Umbra by Dawson E Rambo

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Umbra by Dawson E Rambo

Classification: S R A T , MSR
Keywords: Mulder/Scully, Conspiracy, Umbra

Summary : After being called in to investigate a strange series of military murders, Scully and Mulder uncover a deeper conspiracy that leads to the heart of the Consortium’s ultimate plan.

Rating: R – Strong sexual content, Violence, Adult Themes, Language.

“Umbra”

By Dawson E. Rambo

Disclaimer : Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Walter Skinner and any other tangentially mentioned characters created by Chris Carter remain his copyrighted property, the property of 1013 Productions, and the property of Fox Television, a unit of 20th Century Fox, Inc. The author believes that the use of copyrighted characters in the forum known as “Fan Fiction” is protected under the “Fair Use” statutes of US Copyright law. No infringement of any copyright is intended.

Characters created by the author remain his property.

Feedback: Please. All comments (positive, negative, whatever,) gratefully accepted. Email address is: [email protected]

Spoilers: Up to but not including US4 “Momento Mori”

Casting For “Umbra”

Note: Not all characters appear in all chapters.

CAST PAGE — To see some of the faces that go with the names, go visit: http://www.azstarnet.com/~drambo/ucast.htm Archivist’s Note: You needn’t bother – all images have dropped off the archived version of this page 🙁

“He had white horses and ladies by the score all dressed in satin and waiting by the door…

He went to fight wars for his country and his king. Of his honor and his glory the people would sing, ‘Ooh what a lucky man he was Ooh what a lucky man he was’

A bullet had found him his blood ran as he cried. Nobody could save him so he laid down and he died.”

—“Lucky Man”

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 1/38

Little Creek, Virginia
May 20, 1995

The killer reached down and pressed the ‘pause’ button on the portable CD player he had carefully balanced on the windowsill. Using just the forefinger and thumb of each hand, he gently pried the headphones off, scooting just a little closer to the window at the same time. A pair of binoculars sat perched on the same sill as the CD player, and the killer reached for them, bringing them up to his eyes in a single, practiced move.

His field of vision narrowed and magnified itself. He watched as his target moved down the sidewalk across the street. The killer felt the earliest tugs of a grin starting on his face, and he shivered in anticipation. This was going to be fun, he decided.

One of the hands holding the binoculars moved to the sill yet again, this time for the third item he had placed there. It looked like nothing at all, really. Just a small black plastic box with a toggle switch and a red push-button on it. A small rubberized antenna poked out of the top. At first glance the device looked like a garage door opener or something like that. Something totally innocent.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

The target continued to move, and the killer took a moment to wonder why he felt it so necessary to watch this happen. He had killed before, and never had he felt the need to witness the culmination of his actions. His methods were both obtuse and flagrant, but never had he felt this particular emotion only moments before finishing a job.

Amusement.

He wondered if it was a sign that he was losing his mind.

The killer watched as the target moved closer to his car, digging a hand into a pocket to find his keys.

***

Petty Officer Second Class Anthony Calandra stopped in his tracks. Something was not right. His head came up and he took a slow look at the world around him. Little Creek, Virginia had been his home for almost two years now, and he knew the rhythms of the city as well as anyone could, and he definitely sensed that something was amiss.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, something above his normal sight line. But when he let his eyes drift towards where he thought he’d seen something…there was nothing. Just a window.

Calandra snorted. Must be getting jumpy in your old age, he thought. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he had less than ten minutes to get back. Most bosses wouldn’t get upset if someone was ten minutes late, Calandra knew, but his boss wasn’t like most bosses.

His boss was Captain Eric Prescott, USN, Commanding Officer, NAVSPECWARDEVGRU, which in the eternal alphabet-soup of Navy-speak stood for NAVal SPECial WARfare DEVelopment GRoUp. That was a very nice, very official sounding title for something that had very little to do with developing anything, and had a lot to do with killing people. NAVSPECWARDEVGRU was the ‘cover’ name for the US Navy’s top-secret counterterrorism unit, SEAL Team Six. And Anthony Calandra had been a proud member of what the other Special Operations units in the US military humorously referred to as the “Jedi Knights” for almost six years. He had no desire to anger his boss and risk being reassigned back to one of the ‘normal’ SEAL teams, or worse, one of the UDT Teams.

Calandra quickened his pace, casting one last glance around before bending over his car, keys in hand.

***

The killer smiled. Calandra was as advertised; the experienced Navy commando had sensed his presence, and had reacted to it as he had been trained: Stop, look and listen. But, as he had other issues and matters on his mind, he hadn’t taken that extra second to really look at his surroundings, and as a result, was about to die.

The killer reached down with his thumb and flicked the toggle switch from OFF to ON. The push-button began to glow red. The killer waited until Calandra was inside the car with the doors closed and the windows rolled up against the hot Virginia summer sun.

With a shiver of anticipatory pleasure, the killer’s thumb depressed the red push button.

An instant later, the explosion filled the killer’s view. It was not the most powerful charge the killer had ever placed, but it had been built and placed with care. The small wad of Semtex he had placed under the seat of Calandra’s car had its desired effect. The only obvious sign that anything had happened were the shattered drivers’ and passengers’ windows, and the plumes of white smoke slowly trailing up towards the cloudless blue sky.

Taking his time, whistling as he worked, the killer collected his CD player, headphones and binoculars.

He picked up the transmitter with his right hand, and thought for a long moment. He weighed the options both ways, and made his decision. Un-tucking his cotton T-shirt, he carefully wiped the transmitter down, front and back, until he was sure that there wasn’t a fingerprint on it.

Then, very slowly and very carefully, the killer turned the transmitter over so the smooth plastic back faced him. Biting his bottom lip in concentration, he rolled the ball of his right thumb across the surface. Tilting it into the sunlight, he saw that he had left a perfect impression.

Giggling, the killer carefully placed the transmitter back on the windowsill, turned, and left.

***

Sterling, Virginia
July 25, 1995

Geoff Sanders checked his reflection in the rearview mirror one more time before cutting the engine to his cherry 1966 Corvette and stepping out.

Perfect, he thought. Melissa was one very lucky lady to be going out with me. And she knows it.

Grinning, Geoff walked from the parking lot towards Melissa’s apartment. He was glad that he remembered where it was, because for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her last name. They had met at one of the dozens of bars that dotted Georgetown, had instantly hit it off, and had returned later that night to her place for a ‘nightcap.’

Things had gone well; Melissa had turned out to be an eager, attentive lover, something that Geoff preferred and tended to seek out. He liked his women aggressive without being pushy, and horny without being slutty. Melissa fit the bill on both counts, and he was looking forward to spending another evening with her.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Melissa was very turned on by the fact that Geoff was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had given her one of his business cards, the ones that said he was an analyst in the Economic Research Division. She had seen the red, white and blue seal that had been made famous in the movies, in books and on television, and had practically dragged Geoff from the bar in her eagerness to bed him.

As Geoff turned up the walkway leading to Melissa’s front door, he wondered what her reaction would be if she knew what he really did for the CIA.

***

The killer sat on the couch, legs casually crossed, one hand draped over his knee, the hand comfortably holding a suppressed .22 Ruger pistol loaded with specially designed subsonic rounds. The single best close-quarter silent killing instrument ever designed, the .22 Ruger was the choice of professional assassins the world over, which was ironic, since the killer was here to execute an assassin.

The killer’s finger stroked the safety he would not need, would not use. This one was not going to be as fun as the first, he decided. Calandra had been a blast, no pun intended. But waxing someone from a building fifty feet away with a wad of Semtex as big as a golf ball was one thing. Safe, fun, easy to manage. The man about to enter Melissa’s apartment was another matter altogether. He, too, was a professional, just as the killer was, and if asked, Geoff Sanders would probably think he was the better of the two.

Of that, he was sadly mistaken.

The killer heard the knock on the door. Smiling, he reached with his free hand to the coffee table in front of him and pressed the PLAY button. Melissa’s voice, loud and clear, came out of the speaker. “Come in!” she called, her voice eager and hungry, sultry and promising, all in the same breath.

It sounded perfect, just the way he wanted it to. The killer had spent four hours coaching her on the voice before shooting her in the face and dumping her body in the spare bedroom.

Raising the pistol, the killer watched as the knob turned.

Geoff Sanders stepped inside, his eyes open, eager, searching the room for his expected conquest. He was so distracted by the thought of the coming nights’ activities that his eyes passed over the man on the couch pointing a gun at him. It took only a half-second for his brain to react to what he had just seen, and that was all the time it took.

The killer’s first two shots took Geoff in the chest, the bullets impacting so close together that they would later look like a single hole during the autopsy. Geoff fell to his knees, his eyes focused on the man sitting on the couch.

“You!” Geoff wheezed.

Good, the killer thought. He recognized me.

The killer’s only regret about the first killing was that Calandra hadn’t known who had pushed the button that had ended his life. At least now he had the satisfaction of seeing the look of pain, confusion and betrayal on Geoff’s face.

“Yes,” the killer whispered. “Me.”

The next two shots took Geoff in the face. He fell, face-first, onto the carpet. Standing, the killer walked over and stood over the body.

“Pity, Geoff, old man. I thought at least you’d be more of a challenge.”

Once again, the killer carefully wiped his instrument of murder down, and then just as carefully, made sure that he left a single thumbprint for the police…or whomever…to find.

The killer looked down at the body, taking care not to step in the rapidly-growing pool of blood. “Ta-ta,” he said, tossing the gun so it landed in the middle of the corpse’s back.

Whistling, the killer left the apartment, closing and locking the door behind him.

***

Marine Corps Air Station
Twentynine Palms
Outside of Palm Springs, California
April 18, 1997

Peter O’Mally jumped into his Jeep CJ-7 and fired it up. It was the end of a very, very long duty day and he was looking forward to downing a few brews and relaxing. It was Friday, and he had the next two days off. The peacetime Marine Corps was just another nine-to-five jobs, even for a specialist like him.

Pete’s specialty was high-security communications, with a concentration in microwave systems and burst transmitters, something quite in demand in the “new” Marine Corps.

He cleared the post with a quick salute from the guard and punched the gas, reveling in the feel of the wind in his hair. Well, what the Marine Corps called hair, anyway. Still, it felt good, it was Friday, and there was cold beer and warm women waiting in Palm Springs. Smiling, Sergeant Peter O’Mally wondered if he should go to that new place… what was the name?

Snapshot Grill.

Pete had heard a lot about the place, but he wasn’t in the mood for a new experience tonight. He was in the mood for some country music, some cold beer, some pool, and perhaps a slow dance or two with a cute girl.

Marty’s it was.

***

The killer sat at the bar, slowly twisting the bottle of MGD. Lifting if off the coaster, he would give it a precise one-quarter turn and replace the cold, sweating bottle back onto the cardboard square. With his other hand, he massaged the depression where his eye socket met the bridge of his nose.

His target was late. Not that it mattered in the great scheme of things, but the killer was a meticulous man, and any deviations from a planned schedule tended to upset him. And this was most definitely a schedule deviation.

The killer had been tracking O’Mally for six weeks. Every Friday, at exactly 18:30 sharp, O’Mally would enter Marty’s bar and order the same exact thing: A Coors and a shot. For six straight weeks, the killer had been tracking O’Mally’s every move, on base and off. It hadn’t been nearly as hard as the killer had planned to get onto the base, and once there, it had been a simple matter to wait for the perfect opportunity.

That opportunity was supposed to have presented itself to the killer over twenty minutes ago. It wasn’t as if the killer were afraid of missing his target altogether. After all, he had all the time in the world, and none of his targets knew he was coming. Even after five of them, the sixth still had not been told that he had been marked, that he was targeted. They were like that, all of them, the killer knew. Like ostriches. Heads in the sand, asses up, never caring what happened to the other guy. Just as long as they were protected, they didn’t care about anyone else.

Well, the killer cared. He cared a lot. And that was why he was so angry at Peter O’Mally. Deviation from the schedule was not acceptable.

The killer thought about just doing it anyway. It would only cost a quarter, and then O’Mally would be out of the picture and there would only be two left. Stone and the Haynes woman. Once O’Mally was out of the way, things could get interesting. He had saved the Haynes woman because he had never had a woman as a target before. Yes, he had killed Melissa, Geoff’s lover of the week, but that had been different. Her death had not required any planning, and the killer had taken little, if any, satisfaction from it. Haynes would be different. She was one of them; she was a target deserving the killer’s full attention and creativity.

And she was going to get it, just as soon as O’Mally presented himself so the killer could detonate the four ounces of carefully shaped and placed C4 plastique he had put in the target’s cellular phone.

The bell over the door signaled that someone was entering the bar. The killer glanced up into the face of his target and fought not to jump up and throw his arms around the man.

The killer glanced at his watch.

One last drink, O’Mally. One last Coors, and your one, final shot, and then I will make the call that will end your life.

The killer raised his MGD bottle and signaled the bartender for another.

***

Headquarters, Naval Investigative Service (NIS)
Washington Navy Yard
Monday, April 21, 1997 0900 Hours

Vice Admiral Jake Karn read the telex one more time and fought the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. The name on the telex was one he had been expecting to cross his desk sometime within the last thirty days, but he had never expected it to be like this.

The explosion in Marty’s Pub had taken out two innocent bystanders and seriously wounded another four. The press was starting to sniff around, asking why the cellular phone of a Marine Sergeant had exploded inside a bar. For now, the Public Affairs Division of HQ, USMC at Eighth & I streets were trying to create the conception in the press that the murder had been a racially motivated incident precipitated by a harsh word spoken in a squad bay months ago. The fact that the Commandant was willing to risk the bad press that admitting the USMC still had race relation problems would create testified to the importance of covering the truth.

Karn reached into the second drawer on the left hand side of his desk. There was a small secure safe built into the drawer with a seven- button cipher lock. Quickly unlocking it, he withdrew a unremarkable manila folder.

Unremarkable, except for the fact that it had seven purple diagonal stripes running from the upper right hand corner to the lower left, signifying to those that knew about such things that the contents of the folder were so highly classified that if one had to ask what was inside the folder, they more often than not didn’t have clearance to even look at the contents.

Vice Admiral Karn opened the folder stared at the single page inside. It was nothing but a list of names, ranks and current assignments. A small red checkmark had been placed next to five of the eight names. Taking a red pen from his middle drawer, Karn carefully placed a red check next to the sixth name: O’Mally, Peter, Sergeant, USMC, currently assigned as a Communications Technician, MCAS Twentynine Palms, California.

Sighing, Karn studied the two remaining names on the list:

Stone, Matthew, CMDR, USN NIS-SLUDJ

Haynes, Heather, Major, USA, DIA-DCSINTEL

The first name, Matthew Stone, was assigned to the very office that Admiral Karn commanded, the Naval Investigative Service, and was currently tasked in the Sensitive Legal (Upper Deck) Jurisdiction (SLUDJ, pronounced ‘sludge’) division. The elite of NIS, SLUDGJ investigators normally were assigned such cases that so sensitive that no one else at NIS wanted to touch them with a Mark I Mod 0 ten-foot pole.

The second name, Heather Haynes, was a Major in the United States Army, and was currently serving in the Pentagon as a liaison officer between the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (DSCINTEL) and the Defense Intelligence Agency. A highly capable Military Intelligence officer, Heather Haynes was the only female name on the list in Karn’s folder.

Karn had a decision to make.

He had to call one of the two names on the list, to at least give them a chance. It was unfair to wait any longer, as he had with the other six names. The first had been an obvious hit, but Karn hadn’t picked up on it right away. The car bomb that had killed Tony Calandra hadn’t blipped Karn’s radar at all. Geoff’s bullet-riddled body had caused an arched eyebrow here and there, but it wasn’t until the third murder, Gerry Smith down in Florida, until Karn started putting the pieces together.

He was scared; Karn wasn’t afraid to admit that. Something was going on, something horrible, something no one had ever expected, something no one had ever been able to prepare for, to plan against.

The next three murders…Dorson, Adams and now O’Mally had all happened so quickly that Karn hadn’t had a chance to really stop and think about the overwhelming implications of what was taking place.

But something had to be done, and done now.

A thought had been tickling the back of Karn’s head for about a week now, as he had struggled with the decision of what to do about the GOBLIN problem. An old friend, someone he had known a lifetime ago in Vietnam, was still in the federal government, in the law enforcement arm. At the FBI, as a matter of fact.

Karn wondered if he could count on a friendship that had gone untested for almost twenty-five years.

Well, he thought, no time like the present. He’d already looked the number up himself, straight out of the Federal Registry. Picking up the phone, Karn dialed the seven numbers quickly, before he could change his mind.

***

FBI Headquarters
J. Edgar Hoover Building

Assistant Director Walter Skinner glanced over at the ringing phone and then through his office door at his secretary’s desk. Abby wasn’t on the phone, and seemed to be ignoring the ringing. He was just about to suggest, more than a little loudly, that Abby get the damn call when he noticed that it was his private line that was ringing.

“Skinner,” he said.

“Walter Skinner? How are you, you old son of a bitch!?”

Skinner’s ears recognized the voice, but his mind couldn’t match it with a face.

“I’m sorry, you have the advantage.”

There was a pause. “Ah, shit…well, I was hoping that a blast from your past wouldn’t exactly be unwelcome. This is Jake Karn, Walter, and I’m sorry to have bothered you. Have a nice-”

“Admiral Karn?” Skinner interrupted quickly.

“Yes.”

Skinner was amazed. He’d seen the story in Jane’s Defense Weekly about his old friend Jake getting promoted to Vice Admiral, but he’d never, ever expected a call from him. Some things, Skinner knew, were better left buried. Dead and buried. No use pulling the scab off a wound that had all but healed.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“This is unofficial, Walter. I mean it.”

Skinner considered the debt he owed this man. “I’m listening.”

“I have something strange going on here, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Nutshell, sir.”

“Here’s the dump, Walter. I have a dead man killing people.”

Skinner paused. “Excuse me, sir?”

“Walter, knock off the ‘sir’ crap! It’s Jake. It was then, it always has been, and it always will be!”

“Yes, sir, Jake, sir,” Skinner said, unable to resist. “Besides, you know that all Marines are trained to call flag officers by their first names: Admiral.”

The answering laugh was music to Skinner’s ears. It was just as he remembered it, full and throaty, deep, from the belly, where a laugh should come from.

“Talk to me, sir. For a minute there, you sounded like one of my agents.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Skinner sighed. “I’ve got an agent that believes in…extreme possibilities. I thought I heard you say that you had a dead man committing murders, and that’s something this particular agent would just love to sink his teeth into.”

Karn paused. “That is exactly what I’m saying, Walter. I have fingerprints left at the scene of six murders over the past two, two and a half years…the same print, right thumb, from a man that died in a rocket attack at Da Nang in 1969. I have a ghost committing murders, Walter.”

Skinner thought about it for a moment. “Think about it, Jake. There were a lot of dirty, private little wars going on then. Lots of people were supposedly killed in action when in reality they were double-dipping for the CIA or the Phoenix Project or the CIDG or something like that.”

Karn sighed. “Normally, I’d agree with you, Walter, but there’s two little twists. The first is that I, myself, personally identified the body of this particular murderer. I was there when the rocket attack hit, and I saw the doctors pronounce him dead, and I saw him buried. I was his escort officer back to the states. So I know this man is dead and buried at Arlington National Cemetery.”

“What’s the other point?” Skinner asked.

“I know who he’s going to kill next.”

That brought Skinner up short. “So what’s the problem, Jake? Just call them up and warn them!”

“Not that easy, my friend. Actually, I don’t know who’s going to die next, exactly, but I do know that it’s one of two people.”

Skinner tapped his fingers on his blotter, twisting in his seat to look out the window. “Who?”

“One of the two surviving members of a commando team that was sent into Bagdahd to assassinate Saddam Hussein during the height of the Gulf War.”

Karn paused. “Listen, Walter…I know this is way, way out of policy, but I need help. Is your agent that good?”

Skinner felt his jaw tightening. “Yes, he’s that good. But I have to warn you, he’s a bit of a loose cannon sometimes. He doesn’t much trust the military. He thinks you guys are all covering up alien abductions and things like that.”

That brought Karn up short. “He’s a nut?”

“No…like I said, he believes in extreme possibilities. But the fact of the matter is that he’s a brilliant investigator. He has a mind like a steel trap, and he remembers every single thing he reads.”

“I want him, Walter. I need him.”

Skinner considered a moment. “I can’t do it, Jake. Before you get whipped up, hear me out.

“First reason, he’s got a partner. And not just any partner, but the kind of partner that would go to the ends of the earth to find out where he is and what he’s doing if she feels that I’m lying to her about his whereabouts. Since I assume you want this done on the QT, she could create problems.

“Second, she’s the second half of the partnership, like I said. Alone, Mulder is one of the best agents I’ve ever seen. When he and his partner, Dana Scully, get together, there isn’t a better investigative team in the entire FBI.”

“What are their stats like?” Jake interrupted.

“About a ninety-percent closure rate, with an about 80 or 85 percent solve rate, Jake.”

Admiral Karn whistled through his teeth.

“I told you…best team I have. I can’t, for a lot of political reasons having to do with my position here, let them be seconded to the Navy. But I’ll tell you what…you send me someone.”

Karn thought about it for half a second. “Good idea, Walter. I have just the man. Commander Matthew Stone. He’s an investigator for the SLUDGJ team, so he’s used to tiptoeing around important people. Maybe he can teach your Agent Mulder some manners.”

“I doubt it,” Skinner said, glad that Karn couldn’t see the smile on his face.

“Listen, Walter, there’s something you need to know.”

“What?”

“Stone’s on the list. He’s one of the two people left.”

Skinner drummed his fingers on his blotter a few times. “I understand. Tomorrow morning, early, have Commander Stone report to me at the Hoover building. I’m on the eighth floor.”

“Thanks, Walter. I owe you one.”

Skinner hung the phone up and drummed his fingers on the blotter some more. Picking up the phone again, he dialed four digits.

“Scully,” the familiar voice answered.

“Agent Scully, I’ll need to see you and Agent Mulder tomorrow morning, about eight, in my office.”

He could almost hear Scully changing mental gears. “Is there a problem of some kind, sir?”

“No, Scully. No problem.” Skinner hung the phone up and turned once again to stare out his window. This one was going to be bad. He could feel it in his bones, and his bones never lied.

Well, Skinner thought. No use worrying about it today. Turning back from the window, Skinner grabbed his pen and dove back into the never-ending pile of paperwork that was the life of an Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 2/38

Office of Assistant Director Walter Skinner
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC

Mulder turned to study his reflection in the glare of the window directly outside Skinner’s office, his hand moving automatically to adjust his tie. Stork-like, he stood on one foot and quickly buffed the toes of his shoes on the back of his pants legs.

“Do you have any idea what he wants?” he asked Scully.

His diminutive partner glanced over her shoulder back at him and raised a single, silently sarcastic eyebrow. “No idea, Mulder. What do you think he caught you doing this time? How many important pairs of toes have you stepped on recently?”

“Just the woman I went dancing with last night,” he said with a shrug. Scully’s eyebrow arched a notch higher, but she wisely chose to keep her mouth shut. She had little doubt that Mulder’s claim of being out on a date last night was, at best, an outright lie, and at worst, the frustrated fantasies of a man who had spent the better part of his adulthood with a ‘life’ on back order.

“Well,” Mulder said, his voice sounding strangled and strange, even to himself, “there’s only one way to find out.”

Quietly, so only her partner could hear, Scully muttered, “Into the valley of death rode the four hundred…”

As she raised her hand to knock, Mulder whispered back, “I wouldn’t mind having the other three-hundred and ninety-eight as backup…”

Scully grinned and knocked in the prescribed FBI manner. Sharply, twice, with all four knuckles.

“Come,” Skinner called. Pushing the door open, Scully entered the AD’s office, followed closely by her partner. They both noticed immediately that their boss was not alone. Two US Navy officers sat on the couch. Dana’s practiced eye swept over the two men, cataloging and judging in an instant. The older of the two was a three-star flag officer, a Vice Admiral. He wore a chest full of ribbons, badges and devices. He had his water-wings, which meant that he was qualified to command a ship of the line, and judging by the small gold star above his right breast pocket, he had once commanded such a ship. He wore the requisite “I was there” ribbons that one would expect an officer of, oh, about thirty years-worth of experience to wear.

The younger one was more interesting, though. His Navy blue dress uniform told a much different story. He wore almost as many ribbons as his superior, but they were of a different kind. His was the first Naval uniform Scully had ever seen that sported such an unusual collection of baubles.

Centered, alone on its own row, was the small purple and white striped ribbon that signified that the owner had been awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy’s second-highest award for valor. Below that was the Distinguished Service Medal, usually only awarded to Army personnel. Below the ribbons, centered on the left breast pocket itself was a set of Master Parachutists Wings, with a star signifying a combat jump. She saw by the three gold stripes on his sleeves that the younger man was a Commander, equivalent in rank to an Army Lieutenant Colonel. Only then did Scully raise her eyes to the face of the man sitting inside the uniform.

There was something there, something behind his eyes that caught her attention. A coldness, a sense of emotional distance. He sat with his hands folded neatly in his lap, his legs crossed at the knee. Well turned out, Ahab would have said, she thought. A fine young officer in the peak of his career. Probably on the selection list for Captain. No, she corrected herself, he’s too young. He looks to be no more than thirty-four or thirty-five years old. For that matter, he’s too young for the three stripes of a full commander.

I bet there’s a story in that, Scully thought.

“Mulder. Scully,” Skinner said. “Please come in.” The two agents advanced through the office to their customary position in front of Skinner’s desk, hands on the chairs they stood behind.

“Have a seat,” he offered, pointing with his pen. Mulder sat, and Scully followed suit. Skinner finished reviewing the report on his desk, signed it, closed the folder, tossed it into his OUT box, and finally looked up at his two favorite agents.

“We have a situation,” he began. Mulder started squirming almost at once, eager to find out what delicious, tasty treat Skinner was about to throw in his lap.

“You both noticed our guests. I’d like to introduce you to-” As Skinner spoke, both Mulder and Scully stood and turned to face the naval officers. “Admiral Jake Karn and Commander Matthew Stone.” Mulder extended his hand and shook with both Karn and Stone. Scully followed suit, her hand lingering just a little bit longer in Stone’s than it had to. She looked into his eyes and saw that same something behind them.

“Matt,” he said softly.

“Dana,” she added, and then quickly withdrew her hand. My God, she thought, am I actually blushing?

Skinner stood amongst them and pointed to the conference table. “Perhaps we’d all be more comfortable there,” he said, leading the way. The foursome, led by Skinner, quickly assumed seats around the table.

“Perhaps it’d be best if I let Admiral Karn begin.” The Admiral shifted in his chair to face the two X-Files agents. “About three and a half years ago, a man was killed in a car bomb explosion outside of Little Creek, Virginia. Because he was assigned to a classified unit, and had been on several missions of a sensitive nature, the matter was quietly handled by both the NIS and the Little Creek police.

“Now, that in and of itself is not exactly news. We’ve lost people before to terrorist activity, but never in this country. Shortly after that, an employee of another agency, with a very unique job description was shot dead in an apartment in Sterling, Virginia. Again, considering the nature of his job, it was not exactly something to trip any wires. Again, because he worked in a sensitive job, the murder was handled very quietly, very discretely.”

Karn paused, shifted in his seat, and began again. “I see now that my decision to…take that course of action was motivated more out of political concerns…the embarrassment it might cause an administration that had way, way too many of them already than concern for my men.” Karn paused again. “I don’t know how much either of you know about the military, but the US Navy is very special in one specific way. When an officer takes command of a unit, he takes complete and utter command of the officers and men under him. He is responsible not only for their military lives, but their personal lives as well. The lives of the wives and children, and in some cases the husbands,” he added quickly, glancing at Scully.

“My father was a career officer. Finished as a Captain,” Scully said. Matt Stone, who had been studying the table, looked up with new interest in his eyes.

Scully and Stone locked gazes across the table for a long moment.

“Captain Bill Scully?” Stone finally asked. Silently, Scully nodded. “I thought so,” Matt said. “You have his eyes, if I may say so.”

Despite every effort to the contrary, Scully felt the blush creeping up her neck again. She didn’t answer him, however, and after an awkward moment of silence, the meeting continued.

“I’m glad to hear that, Agent Scully, because I feel horrible that I let political considerations get in the way of being a good commanding officer.”

“Be that as it may,” Mulder said, interrupting with a snide tone in his voice, “I fail to see how any of this is an FBI matter. Admiral Karn, I believe you are the head of the Naval Investigative Service?”

Karn nodded. “I’ve been the Commanding Officer for three years now. I’m due to be promoted to CINC of the Sixth Fleet in about four months.”

“….and this could hold up that ‘ol promotion, am I right?”

Without knowing why, Scully kicked Mulder under the table. He glanced back at her, and those silent, undetectable communication channels opened between the two partners. I’m sorry, he thought to her.

Play nice, she thought back.

Chastised, Mulder turned his attention back to the meeting. Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder caught a perplexed expression on Stone’s face. The commander had caught the silent exchange between he and Scully, and was wondering what had just happened.

“If you’ll allow the Admiral to finish, Mulder, you might learn why I think this is an FBI matter.” Skinner was growling, his voice holding a dangerous, steely edge. Both Mulder and Scully knew that tone, and knew when it was possible to push Skinner that one extra inch.

This wasn’t one of those times.

Karn coughed nervously and then continued. “The thing of it is, Agent Mulder, that…well, this is kind of hard to believe, but there is…physical evidence that leads me to believe that the murderer is the same person.”

“Fingerprints?” Scully asked.

Karn nodded. “Yes, a single print. Right thumb. Left at all the murder scenes, and frankly, it looks as though the print were left on purpose. At the first scene, the car bombing, the transmitter was wiped clean, except for the single right thumbprint. At the second scene, the one where a CIA employee was…” Karn trailed off, realizing his mistake.

“Sir,” Stone interrupted. “If we’re going to get these two agents’ help…it was bound to come out eventually.”

Karn nodded. “You’re right, Matt. Anyway, as I was saying, the second murder, a CIA employee, who was shot four times…the murder weapon was a .22 Ruger pistol. The gun was wiped clean…”

“Except for a right thumbprint,” Scully finished.

Karn nodded again. “Yes, Agent Scully. The same right thumbprint.”

Scully shrugged. “Is there a question as to who the print belongs to? I thought that NIS had access to the NCIC.”

Stone began speaking, directly to Scully. “Yes, we do, Agent Scully. And we know who the print belongs to. But that’s the problem. It can’t possibly belong to who the computer says it does.”

Now Scully was confused. The concept that the NCIC would make a mistake like that was unheard of. Despite the rash of stories in the press highlighting the shortcomings of the once-vaunted FBI criminalistics lab, it was neigh-on impossible to make a mistake with a fingerprint. The querying department only had to ask for a hand-search, and a FBI fingerprint technician would hand-compare the prints. And a human never made a mistake like that.

Never.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to say,” Scully said.

Karn picked up the story again. “The fact of the matter is that the man the NCIC says matches the print died almost thirty years ago in Vietnam.”

Mulder interrupted. “How do you know this, Admiral?”

“Because I was standing outside the hooch the man was in when the VC began a rocket and mortar attack. I didn’t look away, and I didn’t flinch. The rocket took the hooch dead on. Furthermore, I identified what was left of the body, and since the man in question was one of my best friends, I escorted the body back to the states for burial. I, myself, was with the body from the time the rocket hit until the first shovelfull of dirt hit the casket. And I’m telling you that the man the NCIC says matches the thumbprint is dead. I watched him die. Is that good enough for you, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder sat back, rubbing the tip of his chin with the side of a finger. “Good enough. Let me ask you a question. This may sound a little odd, but what are the chances that someone may have removed the man’s finger during embalming?”

Scully interrupted. “Mulder, it’s impossible to keep a finger viable enough to leave fingerprints for close to thirty years. It’s just not possible.”

Mulder turned to his partner. “As far as we know,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “Admiral?”

“Not possible,” Karn said, shaking his head. “I said I was with the body every moment, and I’m not kidding. My own hoochmates brought me a change of clothes and packed my duffel. The body was not out of my sight for almost seventy-two hours, and after that, it was buried at Arlington.”

Mulder switched tactics. “What are the chances that the body was exhumed and then the hand or finger removed?”

Stone stepped in again. “I thought of that, Mulder. As insane as it sounds, I thought that…well, if you think about it, it’s a very good idea for someone who doesn’t want to be found. Take a hand from a dead body and leave fingerprints all over the murder scene. Send the cops searching in circles. But when I went to Arlington and checked, the grave had not been disturbed in any way.”

“Again,” Mulder pointed out. “As far as you know.”

Stone sat up straighter, his eyes flashing in anger. “Let me tell you something, mister…”

Scully had a sudden thought, and was immediately ashamed.

God, he’s handsome.

“…I went to Arlington, and I exhumed the body myself. The seals that Graves Registration puts on all the caskets was intact. I took the seals off, replaced them with new ones, and had the damn glue on the back analyzed. According to your own labs, Agent Mulder, the glue was dated at 1970. So, no, no one opened the damn casket and took the hand.”

Mulder sat back this time, slouching in his chair, his eyes far away. Skinner made a motion towards Stone with his hand, a “leave him alone” gesture that was unmistakable. Mulder could be a total pain in the ass sometimes, but Skinner knew “Spooky Mode” when he saw it. Mulder was gone, had left for some other point in his own personal existence, and was busy connecting dots and drawing conclusions where no rational investigator would be able to see any. It was amazing, sometimes, but the emotional and political cost was sometimes very high.

Skinner felt that this might be one of those times.

Scully took the time to study Stone obliquely. Her earlier thought had not gone away, and she realized with a start that she was attracted to the tall, muscular naval officer.

Muscular? Where had that thought come from?

And then Scully did what she always did. She took the feelings, turned them over in her mental hands, examined them closely the way a child might look at an especially shiny or smooth stone, and then skipped it across the pond in her mind, letting them sink to the bottom of her consciousness. Best not to have thoughts like that, Dana, she thought. Unprofessional. Dangerous.

Arousing.

“Well,” Mulder said, coming out of his now-famous trance, “there are only a few possibilities. First, the man that died in the hooch was not the man you thought he was, Admiral. Someone had assumed the identity of your killer. Second, someone did manage to get the finger or the hand from this man, and has managed to keep it viable enough to leave fingerprints for thirty years. Third…” Mulder trailed off.

“Let me ask you a hypothetical question, Admiral.”

“Go ahead.”

“First…how much do you know about zombies?”

Four mouths dropped open at Mulder’s question, and eight eyes turned and focused on him.

“You can’t be serious!” Karn protested.

“No, no,” Mulder said, holding up a placating hand. “Let me finish…”

“Mulder, that’s enough.” Skinner straightened. “As of this moment, the FBI is joining the investigation into this…matter. Agent Scully… Mulder, Commander Stone, who himself is a Special Agent of the Naval Investigative Service, will be joining the investigation as an equal partner. He is to be given all that he needs.” Skinner sighed. “Mulder, you’re in charge. Find out what the hell is going on here, and find out fast.”

“Don’t want to lose that fourth star, do we?” Mulder said insolently. Skinner gritted his teeth, knowing that it was the price he would have to pay for Mulder to give the case his full attention. He was such a pain in the ass, but once he got his say in, he would dive into the case with both feet, making sure that no stone was left unturned and no toes left untrod-upon.

“Yes, if that’s the way you want to look at it, Mulder. But you have to admit that it does fit the profile of an X-File.”

“That, or the second coming of Christ,” Mulder remarked dryly. He sighed deeply. “Very well…” Turning his attention to Commander Stone, Mulder asked, “I’ll need all your source material, Commander.”

Stone nodded at Mulder’s courtesy of using his military title. “I brought slides,” he offered.

“Cool,” Mulder replied, his face splitting in a wide grin.

“I’m prepared to give you a full briefing as soon as this meeting breaks up.”

Scully rolled her eyes. Boys and their toys. A slide show. Just what Mulder needed to really sink his teeth into this case.

***

Office of Fox Mulder
FBI Headquarters
J. Edgar Hoover Building

“Need any help?” Mulder asked, moving to stand from behind his desk.

“Nope,” Stone said, fiddling with the slide projector. “Almost got it.” He twisted the circular carousel left, then right, and felt it snap! into place with a satisfying solidity.

“Dim the lights, please?” he asked Scully. She was standing against the door, arms crossed across her chest. Nodding, she reached over and flicked the switch, throwing the room into darkness. A moment later the slide projector clicked on. The first slide was obviously an official US Navy photograph.

“Tony Calandra, US Navy. Assigned to SEAL Team Six. Killed by a car bomb in Little Creek, Virginia, May 20, 1995. Forensics show that it was a fifteen-ounce shaped Semtex charge under the driver’s seat. Expertly designed and detonated. No external damage to any other car, pedestrian or passerby. Blew out both windows, but aside from killing Calandra, that was the only damage. Right thumb print was left on the rear of the radio transmitter, found in a rented loft sixty feet from the bomb. “

Click!

“Geoff Sanders. Contract hitter for the Central Intelligence Agency. Killed in a girlfriend’s apartment on July 25, 1997. Shot twice in the heart, twice in the head. Murder weapon was a .22 Ruger with subsonic, soft-nosed killing rounds. Right thumb print matching the print at the Calandra murder found on the grip.”

Click!

“Gerald Smith, US Army Ranger. Assigned to the 1st Ranger Battalion. October 10, 1995.Discovered in his car, parked, in the lot of a 7-11 in Dunwoody, Georgia while on leave. Neck broken in four places. Forensics shows that the killer used a move that has been taught to the Rangers since World War II for silent, quick killing.”

Click!

“Marty Dorsen. US Army Special Forces. Master Sergeant. Speaks English, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic, and oddly enough, Russian. Cross trained in communications and demolitions. Sergeant Dorsen was also a diabetic. Someone put the dormant agent of a binary poison in his insulin. When the second agent was introduced, probably by osmotic skin absorption, he had a massive heart attack and died. Originally classified as natural causes by the local police department. Killed on October 19, 1995.”

Click!

“Jose Montoya. US Army, Delta Force. Sniper. Captain. Won a bunch of thousand-yard matches before joining the service. Participated in the Iranian hostage rescue attempt. Killed while hunting in upstate New York on November 19, 1995.” Stone paused, trying to hide the irony in his voice. “Killed by a .306 round fired from over six hundred yards away. Single shot, on the bridge of the nose. Classified as a hunting accident by local authorities.”

Click!

“Mel Adams. United States Air Force. Major. Qualified fighter pilot. Flew F-15 Strike Eagles for both the Grenada and Panama invasions. Broke a leg playing polo in West Palm Beach in 1989. Grounded. Joined the Air Commandos, became a specialist in Escape and Evasion. Also killed while hunting in Bear Creek, Colorado.”

“Shot?” Scully asked.

“No. Garroted from behind. Took about three-quarters of his head off.”

“Oh,” she said quietly.

Stone put down the projector remote and walked into the light. “These six men, on the surface, have nothing in common except for the fact that they are all military officers. However, they do have something in common, something that is not very widely known.” Stone paused, gathering his thoughts. “What I am about to tell you is very, very highly classified. Word of this cannot leave this room. Understood?” He looked at Scully, who nodded, and then at Mulder, who hesitated but finally nodded as well.

“Very well.” Stone stepped back behind the project and reclaimed the remote.

Click!

“Heather Haynes. Major, US Army. Military Intelligence. Analyst. Currently assigned as liaison between the Defense Intelligence Agency and the US Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. She is not dead. But she has the same thing in common with all the men that they have in common with each other.”

Stone paused for a very long moment and then pressed the button on the projector one final time.

“Matthew Stone, US Navy,” he began, almost stopping when he heard Scully gasp behind him. “Former Navy SEAL, currently assigned as Special Agent, Naval Investigative Service.” He paused, and then added with a laugh, “Also not dead. Yet.”

Mulder nodded at Scully, who turned on the lights. “Ok,” he said. “You have my attention. What’s the connection?”

Stone took the only chair in the office not occupied and crossed his legs. “This is the classified part. Are you familiar with Goblin Teams?”

Mulder’s mouth opened and he stood. “Dammit, I should have known it would be something like that!” Stone was obviously surprised at Mulder’s reaction.

“What’s a Goblin Team?” Scully asked.

“Hit teams,” Mulder said, spitting the words at Stone. “High-level intelligence agents, commandos, trained killers sent out by the government to do its’ dirty work. Denied at the highest levels, but they exist, as we’ve just seen.” He paused, trying to catch his breath. “They take the best of the best, Scully, the cream of the crop. And train them to be brutal killers, train them to get the job done, no matter what. Send them out on missions…assassinations. Murders.”

Scully frowned and looked at Stone. “Is this true?”

“Yes and no,” he said uncomfortably. “True, we have been assigned to…sanctioning projects-”

“Oh, is that the phrase they’re using now?” Mulder demanded. “Terminate with extreme prejudice has such a nice ring to it! What happened?”

“It got overused,” Stone said quietly. “Anyway…we did get assigned…wetwork-”

“Just say it!” Mulder demanded. “Just say the word, Stone.”

“Fine, Mulder. We were tasked with assassination projects. Are you happy?”

“No.”

“Excuse me,” Scully interjected. “But government-sponsored assassination is prohibited under an Executive Presidential Order signed by Ford. We don’t do that anymore. This country isn’t supposed to be in the assassination business!”

Stone nodded. “Except for the fact that Bush signed another order, a order so classified that not a single copy of it exists outside of the one that lives inside the personal classified documents safe that belongs to the Director of Central Intelligence. We got our hunting license back in time for the Gulf War.”

“Wonderful,” Mulder muttered.

“Anyway…”

“You were on this team?” Scully wanted to know. Stone twisted in his seat to face her. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I was the Executive Officer of Goblin Team Twelve.”

“They’re TWELVE of those teams?” Mulder exploded.

“Actually, twenty-five.”

Mulder just sat back, his mouth hanging open in surprise. “I can’t believe this. This is a nightmare. That’s it. It’s a nightmare. I’m going to wake up..on..my..couch..right..now…..”

“So let me see if I get this right,” Scully said, walking over to the screen, where the image of him was still displayed. “All the victims, excepting you and Heather, were on Goblin Team Twelve.”

“That’s correct.”

“And someone is killing all of the members, one by one.”

“That’s also correct.”

“Has anyone warned Major Haynes?”

Stone started to squirm. “Not exactly.”

“Why the hell not?” Scully wanted to know.

“Admiral Karn wants us to…the thing of it is, Scully, that Karn thinks the three of us, if we do this right, can catch this son-of-a- bitch when he makes a try for Haynes. He wants us to stake her out and grab this asshole.”

Scully nodded, accepting the logic. “But, still, couldn’t we warn her?”

Stone shook his head. “Our target is a trained intelligence professional. He would know if we’d told her. She would act different, somehow. He would sense it, and then vanish into the wind.”

“How can you be so sure?” Scully insisted.

Stone said nothing, but stood and walked over to the projector. He grabbed the remote one more time and clicked the button.

The image changed.

Scully turned and faced the screen. As the image came into her view, she heard Mulder swear softly behind her. “Oh. My. God.” He said.

Up on the screen was another image, this time of a man in his early thirties. He was tan, fit and trim, and was smiling at the camera. Scully looked at the image on the screen and then back at Matt.

“Matthew Stone, Jr.,” Stone confirmed. “My father. The right thumbprint recovered at the scene belongs to my father, who was apparently killed in action at Da Nang airbase in 1970 by a VC rocket.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 3/38

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC

“Excuse me?” Mulder said.

“What?” Scully interjected.

“You heard what I said,” Stone remarked dryly. “My father, Matthew Stone, Jr., was killed in a VC rocket attack in Da Nang, Republic of Vietnam. His is the right thumbprint that was recovered at each and every murder scene.”

Scully took a deep breath, feeling the room beginning to spin. Mulder sat down hard, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“What I don’t understand,” Scully said slowly, carefully, “is why the Navy would allow you of all people to investigate this case. Surely they can see the conflict of interest. Your own father!”

Angrily, Commander Stone tossed the slide projector’s remote on Mulder’s desk. “Neither of you understand. The man murdering all the members of my team is NOT my father. My father died over twenty years ago in Vietnam. Admiral Karn saw him die, held his hand, helped my mother BURY him at Arlington. I don’t know who is doing this, and I sure as hell don’t know HOW it’s being done, but I assure you that it is NOT my father.”

Scully nodded, the scientist in her accepting the logic. “That makes sense. The commanding officer of NIS knows that it was your father that died, and so…”

“He sends the prodigal son out to catch the real killer, full well in the knowledge that I know things about my father that no one else in the world could. It makes perfect command sense.”

Scully nodded, the Navy brat in her agreeing with the logic of men that commanded other men, those chosen few that had both the ultimate gift and the ultimate curse to command men, to send them possibly, knowingly to their deaths. Scully smiled the smile of those that had walked the walk to Stone, letting him know that she understood. The children of two career Naval officers shared a knowing glance.

“I have a question,” Mulder interjected softly.

“What?” Stone asked.

“Let’s just for the sake of discussion postulate that perhaps it is your father-”

“I told you!” Stone interrupted. Mulder held up a placating hand. “I heard you, Commander. Please listen to me now.”

Stone clamped his mouth shut and nodded, signaling for Mulder to continue.

“Let’s assume that by some quirk of the universe, it is your father, Commander Stone. What then? Are you prepared to track, arrest and possibly having to shoot and kill your own father?”

Stone sat down slowly, the blood draining from his face. “I never considered that.”

Mulder shrugged. I didn’t think you had, pal, he thought. That’s why I had to point it out.

“Do you think it’s possible?” Stone asked incredulously.

Scully tilted her head to the side and shrugged. “You’d be surprised what we’ve seen over the last four years,” she cautioned. “Things that defy any scientific…hell, any rational explanation. Things that would, frankly, Commander, turn your hair white.”

Stone nodded, accepting this. “Still…have you seen anything that would make this…scenario even remotely plausible?”

Mulder stood and walked to one of the dozen or so filing cabinets that ringed his office like some kind of demented metal Stonehenge. Opening a middle drawer in one of them, he rifled through the folders for a moment before locating and selecting the file he’d been searching for.

“A low priority case from about six years ago,” he explained. “Four sexual assaults in south Florida, all with…physical forensic evidence that strongly suggested that the attacker was a single man, a man that had been put to death in Texas four years before the attacks began.”

Scully moved behind the desk to peer over Mulder’s shoulder at the file. “How come you never investigated it?”

Mulder smiled. “Because I know how it was done. Or at least, I have a very good idea how it was done.”

Stone noticed how easily Scully moved into Mulder’s personal space. He reminded himself that they had been partners for a long time. Or are they more than partners? he wondered.

“I’m waiting…” Scully prodded.

“Well, the principle is not that far out. The CIA has been using it for years. There are two ways that I know of to alter fingerprints. The first is minute injections of silicon under the skin of the fingertips. Lasts about a week, and can change fingerprints enough to foil detection. But that’s just enough to make a set of prints that doesn’t pop up on any computer, because basically, they don’t exist.

“The second way is a bit more complicated. What you need to do is take a silicon casting of someone’s hand. Then, you can create a very, very thin ‘fingerprint glove’ that the wearer can use to leave readable prints of another person.”

“That’s ludicrous,” Scully protested.

“No, it isn’t,” Stone corrected softly. “Mr. Mulder is…excuse me, Special Agent Mulder is very informed. I compliment you on your sources, sir. That method is supposed to be classified.”

“It is,” Mulder said smugly. “I just happen to have very good snitches.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Scully pointed out. “Whomever might have access to this technology needs something else. Access to the hand.”

All three of them fell silent. Mulder sat back, lacing his fingers behind his head, his gaze once again far off. Stone opened his mouth to speak, and Scully held up a warning hand. “Later,” she mouthed. Stone nodded, still not sure what was going on, but acclimated enough by now to the situation to understand that these were not any ordinary FBI Special Agents.

After about thirty seconds, Mulder came out of it. “No,” he finally said, “They wouldn’t need access to the hand. Not anymore. Maybe six years ago, but not today. All you’d need was a high resolution scanner, a programmable cast engine, and a copy of the fingerprints. Like from the deceased’s records. Military records, gun permits… anything like that. The rest could be automated by computer.”

Stone considered this, and then stood. “I’ll see you two in the morning,” he said, moving towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Scully asked.

“The Pentagon,” Stone answered. “My father’s records are kept there.”

Scully didn’t ask why, but started moving towards her coat. “I’m coming with you,” she stated. Her tone of voice brooked no argument, and Stone simply nodded.

Mulder watched as his partner and Commander Stone left his office.

As the door clicked closed behind them, one thought ran through Mulder’s mind.

What just happened?

And on the heels of that, another thought occurred to him.

Mulder snatched the phone and dialed seven numbers from memory.

***

“Lone Gunmen,” Langley answered.

“It’s Mulder. Turn off the tape,” Mulder ordered. Langley considered for a moment and then acquiesced, reaching over and thumbing the huge reel-to-reel into stillness.

“What’s up, Mulder?”

“I need an ID check run, very quietly.”

“On who? Don’t tell me Skinner revoked your NCIC rights again.”

“No, I just don’t want to go through official channels.”

“Ok, Mulder, but you owe us. What’s the dude’s name?”

“Commander Matthew Stone, US Navy. Assigned to NIS.”

“Whoa,” Langley said softly.

“Find me everything. Every last thing about him you can.”

“You owe us, Mulder. Big time. Talk to you in about an hour.”

***

Mulder sat back, his hand still on the phone receiver. Why did I just do that? he wondered. Somehow, he felt it was more than just his knee-jerk reaction to anything military. There was something about Commander Matthew Stone that Mulder just did not like.

Forcing thoughts of Stone and Scully sharing the long car ride to the Pentagon from his mind, Mulder turned his attention to the unfinished expense account reports that Skinner was always moaning about.

It was a long time before Mulder was able to concentrate.

***

River Entrance
The Pentagon

Matt Stone parked his NIS-issued Chevy Caprice in the NIS-only lot just outside the River Entrance to the Pentagon, directly across the lot from the helipad that the various high-ranking officers used when they needed to get to Andrews Air Force Base quickly.

“Must be nice,” Scully remarked. “Not having all that distance to walk that the mere mortals do.”

Stone thought about responding in kind, but decided against it. He’d enjoyed the drive over. Dana Scully was an interesting, fascinating woman, a woman with a razor-sharp mind, a woman who could keep her own in conversation, and wasn’t shocked when a salty sailor like him used the work “fuck” in casual conversation. Not to mention the fact that she was gorgeous to look at.

“That’s me, little lady,” he drawled. “King of this here hill.” Just as the words were out of his mouth, the three-star admiral who commanded SURFORLANTFLT exited the building and started walking towards his car. As required by protocol, Stone snapped to attention and saluted the flag officer.

Scully looked away, trying to hide her smile. “Oh, yeah…long live the king.”

“Very funny, Agent Scully. I imagine that if you FBI types had to salute your superiors, every time Skinner passed you in the hallway you’d snap to just as I have to.”

Scully laughed. “Who says I don’t already? Skinner’s an ex- Marine.”

Together they ascended the short staircase leading into the Pentagon. Matt led them on a twisting, turning, circuitous path that ended up in a long hallway. At the end of the hallway was a metal detector manned by four very fierce-looking Marines. They were visibly armed, and the eyed the approaching duo with the requisite suspicion.

“Sir?” one of them asked as Matt approached. Reaching into the inside pocket of his dress uniform jacket, Matt returned with a small black leather folder. Opening it, the Marine studied Matt’s NIS credentials, compared the photograph against Matt’s face and nodded.

“Ma’am?” the marine asked. Scully handed over her FBI credentials. The marine performed the same procedure, nodded, and handed Scully back her ID.

“Ma’am, if you’re armed, you’ll need to check your weapon with us.”

Scully looked over at Stone who was already reaching under his jacket for the .45 Colt Officer’s he kept tucked in the small of his back. “Go ahead,” he said. “Regulations.”

Shrugging, Dana reached to the small of her back and retrieved the SIG Sauer P226 she had recently started carrying. Handing it to the guard, she waited for Stone to finish signing them in.

“This way,” he said, placing a hand at the small of her back to guide her through the metal detector. Scully had a sudden mental and body image of the thousands of times Mulder had done the same exact thing. Just like Mulder, she thought, only using the tips of his fingers.

Stone moved alongside her once they passed through the metal detector and led her down another series of turning, twisting hallways. They ended up in front of a door that, besides a very official-looking placard that announced that access was for authorized personnel only, was blank. There was a small magnetic card reader mounted at doorknob level.

Stone reached inside his jacket pocket again and retrieved his ID folder. Removing one of the two plastic laminated cards, he slid it through the reader. There was a pause, then the small LED that had been glowing a steady red started flashing green, and Scully heard the metallic click! as the lock disengaged.

Pushing the door open, Stone made a sweeping motion with his arm, encouraging Scully to enter first. She did, and was immediately struck by the size of the room. It had to be at least a hundred yards long and twice as wide. Row after row of filing cabinets were neatly aligned. Remembering the last time she had seen so many filing cabinets, Scully shuddered.

“Cold?” Stone asked.

“Something like that,” Scully said. “What is this place?”

“NIS Records Room. My father’s records are here because he was killed under suspicious circumstances.”

Stone had been leading her down one of the isles, and she stopped at his words. “Suspicious? Matt, he was killed in a rocket attack in a war zone. What’s suspicious about that?”

“The fact that the only rocket fired that day hit my father’s tent, Dana.”

When, she wondered, was the last time a man had used my first name?

“Oh. Well, lead on!”

Stone turned and continued walking back. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, because before long he stopped in front of a six- drawer filing cabinet. Like all the others, this one was secured by a combination lock, the dialface set into the fourth drawer. He spun it easily, and opened the middle drawer a moment later.

Quickly flicking through the files, he made his way towards the back of the drawer. “Here,” he said, pulling a thick file from the drawer. “My father’s official US Navy 201 file.”

Stone hip-shot the drawer closed and started walking back up the isle. After a few steps, he realized Scully wasn’t following. “Coming?” he asked.

Distracted, Scully looked over her shoulder at Matt. “Oh, sorry. Lost in thought for a moment.” In reality, she had been mulling something that had been bothering her.

He knows where his father’s file is without having to look it up.

He knows the combination to the exact cabinet without having to look it up.

He’s been here before.

Often.

“Sorry,” she said, turning and following him back up the isle. Suddenly, the fact that Matt Stone was a tall, dashing, attractive Naval Officer wasn’t nearly as important and interesting as it had been thirty seconds ago.

Stone sat himself down at a desk that had been set just inside the entrance. He snapped on the light and opened the file.

“Shit,” he muttered. “They’re not here.” He started rifling through the file, faster and faster, finally picking it up and shaking it.

“Nothing.” He sighed. “That partner of yours is pretty smart, Dana.”

“Scully,” she corrected. Stone looked up, concerned. “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

“I…just think it would be a good idea to keep our relationship as professional as possible, Commander.”

A dark cloud crossed Stone’s face, but he managed to force a smile. “Of course, Special Agent Scully. By all means.”

“The fingerprint card is missing, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“When is the last time you saw that file?” Scully asked, trying to use one question to hide another, deeper one. How many times have you been here, Stone, looking at your father’s file? Are you somehow involved?

“Four years ago,” he answered, much too quickly.

Scully accepted his answer on the surface, but some questions remained in her mind. “Excuse me,” she said, reaching into her pocket. Pulling out her cellphone, she dialed Mulder’s number.

“Mulder.”

“Mulder, it’s me. You were right. Commander Stone’s father’s fingerprint card is missing from his 201 file.”

“Where are you, Scully?”

“I’m in the NIS records room in the Pentagon with Commander Stone,” she answered, knowing that the real question he had asked was: Are you alone?

“I have some information I think you should hear, Scully.”

“What, Mulder?” Just then the connection started to break up. Scully took a few steps, trying to clear the static from her ear.

“Mulder? Mulder? Can you hear me?”

“-one, he’s not what he-” she heard, and then static, and then “- eally need to talk to you abou-”

“Mulder, I’ll have to call you later,” Scully said. “You’re not coming in.” Disconnecting the call, Scully collapsed the antenna and put the phone back in her jacket pocket.

Stone had tossed the file into the “Re-file” basket and was standing closely behind her. “Special Agent Scully, I’ve obviously done or said something to upset you, and I’d like the chance to make it up to you.” He paused. “Would you have dinner with me?” He saw the look crossing her face and held up his hands. “Strictly as professionals, Agent.”

Dana considered. It had been a long time since she’d had dinner with a man who wasn’t a member of the FBI. Even if it was work related, Stone wasn’t Mulder or Skinner or Pendrall.

“Sure, Commander. Where to?”

“I know just the place,” Stone said, opening the door.

***

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC

“Shit!” Mulder swore. He looked again at the page Langley had faxed over. It was a computer printout of Stone’s Navy record. It made for very, very interesting reading.

Picking up a highlighter, Mulder began reading again, looking for the patterns. Looking for the missing piece. It had to be there.

It had to.

***

Magoo’s Georgetown

Special Agent Dana Scully patted the corner of her mouth with the thick cloth napkin and then delicately placed it beside her plate. “That was delicious,” she said, her eyes smiling at the man across the table from her.

“I’m glad you think so,” Commander Matt Stone, USN replied. “Whenever I’m in DC I try to have at least one meal a week here.”

“Not much of a cook, eh?” Scully teased.

“No, actually, I am a pretty damn good cook. It’s just depressing to cook for one, that’s all.”

Well, Scully thought, that was pretty slick. He managed to convey three pieces of information with a simple sentence : He’s single, he’s a good cook, and he wants to meet someone.

Am I that someone? she asked herself.

Looking into his eyes, Scully imagined that there were worse fates in the world than being on the receiving end of this man’s armorous attentions. He has…different eyes, she thought.

Different from what?

With a start, Scully realized what the rest of that thought was.

Different from Mulder’s, of course. And that thought itself brought on a rash of other, more disconcerting thoughts. Is it that bad? she wondered. Mulder is my best friend in the world, but… is he the only yardstick I use to judge the men in my life with anymore? A paranoid, sleep-deprived, fashion-challenged, obsessive-compulsive federal agent? How did that happen?

She knew. Deep down inside, Scully knew. She had taken on Mulder’s quest, either by unspoken agreement or situational osmosis. The last few years, when viewed through the prism of distance and objectivity seemed to have lasted six times as long on the one hand, and no longer than a couple of weeks on the other. For better or worse, Mulder and the Quest had become the center of her life for as long as she could remember.

Stone looked at her again, his eyes boring into hers. He has cold eyes, Scully thought.

A killer’s eyes.

She had no problem seeing Matthew Stone as the executive officer of a government-sponsored assassination team. No problem at all. Suddenly, Scully didn’t want to be sitting in a Georgetown restaurant with him anymore. She wanted to be anywhere else but here: Home, at the office with Mulder-

Mulder.

That was a thought that brought an involuntary smile to her face. Mulder was as constant as gravity. He may be all those things: Fashion- challenged, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid…but he was no killer. Not like this man.

This…monster.

How any professional military officer could deign to become part of something that was so utterly alien, totally repugnant to the men of courage and honor that served this country every day, men like Skinner, men like Ahab, even men like Mulder…it was beyond Scully’s ability to understand.

Stone must have been able to read her mind.

“You hate me, don’t you? You hate what I stand for. Who I am. What I used to do. The blood that I have on my hands and on my soul. That blood taints me in your eyes, doesn’t it?”

Scully pursed her lips, not sure she wanted to answer.

“Don’t bother denying it, Agent Scully. I can see it on your face. I’ll just pay the check and then take you home. I’ll drive as fast as I can so you won’t have to spend one more moment with me than is absolutely necessary.” And with that, Stone stood and stormed off, looking for their server to claim the check.

Scully wanted to feel sorry for hurting his feelings, but found that she was unable to do so.

Stone returned moments later, carrying her coat folded over his arm.

“Ready?” he asked snidely.

***

Outside the Residence of Dana Scully
Arlington, Virginia

Stone pulled the Caprice smoothly up to the curb and killed the engine.

They had spent the entire ride back from Georgetown in total silence.

“Thank you for dinner,” Scully said stiffly, moving to unlock her seatbelt.

“Just a moment, please,” Stone said formally. “I would like to tell you something.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “Remember that scene in “A Few Good Men?” When Cruise is badgering Nicholson about the “truth?”

“Sure,” Scully said. It was one of her favorite movies.

“Well, to borrow a line from that movie, you couldn’t handle the truth, Scully.”

She turned to face him. “Excuse me?” The truth…if only this man knew what she had gone through in search of the truth! He had no right-

“I’m not talking about the kind of truth you are, Scully. I’m talking about the kind of truth that exists in my world. The kind of truth where there are no clear-cut options, no clearly delineated choices to pick from. A terrorist has a plan to release a large quantity of Tuban nerve gas in the New York City subway system during rush hour. It would kill thousands of innocent people. So the White House sent me my team to the Libyan desert. We parachuted in from 36,000 feet. Took over half an hour to land. We crossed ten miles of desert at night and waxed four terrorists in their beds as they slept. I saved thousands of lives and you have the gall, the unmitigated audacity to look down your nose at me?”

“Why was it necessary to go to Libya and kill them? Why not just arrest them when they enter the country?”

Stone sighed. “I never figured you for a liberal, Scully.”

“I’m not-” she started, but Stone held up his hand. “Listen to me. America is the most wonderful country in the world. One of the reasons that is so is because we are so open. We can’t watch every single border crossing. There are just too many ways to infiltrate this country totally, completely undetected. Would you be willing to risk the lives of thousands…of tens of thousands of people in New York on the off chance that a customs or immigration agent is on the ball that day and managed to spot the forged passport this asshole has been using to traipse in and out of my country for the last five years?

“Well, I wasn’t! Neither was my team, and neither, thank God, was the leadership of this country. They did what was necessary.”

Scully waited for his anger to subside. “What about what’s right?” she asked.

Stone turned to face her, his eyes bright in the confined space of the car. “Listen to me…little girl… I’m going to give you my philosophy in simple, easy to understand sentences. First, do what is legal. If you can’t do what is legal, do what is right. And if you can’t do what is right…”

He paused again, his smile widening. Scully thought it looked like the grin of a shark about to enter a feeding frenzy.

“If you can’t do what’s right…do what’s necessary.”

Scully nodded. “I can see you feel very strongly about this. But we just don’t agree, I’m sorry. Thanks for dinner.” She got out of the car, shut the door firmly behind her, and walked up to her apartment as quickly as she could without actually breaking into a run.

Inside, she saw the message light flashing on the answering machine.

“Scully — it’s Mulder. Call me. I have some information I think you should have. It’s about Commander Stone….call me anytime. I’ll be up.”

Scully reached for the phone and then stopped.

No. Not tonight. Tomorrow. At work, before Stone got there, she’d look at what Mulder had. Tonight, she wanted to just sit quietly, read a book, drink some tea and try to forget the government sponsored assassin with the dark, dangerous eyes, the crooked smile and the voice that sent shivers up her spine.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 4/38

“Well, we all fall in love But we disregard the danger Though we share so many secrets There are some we never tell

Why were you so surprised That you never saw the stranger Did you ever let your lover see The Stranger in yourself?

Don’t be afraid to try again Everyone goes south Every now and then You’ve done it, why can’t someone else? You should know by now You’ve been there yourself.”

— The Stranger

Billy Joel

Office of Fox Mulder, Special Agent
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC 0815 Hours

Special Agent Dana Scully was sitting behind her desk, lost in yet another mountain of paperwork. It seemed to her that the recent marked decrease in the public’s trust in the FBI (indeed, in any federal law enforcement agency,) could probably be traced back to the virtual piles, mountains, planets of paperwork that required to accomplish even the simplest tasks. Take the current issue before me, she thought. I need a piece of software to help coordinate scheduling conflicts between the X- Files division, the Forensics department of the criminalistics lab, and the VICAP team. Retail? Forty-six dollars and eleven cents. In the real world, all she should have to do is go to her boss and say, “Hey, I think we need this. It’s less than fifty bucks. Cough up some dough.” In the real world, the boss would reach into the petty cash box and grab two twenties and a ten, and send Scully on her merry way.

But this…this was the US Federal Government. Any purchase made with Federal Dollars had to go through a process so Byzantine, so convoluted that it defied description. First there was the Original Needs Request Form, then the Vendor Bid Worksheet (so that more than one vendor could be given the chance to bid to provide the software to the Feds; didn’t want to have the GAO accuse the FBI of playing favorites,) and then the Specification of Specific Need form, which told the bean counters in the OMB over at the White House that yes, the feds did need this particular piece of software. And the list went on. Scully estimated that if it was going to take at least a day, a full working business day to complete all this paperwork. All for a piece of software that cost less than fifty damn dollars.

She considered buying it herself, but that entered into yet another area of potential paperwork. FBI regulations clearly stated that no, repeat no, software not specifically authorized and tested by the Office of Technology Security would be installed on any, repeat any, FBI computers, without a single exception. The publicly stated reason for this was so that viruses and other nasty surprises programmed by any nogoodninks couldn’t make their way into the FBI’s sensitive computer system. Scully had a sneaking suspicion that the collection of former high-school A/V nerds that ran the OTS just liked having that feeling of control they had so lacked during those important formative years.

Sighing, she removed her glasses and tossed them onto the pile of paperwork. Leaning back, she used her thumb and forefinger to gently rub the bridge of her nose.

“Tired?” Scully gasped and jumped, her hand automatically moving to the SIG Sauer in the small of her back. She turned to see Commander Matthew Stone standing in the doorway. The man was a ghost, Scully thought. She hadn’t heard the knob turn, hadn’t felt the shift in air pressure that an opening door would cause; the man had suddenly appeared as if from thin air.

“God…you startled me!” she said.

“Sorry,” Stone said, smiling. “But I come bearing gifts.” For the first time, Scully noticed that Stone was standing with his hands behind his back. Her hand moved, almost imperceptibly, towards the SIG Sauer again. After all, the part of her mind that was in charge of Personal Safety and Professional Survival thought, he is a government assassin.

To her relief, the only thing in Stone’s hand was the distinctive pink and white box from Dunkin’ Doughnuts. “I brought breakfast,” he explained, moving to the coffee machine and dropping the box.

“Breakfast? I should think not,” Scully said. “Mulder will love you forever; he lives on junk food.”

“Hmmm? Oh…that’s too bad,” Stone said, mirth dancing in his voice. Opening the box, he removed a delicious-looking French Crueler, twisting it slowly in his fingers. “They are quite delicious, you know.”

Scully felt the urge to give in crawling around inside her stomach. It would taste good, she knew. She could almost imagine the taste, the sweetness on her tongue as the fried dough dissolved in her mouth.

“Ok, you twisted my arm,” she said, standing and walking over to join him. “Gimmie.”

“Get your own,” he said, taking a bite. Despite herself, Dana laughed. Frowning, she reached for the box, lifting the lid and peering inside. Last night, their conversation in front of her apartment building had convinced the pretty redheaded agent that there was no way in the world she could ever really be attracted to this man. The life choices he had made, the things he had done, the man he had become had all conspired against them, she had thought. There was no way she could respect a man who spoke of violence, the life-taking, widow-making kind of violence that all civilized people abhorred, as easily as he did.

But now, standing next to this man, eating a breakfast pastry, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, Scully had second thoughts. There was something about him that was so…charming. So disarming. Her analytical mind whirring away, Scully tried to pinpoint what it was that so obviously interested her about this man.

She had never considered herself a typical female in certain senses; she was rarely attracted to a real person solely on the basis of their physical appearance. He was good looking, that was true, but that couldn’t be all there was.

Right?

Right.

So what was it?

Dana took a large bite of a chocolate-glazed Boston Kreme and thought about it as she munched. The men in her life, she knew, the men she respected, looked up to, the men she used as a yardstick to judge the other people in her life against had to have some effect on this entire equation. So, who did she look up to? Mulder, in a way. There was a time, Scully remembered, when had literally stood in awe of her partner. That day had long since passed, due to all the experiences they had shared. Although hard-pressed to admit it, Scully knew that Mulder felt in his heart of hearts that they were more or less equals by this point. So…who else? Her father, of course.

What would Ahab think of this man? Scully wondered. He would recognize the need for such men, and while not embracing their existence, would tolerate it in the name of furthering the aims and goals of US foreign policy and the American Way of Life. With a wry grin, she wondered what Ahab would think if she had brought Matt Stone home as a suitor. That would have been an interesting discussion, she was sure.

Skinner. Skinner was another person Scully looked up to and respected. While not always forthcoming and open about his feelings and emotions (something Scully treasured in a man,) Skinner did have something that she admired: His moral compass seemed to be strictly aligned. Skinner had a very well-defined understanding of what was both right and wrong. “So,” Stone said, breaking into her reverie, “you’re a Navy brat, huh?” Scully nodded. “You already knew that. You remembered my father, I thought.” Stone nodded. “Bill Scully is a legend in Naval Intelligence.” Scully frowned. She had never heard that before.

“Oh? How so?”

Stone guffawed. “Well, Special Agent Scully,”

“Dana,” Scully said, without knowing exactly why.

“Dana, then,” Stone corrected, much more softly. “Well, Dana, most of the stories that I know that concern your father are classified.” He paused, trying to remember something that he could tell her, something that would break the ice just a little more between them.

“Well, one time your father was recruiting agents for a very sensitive mission aboard an aircraft carrier. An undercover assignment for Naval Intelligence. Due to the…nature of this assignment, the men selected had to be able to swim fifty yards under water without surfacing. The type of man they were looking for was tough, inventive, someone who thought for themselves but was still capable of taking orders. Motivated, I guess, is what they were looking for.

“So all the men showed up at Little Creek for the initial testing. There was this one kid, a Boatswain’s mate second class, who really, really wanted the mission. Only thing was…well, let me tell you the whole story.

“The test was set up like this. The volunteers had to jump into the deep end of an Olympic-size pool, submerge to the bottom, and grab two buckets full of sand, and then swim to the other end carrying the buckets, without surfacing.

“This kid jumps in, but instead of swimming, just picks up the buckets and starts walking along the bottom, carrying the buckets. He makes it the whole way. Must have taken him all of three minutes. Gasping and wheezing, he surfaces at the shallow end and slams the buckets down on the deck. Your father, who at the time was a Lieutenant Commander, got in this poor man’s face, his own face red, screaming and yelling.

“‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Mister?’ your father screams. ‘I thought you were told to swim this pool!’ The poor man sputters and gasps and then admits that he doesn’t know how to swim. Now, your father, who recognized a serious non-quitter grunt when he saw one, smiled and said, ‘Aw, shit, son…we can teach you to fuckin’ swim. Welcome to the fuckin’ program.’”

Despite the salty language (which her father had taken great care not to use in front of his wife and children,) Scully could just see her father doing and saying the things that Stone was describing. She started laughing with him, her arms across her chest, her shoulders shaking with the effort.

Which is exactly how Special Agent Fox Mulder found them a moment later when he entered the office.

Mulder walked in, his head down, thoughts on the document that Langley had faxed him last night. He was going to have to explain to Scully that Stone was all he said he was…and more. Much, much more.

But the first image he had that morning of his partner was of her looking up with what could only be described as…what?

Adoration?

Something similar, he thought. She was looking at that moron Stone like he was the captain of the football team and she was the head cheerleader.

“Scully,” he said. And then, after a pause, “Commander.”

“Mulder!” Scully said, her smile fading as she saw the expression on her partner’s face. “Good morning,” she added, much more formally.

“Yes,” Mulder said. “It is morning, isn’t it?”

“Doughnut?” Stone offered, holding the box up.

Despite his desire not to accept anything from this man, the sweet, delicious odor of the pastries reached Mulder’s nose, and he was gone. Reaching in and selecting a powdered jelly, Mulder took a bite and lifted his chin towards Scully.

“Can I see you outside a second?” he asked. To Stone, he added, “FBI business.”

“Sure, go ahead. I’ll just finish my coffee,” Stone replied. If he took offense at not being included in the discussion, he didn’t show it.

Scully joined Mulder in the hallway, closing the door behind her. Crossing her arms, she arched an eyebrow. “What is it, Mulder?”

Mulder reached into his pocket and took out the folded printout. “Langley sent this over last night…”

“Langley, as in the CIA, or Langley, as in that paranoid Wayne Campbell wannabee you call a source?”

“That would be the latter,” Mulder said around a mouthful of jelly doughnut. “Take a look.”

Scully looked dubiously at the folded page that Mulder was offering, and then took it, scanning it quickly.

“Mulder, this is classified!” she said.

“So?”

Letting go with an exasperated sigh, Scully continued to read. “So? It’s his assignment roster since he left the Academy. What’s the big deal?”

“First,” Mulder said, ticking off the items that had caught his attention last night, “he’s not wearing an Academy ring. I have never, ever known a graduate of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis who has not worn their ring with pride. Secondly, there are some huge gaps in this service record. It shows that he graduated in 1977, but his first assignment was to something called the Office of Management and Budget in 1982. Five years missing. And I checked. There is no such office in the Navy, or anywhere in the Defense Department for that matter.”

“So…? Mulder, he works in sensitive, classified areas. The Office of Management and Budget is probably a cover name for another assignment. Stop seeing ogres under every bridge,” she admonished.

Mulder blinked, not sure he was hearing correctly. “Are you defending him?” he asked.

Sighing, Scully avoided the question. “Mulder, Skinner assigned this man to us on the advice of a dear old friend of his. Do you trust Skinner?”

Mulder nodded, taking another bite. “I don’t trust Stone, though.”

Scully nodded. “I know. That much is obvious. So don’t trust him, Mulder. You don’t trust anyone.”

“I trust you,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she said, just as softly. Reaching out, she brushed powdered sugar off his tie. “I trust him,” she said gently.

Mulder felt something flare inside him, something white-hot and unfamiliar. “Is it because he knew your father?” he asked nastily. Scully set her jaw, biting the inside of her cheek to stifle the response that had leapt immediately to her tongue.

“Enjoy your doughnut, Mulder” Scully said, pushing past him and re-entering the office. Mulder turned to follow her progress and watched as Stone looked up, a warm, appreciative smile lighting his face. And then his vision was blocked as Scully closed the door in his face.

Mulder stood there, his mouth agape. I can’t believe she…

What?

The jumble of thoughts that were twisting their way through Mulder’s mind were both unfamiliar and confusing. He pushed the door open and entered what was, after all, his office.

Scully and Stone were by the coffee machine, smiling at each other.

Mulder looked down at the paper he was holding in his hand and quickly folded it, shoving it back inside his jacket pocket.

“Everything settled?” Stone asked.

“Oh yes,” Scully said, shooting Mulder a warning glance. “Everything’s just fine.”

Mulder grunted and moved to his desk, finishing the doughnut in two huge bites. “Heather,” he croaked around a mouthful of sugared dough and jelly. “What are we going to do about her?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Stone admitted. “I think we should approach her and warn her about…what’s been happening.”

Mulder and Scully nodded in unison. “I agree,” Scully said. “Where is she now?”

“Out at Vint Hill,” Stone replied. Mulder frowned. “There’s no way we can get in there.” Vint Hill was the headquarters of the super- secret National Reconnaissance Office, the quasi-military agency charged with maintaining all of the United State’s surveillance satellites. Access to the Vint Hill facility was one of the hardest to obtain.

“I have clearance,” Stone admitted. “I can get us at least in the front door.”

“What is she doing there?” Mulder wanted to know. “I thought she was working for DCSINTEL.”

“She is,” Stone said. “But she’s on a…project at NRO. I’m sorry, Agent Mulder, but I can’t give you any more detail than that. It’s classified.”

“I see,” Mulder said, shooting a significant look in Scully’s direction. She ignored it.

“Commander Stone, would you excuse us for a moment?” Scully asked sweetly. “I need to speak to my partner.”

Stone looked at the diminutive Federal Agent for two heartbeats and then nodded. “Of course. I’ll just be outside.”

After Stone left, Scully spun on her partner. “Listen to me, Mulder. This assignment is going to be hard enough without your…attitude. We owe it to Skinner to do this right!”

Mulder saw the anger and frustration in his partner’s eyes and nodded weakly. “You’re right, Scully. What do you suggest?”

Scully’s head snapped back. She hadn’t expected Mulder to cave so easily, but she knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouse. “I suggest that I go with Commander Stone to NRO to warn Heather. As a matter of fact, I think that unless it’s absolutely necessary, I should be the primary contact between the Navy and this office.” Scully crossed her arms, waiting for the argument that she was sure was about to begin.

Again, Mulder surprised her. “I think that’s a good idea, Scully. The Gunmen are going to set up an appointment with me with a manufacturer of a silicon cast generator. The type of device that I think is being used to commit these crimes is rare, but not that rare. We might be able to solve this one by old-fashioned legwork. You and Stone go to NRO and warn Heather.” He stood, checking his pistol and cell-phone. “Call me if you need me.”

With that, he took his leave of the office, passing Stone in the hallway.

“Scully will brief you,” was all he said.

Stone shrugged and re-entered the office.

Strange bird, that Mulder, he thought.

***

National Reconnaissance Office
Vint Hill Station
0914 Hours

The road leading up to the NRO was guarded by a single gatehouse. The man sitting inside didn’t look military, Scully thought. He looked more like a private security guard. There was a simple sign on the front of the gatehouse:

WARNING:RESTRICTED GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS PROHIBITED BY LAW. LOITERERS WILL BE ARRESTED AND PROSECUTED.

Stone pulled up to the gatehouse, his ID at the ready. The guard leaned in and examined Stone’s credentials, and then shot a glance over at Scully, who was holding her FBI ID up for examination.

“Take this road-” the guard started.

“I’ve been here before, sir,” Stone said. The guard nodded and stood, waving them through.

As Stone wound his way up to the main building, Scully looked out the window, her thoughts far away. The ride over from the Hoover building had been spent mostly in silence, each of them remembering the dinner and discussion from last night.

“Can I ask you a question?” she finally said.

“You just did,” Stone pointed out. Scully smirked. “You know what I mean.”

“Go ahead,” Stone replied.

“Your service record is…interesting. Gaps. You don’t wear your ring.”

Stone waited a beat and then said, “I didn’t hear a question.”

“Well…what’s going on? My father graduated from Annapolis. He never took his ring off, not once in over 20 years of Naval service.”

Stone parked the car in a space marked for visitor’s use and killed the engine. “I guess I couldn’t say that I’m not a ring-knocker. It’s true; most graduates don’t take the ring off for any reason. But sometimes, Special Agent Scully, I’ve had to go undercover as an enlisted man. Now you can understand that an EM can’t go aboard the Nimitz wearing an Annapolis ring. Might cause problems.”

That was a pretty trite explanation, Scully thought, but said nothing.

“And the gaps in your service record?”

Stone sighed. “Most of that is classified, Special Agent Scully-”

“Dana,” she insisted, again surprising herself.

“Dana,” he amended, much more softly. “You have to understand. We have different beliefs. Differing philosophies. I believe in things, in the need for certain types of actions that you do not. That’s fine; two people can co-exist with different beliefs. It’s one of the basic tenants that this country was based on.”

Co-exist? Scully thought to herself. Interesting choice of words, Commander. “But if you must know, between my graduation and the first assignment that appears on my service record, I attended some specialized training, and then had three cruises before I had to change my occupational specialty due to injury.”

“That injury doesn’t appear on your service record,” Scully pointed out.

“I know, Agent Scully…Dana. That injury occurred in a place that I was not supposed to be, doing something that our government wishes to deny ever happened. And because, while recovering from my injuries, I made it clear that I intended to make the Navy my career, it was decided to ‘remove’ that particular assignment from my service record. Any officer that gets my package will see that missing chunk and know that unless he wants a visit from the Special Agents at NIS to just nod and pretend like it’s not even there.”

“Institutional blindness,” Scully remarked. “Helpful, sometimes.”

“As I’m sure it’s helpful in your job, Dana. I’m sure that there are things you’ve seen or done in your job, things you’re not quite proud of as a person and as a representative of your government, things you’ve left out of official documentation, reports, whatever. It’s the nature of what we do, Dana. The nature of the type of people that are attracted to the kinds of job that we are.”

They turned and looked at each other and shared another smile.

God, she’s gorgeous, Stone thought.

“Can I ask you something?” Stone said.

“You just did,” Scully replied, a wry grin twisting her face.

“Touche,” he granted. “Your partner…”

“What about Mulder?”

“You…and he. Are you…close?”

Scully snorted, raising a hand to her face to hide the smile. She made as if she were rubbing her nose, all the while thinking, Where to begin?

“Mulder and I are not typical partners, I’ll be the first to admit that,” she started. “But if you’re asking if we have a relationship that exists outside the boundaries of our established professional partnership, I’d have to say no.”

“Why?” Stone asked softly.

Surprised by the question, Scully said the first thing that came to mind. “Well, it’s prohibited by regulations, for one thing.”

“Forget that for a minute. It’s obvious you care about each other, more than other partners might.”

Shifting in her seat, Scully wondered how the conversation had arrived here. “Mulder and I are…close, in a way. We’re partners, and I consider him my best friend. I think he feels the same way about me…”

He feels more than that, little girl, Stone thought.

“…but as for a personal relationship of the kind I think you mean…No. That’s just not…what Mulder and I are about.”

“Is it?”

“No,” Scully repeated. “I’d be lying if I said the thought never entered my mind. It’s human nature. Mulder is an interesting, intelligent, attractive man. Of course, from time to time, the thought of what it would be like to be with him… in that way…crosses my mind.”

Liar, she thought. Some days you can’t get it out of your mind.

“But the fact of the matter is that Mulder and I are partners. Our work is very important to us, and to the Bureau. Any chance of a personal relationship is far, far outweighed by the job. And that’s all there is to it.”

Stone nodded, apparently accepting the explanation. “I see. One last question. Have you ever had a relationship with someone you worked with?” Without thinking, Scully nodded. “Once. An instructor at Quantico and I had a relationship for about a year.”

“What happened?”

Scully turned and looked out the window. “He died,” she said quietly. Quickly, she added, “But not while we were involved. His death was related to my work. We investigated his death as part of the X- Files.”

“Sounds like an interesting story,” Stone admitted, “but I won’t press you on it.”

“Good.”

“Well, we should be getting inside. The people watching the video monitors are probably sure we’re making out in here.”

Why did that thought cause my heart to skip a beat? Scully wondered.

“Why did you want to know?” Scully asked. “About Jack, I mean.”

Stone opened his door, and stepped out. Leaning back down to peer inside the car, he grinned. “So I know that I still have a chance.”

Oh, my, Scully thought.

Blushing, she exited the car.

***

“Please have a seat,” the receptionist said. “Major Hynes will be down shortly.”

Stone guided Scully over to the waiting area, his hand at the small of her back.

They sat next to each other, both of their thoughts on other subjects.

“A chance?” Scully whispered to him. “What made you think you ever had a chance?”

Stone looked at her, turning the full intensity of his gaze upon Scully.

“Did I?” he asked simply. His direct question stripped any defenses she might have put up cleanly away.

“Yes,” she admitted. “You still do.”

He said nothing.

“Matt!” The voice came from behind them, and Scully twisted in her seat.

Major Heather Hynes, United States Army, was walking down the hallway. She wore a Class-A uniform, green skirt and jacket, and flats. Scully stood, watching the way Heather moved. She was tall, about five ten or eleven, with long, slim legs, golden blonde hair and a supermodel’s smile.

And she was looking at Stone the way a woman looks at a long-lost lover, Scully realized. A combination of possession and hunger.

They’ve been involved, Scully thought. She knew she was right.

And that thought filled her with an emotion she hadn’t felt for years.

Jealousy.

***

Publishing Offices of the Lone Gunmen
Undisclosed Location
Metro Washington, DC area

“Listen to me very carefully,” Mulder said slowly. “I have done a lot for you guys over the years, and I need this one. I’m asking for payback. I want to know what, exactly, Commander Matthew Stone was doing during those five missing years. I don’t care what you have to do, who you have to bribe or threaten. I want to know.”

He studied the faces of his three friends.

“Just how good looking his this guy, anyway?” Frohike asked.

“Fuck you,” Mulder said, standing to go. “Just do it.”

They watched Mulder leave.

“Geez, he’s got it bad,” Byers remarked.

“Well, duh,” Frohike said. “You’ve seen Scully.”

“Let’s get to work.”

Several hours later, the trio stood in front of a computer monitor. “Should we tell him?” Byers wondered aloud.

“How can we not?” Langley responded. “He asked us to, and he’ll know if we’re lying.”

“Just how much danger do you think Scully’s in?” Frohike wondered.

“Jesus, read the screen!” Langley said.

Frohike nodded. “I’ll call.”

***

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC.
1345 Hours

“Mulder,” he said, lifting the cellphone to his ear.

“It’s Frohike. We gotta talk.”

“I’m on my way.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 5/38

“In time of war the devil makes more room in hell.”

– German Proverb

“We vew, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me; Shall be my brother.”

– Shakespeare

“Henry V”

National Reconnaissance Office
Vint Hill Station
0914

“Heather,” Matt said, opening his arms, “it’s so good to see you.” The tall, trim Army Major stepped into his arms and they hugged briefly. Pulling away only slightly, they looked deeply into each others’ eyes for a long, pregnant moment, and then parted.

“To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?” Heather inquired.

Stone’s expression went from happy to grim in the space between two heartbeats. “Heather, we need to talk,” he said, and then added, “Privately.”

Heather looked at Matt for a long moment and then nodded. Tilting her head towards Scully, she asked, “Who’s your new friend?”

Matt started, as if he’d forgotten Scully was there. “Oh, Jesus! My manners! Major Heather Haynes, this is Special Agent Dana Scully, MD from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dana, this is Heather Haynes.”

“A pleasure,” Heather said, obviously not meaning it, offering her hand. Scully took it, marveling at the strength she felt in Heather’s hand. I bet she could crush rocks with that, Scully thought.

“This way,” Heather said, turning and walking back up the hall. Stone turned to Scully with a look of apology plastered on his face. “God, I’m sorry, Dana,” he whispered.

“I’m fine, Matt,” Scully replied. She followed him up the hall, the both of them trailing Heather’s retreating form. Inside, she was fuming at the man beside her, and the most confusing part was that she had no specific idea why. Yes, they had flirted. Yes, she found him attractive. Stone had as much as said that he found Scully attractive, and that’s where it had ended. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and was dismayed to see that judging by the expression on his face, Commander Matthew Stone had put the entire incident out of his mind. She’d said she was fine, and for him, that was that.

With a start Scully realized that Stone wasn’t Mulder; he wouldn’t immediately grasp the overwhelming implications of the phrase “I’m fine” for a few more years yet, Scully knew. Something else slowly wormed its’ way into Scully’s thoughts. Had Mulder committed such a social faux pas, he would spend the next three days with a hang-dog-sorry-puppy expression on his face, doing everything and anything in his power to make it up to her. Publicly, Scully hated it when he did that; privately, she was glad that her feelings meant that much to her partner.

Not enough to stop him from ditching me, Scully thought.

But enough so that when I meet a man who can discard my feelings as easily as a used Kleenex, it hurts. It hurts a lot.

Not to mention the fact that Heather Haynes looked like a candidate for the upcoming “Girls of the Armed Forces” issue of Playboy. She smiled; that was a remark Mulder would have made.

Heather led them to an elevator. It was unlike any elevator that Scully had ever seen. There was no up or down button, just a metal slot about the width of a credit card. Her suspicions were confirmed when Heather produced an identification card and inserted it into the slot. With a satisfying ‘ding!’ the doors opened and the trio stepped aboard.

“Code word or just normal?” Heather asked.

“Above code-word,” Matt replied, referring to the sensitivity of the information he wished to discuss.

“Going down it is,” Heather said, with a verbal wink in her voice that notched Scully’s dislike for her up another notch. She felt the elevator descending, and once again she let her thoughts drift to her partner. Despite her attraction to this man, Scully knew that Mulder’s first instincts about people was rarely wrong, and Mulder obviously hated Stone. But then again, she reasoned, Mulder had a very deeply-held hatred of anything relating to the military. His long-held belief that the military was the chief architect of the world-wide conspiracy to cover up anything having to do with extraterrestrial visitation might be clouding his thinking.

Except for the fact that he liked Charles, Scully’s brother, who was currently attending the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. She grunted; trying to figure out Mulder’s thought patterns was like trying to peel an onion. Every layer removed only revealed another layer, one step closer to the center but never actually arriving there.

And that’s one of the reasons he’s such an interesting, complex man.

The doors opened and the trio exited into another hallway that looked much like the first, except for the fact that there was a Class-A uniformed Marine stationed approximately every fifty feet. They were all huge specimens, all with grim faces and serious expressions.

“This way,” Heather said, turning a corner and leading them ever deeper into the bowels of the NRO. They arrived at a door that looked a lot like the door to the NIS records room at the Pentagon.

“This is a SCIF,” Stone explained to Scully. “It means Special Classified Intelligence Facility. This is as totally bugproof as the US government can make a room. It is actually a room that sits within a cement casing the size of a boxcar, and that cement casing is again cased in lead, and the entire thing sits on forty-six hydraulic springs. It’s swept for bugs four times a day. Once we close this door, we can be assured that no one can hear our conversations. No one.”

Scully nodded her understanding and watched as Heather deftly worked the cipher lock. Scully noticed that Heather punched almost fifteen digits into the lock, about ten more than the one at the Pentagon. They obviously took their security a bit more seriously here.

Once they were inside, Heather shut and sealed the door. There was a hissing sound, and a red light above the door blinked twice and then switched to green.

“We’re secure, Matt. Now…what was so important that you got me eleven stories below ground in an SCIF? You gonna propose again?”

There was a sudden, totally awkward silence. Scully pretended to study the surface of the small conference table.

“Uh, no,” Stone said, trying very hard not to look directly at Scully. Haynes was a highly trained, very capable intelligence officer. In fact, she was one of the very few, the very select that carried a small credit-card like identification in her wallet that certified her as a National Intelligence Officer, one of those selected from the cream of the intelligence crop to provide secure, classified briefings to the highest levels of government, including the National Security Advisor, the Secretaries of Defense and State, and on two occasions, POTUS himself.

She had been the first woman so certified, and was proud of it. The downside was, she missed nothing and saw everything. If Matt so much as twitched an eyebrow, she’d know he was interested in Scully. And based on their past history, Heather Haynes didn’t take the idea of competition very well. She was a first-class, government-certified mind fucker, and she would crush Scully, given half a chance.

“We have something else to discuss,” he said. “Something that involves you directly.” He paused, and then did cast a glance at Scully. “Something that involves Iraq. The team.”

“What are you doing?” Heather hissed, looking at Scully, then back at Stone, her eyes wide. “That’s classified!”

“Yes,” Scully said, “but I’ve been briefed in.”

Haynes scoffed. “I doubt that very much. You might have been told a very, very small part about a single operation, but I seriously doubt that you have been ‘briefed in’ as you claim. I would have been told.”

Stone coughed into his fist. “We’re telling you now, Heather.”

Slowly, Heather moved to take a chair opposite Stone and Scully. “Let me get this straight; she knows? She really, truly knows what the Goblin Teams were? Are?”

“Yes,” Stone said.

“She knows about the mission?”

“No.”

Scully frowned. ‘The’ mission?

“So then, why are you here?”

“They’re dead, Heather. All of them. Calandra. O’Mally. Sanders. All of them. We’re the only two left.”

That caught Heather’s attention. “All of them?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Do…do you know who?” she asked. Stone hesitated a moment. Something was wrong. Heather had automatically assumed it was a ‘who’ and not a ‘them.’ He shifted in his chair, preparing to reveal the fantastic information that he had shared with Scully and Mulder, and then he caught the motion. It was so subtle, so innocuous that he almost missed it. Scully’s right hand was in her lap, and she was slowly crossing and uncrossing her fingers. Like a little girl about to tell a lie.

Scully had caught it, too.

She was telling him to lie.

Without knowing why, Stone went along.

“No,” he said. “We have no idea who is behind it. But you and I are the only two left, and we think that you may be next. We came here to warn you and to ask your cooperation.”

Heather’s eyes flashed. “With what? A stakeout? You don’t think I can take care of myself, do you? It’s Iraq all over again, Matt. I had to prove myself to you then, and I did…and now I have to do it all over again?” Her voice was rising with every word, and Scully and Stone had the same thought.

She’s overreacting. She knows something.

“You have nothing to prove to me, Heather. You never did. I won’t argue with you about this. I can make a single phone call and have your commanding officer, the General, order you to participate in this action with us. Make no mistake, we will do it, with or without your cooperation. I’d much rather have it, because I think it might save your life.”

“Bastard!” she hissed, pushing away from the table and standing. She walked to where the window would be in a normal conference room and crossed her arms, staring at the wall. Scully could see Heather’s shoulders moving with the effort to control her emotions.

“Don’t let him sweet talk you, Scully,” she finally said, turning to face them both. “He’s the smoothest of the smooth talkers. He could sell snow to an Eskimo. Don’t believe him, don’t believe anything he says. Because of him, a good man died on a godforsaken chunk of desert. A man that I respected. A man that I loved. A man that was going to marry me. And because of that man,” she said, pointing directly at Matt. “Because of that man, my Scott is dead. And when we got back from Iraq, that bastard convinced me that it was an accident, a casualty of war, sad, horrible, but expected when you do the kinds of things that we do.”

Trying to change the subject, Scully asked, “Speaking of that… exactly what was the mission in Iraq?”

Stone and Heather exchanged a glance. She shook her head. He nodded. She shook it harder. “No,” Stone said, softly, an edge in his voice, the command sound of I-will-not-be-denied clear in the small room. “We’ll tell her. She’s putting her life on the line, too.”

“Fine, Matt. Do whatever you want. I just want it on record that I was against this.”

“Fine,” Matt said, turning to Scully. “This is highly classified, Dana.” He immediately regretted his decision to use her first name. He felt Heather stiffen from across the table, and watched as her eyes narrowed, zooming in on the petite redhead.

“Oh, ‘Dana’ is it? That’s comfy,” she whispered.

“My Goblin team was sent into Iraq with a very specific mission. Actually two missions. We were to locate the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and use a laser target designator to illuminate his location so that the Air Force could drop a GBU-25 on him. Failing that, we were to assassinate him, by any means possible.”

Scully absorbed this without a word and without changing her expression. Such things were to be expected in war. Saddam, in addition to being the head of the government, was also the head of it’s military, and thus a legitimate target for soldiers.

Or, are you rationalizing, Dana? she asked herself.

“What happened is that the team leader was killed in what can only be described as a tragic chain of events, and I decided, as executive officer, to abort the mission.”

“He’s lying,” Heather said, straightening in her chair. “Lying straight through his teeth. Don’t believe a word he said.”

Stone gritted his teeth. “Fine, Heather. Give her your opinion of the events.”

“I have already stated that I won’t be a party to revealing classified military operations to this…civilian.”

“Well then,” Stone said, the shark’s grin on his face once again, “then Special Agent Scully will only have my version of the truth to make her judgment from.” Turning back to Scully, he continued with the story. “It took us eleven days to exfiltrate through Iraq to Kuwait, and then Saudi Arabia. By the time we reached Bahrain, we had been given up for dead.”

Scully felt something tugging at her mind, and she went after it. “What were the circumstances of Scott’s death?”

Stone and Heather exchanged a glance. “Go ahead, Matt. Tell her. But this time, have the balls to tell the truth.”

“It was an accident,” he said softly.

“BULLSHIT!” Heather screamed, standing again. “Oh, fuck it, I’ll tell her what really happened.” Turning to Scully, Heather began pacing, waving her arms as she spoke. “Commander Stone here was, as he said, executive officer of our little merry band. We went to Iraq with a single mission – Kill Saddam. We had secure communications back to Bahrain. We knew what our job was. Wait for the signal on the secure satellite line, lase the target, and let the Air Farce handle the rest. And if something happened, two of our team members had carried sniper rifles into the desert. Not to mention other highly classified military hardware that I will not go into under any circumstances. Let’s just say that we could reach out and touch Saddam any time we wanted to. We were just waiting for the word.

“The ground offensive started. We got the word that we had 24 hours to find and kill Saddam. We had him stacked, racked and packed. We knew exactly where he was, and…well, the Rules of Engagement for the mission clearly stated to continue radio silence for the last twelve hours leading up to the actual bomb release.” Pointing a finger at Stone, she continued, her voice bitter and filled with hate. “This bastard decided to call for confirmation one last time, with an hour to go. He got a hold of some dickless wonder back at CENTCOM who countermanded the orders. Choir boy over here told Scott that the mission was off. Scott refused to accept the command because it was outside the parameters of the mission he’d been assigned. They were both good officers, Denise-”

“Dana,” Scully corrected.

“Whatever,” Heather replied dismissivly. “Matt and Scott were both good officers. They didn’t want to have a fight in front of the men. They took it private.” Her voice slowed down, became hushed, conspiratorial. “There was a single shot. When Matt came back, he explained that there had been an accident, and that Scott was wounded. We went to him. All of us. We went to him and saw that Matt had shot him like a dog, put him down like a rabid animal. He’d been shot in the stomach, the worst place you can get shot. Gut-shot. It took him almost twelve hours to die, Dana. I had to watch the man I love as he died from the actions of this…coward.”

She stopped talking, stopped walking, and collapsed into a chair. “And then…we buried Scott in the desert. His body is baking under the hot desert sun in an unmarked grave God only knows where. Stone orders us all to exfiltrate, and we do. The entire way back, he’s moving in on me, getting closer, gaining my confidence. I’m a wreck. The man I love is dead, and this…this….this man is telling me how sorry he is, how terrible he feels. I fall for it. Don’t blame yourself, I say. We get back to the states. The team is disbanded, and Stone is still ‘there for me,’ still ‘helping me through the grief.’”

She sighed. “We became lovers. I’ll be the first to admit that I needed him, that I needed someone to hold onto. And he was there. He fucked me, all right. Six months, we were together. Then the Navy decides to award this asshole the Navy Cross for gallantry in action. This butthead knows that there’s no way the Navy will ever court-martial a certified hero, so it doesn’t matter if I go public with what I suspect. He drops me like a hot potato.” She leaned across the table, punctuating her words with jabs of her fingers. “But I figured it out, hero-boy. You killed him. You murdered Scott.”

“We’ve been over this,” Matt started, looking at Scully with an ‘isn’t she crazy?’ expression.

“Why was your safety off, Matt? That’s what you told us out there in the desert. You told us your safety was off and the weapon just discharged. Why was your safety off, you son of a bitch?”

“It was a war zone,” Stone explained. His voice sounded lame, even to his own ears.

Scully was stunned. There was something going on here, something way, way above her level of experience and expertise. She doubted that even Mulder had the experience in the upper elechons of intelligence to handle this one.

Things were just not adding up, Scully thought. Heather had originally been obviously, visibly overjoyed to see Matt. Then, once she realized that…what? Matt had a ‘thing’ for me, she loses it. She went from a dedicated professional to a howling shrew in the space of five seconds and started accusing Matt of murder on the field of battle. A charge she can’t prove, and she knows she can’t prove. Why?

“Major Haynes, as you have so adroitly pointed out, I don’t have the experience…or the clearances to discuss any of what you brought up outside this room. Frankly, I don’t really care about what might or might not have happened on a classified mission behind enemy lines during a war that happened almost a decade ago. I am here to prevent a person, or persons unknown, from committing another in what appears to be a series of murders directed against the members of your team. That is my one interest in this matter, and to you, I put a question.

“Will you cooperate?”

Heather sighed, shuddering with the exhalation of breath. “Fine. Tell me what you need to do.”

Scully proceeded to explain what the FBI would need to set up a surveillance. Heather nodded and made small notes in a spiral pad she kept in the breast pocket of her Class-A uniform jacket.

When Scully was finished, Heather nodded and replaced the notebook in her jacket. Pushing a button mounted into the surface of the table, she said, “Security, room six.”

A moment later, a uniformed Marine entered. “Take Commander Stone outside for a moment, please. I wish to have a word with Agent Scully.”

“Just a minute-” Matt said.

The Marine’s hand went to the holstered .45 M1911A1 on his hip. “Sir, come with me,” he said stiffly.

“Heather!” Matt protested.

“Sir,” the Marine said, a bit more insistence in his voice. “You will come with me…now.”

Resigned, Stone stood and followed the Marine out. The door hissed shut. Scully sat, her arms crossed, waiting to hear what Heather had to say. She had an idea what was coming, and she wasn’t disappointed.

“Listen to me, Scully. Don’t trust him. No matter what he’s told you, I can promise you it’s not the truth. It’s half the truth, a part of the truth, a morsel of the truth surrounded by lies, lies and more lies. I’d never met a pathological liar before Matt Stone came into my life. He’ll do anything he needs to protect his own hide.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Scully asked.

Heather snorted. “Don’t be coy with me, Scully. I can see it on your face. You forget: I study people for a living. And I’m not talking about all that gentle psychobabble your partner learned at Oxford, I’m talking about the real kind of psychology: Military psychology. I take people’s heads apart for a living, Scully. And I can take one look at you and see that you have it bad for old Commander Stone out there in the hallway.

“Don’t get me wrong; he’s good looking, and he’s great in bed. Just don’t ever place your life in his hands, or expect him to be there when you need him. He’s the single most selfish person I’ve ever met, and I’m counting myself in that group, Scully. If you’re looking for a casual roll in the hay, Matt’s your man. And then some. He’ll reduce you to a whimpering pile of goo over the course of a few hours, and then be ready to go again in the morning.

“But don’t trust him with any secrets, or most of all, with your life. He can’t be trusted.” She paused, and then said it again. “Matthew Stone can not be trusted, Scully.”

And with that, Major Heather Haynes stood up and worked the door again, throwing it open to reveal Commander Matthew Stone leaning against the opposite wall, his arms crossed. “Finished assassinating my character?” he asked.

“You know all about assassination, Matt,” Heather said, moving to turn up the hallway. Scully left the SCIF and followed Stone and Haynes to the elevator. It was only once the silver doors had dinged! shut and the car had started its ascent to street level that Scully felt her blood run cold. A single thought raced across her mind, a thundering freight train of fear and adrenaline.

How did Heather know Mulder went to Oxford?

***

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC
1400 Hours

Mulder punched the number for Scully’s cellphone into his desk phone again and waited for the six rings and the voice. “I’m sorry, but the CellOne customer you are calling is not available or has left the calling area. Recording one six nine.”

Swearing, Mulder slammed the phone down and glanced at his watch. How long had they been gone? Over five hours. The thought that his partner, his best friend in the world was in the company of that… man, that killer! The Gunmen had really come up with the information this time. The deleted portions of Stone’s service record were on Mulder’s desk, and he reread them again, going over the words for the thirtieth or fortieth time that afternoon.

Trained as a pilot. Pensacola, for PriFli, otherwise known as Primary Flight Training. Then off to Texas for jets. Then out to the fleet. The best of the best. Tomcats. F-14, the trouble-laden A model. Carrier Quals. Third in his nugget class. Over six hundred hours logged over two cruises in the F-14. Promoted rapidly from Lieutenant (j.g.) to Lieutenant, and then to Lieutenant Commander. And then the lovely year of 1982. The words jumped off the page at Mulder. “UNLAWFUL TAKING OF HUMAN LIFE” the report screamed. The details were sketchy. All that Mulder could discern was that Stone had transferred off the USS Enterprise for duty on the beach at NAS Mirimar. Assigned to something called Section 28. And then…Libya. Something in Libya. Mulder wracked his brain, trying to remember any international incidents that happened in Libya during 1982. Nothing came to mind, but something must have happened. Almost a year after returning to the States, Stone had been court-martialed.

The transcript was classified, as were the charges and specifications. All Langley had managed to get out of the BUPERS computers was one of the original reported charges.

Unlawful Taking of Human Life.

That spelled one thing to Mulder: Murder.

That was why he didn’t wear his ring, or his ‘wings of gold.’ They had probably yanked them right off his chest, Mulder thought with a grin. Probably made him participate in some arcane ritual where they drum them out of the aviator corps.

You’re taking way too much glee in all this, he reminded himself. Scully could be in some real danger here, and you can’t get a hold of her.

Returning to the data Langley had provided, Mulder saw that as far as he could tell, Stone had never flown an airplane, military or otherwise, again. There was a notation that he was restricted from flight duty, as either a Pilot in Command, or as co-pilot, and that he was not qualified to receive flight pay anymore.

That probably meant medical, Mulder thought. He busted his flight physical, and they took him off flight status. That means he was probably shot down.

Libya. Shot down. Mulder wracked his brain. Nothing.

He dialed.

“Lone Gunmen.” It was Byers.

“It’s Mulder. Do you know of-”

“Nope, we checked. We can’t find a single issue in that part of the world at the time indicated. Sorry, Mulder.”

“You guys are reading my mind again.”

“The hell we are; this will make a great story for the next issue!”

“Byers, do me a favor and hold it until next month, Ok?”

There was silence on the line. “As a favor to me, Ok?” Mulder pleaded.

“You have 30 days,” Byers said, “and then we run it.”

“Thanks.” Mulder noticed that his incoming line was blinking. “Gotta go, got another call.” He punched the button. “Mulder.”

“Mulder, it’s me,” Scully said, her voice clear and loud in his ear.

“Scully! Are you alone?”

“Of course not. But we need to talk. Just you and I. I’ve called the Technical Services Group to set up the surveillance on Heather’s place. Stone and I are going to take the first part of the first shift. He’s got to leave around midnight. Do you want to spend the rest of the night with me?” Realizing what she’d said, Scully quickly added, “On the stakeout, I mean.”

Wherever you want, and whenever, Scully. “Of course. Where?”

“I’ll leave a message when we know for sure. Mulder… Stone’s getting us lunch right now. This one is big, Mulder. Bigger than we’ve ever seen.”

“You have no idea, Scully. The Gunmen did some digging. I have a more…complete picture of what you’re spending time with. It’s interesting reading, Scully.”

“I’m sure it is, Mulder. Bring it along tonight.”

“Do you still trust him, Scully?”

There was a very long pause. “I’m not sure, Mulder. But I will tell you this…you’re the only person I trust unconditionally. You’ve never lied to me, have you?”

“No, Scully. Never. Not once.”

“I know, Mulder. You’re the only person I can think of in my life that can make that claim, and I want you to know…I appreciate it.”

That was odd, Mulder thought, but didn’t say anything.

“My pleasure, Scully.”

“Listen, Stone’s coming back with the burgers and fries. Wait for my call. We have a lot of talking to do. Ok?” Mulder heard the sound of a car door opening in the background. “I love you,” Scully said. Mulder’s heart jumped into his throat.

WHAT?!

What had she just-

“I’ll see you this weekend, Mom.”

Mulder felt his heart returning to a normal rhythm. “See you too, sweetie,” he said, disconnecting the call before Scully could reply.

Sighing, Mulder opened the bottom drawer of his desk and carefully removed the hidden bottom. He had never, ever lied to Scully, he knew. But he had not told her everything. The Gunmen were good for more than just a laugh and the occasional cybersleuthing. The voice-activated micro cassette recorder was connected to the phone. Every call Mulder received was taped.

Removing the small audio cassette, Mulder replaced it with a fresh one. Moving quickly, he reassembled his desk drawer. Taking the old tape, he opened his top left drawer and returned with a dictating recorder, a twin of the one in the bottom drawer. Inserting the tape, he rewound it for a second, and then pushed PLAY.

“I love you,” Scully’s voice said.

Mulder hit REWIND, and then PLAY.

“I love you,” she said again.

For the next twenty minutes, Mulder’s office was filled with the high-speed screech of the tape rewinding while against the heads, and then his partner’s voice repeating those three words over and over again.

Finally, Mulder stopped playing the sound. He hit the EJECT button and the drawer snapped open. Reaching in, he pinched the tape out and turned it over in his fingers, holding it up to the light. He should toss it, he knew. It wasn’t healthy to have that tape handy. It wasn’t conducive to a stable, professional partnership.

I should throw it away, he thought.

Instead, Mulder reached for his pen. Discarding the cap, he jammed the point into the protect-tab and forced it off. Then he dropped the tape in his shirt pocket.

He glanced at his watch. Nine hours until he saw Scully again.

Nine hours too long.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 6/38

“Wake up in the morning and I raise my weary head got an old coat for a pillow and the Earth was last night’s bed I don’t know where I’m going only God knows where I’ve been I’m a devil on the run a six-gun lover a gamble in the wind…

I’m going down in a blaze of glory take me now, but know the truth I’m going out in a blaze of glory and Lord, I never drew first, but I drew first blood”

Bon Jovi

“Blaze Of Glory”

National Reconnaissance Office
Vint Hill Station

Scully quickly disconnected the call and turned to face Matt. Her mouth moved, as if she wanted to say something. Instead, she turned away, her mind racing with a thousand thoughts, a thousand unanswered, unasked, terrible, haunting questions. There was so much she didn’t know; so many people with so many different agendas. Who could she trust? Mulder, without a doubt.

But Stone?

Could she trust him? For some reason, some unnamable, unknown reason she desperately wanted to trust the man in the car next to her.

“How’s your mother?” he asked, trying to start a conversation on a safe topic. Scully shook her head, biting her lip. She didn’t want to drop into an inane discussion about Maggie Scully, about home and hearth and children and dogs and houses with white picket fences. It was too dangerous, too familiar a topic to talk about. Especially with this man.

“I have some questions,” Scully started, her voice making it clear that she would brook no arguments. The last time she had used this voice had been in the death row cell of Luther Lee Boggs, when she was scared and afraid that her new partner, her new friend might be dying because of some action the convicted murderer had taken. She remembered that anger, that white-hot place inside her she so rarely visited. Now, however, she welcomed the warmth, used it to focus her thoughts, her emotions. Concentrating, she went to that place, and drew the emotions she found there around her like a shield.

“I would imagine you do. I’ll answer as many of them as I can,” Stone replied, starting the car and putting it into gear. The tacit admission that he knew there were issues between them, between them as two investigators on a potentially explosive case, and between them as two people, a man and a woman investigating something different, something equally dangerous, equally able to detonate in both of their faces, was an incredible relief to Scully. Mulder would have tossed off some wiseass remark, thrown up some verbal shield against his true emotions, his real feelings. There was none of that with Matt Stone, and Scully welcomed the change.

Or was it?

Was it a change?

The man sitting across the car from her was a trained intelligence agent, a man who had spent the better part of his career living in the twilight of existence, in the space between shadow and darkness, living a life dedicated to taking one version of the truth and twisting it to suit his needs, a life spent hunting the real and imagined enemies of his country and making them pay with the ultimate price: their lives. A term Scully remembered from astronomy popped into her mind; Stone was a man who lived in the umbra of existence. A man who was comfortable being a facile liar. Was it a change? Or just another tactic in an endless series of tactics designed by such men to avoid the real questions?

“I need straight answers, Matt,” Scully said. He didn’t answer for a long moment, and Scully was wondering if he was going to when he finally spoke.

“I’m glad we’re back to ‘Matt,’” he said.

“We never left, for what it’s worth. But we may not be staying there long, Commander, if I don’t start getting some straight answers to some very sticky questions. And as far as I’m concerned, the answer to any of my questions that begins with the phrase, ‘I’m sorry, but that’s classified’ is not a valid answer. Do I make myself clear?”

“As crystal,” Matt said, and then added, “but I may be forced to give you that answer, as much as I would like to tell you everything.” Putting the car into gear, Matt navigated his way out of the NRO facility, turning back onto the highway and accelerating.

“Shoot,” he said, his face open and inviting.

Scully mulled the series of questions she wanted to ask. Choosing one, she began. “I find it very hard to believe that the US military, whatever branch it was you were all working for, sent someone that looks like Major Haynes into Iraq during the war. To say she sticks out like a sore thumb would make that phrase more trite than it already is. Explain to me why she was selected for the mission and what her specific role was.”

Matt mulled his response for a few moments. “Are you going to answer me?” Scully asked.

“I’m thinking. Give me a minute.”

“It was a straight-forward question, Matt.”

He turned to face her, his jaw set. “I’m deciding how much, exactly, to tell you.”

Scully felt the white-hot anger rearing up inside her again. “Dammit, Matt! You should tell me all of it! You shouldn’t have to think about it!”

“Listen to me, little girl-”

That did it. Dana felt her composure snap, a clean break between her normal, reserved self and the devil that dwelled within her Irish soul.

“If you ever call me that again, Commander Stone, you can forget about any chance at…whatever it is that we’re trying to do here. I am not a little girl, Commander. I am a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I am a medical doctor. Furthermore, I have seen things and done things that if you were to be made aware of would probably make that manly-man SEAL macho persona you lug around like a badge of honor go running off into the sunset with its’ tail tucked firmly between its’ legs. DO I make myself clear?”

Stone’s face was closed, the mask of his features befitting his name: Stone.

“Understood,” he said. “But let me tell you something, Special Agent Scully. Imagine the worst thing you have ever done, the most horrific thing you have ever seen, and I will personally guarantee that I have seen AND done worse.”

“Too bad I’m not a man,” Scully scoffed. “We could just unzip and figure out who’s the Alpha Male right off the bat.” Her voice was dripping with poorly concealed contempt.

“Yes,” Stone said, startling her. “Too bad you’re not a man, Dana. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with all this bullshit. A man, without me having to explain it to him, would understand what I’m trying to protect you from.”

Scully twisted in her seat until she was fully facing him. “What is it, Matt? What are you hiding from me?”

His expression was incredulous. “You just don’t get it, do you? It’s not you specifically, Scully. It’s not you, not at all. It’s who you are as a…I don’t know…representative of the real world. I haven’t felt like a part of the real world in fifteen years.”

1982, Dana thought.

Stone continued, warming up to his topic. “You…all of you. All of the people that sit at home, fat, happy and ignorant. You have no idea what is done behind the scenes in your name, to protect you, to shield you against the monsters and the demons that stalk the shadows.”

Scully felt her anger notching up another click. “Yes, Commander, I do know, all right? I’ve been there, on the front lines, with you and all the others. To use a phrase you might understand, I may not fight in the same theater of operations, but I am without a doubt a soldier in the same war! So don’t you hand me that-”

“Scully! You can’t understand! No matter how much you claim to, and I think I might just be falling in love with you for saying it, you are NOT part of the same army that I am! Your job is to find the truth, to bring it to the light where it can be examined and qualified and quantified. MY job is to hide things like that! To bury them in desert graves, to make them go away for all time!”

Bury in a desert grave? Scully thought. And then, on the heels of that: Falling in love? That was ridiculous. They’d met yesterday, for God’s sake. But his words sent a chill up Scully’s back.

“Fine,” Scully finally said. “We’ll agree to disagree about that. Now, tell me: What was Heather doing in the desert? What was the mission? What was her job?”

Matt thought about it again, and it angered Dana to no end that he was actually editing his thoughts, that he was considering what to tell her and what to keep secret.

“What I said in the SCIF is as far as I can go into about the mission. We were sent to kill Saddam. As insane as it seems, Heather had good cover. She was covered as a journalist. She had network ID and the whole bit. One of the guys even lugged in a Sony DXC-M3A camera and a bunch of videotapes. We even did a few standups here and there so if she was captured, she’d have video proving that she was filing reports from the front lines. She knew if she was captured that she’d probably be tortured, raped and then murdered, but she was like me, Scully. She knew what had to be done…and why…and was willing to step up to the plate to take a swing.”

“Why, Matt? Why did it have to be done?”

“If I have to explain that to you, you will never, ever understand, Scully.”

Dana decided to accept that, for the moment, and go on. “She knows something, Matt. I feel it.”

“What makes you say that?” His casual tone of voice told Scully that he felt the same way, but wanted to hear her reasoning.

“A couple of things. First, the way she greeted you, like a long- lost lover, and then lost it when she found out that we wanted to protect her. She just totally overreacted. Another thing…she knows things she shouldn’t know.”

Stone laughed. “It’s her job to know things that other people don’t know or aren’t supposed to know.”

“Like the fact that my partner got his doctorate in Psychology at Oxford? Which also means she knows his name?”

That brought Matt up short. “When- Oh, right. When I left. What else did she say?”

That question brought a blush to Scully’s cheeks that couldn’t quite be explained away by anger or lively conversation. “She said not to trust you.” And then, Scully decided to tell him everything. Maybe it would crack that oh-so-sanctimonious shell of his. After all, if she could be one-hundred-percent truthful with him, even when it was embarrassing…

“She said you were very good looking and great in bed.” The car swerved as Stone turned to face her, and then he wrenched his attention back to the road, correcting the skid like an expert.

“She also said,” Scully continued, “that you are a pathological liar and cannot be trusted, and that I should not put my life in your hands.”

Stone said nothing for almost two miles. Then, finally: “Do you agree with her?”

“About which part?” Scully asked.

“I don’t know. All of it. Any of it.”

“Well, I don’t know if I can trust you, Matt. You haven’t given me much to work with. And until you do, I think I’d better reserve comment on the rest of it.”

Stone nodded. “Where are we going, by the way?”

“Heather’s apartment. I want to check up on the TechServ guys.”

Stone flicked the turn-signal and changed lanes.

“Guess you don’t need directions…”

“No,” Stone said, without thinking. “I’ve been there before.”

I bet, Scully thought, and again that unfamiliar, unwelcome emotion welled up inside her: Jealousy.

***

Office of Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC

“Mulder,” he said, answering the phone.

“Mulder! It’s Langley. Turn on your fax machine and lock the doors. I asked an online associate of ours to take a crack at the records of your Commander Stone, and he hit paydirt. Normally we’d ask you to come over, but the second we finish faxing this to you, we’re going to burn it and forget we ever saw it.” Langley paused. “After this, Mulder — we’re even.”

The phone went dead in Mulder’s ear at the same moment the fax machine behind him hummed to life. Twisting his chair, Mulder watched as the first page inched their way out of the machine.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET:EYES ONLY

NO COPIES

19 OCTOBER 1982

AFTER ACTION REPORT

OPERATION JOVIAL CLOWN

Frowning, Mulder got up and went to lock his office door. Once again, the Gunmen had come through, prowling in places they had no business being, uncovering the truth.

It’s a dirty job, Mulder thought with a grin, but someone’s got to do it.

***

Major Heather Haynes’ Apartment
Georgetown

The TechServ van was, to the untrained eye, just another sport utility vehicle with deeply tinted windows. The plate was from Kentucky, giving it a little bit of credence as an out-of-town sightseers’ car. Only to Scully’s trained eye would it appear as anything else.

There were no huge groups of external antennas to give it away as a surveillance van. Gone were the days where wads of whip antennas and the smaller, circular DF antennas would telegraph to the world that the FBI was sitting on someone’s house or place of business. The engineers at the FBI Technical Services Unit (TechServ) had made some advancements over the years. The external antennas and laser audio microphones were built into the SUV’s luggage rack. Pinhole video cameras peeked out on all aspects. The inside was crammed with several hundred thousand dollars worth of electronic equipment. It saw everything and missed nothing. It was capable of receiving video, audio and infrared transmissions from remote cameras and microphones placed up to two miles away.

“Pull over,” Scully said, pointing. “There.”

“Why?”

“Look at the rear bumper of the SUV. See how the license plate light is on?”

Stone looked and then nodded. “Sure.”

“That means TechServ is inside, placing the bugs. When they come back out, the light will go off and then we can get in.” Stone followed Scully’s instructions and parked the car.

“What kind of bugs are they placing?”

Scully thought about it for a second, considering all the options TechServ had available to them. “Probably audio, video and infrared. Motion and heat sensors on all external doors and the roof. Phone tap. If she has a modem, modem tap, cell tap if she has one.”

“That’s quite a list!”

“Yeah, we like to be thorough.”

Stone ignored the comment and used the edge of the rearview mirror to study his temporary partner. She was frowning slightly, her gaze narrowed in concentration as she watched the apartment building. Major Heather Hynes lived in a twelve-story luxury high-rise, complete with all the latest amenities. Stone remembered with some fondness the Jacuzzi-equipped Roman bathtub. Forcing such thoughts from his mind, Stone returned his attention to the task at hand.

Scully.

Oh, he thought, how to win the heart of the fair Scully?

Then his little voice spoke up; Is it her heart you want, Matty, or her body?

The cold part of him, the part that had emerged from the desert one hot October afternoon answered.

Either.

***

Special Agent Fox Mulder’s Office
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC

The more he read, the sicker Mulder felt. The classified after- action report for operation JOVIAL CLOWN had taken the better part of half an hour to slowly inch its’ way out of his fax machine, and if the Gunmen did have an ounce of sense in any of their bodies, they would have kept their word and started shredding it immediately.

Even for someone as jaded as Mulder, the fax made him sick to his stomach. To think that the government of the United States, even the Reagan administration, was capable of…this! Sections of the report had been blacked out. But not all of it.

He scanned the figures again. Almost three hundred dead. The last sixty shot execution style, one round to the back of their heads. All of them already wounded, incapacitated by twenty-millimeter rounds. He read the same paragraph over and over again, unable to get the images the words evoked out of his mind:

PURSUANT TO NMCC ORDER 780-101982 AFTER [XXXXXXX] ARRIVED ON

SCENE, CONTACT WAS MADE WITH ACTION OFFICER [XXXXXXXX] ABOARD

USS NIMITZ (CVN69) STEAMING OFF STRAITS OF HORMUZ. AFTER BEING

INFORMED OF 58 SURVIVING INDIGENOUS AGENTS, [XXXXXXXX] WAS ORDERED

TO EXECUTE PLAN [XXXXXX] PER NATIONAL SECURITY ACT 1947 BY ACTION

OFFICER. GROUND FORCES COMMANDER REPORTS THAT FOUR ELEMENTS OF

[XXXXXX] TEAM[XXXX] REFUSED TO CARRY OUT PLAN [XXXXX]. AIR SUPPORT

COMMANDER, WHO WAS ON SCENE DUE TO DEPARTURE OF AIRCRAFT AFTER

TAKING UNFRIENDLY FIRE, VOLUNTEERED TO EXECUTE PLAN [XXXXX]. THIS

OFFICER HEREBY RECOMMENDS AWARD OF THE [XXXXXXXXXXXX] FOR ACTIONS

TAKEN BY AIR SUPPORT COMMANDER ON THIS DAY. LTCMDR [XXXXXX], USN

PERSONALLY EXECUTED PLAN [XXXXX] WITH RESPECT TO THIRTY OF SIXTY

REMAINING INDIGENOUS AGENTS.

The report went on and on. As far as Mulder could tell from the report, the mission in Libya had been highly, deeply classified. Stone had been flying air support for the mission, and had apparently been shot down. Then, on the ground, if the report could be believed, he had personally executed 30 wounded prisoners by shooting them in the back of the head.

Mulder’s blood ran cold when he thought about Scully sitting no more than three feet from such a man.

But…how could such a thing have taken place and still be secret? Mulder wracked his brain but could not remember reading or hearing about a single thing related to what was in front of him now. He had to confirm this. Before he told Scully, he had to be sure.

Picking up the phone, he dialed.

The line was picked up, but no one spoke.

“Mulder,” he said.

“Confirmed,” a male voice answered after a moment.

“I need to know about an operation. All I have is the code name.”

“Mr. Mulder,” the voice said, cold, distant, reproachful.

“All I need to know is if it took place. I’m trying to confirm if the after action report that I’m reading is a truth or a lie. I won’t ask you to confirm or deny the contents of the report. Just tell me if the operation took place. If I give you the name, the date and the location, will you confirm it?”

The voice pondered the question.

“Perhaps.”

“October 19, 1982. Libya. JOVIAL CLOWN.”

Mulder wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard the voice gasp.

“Mr. Mulder, you are delving into areas where you do not belong. That operation has no connection to your stated mandate.”

“I’m aware of that. My partner is currently working with whom I suspect was the man awarded some kind of medal for his actions on the ground after the ground forces refused to carry out the orders of the action officer. Do you know of whom I speak?”

“I am…aware of the name, Agent Mulder.”

“Is the after action report accurate?”

The voice laughed. “And then some, Mr. Mulder. The report only tells half the story, because the participants themselves only knew half.”

“What should I do?” Mulder asked.

The voice didn’t hesitate. “I would suggest that you get your partner out of the arena of operations as soon as possible, Mr. Mulder. If she is…associating with this…person, she could be in grave danger. He is known to be…unstable. Unpredictable. Quite a patriot, if you know what I mean.”

“Does he smoke?” Mulder asked, knowing that the voice would understand the question.

“Not directly. Secondhand.”

Mulder grimaced at the sick joke. “Can he be trusted?”

“Again, that depends. If you ask him to go to a place, and perform an action, a specific kind of action, in the name of national security, then he is as dependable as death. Otherwise, I cannot comment.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can not, Mr. Mulder. As I said, I am only tangentially aware of the person of which you speak. We may not be speaking of the same person. But if we are, then your partner is between a rock and a hard place, is she not?”

Click!

Mulder slowly replaced the phone; his contact had confirmed all he needed to know.

‘Between a rock and a hard place.’

Between a Stone and a hard place, Mulder thought. His first desire, his overwhelming desire, was to call Scully and order her, as her nominal superior, to get the hell out of there and report back to the Hoover building ASAFHP.

But without proof, there was no way she’d listen. And Mulder was loathe to invoke a personal favor from her. The immediate gain, getting her out of that monster’s clutches, would be overwhelmed by the agony he would go through over the next months. Scully would never let him forget that he’d felt he had to ‘rescue’ her from the clutches of the Bad Man. She wanted to be treated as an equal, a full member of the partnership. Well, now was the time.

Mulder glanced at his watch. It was just after 1430. He had almost ten hours until he was due to replace Stone on the stakeout. Time to do some more research.

***

FBI Surveillance Van Sierra Six
Outside Heather Haynes’ Apartment
1730 Hours

“Baker one to Sam Six,” the voice on the radio called. Picking up the high-powered, scrambled two-way radio, Scully answered the car that was assigned to trail Heather home from the NRO.

“Go, Baker One.”

“LOOKER has left Area One. Heading back to Area Zero.” Scully grimaced at the call sign the team had picked for Haynes. Looker, indeed. She wondered what her call sign was. “Confirmed, Baker One. Six out.” Scully dropped the two-way on the seat to her left. Stone was seated to her right. She was very aware of him in the close confines of the van. The two technicians assigned to this detail were preoccupied with their equipment, as such types were wont to do. Stone and Scully were relegated to listening to the radio crosstalk and inhabiting each other’s space. She could smell him, he was so close; she could feel the warm pressure of his leg against hers, and to be truthfully honest, it was not a totally unwelcome sensation.

Mulder had his little touches, but aside from those few times when one or the other’s emotions had boiled over due to some trauma, they had not really touched much, Scully thought. Part of her was fine with that and probably even encouraged it with her body language and demeanor. Encouraging such behavior with her partner could only lead to…

What?

Disaster, she was sure. Let’s be honest here, Dana. Mulder’s pretty damn cute. More than once she had found herself glancing into his eyes and felt her emotional footing falter just a bit. It would be easy, she knew, to get lost in those eyes and never emerge again. Her friendship with Mulder was without a doubt the most significant, meaningful relationship she had ever had, bar none. And as intimate as it was, they had both decided by mutual, unspoken agreement not to take it any further. That did not mean that the desire, the attraction was not there.

Far from it.

She remembered holding his hand. Feeling his arms around her. She remembered wanting more of that, more of everything that Mulder represented, and on the heels of that, the alarm bells ringing in her head and her heart. Mulder was intoxicating, but so was Tequila, and she wasn’t taking bets on which would give her a worse headache come the morning. Scully was quite clear on that: She loved Mulder, but was not in love with him. That particular Pandora’s box was better left unopened.

Locked in the closet.

A basement closet.

Locked inside a safe inside a basement closet in the bowels of the Pentagon, guarded by a platoon of fierce man-killing Marines.

But, she was a fully functional, grown woman in the bloom of her youth, to turn a trite phrase. She had…hungers, needs that weren’t addressed by the wonderful, intricate, complicated relationship she shared with Mulder. Needs that were growing more incessant with every moment she spent with Matt Stone, USN.

Scully was very aware of his masculinity. And that part of her that was aware of him as an extremely virile, masculine male presence was also shouting ‘traitor!’ at the top of its’ tiny mental lungs. Mulder may not have been a Navy SEAL, and he might have a tendency to lose his gun at inopportune moment, and he may have the habit of getting the stuffing kicked out of him on a few occasions, but he was just as much a man as the knuckle-dragging Naval commando sitting next to her.

So why, then, was she so…disturbed by Stone?

Why, Dana?

There was something, she knew, very deliciously decadent about the thought of lowering the defenses she’d spent the better portion of her personal and professional life erecting against the world. Something so…Harlequin about dropping all the pretense, all the back-and-forth jockeying for position that passed as male-female relations in the latter half of the twentieth century and just being…female. Just being…what?

Taken?

Ravished?

Scully turned her head slightly and looked at Matt’s profile. His beard was starting to show, the rough little nubbins on his face darkening his features and making Scully suddenly think about how that rough, scratchy skin would feel like rubbing against certain portions of her body.

The van suddenly felt very confining.

“Is it hot in here?” Scully asked, shrugging out of her trademark formless trenchcoat.

“Hadn’t noticed,” Stone said, his own thoughts not very far away. He noticed the way Scully’s body moved when she took the coat off; he could see the outlines of her soft, feminine curves as they stretched the silk blouse she wore to the breaking point.

Nice, he thought.

Very, very nice.

***

The killer spotted the FBI SUV almost immediately. Well, of course, he thought with a grin. I helped design parts of the damn thing. The plate light was out, so he knew they had already been inside and had wired the place from top to bottom. Well, that’s ok, he thought. Nothing like a challenge.

Although this won’t be much of one.

***

“Baker One to Sierra Six,” the car called.

“Six, go one,” Scully answered.

“LOOKER has arrived home.” Scully craned her neck and saw LOOKER, AKA Major Heather Hynes wheel her pigeon-blood red Mazda Miata around the corner and down the ramp into the apartment building’s garage. So she is, Scully thought.

“Affirmative, One. Take up blocking positions one block east.” Scully watched as the TechServ droids found Heather with the thermal imager and followed her from the Miata to the elevator. “We have LOOKER. All units, take up assigned positions.”

The six other cars keyed their radios with various forms of “Ten Four” and “Roger” to signify they had received the message and were ready for a long night.

Scully glanced at her watch. “Mark her home at 1739,” she said to the droids. They mumbled assent as one of them bent to write in the log. Sighing, Dana Scully sat back to wait, trying not to think of the interesting, sexy man seated not six inches to her right.

***

The killer waited almost half an hour before making his move. It was quite simple, once you knew the rules, he thought. Approaching the building, he took out the first of two small electronic devices that had been developed for use overseas on installations that were guarded in much the same way that this one was. The device worked very well on solid-state electronics. With a few taps of the devices’ buttons, the killer had entered the building undetected. The heat and motion sensors on the door he had been used had been ‘told’ electronically to ignore the pressure and heat passing under them as part of their internal diagnostics checks. They reported nothing, and the four people sitting in the FBI SUV not more than a hundred yards away had no idea that he was in the building.

Moving up the stairs, the man repeated the function at the stairwell door on Heather’s floor. Once the door clicked softly behind him, he took the second of the devices out of his pack, and started using it.

It was even more ingenious than the first one. It was set to scan for the frequencies being used by the FBI team. It found the audio frequency first, and then shortly after that, the video frequency. Two long, sweaty, agonizing minutes later, it found the frequencies the infrared transmitters were using.

What the killer did next was simplicity itself. Inside the device was what amounted to a massive VCR on a set of high-density memory chips. He recorded ten minutes of activity inside Heather’s apartment, including the television and the sounds of her moving around the apartment. Ten minutes was all he would need.

Once he was satisfied, the killer killed the recording and moved down the hall towards Heather’s door. Standing outside of it, he counted to five and prayed that anyone inside the SUV wasn’t looking directly at the monitors.

He pressed the SEND button.

***

Scully had returned her gaze to Stone. She was trying not to stare, but finding it very hard not to. His face was a mixture of classic good-looks and the world-weariness of someone who had seen things and been places that no one should have to see or visit.

A flicker on one of the monitors caught her eye. Tearing her attention away for a moment, she spoke to one of the two droids. “Check number three,” she ordered, quietly.

The technician punched a few buttons and took a reading. “Transmitting Ok. Nominal interference levels. All normal, Ma’am.”

Scully raised the radio to her lips.

“All units, report.”

***

In his ear, the killer heard Scully’s radio request. The radio receiver he’d tucked into his ear had been previously tuned to the FBI tactical frequency. He listened as all six blocking units reported that there was no trouble.

Satisfied, he removed the electric lock-pick from his pocket and gently inserted it into Heather’s door.

It took him six seconds to unlock the door, the battery operated pick working as quietly as a whisper. He dropped it on the carpet and drew the 9mm suppressed Browning HiPower he wore in a shoulder holster. He gently kneed the door open.

Heather was on the couch watching television and reading the newspaper. She felt the current of air across her head and twisted, her eyes wide with alarm.

“You!” she hissed.

“Yes, Heather, it’s me.”

“You! You’re-”

“No. I’m not. But you are.”

The killer brought the pistol up in one smooth motion, the front and rear sights aligning as if by magic. It had taken years of practice, hours a day, six, seven days a week, but he could draw and fire the weapon as naturally as most people pointed their finger. The pistol made a soft “pfffft!” sound, and Heather Haynes suddenly had a third eye.

The killer walked over to the body and stood over it.

“One left,” he whispered to himself. Stone was close, the killer could feel it. Probably in the van, watching the monitors, thinking nothing was wrong. It would be so easy to just hit the END switch on the transmitter, returning the van to the live video feed and wait in the closet. So tempting. Once Stone was dead, the next part of the plan could commence.

All the people that were directly responsible for his personal hell were almost dead. He had one left to go. And then he could go after those indirectly responsible. In the most spectacular way possible.

The killer glanced at his watch. He had four minutes of video left. A part of him was sad. The game was almost over, and none of them had really gotten to play yet. Each of them had been so easy to take. It was almost as if they’d all wanted to die. Hadn’t they learned anything?

The killer decided that the stakes needed to be raised, just a little. He checked his watch again and saw that he had less than two minutes. He moved quickly, searching the apartment for what he needed. He found it in the front hall table, in a small drawer set into the wood. A deck of cards.

He extracted the card he needed from the deck and carefully placed it on Heather’s chest.

Eighty seconds.

He wiped the gun clean, and then carefully applied a thumbprint to the slide, and then another to the suppressor.

Sixty seconds.

He moved to the door, closing it behind him.

Fifty seconds.

He moved down the stairwell quickly, almost forgetting to use the first device on the exit door.

Thirty seconds.

Outside, turn left, walk down the street.

Sit down on the bus bench.

Fifteen seconds.

Deep breaths.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Playtime’s over, Matt.

***

The screen flickered again, and Scully was turning her head, away from the monitors this time, back towards the face that was so interesting, to mesmerizing. But her eye caught a piece of the image that was on the screen, and all thoughts of subtle flirting with the dangerous Naval officer was forgotten as the horror of what her eyes were seeing filled Scully’s senses. She almost stood inside the van, but stopped herself in time, reaching for the radio instead.

“All units, move in, move in!” she called, already twisting to unlock the back door. Stone was following her, shouting at her as Scully dashed across the street. “What?”

Standing in the road, Stone watched as the six blocking FBI cars moved in. He glanced back in the van and saw the now-live video feed of Heather’s dead body slumped over her couch. Leaning into the van, he saw the playing card on her chest and muttered, “Shit!”

Turning, he took off after Scully.

***

Heather Haynes’ Apartment
Georgetown
2130 Hours

Mulder flashed his ID at the door, and the DC cop let him pass. He moved into the room gingerly, taking care not to step into anything that might be evidence. Hands on hips, he stood in the living room, turning in a slow circle, trying to piece it together.

The crime scene technicians were still working the place over. There was a small circle of red tape behind and to the left of the couch. A small folding placard sat in the middle of the circle with the number “1” on it. Spent shell casing, Mulder thought.

Skinner’s voice drifted in from what Mulder suspected was the bedroom. “Well, how DO you explain it then?” he asked. Mulder had an idea of who he was talking to, and what about. He moved to be by his partner’s side, where she needed him…

Or, apparently not, Mulder thought, freezing in his steps. Scully stood, her chin jutting forward, arms crossed across her chest, jaw set, taking the best Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner had to dish out.

“I don’t know, sir. We’ll have to go over the video and audio tapes in the lab. Somehow, the killer gained entrance to the apartment and murdered Major Haynes.”

“You were in the van the entire time she was in the apartment?” Skinner demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you had your full attention focused on the monitors? At all times?”

“We had four people in that van, sir, and none of us saw a thing.”

Commander Matthew Stone was standing behind Scully, his mere presence visibly offering her support. Mulder turned quickly, before Scully could see him, and moved to the kitchen. The voices from the bedroom drifted off, and Mulder decided to concentrate on something else.

Anything else.

The evidence technician from the DC Homicide unit was using the kitchen table to sort and catalog the evidence. Holding out his ID, Mulder asked, “Mind if I look?”

“Nothing leaves the room,” the tech said, “But go ahead.”

Mulder looked at the collection of glassine bags on the table. The Browning HiPower, complete with the suppressor still attached, was in one bag, the shell casing in another. Mulder could see the telltale dark flakes of fingerprint powder on the gun and the casing.

“Any prints?”

“Mostly clean,” the tech admitted. “But I found-”

“A right thumb somewhere on the gun, clear as day?”

The tech nodded. “That’s right. And one on the suppressor. How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess. What’s with the shell casing?”

“Bulgarian surplus, circa…oh, about 1965.” Mulder nodded. A favorite of Special Ops units worldwide. Tons of it lying around gathering dust. Totally untraceable.

“Anything else of any use?”

“This,” the tech said, handing Mulder the playing card, also in it’s own glassine envelope.

Turning it over in his hand, Mulder felt his blood run cold once again.

It was the Jack of Spades.

Blackjack.

VF-221. Naval Fighter Squadron 221, “The Blackjacks” was the unit (then) Lieutenant Commander Matthew Stone had been assigned to on October 19, 1982.

Mulder turned at the sound of Skinner’s voice, dropping the card back on the table.

“Mulder, what are you doing here?”

“I came to offer Scully…” Mulder started, and then realized how patronizing he sounded, and stopped speaking.

“Support? Very nice, Mulder, but she’s already gone home.”

Home? Mulder thought. How did she get-

“Commander Stone was gracious enough to offer her a ride,” Skinner said, as if reading his mind. “You, Agent Scully, and Commander Stone will all report to my office, oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning to go over the…circus this investigation has descended into.” Skinner thought about asking the obvious question, like…where had Mulder been when all this was happening, but resisted. He would give Mulder the same chance he was offering Scully and Stone.

“Go home, Mulder. Get some sleep.”

Mulder snorted. As if.

But he took the advice. He left the crime scene and made his way down in the elevator. He’d heard the preliminary reports on the radio on his way into the scene; he knew that Stone was in the van with Scully when the murder occurred, so he was not directly involved as far as Mulder could tell.

But one thing was for certain. Stone knew the killer, or the killer knew Stone.

***

Apartment of Special Agent Dana Scully
2223 Hours

Stone pulled the Caprice to a stop at the curb and killed the engine. Scully started to get out of the car, but a restraining hand from Stone stopped her.

“Dana.” Her name from his mouth was an urgent, eager whisper, and Scully felt the fire run up her spine and detonate inside her head at the exact same, precise moment the alarm bells in her heart started ringing.

“No,” she said softly. “Not tonight.”

“You need-”

“You have no idea what I need,” Scully whispered, turning to face him. “I need a friend tonight, Matt.”

“I can be your friend,” Matt offered, using the time-honored line of all men using anything they can think of to gain entrance through the magic portals: The apartment door.

“I already have a friend,” Scully answered. “I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early.”

Matt removed his hand and nodded. “Good night, Dana.”

“Good night, Matt.”

***

Apartment of Special Agent Fox Mulder
2240 Hours

Mulder dug the chirping cellphone from his jacket pocket. “Mulder,” he answered, his voice slurred by what passed for sleep in his life.

“Mulder, it’s me.”

Scully. Her voice washed over Mulder, a comfortable, familiar wave of warmth and tenderness. “Scully,” he said.

“I hate to ask you, Mulder…but-”

“Anything, Scully.”

“Can you come over? I need someone to talk to.”

Mulder stood, reaching for his jacket. “I’m on my way.”

–x–x–x–

“The Stranger” Words & Music Copyright (c) 1977 by Billy Joel. Copyright 1977, 1985 Impulsive Music and Columbia Records. From the album “Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volume I” Used without permission. No infringement intended.

“Blaze Of Glory” Music & Lyrics by Jon Bon Jovi. Produced by Danny Krotchmar. From the motion picture soundtrack “Young Guns II” Copyright 1990 Polygram Records. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission, and no copyright infringement was intended.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 7/38

“In these days and these hours of fury When the darkness and answers are thin Lovers come and check out in a hurry Shallow and hollow again Come lay your body beside me To dream to sleep with the lamb To the question your eyes seem to send Am I your passion your promise your end?

Barring divine intervention There is nothing between you and I And if I carelessly forgot to mention Your body your power can sanctify Come feed your hunger your thirst Lay it down the beast will die You can question my heart once again

I will stand firm in the tempest I will ride destiny’s trail To believe when the truth comes up empty To hold and respect without fail Come and be one in the motion A desire they cannot comprehend Never to question again For I am your passion your promise your end”

== “Yes I Am”

Melissa Etheridge

“The heart knows what the heart wants, and the mind knows nothing of the heart.”

– Anonymous

–x–x–x–

-7-

Apartment of Dana Scully
2310 Hours

Mulder parked his Bureau-issue Taurus at curb in front of Scully’s apartment and twisted the ignition key to OFF. He glanced up through the windshield and saw that there was only the one light on as far as he could tell.

Mulder tried to quell the feeling of disquiet rumbling in his stomach. He had tried to figure the reason why Scully had invited him over to her apartment (itself a rare occurrence,) the entire way over. They lived about half an hour apart, but he had made the trip in less than twenty minutes, complete with a stop at Dunkin’ Doughnuts for some of their extra-high-octane coffee. The coffee that kept the DC police awake during the night shifts, the coffee that had been consumed are more crime scenes than any other. He had two Styrofoam containers with him, just in case Scully needed a jolt.

Mulder locked the car and then made his way upstairs. He was trying to figure out how to unlock Scully’s door without putting either of the coffee cups down, because he knew that if he did, he would end up knocking one of them over with his foot. It was as inevitable as the tides; it wasn’t a matter of if it would happen, but how deeply the stain would affect the hallway carpet. He was still struggling with the idea of balancing one cup on top of another while digging in his jacket pocket for the keys when the door opened wide, revealing a wide-awake Dana Scully.

“Mulder,” she said softly. “Thanks for coming.”

He just nodded and entered the apartment, handing her a cup as he passed. “Coffee,” he explained.

“Thanks,” Scully smiled, “But I drink tea.”

Embarrassed, Mulder shrugged. “Sorry.”

“No, Mulder, it’s OK. I appreciate the gesture.” Closing and locking the door, Scully pointed at the couch with the back of her hand. “Have a seat, Mulder. I’m going to go put this in a real mug.” Scully moved into the kitchen, and Mulder took the opportunity to seat himself on her couch, moving to the far end and settling down.

Scully, in the kitchen, opened the cabinet next to the sink and reached for her favorite mug. It had the FBI crest on one side, and her name (“Dana Scully, M.D.”) on the other. It had been a graduation present from Scully’s mother.

The other mug sat next to it.

Purchased when Mulder was…in New Mexico, Scully had purchased it specifically because it reminded her of Mulder. It was a simple black enameled mug with a drawing of Marvin the Martian. Scully realized with a start that she hadn’t used that mug in almost a year, and that she had never told Mulder she’d gotten it.

No time like the present, she thought. Pouring her coffee into her mug, she grabbed “Mulder’s” mug and returned to the living room, holding it out for him to take.

Mulder’s eyes were on his partner, concern etching his face. He didn’t notice the mug’s illustration until he had transferred his coffee into it and was raising it to his lips to take the first sip. He pulled it back slightly, his gaze narrowing on the image, and then he smiled.

“Scully, this is really cool!”

Smiling, she sat at the other end of the couch, tucking her feet underneath her. “I’m glad you like it, Mulder. I kind of got it for you.”

Mulder laughed. “Oh yeah, considering all the time I spend here.”

Scully’s smile was her only answer. “I guess I could ask you why we don’t spend more time together away from work, but we already know the answer to that question, don’t we?”

Mulder nodded. “Yes. We do.”

There was a long silence, and finally Mulder broke it. “Scully… not that I don’t enjoy every moment we spend together, and not that this isn’t nice and all…but why did you call me?”

Scully was in the middle of sipping her coffee, and she took the opportunity to gather her thoughts before speaking. “It’s this case, Mulder. I found out some things today that I think we should discuss. And since you hate using the telephones for anything sensitive, and the fact that Matt might show up at the office early tomorrow morning, I wanted to do this here.”

Matt? Mulder thought, but wisely chose to say nothing.

“There’s more going on here than we’ve been told, Mulder. As you know, Matt and I went to NRO today to meet with Major Haynes.” Scully paused, again trying to find the words. “Mulder, she was gorgeous. Supermodel beautiful, I kid you not. And that’s what got me thinking. I don’t care what Matt told me, it doesn’t seem likely that they would have sent a woman into combat that looks like her. No matter what the mission.”

Mulder interrupted. “What was her cover?”

If Scully was surprised that Mulder knew Heather had gone in covered, she didn’t show it. “Journalist,” she said. “Complete with all the background paperwork and props to back the story up, or so Matt said.”

“You keep calling him ‘Matt’,” Mulder pointed out.

Scully arched an eyebrow in his direction. “That’s the man’s name, Mulder.”

“What happened to ‘Commander Stone’?”

Scully used the pretense of taking another sip to buy time to compose her answer. “Matt and I…” She stopped, then began again. “He and I…”

“Are becoming close,” Mulder finished. Scully couldn’t meet his gaze. She just nodded. Mulder looked away. He couldn’t look at her. The slowly creeping dread that had been building since yesterday was now a full-blown bummer. He had tried so hard not to think about it, to resist the temptation to obsess over it. The images came to his mind unbidden, little mind-movies of Scully and Stone walking down the beach arm in arm, laughing as the slowly creeping tide tickled their bare feet. It was a clich,, something about of a cheap romance novel, but that image, among others, would not go away. He had a sudden mental snapshot of Scully in Stone’s arms, moving towards him, her lips seeking his, her eyes drooping heavy with passion, her tongue coming out, snakelike, to moisten her lips, and then-

“Mulder?” Scully’s voice snapped Mulder out of his reverie, and he turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

“I’m sorry, Scully. I just…need a minute.” Scully said nothing. Standing, she went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and located the milk carton. Returning to the living room she added a dollop to her coffee and then offered the carton to Mulder, who shook his head. His mind was a thousand miles away. The images of Scully and Stone had, thankfully, left his mind for the moment. Instead, he was battling with a new set of emotions, a brand-spanking-new feeling that was surprising, both by its presence, and its intensity.

He was struggling to qualify it, to put a name to it. The first description that came to mind was obvious: Jealousy. But not the kind that Scully would expect, not the kind that most people, if they knew the situation, would expect. He wasn’t jealous of Stone because he had Scully’s affections. They were partners, friends. He wouldn’t be human if he claimed that he’d never thought of…that with Scully. She was a gorgeous, intelligent, interesting…captivating woman. A woman who had more than once put her own life on the line for him, a woman who’d had to endure more pain and suffering than anyone had a right to expect. Melissa Scully was dead and gone because of him, because of his crusade. He knew that he loved her…but he was not in love with her.

Was he?

He searched his soul, looking deep. He found his affection for her there. He sighed deeply, and caught a whiff of her scent in the apartment, an intoxicating sand-spice-perfume scent that was pure Scully, a scent he had come to treasure over the years. A door inside his mind unlocked, and he went through it, going down the mental stairs to the next level.

Well, why not? Why not Scully? Just because they were partners? The FBI was filled with couples that had started off as partners. The bosses frowned on it, but they realized that it was bound to happen. There was no regulation against marrying your partner, oddly enough, just one against sleeping with them. In the insane world of internal office politics, Mulder held the opinion that the FBI brass would almost rather have two male partners sleeping together than a man and a woman.

So, why not Scully? Well, Mulder reasoned, for one thing, they’d be split up, separated, scattered to the four winds. Scully would be returned to Quantico, or perhaps a field office. Mulder had too much clout these days to be taken off the X-Files, but something would have to be done.

And then, of course, there was the deeper reason. The little voice came out of his hiding place. It wasn’t the normal little voice, the invisible demon that spoke to Mulder when he was at his spookiest. It was the evil twin of that voice, the little troll that only spoke in the wolf hours of the night, when the only thing to talk to, the only thing to curl up with was a cold, impersonal pillow. The voice of self-doubt and guilt that had plagued Mulder all his life.

She won’t want you.

She doesn’t feel the same way.

She’ll laugh at you if you ask.

Mulder was amazed to discover that a very small part of him was, in fact, in love with Scully. He’d buried it so deeply and so completely that only the specter of Matt Stone taking Scully’s heart brought it to the surface. And that explained the ache in his gut and the heaviness in his chest.

And on the heels of that, another thought. Anything he did that was even sensed by Scully as being an attempt to break her and Matt up, any even oblique attempt to discourage the normal developmental cycle of the relationship would damage his relationship with her. Possibly beyond repair.

Mulder felt his gut clench as he realized he was going to have to ride it out. And then, a savior. The evil twin’s better half spoke up, emerging from the same mental closet, bringing words of joy, of happiness, of salvation.

Even if she slept with him, even if Scully and Stone had a torrid affair that lasted the rest of the case, when the case was over, Stone would go away. He might be reassigned, me might have a mission somewhere else. There was no way he was going to become a permanent part of Scully’s life. She was entitled to a fling, to a casual thing between her and another consenting adult. God knew he hadn’t been an angel for the last four years. His thoughts hadn’t been pure. Who was he to point the finger?

“Ok, Scully, what about Heather’s cover story bothers you?”

She shifted on the couch, glad to be back on the main topic. “It’s not that her story bothers me, specifically.” She held up a hand. “Wait. Let me back up. When I was at NRO, she asked Matt to leave the room for a minute, and then she let something slip. She told me that she took people’s minds apart for a living. She knew psychology better than the kind they taught at Oxford.”

Mulder considered that, and the implications behind it. “She knew about me.”

“She knew Matt and I were coming. Someone on the inside was giving her information.”

Mulder nodded, mulling it over. “Ok, but that seems like just normal business in the intelligence circle. Remember, Scully, you and I are not exactly unknown in those circles.”

Scully nodded, not wanting to take the next step. “There’s one more thing.”

“I’m listening.”

“She and Matt had a relationship. Before, I mean.”

Mulder wiggled his jaw as he thought about it, an old nervous habit from school. Was the fact that their co-investigator had a history with the now-dead Major Haynes bothering Scully professionally?

Or personally?

How to approach that subject? Mulder thought.

Easy, his mind answered. Give her the benefit of the doubt.

“I assume you confronted Stone about it.”

Now it was Scully’s turn to shift on the couch uncomfortably. “Sort of. He admitted that he had a history with her, that they’d been lovers in the past. He maintains that it has no bearing on the case, and I believe him.”

Mulder desperately wanted to ask if she had any evidence to back that up, but remembered that she had gone along on his hunches more than once.

More than twice, Mulder.

But then there was the pieces of paper in Mulder’s pocket. Four of them, neatly folded into quarters, shoved in his left rear pocket. Which was more important? His friendship with her, or Scully’s safety?

No choice.

Mulder scooted over closer, using his arms to lift himself off the cushions enough to move. Scully’s eyes got very wide as she watched him move, but she said nothing.

He reached out, taking the cup from her hand and placing it on the coffee table. Then he took her hands.

“Scully,” he started. “I don’t know how to tell you all this…”

“Mulder…what is it?”

“It’s about Matt. Some things I found.” He felt her fingers tighten on his, and then her arms were trying to pull away. Her eyebrows were knitted together, her mouth turned down in the beginning of the famous Scully frown.

“No…listen to me. Listen to what I have to say. If, after listening, you don’t want me to tell you what I know, I’ll respect your wishes.”

Scully’s fingers loosened and she nodded. “Go ahead, Mulder. But I already know what kind of man he is.”

Mulder didn’t answer. “Did you know he was a pilot, too?”

“Naval Aviator,” Scully automatically corrected, and then paused. “No. No, I didn’t. That’s strange. Why doesn’t he wear his wings?”

Mulder scooted a little closer, taking a deep breath. “Scully, I care about you very much. About your happiness. I know that working with me all these years hasn’t been easy, and I appreciate your…dedication to my quest. No matter what other feelings I have for you, I’m your friend first.”

Other feelings? Scully thought.

“I am not playing mother hen, and I don’t think that you need protection, Scully. You’re a fully grown woman, and you already have one mother. You don’t want or need another. But I have learned things about Matt that I’m almost positive you don’t know, and…it’s important that you know, Scully. I think it’s very important that you know what kind of man you might be getting involved with.”

Tentatively, she asked, “What kind of things?”

“Bad things,” he said softly.

Scully withdrew her hands and stood, walking to the fireplace. Putting one hand on the mantle, and the other on her hip, she tilted her head up and studied the picture of her father mounted there. Captain William Scully, USN, was in his full dress uniform, wearing his cover, his medals on full display.

“Go ahead, Mulder.”

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Mulder began. “From Annapolis, Stone left for primary flight training in Pensacola, and then to jets in Texas. After jets, he qualified for the F-14 program. He was assigned to VF-221.”

Scully turned, her face going white. “The blackjacks?”

“Yeah, Scully. I was going to point that out. But there’s more.”

She bit her lip and nodded, both hands on her hips. “He made his carrier qualifications, and flew for two cruises aboard the USS Eisenhower. Then…he was selected for something else. A mission. A classified mission into Libya.”

Scully could see it coming, but she wasn’t there quite yet. “1982?” she asked.

“Yes!” Mulder said. “He told you?”

“No. I’m piecing this together bit by bit, Mulder. Tell me the rest.”

“1982…Libya. Whatever mission it was, it involved both air and ground forces. He was the commander of the air support forces, and he got shot down. The ground force ran into some resistance. They encountered about 300 troops. At one point, there were only sixty of the…other guys alive. They contacted the action officer for the mission, who was aboard the Nimitz in the Straits of Hormuz. They were ordered to execute the survivors, Scully. All thirty of them.” If it were possible, the normally fair Scully whitened even more.

“Some of the ground forces refused to carry out the order. The after-action report states that…” Mulder halted, not willing to finish it, not willing to inflict that kind of pain on his partner, his best friend.

“He killed them, didn’t he? He executed all of them.”

“No,” Mulder said, moving to soften the blow, although he didn’t know why. “Thirty of them.”

“Well,” Scully laughed, a short barking noise. “At least he’s not a total monster!” She started pacing, running a hand through her hair. “How, Mulder. How did he do it?”

Mulder looked away, unable to meet her eyes. “Execution style. Back of the head.”

Scully crossed her arms. She studied her partner. She was angry at him, angry for digging this dirt up on the man who she-

What?

She-

No, not that.

Anything but that.

But…yes…maybe?

No.

Scully shook herself, wanting the feelings inside her to go away. She wanted nothing more than to call Matt, to beg him to defy Mulder, to prove her best friend, her partner, wrong. She wanted that dark, dangerous man to claim that it was all a mistake, a paperwork screwup, a misfiled report. But she knew that he couldn’t, because it fit.

“I haven’t felt like a part of the human race in 15 years,” he’d said. 1982. It all fit.

“Oh God, Mulder,” Scully said, her voice shaking. “He told me he loved me! What am I going to do?”

Mulder knew what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t. That would be cruel, taking advantage of her.

He stood and joined her, taking her hands in his own again. “Listen to me,” he whispered, dragging her eyes back to his with the urgency of his voice. “Scully…we’re friends, right?” She nodded. “Scully, we’ve been friends for four years, partners…best friends. But we’re not…that kind of friends. I want to be here for you, to help you through this. If we do this…if we go there…this is a new place for us, and we can’t go back. I can’t go back. I won’t. I know I’m not the most sensitive person that ever lived. I can be flip and dismissive sometimes, especially when it comes to your feelings. But…not this time, Scully. Not about this. This is too important to you…to us. If you let me in, there’s no going back. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Scully felt the tears welling up behind her eyes, stinging and vicious. Mulder was trying so hard. She could see the pain and hurt in his eyes, could feel his need and hunger to be there for her, to be the man, the person she so desperately needed. Struggling not to cry, she just nodded her head.

Twice.

“Come with me,” he whispered. “Come sit down on the couch.”

They moved together, bumping knees against the coffee table as they shuffled towards the couch. Mulder sat on the end, holding his arms open, and Scully came to him, burying her face against his chest, her arms around his neck and shoulders.

Mulder said nothing for the longest time. He just held her and softly stroked her hair, letting his even breathing and calmness wash over her.

Scully wanted to cry, wanted to let it out so bad, wanted to scream and yell and throw things. She wanted to punch Mulder, just to have something to hit, something to take her aggression out on. Instead, she just took comfort in Mulder’s closeness, in his warmth.

Mulder shifted slightly. “Scully…do you love him?”

Silence. He let the question hang in the air.

“Mulder, I’ve only known him for two-”

“Do you love him?” Mulder asked again.

“No,” she finally said. Mulder’s heart soared, and then plummeted with her next words. “But I could. So easily.”

He wanted to ask why, what could she possibly see in him, what could attract someone like her to such a monster, but knew better than to ask.

“Let’s talk about the case,” she whispered.

“Sure, Scully. What do you think the card meant?”

“The playing card? It’s obvious. The killer knows Stone.”

Stone, Mulder thought, grinning. She’s calling him ‘Stone’ again.

“But we knew that,” she added. “Or at least, we assumed that.”

“Why is it important?” he prompted.

“Mulder, I’m too tired to think-”

“Because it’s the only thing he’s left at a murder scene except for the murder weapons, complete with handy-dandy fingerprints from a dead man. He was sending a message, Scully. A very specific message to a very specific person. The killer knows we’re onto him, Scully. He knows Stone is on his case.”

Scully twisted in Mulder’s arms, laying her head in his laps, her forearm across her forehead, looking into her eyes. There was nowhere for his hands to go except where they did. Gently, he put his palm on her stomach, feeling the muscles shifting underneath.

God, she’s warm, Mulder thought.

Warm and soft.

“That was his plan all along, wasn’t it?” Scully said.

Mulder nodded. “That’s why my take on it is. And remember, I’m a nationally certified violent crimes profiler. My opinion counts when it comes to this.” She heard the smile in his voice and returned it for real; it wasn’t the full-wattage Scully Smile that Mulder treasured, but considering the circumstances, it was a good effort.

“Who? His father?”

“I doubt it. But I do know one thing. Or at least, I suspect it. Somehow, what happened in Iraq is tied to Stone, Heather Haynes, what happened in Libya, and the killer. Somehow, they’re all interconnected.”

Scully chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I’ll agree about the killer, Stone, Heather and Iraq. Libya is a bit of a stretch. That happened fifteen years ago, Mulder.”

“I don’t think they’re directly related, Scull.” She smiled at his use of her nickname. It was so…familiar. Warm. Comfortable.

Mulder.

“How, then?”

“Something happened to Stone in Libya. And that has something to do with what happened in Iraq. That’s about as far as I can take it right now.”

“What’s next, then?”

Mulder moved again. The feel of Scully in his arms was perhaps the most divine thing he had ever experienced, but she was heavy!

“Well, you and Stone need to explain to Skinner how a killer got through the tightest security that the guys at TechServ were able to manage, kill your remaining team member, and escape, all completely undetected. I imagine that will take a good portion of the morning.”

“Oh, God,” Scully wailed. “Skinner! I forgot all about Skinner!” Suddenly, she smiled. Reaching up a hand, she pressed her palm against Mulder’s cheek. He could feel her nails against his beard stubble. They made a scraping noise as she massaged his face with her thumb.

“Thank you for making me forget Skinner,” she said. Scully saw something flare behind Mulder’s eyes, something hungry and animalistic, and she dropped her hand.

But not right away.

“What are you going to do?” Scully asked.

“I’m going to talk to the Gunmen about their contact. The guy that dug all this stuff up is going to talk to me. He’s going to get me names…men assigned to the Libya mission. I’m going to talk to them. I’m going to find out what happened in Libya. And I’m going to use that leverage against Stone to tell us what happened in Iraq.”

“Trust no one,” Scully whispered.

“No,” Mulder said, just as quietly. “Just be careful who you trust, Scully.”

She smiled again, and then hoisted herself upright. “Go home, Mulder.”

“No,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m staying here tonight.”

Scully’s eyebrow reached a new height. “Excuse me?”

“I mean it,” he said, patting the couch. “RIGHT here. I’m not leaving this couch. You have two choices, Scully. You can sleep here, tonight, with me. I’ll hold you all night, and in the morning, we’ll both pretend that it never happened. And we’ll succeed at it, too. Because this isn’t about being partners; this is about being friends. Or, you can go and sleep in your bed. But I’ll still be here, because I want to be here. If you need me in the night, just come out. I’ll be awake.” He laughed. “I promise.”

Scully felt the heaviness in her chest, the ache in her heart. “You dear sweet man,” she said. “What would I do without you?”

“Perish and die. Just as I would. Now, put up or shut up, Scully.”

She giggled, and stood, moving to the lamp by the window. She turned and faced her partner, smiling as he arranged the throw pillows so they could lay down together. When he was ready, he nodded, and Scully doused the light, blanketing the apartment with darkness.

***

Below, on the street, in a parked car carefully hidden in an alley, away from any streetlight or other ambient illumination, Commander Matthew Stone, USN, sat. The fourteen-power Ziess binoculars brought Scully’s window into sharp focus. He’d seen Mulder enter the apartment almost an hour ago. He’d seen them moving around the apartment, had seen when Mulder had stood and walked to Scully’s side, taking her hands and leading her to the couch.

And now Scully was turning, smiling over her shoulder, her hand on the light.

The apartment went dark.

Stone lowered the glasses.

Oh, he thought. So that’s how it is?

I don’t think so.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 8/38

“Violence is the quest for identity. When identity disappears with technological innovation, violence is the natural recourse.”

Marshall LcLuhan

“You know what I think about violence. For me it is profoundly moral – more moral than compromises and transactions.”

Benito Mussolini

“We are all shot through with enough motives to make a massacre, any day of the week that we want to give them their head.”

Jacob Bronowski

“Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee Agreed to have a battle; For Tweedle Dum said Tweedle Dee Had spoiled his new rattle.”

Lewis Carroll

-8-

Apartment of Dana Scully
0620 Hours

Scully woke slowly, enjoying that early morning sluggish-warm feeling. Slowly the realization dawned on her that she wasn’t alone, and there was a moment of panic that was more telling than Scully would ever admit when she desperately tried to remember who, exactly, it was she was so comfortably snuggled up against.

It was with no small relief that she discovered that it was Mulder. Rarities of rarities, he was actually asleep. She moved slowly, gently, not wanting to wake him right away, taking a few moment to study his slumbering features. She felt a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she realized that the lines of tension that were usually etched into his face during normal waking hours were not visible. His face looked relaxed, almost…happy.

She lowered her head again, breathing deep the scent of the both of them. Had she been asked, Dana Scully would have scoffed or laughed at anyone who had suggested that she would ever find herself in the position of waking up, literally, in her partner’s arms. Not that Mulder was a toad or a troll.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

But the fact of the matter was that their relationship, as rewarding, challenging and yes, even exasperating as it was, had limits. Self-imposed, specific, unspoken limits that neither one of them had been willing or ready to break.

Until last night, that is.

A very private thought slowly crawled across her mind, and she regarded it the same way an entomologist might a particularly interesting bug. Waking up in Mulder’s arms was not exactly the worst thing that had ever happened to Scully. Not by a long shot, she realized. Scully enjoyed snuggling as much as the next person, but it had been a long time indeed since she had been held in this way. It felt good, comfortable…right.

And that was a very scary thought. Almost as scary as her now- admitted slowly-growing attraction to Matt Stone. Memories of the discussion with Mulder from the previous night began trickling into her consciousness. He was right, she realized. There was no possible way for them to go back to the way things had been between them before last night. But Scully also wasn’t sure where, exactly, they had found themselves, relationship-wise. Mulder had really opened his heart to her last night, had listened without judging, had accepted her feelings for Matt without any overtly hostile comments.

But really, she thought, why should he care? We’re friends and all, she thought, but not quite that…

What?

Scully found herself struggling to find the words, the concepts to apply to the nature of her relationship with Mulder. It just defied description. They were friends, partners, confidants. And what else?

Scully remembered the crush days. Those first few weeks, working with Mulder for the first time, watching his amazing mind work, watching the way he took cases apart like a Swiss watchmaker. She remembered that feeling of almost worshipping him. And then, as the relationship grew and matured, and she realized that Mulder was, in fact, human and that he did make mistakes from time to time (more often than the damnable man would ever admit,) that crush had slowly faded, replaced instead by profound respect and admiration. There was no doubt in Scully’s mind that Mulder was her closest friend, and that their relationship was the most profound one she had ever experienced in her life.

So, again…why not Mulder? She sighed softly, letting the lesser voices of her personality take over. Taking Mulder on as a romantic partner was just fraught with so much…baggage. He was a deeply damaged, haunted man. Part of that damage manifested itself in such a way that he seemed brilliant, driven, obsessed in his quest for the truth. And she admired that about him. But Scully had seen the dark side to that brilliance, the huge emotional price that Mulder had to pay to exist in the world wired the way he was. And as important as Mulder was to her, Scully wasn’t sure she wanted to take that burden on.

Mulder stirred against her, his hands tightening around her. Scully smiled, knowing that her closeness and warmth were somehow comforting to Mulder as he slept, and was glad that she could be there for him in this way. It was another step, she realized, another tiny fraction of an inch gained in the Trust Olympics, a seemingly never- ending game between them. As difficult as it was for Mulder to trust anyone, she knew he trusted her, just as she did him.

Implicitly. Completely. Without reservation or question.

Can’t say that about Matt, her mind replied.

Scully made a fist and plopped her chin on it, watching him sleep. They would have to get up soon, and then it would be the Morning After. The questions would hang in the air, unasked, unanswered. If this night had happened four years ago, Scully wasn’t sure that the partnership would have lasted much longer. But it had happened at the right time, the right moment in their trip through this life together, she thought. We can handle this. We’ve handled worse.

Mulder woke, his eyes opening. He saw Scully staring at him, and he knew that she’d been doing it for a while; her eyes were clear, bright, awake. No sleep-puffiness, no early-morning glaze to give away the fact that she’d just woken.

“Morning,” he croaked.

“Morning,” she answered, softly. “We-”

“I know. I have to get back to my place. Shower, change clothes, the usual.”

Having said that, they were both reluctant to move. Scully spread her fingers and rubbed Mulder’s chest through his shirt. She opened her mouth to thank him, but he was already moving, using his leverage to sit them both upright on the couch.

Running his fingers through his hair, hair that looked like a deranged chef and a MixMaster had gotten a hold of it during the night, Mulder looked pleasantly rumpled.

He stood, looking for his jacket. So many thoughts were rushing through his newly-awake mind. He was trying to sort through them all, to categorize them, prioritize them, trying to find a handle on at least one single, discrete thought that he could concentrate on.

Scully stood to walk him to the door. Mulder shrugged into his jacket, found his gun, slipped it into his holster, and tried to find something to say.

Anything.

She walked up to him, very close, inside his space. He liked it when she was there, inside his zone, her head tilted up to look into his eyes. She visibly wanted to say something, and Mulder wanted her to, but was afraid to hear what she would say.

“Thanks,” he said softly. He watched as the expected eyebrow-arch occurred.

“Thanks? Mulder, I should be thanking you!”

He chuckled. “Scully, last night was the first time in a long time that I actually got some sleep. Thanks for…being there,” he said, full well knowing that he was taking her off the hook, letting them both deal with what had happened as something that he’d needed. With a single sentence, he’d defused the situation, and to tell the truth, he was kind of pleased with himself for doing so.

Scully wasn’t buying it, but she decided to let it slide. If that’s what made it comfortable, palatable for Mulder, she’d go with it. She quickly leaned up on her toes and kissed the side of his mouth, aiming for the cheek and catching about a quarter of his lips.

“You’re welcome,” she said, turning to open the door.

Mulder caught her elbow, using his thumb to turn her back to face him. Without knowing why, he leaned down, tilting his head, moving for her mouth. “Was that a proper good morning kiss?” he asked. Scully’s mind froze; she did not know what to say, how to react. All she saw was Mulder’s mouth moving towards hers, his eyes slowly closing, all she felt was the tickle of his breath against her cheek, her chin, her nose. And this time it was her, she who acted without knowing why, who felt her own eyes drooping slowly closed, her own head and mouth moving towards his.

The contact was brief but electric. He kissed her softly, gently, a swift, tantalizing brush of lips against lips. As chaste a kiss that had ever existed, she thought. And then he was moving past her, reaching for the knob himself, turning it, twisting it, opening the door and stepping out. He turned to look over his shoulder at her, his trademark leer back in place, and Scully knew that it was fake, that it was an act. She knew that that single, gentle, soft kiss had affected him just as much as it had her.

She had only to look into his eyes to see that. He smiled and waggled his eyebrows once, a facial shrug that said nothing at all and spoke volumes in the same instant. She raised her hand to shoulder height, spread her fingers and waved, her other hand moving to her mouth, her mind trying to decipher the reason why her lips tingled so.

He reached back, his hand finding her shoulder and squeezing once, twice.

And then Mulder turned and left Scully alone with her thoughts.

She closed the door, turning at the last moment to use her butt to shut it.

Oh, Lord, she thought. We’re in trouble now!

***

Mulder got into his car, moving as quickly as possible. He wanted to get as far away from Scully’s apartment as possible as quickly as possible. It wasn’t that he was upset, angry, ashamed or afraid. He just wanted as much time as possible before the work day began to go over the night before in his mind. Like Scully, he’d never thought that what had just happened ever would.

He twisted the key in the ignition, automatically checking the mirror before pulling into traffic.

A flash of light caught his eye, something he recognized from another time, another place. It wasn’t recent enough to trigger an instant recall, and it took him almost forty seconds to realize what it was that he’d seen.

Sunlight. Reflecting off the highly-polished lenses of a pair of very powerful binoculars.

Mulder knew who it was. He had no doubt. His first impulse was to reach for the phone and dial Scully and tell her. She would be furious with Stone. It might actually be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Mulder’s fingers curled around the bulk of his cell phone. He had removed it from his jacket and was already turning it over in his hand, his thumb moving towards the STO button before he thought better of it.

There was a better time, a better place for such a discussion.

Mulder dropped the phone on the seat next to him.

And began to whistle.

***

Office of Assistant Director Walter Skinner
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC 0830 Hours

Scully and Mulder arrived at the same time. He had showered and changed, as had she, and they shared a private moment in front of Skinner’s door. Without thinking about it, Scully reached up and straightened Mulder’s knot, using the fingers of her left hand to smooth the silk flat. Finished, she looked up and smiled primly.

It was a very…possessive thing to do, and it filled Mulder with a sense of warmth and comfort.

Scully knocked.

“Come!” Skinner called, and they entered his office. Matt Stone was already there, in dress blues, as was Admiral Karn, who was wearing khakis. The three silver stars of his rank glittered on his collar point, and Scully wondered if he’d worn the uniform as a way of imposing his will on the situation. Those stars were hard to miss.

And there was something different about Stone, too. His dress blues had been updated since the previous day. He was wearing his wings of gold, and his Budweiser in addition to his medals and Master Blaster wings.

“Mulder, Scully, come in,” Skinner said, standing. “We’re just about to get started.”

“Commander, Admiral,” Scully said. Karn smiled and nodded.

Stone did not. He moved stiffly to the conference table and sat, refusing to meet Scully’s eyes.

Confused and more than a little hurt, Scully moved to the other side and joined Mulder.

“The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the current situation regarding this investigation, and to make a decision regarding the FBI’s continued involvement,” Skinner began. He had a pen in his hands and he turned it over and over as he spoke, staring down at the pad of paper in front of him. He was clearly uncomfortable, and Scully had the feeling that Skinner had been undergoing an ass-chewing of epic proportions since last night. The FBI Brass did not like opening the Washington Post to stories about how they had managed to let someone under their protection die.

“The investigation into how the person or persons responsible for the murder of Major Haynes is continuing,” Skinner continued.

“Sir,” Stone said, interrupting. “I may have some new information about that.”

Skinner sat back, using his open hand to indicate that Stone had the floor. “Please, Commander, by all means.”

Stone looked Mulder directly in the eyes. “Last night, after I dropped Agent Scully off at her home, I did some investigating on my own. There exists technology to defeat the FBI technical surveillance gear. While not exactly common knowledge, it is not that hard to come by if one knows where to look. And if nothing else, the killer has proved that he is a capable operative within the clandestine world. It would not be beyond the realm of possibility for him to have obtained such equipment and utilized it to facilitate the murder of Heat- Major Haynes.”

Mulder gritted his teeth, watching as Stone out maneuvered him. Mulder would look silly going to Scully now and claiming that the man had been watching her apartment all night.

Scully caught the vibe passing between Stone and Mulder and tried to suppress a sigh. She knew, a small part of her had known, that it was eventually going to come to this. Alpha males, trying to establish dominance. Whether it was about the investigation in general, or her specifically, something was going to have to be done.

“Very well,” Skinner said. “For now, that’s the hypothesis we’ll work with. The question is…what to we do next?”

“If I may,” Scully said. “The playing card presents some very interesting angles. As I’m sure the Admiral and Commander Stone are aware, Navy fighter wings all adopt nicknames. One of the units, VF-221, has long been known as the “Blackjacks.” I’m of the mind that Commander Stone and I head over to BUPERS and see if we can dig up anything on pilots or crew assigned to VF221 the past.” Scully used the oblique threat to capture Stone’s attention, and she saw that she had it. He was boring holes in her eyes, trying to discover what she knew by the sheer force of his will.

We’ll talk, her eyes promised, and he nodded, accepting it.

“Good idea,” Skinner agreed. “At this point, I’m going to remove myself from day-to-day oversight. I don’t want to micromanage this investigation. Admiral, Commander, these two agents are perhaps the best investigative team the FBI has right now, and the brass has made a decision. We’ve gotten in so far now that to pull away would be political suicide for the Director. Therefore, he’s ordered that Mulder and Scully, with Commander Stone’s help, be given full reign.” Turning to his two agents, Skinner continued. “Mulder, Scully…this is unusual, but for the remainder of this investigation, you will not be filing daily status reports. I will be your point of contact if you need anything, manpower, overtime, anything. But you will be on your own until this case is solved, or you hit a dead end that you cannot surmount. Your travel expenses, if needed, have been preapproved.” He paused. “If there aren’t any more questions, the Admiral and I have some other issues to discuss.”

Mulder and Scully exchanged an incredulous glance. What Skinner had just announced was completely, totally unheard of inside the FBI. Two relatively low-level field agents being given complete and utter control of such a sensitive, potentially explosive investigation just did not happen in Federal law enforcement.

Mulder was elated. He wouldn’t have to go to Skinner anymore to explain his theories, wouldn’t have to reveal the information he’d dug up about Stone (or, for that matter, any subsequent information he might come across) until the time was right. Released from the confining ropes of investigative policy and procedure, Mulder was free to do what he did best: take the ball and run like a man with his ass on fire.

“No, sir,” Mulder said, standing. “No more questions.”

Scully rose with her partner and followed him out. After a moment, Stone also rose and departed, leaving Admiral Karn and Skinner alone.

The door securely shut, Skinner faced his old friend. “You said you had something for me.”

“Yesterday, DTSA detected two unauthorized accesses to highly classified records dealing with Commander Stone. One was an after action report on a mission that is still so highly classified that I was not given any information about it. The other access was a basic background check, although it was a very sophisticated attempt.”

Skinner chewed the stem of his glasses. “What do you think it means, Jake?”

“It means that my Commander Stone may be in this deeper than I thought, Walter. He may actually be involved. When I called DIA to try and pry some information about the operation out of them, I was told by a two-star piss-ant to go jump in the lake.”

Skinner grinned. “Couldn’t you order him to reveal the information?”

“No, doesn’t work that way. That little twerp holds my security rating in the palm of his hand. And without a top secret security clearance, I would be out of a job.”

“Try the back door.”

“I will. My daughter is married to the J2 over at JCS, a Brigadier General Paul Jiggs. I may place a bug in his ear about this and see what happens.”

Skinner nodded. “I have to tell you, Jake, I’m taking a lot of heat over this entire investigation.”

Karn nodded. “I’m aware of that, old friend. As am I. CNO has left me an email requesting my presence in the Tank this afternoon for a little chat. I can only guess what the topic of our little discussion will be, but I will keep you informed as to the outcome.”

Karn paused. “I just hope they can catch this bastard.”

Skinner grunted. “Trust me, Jake — if this asshole can be caught, those two will do it.”

***

Sixth Floor Mens’ Room
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC

Mulder checked under all the stalls before dialing.

“Lone Gunmen.”

“It’s me. No names.”

“Mulder! Use a landline!”

Mulder grimaced. “I said no names, Frohike!” Realizing what he’d just done, Mulder smacked his own forehead.

“What can I do for you, Mulder?”

“I need a name. No arguments, no bullshit. This is the biggest thing you can imagine, Frohike. I need the-”

“Commander Maggie King, BUPERS. But she doesn’t know we know who she is, so tread carefully.”

“Thanks, Frohike,” Mulder said, ending the call. As he hung up, Commander Matthew Stone entered the bathroom, moving to a urinal as he unzipped.

“Personal call?” he asked.

“Something like that,” Mulder said. “Listen, Stone, I have an errand to run. You and Scully going to be ok for a few hours?”

Stone finished his business, zipped and turned to face Mulder. “We’ll be fine,” he said, a snide undercurrent in his voice. Mulder thought about saying something, but decided that he wanted to find out a lot more about this man before confronting him.

Mulder pushed past him.

“Mulder,” Stone called.

He turned.

“Be careful.” There was no mistaking the malice in Stone’s voice, and for a moment, Mulder saw the killer inside Stone, saw the face that those thirty soldiers had seen in the Libyan desert.

“I will,” Mulder promised.

***

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC

Mulder entered quickly, using his butt to shut the door behind him. Scully was at her new desk, tapping away on her laptop. “Stone is on to us, I think,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘us’?” Scully asked.

“I think he knows we’ve been checking up on him. That’s why he’s wearing his wings and that other thing.”

“His SEAL badge?”

“Yes, whatever.”

“You noticed?”

Mulder smiled and took a step towards her. “If I could do what I wanted in this office, Scully, I’d take your face in my hands and tell you that I don’t miss anything. Especially when it comes to you. I know Stone’s important to you, Scully. Just…be careful, OK?”

Scully was touched. She suddenly wished Mulder would take her face in his hands and kiss her again like he had that morning.

Mulder smiled, seeing that thought in her eyes. “Maybe later, Scully. I’m off to BUPERS.” He turned to go, then stopped. “Whatever decision you make,” he said, speaking to the door so he wouldn’t have to look at her, “I’ll support.”

“What should I tell Stone?” she asked. Mulder was secretly pleased that she wasn’t calling him ‘Matt’ anymore.

“Tell him I went hunting for the truth. Actually, tell him I went to DCSPERS to check up on Haynes. That will buy me some time.”

He had the door halfway open before her voice caught him.

“Be careful, Mulder.”

“I will. Call me.”

Mulder had been gone for all of ten seconds before Stone made his appearance.

“Good morning, Special Agent Scully,” he said, formally.

“Good morning,” she said, arching and eyebrow, asking the silent question with her face: What’s wrong?

“Sleep well?” he asked. For a trained intelligence officer, he sure as hell gave away a lot with his face.

And then she knew. She pursed her lips so he wouldn’t see her jaw clenching. The son of a bitch had actually stalked her!

“Very well, as a matter of fact,” she said, her gaze suddenly chilly.

Stone let the silence build between them before finally speaking. “Well, I suppose we should go to BUPERS.” Scully suddenly realized that was where Mulder was heading.

“No. Let’s go to DCSPERS first. I want to do some checking on Heather first. Then we can go to BUPERS.”

Stone’s gaze narrowed. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll meet you there, if that’s all right. I have…an errand to run on the way over.”

Scully nodded. “Of course.” She grabbed her trenchcoat and they left together, heading for the garage.

***

Matt watched Scully’s Camrey pull out of the FBI lot, his hand already reaching for the cell phone. He dialed quickly.

“BUPERS, Commander King, sir.”

“Hi, Maggie. It’s Matt.”

***

Office of the Chief of Naval Opertions, Bureau of Naval Personnel (BUPERS)
Federal Office Building #2
Washington, DC

Commander Margaret King, USNR, hung up the phone and promptly said a very unladylike word, a word that rhymed with ‘brother-trucker.’ Of all the people she had never expected to hear from again, Commander Matthew Stone was very high on the list. He was also very high on the list of people that Maggie King never wanted to hear from again.

Six years. Six years and the bastard calls as if we’re old friends. Like the last time we talked, the last time we saw each other was yesterday!

And he had the gall, the unmitigated audacity to ask her to lie. To lie to an FBI agent investigating him in an official capacity.

When pigs fly, she thought.

Her intercom buzzed.

“Yes, Anderson?”

Her yeoman spoke through the intercom. “Ma’am, there’s a Special Agent Mulder from the FBI on line three for you. Should I take a message?”

“No,” Maggie said quickly. “I’ll take it.”

With pleasure, she thought.

“Commander King speaking, sir,” she said, using the proper military protocol for answering a phone.

“Commander, my name is Fox Mulder, and I’m a Special Agent with the FBI. I was wondering if I might have a few moments of your time.”

“Of course, Agent Mulder.”

“I was wondering if we could meet somewhere.”

That was an interesting request, she thought. “How about my office?”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, this is a matter of some sensitivity. I would appreciate meeting some place public.”

Matt must be in more trouble than he’s letting on, she thought.

“Very well. Where would you like to meet?”

Mulder named a popular breakfast restaurant in Alexandria, and Maggie quickly agreed. She’d always wanted to eat there.

“One more thing,” Mulder said before hanging up. “I know a friend of yours, and he asked me to mention him to you. Sort of way of establishing the…sensitivity and need for discretion in this matter.”

Now Maggie was interested.

“Who?” she asked.

“Well, you probably know him by a different name than I do. You know him as LoneGunGuy.”

At the mention of her online friend’s screen name, Maggie almost dropped the phone. This Mulder character knew LoneGunGuy! Maybe she could finally learn something about him!

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” Maggie said, dropping the phone back into the cradle without even saying goodbye. She stood, reaching for her jacket, and then stopped. Reaching under her blotter, she found the well-worn, dog-eared envelope and tucked it into her pocket.

Grabbing her Navy-issue purse, she headed for the door.

***

Patty’s Pancakes Alexandria
0940 Hours

Mulder stood when he saw Commander King enter the restaurant. He motioned to her, and she hurried to join him. Sliding into the booth opposite him, she leaned forward, her hands together, her eyes bright and alive.

“Before we talk about Commander Stone, I have to ask you a question.”

Mulder was taken completely aback. “How did you know this was about Commander Stone?”

“He called me about five minutes before you did, asking me to cover up for him. But that’s not important right now. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about him. But first-”

“What?”

“LoneGunGuy. Do you know him?”

“Yeah, for about eight years,” Mulder said.

“Oh, good!” Maggie said. “Tell me about him. Tell me all about him.”

Mulder felt his world spinning. “Uh…why?”

“Because he’s just so…wonderful!” Maggie said.

“Excuse me?”

Maggie reached into her pocket and withdrew the envelope. Sliding it across the table to Mulder, she said, “Wouldn’t you say that a man that can write that kind of poetry is wonderful?”

Poetry? Mulder thought. I must be dreaming.

Frohike?

Poetry?

He took the envelope and opened it, sliding out some folded pages. Unfolding them, Mulder saw that they were laser-printer pages. The first one jumped off the page at him:

Alas!, how light a cause may move

Dissention between hearts that love!

Mulder forced his face into a stony mask. He could not laugh. He would not laugh. Only Frohike would plagiarize Thomas More to seduce someone on the Internet.

He turned the page.

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That’s all we shall know for truth,

Before we grow old and die.

Great. William Butler Yeats.

He turned the page again. “He sent me that one the first time we went to a private chat room.” Mulder was absolutely sure he didn’t want to hear any more about that.

He read:

Love, all love of other sights controls.

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Mulder sighed. Well, at least his taste in poets was improving. John Donne this time.

“So?” Maggie insisted. “What’s he like?”

“Uh-”

“I assume he does something terribly secret for the government.”

Mulder felt his eyebrows crawling up his face in disbelief. He had no desire to mislead this woman, but he needed her, needed her desperately. “He works outside the normal channels, that much is true. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you more than that.” He hated himself, but he had to say it. “It might put his life in danger. You understand.”

“Oh yes, of course!” Maggie said, blushing. “If you talk to him tell him that…tell him I said hi.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” Mulder said, feeling the waves of laughter that had been threatening to explode slowly receding. “Now, about Commander Stone?”

Maggie sighed, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “That bastard. What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Mulder said.

“Well, a lot of it is highly classified-”

“Commander Stone is…involved in a murder investigation. A multiple murder investigation.”

“Is he a suspect?” Maggie asked.

“I’m not at liberty to say. But his involvement is…substantial.”

Maggie nodded. “It was bound to happen.”

“What?”

“His taste for blood. It was bound to catch up to him eventually.”

Mulder felt like he was one huge ear, a virtual recording device. His photographic memory was on full RECORD mode.

“Could you go into a bit more detail?”

Maggie sighed, sitting back again. “How much do you know?”

“I know that he was in Libya in 82, and that he was charged with the unlawful taking of human life. But since he’s still in the Navy, and I can’t find any record of him having served a moment of time, I assume he was acquitted.”

“No,” Maggie said, her eyes far away. “The charges were dropped. But that’s not the worst part.”

Mulder said nothing, using the old interrogator’s trick of letting the subject fill in the silent spaces.

“The mission profile was complicated. This isn’t in his official records, Agent Mulder. I got this from him via…other means.”

Pillowtalk, Mulder thought, but said nothing.

“The mission was related to the nuclear arms program that was being jointly developed by Libya and Chad. A clandestine mission to destroy the processing plant that Libya was using to develop weapons- grade plutonium. Matt was the Air Commander for the mission. He was flying an F-14 in a close-air support mission. Navy SEALs were the ground element.

“When the SEALs arrived on scene, a Libyan transport plane showed up, dropping airborne troops. Or, what looked to be airborne troops, anyway. Stone was given the weapons-clear order by the action officer, and ordered to kill as many of them as he could.

“He used his 20 millimeter cannon, Special Agent Mulder. He made six passes, using the Vulcan like a firehose. The Libyans dropped over three hundred troops. They also had a unit of troops on the ground that we didn’t know about, a small special operations-style force. They had Stingers that had been purchased from Afghanistan. Matt was shot down. He ejected, and came down right in the middle of it all.

“There were about sixty survivors, and the action officer ordered them all executed. Some of the SEALs refused, and Matt offered to do it. He killed thirty of them himself.”

Mulder nodded. “That much I was aware of.”

“Well, you probably don’t know this part. It was not exactly a diversion, but it was a setup. The troops? OpSec had been broken; Qadaffi knew we were coming, and he set us up. Set us up to take the blame in the international geopolitical arena. They weren’t airborne paratroopers.

“They were children, Mr. Mulder. The oldest one was perhaps fifteen years old. Commander Matthew Stone, USN, personally executed thirty children in the furtherance of his country’s foreign policy.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 9/38

“It was an Oxford secret. The kind you can only tell one person at a time.”

– Anonymous

Patty’s Pancakes, Alexandria
0947 Hours

Mulder shook his head slowly, not believing his ears. “That’s not possible,” he said. “There was never anything in the papers, on the news!”

Commander King smiled the smile of those that have peered in the darkest recesses of another person’s mind and returned to see the light of day, worse for the wear, but wiser. “Agent Mulder, if you had any inkling of the things that go on in the name of national security, in the name of furthering the foreign policy interests of this country and those that run it, you would probably go screaming into the night.”

Mulder felt a flash of irritation; if she had known the things he and Scully had seen, she wouldn’t be so quick to condescend.

Scully.

Oh, my god…Scully was with Stone at this moment, heading over to DCSPERS or BUPERS!

“Do you have any proof of this? Any at all?” Scully would require proof. Hell, anyone would require proof after hearing the incredible words that King had just spoken.

Maggie shook her head. “Just his word. But let me tell you something, Mr. Mulder. I have no doubt that the mission took place as Stone described it to me.” She paused, the blush slowly creeping up her face. “I heard him screaming in the night, Mr. Mulder. Nightmares. Bad, horrible dreams.”

Mulder snorted. “It sounds like he’s due a few of them.”

Maggie nodded. “One part of me agrees with you, I will admit. To think that he killed children…it’s abhorrent. But, on another front, please realize that Matt didn’t send those children into battle. He was following the lawful orders of those above him, those that thought the mission as originally planned was worth the risk of life that Matt and the SEALs represented. It was someone else who sent those children to die in a ploy designed to do only one thing: Embarrass the United States and protect Libya’s nuclear policy.”

Mulder hook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. There was just so much, so much information to wade through and dissect. He was no babe in the woods; he knew that sometimes horrible, sickening things had to be done to protect the security of his country. He had no problems with those that chose to make the profession of arms their life’s work. Captain Bill Scully was a prime example, as was Walter Skinner. Honorable men who had gone in harm’s way to protect those people that they loved, and a country they adored.

What would Walter Skinner say if he knew what had transpired in the Libyan desert? What would have Scully’s father thought?

“Lawful orders?” Mulder whispered. “You can give a lawful order to kill a child?”

King nodded. “The Rules of Engagement are pretty clear. They were operating under Executive Authority, signed by the President. Congress had been informed, and had given their permission. The children, sad as it was, were armed. They had AK’s, and knew how to use them.”

“Tall enough to reach the trigger, tall enough to shoot, right?”

King nodded slowly, accepting Mulder’s rebuke.

“Why weren’t they taken prisoner? God, wouldn’t that have been a better solution, politically? What would Qadaffi have been able to say when the world was presented with irrefutable proof that he was using children to fight his wars?”

King sighed. “Iran and Iraq were doing the same thing at the same time, Mr. Mulder. And Qadaffi hardly worries about what the west thinks of him, only other Islamic countries. And the two largest Islamic countries in the region were doing the exact same thing. To be honest, Mr. Mulder, the military hadn’t thought that far ahead. They had never expected any resistance to the mission, and so they had no backup in place. It was never expected that Matt would be shot down, that he would be forced to make the choice that he did.”

“Why?” Mulder wanted to know. “Why would he chose to murder those children?”

“He didn’t murder them, Mulder. He executed them. There is a slight difference. What he did was reprehensible, but it was not a crime, not in the eyes of the law.”

“But he was charged-”

“Mr. Mulder, there are two things about those charges that you need to know. The first is that they were dropped. The Article 32 investigation was completed, as required under the UCMJ, and the charges were dropped.”

Mulder was surprised to find that he was gritting his teeth. “What’s the other thing I should know?”

Maggie sighed again, a deep, sad sound that made Mulder’s stomach flop.

“He wasn’t under Article 32 investigation for the execution of those children, Mulder.”

“What?!”

“He killed a SEAL. Well, not exactly killed. Let me put it to you this way. There was a disagreement of some kind, and one of the ground forces members ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. The Commanding Officer of the ground forces filed the Article 32 complaint investigation form, but after review, the charges were dropped.”

Mulder’s mind started racing. “The paperwork. Where’s the Article 32 paperwork?”

Maggie King shook her head. “It’s sealed.” She saw the look on his face, the look that said he had ways of finding things out. She could see his mind working, watch as he went through the list of his contacts throughout the government, Mulder’s own personal fifth column of spies and informants.

“Mulder, there’s no one that you can ask to find the records, because the records don’t exist. Not only was the Article 32 dropped, but the records were expunged. Actually physically destroyed. Put in a burn bag at NIS headquarters.”

“Shouldn’t the Judge Advocate General have a copy?”

“They might have some notes or something buried in a drawer, but when a record is expunged, it is expunged.”

Mulder took another tack. “Is there a list of officers that sat on the review board? The ones that made the original decision to drop the Article 32 investigation?”

Maggie considered this, scratching her chin. “I’m sure there might be somewhere…I’d have to check.”

She looked up into the excited, wild eyes of Special Agent Fox Mulder and grinned. “Here, use my cellular,” he said, offering his phone to her. She looked at it dubiously, wondering if the man actually expected her to put her career on the line right here, right now, for a man she had met only moments ago.

Well, she thought, he does know LoneGunGuy.

She took the phone and dialed. Her yeoman answered, and she started issuing instructions. He took notes, promised to call her back as soon as he found anything out, and disconnected the call.

“I told him to look for anything that would like Stone to that Article 32 investigation and to get back to me. Your best bet-”

“Is to find someone retired, someone who won’t mind risking his pension.”

“Or her pension,” King pointed out.

“Or her pension,” Mulder agreed.

King stared at the young FBI agent for a few long, strained seconds. Now that the ball had started rolling, it was only a matter of time before it came back to bite her in the ass, she was sure. Commander King knew that there were forces at work at pay grades way, way above her own that made looking out for officers like Matt Stone their life’s work. She had known other officers, men and women she considered unfit to command a platoon of mess-kit repair technicians who had been given commands of aircraft carriers, Spruance-class destroyers, even entire fleets of submarines and ships, all because they had a ‘hook,’ a senior officer who looked out for classmates, the sons and daughters of friends, and every once and a while, those select few officers who were pinpointed and fast-tracked for promotion to Commander, Captain and above. Up until this breakfast meeting with Special Agent Mulder, Maggie would have bet a year’s salary that there were Admiral’s stars in Matt Stone’s future.

Now she wasn’t so sure. Part of her was sad, because despite all her objections to the contrary, both internal and external, she still harbored feelings for Matt. He’d been an exciting, dangerous man, the kind of man that had brought all her ‘bad boy’ fantasies to light. But part of her was glad, a much larger part, because she felt in her bones that men such as Commander Matthew Stone, USN, should not be placed in a position of authority over other lives. He was too dangerous, too unpredictable, too bloodthirsty.

“So tell me what happened,” she finally said. “What brought you to me, other than LoneGunGuy?”

“I really can’t go into it,” Mulder demurred, holding up his hands to stop her protest, “not because I don’t trust you.” Although I don’t, he thought. “But..it’d be safest for you. I’ll make you a deal. If and when I can talk about this, you’ll be the first to know. I’ll tell you everything I know.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Deal?”

She reached over and shook his offered hand. “Deal, Mr. Mulder. Now, are you going to buy me breakfast, or was that just an empty promise to get information out of me?”

***

Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel
The Pentagon
Alexandria, Virginia
1000 Hours

Matt Stone entered the outer office of the DCSPERS and smiled down at Dana Scully, who was sitting in a chair waiting, her legs crossed primly at the thigh. She was flipping through an issue of Army Times. She tried to find it within herself to smile back at this man, but found that she could only manage to keep something just this side of a grimace on her face.

Taking the seat next to hers, immediately moving into her space, violating that invisible, silent wall she kept up to ward off the world, Stone whispered in her ear, “What’s wrong?”

She moved away, using her eyes to force him back. He saw the look on her face, the same look that hundreds of suspects and other uncooperative individuals had seen on her face…

And moved back.

“Nothing,” she said softly. “We’ll talk later.”

Stone just nodded, trying on a hurt-puppy expression. He had seen Mulder do the same thing to her, and its effect on Scully had not gone unnoticed.

Scully had to fight to keep the look of disgust off her face. On this man that look was…disgusting. Revolting. With a start, Scully realized why Stone was such a good investigator, such a good intelligence agent. He had that unique ability to become a chameleon, to change himself to fit any situation, to give the target of his attentions (and probably his affections, too, she thought,) what he thought they wanted and needed. He was the candy man, offering up the treats that his…subjects, targets…lovers wanted.

He’s trying to make me react to him the way I react to Mulder, she thought.

As if I would ever.

The anger inside her notched up another level, and she wondered what it was that she had thought she’d seen in Commander Stone. Nothing could be further from the truth at this point. She could hardly stand to be in the same room with him, let alone have him actually touch her.

“Special Agent Dana Scully?”

Scully looked up at the mention of her name. A tall, distinguished, straight-backed US Army Major was standing in front of her, a bemused smile on his face.

“Yes?”

“I’m Major Donald Gates,” he said, offering his hand. Scully stood, shaking it. “Commander Stone,” Matt said. The major, although outranked by Matt, gave him a look that made shivers run up Scully’s back. “Commander,” he said softly, shaking Matt’s hand. He released it just a little quickly, Scully thought.

She found herself liking Major Gates rather easily.

A enemy of my enemy is my friend, she thought, wondering why that had entered her mind.

“If you’ll come with me,” Gates said, turning to lead them to his office. Stone started to follow along, and sensing this, Gates stopped. “I’m sorry, Commander, but this briefing is for Agent Scully only.”

Stone stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes narrowing. “Excuse me, Major?”

“I’m sure you heard me, Commander. DCSPERS got a call from Assistant Director Walter Skinner this morning asking for a classified briefing on one of our officers. He made no mention of any Naval personnel attending this briefing. Our regulations are quite clear on the matter. I’m sure you understand.”

Stone said nothing, but reached inside his jacket for his credentials.

Gates waves them away. “I’m quite aware of who you are, Commander, and frankly, it doesn’t matter to me that you’re a Special Agent at NIS. Or that you’re assigned to SLUDJ. The fact of the matter-”

Stone held up his hand. “I don’t care about your regulations, Major. I outrank you, and I am ordering you to allow me to attend this briefing.” Scully looked up in surprise, her own eyes narrowing in anger. What did Matt think he was doing?

Gates laughed, surprising both Stone and Scully. “Yes, you probably do, Commander. But since I am not in your chain of command, nor attached to a joint staff position, your relative rank means nothing to me, or to DCSPERS.”

Stone was fuming. “Listen to me, you little piss-ant, I can call my Admiral-”

“Oh, yes, Admiral Karn. If I remember correctly, he is a Vice Admiral, is that correct?” Stone’s jaw dropped open. Vice Admirals of the US Navy wear the three stars of a Lieutenant General of the US Army. DCSPERS, the man who was actually the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel was a four-star general. He had recently been promoted, and the rumor was that he was going to be given CINCTRACODC. For the time being, he outranked Admiral Karn. Which meant that Karn would have to go to his boss, the four-star Judge Advocate General himself.

“I see your point,” Stone said stiffly. “I’ll wait out here for Special Agent Scully.”

Gates smiled thinly. “As you wish, Commander.” He turned to continue leading Scully to his office, and then stopped. He turned back. “I am very sorry, sir.”

I just bet you are, Stone thought. He frowned and nodded, picking up the copy of Army Times that Scully had been reading.

Scully looked at Stone again, saw the little-boy petulance on his face, and again wondered what she had ever seen in the man. Shaking her head, she turned and took a few long strides to catch up with Major Gates.

***

Office of Commander Maggie King
Navy Bureau of Personnel (BUPERS)
1002 Hours

Yeoman Second Class Richie Pierce glanced around one last time before lifting the phone. It wouldn’t do to have someone catch him at what he was about to do.

But he had no choice.

He dialed the ten numbers, reading them off the back of a business card that he kept hidden deep inside his desk.

“What?” the voice answered.

“It’s me…Richie,” Pierce said.

“Richie who?”

“Pierce. Richie Pierce, at BUPERS.”

The voice softened almost immediately. “Go ahead.”

“King called about twenty minutes ago. She wanted the whole package.”

There was a pause. “What are you going to do?”

Richie knew the correct answer to that. “Whatever you want me to.”

“Good answer, Richie,” the voice said. “Give her everything. Names, addresses, the whole deal.”

Richie couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. That Mulder moron can’t hurt the operation. As a matter of fact, having Mulder running around the country talking to old men with bitter memories will help this operation. It’ll keep him out of the loop. So do what I tell you, Richie. Give King everything that she wants.”

“Aye, Aye,” Richie said. “Do you want me to-”

“No, son. Just do what I tell you.” The voice paused again. “Or you know what will happen.” Richie tried to swallow past the lump in his throat, but found that his mouth was too dry.

“Aye, aye,” he said again, and hung up the phone.

***

Patty’s Pancakes Alexandria
1012 Hours

Mulder’s cellphone chirped.

“Mulder.”

“Uh…”

“Are you looking for Commander King?”

“Yes…yes, sir.”

“Just a moment.” Mulder handed his phone to Maggie. She had just forked a huge wad of syrup-covered blueberry pancakes into her mouth. Chewing mightily, she took the phone with one hand and made a writing motion with the other, asking Mulder for a pen. He reached inside his jacket and found his notebook and Mont Blanc. Unscrewing the cap, he assembled the pen and handed it all to King.

“Uh huh…Florida. Got it. Ft. Pierce. Got it. Texas? Where in Texas? Dallas? Ok…” she wrote quickly, neatly, adding a series of names, addresses, ranks and telephone numbers to the pad. “How many left on active duty?” She wrote names, ranks. “How many in the MDW?” She shook her head at Mulder, who swore softly under his breath.

“Thanks, Richie.” She disconnected the call and handed Mulder back the phone, sliding the notepad across the table. “This is what I could find.”

Mulder studied the list she’d given him. Six names. Four members of the Article 32 panel, and two members of the SEAL team that had been in the Ground Element during JOVIAL CLOWN. “Thanks,” he said softly. “I know that this might come back at you, and if it does, and there’s anything I can do-”

She waved a hand, dismissing his offer. “Listen to me, Agent Mulder. Matt Stone may be gorgeous to look at, and great in bed, but he’s an asshole, pure and simple. He used me, used me to get a peek at records he had no business looking at. I thought he loved me, and I let him use me. I’ll be honest here — most informants, in my opinion, do what they do out of revenge. I like LoneGunGuy, and I’d like to meet him someday. But I’m giving him — and you — the information because I feel it’s the right thing to do. Idiots like Commander Matthew Stone have no business being in MY Navy.” Finished, she looked down at her plate. “I need more syrup,” she said, lifting an arm and calling, “Excuse me, waitress?”

***

Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel (DCSPERS)
Office of Major Donald Gates, Junior aide-de-camp
The Pentagon Alexandria
1003 Hours

“Please, Special Agent Scully, have a seat,” Major Gates said, offering her one of the two comfortable-looking leather wing chairs that faced his desk.

Scully settled herself and took out a notebook. “That won’t be necessary,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll be provided with copies of all the information that we’re about to go over. And frankly, I’d rather appreciate it if you wouldn’t take notes about the things we will be discussing that aren’t in the files.”

Scully slowly put the notebook away. She had the distinct impression that her strings were being pulled, that someone or a group of someone’s were making sure that only certain, specific information reached hers’ and Mulder’s ears.

And Scully didn’t like it one bit.

“So tell me about Major Heather Haynes.”

Gates nodded, obviously the type that liked to get right to the point. He pulled a thick folder out of his IN box and opened it on his blotter.

“Major Heather NMI Haynes,” he began. “Born in White Plains, New York. Father was Major General Peter Haynes, deceased. Mother was Elaine Haynes, also deceased. Graduated from White Plains High School and applied for admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point, 1982. She graduated in 1986, 121st in her class, awarded a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.

“Attended US Army Jump School, Ft. Benning, Georgia, during the 1983 summer, and Advanced Infantry Training, also at Ft. Benning, during the 1984 summer.” Gates looked up at Scully with a totally unreadable expression, and then returned his gaze to the file. “Selected for a special project for TRADOC, named FANCIFUL DARING.” He paused again and then closed the file. “Special Agent Scully, I’ve been instructed to give you one-hundred percent cooperation, and I plan to do that…and more. But I want to take this opportunity to impress upon you the importance of keeping certain…elements about Major Haynes career as confidential as possible. Heather was a very special person, a special woman and a special Army officer. I would hate to see her memory tarnished as a result of some FBI witch hunt.”

Scully felt her left eyebrow arching and tried to restrain it. “Major Gates, I appreciate your candor. All I can say at this point is that I’m looking for a clearer picture of Major Haynes’ career, including any information you can give me about the assignments she had and the other officers and enlisted personnel she came into contact with. I have no desire to besmirch Major Haynes’ record in any way, and of course all concerns regarding disclosure of classified information should have already been answered by AD Skinner.”

Gates nodded rather primly and re-opened Heather’s folder.

“FANCIFUL DARING was a very…well, not exactly classified project, although it was. It just wasn’t the normal type of project that we would classify. Major Haynes, then a Second Lieutenant fresh from her commissioning ceremony, was selected to attend the Infantry Officer’s Basic course at Ft. Benning in preparation for taking command of her own infantry platoon, one of the very first women so selected. It was ahead of its time by almost a decade. But for circumstances that are still unclear to this office, she never completed the IOB school, and instead requested a transfer to Military Intelligence. After careful and due consideration, her request was granted.

“After completion of Military Intelligence school, she attended two courses at the Presidio Language School in San Francisco, one in Farsi and one in Arabic.”

“This was 1988?” Scully asked.

“Yes.”

“Rather…eclectic choice for a former Infantry officer, wouldn’t you say?”

“Military Intelligence or her choice of languages?”

“Either. Both.”

Gates nodded, frowning. “It almost seems as if she knew what was coming, didn’t it? Hmmm. Well, anyway, after completion of her two language courses, she was assigned to the 12th Military Intelligence Corps, Korea as a field translator/interrogator.”

“I thought Korea was considered a hazardous duty station, a forward-deployed area?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Major Haynes, pardon my pointing it out, is female. The MOS you just described is considered combat duty, is it not?”

Gates shifted in his chair. “Yes, it is, Special Agent Scully. I had no idea that you were as…up to speed…as you are on Army MOS and policy.”

“My father was Captain Bill Scully, USN.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. I should have realized.” He frowned again, and then continued reading from Heather’s file. “She completed her tour of Korea, reaching the rank of Captain, in Command of Baker Company, 12th Military Intelligence Corps. She requested and was transferred to the Army Intelligence School at Ft. Boliver for post-graduate training.” Major Gates closed the folder again. “I’m sorry, but the majority of the coursework at the Army Intelligence School is classified, Agent Scully.”

“I understand, Major. Please continue, if you would.”

“Very well.” He opened the folder for a third time. “Captain Haynes graduated sixth in her class of sixty, putting her in the top tenth percentile. She was allowed to choose her next duty station. She chose CENTCOM.”

“This was when?”

“Late 1989.”

“I see. Wasn’t CENTCOM a paper command at that time, sir?”

“Yes, Agent Scully. She transferred to Headquarters Company, US Central Command, at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.”

“I see. In what capacity?”

“Military Intelligence Aide to the CINC, CENTCOM.”

“She worked for General-”

“Yes. But not directly. She was the most junior member on the staff. To my knowledge, she was never…she did not know The General.”

“I see. Can you tell me how Major Haynes might have been assigned to a behind-the-lines mission in Iraq during the Gulf War?”

Gates laughed, a dry, impersonal sound. “I can assure you, Special Agent Scully, that no such mission ever took place. At least, not to my knowledge.”

Scully felt her ire rising. “Major, I spoke with Major Haynes the day of her death, and she informed me that she was in Iraq during the air offensive, and that she was covered as a journalist, and that she had a specific mission to— well, sir, I might assume that you are not cleared for the scope and profile of that mission. I was just wondering if you could give me any information as to why the US military would send a woman in behind the lines on a classified mission, against their publicly stated policy?”

Gates shifted in his chair, shut the folder and slid it across the desk. “Special Agent Scully, I’m on the selection list for Lieutenant Colonel. I have been in the Army for close to fifteen years. I have no desire to either rock the boat, by which I mean bring unwanted attention to myself, or to hinder your investigation in any way. You have the official, classified personnel file of Major Heather Haynes, United States Army on the desk in front of you. That is your copy. Please follow standard US Government policies and procedures for handling classified information, and don’t forget to have a nice day.”

Gates stood, obviously dismissing her. “Sir, may I use your phone?” she asked.

Gates nodded. “Of course. I assume it’s a local call?”

Scully smirked. “Of course, Major.” Scully picked up the phone and punched out Mulder’s number.

“Mulder, it’s me. I’m just about finished at DCSPERS, and I want to know…”

She listened. “Ok. I’ll take Stone back to the Hoover building so we can…discuss the file.”

She hung up the phone and turned to Major Gates, who had been waiting rather impatiently for her to finish.

“Sir, I have one more question, and then I will thank you for your time and get out of your office.” At the promise of having the inquisitive FBI agent out of his hair, Major Gates’ mood visibly improved.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Would you explain your reaction to Commander Stone, please? I know all about your regulations and policies and procedures, but you took a lot of pleasure out of denying that man access to this meeting.”

Gates moved back to his chair slowly, his eyes focused on Scully. His gaze never left her face, and she had the feeling that he was studying her, trying to see inside her soul, trying to determine what kind of woman she actually was.

“Commander Stone…in certain circles…is well known inside the military establishment. He has a … reputation, I guess you could say. There are some that feel he should not be an officer, let alone one trusted with as much responsibility and authority as he has been trusted with. There are those of us who believe that the nation would be better off had Commander Stone never worn our uniform.”

Scully said nothing. She stood and gathered the folder on Gates’ desk and turned on her heel.

“Agent Scully, are you upset about something?”

Scully stopped with one hand on the doorknob. She turned back to face Gates. “Sir, I’m only angry at myself.” Opening the door, she left Gates sitting behind his desk, staring after her.

Way to go, Dana, she thought. First man you’ve had any feelings for

except Mulder

in months, no…years, and you have to pick a sociopath. Every single person that had ever known Matt, had ever worked with or for him, with the possible exception of Admiral Karn, that Scully had run into had nothing nice to say about the man.

And yet…

She shook that feeling off, choosing instead to remember the feel of Mulder’s lips on hers that morning. That soft, gentle, chaste kiss that had ignited something inside of her, had brought to life a feeling inside of her that Scully had almost forgotten about. Mulder reached a part of her, a portion of her soul that Stone never would. A part that Stone was probably unaware that even existed.

Too bad he’s my partner, she thought, rounding the corner and heading back towards the reception room where Matt was waiting. Too bad we can’t do anything about it. The temptation to use Mulder to forget all about Commander Matt Stone was overwhelming. But that’s what it would be, Scully thought. Using him.

Stone stood as Scully approached. “All done?” he asked lightly. “Because if we hurry, we can get to BUPERS before they go to lunch.”

Scully shook her head, holding up Heather’s thick personnel file. “I want to get back to the Hoover building and go over this.” Stone eyed the file warily.

“That’s her file? Her entire file?”

“Yes, or so I’ve been told.”

Stone couldn’t take his eyes off the file. Scully watched as his fingers clenched and unclenched.

“May I?” he asked.

Scully thought about it, thought about denying him access to it, only because she could.

Pretty damn petty, Scully, she thought.

“Of course. Back at the Hoover building. We’ll both go over it,” she said, stepping around him. He reached for her, catching her by the elbow, stopping her.

“Will we talk about…what’s bothering you?” he asked softly, his voice quiet and dark. She looked over her shoulder at him-

And was afraid.

Something evil and hot and moist uncoiled in Scully’s belly, and she suddenly wanted to be as far away from Matt Stone as possible. There was something behind his eyes, something in the way the light caught the reflections in his irises that made Scully nervous and scared.

“Sure, Matt,” she said, trying to make her voice light.

“Good,” he said, releasing her arm. He moved inside her space again, looking down at her. “Because I don’t like being kept in the dark.”

Scully just nodded and opened the door leading out of DCSPERS. She wanted to call Mulder. She desperately wanted to hear his calm, comforting voice. And she really wanted him to hold her again.

“I’ll see you there,” she called over her shoulder. Stone just nodded and turned and walked away in the other direction.

Scully was going to be a problem, he thought.

That’s ok…his mind answered…you’re good at solving problems.

—

“Yes I Am” Lyrics and Music by Melissa Etheridge. Copyright 1993 MLE Music Administration by Almo Music Corporation (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Used without permission. No infringement intended.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 10/38

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC
1145 Hours

Fox Mulder sat at his desk, working the phones. Maggie King had given him a ton of information, and he was desperately trying to make something out of it. Glancing at his watch as he dialed, Mulder tried to estimate how much time he had before Scully and Stone returned from the Pentagon.

His other line trilled.

“Mulder.”

“Hi, Mulder, it’s me.”

“Hi, Scully.”

“Listen, Matthew and I were going to grab a bite to eat before we came back to the office, and we were wondering if you wanted to join us.” God bless Scully, Mulder thought. With one simple sentence, she’d managed to convey several facts at once, and all of them under the nose of Commander Matthew Stone, USN. First, by calling him “Matthew” instead of “Matt,” she was telling Mulder that while she still had Stone’s confidence, she was not falling back under his spell. Second, she was asking if he needed more time alone in the office. Third, she was telling him that she was with Stone, that he was right next to her, probably listening to her side of the conversation, without coming right out and saying it. Five years of working together had paid off, that was for sure.

“How is the Commander?” Mulder asked, wanting more information about his whereabouts.

“Right now he’s sitting across from me trying to decide on a double or a triple burrito, Mulder. He followed me from the Pentagon and made me pull into this grease trap. I guess he figured since we’ve been partners for so long, I’d be used to eating food like this.”

Ok, that meant Stone couldn’t overhear his voice. Good.

“Keep him busy, Scully. I’ve got a pile of phone calls to make, and I want to get them done before he gets there. I need to ask you something; just say yes or no. Is the file on Haynes with you?”

“No.”

“In the car?”

“Yes.”

“Ok…here’s what we need to do. We need to find a connection between Haynes, Stone, Iraq and Libya. I’m convinced they’re releated somehow. I have some leads on some people that served with him in Libya, and some of the officers that sat on his Article 32 investigation board. Call me before you come back, ok?”

“Ok, Mulder, but you’re missing really good chili!”

Mulder smiled in the dim light of his office. “I miss you too, Scully.” He could hear Scully’s answering smile.

He decided to play with her…just a little. “Hey, Scully…what are you wearing?”

Her answer was swift and fatal. “Oh, yeah, I can bring some back for you. What would you like?”

Mulder laughed into the phone.

“Two helpings? Extra hot? Ok, Mulder, but judging by the face Matthew is making, I don’t think he believes you can eat all that. It’s up to you to defend the FBI’s honor!”

Serves me right, Mulder thought. “Talk to you, Scully,” he said, hanging up.

He went back to working the phones. The name on his pad was Steven Hamm. According to the data King had given him, Steven Hamm was a 21- year Navy veteran, a mustang who had risen to the rank of Commander before retiring in 1985. He’d spent most of his career in Naval Special Warfare, starting out first as a frogman, then moving to the UDT teams, and then finally to the SEALS in 1974. He had a masters degree in International Relations from Auburn University, and was currently the sole owner and proprietor of Swimmin’ Steve’s Scuba Shop in Fort Pierce, Florida. In the back of Mulder’s eidetic memory, he recalled that the UDT/SEAL Museum was in Ft. Pierce.

He dialed quickly.

“Swimmin’ Steve’s” a voice answered.

“Is this Steve Hamm?” Mulder asked.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“My name is Fox Mulder. I’m a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I’d like to ask you a few questions if I could.”

There was a brief pause. Mulder could hear movement on the other end of the phone, and then, finally, “This is about that prick Stone, isn’t it?” Mulder felt his pulse quicken.

“Mr. Hamm?”

“Call me Steve, Fox.”

Mulder bit back the urge to order the man to call him Mulder. Normally he would, but he needed Hamm, needed him badly.

“Why would you say that?”

Another pause. “I’m right though, aren’t I?”

Fox swallowed. It was bad interrogation technique to give too much away too early. But he had a gut feeling about this one. “Yes. Yes it is, Steve. I need to talk to you about Stone and Libya.”

“Mr. Mulder, you better move in some pretty high and powerful circles to have the fucking balls to call me about an operation that never took place on an open fucking phone line!”

Mulder gulped. Dammit!

“Of course, Steve. Forgive me. Would it be possible for you to come to Washington?”

“D.C.? Now? Today?”

“Yes. My partner and I’d like to speak with you about Commander Stone.”

“If you know as much as I think you do, Mr. Mulder, the answer is staring you right in the face. But seeing as how you’re probably one of them college boys who thinks too damn much with his head and not enough with his guts and his balls, I’ll come up there and head-shed with you. What time?”

“As soon as possible, sir. I can have a ticket sent-”

“Forget it, Mulder. I’ll pay my own way. Give me a number to contact you when I get there.”

Mulder gave him his cellular number and exacted a promise to have Hamm call the moment he touched down. Disconnecting the call, Mulder reached down and flipped to the next page of his notebook and prepared to dial again.

***

In Fort Pierce, Florida, Steve Hamm stood in his scuba shop, staring at the phone in his hand. He tapped his nails against the receiver, making a decision. Grunting, he lifted the phone and began to dial.

“It’s me. I just got the call,” he said. “We need to talk.”

***

El Terraro’s Mexican Restaurant
14th and K Streets
NW Washington, DC
1202 Hours

“So,” Commander Matthew Stone said, putting his fork down, “why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?” Scully felt her stomach coiling and tightening, and she wished Mulder were there. She blinked that thought away, already mentally chastising herself. You’re an adult, completely independent woman, Dana. You can handle this asshole. You’ve handled worse.

Have I?

She looked up into the eyes of a man who had all but declared his love for her the day before. She had no doubt in her mind that his so- called tacit admission was nothing more than a ploy to control her, to gain access to the information she possessed through her emotions. He had done the same with Heather and God only knew how many other women. She saw the flatness in his eyes; they looked like lizards’ eyes.

“Matt, it’s not that anything’s bothering me…it’s just that…” she made a show of searching for the words, even going to far as to nervously twist her napkin in her hands, trying to make herself look like the typical nervous woman struggling with new, powerful emotions while basking in the presence of the Sex God himself. The thought, although amusing, was dangerous, because it threatened to bring a smile to a face Scully was desperately trying to keep straight.

“The thing of it is…well, when this assignment is over…what happens then?”

Stone dabbed at the corner of his mouth with the paper napkin, studying her. “I’m not sure what you mean, Dana.”

She tried to forget what his voice saying her name sounded like. “I mean, how much longer is your tour at NIS? I assume that eventually you’ll be transferred to another duty station, and well…I’m an old- fashioned girl. I need to know that you’ll be around.”

His eyes narrowed, his mind calculating. What the fuck was she trying to pull? She wasn’t fooling him with her act. He knew women like Dana Scully, had been with his share of them all over the world, in more ports than he could count.

They were all the same.

They all wanted the same thing.

“Listen to me, Dana,” he said, his voice harsh, tight. “I told you how I feel, and I think you know what I want. And I’m used to getting what I want, when I want it, and who I want it with. Am I making myself clear?”

Scully dropped all pretense of being the dutiful would-be girlfriend in a heartbeat. She instantly recognized how truly dangerous this man was, how insidious he could be. Her trained mind began to compute the statistics and probabilities. Her SIG was at the small of her back in a modified horizontal-draw holster. She had timed herself on the range at Quantico in a variety of different clothing combinations. She could draw and have the weapon in his nose in less than a second, she knew, even with the fork in her hand. She had practiced again and again until the movement was smooth, automatic, part of her. Mulder had insisted upon it, and for once, she had agreed with him. If this maggot of a man made any kind of move towards her, she’d give him something to think about.

Stone could see the anger flashing in her eyes. Good, he thought. That will make her emotional, unpredictable. He liked it when they fought. Made it interesting.

Exciting.

Arousing.

He could feel himself hardening under the table. He opened his mouth, sucking in a breath between his teeth.

Scully saw his pupils dilating, saw his breathing change, and the doctor inside of her announced with prim precision that the maggot sitting across the table from her was actually getting sexually aroused at the idea of…what?

Raping her?

Bet me! Scully thought.

“You listen to me, you son-of-a-bitch. You stay the hell away from me. As of this moment, you are off this investigation! Do you understand me? Take your little pretty-boy uniform, all your shiny medals and badges, and get the hell out of here! If I see you on FBI property, you’ll be arrested and prosecuted for obstructing justice. Now…get out of here.” Scully felt the snarl on her face and her anger towards Stone deepened.

His smile was infuriating. “You won’t do that,” he said. He reached for her hand. “You want me. I want you. You know it, I know it. Stop fighting it, Dana!”

Scully saw his hand coming towards her and she reacted without thinking. She caught his middle finger with her hand and bent it back savagely. She smiled an evil, satisfied smile when she heard the tendons creaking in protest. To his credit, Stone did nothing, didn’t yell, didn’t scream. His face paled as he looked down at his hand.

“You BITCH!” he hissed.

“Believe it, Stone,” Scully whispered, her voice dead, flat. “I’m telling you one last time. Get out of here. Go back to Little Creek. I don’t care what you tell your Admiral, but you and this investigation are through. We’ll communicate the final report to you through channels. You come near me or my partner again, and I’ll arrest you myself.” She lowered her voice even more, leaning across the table, using the leverage to bend his finger back even more. Scully knew with the slightest of effort, the tiniest little bit of force, she could break the bastard’s finger. “And if you think that a big, bad SEAL like you can’t be taken by a little redheaded FBI agent, you just try me, Stone? You give it your best shot.”

She released his finger and reached for her fork, intending to finish her meal. The anger was flowing through her system, the blood pounding in ears, her breath coming in quick, shallow gulps. Stone pulled his arm back, slowly turning his hand from side to side, inspecting his finger. It had to hurt like hell, Scully thought.

Good.

And then she saw it coming. Time slowed to a crawl.

Her gun hand was wrapped around the fork. Instead of losing precious moments by putting it on the plate, she just opened her hand, letting it fall to the floor. She saw the grimace on his face, saw the snarl behind his lips, saw the darkening in his eyes, felt the white hot heat of his anger. She could read his mind, sense his thoughts. The fork had fallen half an inch at that moment; by the time it had fallen another inch Scully’s arm was moving, sweeping her jacket back, her other arm coming up and across her body. But Stone was fast, almost as fast as she was. She’d had the advantage of knowing what he was going to do before he did. His right arm came across the table, a runaway freight train heading straight for her. She felt his arm go under her own, his fingers reaching for her throat. His hand found the soft skin there, and she felt the fingers gripping, squeezing, cutting off her breath. He was growling now, the anger and hate and rage flashing behind his eyes.

God, I thought I liked this man? The thought raced across Scully’s mind in the time it took the fork to fall another half inch. Her right hand found the butt of her gun, her thumb finding and releasing the hammer-break. She felt the sudden give of the weapon from the holster and came around, her shoulder and elbow swiveling at the same time. The fork was six inches from the floor, turning lazy end-over-end circles. No one in the restaurant was aware of what was happening.

Yet.

The motions were complete. Scully felt herself being jerked out of her chair by the throat at the same time her gun cleared her jacket. She brought it up and around, her thumb working the safety in the space between two nanoseconds. Just as Stone brought her closer, so close she could feel his hot, sour breath on her face, the SIG was in play. She caught him in the orbital arch, the barrel placed directly against his eye socket.

“Let me go, you fuck!” she wheezed. She felt his fingers tightening, and she knew she was going to have to kill him. She tried one last option, thumbing back the hammer of her SIG. Stone knew that she only needed to apply 1.2 pounds of pressure to the trigger for it to break. “Now,” she added. She felt his hands slowly relax, and then she was free. She sat back, her free hand moving to her throat.

She was going to have a bruise.

And Mulder was going to want to kill Stone.

Truth be told, she wanted to kill him herself.

She slowly pulled the gun away from his face, the barrel never wavering. “Get out,” she said softly. “Get out of my sight, Stone.”

“You’re pretty good with that thing,” he said. “How’d you know I was going to…?”

“Same reason I know shit stinks, Stone. That’s all it’s capable of.”

Stone stood, brushing imaginary lint flecks off his uniform. “Are you comparing me to a piece of shit, Agent Scully?” he asked.

Scully grinned up at him. “No. Not at all,” she said. Her smile was anything but warm, and she waited a beat before finishing her thought.

“Shit has a purpose.”

She watched his eyes darken in anger again, and she regretted her words instantly. She’d already proven that she wasn’t like the other women in his life. No need to add insult to injury.

“Bitch,” he hissed again. Scully said nothing. “You’ll be sorry,” he said softly, urgently. Scully had the feeling that Stone needed her to be afraid, that he craved the feeling in his women. He needed the control, the complete and utter domination of his conquests in order to feel…what?

More like a man? The thought that this…thing thought he was a man turned Scully’s stomach. Instantly, her thoughts flew to Mulder. The dead skin that flaked off the bottom of Mulder’s feet was more manly than this turd in a uniform.

Stone turned without a further word and left quickly, glancing over his shoulder at Scully. Scully watched him go, watched as he got into his car and departed the restaurant, tires squealing.

Reholstering her gun, Scully held both hands out, fingers spread. They were rock steady.

Good. Grabbing her cell, she dialed the Hoover building security office first. “This is Special Agent Dana Scully. Until further notice, building access for Commander Matthew Stone is hereby revoked. If he attempts to gain access to the building, hold him for questioning and page me immediately.” The security office promised they’d keep an eye out for Stone.

She called Mulder next.

***

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC
1207 Hours

Mulder hung up the phone and smiled. His Texas contact had also agreed to come to Washington to talk about the Stone matter. There were four names left, the four officers on Stone’s Article 32 board. The first one was attached to CINCPACFLT in Pearl Harbor.

The second one was currently the Naval Attache to Japan.

The third officer was on sea duty aboard the USS Chicago, a fast- attack submarine. The Navy was not forthcoming about the locations of its submarines while at sea, so Mulder crossed him off the list.

The fourth was also on sea duty, assigned to the USS Georgia, another fast attack boat. Only the Georgia was in dry dock at Electric Boat in Groton. Six hours by car, or a 39-minute shuttle flight and then an hour drive.

No contest.

Mulder had picked up the phone to dial the travel office when his second line rang.

“Mulder.”

“Hi, it’s me,” Scully said. There was something wrong with her voice, and Mulder was instantly on guard.

“Scully, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Mulder, I’m fine.” Sure, Mulder thought. Sure you are.

“Talk to me, Scully.”

“Stone and I had a falling out at lunch. He didn’t take it well. He made the mistake of trying to put his hands on me in…well, what can only be described as in a rather…aggressive manner.”

Mulder had an interesting habit. When he was on the phone, unless he was writing something down, he picked an object in the immediate vicinity and focused on it, losing himself in the details. It helped him on cases, because he could tell you that a standard Stanley-Bostich stapler held exactly 125 staples in it. He’d counted.

He’d been staring at his Rolodex during this call. The view of the Rolodex was replaced with a blinding red haze the moment Scully’s words sank in.

“He WHAT?!” Mulder said, standing up.

“Relax, Mulder. I handled it.”

Mulder was suddenly very happy that he’d insisted that Scully drill with her weapon until drawing it under any circumstance became automatic, instinct, second nature.

“Jammed your piece in his face, didn’t you?”

There was just enough of a pause to answer Mulder’s question. “Good for you,” he said. “Felt good, didn’t it?”

There was another pause as Scully tried to decipher Mulder’s question. Surely he couldn’t mean that it felt good to come within a quarter-inch of blowing the bastard’s head off, could he? No, he was probably asking if it felt good to know that if push came to shove, she’d be doing the pushing and the shoving.

“Yeah. Listen, have you got anything? Because if not, I was thinking of heading home to go over the Heather Haynes file.”

Home. Mulder’s heart leapt into his throat. If he knew Stone, and he thought he did, the sick bastard was probably waiting for Scully at her place.

“Nope. Sorry, Scully, we have a change of plans. You have a bag packed in the trunk?”

She groaned into his ear. “Where are we going?”

“Groton, Connecticut.. You’re about to become the first woman to board a nuclear submarine.”

“When?”

“Come by the office. I’m still making plans.”

“Be there in a few,” Scully said, disconnecting.

Mulder quickly called the travel office and made reservations for them. He scheduled them on the 4:30 shuttle flight out of Dulles for LaGuardia, a rental car, and two motel rooms in Whitestone, Queens. They’d fly out this afternoon, stay overnight, drive up to Groton tomorrow morning and fly back tomorrow night.

Mulder flipped his notebook back a few pages, looking for another telephone number. He dialed it, wondering if Stone had taken any steps yet to burn this particular bridge.

“Karn,” the voice said. The Admiral had given Mulder his private back-channel line.

“Special Agent Mulder, Admiral.”

“Mulder! How’s it going?”

So far so good, Mulder thought. “Very well. Listen, need a favor. Two favors, actually. First, I need to get aboard the USS Georgia in dry-dock up in Groton. Second favor is…don’t ask why.”

There was a pause. Mulder knew that he was giving something away; Karn would immediately recognize that if Mulder was coming to him with this request instead of Stone that something had happened. “How deeply is Stone involved in this mess, Mulder?”

“Pretty damn deep, sir,” Mulder answered. He’d decided to trust Skinner’s judgment on this one. He and Karn went back over twenty years.

“Very well. What’s his status?”

“Uh…sir, I’m going to be brutally honest with you. Commander Stone and Agent Scully had a falling out of sorts. She’s removed him from the case. He’s persona non grata around here.”

Another pause. “What about the killer? What if the killer comes for Stone?”

Mulder. “Sir, without giving too much away, I think the killer is sending Stone a message. I’m not sure he wants to kill Stone quite yet. After my trip to Groton tomorrow, I’ll have a better idea of how to proceed.”

“This is most unusual, son, but considering the circumstances, I’ll approve it. I assume you and Agent Scully are both going?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. A woman on an attack boat. Will wonders never cease? Anyway, do me a favor, Mulder. The captain of that boat is an old friend of mine, Daryl Douglas. Do me a favor and say hi to him. Mention my name. That should get as much cooperation as you need. Also, ask Daryl for some of his coffee. He makes the best coffee in the fleet.”

Mulder couldn’t resist. “Which fleet is that?”

“Why SUBFORLANTFLT, of course.” Mulder tried to hide the smile in his voice. How these men could push all those letters together and make them into a sound was beyond him. Karn’s words had come out as “sub for lant fleet.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“No problem, Mulder. You just call me if you need anything else, you hear?”

“Thanks again, sir.”

***

Teletype Room USS Georgia (SSN-55)
1220 Hours EST 1820 Hours UT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET – UMBRA NOFORDIS EYES ONLY – NO COPIES – DO NOT LOG

TO : COMMANDING OFFICER, USS GEORGIA (SSN 55)

FROM: CINCSUBFORLANTFLT

CC : COMMANDING OFFICER, SUBFOR ALPHA

DATE: 16MAY97

1. BY ORDER, CINCSUBFORLANTFLT, YOU WILL PREPARE TO RECEIVE TWO (2) REPRESENTATIVES OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, SPECIAL AGENT FOX WILLIAM MULDER AND SPECIAL AGENT DANA KATHERINE SCULLY ON 17MAY97 AT GROTON SHIPYARD ABOARD USS GEORGIA.

2. REFERENCE IS MADE TO (1) ABOVE. YOU WILL GRANT AGENTS MULDER AND SCULLY ACCESS TO ANY NONE-CLASSIFIED AREA OF USS GEORGIA. IF AGENTS MULDER AND SCULLY REQUIRE ACCESS TO CLASSIFIED AREAS IN THE COURSE OF THEIR INVESTIGATION, THEY ARE ASSUMED TO HAVE THE NEED TO KNOW UP TO BUT NOT INCLUDING CNWDI-LEVEL STATUS.

3. AGENTS MULDER AND SCULLY WILL BE CONDUCTING INTERVIEWS WITH MEMBERS OF YOUR CREW, BOTH O-LEVEL AND E-LEVEL PERSONNEL. ALL HANDS, REPEAT ALL HANDS NOT ON SICK LEAVE WILL BE PRESENT, ACCOUNTED FOR, AND AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS.

4. ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS MESSAGE, ITS CONTENTS, ITS INTENT OR ANY MATTER HAVING TO DO WITH THIS MESSAGE SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR, NAVAL INVESTIGATIVE SERVICE, LITTLE CREEK, VIRGINIA OR THE OFFICE OF THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL,

PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, DC.

FOR CINCSUBFORLANTFLT, VICE ADMIRAL COCKLE, CHIEF OF STAFF

***

Office of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, DC
1230 Hours

Scully pushed the office door opened and stepped inside. Mulder was instantly up from his desk, moving towards her. She pinned him with a glance and he shrank back.

“Just give me a minute, Mulder. Don’t mother me, and I’ll tell you the whole story, ok?”

He just nodded, retreating enough to sit on top of his desk. Scully dropped her briefcase on her desk and turned to face her partner, the man she-

What?

Loved?

Yes, in a way. Right now, she loved him like a brother, like a best friend. Maybe later there could be more, but for right now, there was only this.

“Stone is a possessive, woman-hating asshole,” she started softly. “He seems to think that just because he happens to be good-looking and mildly charming that every woman he takes a liking to should promptly fall on her back and spread her legs. He put his hands on me, and it was almost the last thing he ever put his hands on.” She looked up and saw the pain and fear on her partner’s face. “Mulder, I handled it,” she said, even more quietly.

“I know,” Mulder whispered. “Don’t ask me not to care, Scully, or not to worry, or not to want to put a bullet into Stone myself. I’ll try and handle this as best I can, but don’t ask me not to feel.”

Scully smiled at him, a warm, comfortable feeling washing over her. She watched as Mulder stood and walked over to her. His hands came up from his sides and he asked softly, “May I?”

She nodded. She felt his fingers tracing her jaw, tilting her head gently to the side. Where his fingers touched her skin, Scully felt warmth, fire, electricity. It was like that every time Mulder touched her, even through her clothes, even that ubiquitous hand at the small of her back as he guided her through the halls of the Hoover building, even that touch through her business suits, Scully could feel. Mulder was much closer now, in her space, his head moving so that he could see the already-fading finger-marks from Stone’s hand on her throat. He touched the soft skin there, and she winced, remembering his fingers closing, tightening.

“Sorry,” he muttered. He dropped his hands, as if afraid to touch her, afraid to hurt her. His eyes began to brim over with tears, and Scully’s heart slowly tore.

“No,” she said, reaching for his hands. “I want you to touch me, Mulder. Please touch me.” Under any other circumstance, Mulder would have taken the opportunity to make one of his trademark unctuous remarks.

He said nothing this time.

He just gently, slowly took her in his arms.

She buried her face against his chest, inhaling his scent. Scully had never felt so comfortable, so protected, so safe. Her arms went around his waist, underneath his jacket, pulling him to her, tighter, closer.

“I almost shot him, Mulder,” she whispered against his chest.

“Remind me never to piss you off,” he said, his tone light, trying to get a smile, a laugh…anything.

“Damn straight,” She said, pulling away.

Mulder looked down at her. “I can’t be with you every moment of every day,” he said, “and I know you don’t need me to protect you. But if I’m with you, and something like that happens again, I’ll kill them. No one had better-”

She smiled.

“Mulder…right now, if you ask me right now, I never want anyone to touch me again, ever. Except you.”

“Scully!”

Realizing what she had just insinuated, Scully blushed. “You know what I mean!”

“Yes, I do. And you’d better remember that, because we leave for the airport in about twenty minutes. Then we’re going on board a submarine full of nothing but manly men in the full bloom of their manhood. A dish like you needs to be able to protect herself.”

Scully’s head snapped back. “A dish? You think I’m a dish?”

Mulder smiled. “A delectable taste treat, a veritable cornucopia for the senses!” He grinned wider and leaned down, his mouth moving towards hers.

Scully saw his mouth coming and moved towards him, wanting the kiss, needing the kiss, but he stopped an inch from her lips. “Probably not a good idea at the office,” he whispered.

“Tonight,” she added. “The motel.”

Holy shit, Fox thought.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 11/38

Holy shit, Fox thought, and then grimaced.

“What’s wrong?” Scully asked.

“Nothing,” he whispered. “I just remembered that I have two interviews scheduled for tonight. I can’t believe that I forgot.” He pushed away and walked back to his desk, slumping down in the chair. Scully tried to hide a smile, and failed miserably.

“Mulder,” she said, softly reproachful. He looked up, saw the expression on her face, and returned her expression with a rueful one of his own.

“Tell you what. You go up ahead of me. Get us checked in and all that, and after I finish the interviews, I’ll jump on a plane and meet you there tonight.”

Scully considered this for a brief moment and then nodded, accepting his logic. “Sounds good to me.” Mulder let a soft sigh escape him, hoping she wouldn’t notice. He was glad she’d agreed to leave that night, but not for the reason Scully might have thought. Mulder hadn’t told Scully yet that he’d seen Stone lurking outside her apartment that morning. And as sure as the sun rose every morning, Mulder knew that Stone would be there again tonight, awaiting her return.

And Mulder desperately hoped he would be. He had plans for Commander Matthew Stone, USN.

Scully gathered her coat and briefcase and turned towards the door. “One more thing, Mulder,” she said at the door. “When you get into Groton tonight, wake me up. No matter what time, okay?”

Mulder gulped, wondering if she meant what he thought she did. She turned her head slightly and smiled at him, and Mulder knew that she did mean what he thought she did.

Didn’t she?

With another infamous Enigmatic Scully Smile, she twisted the knob, opened the door, stepped out and was gone.

Mulder stared at the closed door until the phone rang, startling him.

“Mulder,” he barked into the phone.

“It’s Hamm,” the voice said. “I’m at Dulles.”

“That was fast,” Mulder said.

“Got my own plane. Don’t have to wait on the damn airlines. Where do you want to meet?”

Mulder thought quickly. The Hoover building seemed like the best bet. Stone would be at Scully’s apartment. “Why don’t you come to my office? I’m at the Hoover building, on-”

“I know where it is, boy. Have security at the K street entrance waiting for me.”

Hamm hung up, and Mulder quickly dialed security and informed them that he was expecting a visitor within the hour. Glancing at his watch, he decided that he had time to grab something to eat in the cafeteria before Hamm arrived.

***

1750 Hours

Mulder was polishing off the last bit of a rather juicy roast beef sub when the knock came at his door. “Come,” he called. A uniformed FBI Building Security agent stuck his head in the door.

“Agent Mulder? You were expecting a visitor?” Mulder nodded and rose to greet Steven Hamm. The man that entered his office was not at all what he expected an ex-Navy commando to look like. Unlike Stone, Hamm was short, about five six, and wiry. His body was leanly muscled, with thick, strong-looking forearms. His gaze was direct, intense, his eyes boring into Mulder’s.

“Commander,” Mulder said, aware that military types grew very attached to their ranks.

“Actually, I was frocked to Captain before I pulled the pin,” Hamm said, and then added with a smile, “But you can call me Steve.”

“Steve, then,” Mulder smiled. “I’m Mulder.”

“Not sure I trust a man I can’t call by his given name,” Hamm offered, taking the seat Mulder had indicated. Mulder sat and regarded the man across the desk from him.

“I don’t even let my parents call me by my first name, Steve. If you prefer, I’ll call you Hamm.”

Hamm shook his head. “Nah, I guess a man has a right to be called what he chooses.” Mulder got an instant impression off of Hamm. His constant use of the word ‘man,’ and the way he wrapped his mouth around it spoke volumes to Mulder. Hamm was the kind of military officer that believed in the concept of ‘men’ and ‘man,’ the kind that thought there were certain things a man should do, and a longer, more complete list of things a man should not do. And if his response to the mention of Stone’s name was any indication, Stone had done things that Hamm considered very unmanly.

“Steve, I want to thank you for coming up to see me,” Mulder started. Hamm waved him off.

“Just a matter of time before I got the call. I knew that fifteen years ago. I’m just glad it caught up to the prick before he made Captain.”

Mulder frowned. “Is he scheduled for promotion?”

“Not that I’m aware. Stone’s just one of those pricks that makes it look real easy, moving up the ranks. Hell, I started out as an EM, got myself a degree, went to OCS and finished, like I said, frocked to Captain. Took me almost thirty years. Took Stone less than that. Asshole.”

Mulder was trying to decide if Hamm was bitter at being passed over by an Annapolis graduate, a member of the Old Boys Network that seemed to protect and look out for members of the service academy in all branches of the military.

“What can you tell me about Stone?” Mulder asked.

Hamm snorted. “Whyan’t you tell me what you know ‘bout the prick, and I’ll fill in the blanks.”

Quickly, Mulder hit the high notes. “And,” he added, “just this afternoon, he put his hands on my partner.”

Hamm snorted. “Hope your partner put a bullet into the bastard.”

“She almost did,” Mulder confirmed. Hamm’s eyes widened at that, but he said nothing.

“So…” Mulder said, trying to draw Hamm out.

“So what, Mr. Mulder? You want to know why I keep calling Stone a ‘bastard’ and a ‘prick,’ am I right?” Mulder nodded. “Well, let me tell you what happened in Libya. What really happened.” Hamm paused, gathering his thoughts. “Part of the problem, I guess, was that we caused the damn problem ourselves.

“One of the original cover stories was that we were trying to interdict a nuclear weapons program that Libya had begun with Chad. That was a pile of bullshit, as far as it went. Anybody that knows anything about the area knows that Chad and Libya hate each other. Hell, everyone hates Libya. Goddamn Qadiffi is as nutty as a fruitcake, you ask me. But someone, somewhere, decided that he was stable enough to deal with. And after Iran, we wanted to make sure we had a good friend on the Arab side in that mess of a Middle East. We already are pretty good friends with Israel, as long as their agenda matches ours. As soon as we start to deviate, Israel starts getting antsy, and we can’t do dick with anyone there that’s not Jewish.” He saw a sudden darkness in Mulder’s eyes, and quickly moved to correct himself.

“Let me make one thing clear, Mr. Mulder. I’m no anti- Semite. But I do believe that we need stability in that region, and there are some factions on the Israeli side that need to chill the fuck out a bit. They have to realize that we need friends on all sides of the fence, and if they’d allow us to make friends, we might just be able to keep all the real anti-Semites off their backs.

“And, of course, that’s what caused the entire problem. Someone somewhere decided to give some…information, some advice to the Libyans to…shit, I don’t know what the reason was. But we never gave any real useful information to them. But the information we did give them was enough. They found a couple of Germans that liked the idea of a few hundred million in a bank account in exchange for CNWDI help-”

“Excuse me?” The word Hamm had said sounded like “Cindy,” but Mulder didn’t recognize the acronym.

“CNWDI. Critical Nuclear Weapons Design Information. How to make a little bomb make a really big boom.”

“We gave that information to Libya?”

“No, not really. We gave them just a little bit of help with some other matters. Seven-axle milling machines, tools like that. Stuff that can be used to build a nuke, or submarine propeller blades. Dual-use technology is the term.”

“Didn’t DTSA get upset?”

“Well, if they fuckin’ knew about it, I’m sure they would have, Mr. Mulder. This was high-level intelligence stuff. No one over at DTSA had a vote.”

“I see.”

“No,” Hamm corrected. “You don’t. But you will. See, once the morons in DC realized that Qadaffi had more help than he needed making a boom-boom, we were sent in to make it go away. My SEAL Team, Alpha and Bravo Platoons, SEAL Team One, were sent in to make the nuclear refinery and the site where we had shipped all those cool toys go away. The only problem was that OPSEC got blown out of the water, and we had those little kiddies waiting for us. A Soviet transport plane dropped ‘em right on our position. As you probably knew already, Stone got his plane shot out from under him, and he parachuted down in the middle of the action.”

Mulder nodded, he knew this.

“But what you don’t know is what happened next. We were on a secure radio link back up the chain of command. We were ordered to take the survivors out. Kill them all, as the saying went, and let God sort ‘em out. Our CO refused. Said he wouldn’t be a party to killing children. Stone outranked the CO, technically, and he ordered Sam to do the deed. Sam again refused, and instead of getting into an argument in front of the men, Stone took Sam behind a sand dune and tried to explain the geopolitical implications of having any survivors. Sam again refused, or so I suspect, because the next thing I know, Sam’s got a bellyfull of lead.”

Hamm paused. “Stone executed my Commanding Officer, Mr. Mulder. He cited an old provision in the UCMJ about cowardice in the face of the enemy, and killed Sam deader’n shit. Then he announced that he would kill any SEAL that didn’t carry out the lawful orders of the officers appointed above them.”

Mulder frowned. “SEALs are trained killers, Mr. Hamm. Everyone knows that. Why the hell didn’t they take Stone out in the desert?”

Hamm smiled, a grim, deaths-head smile that shook Mulder to the core. “Because of OPSEC again, Mr. Mulder. Sam, my CO, and Stone, the air element commander, were the only ones that had the radio codes to get us the fuck out of there. If we had killed Stone and then tried to contact the Nimitz for extraction, we would have been told politely to go fuck ourselves. Stone had us between Iraq and a hard place.” Hamm smiled at his own weak joke. “Stone then proceeded to execute thirty children by shooting them in the back of the head. Waxed a good lot of ‘em before some of the more bloodthirsty SEALs realized that Stone was serious, and they proceeded to do the rest.”

Mulder asked the next obvious question. “Did you kill anyone?”

“No,” Hamm said softly. “I picked two that were already dead and put a bullet into their heads. I didn’t want to get left in the desert, son.”

Mulder nodded; he might not have agreed with the man’s actions, but he sure could understand them. “Understood,” he said, moving on. “What happened next?”

“We got exfiltrated to the Nimitz aboard a RH-53D, and that was the last I heard of it. I was sure that we’d be in the papers the next morning, but nothing ever came of it.”

Mulder wrote that down. “Debriefing?”

“Short, sweet, and to the point. That never happened, you were never there, the usual line of bullshit.”

“I see.” Mulder paused again. “What do you think happened? About the raid, I mean. Why didn’t it ever make the papers?”

Hamm grunted. “Not sure. I’ll tell you what I think, though.”

Mulder made a come-on gesture with his hand. “Israel. I think a back channel communication to Libya through the Syrian embassy told Libya in short, easy-to-understand diplomatic sentences that if word of the raid ever hit the international press that IAF F-15’s and F-16’s would level Tripoli. Bomb it flat. And back in those days, as much as Libya publicly hated Israel, secretly they were afraid of the little bastards.”

Again, Mulder’s face held a pained expression. Hamm frowned. “Mr. Mulder, I’m going to say this one more time. I have no problems with Israelis. They are some of the finest soldiers I have ever seen, and knowing what they have to go through every day of their lives, I cannot blame them for the positions they take in politics. They live, surrounded by their enemies, day after day, and have only survived by having the attitude they do. Fuck with us, and we will bomb you flat. It hasn’t always worked, but it’s worked long enough and well enough for them, I suppose. I have served with them, Mr. Mulder, fought along side them, and have seen what they will go through in the defense of their country. I have held their dying in my arms. If I want to call them little bastards, I will do so, sir, and you will not make those faces at me if you wish this or any other conversation to continue. Do I make myself clear?”

Mulder had heard the man’s Command Voice coming through loud and clear. He nodded. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Pay it no mind, Mr. Mulder.”

Mulder asked the next question. “Aside from your personal animosity towards Commander Stone, is there any other reason you’re talking to me today, sir?”

Hamm frowned. “I see what you’re getting at, Mulder.” Mulder doubted that he did, but the man’s next words surprised him and made Mulder realize that Hamm was much more astute than his grizzled Navy-veteran exterior let on.

“In case I’m called to testify, the prosecution, in this case, the government, has to be sure that I’m not furthering some hidden, personal agenda. Makes sense to me.” Mulder nodded, surprised.

“Well, sir, I’ll say this about that. The only reason I’m talking to you is because you asked me to, because you are a representative of the government, and I have a feeling that Stone has finally stepped in it deep, up to his arms.”

Mulder nodded, but said nothing more.

“Typical,” Hamm grunted. “Here I spill my guts out to you, revealing details about a covert operation, details that could get me thrown in jail, and all you can do is nod your head like some silly puppet.”

Mulder grinned. “I wasn’t aware that guilt was in the normal bag of tricks belonging to a Navy officer.”

Hamm smiled. “Whatever works, boy. Whatever works.”

Mulder grinned. “Well, considering that this country saw fit to give you a TOP SECRET security clearance, I’ll tell you this much. Commander Stone was involved in a mission during the Gulf War. He was busted off flight status after the Libyan thing, and he joined the SEALS, as I’m sure you’re aware.” Hamm nodded, motioning for Mulder to continue. “Anyway, that mission also ended in the death of the commanding officer, and I’m beginning to see a pattern. Stone kills anyone that doesn’t agree with his mission.” Mulder paused, though, realizing the inconsistency.

“What is it, son? You look like you got something on your mind.”

“The mission in Iraq, or so we were told, was to assassinate Saddam. Only this time, Stone wanted to scrub the mission, and the CO didn’t. The CO ended up dead, and the team exfiltrated without completing the mission.”

Hamm grunted. “Makes perfect sense to me, Mr. Mulder.”

Mulder was confused. “How so?”

Hamm grunted again. “Shit, it’s staring you right in the face, boy!” Mulder just shrugged his shoulders.

“Why don’t you explain it to me?”

Hamm sighed deeply. “Very well. The first thought that comes to mind is why the team was sent in. As I recall it, Saddam was a very hard person to find. So they were probably sent in blind, with limited or no intelligence, on the off chance that they might stumble across Saddam. Stone has a very well-developed sense of self-preservation. He felt the heat and decided it was time to bug out. I bet he even got orders over secure radio to get the hell out of dodge, and told the CO that, and the CO was one of those gung-ho types that wanted to complete the mission, make his bones, get his first blooding. Things like that look good on a career 201 form, Mulder. Stone saw the writing on the wall and did what he always does when he thinks his ass, his career, or both are in the line. He made the problem go away.”

Hamm paused, thinking. “If you don’t mind my asking, who was the CO that Stone waxed?”

“You don’t know?”

Hamm shook his head. “By that time, Stone had left the teams and was working for those GOBLIN assholes.”

Mulder nodded, realizing the man was right. He opened his notepad and flipped the pages, looking for the information.

“Graves. Scott Graves.”

Hamm visibly blanched. “Oh shit,” he said, slumping back in his chair. “If fits…it all fits.”

“What?”

“Mr. Mulder, you said that Commander Stone was involved in some murders, or so you thought. All the members of the Iraqi team have been killed, except for him, right?”

Mulder nodded.

“Well, try this one on for size. Scott Graves is the younger brother of my old commanding officer, Samuel Graves.”

Mulder felt the color draining from his face. “Brothers? He killed brothers?”

Hamm nodded. “Looks that way.”

“Holy shit!”

“Wait,” Graves said, holding up a hand. “It gets better than that. You mentioned another officer, a Major Haynes. That wouldn’t have been Heather Haynes, would it?”

Again, Mulder nodded.

“In addition to her other duties,” Hamm said sarcastically, “Heather was involved with Scott Graves.”

“I knew that.”

“Well, did you know that Heather was also involved with Scott’s brother?”

“Sam?”

“No, Mr. Mulder. Not Scott. There are three brothers. Scott was the youngest. Sam was the middle. Danny is the oldest. Danny Graves.”

And Mulder knew who the killer was.

“What does Danny do?”

“Danny? Danny is a legend, Mr. Mulder. Danny’s got to be close to fifty now, but in his prime, he was one of the best specwar operators there ever was. Killing machine. He left the teams in the late seventies to go to work for those Goblin assholes. Then he left them because they weren’t mean enough for him. He went to something even more secret, more covert than the Goblin teams. He went to GOLDEN ROPE.”

Mulder frowned, scribbling madly on his pad.

“Golden Rope?”

“Outgrowth of the Phoenix project in Vietnam,” Hamm explained. “Hunter killer teams, only they’re much more subtle than the Goblin teams. They were designed to operate in Europe, the Far East. I know for a fact the managed to wax at least one member of the Chinese Politburo. Don’t ask me how, being they were all white. But they managed not only to get into Beijing, but to wax the poor bastard in his sleep and make it out, all totally, completely undetected. That was their specialty, Mr. Mulder. Swift, sudden, undetectable death.”

Mulder nodded, still writing. “Who can I call to confirm this?”

Hamm snorted, and then laughed outright. “Mr. Mulder, there’s no one in the military OR civilian intelligence apparatus that will confirm or deny the existence of GOLDEN ROPE. For one thing, they don’t exist anymore. They were disbanded during the ISA fiasco. They all got new names, new faces, new identities, and vanished into the mist. You’ll never be able to find-”

“Hey, I found out about the GOBLIN teams and JOVIAL CLOWN, didn’t I?”

Hamm begrudgingly admitted the point. “Sure. You did.” He paused. “Mr. Mulder, I spoke with an associate of mine in Texas. He called me just before I left to inform me that he had been asked to attend this little meeting as well. I told my friend that I’d tell you everything, and that he has nothing to add.”

Mulder frowned. “I would have liked to…never mind, Mr. Hamm. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I’m glad I could, son.” Hamm stood to leave, and then stopped. “Let me just add one more thing. If you decide to go after Danny Graves, I’d suggest you inform your next of kin.”

Mulder looked up from his desk, thinking I have no next of kin.

Except Mom.

“Why?”

“Because he’s the best that ever was, son. You go after him, and the only thing you’re gonna need is a body bag. One for you, and one for that pretty little partner of yours.” Hamm held out his hand. “Nice talking to you, son.” Mulder shook his hand and watched as Hamm made his way out of the office. At the door, the man stopped.

God, what is it about that door? Mulder thought.

“One more thing. Don’t ever call me again.”

And with that, Hamm took his leave of Mulder’s office. Mulder sat down and started writing furiously, wanting to get all his thoughts down on paper while they were still fresh. He was in the middle of sentence, the middle of an actual word, just writing the left frame of the letter “A” when the thought struck him.

How did Hamm know that Scully was pretty?

Circles within circles, Mulder thought. An onion. A few moments ago, he’d been ready to call Scully up in Groton and tell her to come back, that they’d gotten all the information they needed from Hamm. But that one remark, that casual, almost offhand statement about his ‘pretty little partner’ had…what?

Brought under suspicion every single thing that Hamm had said.

“Shit!” Mulder swore, throwing his pen across the room. Boxes within boxes. Circles within circles.

What next?

***

Motel 6
Groton, Connecticut
2104 Hours

Mulder stepped out of the cab at the motel entrance, entered the office, got his room key and inquired about Scully’s room.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t-” the clerk started. She looked up to see Mulder holding up his leather-bound FBI credentials folder.

“Oh,” she said. “Room 1013.”

Of course, Mulder thought. How obvious.

Shouldering his bag, he walked quickly to his room (1011, next door, ‘natch,) and dropped everything on the bed. He crept to the connecting door and pushed it open with his fingertips. The room was mostly dark, lit only by the glow of the TV. Scully was on the bed, wearing her trademark blue Pjs, her head lolling against the headboard.

She’s asleep, he thought. He started to back away, to close the door and let her sleep, when he remembered that Scully had asked him to wake her.

Well, there were ways to wake a woman, and there were…ways. He decided to wake her the safest way he knew how, and left the door opening. Shrugging out of his suit jacket, Mulder moved to the bathroom, intending to start the shower. He had so much to tell her, but he felt grimy from the road.

“Hey,” he heard. He turned.

Scully was standing in the doorway between their two rooms, rubbing sleep out of her eyes with the heels of her hands.

She looks like a little girl, Mulder thought, and then another, more important thought announced itself.

She’s only wearing the tops of those Pjs. He could see her bare feet, and her sleek, smooth legs, and then the tail of her top. Nothing else.

Nothing.

Mulder found suddenly hard to swallow.

“You just get in?” she asked softly. He just nodded. She smiled warmly at him, moving towards him slowly. As she passed in front of the light on the beside table, Mulder saw the angry marks Stone’s fingers had left on her neck, and he felt the anger rising in him again, threatening to block out all other thoughts. Then she was in front of the light, and Mulder knew with certainty that Scully was, indeed, not wearing anything besides that top. He saw the dark shadow between her legs and he had to turn away, it was too much, way, way too much, seeing Scully like that. He’d seen her naked before, and almost naked dozens of times, in hospitals, in E.R.‘s across the country and across the world. But this was different, he knew that, and so did she.

Mulder tried to concentrate on something else, something different. Stone. Think about Stone. Asshole extraordinaire. Think about the man that put his fucking hands on her neck, that beautiful, slim, swan’s neck that-

Mulder turned back to see Scully standing very close. Looking up at him, Scully saw the fear and the want and the hunger and the anger in his eyes, the dangerous, volatile mix of emotions that were always swimming just below the surface with Mulder. His passion, his drive were so evident when she looked into his eyes. It was a treat that Scully didn’t allow herself that often. Too dangerous.

“Wait,” Mulder said, moving around her.

Wait? Scully thought. Wait what? What did he think I was-

Oh.

Mulder found his cellphone and dialed quickly. When a voice answered, he said, “Give me the watch commander. This is Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI.” Scully shot him an eyebrow, and he mouthed the words “Police” at her.

Scully’s eyebrow arched a little higher. He motioned for her to join him. She moved to the bed, sitting next to where he stood, her palms flat on the mattress looking up at him.

“Captain Wallace,” a voice answered. “Watch commander. What can I do for the FBI?”

“There’s a man sitting outside the apartment building of my partner, in the alley on the south side. He’s stalking her. Do me a favor and roust him, ok? Nothing too…brutal. Just make it clear that the Annapolis police don’t appreciate that kind of…activity.”

“Mr. Mulder, is it? Mr. Mulder, can I have your FBI ID number?” Mulder read it off from memory, and Wallace asked him to hold.

Scully was standing now, very close to Mulder, her hands on his hips. “You want to explain this, Mulder? Now?”

“In a minute, Scully.” She gave him The Look, and he frowned. “I promise. In a minute.” Scully nodded, satisfied, and sat back down on the bed. A Mulder Promise was as good as gold.

As long as she had him in her sight, anyway.

She sighed, waiting, and the motion caused one shoulder to slip out of her top, baring it. Mulder glanced down, and saw her sleek, porcelain skin, and had to look away. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she know what the sight of that did to him?

Of course I do, Scully thought, reading his mind. Does he know what it does to me to know what it does to him? She smiled inwardly, keeping her expression carefully neutral, as if she didn’t know what it did to him.

Wallace came back on the line. “Give me the address, Mr. Mulder.” Mulder gave Wallace Scully’s address. “By the way, Captain, this man is armed. He is a special agent with NIS, and he will claim that he’s on an investigation. Don’t believe him. Hell, don’t believe me. His CO is Admiral Jake Karn, NIS HQ, Little Creek. Give Karn a call if you don’t believe me, or call the NIS Duty Desk at the Pentagon.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Agent Mulder. We’ll take care of this. Good night.” Wallace hung up, and Mulder considered faking the call for a few more minutes, but in the end decided that it was safer to get undressed and take a shower, Scully or no.

He thumbed the PWR button on his cell and tossed it on the bed.

“Now give, Mulder,” Scully demanded.

“Shower first, Scully.”

She saw her opening and stood, her hands moving to the buttons on her top. “If you insist, Mulder. If that’s the only way-”

His hand stayed her actions. “Ok, fine. I give up. Sit down.”

She looked up slowly, her eyes fluttering open, her lashes looking like the delicate petals of a precious flower. Her eyes, deep blue, the color of the ocean on a stormy morning, found his, and locked, boring into his soul. Without speaking, her hands came up and found his tie, swiftly undoing the knot and sliding it out from under his collar.

“Talk to me, Mulder, or I’m going to strip you naked.”

He moved back a step, finding it hard to breathe. “Scully! What’s gotten into you?”

She sat back down on the bed, pouting. “I don’t know, Mulder. I just—” She sighed. “Tell you what, let’s talk about the asshole, and that’ll probably take my mind off more dangerous topics.”

Mulder silently gave thanks for the enigmatic Dr. Scully’s practical side, and moved to the only chair in the room, sitting down and toeing his shoes off. Quickly, he explained what he had seen that morning outside her apartment.

“And so you sent me to Groton because…what? You didn’t think-”

“Hold it, Scully. I sent you here because I had an interview to conduct, and, well, the tickets were already booked. Seemed a shame to waste both of them.” He paused. “And to be honest, if he had come up to your apartment, you would have shot him dead, and that would have put the kibosh on this investigation. At least your part in it.”

Scully nodded, accepting his logic, seeing the truth in his eyes.

“Why didn’t you go and grab him, Mulder?”

He grinned. “Because I wanted to get up here.” To be with you, he thought, but didn’t say.

Thank you, she thought back. He smiled, getting the message.

“So what did Hamm have to say?” Scully asked. Mulder filled her in, including the part about Hamm calling her ‘that pretty little partner of yours.’

“That’s odd,” Scully remarked.

“Yeah. I get the feeling we’re being run-around again, Scully.”

“You think this interview aboard the Georgia is a waste of time?”

Mulder considered this. “No. For one thing, we know, but they don’t know we know, ya know?” She smiled at his attempt at levity and waited for him to continue. “We’ll ambush Commander Jenkins tomorrow morning, tell him that we know someone’s been in contact with him, and if he doesn’t cooperate we’ll file an Article 16 to have him arrested by the FBI and turned over to civilian authority on a charge of obstructing justice. That should shake him up enough to answer the first few questions before he realizes we don’t have a leg to stand on.”

Scully nodded, agreeing. “Sounds like a good idea.”

Mulder stood, bare to the waist, bare feet, wearing nothing but his suit pants. “And now, I’m going to take a shower.”

Scully saw the look on his face and stood to join him. “I’ll go back to my room. Come on in and say goodnight before you go to bed, okay?”

“Gonna tell me a story, Scully?”

“Maybe,” she said, flashing another smile. And then she was gone, softly closing the door behind her.

Sighing, Mulder headed for the shower.

***

Mulder wrapped a towel around his waist and exited the bathroom, moving to his overnight bag. He found the comfortable sweats and t-shirt that he liked to ‘sleep’ in, as he referred to it. Sleep. What a joke. He’d turn on the tv, find an all-nite- creature-feature and doze in front of the set. Amazing what the human body can become accustomed to, he thought. Four hours of restless sleep a night punctuated by sweaty, nightmarish visions of a past that he’d almost rather forget, were it not for Sam.

He dressed quickly, and then moved to the connecting door. Scully was asleep again, and Mulder moved to the bed, looking down at his partner.

The PJ top had shifted up, baring more than a partner- like expanse of warm, smooth thigh. He thought about running his hand over the skin there, testing the warmth and smoothness, but decided to tug it down instead.

His fingers had just closed over the material when Scully’s hand gripped his wrist.

“Playing possum, Scully?”

“I wanted…” she started, and then stopped. She started again: “I wanted to see what you were going to do.”

“Did I pass the test?” he asked, a bit of heat creeping into his voice.

She turned over, still holding his wrist.

“No,” she whispered, using the wrist to pull him to her. “I wanted you to pull it up, Mulder.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 12/38

Motel 6
Room 1013
Groton, Connecticut

Mulder settled down next to Scully on the bed, closing his eyes as his head came into contact with the pillow. Her hand was still on his wrist, and she shifted on the bed, turning her back to him, bring his arm across her hip to her stomach. He could feel the soft pressure of her buttocks pressing against him through her top and his sweats. To say it was distracting would be the same as saying that the sun was ‘warm.’

To her credit, Scully seemed to know what she was doing to him, and what she was capable of doing to him. She didn’t move a muscle, content just to have him close to her, next to her, his steady, even breathing comforting her.

Mulder was trying to piece his thoughts together. “Scully,” he said softly, “What’s happening?”

She thought of answering his question with a typical enigmatic question of her own, something along the lines of ‘What do you want to have happen, Mulder?’ but decided that although it was a safe answer, an answer that would put the ball squarely back into his court, it was not a particularly fair question, considering the circumstances. She had, after all, just about thrown herself at him. And that, she knew, was the question he was actually asking. Why?

“I’m…not sure,” she admitted. “I can’t tell you where this is heading right now, here, tonight. I know that I want you beside me. I liked waking up in your arms this morning.”

Mulder smiled in the near darkness. That had been a wonderful way to start the day.

“We’ve both thought about it,” Scully said, and Mulder knew what she meant. “We wouldn’t be human if we hadn’t.”

He chose to say nothing, letting her continue, letting Scully talk it out. In all the years that he had known her, she always thought best when she verbalized what was on her mind. He’d been her sounding board (and she his,) for so long that it seemed unnatural to have a discussion on any topic with anyone else until he’d shared his thoughts with her first.

“And, we’ve both come up with all the reasons we should, and all the reasons we shouldn’t.”

Mulder shifted on the bed, trying to get a little more comfortable. His movements were not intended to excite or torment, but they had that effect. Scully closed her eyes as she felt the obvious evidence of his masculinity pressing against her tush.

It took a monumental effort on her part not to push back against him.

He felt and heard her sigh deeply, and knew that the rarest of the rare moments between them was about to occur. Dana Scully was going to share what was really on her mind.

“Wait,” he said, moving to get up off the bed.

“No, don’t leave,” she pleaded.

“I’m just going to turn the TV off,” he said. “Total darkness has a way of bringing secrets out.” His smile was warm and comforting, and Scully loved him for it, for his concern, for his complete knowledge of her feelings and her difficulty in talking about them. She reached over to the nightstand on her side of the bed and found the remote.

“Modern technology,” she murmured. She thumbed the TV off and the room went black, inky black. She felt Mulder settle in next to her again, this time with a slightly larger amount of space between their bodies. Good thing he can’t see my face, Scully thought with a devilish smile. She made as if she were fluffing her pillows, and when she settled back down on the bed, she felt him against her backside again. He moved, as if to shift away again, and quietly she said, “Don’t.”

He froze.

“Scully,” he whispered, his voice ragged, his breath shallow, barely controlled.

“Can you just hold me, Mulder?” He tried not to sigh, tried not to let her know how much this was affecting him. Being this close to her was driving him insane. Slowly, deliciously insane. “Can we just be best friends tonight, Mulder? A man and a woman? Not partners?”

“We can try,” he croaked. Scully smiled and snuggled a little closer, trying very hard not to cross the line. How many times? she thought. How many times have this man and I come up to that line, toed the line, looked at the line, reached out and all but tweaked the line? She remembered the times he’d been there for her, and the times she’d been there for him. A hug here, a slight grazing of their hands there, a look, a glance shot across their basement office, an arched eyebrow raised against an insane theory, a soft, small smile offered as a gift when he said or did something that was just so completely Mulder that she broke her long-standing rule not to let him know just how inside her soul he truly was.

“I’m just so lonely, Mulder.” The words shocked them both. Scully felt her eyes widening in horror. She had no idea what had compelled her to voice a thought, an emotion that was just beginning to bubble to the surface of her own consciousness. She felt the hot, angry sting of the tears building, the heavy, liquid sensation behind her eyes annoying and relieving at the same time. Annoying because it was a loss of her precious control, the tool she used to distance herself from the horrors she was forced to witness every day of her life. Control was the only thing that kept her alive, kept her sane, kept her functioning at a personal and professional level.

Control, she realized, that kept the most important people in her life at a safe, comfortable distance. Control that made thousands of nights long, lonely ordeals that she filled with writing reports and reading medical journals.

Mulder’s fingers insinuated themselves between the buttons of her top, his fingers finding and lightly stroking the smooth, soft skin of her belly. He found her navel and circled it slowly. Scully closed her eyes and tried to suppress an audible moan. She waited to see what happened next, waited to see if Mulder’s hands were going to rise to her breasts or lower to her hips, to see if he was going to go exploring, to see if he wanted to discover all the secrets she wanted to share with him.

But he did not. His touch was gentle, soft, comforting, but not arousing. He wasn’t trying to arouse her, she realized. He was just… being Mulder.

The fact that his touch burned Scully’s skin didn’t surprise her.

“Is that why you…” He stopped, trying to find the words, and discovered that there were none.

“Matt?”

He sighed in the darkness. “Yes.”

Scully shrugged. “I’m…not sure. He made it clear that he… wanted me. As a woman. I can’t remember the last time that happened.” She paused. “It felt good.” Very good, she silently amended.

His hands paused their movement for the briefest of instants, and then started again. Scully felt his hesitation, his pause, and closed her eyes. She’d hurt him by her actions with Matt, she knew. How deeply, she had yet to discover.

“I’m just sick of…being alone, I guess. Of not having anyone to share with.” She felt his hand pause again, and Scully decided to take the offensive. She twisted in his embrace, turning to face him. His hand got caught on a button lifted the top almost completely off her hips. His eyes were wide, she could see them, his gaze locked on hers. Without saying a word, Scully reached down and undid the last button, allowing his hand to slide across her hip, into the dark warmth at the small of her back. Scully used her hand on his arm to guide his touch to where she wanted it, needed it. His fingers were inches from the gentle swell of her buttocks, and Scully liked the feeling.

And she realized with a sudden certainty that it was OK to like the feeling of Mulder’s hand there. He was Mulder. He would never consciously hurt her. At times, Mulder was perhaps the most annoying, confounding man that she had ever known. He could be selfish, controlling, manipulating and egotistical in the extreme. His beliefs were his armor against the world, just as icy self-control was hers. It set him apart from and above those that he did not respect. But he could also be the most wonderful man she had ever known. When he smiled at her that one way, that one certain way, it sent shivers down her spine, caused heat to blossom in the pit of her stomach (and sometimes even lower, she thought.) When he touched her those oh-so infrequent times, she felt whole, complete.

“Scully,” he whispered, and to her ears, it was the most wonderful sound in the world.

“I’m so scared, Mulder,” she whispered.

“Of me?”

“No, of us. We could spend all night rationalizing about how there is no ‘us,’ how we’re just friends and partners, how anything more would be insane and dangerous, how our being together would be nothing but ammunition for those that stand against us, but there is no denying that you and I are…how this is meant to…”

She stopped again, unable to say the words on her lips. Her hand found his face, her nails lightly scratching the skin, her fingers tracing the strong line of his jaw. His eyes closed at her soft, gentle touch and he turned his face into it, his lips brushing against her palm. Scully felt a tightness in her chest, felt it suddenly difficult to breathe.

“I…I’ve given you my trust, Mulder. There is no one else I trust as much as you,” she whispered.

He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her that he trusted her, too, but Scully’s hand moved from his cheek to his mouth. She pressed two fingers against his lips, silencing his words before they had a chance to escape, before he broke the spell.

“I’ve given you my trust, Mulder…I want to give you my heart.”

There.

She’d said it. A long, comfortable silence enveloped them. Mulder’s hand started moving again, his fingers tracing her spine, his touch dancing on her skin. Then his hand was moving lower, past her back…she felt his fingers as they lightly, softly grazed the skin of her buttocks, his hand finally coming to rest on her left cheek, his fingers testing the soft, buoyant skin.

Scully gasped, closing her eyes. It had been so long since anyone had touched her there. She took shallow breaths, letting them out heavily, gasping in the darkened motel room. Mulder’s hand ascended again, found the small of her back, and came to rest.

“It’s just…so much,” he finally said. “Almost too much, Scully.” She lowered her gaze, tucking her chin into her chest, trying not to cry in front of this man.

“Look at me,” he whispered.

She raised her eyes.

“I said almost, Scully. Almost too much.” He paused. “I’m just worried, that’s all.”

He felt her stiffen, as if she was going to pull away. He smiled in the darkness, a wry, rueful smile. He locked his elbow, preventing her from moving at all. “Listen to me,” he said softly, quietly. “Let me finish.”

She relaxed, and he brought her slightly closer, her hand coming up to his chest, her fingers softly stroking him.

“I’m worried that…how can I say this? I’m worried that you may be…a little…shaken because of what happened today. You’re right, Scully. I have thought about it…about us. You were right; I wouldn’t be human if I hadn’t noticed this incredible person in my life, this person that keeps me sane without even trying. This person that… fills my life with warmth and…love.” There. He’d said it.

“I want to…explore this, Scully. You’re too important to me to just…rush into this. Today was a stressful, traumatic day, no matter how much you’d like to deny it. Drawing a gun on a man you have feelings for is not easy.”

“I know,” she giggled, and Mulder remembered. Her hand moved to the puckered scar on his left shoulder. She traced it with her fingers, closing her eyes and remembering the moment, the only moment in her life she ever considering shooting someone out of love.

He sighed, pulling her closer. He felt one warm leg slide over his, the skin smooth and hot against his. If they got any closer, it wouldn’t matter what he wanted, or what she wanted. Instinct, attraction and desire would take over. And then something might happen that they could both possibly regret for the rest of their lives.

“When you told me that Stone had put his hands on your throat, I wanted to kill the bastard. And not because you’re my partner. I mean…yes, you are my partner, and anyone that threatens my partner threatens me. But you’re also…so much more to me than just a partner, Scully. We’ve always known that. We haven’t said anything because… well, because we are who we are. Both of us, stubborn, headstrong, sure and complete in the knowledge that we don’t need anyone, that we’re both on a solitary crusade, you to find the truth through science and research, me, on the same hunt, the same crusade, but from a different angle. Both of us…alone and together at the same time.” She felt his lips press against her forehead and she closed her eyes, savoring the warm, gentle contact.

“And here we sit, both of us struggling to contain the… desire, that hungry ache we both feel for each other. It would be so easy to give in, Scully. So easy to just roll over, take that top off of you and do what we both want so badly, so desperately. The thought of…the thought of taking you in my arms, of making love with you, of losing myself inside you is so tempting, so…appealing that it’s almost impossible to describe.”

Scully smiled, tucking her head under his chin, her own chin against his chest, turning her head slightly so she could hear the beating of his heart.

“But we gotta wait, Scully. We’re in the middle of a case right now. A case that involves things we’re only just beginning to decipher and understand. Our emotions are running high and tight, the mixture is too pure, too rich. We risk flaming out and crashing and burning. And I don’t want to crash and burn, Scully.”

He withdrew his hand from under her shirt and used it to lift her chin, to bring her eyes to his. “I don’t want to start something that we can’t finish.” He paused. “There’s so much danger, Scully. I’m afraid of losing you, of pushing you away when I get…the way I get. I’m not exactly what any mentally stable woman would consider a ‘catch,’ Scully.”

Oh, you’re just about as wrong as a person could be, she thought.

“Can I ask you a favor?” she said softly.

“Anything, Scully.”

“Will you hold me tonight? Just like this? Will you spend the night next to me, let me sleep in your arms? I just need to be held, Mulder. I can wait for the rest. We both can. But I want…I need this contact with you, Mulder. When I’m in your arms, I feel so safe and loved. Will you do that?”

He laughed softly. “Sure, Scully. I’ll even go one better. I’ll hold you any night you want. For now, that’s about as far as we should go. Deal?”

She nodded, lowering her face to his chest again. “Deal, Mulder.”

***

Motel 6
Groton, Connecticut
0615 Hours

Mulder came awake slowly, aware that he had greeted the dawning of a new day in the arms of his partner again. They had spent the night much like it had started, in each other’s arms. As Scully would shift and turn and twist in the night, his body would move to find hers again, his arms snaking across her hip, finding her stomach or her thighs, pulling her against him, finding solace and warmth in her softness, her heat. His eyes opened, sticky and heavy with sleep. They were on their sides, snuggled together, two spoons in a warm, comfortable drawer. Her eyes were closed, and he took the moment to study her features, losing himself in her quiet, gentle beauty.

He reached over and swept a lock of her hair away from her face, gently tucking it behind her ear, the better to see the sweet line of her jaw, the gentle arch of her cheek, the intriguing curve of her nose.

Scully’s eyes slid open, curtains parting to show him her soul. Her head twisted on the pillow.

“Morning,” she said, her voice thick with sleep.

“Morning,” he replied.

They smiled at each other for a brief second. “We have to get moving,” he said apologetically. She nodded, but didn’t move.

He moved first, withdrawing his arm and swinging his feet over the edge of the bed, standing and moving towards his room.

“Breakfast in an hour?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, already missing him. He closed the connecting door and leaned against it, letting out a huge, deep sigh. Scully, he thought, and that was his only thought.

Scully.

***

Scully snuggled back under the covers for five more minutes. One of the things she was most proud of was the fact that she’d somehow managed to convince Mulder that she needed an hour every morning to get ready. In reality, it took her less than twenty-five minutes to rise, take a shower, dress and apply the little makeup she wore. Truth be told, she enjoyed that extra half hour of dozing in the warm, comfy bed. Especially this morning, as the sheets and pillow to her left still smelled like him, still held his warmth. She moved to them, drawing them around her, wallowing in his scent.

She drew the sheets to her chin, turning on her side to look out the window. The sun was coming up, just peeking over the ocean, and Scully tried to remember every single detail of the night before.

She stayed that way for perhaps two minutes, remembering.

Time to go, her mind said.

Sighing, she scooted to the other side of the bed and stood, stretching and yawning.

A shower would feel wonderful.

Her hands moved to her top, the fingers nimbly releasing the buttons.

***

Shit, Mulder thought. The damn housekeepers forgot shampoo! There was nothing in the bathroom except two miniature bars of soap, neatly wrapped and left on the small shelf above the vanity. Running a hand through his hair, Mulder considered just skipping it this morning, and then decided against it.

He grabbed his bathrobe and tugged it closed against his nakedness, tying it closed. He moved to the connecting door, a small smile on his face. Scully liked to sleep in, he knew, and glancing at his watch he saw that he still had another ten or fifteen minutes by his estimation before she got up. He knew that Scully thought she’d fooled him. It was a secret that he loved keeping, because she took so much pleasure in continuing the little white lie.

He pushed the connecting door open and stepped through.

***

Just in time to see Scully drop the top and take a single step towards the bathroom. She froze, her eyes wide, her mouth forming a surprised little “O”.

Mulder froze.

Time froze.

He couldn’t help himself. He felt his eyes leaving her face, dragging themselves down her body, taking in the lines and the planes and the curves of her form, drinking in the sight of her completely naked body. Her tiny, perfectly formed feet, sleek, muscular calves, smooth, warm thighs, the juncture protected by the curly auburn hairs, the gentle swell of her stomach, two proud, high perfect breasts, her slim, swan’s neck, and then her mouth, still formed in that “O.”

Time started again, and Scully quickly moved again, her hand reaching back to the bed, finding her top and drawing it against her, two hands clutching the material and bringing it against her body, holding it just above her breasts like a matador’s cape.

“Mulder,” she whispered, her eyes wide and liquid.

“Shampoo,” he whispered. “Needed…shampoo.” And then she saw it. A medical doctor herself, Scully was no stranger to the physiology of men. She knew that as they slept, their bladders filled with the output of the kidneys, putting more and more pressure on the prostrate until the inevitable happened. Most men awoke with a certain condition, a pressing fullness below the waist that could only be relieved with a shiver-inducing visit to the bathroom.

But she’d heard the water sounds coming through the walls. She knew that he’d already done his morning business. So that slowly growing mass under his bathrobe was not the result of having drank too much water the night before.

No, she was the cause of that swelling, and it sent a shiver of delight and anticipatory pleasure tingling through her body.

She moved towards the bathroom, finding an extra bottle of shampoo that housekeeping had left. Grabbing it, she turned back to Mulder, facing him from the bathroom door, and tossed it underhand.

It hit him square in the chest and dropped to the floor with a soft thud. His eyes were still on her, and Scully realized that when she’d turned to go into the bathroom, she’d shown Mulder her naked backside. She saw that the lump under his bathrobe was even more pronounced.

Scully had a sudden wicked thought, and without further contemplation, she acted on it.

She dropped the top again, feeling it pool around her feet.

Mulder’s eyes widened even more, if that were possible.

The lump shifted and throbbed.

Scully felt her eyelids lowering, suddenly heavy and hot.

“I love the way you look at me,” she whispered, and then closed the bathroom door.

***

Mulder stood there for a good twenty seconds, and then stooped to grab the shampoo. Sluggishly, dumbly, he moved back to his room and into the bathroom. Cranking the shower handles, he waited until the water was sufficiently warm to enter, and then stood under the spray, staring at nothing, his mind whirling with images of Scully’s perfect nakedness.

The level of intimacy, of closeness needed for Scully to do that was amazing, Mulder thought. Her trust in me…in us was just about the most incredible thing he had ever experienced. He knew she’d seen his reaction, his body’s automatic response to her incredible, breathtaking beauty.

Still blown away, Mulder started washing himself, only realizing after a few moments that he’d forgotten to take the wrapper off the soap.

The way I look at her? he thought.

***

Scully turned the water off and exited the shower. Grabbing a towel and quickly dried herself and then dressed. Glancing at her watch, she realized that Mulder had been in the shower for almost twenty minutes.

I wonder if…she thought. If he’s…relieving himself?

He’s been in there too long, she told herself. I’d better check on him to see if he’s all right.

***

Mulder glanced down at his hands and saw the skin beginning to prune up, and realized he’d been standing under the hot water for close to half an hour. He was running late. He cranked the handles off and swept the shower curtain back with his arm, reaching for a towel.

That was when he saw Scully.

Standing in the doorway to his bathroom, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched.

He froze.

Scully smiled, the knowledge in her heart that she had come over for a single reason: To stand in frank appraisal of his body, her mouth open, the blood pounding in her ears (and other body parts,) and just…enjoy.

“Fair’s fair, Mulder,” she said, and then turned, leaving him alone.

***

Mulder was standing in front of the mirror, fighting with his tie when Scully re-entered the room. She’d finished applying her makeup and stood, arms crossed again, watching her partner fumbling and swearing softly to himself. He could feel her gaze on him, her eyes crawling up and down his body.

“Here,” she finally said, reaching out a hand to his arm, turning him towards her. “Let me.”

He considered protesting, but instead let his arms drop to his sides, taking the opportunity to look down at Scully as her nimble fingers made quick work of his tie. Tightening the knot, she slid it against his collar button, and then used her fingers to smooth it flat, tucking the tail neatly behind the label.

“There,” she said softly, her task finished. She looked up and saw his eyes, his gaze, the depth of emotion swimming in them.

“I like the way you look at me,” he whispered.

“Oh!” Scully said, more a gasp than a word. His face was lowering, his mouth aiming towards hers. She lifted herself, reaching for his mouth with her own, sighing into him as they made that first, electric contact.

The kiss was soft, brief, and when they pulled apart, she could see the stain of her lipstick on him. She reached up with a thumb and wiped it off, smiling at him.

“When we go out there,” she said, tilting her head towards the door, “We can’t…”

“I know, Scully. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking about it in my free time.”

Scully grinned. “Me, too.”

“Let’s go,” he said softly.

***

United States Submarine Base
Groton, Connecticut
0900 Hours

Mulder pulled up to the gate and offered the guard his FBI credentials. “Special Agents-”

“Fox Mulder and Dana Scully,” the guard said, stooping down to peer across the car at Scully. “We’ve been expecting you, sir, ma’am.” He pointed with his arm as he gave directions. “Take this road two miles, and then make a right onto Independence Road. Take that two miles, and you’ll be at the Georgia’s berth.

“She’s in dry-dock?” Mulder asked.

“Sort of. She’s tied up alongside. She just got out of dry-dock four days ago after a refit. That’s as much as I know, Mr. Mulder. You’ll have to ask her captain for any more details.”

Mulder thanked the man and waited as the gate was opened electronically. He drove through and found the guard’s directions easy to follow. Ten minutes later they pulled into a parking space on the Georgia’s berth.

The USS Georgia was a huge boat, Mulder saw. Hundreds of feet long. There was a gangplank leaning towards the deck, with an armed US Marine standing stiffly at attention at the bottom. Mulder could see a man in the tan summer officer’s uniform standing on the bridge.

They got out of the car and walked towards the gangplank. The Marine turned towards them.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Special Agents-”

“Mulder and Scully. Of course. Please go aboard.” Mulder lifted his foot to step onto the gangplank and felt Scully’s hand at his elbow, staying his motion.

“Allow me,” she whispered. Turning her attention towards the man on the bridge, she called, “Permission to come aboard?”

The man snapped to attention. “Permission granted,” he called back.

To Mulder, she whispered, “Tradition. They just don’t like you romping on their boats without permission.”

“Oh,” he said. He followed her up the gangplank, his thoughts a thousand miles away as he watched the gentle sway of her hips.

At the top of the gangplank, Scully stopped. The man had climbed down from the bridge and was waiting for them slightly forward of the sail.

Scully held out her ID, as did Mulder.

“Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI,” she said. Hooking an elbow towards Mulder, she added, “Agent Mulder, my partner.”

“Welcome aboard the Georgia, sir,” the man said, all but ignoring Scully. “The Captain has been expecting you. If you’ll just follow me.” He turned and moved towards the forward weapons loading hatch. He scampered down it. Scully and Mulder quickly followed suit.

They emerged into the Control Center of the USS Georgia. A training mission of some kind was obviously underway, because the control room was crowded with people, both officers and enlisted men. More than one of the crew looked up in surprise as an attractive, smartly dressed female FBI agent violated what had been until that moment a male-only bastion.

“Diving officer, make your depth six zero feet!” a tall, distinguished man called out.

“Six zero feet, aye,” another called. That man turned to the two enlisted men that sat behind what looked like a huge replica of a car’s steering wheel. “Two degrees down bubble,” he ordered, loudly. “Come to depth six zero feet.”

“Conn, sonar,” a voice called out, and Scully turned to see another man facing a bank of computer screens. Sonar readouts, she thought.

“Sonar, Conn.”

“Contact, bearing two zero two, range…twelve thousand yards. Sounds like an Oscar running on top, sir.”

“Conn, aye. Start a track on that, Sonar, call it Omega one. Weapons, I want a shooting solution yesterday. Come to new heading two zero zero, ahead one third.”

“Aye,” another voice called out.

The officer that had greeted them on deck turned and whispered to Mulder, his gaze never touching Scully.

“They’re running a simulation of tracking a Russian Oscar-class SSBN. We have computer tapes that allow the crew to train dockside without having to leave the ship.”

Mulder nodded and then pointedly turned to Scully. “What’s an SSBN?”

Thank you, she thought. Mulder always knew how to put idiots in their place.

“Ballistic missile submarine, Mulder. This is a fast-attack boat, charged with finding and neutralizing boomers.”

The officer of the deck’s eyes widened as Scully moved into lecture mode. “This is a Los Angeles-class, or 688-class, fast attack boat, built by General Dynamics at the Electric Boat shipyard about two miles away. Sixty two in total have been built. They each carry Mod 4 and ADCAP Mark 48 torpedoes, as well as Tomahawk cruise missiles. She can dive to a depth of about nine hundred and fifty feet and move at about thirty knots.” Scully glanced directly at the officer of the deck and continued. “She is one of the quietest attack boats ever built, and radiates less sound than the surrounding ocean.”

“That’s right, Agent…Scully, is it?”

“Yes,” Scully confirmed. “My father was Captain Bill Scully, and I’ve been around the Navy in one form or another for all my life. This isn’t the first submarine I’ve been aboard, Lieutenant.”

There was a new respect in the man’s eyes as he turned back to watch the exercise unfold. It took about ten minutes before the Weapons officer announced, “Shooting solution, sir.”

The captain nodded. “Match bearings. Flood tubes one and two.”

“Flood tubes, aye,” the weapons officer called.

“Engineering, I’m going to need flank speed in about sixty seconds,” the captain called.

“Tubes flooded.”

“Fire one.”

“Firing one.” There was no sound, no motion to indicate that an actual torpedo had been fired, but Mulder still felt the excitement in the air. “Fire two,” the captain called.

“Firing two.”

“Conn, sonar. Both fish are in the water, and are tracking. Going to active sonar…now.”

The ship was filled with the sounds of a phantom torpedo tracking a submarine that was not there. “Range to target, eleven thousand yards,” a voice called.

It took almost six minutes.

“Range to target, five hundred yards. Impact in twelve seconds.”

“Four hundred.”

“Three hundred. Six seconds.”

“Two hundred.”

“One hundred. Impact!”

“Come to new heading, zero zero zero, all head full,” the captain called.

“Sir, we have hull-popping sounds and…breakup. The boat is breaking up, sir. Direct hit.”

There were smiles of satisfaction at a job well done all around, the captain stepped down from the periscope pedestal, clicking a stopwatch he’d kept hidden in a pocket.

“Forty two minutes to acquire, solve and fire, men. Very good job.” He turned to another man who had been repeating all of the captain’s orders. “XO, you have the conn.”

“XO has the conn,” the man repeated, taking formal control of the boat.

“I’ll be in my cabin,” the captain continued, turning and walking aft, trailing the OOD, Scully and Mulder behind him. They all entered the cabin.

“OOD, that will be all,” the captain said. The young Lieutenant looked crushed at not being included, but he turned on his heel and let himself out of the captain’s cabin, shutting the door behind him.

“Now,” the captain said, turning to face the two agents. “What is all this about? I got a TWX from COMSUBLANT telling me to give you two total access to my boat and my crew. What interest does the FBI have with my boat?”

“Actually sir,” Scully started, “We have no interest in the Georgia. We do want to talk to a member of your crew about a case we’re working on.” She paused. “I’m sorry, but the nature of the case is classified.”

The captain, whose nameplate read “V. Newton,” nodded. “I suspected as much. Which one of my men do you need to see?”

“Commander Jenkins, sir.”

The captain’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. I see.”

“Is there a problem?” Scully pressed.

“No. I just assumed it was one of the men, not an officer.”

Mulder spoke up. “Captain, I hate to impose, but we will need a place to conduct the interview. Might we…?”

“Of course, Agent Mulder. You may use my cabin for as long as you need. I’ll have Jenkins sent down.”

The captain reached over Mulder’s shoulder and grabbed a red telephone. Lifting it to his ear, he spoke quickly. “XO, report to my cabin immediately.”

He hung the phone up without waiting for an answer.

“I will leave you two alone. Please come see me before disembarking.”

“Yes, sir,” Scully said.

The captain of the Georgia left his cabin just as Jenkins arrived. Commander Peter Jenkins looked the part of a submarine officer. He had that vague, pale computer-wonk look that all nuclear engineers had, and in the nuclear navy, most of the SSN CO’s looked like Jenkins.

“Sir? Ma’am?”

They held up credentials again. We should have them tattooed on our hands, Scully thought. “Special Agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Come in and have a seat, Commander.” They put their ID away, shifting easily into interrogation mode. Their roles were well known by now, each of them attuned to the other’s movements and body language. Scully crossed her arms and leaned against the door, blocking Jenkins’ exit. Mulder sat down on the captain’s bunk, facing the man, his face wide, open, inviting. It was a technique that had been perfected by generations of police officers, the classic “Good Cop/Bad Cop” ploy. Mulder and Scully had elevated it to a new level, because most suspects and interviewees would expect Scully, being the female, to be the easy, gentle one.

“We need to talk to you about something that you were involved with during the Gulf War,” Mulder started.

“I had shore duty,” Jenkins started, confusion etching his features. “I was assigned to COMSUBLANT as a staff officer. I wrote papers…?”

“Not only that,” Mulder continued, his voice even, steady, soothing. “You sat on an Article 32 board.”

The change was almost instantaneous. In a flash, Jenkins’ body language shifted. His expression darkened, and Scully watched as the muscles in his jaw tightened. Crossing his arms across his chest, Commander Jenkins might as well have made a locking motion at his lips and then tossed the imaginary key over his shoulder.

Mulder decided that it was time to play the only card they had. “We know you’ve been contacted, Jenkins. Take a look at my partner.” Jenkins glanced at Scully. She was holding several sheets of paper, folded lengthwise in one hand, and a pen in the other.

“That’s an Article 16 request for your transfer to civilian legal authority, specifically the Justice Department. If you don’t cooperate with me right now, she will sign that, and I will present it to your captain. We’ll take you off this boat in shackles in front of all your men. Your chances at promotion will dry up, even if you are acquitted of the charge of obstructing justice. You will never get your own boat, Commander.”

Jenkins visibly considered that outcome. His arms dropped from his chest and he wiped the palms on his legs. “What do you want to know?” he asked, the tone of defeat clearly evident in his voice.

“Why was he acquitted?”

“Stone? Because we were told to acquit him.”

Scully moved from the door. “Told? By whom?”

Jenkins shook his head. “I don’t know. I saw his face, but I don’t know who he was. The chair of the Article 32 board met with him in private, and then with us in his chambers. We were told that for reasons of national security, we were to find acquit him on lack of evidence and to forget that we’d ever heard anything about the case.” He glanced at Mulder, his eyes haunted. “And until this morning, I’d made a pretty good stab at forgetting.”

Mulder moved in for the kill.

“Forgetting what, Commander? What did you hear? What evidence was presented?”

“The mission…the details about the mission….we got a briefing from someone at CIA. It wasn’t evidence. Two of us…me and another submariner…we didn’t want to acquit. We were told that it would jeopardize our careers if we didn’t. We asked why. What. What was going on? They told us enough. Enough, Mr. Mulder, to make me almost resign from the Navy.”

That brought Mulder up short.

“Were you contacted? Before we arrived, were you contacted?”

Jenkins nodded. “Yes. I was told to…lie. To tell you a story about what happened.”

“What happened?”

“The mission,” Jenkins repeated. “Why it went…south.”

“Why did it go south?”

“They were ordered out. The mission was scrubbed. The CO didn’t want to take the orders, because Stone had broken radio silence. It was outside the parameters of the mission profile. They weren’t supposed to take any orders within 12 hours of the launch time. But Stone broke radio silence, got in contact with the NMCC and got orders to scrub, bug out and exfiltrate. Graves didn’t want to do it. Stone killed him. Battlefield execution.” Mulder nodded. I knew that. Except for the ‘why’ part. Why did Stone break radio silence?

“What was the mission?” Scully asked softly.

“Saddam. Kill Saddam.”

“With a woman on the team?” Scully prodded. Jenkins’ eyes widened even further. “You know about that?”

“Yes. We know most of it. Do you have anything to add? Why the mission was scrubbed?”

Jenkins took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I can think of only one reason, Mr. Mulder.” Scully decided to ignore the fact that she had asked the question.

“If you know the makeup of the team, then you know that there was only one way they were going to be able to get close to Saddam. Intelligence had a source, someone in Saddam’s inner circle that was setting him up to be executed. Assassinated. The only reason they were pulled out is because someone changed their mind. Someone didn’t want Saddam killed, and the team was ordered out.”

“Do you know who?” Mulder asked.

“No,” Jenkins said, shaking his head. “But it had to be someone pretty high up. The order came from the NMCC direct. There’s no record of the communication in the NMCC logs. None at all.”

Scully was confused. “Why would they order the mission scrubbed? Especially if they knew where Saddam was?”

Jenkins replaced his glasses. “Remember your history, Agent Scully. I don’t know this for a fact, but I do have some suspicions.”

Scully crossed her arms and leaned against the door again. “And those would be…?”

“We needed Saddam, Agent Scully. We needed someone in the area that was a threat. The military budget was in danger of being cut. You have to remember…the mission took place sixteen hours into the ground war. It was obvious by that time that the coalition forces were going to kick Saddam’s army out of Kuwait. Someone realized that if the public, if the Congress saw how easy it was for our forces to swat Saddam like a fly, they would have justification to downsize the Army, shrink the Navy and Marine Corps, and decimate the Air Force. Why would we need all that expensive hardware if we could just run roughshod over people?

“Saddam was allowed to live because we needed a credible threat in the area, so we could come back again. So we would be able to keep the military the size it was, with the manpower, staffing, equipment, and all those wonderful pork-barrel projects that the Generals and Admirals seem to love so much.”

“Let me get this straight,” Mulder said. “You are telling us-”

Jenkins straightened in his chair. “I am telling you, Mr. Mulder, that someone in the Pentagon decided to halt all offensive covert actions against Saddam so that they could send more American boys and girls to die in the name of protecting their budget!”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 13/38

Aboard the USS Georgia (SSN-56)
Berthing Space 32
US Submarine Base
Groton, CT

“Let’s back up a minute,” Mulder said, his mind racing. “You admitted a moment ago to being contacted about our arrival, and about being told to lie to us.” Jenkins nodded. “Who contacted you?”

“I don’t know.” Mulder’s face showed his disbelief, and Jenkins hurried to explain. “Late last night, the Officer of the Watch came to my bunk and told me that I had a message waiting at the SUBGRU 2 operations desk. That’s not rare, when we’re tied up alongside the pier like this.

“I went to get the message. All it had was a telephone number and a time to call. I was curious, so I called. The voice on the other end of the phone made it very clear very quickly that she knew all about the Article 32 board regarding Stone, and about my complicity in the cover- up. She told me that two FBI agents, a man and a woman, would be coming to visit me today to talk about the case, and that I was to lie through my teeth about it.”

Mulder and Scully exchanged a silent glance.

“She?” Scully prompted. “The voice was female?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Mulder leaned back, trying to figure the angles. If Major Haynes hadn’t been currently occupying a drawer in the DC Medical Examiner’s office, she would have been his first suspect.

“What did the voice tell you to say?” Scully asked.

Jenkins looked away, the color in his face deepening. “She told me to deny everything. Not that I was on the board, but that there was a cover-up, that I knew anything of substance about the Iraqi mission. She told me to tell you that there wasn’t enough evidence to convene a General Court Martial, and so we had no choice under the UCMJ but to acquit.” His voice was quiet when he finished; the man was obviously ashamed at what he had done. That was good, Mulder thought. He was not above using the man’s embarrassment to further his own ends.

“Ok, so you were told to acquit, or you would suffer adverse affects on your career. You think that the only reason you were told to acquit was to cover up a larger issue, the conspiracy involving members of the US military senior command structure to assassinate Saddam and then cover up the fact that they changed their mind in an effort to protect their budget.”

“That’s correct,” Jenkins said softly.

Scully moved into action. “You’ll have to do better than that, Jenkins. That makes no sense.”

Jenkins’ head snapped up. “What?”

“The military has never needed a concrete reason to ask for more money. This was during the Gulf War, remember? The government, the military, the citizens were all gung ho over the war. There was no danger in cutting the military budget. At that time, Bush was all but certain to be elected to a second term.” She paused, unfolding the papers she held and clicking the button on her ballpoint. She leaned over the captain’s desk, preparing to sign the papers. “He’s not cooperating, Mulder,” she said mildly. “I say we take him in.”

“Wait!”

Scully paused and straightened. “You have something you want to add, Commander?”

Jenkins looked between the two agents, his eyes wide and scared. “Sometimes…we need an enemy for more than the obvious reason, Agent Scully.”

“Such as?”

“Promotion,” he said softly.

“Explain that, please,” Mulder requested.

“It might have been the budget, like I said. It was something I suspected. No one ever confirmed it. But…it also could have been for another reason. See…the Admirals and the Generals…they’re all veterans of Korea and Vietnam, and before them, World War II. They were all company and brigade commanders, sometimes even Division commanders. By the time Grenada and Panama came around, they had entire Corps under their commands, entire fleets. And when it comes time for the new Generals and Admirals to be named, to be promoted, they want men with combat experience, men who have been the places they’ve been and seen the things they’ve seen. They won’t trust command of the fleets and the armies to men who have only fought in a simulator. They need wars, Agent Scully, Agent Mulder…they need wars to prepare the men who are going to command the wars of the future.”

The two FBI agents exchanged another glance. “Are you telling us that the senior military leadership of this country purposefully kept a madman in power when they had the means and the legal authority to dispose of him? Just so that a few more officers could earn battle stripes?”

Jenkins nodded his head. “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility,” he said softly. “I’ve seen it before. Look at Vietnam, Agent Mulder. Company and field-grade officers, Captains and Majors and Colonels who came in-country for the minimum 90 days of a combat command to earn their Combat Infantry Badge. They had no business leading troops in the field! But they knew, they knew! that if they didn’t have that little blue and silver badge on their uniform breast that they’d never make General Officer. There isn’t a General Officer serving in the Army today that doesn’t have a Ranger tab, jump wings and at least one CIB. For God’s sake, Mulder, the head of Army Logistics has a second award star on his CIB! He’s never had a true combat command in his life, except for the two 90-day tours he did in Vietnam!”

Scully leaned back against the door and crossed her arms again. “For a Naval officer, Jenkins, you seem to know a lot about the senior Army leadership.”

Jenkins nodded. “I know it sounds strange, hearing this come from a squid, but the same is true for the Navy. There are only so many boats out there, so many ships that can be commanded. In order to make Flag rank, you have to command a ship of the line. We only have 10 or 12 Aircraft Carriers in service right now, all the battleships have been decommissioned, and what…fifty or sixty submarines? We have two dozen Ageis-class and Spruance-class guided missile cruisers. But, we have over two hundred flag officers. Where are we going to find the men with combat experience to promote unless we give them combat experience? And you can’t get combat experience without a war, Agent Scully.”

Scully’s arched eyebrow communicated her skepticism better than any words ever could.

“Look, think about it this way. A captain of any vessel has the boat or the ship, at the most, for only three years. They work and they work for years and years to get that little gold star. In the Submarine Service, once they get a boat, once they’ve commanded a boat, they go ashore for a staff position, and once they get promoted to the next level, they take over as commander of a SUBGRU or a SUBFOR. They don’t get another boat. Getting a second sea command is almost unheard of in today’s Navy. And if you want Admiral’s stars, you’re gonna need that combat command ticket punched. That’s all there is to it.

“So when I left the Article 32 board, I started thinking. Who benefits? Who would benefit from keeping Saddam in power?” Jenkins started counting on his fingers, ticking the various options off. “First, the Iraqis, or specifically, Saddam. He gets to keep his head, and stay in power. For that, he might give a ton of concessions to the US and the coalition forces. That wasn’t forthcoming, so I disregarded that one. Second, the intelligence agencies. They get to impress on Congress how important it is to have human assets on the ground in hostile countries. We didn’t have a single HUMINT source in Iraq, folks. Third, the military. For two reasons. Primarily, we get to have an enemy still in place, and still capable of causing trouble in the region. That lets us put political pressure on the Saudis and the other Arab members of the coalition forces to allow us to keep NSA listening posts and other covert intelligence operations going on their soil. It gives is a foothold in the region, allows us to expand our presence quietly, covertly. Secondly, it allows the military to go to Congress and cry and plead and beg for more money, for more manpower. Just as there are only so many ships in the Navy to command, Agent Scully, there are only so many senior commands in the Army and Marine Corps. Only so many Divisions and Corps. And from there, that thought led to how commands are granted, how the officers are picked.

“Experience. Combat experience. And like I said, you can only get combat experience by fighting in a war. And keeping Saddam in power was the best way to make sure that another war will happen in that region of the world within the next ten or fifteen years. Enough time for the Lieutenants and Captains serving now to become Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels, commanding Divisions and Brigades, giving them the chance to earn their battle spurs and move on up to General rank. Enough time for the junior officers aboard this boat to move up through their shore assignments, through the senior staff schools…just enough time for them to take command of their own attack boats and go out and shoot some Tomahawks off at Saddam again next time.”

Mulder shook his head slowly, considering all the points that Jenkins had made. “Still doesn’t add up, Commander. Why did Stone break radio silence? It was almost as if he knew ahead of time that they were going to call the mission off.”

Jenkins shrugged. “Is that so hard to believe? I can’t speak for Stone, but I’ve known some other intelligence types over the years. They all love dealing in the gray areas, Agent Mulder. They get off on the duplicitous nature of their jobs. On knowing things that other people don’t’. Having sources deep inside hostile governments. Stone was probably planning on breaking radio silence the entire time. He might have known that the mission was going to be scrubbed. Hell, he might have even asked that it be, and then come back to tell Graves that it had been called off.

“They live in the shadow, Mulder. In the deepest, darkest shadows. In the umbra.”

Scully folded the papers she was holding and slipped them inside her jacket. “Thank you, Commander,” she said, straightening up. “You’ve been a wonderful help.”

“Don’t take my word for it,” Jenkins insisted. “Talk to the other submariner. Commander Armfield.”

“The Chicago is at sea,” Mulder said.

“No, she put in last night.” Jenkins paused. “I’ve already called Armfield. I left him a message, a rather cryptic message to anyone else that might read it, but he’ll understand.”

“What was the nature of the message?” Scully asked.

“That I was going to reveal the truth to you if asked directly, and that if he knew what was good for him, he would, too.”

“Where is the Chicago?” Mulder asked.

“Pearl Harbor,” Jenkins replied.

Once again, the partners exchanged a glance. Mulder saw something in Scully’s eyes, something close to amusement, and he could practically read her thoughts. Skinner’s gonna love that, he thought. Scully reached inside her jacket and retrieved her cellphone. She dialed the FBI Travel Office, gave them her ID number and authorization code, and had two tickets from Hartford to Hawaii via JFK and LAX arranged within minutes.

Disconnecting, she spoke to Mulder, who had been chewing his lip while he mulled all the information they had gathered. “Better call Karn,” she said.

Mulder nodded and held his hand out. Scully slapped her cell phone into his palm and turned her attention to Jenkins. “Here’s what we want you to do,” she started.

“If your contact calls you back, leaves a message, anything, I want you to tell them that you told us nothing. You did as asked. You lied through your teeth. The cover story we’re going to tell Karn, for now, is that the reason we need to get aboard the Chicago is to talk to Commander Armfield because you were unable to shed any more light on the subject, but you thought that he might. Understand?”

Jenkins nodded.

Mulder was speaking, and Jenkins struggled to overhear. “That’s right,” Mulder said. “I need the Georgia to put out to sea as soon as possible, with all hands. Today, if that can be arranged. Also, we need the Chicago held at Pearl for at least 24, maybe 48 hours. We’ll need the same deal there that we had here; access to the boat and crew. What? No, I just think that Commander Armfield might be able to shed some more light on this entire business, that’s all.” Mulder paused and shot a look at his partner. “No, I haven’t heard from Stone since yesterday. I’d check with the Annapolis police, though.” Another pause. “Just a hunch. Thank you, Admiral.”

Mulder hung up and handed Scully back her phone. “We’re set for the Chicago. Commander, you and the rest of the Georgia are going to put out to sea in the next two or three hours. Can you get the captain back in here? We need to talk to him before we leave.”

“Of course,” Jenkins said, standing. He moved to the MC1 mounted on the bulkhead and lifted the phone, dialing the number “1” on the pad. “Captain, this is the XO. Our two guests would like-” He stopped in mid sentence. “Thank you, sir,” he said after a moment, and hung up the handset. “The captain is on-”

The door opened, and Mulder had to smile. A submarine was not a very large place.

“Commander, thank you,” Scully said, inclining her head towards the door. Jenkins looked at his Captain who nodded. “Dismissed, XO.” Jenkins smiled gratefully and all but ran out of the Captain’s cabin, shutting the door behind him.

“Get all you need?” Captain Newton asked.

Scully answered for them both. “Mostly, sir. We just wanted to take a moment to talk to you about certain aspects of what happened here today. Commander Jenkins possessed information about a case we’re working on. I wanted to impress upon you the fact that Commander Jenkins is a source, sir, not a suspect. He is a fine officer, one you should be proud to serve with.”

Her words were unnecessary, she saw. Newton was the kind of commander that really didn’t give a hoot what other people thought about the men under him. Newton looked like the type that formed his own opinions, OERs be damned.

“Very well.”

“One more thing,” Mulder said. “I suspect that you might want to prepare to move out to sea. I have a hunch that you might be getting orders to get lost for a while.”

Newton turned his full attention to Mulder, his brows knitting with concentration, then alarm. “Just who the hell are you, Agent Mulder? How high does your influence go? Are you telling me that you can order a Naval vessel out to sea?”

“No, sir,” Scully interjected, flashing her partner an angry look. “It’s just that…well, we’re working closely with NIS, and the case is very…sensitive. We just feel that it best that Commander Jenkins be… unavailable for a few days, until this is all straightened out. Our contacts at NIS have made certain…arrangements.”

“Captain, radio,” a voice called out. Mulder and Scully looked around, wondering where the voice had come from. Set below the MC1 was a smaller device, something that looked suspiciously like a Radio Shack home intercom system, only where the distinctive Radio Shack logo would have been, there was the equally distinctive emblem of General Dynamics.

I wonder how much that cost, Mulder thought, trying to hide a smile. A ten-thousand dollar intercom.

“Go ahead, Radio.”

“Flash traffic on the SATCOM,” the comm officer called. “Decoding now.”

“Bring it to my cabin,” Newton ordered, and then moved back to face the two FBI agents. “I assume those are my sailing orders?”

“Uh…” Mulder said, clearly embarrassed that Karn could move so quickly.

He was saved from further explanation by a knock at the door. A Lieutenant (jg) opened the door at Newton’s bark of “Come!” and handed the captain the communication flimsy. Newton read it quickly, swore softly under his breath, and moved to the MC1, lifting the handset and punching several numbers.

“Engine Room, this is the Captain. I want you ready to answer bells in two hours.”

He listened to the response and then broke the connection with his finger. He dialed again. “Conn, this is the Captain. Be prepared to get underway within two hours. Recall all sailors ashore at once, and prepare to take on stores. We’ll need enough for a month of operations.” He hung up without a further word and faced the two agents again.

“I am impressed, Agent Mulder, I will say that.” He handed the flimsy to Mulder, who read it quickly and then handed it to Scully.

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET – JULIET/QUINCY NOFORDIS EYES ONLY – NO COPIES – DO NOT LOG

TO : COMMANDING OFFICER, USS GEORGIA (SSN 55)

FROM: COMSUBLANT

CC : COMMANDING OFFICER, SUBFOR ALPHA

DATE: 17MAY97

1. BY ORDER, COMSUBLANT, YOU ARE ORDERED TO PUT TO SEA BY 1200 HOURS EST (1800 HOURS UT). 2. REF (1) ABOVE, YOU ARE ORDERED TO CONDUCT TRAINING EXERCISE CHARLIE BRAVO SIX THREE IN EXERCISE AREA 12-JULIET. 3. REF (2) ABOVE, THE EXPECTED TIME REQUIRED TO COMPLETE THIS EXERCISE SHALL NOT BE LESS THAN THREE (3) WEEKS UNLESS OTHER ORDERS ARE TRANSMITTED VIA ELF BY COMSUBLANT. 4. REF (1),(2),(3) ABOVE, ALL LEAVES ARE HEREBY CANCELED AND ALL ASHORE CREWMEMBERS ARE HEREBY RECALLED. 5. YOU WILL TRANSMIT ACK OF THIS ORDER WITHIN THIRTY (30) MINUTES OF RECEIVING IT. NO REQUESTS FOR RESCINDING OF THIS ORDER OR ANY CHANGES OF ITS OPERATIONAL SPECIFICATIONS WILL BE ENTERTAINED AT THIS TIME.

FOR COMSUBLANT VICE ADMIRAL COCKLE, CHIEF OF STAFF

Scully felt her eyebrows crawling up as she read it. Handing it back to Newton, she had a small smile on her face. “I’m sorry, Captain. But trust me…this is best for all concerned.”

Newton studied Scully’s face for a long moment. “Let me ask you something,” he said, just as quietly. “What if this boat hadn’t been seaworthy? What would you have done then?”

Scully turned to Mulder, who answered without hesitation. “I would have had Commander Jenkins temporarily transferred off this boat to shore duty. Somewhere far away, where his movements couldn’t be tracked.”

Newton shook his head. “Do you have any idea what kind of impact that would have had on his career? Getting transferred out of an XO billet on an attack boat under suspicious circumstances under the direction and encouragement of the FBI would not have helped his career any.”

Mulder was unrepentant. “Do you have any idea what impact leaving Jenkins dockside might have had on his life?”

Newton considered this and then nodded. “One final question, if you please.” Both agents waited. “Will Jenkins…or either of you… ever be able to tell me what this is all about?”

The two partners exchanged yet another silent, wholly communicative glance. Newton watched their faces work as they spoke volumes without uttering a word. God, Newton thought, they work together like the best crew I’ve ever seen!

“Probably not, sir,” Scully finally admitted. “But I will tell you this much. What Commander Jenkins did was probably one of the bravest things I have ever seen, and if medals were given out for that sort of action, he’d have a chestfull. Remember that when you write his OER.”

Newton nodded. “Very well. If you’ll excuse me, I have a cruise to prepare for.”

He departed, leaving the two agents standing his cabin, unsure of how to get off the boat. Mulder pointed towards the MC1 with his chin. “Think we should call the porter?”

“C’mon, Mulder…I’ve been on one of these before. I’m sure I can find my way off.”

Radio Room USS Chicago (SSN-220) Pearl Harbor Naval Base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii 0403 Local Time (1603 UT)

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET – QUINCY/FOX NOFORDIS EYES ONLY – NO COPIES – DO NOT LOG

TO : COMMANDING OFFICER, USS CHICAGO (SSN-220)

FROM: COMSUBPAC

CC : COMMANDING OFFICER, SUBFOR DELTA

DATE: 17MAY97

1. BY ORDER COMSUBPAC, YOU WILL REMAIN ON STATION AT PEARL HARBOR

NAVY BASE FOR FORTY EIGHT (48) HOURS OR UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS ARE

RECEIVED. 2. REF (1) ABOVE, YOU WILL PREPARE TO TAKE ON BOARD TWO AGENTS OF THE

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION ON 18MAY. 3. THESE AGENTS WILL BE CONDUCTING INTERVIEWS WITH CREW MEMBERS

ABOARD THE CHICAGO. YOU WILL MAKE AVAILABLE TO THESE TWO AGENTS

ALL CREW MEMBERS, INCLUDING O AND E-LEVEL. THESE TWO AGENTS WILL

BE ASSUMED TO HAVE THE NEED TO KNOW REGARDING ANY CLASSIFIED

INFORMATION UP TO BUT NOT INCLUDING CNWDI. 4. REQUESTS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO :

COMMANDER, SUBMARINE FORCES, PACIFIC (COMSUBPAC,), COMMANDER,

NAVAL INVESTIGATIVE SERVICE, OR THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERALS

OFFICE.

FOR COMSUBPAC RADM WATTS CHIEF OF STAFF

Annapolis Police Department, City Jail 11:30AM EST

Commander Matthew Stone stared at the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head, trying to count the cracks in the plaster. It was an exercise he had learned over the years, something he used to calm his emotions when they threatened to tear out of control. At the moment, he was barely containing his seething, overwhelming anger. The complete embarrassment of being arrested while sitting in his car outside Scully’s apartment was nothing compared to the fact that this was, somehow, going to get out.

He’d been forced by circumstances to give the cops Karn’s name. He’d made the mistake of claiming that he was on an assignment for NIS when the Annapolis cops had pulled him out of his car, and they had done what they were supposed to: Asked for the name of his CO so they could check it out. And if Mulder or that bitch Scully had already told Karn that he was off the case, then he would really be off his case, for real. Karn wouldn’t take well to his…what?

Stalking?

That’s what the Annapolis pigs had called it. They’d booked him on a charge of domestic stalking and thrown his ass into a cell. They’d taken his weapon, his ID, his belt…even his shoelaces. As if he were some wretch that was so broken up over the loss of the Fair Scully that he was going to kill himself.

Stone snorted in the dark, dank cell.

Plenty of women worth killing for, he thought.

Not one of ‘em worth dying for.

There was movement at the end of the corridor. The Annapolis City Jail was made up of twelve cells, six on each side of the hallway. In deference to his military standing and rank, they had placed Stone in a cell by himself. Swinging his feet over the edge of the cot, he stood.

A guard approached the cell with a huge ring of keys in his hand. Trailing him was one of the detectives that had interviewed him the previous night. The cop had a two-day growth of beard on his face, and a world-weary expression on his face.

“Commander,” the cop said.

“Detective.”

“I have a message for you,” the cop said. “We called your Admiral Karn, and he confirmed that you were working on assignment.” Thank God! Stone thought, but said nothing, keeping his face carefully neutral. “But, he has ordered you to return to NIS headquarters at once. He informed us that if we found you skulking around Scully’s apartment like some lovesick teenager again that we were to consider you ‘off the reservation,’ and arrest you at once. Those were his exact words, Stone.”

Matt said nothing, his eyes boring into the cop’s. After a long moment, Stone finally asked, “That mean I can get out of this hole?”

“Sure,” the detective said, nodding at the guard. The guard inserted one of the huge keys in the cell door and twisted it left. It took two full revolutions before he slid the door to the left. Stone stepped through, taking a deep breath. “And the charges?”

“I wasn’t able to get a hold of Agent Mulder or Scully, Commander. The charges aren’t dropped…but they aren’t pending, either. Admiral Karn made it clear that this entire situation was unusual. If Miss Scully comes down and signs these charges, then-”

“Bullshit,” Stone said around his famous shark’s grin. “She won’t sign anything.”

Ah, the cop thought. True love.

Stone turned to leave and then stopped. “I assume my weapon and other personal effects-?”

The cop motioned up the corridor with his hand. “At the front desk, Commander.”

Stone turned on his heel and left without another word.

***

Standing outside on the front steps of the City Jail building, Stone blinked in the bright sunlight. He’d taken just enough time to thread his belt back into his pants and tuck his weapon into the small of his back. His shoes still did not have their laces, but he didn’t care. He had things to do.

And getting back to NIS HQ was not one of them. He glanced at his watch, trying to calculate the time he had. Five, maybe six hours. Not much time. It was Saturday, just before noon.

Where would she be?

Home, probably. She was always home when she wasn’t working. She was predictable as clockwork, just like the rest of them.

Whistling, Stone headed for the corner, trying to see if there were any taxis available.

Apartment 15 323 Evergreen Terrace Annapolis, MD 1204 Hours EST

Commander Maggie King, USNR, looked up, startled. The knock on her apartment door was unexpected; she hadn’t even heard anyone walking down the hallway. Putting down the book she was reading, she headed for the door.

Peering through the peephole, Maggie saw who was standing on her doorstep and gasped, stepping back. What the hell was he doing here?

“Open up, Maggie. I know you’re in there,” Stone called through the door.

Aboard Delta Airlines Flight 1027 Enroute to JFK International Airport 1230 Hours EST

“Mulder,” Scully said, breaking his train of thought. “Do you really think Commander Armfield can give us any more insight? It looks as though they were all told the same thing. Forget what you heard. Deny everything.”

“Obfuscate-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Scully said with a smile. Mulder’s memory was so annoying sometimes. “But really-”

“I’m not sure, Scully. Jenkins seemed to think so. And Karn reacted pretty quickly.”

Scully nodded, her expression troubled. “That’s another thing, Mulder. All these TWXs he’s sending out under our direction. The Navy is a small place, especially at the top. Someone’s going to notice that NIS is ordering ships around like pawns on a chessboard, and someone is going to start asking questions pretty damn quickly. We could be telegraphing our intentions.”

“How so?”

Scully sighed. “My father…did a bit of work in Naval Intelligence, and I remember a conversation I heard him having with my mother. He had sources everywhere, Mulder. He made a habit out of making as many friends as he could on as many bases as he could, on as many ships as he could. He loved the backchannel information. He said it was his private ‘fifth-column’ of operatives.”

Mulder nodded, digesting this. “What else can we do, Scully? I might be able to dress up as a Navy officer and bluff my way aboard a nuclear submarine, but I doubt you’d be able to.”

A quick, delicious image of Mulder in dress whites, with a chestfull of ribbons danced across Scully’s mind, and she pushed the thought away, wanting to concentrate on the task at hand. Later, she promised herself.

“Yeah. There is that.”

They fell into a comfortable silence again. “Besides,” Mulder said after a few minutes, “think of this as a Hawaiian vacation on the Bureau.”

Scully smiled. He had no idea. The FBI travel office had called her back just as they had descended the gangplank of the Georgia. They had wanted to know if, instead of two hotel rooms, a suite would be acceptable. Scully had asked a question or two, and it had turned out that Abbey, Skinner’s secretary, was an old friend of the secretary in the travel office, who was in turn an old friend of the secretary of the hotel’s manager. A suite was cheaper than two separate rooms, and the word had been spread to ease the way of she and Mulder on this mission.

Scully had thought about it for all of two seconds. She’d agreed to the suite without exactly knowing why. If it ever came up, she would deny the conversation ever took place and blame it on a booking misunderstanding, just as she was sure Mulder would if he were ever asked.

It was a surprise she was saving for Hawaii, and she couldn’t wait to see his face.

Apartment 15 323 Evergreen Terrace Annapolis, MD 1207 Hours EST

“Maggie,” Stone whispered through the door, “if you don’t open up right now, I -will- kick this goddamned door down. I need to talk to you, NOW!”

Maggie looked around her apartment, wondering if she had anything to defend herself with.

At that moment, Yeoman Richie Anderson walked out of her bedroom, dressed in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. Maggie swore under her breath. If Stone found out about Richie-

“Maggie!” the voice on the other side of the door called. The knob rattled, and then there was a whump! as he threw his shoulder against it.

“What’s going on?” Anderson asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“Nothing. Go back to-”

And then the door burst open. Commander Matthew Stone, USN, stood in the doorway for a moment, glancing up and down the hallway to see if anyone had noticed him breaking the door down. Satisfied that he was unobserved, he took a step inside the apartment and froze, spotting Anderson.

“Get out, Richie,” he growled. “Now.”

Yeoman Anderson saw the look on Stone’s face and nodded. He ran back to the bedroom and grabbed at his clothes scattered at the foot of the bed. Turning and dashing back to the living room, he passed Commanders King and Stone, clutching the clothes to his chest.

“I’ll call you-” he said to King as he passed. She wouldn’t return his gaze. She stared at the floor, chewing her lip. The same thought kept repeating itself in her head: My career is over.

Stone owns me, and I will not do anything that this bastard wants, she thought. He’s got me by the short-and-curlies. If I don’t do what he wants, he’ll turn me in to NIS. I’ll be court-martialed and forcibly retired with a dishonorable discharge. The papers will be full of the story of the thirty-something single female naval officer who had seduced the young, naive yeoman farmboy. I’ll be the laughing stock of the Navy, she thought.

Goddamn him!

And then another thought occurred to her.

How did Stone know Richie’s name?

Stone shut the door, taking care not to make the damage any worse. “I’ll pay for that, of course,” he said. Maggie held up a hand.

“I don’t care, Matt. Whatever you want, you can forget it. I will not be a pawn in one of your little power games.”

Matt moved to take her in his arms, the charm already ratcheting up. “No, Maggie, you don’t understand. That’s not it at all. I just want to talk, I swear.”

King nodded, not trusting her voice to speak. The last time Stone had ‘wanted to talk’ they had ended up in her bedroom, rolling around on top of the sheets like a couple of horny teenagers. Her body flushing with the memory of the pleasure that Stone had given her that long afternoon and night, Maggie moved away from him, trying to put some emotional and physical distance between them.

“No, Matt…I know the way you work.”

Stone stopped his advance. “Fine. I won’t touch you. Go sit on your couch, and I’ll stand here. All that I ask is that you listen to what I have to say. I’ll leave, and you can get on with your life. You can even continue sleeping with your little pal Richie. I won’t say a word to anyone.”

Maggie desperately wanted to believe him. Richie had come to mean a lot to her. What had started out as a harmless flirtation between a superior and a subordinate had taken on a decidedly interesting turn over the last six months. Richie had seemed infatuated with her, with her body and her experience as a woman, and he had made it clear that he wanted to be with her every moment that he could. He was insatiable, always taking Maggie to new heights, to places she had never dreamed she would go with a man, any man.

And then she remembered that Stone had known his name, and with a sudden certainty, she knew why Richie had ‘wanted’ her so badly.

“Oh, you son of a bitch,” she whispered. “You’re running Richie, aren’t you? He’s one of your sources!”

“No,” Stone said, holding up his hands. “I swear, he’s not one of mine.”

“Then how the hell do you know his name?”

Stone grimaced. Think fast, he thought. “His nameplate. On his desk. It says Richard Anderson.”

“So why didn’t you call him Richard, Matt?” Maggie was close to tears now.

“Because I heard you call him Richie once,” Stone lied. It was just enough of a lie, a tiny little tidbit that he tossed her, and Maggie snapped it up gratefully. He saw her eyes clear, saw the hitching motions of her shoulders slowing and then stopping.

“He’s not one of yours?”

“No,” Stone lied. “I swear it. On my mother’s eyes.”

Shakily, Maggie moved to the couch. “Fine, Matt. For now, I’ll believe you.” She sighed, leaning back against the cushions, running her hands through her hair. “Tell me what you came here to tell me.”

Corner of Evergreen Terrace & Willow Lane Annapolis, MD 1215 Hours

Richie Anderson dialed the number from memory.

“What?”

“It’s Richie Anderson,” he said this time, wanting to establish himself immediately. The last time had been embarrassing.

“Of course. What do you have for me?”

“He’s up there with her now, sir.”

“Perfect. Just as I planned.” The voice paused. “How are things between you two, anyway?”

Richie wondered if he should lie to this man, and decided against it in an instant. “Wonderful. She thinks I’m in love with her.”

“Are you?”

Again, Richie paused. “I think I might be.”

“Be careful, Richie. Remember…you are working for me. Remember what I told you. Failure is not acceptable. You cannot become too close to this woman. She must trust you as she would trust a lover. But no further.”

Richie nodded, feeling stupid because he knew the man couldn’t see him. The man’s next words turned Richie’s blood to ice.

“That’s right. I see you nodding. Have a nice day.” The line clicked, and Richie hung the payphone up with shaking hands.

Who was this man? Was he everywhere at once?

Apartment 15 323 Evergreen Terrace Annapolis, MD 1210 Hours EST

“…so the mission was,” Stone continued, “…to find Saddam and take him out.”

“You’ve already told me that much,” Maggie pointed out.

“I know, I’m getting to it!” Stone said, a little sharply. Softening his tone, he continued, “Let me finish, ok? Then I’ll answer any questions you have.”

Maggie nodded, not sure where it was going, and not sure she wanted to know.

“The thing of it is…we had someone. Someone inside. Very close to Saddam. The commander of his protection detail was in cahoots with the senior members of the military. They saw what the bombers were doing to the troops on the line. They knew that once the ground war started, if something wasn’t done to stop Saddam, they’d lose their entire Army to us.

“A message was sent to me through backchannels. Four senior members of the Iraqi army had agreed to set Saddam up for assassination. We’d insert a team, they’d tell us where he was going to be and when, and then a GBU-25 would take care of the rest. It was the fastest mission planning I’d ever seen. Texas Instruments changed the electronics package on the bomb in less than a week. Hughes Aerospace built three of them almost overnight. We tested one at China Lake, and the other two were shipped to Saudi. Then we were inserted. Everything looked good to go. The mission was on. It was a go.

“But I had a safety built in. My contact knew a frequency that our STU’s could pick up, but not transmit on. He was to send a coded, repeating signal, like Morse code, if the mission was still a go. If Saddam wasn’t going to be there, or if the mission profile changed, he would inform us by that code.”

“Why?” Maggie asked.

“Because…if Saddam wasn’t going to be where he thought he was, and we dropped a new weapon on him, he’d know that someone close to him was a double-agent, and we’d lose our source. Saddam would have killed anyone he even suspected of having anything to do with it. And that source was too valuable to waste.”

Maggie nodded. It made sense, in a sick sort of way. It made sense to the shadow warriors, she thought.

“So I check for the message about 12 hours before H-hour, and there’s nothing. No signal, nothing at all. Which can only mean one thing. My source had been discovered, and was dead. I called the NMCC on the SATCOM and got our action officer on the line. I explained what had happened, and he scrubbed the mission. I told Scott that the mission had been scrubbed, but he didn’t believe me. He wanted to go on. I offered to let him talk to the NMCC, but reminded me that we had strict radio silence orders. He was going to take the team in, no matter what.”

“Didn’t he know about your source?”

Matt looked away, unable to meet her gaze. “It wasn’t my decision,” he said softly. “Danny wasn’t deemed to have the need to know.”

“But he was the commanding officer!”

Matt nodded, still not able to meet her eyes. “I know. The tactical commander. When it came time to shoot and loot, he was the best. But intelligence wasn’t his strong suit.”

Maggie digested that and waited for Stone to continue.

“Anyway…I had no choice. You know what happened next. I won’t go over that again. When we got back to the states and went through the debriefing, it came out that Saddam had discovered the traitor.” Matt paused, thinking quickly. This next part was dicey. The story had to have just the right amount of truth to it. Just enough for Maggie to buy it.

“Saddam found the traitor, somehow, and tortured and then executed him. Then he sent a message to Washington through the Syrian embassy. Saddam told Washington that if any attempt was made on his life, that he would launch the sixty SCUD missiles he had pointed at Israel.” Matt paused again, and then thought of a particularly delicious way to end the story. “Those sixty SCUDs were specials, Maggie. They all had chemical warheads.”

Maggie took a ragged breath. “So by killing Danny, you’re claiming that you saved all those lives, is that it?”

Stone tried to control his frown. “Well, I might not have put it that way, but-”

“Sure you would, Matt. You’re always the first one to blow your own horn. I wouldn’t put it past you to do something that…cold.”

Matt decided to change tactics. “I remember a time when you didn’t mind blowing my horn.”

Maggie looked up, disgusted, feeling her face twisting with revulsion. And then she saw him, saw him sitting there, his face wide and open, his eyes clear and honest. It was a look the damn man had perfected, a look that he had practiced in front of the mirror for countless hours, and she remembered.

Maggie remembered the hours they had spent in her bedroom, doing things and…experiencing things that she had never thought she was capable off. She remembered the heights this man had taken her to, remembered the way he had touched her, stroked her, moved her along slowly until she had been reduced to a writhing mass on the bed, pleading, begging for release. And then he would take here there, push her gently over the top, into that deep, dark abyss of pleasure.

And that was the exact moment her body betrayed her. Her body didn’t care about moral issues and intelligence objectives. Her body only remembered the pleasure this man had given her, and to Maggie’s utter horror, she felt herself become aroused at the memories of her times with this man. She felt her nipples hardening and knew without looking down that they were visible through the thin cotton of her Annapolis T-shirt.

Of all the mornings not to wear a bra, she thought.

And then Stone was moving. He’d seen his chance and knew what he had to do. As distasteful as it was, he saw his opening. He was beside her on the couch, his hands moving towards her head, capturing her cheeks, turning her face to his, leaning down, his mouth reaching for hers.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered, and then kissed her.

Maggie King moaned, lost in his kiss, lost in this man’s embrace, lost in the feeling of lust and hunger his touch caused inside her.

I’m lost, she thought. I’m his.

Dammit.

She broke the kiss and stood, turning to walk to her bedroom. Standing at the foot of the bed, she removed her T-shirt and dropped it at her feet. Barefoot, and wearing only a pair of cotton hiking shorts and panties, she moved to the bed, turning to face the doorway where Stone stood. He was unbuttoning his uniform jacket, a wry grin plastered across his face.

“Maggie,” he breathed.

And for the second time in as many hours, Maggie King took a member of the Naval service into her bed, both members leaving her with the feeling of being utterly and totally used.

***

After, Maggie was on her back, staring at the ceiling. “Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you come here?”

“Maggie-”

“Don’t bullshit me, Stone. I know you didn’t come here because you think I’m the next Cindy Crawford. You knew you could get me into bed with that damn smile of yours. Well, now you’ve had me. I hope your happy. And I know the other shoe is about to drop, so let’s just get it the hell over with, ok? Tell me what you want.”

If Stone was hurt by her accusation, he didn’t remark about it. “Karn. I need you to call Karn for me. Tell him that…tell him that you’ve been in contact with me, and that everything is not as it appears.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s ordered me back to Virginia, and I have somewhere else I need to be.”

Maggie rolled over, giving Stone her back. “Fine,” she whispered, feeling the tears starting. “Go, Matt. Get out. I’ll call Karn in a few hours.”

She felt his hand on her shoulder, tugging her back to face him. His expression was dark, unreadable.

“Listen to me, Maggie. You may have me pretty well figured out. But you don’t know every damn thing. And trust me on this…you are doing the right thing. If I don’t get to San Diego, a lot of people are going to die.”

Maggie looked in his eyes, searching for the truth. She thought she saw it, and she seized on it.

“Fine, Matt. Just do me a favor, ok?”

“Anything,” he said, and then added, “If I can.”

“The next time you need me to do something, just ask me, ok? Don’t fuck me twice. Once will be enough.”

Aboard Delta Airlines Flight 203 Bound for Oahu, Hawaii 2100 Hours Local Time (0900 UT)

“Ever been to Pearl?” Scully asked.

“No, you?”

“Once. Mom brought all of us out to visit Dad one Christmas.”

Mulder grinned. “You and Missy in Hawaii. Now that’s a thought.”

“Mulder, I said ‘all of us.’ Bill and Charlie were with us!”

“Oh, right. The two brothers that I’ve never met and exist only in faked photographs and your overactive imagination.”

Scully grunted, deciding not to reply in kind. It would only encourage him. “Well, Pearl’s such a beautiful place,” she started.

“Yeah, I’ve seen pictures,” Mulder remarked.

“Oh?” Scully asked.

“Sure, Scully. Pearl Harbor started off as a coaling station in the late 1800’s. We signed a treaty with King Kalakaua in about 1887 or so to get exclusive rights to the harbor. We built a shore establishment in about 1900 or 1901, and it was added to the 14th Naval District shortly after that. It now ranks-”

“Enough, Mulder. God, do you remember every single thing you read?”

“Yup,” he said. “The Navy’s real big in Hawaii. In addition to COMSUBPAC, there’s CINCPACFLT and CINCPAC, all sorts of commands out there.”

“Mulder, you are a never-ending fount of knowledge, you know that? If there was only a brain attached to that mouth…”

“Oooh, Scully…feisty. I like that.”

They locked gazes for a long moment and then Scully tore her eyes away, looking instead out the window. It was night, so there was nothing to see but the wing, but she needed the moment to get her breath back.

I could fall into his eyes, she thought. Fall in and never come out. If she tried very hard, Scully could almost forget how much of a fool she had made of herself over the past few days with Matt. She had no idea yet how much it had hurt her partner.

She felt his hand close over hers, the thumb stroking her skin softly, gently. There was fire, electricity where their skin touched.

She gasped.

“Penny for your thoughts, Scully.”

“I was thinking about the ocean-”

“Nuts to that, Scully. What’s on that enigmatic mind of yours?”

She sighed. Trying to lie to Mulder was like trying to lie to God.

“Matt. You. Me. Us.”

“Hmmmm,” was all he said, encouraging her.

“I…want to apolo-”

“Wait,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Tonight, when we get settled, I’ll come to your room, or you can come to mine, and we’ll talk about it.” He paused. “For as long as you want.”

His smile, when she turned to face him, was sweet and gentle. The Mulder she had fallen in love with sat next to her, offering her his strength.

What?

Fallen in love with?

Scully felt her expression change at the words flooded through her mind.

She was saved from having to say anything more by a flight attendant stooping over their seats, holding a plastic trash bag. “We’re almost ready to start our descent,” she said, “and I’m collecting all the trash…”

Mulder handed her his plastic cup and napkin, and Scully followed suit. A moment later the captain’s voice filled the cabin as he confirmed the flight attendant’s claim.

The huge airliner banked slowly to the left and descended into Oahu.

Holiday Inn Oahu – Front Desk Oahu, Hawaii 2330 Hours

“Yes, Mr. Mulder, your suite is ready. We kept it on a late hold-”

“Excuse me?” Mulder said, not sure he’d heard correctly.

“I said your suite-”

“Suite? Not two rooms?”

The night manager looked up in horror. “Uh, no sir…the reservation came in as a suite.”

“That’s unacceptable,” Mulder said. “We’ll need two-”

He felt a touch on his elbow and he glanced down at Scully. All he needed to see was in her eyes.

“Never mind,” he said, turning his attention back to the manager. “The suite is fine. Where do I sign?”

The manager slid the check-in card across the counter, wondering what the hell was going on. The small billing code at the upper left hand corner of the card indicated that the bill would be paid by the Justice Department. They had a standing account with the hotel. But, as all hotel employees know, the night manager had seen more than his share of strange goings-on in his lobby over the years. This was just one more to add to the list, and a minor one at that.

“Front!” he called, reaching for the bell. Mulder stayed his hand. “That won’t be necessary,” he said softly. Together, Mulder and Scully turned from the front desk and walked to the elevator.

Once the doors closed, Scully hesitated a moment and then moved, sliding her arms around his waist, burying her face against his chest. “I wanted it to be a surprise, Mulder…” she started.

“The suite?”

She nodded against him, loving the feeling of his warmth against her. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, soft, almost afraid. “I got us a suite…in case you didn’t want to…hold me tonight… you could have your own room.”

Mulder wished she would look at him so she could see the expression on his face. The thought of being able to hold Scully all night long was not exactly a horrible one.

“Shhhh,” he said instead. “I promised we’d talk, and we will.”

Mulder looked at the lights above the doors and realized that the car wasn’t moving; he’d been so tired he’d forgotten to push a button. Digging the key out of his pocket, he looked down to find the room number.

“Hey, Scully, what’s “P” mean?”

“Give me that.” Her voice was eager. Wordlessly, he handed her the key. She moved to the panel and studied it for a moment. At the very top there was a small slot. The plastic tab that held the room key had another, smaller key on it. Holding her breath, she slid the smaller key into the slot on the panel.

It fit.

She turned it, and the car lurched upwards.

“Oh my god,” she whispered.

“What?”

“It’s the penthouse, Mulder!”

***

They stood in the doorway, looking at the suite. Scully made a mental note to send Abbey a dozen roses in the morning. If Skinner ever found out…God, she hoped they were being billed at a normal suite’s rate.

She walked to a small table in the foyer and lifted the phone.

“Operator,” a voice said.

“Front desk, please.” Two clicks later a voice answered, “Front desk, Night Manager.”

“This is Dr. Scully in the Penthouse…uh, I was under the assumption-”

“Think nothing more of it, Dr. Scully. Our friend at the Justice Department explained everything. The room is being billed at the normal rate. Enjoy.”

“Thank you,” Scully said and hung up.

Explained? Explained what?

Mulder had taken the opportunity to explore the suite. He came back, his eyes wide with boyish excitement. When he looked like that, there was nothing that she could deny him. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Cool?” he asked. “Scully, there’s only one bathroom!”

“So? We can share?” She saw the look that crossed his face and had to hide a blush of her own. That’s not what I meant, Mulder, she thought.

Was it?

They carried their bags into the separate rooms. She took the one closest to the ocean. There was a sliding glass door in her room that opened to a small cement deck, and she stepped out, breathing in the salt air. She could see the moon hovering over the water, and it was one of the most beautiful sights she had ever witnessed. All that was missing was someone to share it with.

Scully smiled as she felt Mulder come up behind her. His hands found her waist, holding her gently from behind, almost as if he were afraid to do anything more.

Scully took the initiative. She reached down and grabbed his wrists, drawing Mulder’s arms around her like a jacket, leaning back into him.

“Nice view,” she said.

“Yes. The moon’s nice, too.”

She laughed. Every once in a while, he said something that was just…perfect.

She felt her eyes growing heavy, and realized that she was still on DC time. It was almost morning back in Washington.

“Time for bed, Scully?”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

They stood there for another minute and then turned to go back inside. That is, Scully turned, and Mulder stood where he was until she was facing him.

He spoke:

“Luna

the goddess

smiles down from a dark sky

touching everything she sees with

silver fingers of love.”

Scully felt a warmth in her chest, and then a moister heat somewhere south of her heart.

“Donne?” she quizzed.

“No,” Mulder said, blushing. “Someone else.”

“Who?”

His eyes slid from her face to find the ocean again. “I forget.”

Now she knew he was lying. “Mulder…did you also forget who you’re talking to? You don’t forget anything. Now give…who wrote that?”

Instinctively, she knew the answer before he spoke. “I did.”

“Oh!” Scully said. His head moved a fraction of an inch towards hers, his entire body asking a question. She moved closer to him, also by a fraction, silently giving permission.

The first brush of their lips was soft, yet electric. Mulder knew what she had been through with Stone, and was trying to show her that he was not that man, that he did not take what was not offered. She moved against him, showing him that she was offering, asking, pleading, begging for his touch, his kiss, his gentle warmth.

His arms slid around her, and hers around him. He felt her petite heat against his body and it inflamed him.

The kiss deepened, and then smoothed out. They lost themselves in it for a single, perfect moment in time, and then broke apart, moving inside, arm in arm.

Reluctantly, he let her go and moved towards the bedroom door, intending to change in his room.

“Mulder.” Her voice was quiet yet…hungry. It’s tone stopped him in his tracks.

He turned.

Scully had shed her jacket and was nimbly unbuttoning her blouse.

“Scully…what-?”

She glanced up at him, imploring him to be silent as she shared this with him for the first time. Yes, he had seen her naked before. He knew what she looked like, how the planes and curves of her body filled and shaped the light around her. There was only one light on in the room, and it cast a soft, warm glow around her. He knew what she looked like, but this was different.

Mulder saw the message in her eyes and kicked the door shut behind him. He moved to her overnight bag and unzipped it, reaching inside for her blue pajama top, his eyes never leaving hers; he found it by touch, something that amazed Scully.

Scully shrugged out of her blouse, her hands moving to her pants as she toed off her flats. Mulder felt his mouth go dry as he took in the vision of Scully standing there. Her pants were open, the zipper lowered, revealing her silky panties. She leaned down, giving him a dizzying view of her cleavage as she hooked a finger into her knee-highs and slid them off her tiny feet. Standing, she wiggled her hips and the pants fell in a single slide to her ankles. Stepping out of them, she approached the bed, her arms going butterfly-style behind her back to release the catch on her bra.

He heard the snap!

It was loud, he thought. Very loud. She did something with her arms and the bra floated to the floor.

Mulder tried to swallow and found that he couldn’t.

Scully hooked both thumbs into her panties and slid them down her legs and over her feet, standing to face her partner.

His eyes never left her face.

He lifted the pajama top out of the overnight bag and moved to her, opening it, lifting it over her head like a magician’s cape. She slid her arms inside, and he sat on the bed, turning her to face him, his fingers adroitly closing the buttons, covering her body from his gaze.

“Scully,” he whispered as he felt her fingers running through his hair. “That was…incredible.”

“Mulder…you talk too much.” He was going to retort, and had even lifted his head to show her the amusement in his eyes.

She silenced him with another kiss, her hands moving to his jacket. She undressed him slowly, letting her eyes drink in his form, running her fingers over the muscles in his chest. She was careful not to touch parts of him. She knew it, and he seemed to sense it: this was a tease, nothing more. A delicious little game that they had both agreed to play without speaking. At that moment, if Mulder had moved to take her to the bed, to roll her over and slip himself inside her, Scully was sure that a word of protest would not escape her lips. But she knew, as he did, that it was not the time for that yet.

Soon.

But not tonight.

He stood, wearing nothing but his boxers.

They shared another soft, gentle kiss.

They moved to the bed, each going to an opposite side.

They slid the covers back and climbed in.

Scully turned the light off, and the room was filled with the soft moonlight and the gentle sound of waves breaking on the shore below.

They moved as one, finding the position they enjoyed the most; Scully on her side, her back to him, spooned together. His arm came around her hip again, his fingers sliding under her top to find the soft swell of her belly.

“I want to apologize.”

Scully started, frowning in the darkness. Those had been her words on the plane, and now Mulder was-

“Why?”

“For not giving you what you needed, Scully.” He laughed in the night, sure that she would get his next joke. “For forcing you into the arms of another man.”

Scully smiled, getting it. Then she turned serious. “Mulder, I was never in his arms. That’s not where I wanted to be.”

Mulder chose not to pursue that topic. “Where did you want to be?” he asked, already anticipating the answer, but wanting to hear her say it.

“Here,” she whispered.

“Good night, Scully,” he said softly, kissing her ear.

“Good night, Mulder.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 14/38

Penthouse Suite
Oahu Holiday Inn
Oahu, Hawaii
0430 Hours Local Time (1630 UT)

Mulder snapped awake, his mind in a thousand pieces. He struggled to remember where he was, what he was doing, and who he was doing it with. His body told him several things at once; he was in a bed, not on the familiar couch in his apartment. He was somewhere near the ocean; he could smell the salt air.

And he was not alone.

In that terrifying moment before reality flooded back into his mind, Mulder was certain that it was Kristen next to him, that she would roll over at any moment and reveal long, white, glistening fangs, that she would start moving towards him slowly, her gaze snaring him, a tiny animal caught in the sights of a hunter…

Or that it was Phoebe, that she had somehow found him and kidnapped him and taken him to this place, whatever this place was, and that she was getting ready to play another nameless mind game on him, that she would point and laugh at him when he tried to tell her how he felt, that she would make fun of his attempts to communicate the depths of his emotions towards her-

And then reality did flood back into Mulder’s mind, and he knew where he was, why he was there, and lastly, gratefully, who he was with.

He moved slowly, shifting position slightly on the bed. He was on his back, and Scully was against him, the blue silk of her pajama top soft and smooth against his skin. Her head was against his chest, her arm casually tossed across his hip. Her soft, gentle breathing told Mulder he hadn’t awakened her.

The fact that he hadn’t been awakened by a nightmare didn’t escape him. He struggled to remember the last nightmare he’d had. Last night, they’d spent together in Connecticut. The night before that, her apartment. Three nights in a row, they’d…slept together. Odd how that phrase had taken on a whole new meaning with Scully. He fought the soft laugh he felt swelling in his gut; most words took on a whole new meaning when applied to Scully, and most especially when applied to the both of them.

Take love, for instance.

As defined by her, and him, he thought, love was anything but the typical definition. The love they had for each other manifested itself in so many different ways that it was impossible to count them all. He thought of all the times she had looked at him with an expression he had now, finally, begun to understand. If only, he thought, if only I’d understood what it really meant all those years ago. Equal parts protectiveness, bemusement, admiration and deep, heartfelt…what?

Attraction?

Perhaps. Part of Mulder’s ego would like to believe that Scully had fallen for him the moment she’d entered his office four years ago. A large part, truth be told. But he also knew, deep in a part of himself that he rarely visited, that it had taken weeks, months, even years for the love to take root and grow. The shared experiences of the X-files, the glue that held he and Scully together had taken a while to set, to bond, and even longer to strengthen to the point it was out now. There’d been tests along the ways, horrible, evil tests that had stretched the bond to the breaking point.

But they had remained together through it all. Through more than most couples ever experienced, he thought.

Couple?

Is that what we are? he thought. A couple? Somehow, the word evoked images of white picket fences and walks through a park filled with laughing, running and jumping children. It most certainly did not invoke images of what the two of them did represent. A team. A dynamic duo, to turn a phrase. The two of them against the rest of the world. And even though the score was World 60, Mulder and Scully…what? Ten? Twelve? More often then not, Mulder thought, he and Scully fought the demons of the world to a draw. There had been so few clear victories. Pfaster was one. A close call, a game won at the final buzzer, a fadeaway jumpshot in the guise of a SWAT team kicking in the door and rescuing a shaking, scared Scully from the clutches of that…madman.

“Escalating fetishist.” That was the phrase Mulder’s dry psychologists’ mind had dreamt up. It sounded so clinical, so…remote. But a madman was what Pfaster had been.

We’re not a couple, Mulder thought. We may be together, but we’re not a damn couple.

Scully shifted, pulling herself against him just a little more tightly. His arm was around her back, and he encouraged her movement. In her dreams, Scully lifted her head a fraction of an inch and placed a soft, dry kiss against his chest, two inches from his left nipple. He saw the smile on her face, the contentment, and he smiled at the darkness, feeling the familiar ache in his chest every time he saw her face.

Once, a long time ago, it had been an empty, hollow ache, a feeling of…well, not exactly loss, but of hunger, of desire, of wanting and knowing that the object of the want was not obtainable. One day soon they would talk about days past, about when it had started for the both of them, when the feelings had slowly begun to shift from friendly partners to something more, something deeper, something more meaningful and powerful.

Scully sighed in her sleep and rolled over, giving Mulder her back. He smiled in the darkness and moved against her, snuggling his body into the curve of her back, the slope of her buttocks. She felt him there, his warmth, his presence in her dreams and she pressed back against him, pressing her body even closer.

His hand slid over her hip, under her top, to that comfortable, familiar spot. His fingers spread, Mulder thought about sliding his hand up, about discovering for himself the secrets of her body. He knew he could; he knew that if he started slowly, carefully, he could arouse Scully in her sleep, excite her to the point where she would turn and welcome him into her, welcome his touch in her most secret, private places. The ache he felt, the need that burned inside him threatened to overwhelm his control, and he fought it.

Mulder knew that he probably was not going to fall asleep again that night. The four hours he’d managed to squeeze out while entwined in her arms was all that he needed, and knowing how used his body had gotten to working with such little rest, he was all but sure that sleep would not take him again that night.

He was wrong.

***

Scully felt Mulder pressing against her back, and she smiled into the pillow. She twisted her arm just a little, studying the luminescent hands of her watch. Almost five am. The sun would be coming up soon, rising above the ocean like a Phoenix out of the ashes of yesterday. It was a new day, she thought, a new beginning for so many things.

Mulder was snoring softly, and the sound was music to her ears. He got such little rest, so little actual sleep, she was loathe to wake him. She stretched slightly, letting the muscles in her back and legs tense for just a minute, reveling in the answering shiver. Mulder’s arms tightened around her as he slept, and she smiled wider, taking as much warmth as she was giving.

Moving slowly, Scully twisted in his arms, bringing herself around to face him. She remembered this exact position on her couch, taking those first few quiet moments of that morning to study the face of the man she…

What?

The word had crept into her mind on the plane ride out. He had looked at her with those depthless eyes and she had heard the word spoken in her mind with the clarity of a bell.

Love.

The man she loved.

How could she have been that blind? Matthew Stone, of the chiseled chin and ice-blue eyes. Stone, the man with the face of a movie star and the soul of a killer. Yes, his attentions had been welcome, before he had made his intentions known. But that was forgotten now, for the most part. She was in the arms of the only man she was ever meant to be with, and she knew it.

Four hours sleep was enough, Scully thought. They would have to rise in another hour or so and greet the new day. They would have to make their way onto another military base, find another submarine, and conduct another interview to try and unravel this mystery. The more Scully thought about it, the more she was convinced that Stone knew more than he had told, that he was hiding something. And once she and Mulder discovered what that piece was, what the critical, missing puzzle segment was, she would own that arrogant SOB’s ass.

Scully slid her arm across Mulder’s chest, and then down his body, towards his abdomen. Turning her face, she could see the evidence of his masculinity pressing against the material of his boxers. Her fingers slid along the elastic waistband as she thought about sliding her hand further inside. Just a quick touch, she thought. Men have been copping cheap feels for years!

Her fingers inched lower, slowly.

“Lose something?”

His voice in the quiet room startled her, and she drew her hand back as if burned. Caught! she thought, and grinned.

“Maybe. Maybe I found something,” she answered.

He said nothing, but she could almost hear his thoughts. Not yet, Scully. Not just quite yet.

“When?” she asked, and she felt him smile.

His answer was direct, honest, brutal. All Mulder. “I don’t know. I want you…you must know that.”

She turned to him, her eyes bright in the early-morning light. “Of course I do,” she said warmly, letting the smile reach her eyes. “I’ve known that for years, Mulder.”

It was a challenge, he saw, an opening. A way to talk about what they had been avoiding for days. He moved slightly putting some space between them. Wordlessly, his hands moved to her top, his fingers quickly unfastening the buttons. When he was done, only gravity kept it shut.

“Show me yours…” he whispered, the grin on his face teasing, playful.

“Can we?” Scully asked, the unspoken part of the question loud in the room. Can we trust ourselves? Can we stop?

“How can we not?” he whispered, his voice thick, hungry.

“Tell me,” she said softly.

His hand moved to her top, lifting it away from her body, draping it over her back, revealing her to his gaze. His hand moved to her face, cupping her cheek, his finger tracing the outline of her features and then sliding lower, memorizing her skin. His finger slid through the valley of her breasts, seeking the silken skin of her. “I’m not good at finding the words…” he started.

“Don’t worry about it, Mulder…let your heart speak the words.” Ooh, Scully thought. Nice. Have to remember that one.

“Your body is a sacred place to me,” he whispered softly. “The only church I ever want to attend.” Scully had a sudden ugly thought; this was not the first time he had spoken these words, and she thought she knew who he had spoken them to.

He felt her tense, saw the look of pain and fear in her eyes, and he knew her thoughts. Hurt, he hurried to explain.

“No, Scully…I may have said them before, but no one’s ever heard them except me.”

Her eyebrow asked the question.

“To you, when you weren’t there. A picture of you I carry in my heart. A smile you once gave me. A laugh I once heard. I tried to tell that image first, so when the time came to tell you the words would seem…real. Natural. Comfortable.”

Scully relaxed at his words, knowing they were the truth. Her hand found his face. “God, Mulder…I have wanted this for so long-”

“We both have.”

She smiled. “Let me finish.”

“Go ahead.”

She felt like slugging him, sometimes. But not this morning, not now. They were so far from Washington, so far from that basement office, not just in miles, but in distance traveled. Emotional distance, a separation that had once seemed so great as to be a chasm incapable of being crossed. But they had come so far, again in miles, and distance.

Her hand stroked his face. “I know what you’re trying to say, Mulder. I know you want to touch me, and I want you to. I know you want to make love with me…I’ve known that for months, years.” She smiled, tempering her next words with love and care. “But I don’t want to hear about that; that’s expected, Mulder. There will be a time for the soft platitudes of love, the gentle words spoken in a warm bed. I need more, Mulder.”

His frown wasn’t out of anger, or fear, or hurt. It was out of curiosity.

“Mulder…” Scully started, trying to find the words. It was such a hard thing to speak of. How do you ask a man to tell you why he loves you? How do you ask such a question without sounding pathetic? But she needed the words, needed to know why he loved her so, and she had no doubt that he did.

“Do you know why I always ditch you?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

She shook her head, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Because…well, it’s not because I don’t think you’re my equal. Scully…I’d have to work UP to be your equal. And it’s not because I don’t think you can handle yourself. I’ve never had a more capable partner.”

“Then why?” she asked, hating herself for the pleading tone she heard in her voice.

“Because…Samantha.” He paused, trying to find the words. “I couldn’t protect her.” His voice dropped, so soft and quiet that Scully had to strain to hear it. “I can protect you.”

Scully sighed. Even in his overwhelming arrogance, he touched her. “And do you know why I get so angry when you ditch me?”

Mulder shook his head.

“Because of Missy. Same reason, Mulder. I couldn’t save Missy. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. I need to be there for you when you need me.” His chest heaved as he took a breath, a breath she knew that would be filled with words of debate, of explanation.

“No. Let me finish.”

He let the breath out, a long, heavy sigh.

“I know what you were going to say, Mulder. You were going to say that you need me on the outside, ready to bail you out, to save your ass when you get it wedged so deeply in those cracks you manage to find on practically every single case we handle.” She moved her other hand to his face, her thumbs digging into his cheekbones, pulling his gaze to hers, making him see her eyes as she spoke. “I need to be there with you, Mulder, in the cracks. I need to be by your side when you get yourself into trouble.” Her gaze softened, moving from demanding to a silent plea for understanding, for agreement. “Do you understand, Mulder?”

His mouth moved towards hers. She opened her mouth, taking his breath inside her, feeling the gentle press of him against her. Her top parted, and they were skin to skin, and it burned where they touched. The kiss deepened, lengthened and Scully had trouble discovering where she ended and he began; two had become one, a single soul shared in two bodies.

They parted, both of them gulping for air.

“Touch me,” she pleaded. “Please, Mulder…touch me….” His hand slid lower, tracing the outline of her hip, and then cut inside, heading for the juncture of her thighs. She felt his sure, gentle touch, and she threw a leg over his hip, opening herself for him.

His fingers were knowledgeable, certain. They crawled through the curly hairs, seeking her center. He was undemanding, patient, exquisitely gentle, tracing the shape of her there, her outline, before sliding one exciting, exploring finger inside.

The penetration was incredible; Scully saw stars as she gasped. His finger was thick, masculine, possessive. He claimed her as his own and she went gratefully, losing herself in his need. His finger moved, stroking, finding her most sensitive spots seemingly without effort and she gasped, her hands dropping from his face to his arm, clutching him, pulling his hand against her, needing the hot, hard contact of his heel against her center. She moved, arching her hips towards him, needing more contact, more hot, hard, Mulder contact.

So long, a portion of her mind thought. So long since anyone has made me feel this way. So long since another has touched me. Garden, she thought, the word sticking in her mind. Secret garden. And then all rational thought left her as Mulder’s touch took her higher and farther than she’d ever been; no one had ever touched her exactly like this. No one had ever been able to excite her this way.

With a small grunt of intense pleasure, Scully teetered over the abyss and then she dissolved into it, feeling the ecstasy detonating in her belly, her groin, her chest. Her nipples tightened into hot, hard points, digging channels of pleasure in Mulder’s chest. She leaned forward, biting his chest, sucking at his warm, soft skin, feeling her saliva bathing him, her eyes screwed shut in release.

Chuffing, she slowly regained her senses, opening her eyes and lifting her face to find his eyes, smiling, grinning.

“Now you,” she said, reaching for him, her hands insistent, hungry, eager.

“No.”

His voice was final, commanding.

“What?”

He said nothing. He moved on the bed, releasing himself from her embrace, lying her gently back on the bed. Quicker than Scully thought possible, he was between her legs, his body moving down, his mouth at her navel, tasting, twirling his tongue, then lower, towards her wetness, closing slowly, dangerously.

“Mulder…” she whispered, wanting it so badly, but afraid of what it meant. It was an escalation, a new step, a higher level. Was she ready? Was he? Were they?

And then all thoughts left her as his mouth found her, his hot breath scorching her sensitive skin. Her legs were over his shoulders, her heels dancing a tattoo on his back as he feasted on her. His tongue seemed to be everywhere at once, dancing, licking, teasing, inserting and then withdrawing, circling, tracing, first gentle and then hard, and then somewhere in between; his teeth grasped a fat, moist lip and pulled, the tiny sparks of pain only adding to the overwhelming pleasure. She had exploded so hard only moments ago, but Scully found herself climbing towards release again while at the same time descending into the sensations his hot, wet mouth were causing.

Her fingers found his hair and she used it to guide him, to show him where she wanted the pressure, to pull him away when it was too much. His nose, his perfect Roman nose was rubbing her; only Mulder could have a nose that found her erogenous zones.

She was there again, almost too quickly, but she reached for it, wanting it again, wanting the release with this man again and again, over and over— For the longest of moments she teetered on the edge of final release, and when he sensed it, when he knew she was there, he sent Scully crashing over the edge with not one but two fingers this time, inserting them none too gently, spreading her with them, the rough, bitten edges of his cuticles scraping the silken walls of her interior and that last little spark was all Scully needed: She exploded, her thighs clamping shut around his head, her fingers pulling his face against her harder still, her hips arching off the bed to meet him. She had never been so wet, so ready, so completely and totally open. The pleasure peaked, a warm buzz filling her head, and then she started the slow slide down again-

But Mulder was there, ready for her. He grinned into her wetness, knowing that he was going to send her over the top again. He withdrew his fingers, his hand wet with her nectar, his fingers crawling up her skin to find her breasts, rubbing the slickness into her, his fingers flicking her hot, aroused points. His other hand slid lower, underneath, spreading the half-moon globes of her ass, finding her last secret and slowly stroking her there at the same moment his mouth closed over her clitoris, sucking it between his lips, his tongue reaching out and circling it and then lashing it, bashing it from side to side, sucking on it, drawing it as far into his mouth as he dared.

The room vanished, replaced instead by the incessant buzzing in her gut. There was nothing in the world but Mulder’s mouth, his hands, his fingers, the feel of his touch on her body, everywhere on her body, in places she had never dreamed anyone would ever touch her, or kiss her, or lick her or stroke her. She screamed again, a low, animal wail coming from somewhere inside her, exploding out of her lungs with the force of a thousand screams, her nails digging painfully into his scalp.

Mulder rode her, trying to keep as much contact between their bodies as possible. It was hard; Scully was twisting on the bed like a bucking bronco. He tried, and failed, to keep his mouth attached to her. The brief respite only gave Scully more pleasure when his mouth found her again and closed on her, his tongue insistent, demanding, inserting itself inside her and stroking her walls, finding her wetness and savoring.

Savoring; that was the word, Mulder thought. I could live to be a thousand and never tire of this. He heard her moans and screams of pleasure, felt her clutching at him, her hands and legs pulling him against her tighter, her desperate need for the contact, and he smiled, thrilling on the power of giving her this much pleasure.

And then it was too much; Scully gasped, pushing him away. He knew that she wasn’t angry or upset; just over stimulated. He moved quickly, gathering her in his arms, rolling over and pulling her on top of him, his hands going underneath her top again, spreading it over the both of them, her breasts crushed against his chest.

Scully was gasping for breath, her face buried against his neck. “Oh. My. God.”

Mulder just smiled.

Slowly, they drifted back to sleep.

***

0630 Hours

Scully’s travel alarm chirped quietly at first, and then got progressively louder. She woke, her eyes drifting open slowly. Mulder was beneath her, and she grinned at the warm contact of their bodies.

His eyes were open.

“Why?” she asked softly.

“Why what?”

“What didn’t you let me-?”

He grinned. “Are you complaining?”

“No…just curious.”

“Forgive my indelicacy,” he started, and then she knew. She kissed him to silence his words.

“Go now. And when you get back…”

“No,” he whispered. “I want to remember this morning as being about you, Scully. I have a better idea. A much better idea.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

He stood, holding out his hand. She took it, and he led her to the bathroom.

He worked the shower handles, letting a good head of steam build up. He turned to her.

Suddenly, Scully felt shy, girlish. The way he was looking at her, his eyes warm and liquid, drinking in the sight of her, even though she still wore the top. It was unbuttoned, hanging loosely on her breasts, but the soft expanse of skin that it showed was alluring to Mulder in the extreme.

He reached out and slid his fingers under the top, gliding across her shoulders, lifting if from her body. It fell to the floor with a whisper of fabric against tile.

He slid his boxers off.

The entered the shower together, and closed the door.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 15/38

Oahu Holiday Inn
Oahu, Hawaii
0645 Hours Local Time

Scully closed her eyes as she felt Mulder’s hands on her shoulder. He held the bar of soap in one hand, a plush terry washcloth in the other. He moved with the patience of an artist, soaping her neck and shoulders slowly, carefully, as if he were polishing a marble statue. The shower was big enough to comfortably double as a sauna, but they occupied the area directly under the showerhead, letting the hot, steamy water cascade down on them, a personal, private waterfall.

Mulder bit his bottom lip in concentration, all his attention focused on Scully. Her body looked so small, so petite when she was naked; it was an image that would be forever burned in his mind. He studied the series of small freckles that dotted her shoulder blades and grinned. He closed his eyes for a moment and thanked whatever higher powers that were governing the universe that he would have the chance to memorize each and every freckle; it’s position, it’s relation to the others.

Leaning down, he placed a soft, gentle kiss on Scully’s neck and felt her shiver in response. She turned under the spray to face him, her wet hair plastered to her scalp.

Mulder thought he’d never seen a more beautiful sight in his life.

“My turn,” she said, taking the soap and washcloth from his hands. He stood there and let her work, closing his eyes against the waves of pleasure that zigged and zagged across his body as her small, delicate hands touched and washed him. She paid careful attention to his chest, making sure that he was scrubbed clean. He supposed it was the anal retentive doctor inside her that made Scully pay particular attention to his nipples.

Then again, he thought, maybe not.

“Now me,” he said, reclaiming the soap and washcloth. Scully’s gaze rose to meet his, and he saw something there, something he had never seen before. It was a combination of emotions…she was tentative, scared, almost. In the bright light of the bathroom, she looked vulnerable, open.

He smiled, letting it reach his eyes, telling her without words that she could trust him, that he would never hurt her, that he wanted to do this with her as much as she so obviously did. She nodded almost imperceptibly, and then lowered her head slightly, watching his hands as he began to wash her body.

***

Mulder reached around Scully to crank the handles off, and she took the opportunity to wrap her arms around his neck. She kissed him full on the lips, her tongue wriggling into his mouth. It so surprised Mulder that he almost slipped and fell in the soapy water. Placing his hands flat against the shower wall, he pressed into her, letting her feel his need, his hunger pressing against her belly.

Scully looked down and then back up, raising a hand to her mouth. She was never one to giggle, Mulder knew, and it looked suspiciously like she was about to.

“All that because of me?” she asked.

Mulder thought back to all the nights he had spent on his couch staring at the ceiling, thinking very un-partnerlike thoughts about Scully.

“You don’t know the half of it,” he admitted.

“Soon, Mulder. I promise.”

He nodded. On the one hand, speaking strictly as a man, it could never be soon enough. He’d wanted Scully in this way for as long as he could remember, and the waiting had been driving him slowly insane. But now, with the possibility of such a relationship with her not only a reality, but the consummation of years worth of lust merely days away, he knew that he could wait, and that the anticipation would only add to the pleasure when that day did finally arrive.

“Take as long as you want, Scully.”

She reached down and grasped him. “This is quite long enough, Mulder.”

He grinned at her naughty joke and closed his eyes, thrilling to her touch. She released him and kissed him again. “We need to talk,” she said, uttering the four least favorite words of any man on Earth.

He nodded again, wondering what was on her mind.

He thought he knew.

They exited the shower and found towels, wrapping themselves up, hiding themselves from each other. Re-entering the bedroom, they moved to their respective overnight bags and started yanking out the clothes for the day.

Mulder watched Scully dress as he searched for socks in his bag. She moved with such efficiency, like a cat on the prowl. “So what did you want to talk about?” he finally asked.

“Last night. This morning,” she said softly, peering into the mirror over the dresser as she donned her earrings. Her eyes caught his in the mirror’s reflection and she smiled. “I don’t regret a thing, Mulder. Get that thought out of your head.”

He smiled.

She turned from the mirror, placing her hands flat on the dresser. “There is…however…something we do need to talk about.”

She walked over to where he sat on the bed, using her knees to spread his legs. He did, staring up at her with the wide-eyed wonder of a little boy. When he looked at her like that, there was nothing she could deny him, and she felt evil for what she was about to do to him.

“When we’re on the road, Mulder, we can’t do this every night. Here, in Oahu, in the Penthouse…maybe. But the chances of us… getting caught are just…the repercussions would be too severe for either of us to take.”

He grinned. “Sure, you say that now. Now that you got yours!” She saw the teasing glint in his eyes and leaned down, capturing his face with her hands. She kissed him again. “You bet I did,” she whispered. “My God, Mulder…where did you-? No…forget I asked that. I know I don’t want to know.”

She started to move away, and then he moved, using his hands to capture her face this time. He brought her closer, reaching out with his mouth to nibble on her bottom lip. “No, Scully,” he whispered. “Believe it or not…I never did that before. To anyone.”

She granted him an arched eyebrow and a tilt of the head.

“Men don’t get to have many firsts, Scully,” he whispered. “That was one I wanted to save…for you.”

His words were so naked in their honesty, so totally revealing another facet of his character that Scully almost cried. She felt the heat and the pressure behind her eyes and tried to blink it away.

“Well then,” she said, her voice hoarse with emotion, “you’re a natural, Mulder.”

“No,” he said. “Just properly motivated.” He released her and she stepped back, watching him stand as he turned to find his suit. She took the time to enjoy watching him dress, finding herself a little saddened when he buttoned his dress shirt.

“You can pick the tie,” he offered, motioning towards his overnight bag. Taking the challenge, Scully moved to the bed again and quickly riffled through the selection he had brought. “Marvin the Martian, Bugs Bunny, Tweedy Bird, that damn French skunk, Foghorn Leghorn-”

“Oooh, Scully,” Mulder said, slipping his arms around her waist from behind, “I love it that you know who all those characters are!”

“I was a little girl once, you know. I did watch Saturday morning cartoons.”

“Here,” she said, finding one that didn’t have a cartoon character on it, but was no less garish. “This can do the least damage to my sanity, I suppose.”

He motioned for it, but she stepped close again, holding it out of his reach.

“Let me,” she whispered. Flipping his collar up, she threaded the tie around his neck and quickly worked it into a double Windsor. “When we’re on the road, this is about as much physical contact as we can risk, Mulder.”

His eyes were dark, stormy. His hands found hers and stilled them. “I disagree, Scully.” She opened her mouth to protest, and he used a finger to silence her. “Let me explain, and then you decide. I’ll abide by whatever you wish, Scully.”

She knew that he would.

“Our apartments are probably bugged. At the very least, we are under intermittent physical surveillance. It would take them longer to get something set up like that when we’re on the road. If we were to change motels every night, and still get two adjoining rooms, and make sure to mess up the unused bed…I think we’d actually be safer from discovery on the road than at home.”

Scully thought about it for a long moment, and then found herself nodding. “It make sense…on the surface. But, if someone starts noticing a pattern of us changing motels every night, wouldn’t that tip them off?”

“I thought about that, Scully. All we do is tell Skinner that we’re sick and tired of having evidence stolen from our hotel rooms all the time, and that we’re doing it for security reasons. He knows what kind of demons we have tormenting us. He’d take it at face value.”

“Or become more suspicious,” Scully commented, resuming her tying motions. Finished, she smoothed the tie down. “I love being next to you,” she whispered. “Do you know how much it affects me just to be next to you?”

He nodded. “Probably as much-”

“Let me finish,” she said, tapping his chest. When he fell silent, she continued. “How are we going to work together, Mulder? We’ve crossed so many boundaries these last three days and nights. How am I supposed to look at you when we’re out there, working a case, and not think back to what it’s like to be in your arms, to feel your body against mine, to feel your lips and hands on me?”

He grinned, that lopsided, bad-boy smirk that made her want to kiss him and punch him at the same time. “Tell you what,” he said softly. “When we’re working a case…out there, as you said, I’ll just be the same lovable jerk I’ve been for the last four years. That way, you’ll be so mad at me that making love with me will be the furthest thing from your mind. I’ll still insist on always driving. I’ll tease you about snapping on the latex and pouting when I don’t get to choose the restaurant.” His hands found her face again. “It’ll be a game, Scully. I’ll make you hate me out there and love me in here.”

“Promise me one thing,” she asked quietly. He inquired with his eyes. “The next time you ditch me and I save your ass, don’t run into my arms and kiss me in front of all the nice police officers, ok? Just make some wiseass remark so I can get you back to the hotel and tear your clothes off.”

There was something to be said for an aggressive woman, Mulder thought.

“Well, since I’m not going to ditch you anymore, sure, Scully. That’s a promise I can make.”

They kissed again and broke apart.

“Well, off to breakfast, and then Pearl Harbor,” Scully said, collecting her briefcase.

“I have a question, Scully…why do you always take your briefcase? You always pack it away in the trunk!”

“Where do you think I keep my latex, Mulder?”

***

Naval Station
Pearl Harbor
0900 Hours Local Time

Once again, they were stopped at the gate by a guard. They both held up their credentials.

“Agents Scully and Mulder, FBI.”

If Mulder expected the guard at Pearl to be as informed as the one in Groton, he was mistaken. The guard looked at him blankly, as if waiting for Mulder to complete a sentence.

“We’re here to…we’re here to go aboard the Chicago.” The Marine’s face communicated his disbelief of that statement, but he nodded anyway and returned to his shack. The partners watched as he lifted a phone and waited, and then spoke a few words. Nodding, the guard came back out holding a clipboard.

“Before you go to the Chicago,” he started, “Admiral Watts would like to speak with you.”

“Who is Admiral Watts?” Mulder wanted to know.

“Rear Admiral Watts is COMSUBPAC’s Chief of Staff, Mr. Mulder. He wishes to speak with you before you board the Chicago. And since he’s the biggest dog in this here house, I strongly suggest you do as he asks.”

Mulder nodded and accepted directions to Watts’ office and then the berthing space of the Chicago.

***

Office of the Chief of Staff, Commander, Submarine Forces, Pacific (COMSUBPAC)
Naval Station Pearl Harbor
Oahu, Hawaii
0917 Hours Local Time

Mulder slid the car into the slot marked “Visitors Only” and killed the engine.

“I wonder what he wants to see us about,” Mulder said.

“I think he wants to know what we want with one of his boats, and more specifically, which member of the crew we want to talk to and why.”

“Gee, Scully, you really think so?” Mulder’s tone was light and teasing, and she gave him an arched eyebrow for a reply.

Entering the building, they got directions from yet another stiffly-starched, armed Marine and took the two flights of steps leading to Watts’ office.

Entering the outer office, they saw a Yeoman seated behind a desk. “Special Agents Mulder and Scully to see the Admiral,” Scully said.

“Please go right in,” the yeoman said.

Scully walked up to the door and knocked twice, hard.

“Come!” the voice said.

They entered the office.

Scully practically marched into the office, Mulder noted with some amusement. She stopped precisely eighteen inches from the front edge of the desk and…

Saluted.

Standing in the doorway, Mulder felt his jaw drop. Her next words made his eyes bug out.

“Sir, this Seaman Apprentice would like to point out that the Admiral has both the countenance of an ox, and the grace of a cow on ice skates, sir!”

The man seated behind the desk didn’t look the part of an Admiral, Mulder thought. He looked way to young. The pair of stars on his collar points and the four and a half rows of ribbons above his left breast more than testified to the fact that he’d earned his rank.

The admiral pushed back from his desk and regarded the saluting Special Agent. Slowly, way too slowly for Mulder’s taste, the admiral returned the salute. Only then did Scully lower her hand.

“Sailor, you had better be armed if you’re saluting me indoors!” he bellowed.

“Sir, yes, sir. I am, sir,” Scully said, the laugh in her voice threatening to overpower her.

Admiral Michael Watts stood and moved around the edge of the desk, grabbing Scully in a huge bear hug. “God, Dana, it’s good to see you!”

Mulder closed his mouth and stepped into the office, closing the door behind him. “I suppose this means you two know each other,” he remarked dryly. Scully turned to face her partner, mirth dancing in her features.

He asked a question with his eyes, and got a response. Just because I wanted to see the look on your face, she thought.

The admiral returned to his seat behind the desk. “So, Dana… what are you doing here? I have an appointment in-”

“I’m your appointment, sir.”

Watts frowned. “Excuse me?”

Scully proudly held out her ID. “Special Agent Dana Scully, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Watts stood again, and studying her face closely, slowly reached out for her leather credentials folder. He dropped his gaze to the shield and matching ID cards, and then returned it to Scully’s face.

“But…”

“I’m a woman, yes, sir. We just arrived from Groton; I’ve already been aboard the Georgia, sir.”

Watts folded the ID back up and handed it back to Scully. “I see.” He sat down and reached for the phone. “Hold my calls,” he barked, “Unless it’s the Admiral.”

Mulder knew without having to be told that “The Admiral” was in this case the four-star Flag officer who was currently serving as CINCPAC.

Watts slowly hung the phone up and regarded Scully. “Care to tell me why you’re here?” he asked.

Scully turned and motioned Mulder closer. “I’d like to introduce my partner, first. This is Special Agent Mulder, sir.”

Watts stood again, as men of his generation were wont to do, and offered his hand. “Partner, huh?” He looked at Scully, who was looking at Mulder, and had a private thought. He’s more than her partner.

“Thank you for seeing us, sir,” Mulder said, because it was the only thing he could think of to say.

“No problem. I asked for this meeting, if you remember. Why don’t we all take a seat?”

Scully and Mulder took seats in the leather wing chairs facing Watt’s desk.

“Now then,” Watts started, “why don’t you tell me why you both are here? What’s up with the Chicago? And now that I have you here — why isn’t NIS involved?”

Scully shifted in her seat, leaning forward. “Sir, the exact reason we are here is…classified, I’m afraid.”

Watts favored her with a tolerant smile. “Dana, I’m sure that whatever it is, I am cleared for it.”

Scully shook her head. “Sir, in this case I’d have to disagree. Only CINCNIS is cleared for this, unfortunately.”

Watts’ expression changed in the space between two heartbeats. “We’ll see about that,” he said. He reached over to another phone on his desk and lifted it, dialing quickly.

“Admiral Watts for Admiral Karn,” he said. There was a pause. “Jake? Mike Watts out at Pearl. I have two-” He got no further. There was a prolonged, uncomfortable silence as Karn read Watts the riot act across several thousand miles of telephone cable. Watts said, “No, sir,” twice, and then a final, “I understand, sir.”

He hung up.

“I haven’t had a chewing like that since the Academy,” he said stiffly. “It appears that you were right, Dana…or should I call you Special Agent Scully?”

“Dana is fine, sir,” she said softly.

Watts stiffened even further. “I think that under the circumstances, Special Agent Scully would perhaps be better suited to the task before us.”

Scully bit her lip, thinking about what she wanted to say. “Mike,” she finally began, “…if I could tell you, you know I would.”

Watts said nothing, letting her finish.

“I can promise you that I won’t embarrass the Navy. And we only need to speak to one or two people aboard the Chicago. And it has nothing to do with anything that you’d be concerned with.”

“Anything having to do with one of my submarines or one of my men concerns me, Dana.”

Good, Mulder thought. They were back to Dana and Mike.

“That’s just it, sir…it has nothing to do with the Chicago. It has to do with…something that happened with one of the officers while he was on shore duty a few years ago. That’s all.”

Watts studied her for a long, silent moment. “Can you at least tell me which officer?”

Scully slowly shook her head. “But when this is all over, Admiral, I will tell you as much as I can.”

Watts thought about this for an even longer moment. Turning his attention to Mulder, he said, “As you can probably guess, I have known Dana since before she was born. Her father and I served together aboard more than one ship. Captain Scully was a good friend of mine, Mr. Mulder. I was almost Dana’s godfather. I won’t ask you to confirm what I’m about to say, but it’s more than obvious to me that you two have more than partner-like feelings for each other. Man to man, I ask you, Mr. Mulder…is Dana in danger?”

The partners exchanged glances, the same question on both their faces. Are we that obvious?

Mulder looked Admiral Watts straight in the eye. “Every federal agent is in danger in one form or another every day, Admiral. You may still remember Scully as a little girl in a dress and pigtails, but I can tell you that not only is she the best partner that I’ve ever had,” he said, leaning on the word ‘partner,’ “but she is probably the single most capable FBI agent I’ve ever known, including myself. That question is insulting, sir. To think that the FBI would only send Agent Scully on missions that were ‘safe enough’ for a woman is frankly offensive.”

Scully’s eyes were wide by the time Mulder finished his speech, and he knew he was going to pay for it later.

Watts’ next words changed all that, however.

“You are correct, Mr. Mulder.” Turning back to Dana, he said, “And I want to apologize to you, too.”

“There’s no need-” Scully started.

“Yes, there is. Please accept my apology.”

Scully sighed. “Accepted.”

“Well then!” Watts said. “I guess we have no more business to discuss. I assume the guard at the gate gave you directions to the Chicago?”

Both agents nodded.

Standing, Watts continued, “Well, Dana, I hope you can find time in your schedule to say good-bye before you leave Hawaii. I know that Betty would love to see you before you go.”

Scully smiled primly. “If I can find the time, sir, you know I will.”

Watts held out his hand for Mulder and Scully to shake, and then he escorted them to the door. “If there’s anything I or my staff can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Scully and Mulder exited the Admiral’s office, nodded to the Yeoman, and descended the stairs to the ground floor.

Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Michael Watts returned to his office, shut the door, and moved behind his desk. Ignoring the two phones on his desk, he opened a drawer and found the cellular he was looking for. He dialed the number from memory, a vague disquieting feeling rumbling in his stomach.

“They just left,” he said.

The voice laughed. It was a mad laugh, Watts thought. “Did they reveal any information?”

“No.”

“Perfect. Then they still have no idea what’s going on. I assume the Chicago is waiting for them?”

“As instructed.”

“Good. Maybe Commander Armfield can shed some more light on the issues for our two agents. You’ve done well, Admiral. You will be remembered.”

If the man on the other end of the phone was waiting to be thanked, he’d have a long wait, Watts thought.

“Any further instructions?”

“Not at this time. Mulder may call Karn to have the boat returned to sea duty, or to have Armfield transferred off. You are to make a token protest to any such action, but go no further. Is that clear?”

“As a bell.” Watts’ voice was flat, emotionless. “What if Armfield lets it slip?”

“Cheer up, Admiral. In four days, none of this will matter. You will have what you’ve always wanted, as will I.”

Watts disconnected the call without a further word.

***

USS Chicago (SSN-220)
Berthing Space 17
Naval Base Pearl Harbor
Oahu, Hawaii
0935 Hours Local Time

Mulder parked the car and killed the engine. Scully had been silent most of the way over, apparently lost in thought.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” he asked.

Scully flashed him a glance, and then a gentle smile. “Since before I joined the FBI,” she answered.

“Remind you of your father?” he prodded.

Scully nodded, and then understanding his question, shook her head. “No, that’s not it. I mean, he does remind me of Ahab, but that’s not what I was thinking about.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know. There’s something wrong. He wasn’t…his usual self.”

“Scully…he’s a big, important Admiral now. Maybe the stress of-”

“No, Mulder. Mike was…different. There’s something going on here, Mulder. Something that we’re not aware of.”

“Well, that’s nothing new.”

Scully nodded. “That much is true. But…this time, Mulder… this time it’s different.”

You mean it’s personal, Mulder thought but wisely didn’t say.

“Well,” he said instead, “we’d better get aboard.” Scully just nodded and got out of the car. Joining her, Mulder put his hand at the small of her back and guided her towards the ship. Remembering their conversation from earlier that morning, he hastily pulled his hand away.

Scully stopped.

“No,” she whispered.

Mulder turned to her, a question on his face. She motioned with her hand for him to lower his head so she could whisper in his ear. “Mulder, don’t change the way you did anything…just don’t add to it. I like your hand there. I’ve gotten used to it.”

She gave him her famous enigmatic smile, and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. Then he straightened, replaced his hand where it belonged, and together they walked towards the gangplank of the USS Chicago.

Yet another of what was turning out to be the ubiquitous Marine Corps guards was standing his post at the bottom of the gangplank. He turned with a steely gaze, his hand hovering near his holstered pistol.

“Can I help you, sir?” he asked.

“Special Agents Scully and Mulder, FBI,” Scully said. “We have an appointment aboard.”

This guard reached behind him to a small box mounted on a metal pole and returned with a clipboard. Checking it quickly, he nodded. “Of course. Please go aboard.”

This time, Mulder called out to the Officer of the Deck.

“Permission to come aboard?”

“Permission granted.”

Together, they ascended the gangplank, Mulder’s hand still at the small of her back.

The OOD looked as if he was going to salute them, so Mulder stuck his hand out. “Mulder,” he said.

“Scully,” she added.

“The captain is in his cabin,” the OOD said. “I will escort-”

“We can find it,” Scully replied, trying to hide a smile. “We just left the Georgia.”

The OOD’s eyes widened, but he said nothing, turning to let Scully and Mulder pass. They found the forward weapons-loading hatch again and descended into the depths of the USS Chicago.

Once below, they were assaulted by the same sounds and smells as those aboard the Georgia. The Chicago wasn’t running any kind of exercise, but there seemed to be the same purpose of motion amongst the crew members. No one meandered anywhere; they all seemed to be barely restraining themselves from running.

More than one member of the crew gave Scully a longing, wondrous glance as she passed. Scully didn’t notice a single one, a fact that never ceased to amaze Mulder: she had absolutely no vanity about her incredible good looks. It was just another thing that made him love her that much more.

They found the Captain’s cabin right in the same place that the Georgia’s was. Considering the Chicago and the Georgia were both 688I- class boats, it wasn’t that much of a surprise.

Scully knocked.

“Come!”

They entered to find a man that looked very much like Captain Newton, only a little bit smaller. A brass plate above his right breast revealed his name to be “Kauffman.”

“Tom,” he said, standing, offering his hand. “Tom Kauffman.”

“Mulder,” she said, hooking a thumb at her partner. “And I’m Scully. How are you today, Captain?”

Even though the twin silver oak leaves on the man’s collar points indicated that he was a Commander and not a ‘real’ Captain, Scully had given him the courtesy all Commanding Officers of ships of the line expected.

“What can I do for the FBI?” he asked, ignoring her question. His attention was totally focused on Mulder.

“We are conducting an investigation into very sensitive matters,” Scully said.

“Is that so?” Kauffman asked, his attention never deviating from Mulder’s eyes. Mulder took the opportunity to look away, not wanting to witness was about to happen. He’d felt more than seen Scully stiffen, and he knew that Commander Kauffman was about to be on the receiving end of the infamous Scully temper.

“Is there some sort of problem that I should be aware of?” Scully asked.

Kauffman finally turned his attention towards her. “I hadn’t been informed that they were going to let a girl on board.”

Uh-oh, Mulder thought, wincing.

“First of all, Commander,” Scully said, revoking the privilege she had shown him only moments ago, “I am not a girl, and have not been one for several years. I am a woman, Commander. Just as you are a man, and not a boy. Is that clear?”

Kauffman said nothing. The only indication that he’d heard what Scully had just said was a tightening around his eyes.

“Secondly, this a federal investigation, and failure to cooperate is a federal felony. Just think how wonderful that would look on your record when you get posted for Flag.” Her casual use of Navy terms was not lost on Kauffman; Scully was not a woman to be trifled with.

“Have I made myself clear?” Scully asked, just a little sharply.

“Perfectly, Agent…Scully was it?” Scully nodded. “Well, then, perhaps you’d better tell me what this is all about.”

“All you need to do is ask Commander Armfield to report to this cabin and then excuse yourself. The rest of it doesn’t concern you.”

Kauffman opened his mouth and took a step towards her. He saw Mulder tense, and stepped back. “Now you listen to me, lady. This is my boat, and what happens on my boat is my business. If you don’t tell me exactly why you need to see Commander Armfield, I will have that armed marine guarding the gangplank drag your pretty little behind out of here in chains. Is that clear?”

Scully studied the man for a long moment, chewing her lip. He wanted to play hardball? Fine; she knew the rules better than he ever would.

She stepped past him to the MC1 on the wall and pressed the TRX button. “Radio to the Captains’ Stateroom.”

There was a very long pause, and then a very confused voice said, “Uh..aye, Radio.” A few seconds later there was a knock on Kauffman’s door.

“Come!” Scully called. The door opened and the Officer of the Watch peered in.

“Sir?”

Scully glanced over her shoulder to get the man’s rating. “Lieutenant, please open a line to the Chief of Staff at COMSUBPAC immediately, and pipe it in here?”

The OOW looked at Kauffman for confirmation. The captain gave it with a short, curt nod. The door closed, and the next twenty seconds were passed in tense silence.

“COMSUBPAC on Six for you, Skipper,” a voice from a hidden speaker called.

Scully pointed to the MC1. “Do you want to? Or should I?”

Kauffman made a motion with his hand. Nodding, Scully stepped back to the MC1 and lifted it. “Mike? Dana. Tom Kauffman is apparently not able to read a simple TWX. Would you mind…? Thanks.” She offered the handset to Kauffman, who reluctantly took it.

“Sir?”

The next thirty seconds passed in equally tense silence, as the roar of Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Mike Watts could be heard in the confines of the small cabin, even though Kauffman kept the receiver clapped to his ear.

Scully was facing Mulder, and she caught his gaze the moment before she mouthed, “Asshole.” Mulder had to look away to keep from laughing.

“Yes, sir,” Kauffman said. He slammed the MC1 down and turned to face Scully.

“You didn’t mention that you knew Admiral Watts personally.”

Scully didn’t even blink. “You didn’t give me a chance, Commander.”

Kauffman looked like he wanted to say something about that, but instead grabbed the MC1 again and pushed a few buttons. “Weapons, this is the Captain. Commander Armfield, please report to my cabin at once.”

Slamming the MC1 down one more, he turned to face Scully again. “Commander Armfield is reporting. You know that as soon as you depart this boat, I will know what your conversation was about?”

Scully stepped closer, looking up at the towering man. “Are you insinuating that you will demand that Commander Armfield inform you as to the subject of our conversation?”

“If he knows what’s good for him, he will,” Kauffman said, rather smugly.

Scully lowered her voice to almost a whisper, forcing Kauffman to lean forward to hear her. “Sir, if you do that, I will personally call Admiral Lee at BUPERS and have a word with him.”

“You know Lee?”

“Hank Lee has eaten four Thanksgiving dinners at my mother’s table, Kauffman.”

Kauffman knew when he was beat. He made to leave, but Mulder blocked his way. “Good thing you didn’t really piss her off, Captain,” he whispered in his ear.

“Why?” Kauffman asked.

“I’ve got a bullet wound in my shoulder from the last time I pissed her off, and she at least pretends to like me.”

Kauffman turned his head and saw the truth in Mulder’s eyes. Grunting, he tore the door open and left. Scully smiled at Mulder.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that the last time I pissed you off, you shot me.”

Her eyes widened. “You didn’t!”

“Sure…put the fear of God into him, didn’t it?”

Scully just shook her head. A moment later, another officer appeared in the doorway.

“Uh..Commander Armfield, sir? Ma’am?”

“Come in, Commander,” Scully said, her face split by a wide, open smile. “Mulder?”

Mulder shut the door.

“Commander,” she started, “We’re not going to beat around the bush. We know that you’ve been in contact with Commander Jenkins aboard the Georgia, and that he has informed you that he would tell us everything about the Article 32 investigation regarding Matthew Stone.”

Armfield nodded, but did not say anything.

Scully pulled the three blank pieces of paper from inside her jacket, still folded, and held them up. “This is the paperwork for an Article 16. I’m quite sure you know what one of those is.”

“Remand to civilian custody,” Armfield confirmed.

“Correct,” Scully said. “Now, I want you tell us exactly what happened during that Article 32. Assume we know nothing. Tell us everything.”

Armfield glanced over his shoulder. Mulder was leaning against the door, arms crossed, just as Scully had aboard the Georgia.

“Those proceedings are sealed. It’s a violation of regulations to reveal-”

“Commander, do you need me to call Admiral Karn, the commanding officer of NIS, to get your cooperation?”

Armfield looked back and forth between the two agents, visibly wondering exactly which hard place and which rock he was between.

Sighing, Armfield nodded. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Mulder said.

Armfield moved to the tiny chair in front of the Captain’s desk and sat.

“The Article 32 board was convened because someone squealed to NIS about what happened in Libya. The charge was unlawful taking of human life, which is different from murder under UCMJ. Basically, it was not debated whether or not Stone had killed Graves, just whether or not he had legal authority to do so. Under certain circumstances, the… actions that Stone took are allowed.”

Mulder said nothing, but he could feel his insides recoiling. Sanctioned murder. That’s all it was, he thought. Officially approved murder.

“We were in the investigative portion of the board when… well, this is hard to explain. Basically, we were told to drop the entire thing. A civilian court might call it an acquittal. An Article 32 board can have what’s called a ‘non-judgmental finding.’ What that means is that we have no finding at all. It’s been put in place so that the double-jeopardy provisions of the Constitution don’t apply. If NIS or CID or someone finds more evidence later, another board can be called. It’s not a Court Martial, but the step previous to it.

“Anyway, we were told-”

“By who?” Scully demanded.

“The president of the board. Sort of like the chief judge. He told us that we were going to find that there was no official finding, that Stone would be returned to duty, his record swept clean.”

“Was any reason given for this action?” Mulder asked.

“No. But we were told that the orders came from very high in Naval Intelligence. That it was a matter of national security, that NIS hadn’t cleared the prosecution with Intelligence, and that there were things that we didn’t know that were overtaking our events, so to speak.”

“Is that common?” Scully wanted to know.

“No, not that I’m aware of,” Armfield admitted. “I’ve never heard of it happening before.”

He paused, obviously wanting to say something more.

“What?” Scully prompted.

“I left my briefcase in the hearing room. After the investigation was gavelled to a close, myself and Commander Jenkins decided to go out for a drink. I was all the way to the car before I remembered, so I headed back up.

“When I got to the hearing room, I heard voices. So I stopped and listened. I didn’t want to interrupt another hearing, even though I knew there weren’t any others scheduled for that day.” He paused again, obviously wanting the story dragged out of him.

“What?” Scully prodded.

“Stone was in there. With the president of the board, and two other people. I didn’t know one of the two, but I did know the other one.”

“Who?” Mulder asked.

“Admiral Miles. Larry Miles.”

“The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations?” Scully asked, astonished.

“Not then. Then he was Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was a one-star back then. At 37. One of the youngest ever.”

“And?” Mulder prompted.

“They were talking. And laughing. I cracked the door, and Miles was pounding Stone on the back, laughing about something. I heard something, something that still doesn’t make any sense.”

He paused once again. “They said that the liberty bell would be free to ring again. And then they laughed about it.”

Mulder and Scully exchanged a glance. It seemed like an odd comment.

“What’s the significance of that?” Mulder asked.

Armfield shrugged. “Well, I got to thinking…”

Oh, jeez, Mulder thought. Another one. Just like Jenkins.

“…and?” Scully asked.

“What if it’s the name of a project? LIBERTY BELL? So, I made a few calls, and came up dry. But then…” He trailed off again.

“What?” Scully asked. This was like pulling teeth.

“Well, I ran into the president of the board about four years later. In Annapolis. We were at the same bar, and I decided to have a little fun with him. I went up to him and asked if he remembered me, and he did.

“Then I asked him if the Liberty Bell was still ringing.” Armfield paused and looked directly at Scully. “You should have seen the look he gave me, Miss Scully.”

“Describe it.”

“Like he wanted to kill me. If he’d had a gun, he would have shot me dead right there. Of that I have no doubt.”

He paused, and then continued. “About four days later, I got a visit from two men in suits who didn’t identify themselves. My CO at the time told me to cooperate with them, answer any question they had, the whole deal. They grilled me for three hours about my contact the board president. They asked me over and over again what I had meant when I asked about the Liberty Bell. I told them everything I knew.

“When that happened, I was teaching at Annapolis. I had a dream slot. I was up for command of my own boat, at 31. One of the youngest in the fleet, ever. I’m almost 48 now, Agent Scully, and I’m still a Weapons Officer. I’ll never have command of my own boat. In another few years, I’ll have my thirty in, and I’ll pull the pin. Retire. But I’ll never know what ‘liberty bell’ means.”

He sighed, and then finished. “They told me never to tell anyone what I told them, never to mention liberty bell, whatever the hell it means, again to anyone, no matter what. Highly classified, they said. Intelligence related. National Security. And so, until I got that note from Jenkins, I’d thought it was over.” Grinning weakly, he added, “Guess I was wrong.”

“TLG?” Scully asked, looking at Mulder. He nodded, reaching for his cellphone. He dialed quickly.

As soon as the line picked up, Mulder spoke. “No names. Do you know who this is?”

Frohicke’s voice came through the line. “Of course.”

“Do you remember that time we all went out for sandwhiches?” Mulder asked.

A short pause. “Yes.”

“Remember the city those come from?”

Again, a short pause, and then “Yes.”

“There is only one national landmark in that city. Those two words. Start sniffing.”

Frohicke didn’t pause. “Any general direction you want us to sniff?”

“Military intelligence. An operation of some sort. Past, present or future. Get back to me fastest.” Mulder hung up.

“Who did you just call?” Armfield wanted to know.

“Why?”

“Because if they can find out what this is all about, I want their number. There’s a few questions about the JFK assassination I’d like answered.”

Scully turned away, biting the inside of her cheek to hide her smile.

Mulder grinned. “Well, these guys could probably answer those questions. But it’s better if you don’t know.” Mulder opened the door. “Thank you for your cooperation, Commander. I think we’re done here.”

Scully nodded and watched as Armfield made his way out of the cabin. The officer stopped halfway out. “Aren’t you going to tell me not to tell anyone?”

Scully grinned. “I thought that went without saying, Commander, but yes, please keep this under your cover for now.”

Armfield nodded. “My CO is going to want-”

“I don’t think so,” Scully said, smugly.

Armfield nodded again and left them alone.

“Well,” Mulder said, after shutting the door, “we got a little more. What next?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, I could just ditch you and take off on my own-”

“Watch, it Mulder.”

“Ok…I think we need to go back to the hotel, check out, and get a plane back to DC. Then I think we need to find Stone and run the phrase “liberty bell” by him and see what happens.”

Scully nodded, obviously not very comfortable with the idea of facing Stone again.

“Scully, I can do it by my-”

“Forget it, Mulder. You know better than that.”

He nodded. He did.

“Ok, then, I’ll call Karn and see if we can find Stone. Maybe he’s still in the Annapolis City Jail.”

Mulder pulled out his phone again and dialed.

“Karn.”

“Mulder.”

“Is Stone with you?”

Mulder frowned, looking up at Scully. “No, sir.”

“I got a call from a Commander King over at BUPERS,” Karn said. “She told me that she’d been in contact with Stone, and she gave me a message from him.”

“What was the message?”

“‘Everything is not what it seems.’ I’d ordered him back here after he was released from jail. Nice trick, by the way. I’ll have to remember that. Anyway, I ordered him back to Little Creek, but he’s vanished.”

“Vanished?” Mulder almost shouted. Scully’s interest perked up at that.

“Well, King mentioned that he’d said something about San Diego, but I’ve been unable to confirm that he’s there. He hasn’t gotten transport on any MAC flight, or flown commercial under his own name. And knowing Stone, he probably threw that bone to King so she’d tell me and we’d spend time looking for him at the wrong end of the country. Or, he could think that we think that and go to San Diego anyway.”

“What’s in San Diego?”

“God, Mulder, I have no idea. Several Marine and Navy bases, that’s all that I personally know about.”

Mulder grunted. “Ok, Admiral. Scully and I have some new information. I don’t want to talk about it on an open line. I’ll try and find a secure phone and give you a yell.”

“Understood. Mulder…if you find Stone, do me a favor and bring his ass back to me in chains, ok?”

“You got it, Admiral. Thanks.”

Mulder disconnected.

“What?” Scully asked.

“Well, we have to find a secure phone, and our travel plans have changed. We’re going to San Diego.” He gave her a trademark leer and added, “I hope you packed your bikini!”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 16/38

USS Chicago (SSN-220)
Berthing Space 17
Naval Base Pearl Harbor
Oahu, Hawaii
1020 Hours

“Where to next?” Scully asked as they descended the gangplank towards the dock.

“I think we should ask your friend Admiral Watts if he can get us a secure line to Admiral Karn. We need to give him an update and get as much detail as we can about Stone’s conversation with Commander King.”

Scully nodded, agreeing with her partner’s assessment. They drove back to Watts’ office in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Each of them wondering what they had managed to get themselves into. The case was taking them in directions neither of them had anticipated, places neither would have ever suspected. The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations might be involved, in some way, with a string of murders that was related to two separate military missions almost a decade apart. And the man that the Navy had sent to work on the case with them was somehow involved.

Mulder frowned, thinking about Stone. At some point, Mulder knew, their paths were going to cross again, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to keep from shooting the arrogant asshole. The marks on Scully’s neck had already started to fade, but Mulder would never be able to forget the image of the angry welts against her perfect porcelain skin.

Mulder forced thoughts of delicious revenge from his mind as he pulled into the visitor’s parking space and killed the engine.

“I just had a thought,” he said. Scully turned to him, her eyes tracking and finding his. They locked gazes for a moment, and Mulder had a sudden body memory of that morning in the shower, running his hands over her warm, wet, soapy body. He could feel her slickness under his fingers, the soft weight of her breast as he washed her. Without thinking about it, his eyes dropped to her bustline and then back up again.

She flushed. “Mulder…”

“Sorry,” he said softly. “I did have something business related on my mind, but the moment I looked into your eyes, I remembered the shower this morning.”

His words had an immediate and profound effect on Scully. The first part of Mulder’s apology had been spoken with a little-boy-lost, puppy-dog ‘sorry’ tone to his voice that she found both endearing and annoying. During the second part of his apology, however, his voice had dropped a register or six, becoming husky and raw, the sound of it scraping against her nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. She had the same body memory, but from the other side, the memory of Mulder’s hands on her, touching her, his fingers gentle and warm and sure and sweet, worshipping her body with his touch, making her swoon under the hot water.

He saw the blush rising in her cheeks and felt a little better. “You too?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, surprised at the sound of her own voice. I sound aroused, she realized. “Me, too.”

“Guess this is the part that’s going to take getting used to, huh?”

She arched an eyebrow, asking the question.

“Working together and…wanting each other at the same time.”

She looked away, out the window, not willing to answer, to confirm his assessment with one of her own. It was too dangerous, she thought. Too raw.

“Mulder,” she finally said, choosing her words carefully. “We need to be professional about this.”

“I agree,” he said, “but I also think that after this case, we need to take some vacation time.” He paused. “From us.”

Her head came around so quickly Mulder heard the tendons popping. “What?”

He laughed, reaching out with his hand and finding hers. “No, let me explain. What I meant was that Mulder and Scully need to take a vacation from being Mulder and Scully, and go somewhere to just be… Dana and…uh, Mulder for a while. Get used to this…us. You and me. Together.”

Scully thought about it for thirty seconds and then nodded. “Makes sense. We’ll talk about it later.” She withdrew her hand and moved towards the door.

Hurt, Mulder stopped her. “Scully?”

She stopped, hearing the tone in his voice. She knew what was coming.

“No, Mulder. I don’t regret it.” She turned back to face him. “If we weren’t parked where we are, I’d touch your face and kiss you and let you know just how much I don’t regret it. But we need to get going, Mulder, we need to crack this damn case so we can take that vacation and get back to normal. Ok?”

“Ok,” he said, smiling. When she looked at him that way, that exact, perfect, Scully way, there was nothing he could deny her.

***

Office of the Chief of Staff, Commander, Submarine Forces, Pacific (COMSUBPAC)
Navy Base Pearl Harbor
Oahu, Hawaii
1036 Hours

They were climbing the stairs to Watts’ office when Scully stopped and touched Mulder’s arm. He was a few steps ahead of her, so he had to lean down to hear her whisper.

“What was on your mind in the car?”

He grunted and came down to her step. “You said that something was off with your friend the Admiral. Any chance he’s in on it?”

Scully frowned. “In on what?”

“This whole Stone nonsense. You said he seemed hinky.”

“Hinky? I never said hinky, Mulder.”

“You know what I mean. Hinky. Off. Jittery. Did you or didn’t you mean that he was acting hinky?”

She looked up at her partner. Strange, she thought. If he’d asked that question four days ago, I’d be storming up the stairs ahead of him, ready to defend Mike’s honor until my dying breath. The man has eaten Christmas dinner at my mother’s table. He was almost my godfather.

Mulder was right, she realized. Her own sixth sense was pinging hard as far as Mike Watts was concerned. There was something off there, just not quite right.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He shrugged. “You know him better than I do, Scully.”

She nodded. “True.” Her decision made, she met her partner’s eyes. “Only one way to find out.”

Mulder grinned. “Who’s ‘good cop’ this time?”

She gave him a soft smile. “Neither. Just follow my lead.” Mulder nodded, not needing to say that he’d follow her lead anywhere it took them, anytime.

The Yeoman announced them and they re-entered Watts’ office. He was buried in paperwork and looked up with a huge smile when the two agents entered.

“Dana! I’m so glad you could stop by!”

“Hi, Uncle Mike,” she said, a smile in her voice. Mulder had to fight to keep a straight face; when Scully wanted to, she could be downright evil. Well, he mused, she learned from the best.

Me.

“What can I do for you, Dana?”

Scully sat down, and crossed her legs. “Our investigation turned up some interesting information, and we need to communicate it to CINCNIS as soon as possible. Would it be possible to…oh, I don’t know, ‘borrow’ a secure line?”

Watts smiled and nodded. “Of course. I’ll have a line opened right now. I assume you’ll want some privacy?”

Scully pressed her lips together and just nodded. “I’d ask you to stay, Uncle Mike, since what we discovered has some pretty wide-ranging implications. But the regulations…CINCNIS was pretty clear about who we’re allowed to talk to and when.” She paused, and Mulder felt something in his gut, a psychic twitch that signaled Scully was about to switch from passive to active target acquisition. “I mean, personally, I trust you. I know you wouldn’t have anything to do with this.” It might have been Mulder’s imagination, but he thought Watts’ had paled just a little at Scully’s words.

Watts’ lifted one of the phones on his desk, and Scully thought his hand might be shaking just a little. Damn. “This will take a moment or two,” he said, and dialed. He waited for someone to pick up and then spoke quickly: “This is Watts. I need an STU line piped into my office ASAP. Don’t log or record it.” Mulder’s eyebrows rose at this. The call would be naked as far as CINCPAC went. No record anywhere.

Must be nice to be the boss, he thought.

“Mulder,” Scully said, softly, as if trying not to bother Watts’ call. Mulder felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. This was it. Watts was lifting a cup of coffee to his mouth, smiling into the phone, waiting for a response.

“Remember you were asking about my last vacation?” Scully asked. Mulder nodded. “I went to Philly, like my mom suggested.” Mulder saw the opening and flashed Scully a warm, wide smile with his eyes. He saw a corner of her mouth twist up in appreciation that he’d gotten her not- so-subtle hint.

“Did you see the Liberty Bell?” he asked.

SMACK!

The coffee cup hit the desk and tipped, the widening pool of hot brown liquid staining Watts’ papers. “Shit!” he said, dropping the phone.

Scully caught her breath; there was an ice cold ball in the pit of her stomach. Watts was digging in his desk drawer, looking for something to mop up the coffee with. His eyes rose slowly and met hers, and he knew she knew.

He hung the phone up.

“Mulder, shut the door,” Scully said softly.

Sadly, Mulder closed the door.

Scully went for the jugular. “Mike…you have to tell us everything. Everything you know.”

Watts’ answer was both immediate and shocking.

“I can’t. He’ll kill me.” He sighed, deeply. “Dana, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted to tell someone…anyone, but…I can’t He’ll kill me, and Betty. And the boys.”

“Who?” Mulder asked.

“Graves.”

“Danny, right?” Mulder asked. God forbid there was a fourth Graves brother.

Watts nodded.

Scully tried again. “Mike…you were one of my father’s best friends. You held me in your arms when I was a baby. My mother even told me that you had a crush on her when you were younger.”

Watts flushed and Scully smiled.

“Mike…we need to know. Tell us. We can protect you.”

He shook his head. “No, you can’t. No one could. I’m not saying you’re not good at your job. It’s just…Graves…his reach never exceeds his grasp, if you know what I mean.” Watts paused. “That man has watched Presidents die.”

Mulder suddenly grew his own ball of ice. He’d heard those words before, uttered by a man who sat in a stinking cloud of smoke.

“I have to tell someone,” Watts muttered. “Before this gets out of hand.” He paused and looked at Scully. “I owe Bill that much. He knew that I was in love with your mother,” he said, “and still let me be his friend. You have to promise to protect Betty and the boys. I don’t care what happens to me…but my wife, my sons…” Scully nodded.

Scully’s mind was still whirling from Watts’ earlier statement.

In love? With Mom? And Dad knew?

“I’m only a little piece of it,” Watts started. “A tiny piece. I don’t know the whole picture.”

“Tell us what you do know,” Scully encouraged.

“At the end 1972, I DEROS’d from Vietnam back to the states. I was a Lieutenant Commander. My next job was a staff slot at NORAD, representing the Navy on the Threats & Intentions Team.” He paused, thinking back. “There was a lot of gossip in those days, just like today. Professional military officers can be such a group of old mother hens sometimes.

“Anyway…one of the rumors concerned Nixon. The rumor was that he was slowly beginning to lose his mind. That he was going over the edge.” Watts paused and turned his chair to face the window, lost in memory. “Over the next four months, we discovered that something was going on. We went to DEFCON 2 three times in two weeks, and over ten times over that four months.”

“What, at that time, was DEFCON 2?”

Watts glanced back at his old friend’s daughter. “Planes in the air, fast-attack subs sortied, carriers turning into the wind and launching aircraft, missiles in the silos humming, boomers coming to launch depth and popping the hatches on the D5’s. The hot line open and humming. Teletypes clacking. Not quite hands on the launch keys, but every single SIOP unit waiting for the FLASH message that would start it all.”

Scully glanced at her partner, a frown creasing her perfect face. “I had no idea tensions were that high.”

“They weren’t. That was the problem. Nixon was the Commander in Chief. He could take us all the way to DEFCON 1 without having to pick up a phone and ask anyone. When the Soviet Victor III and Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarines passed sea trials and put to sea, we knew that our SOSUS line was going to have trouble detecting them. And if a Soviet SSBN launched off our coast, Washington would have less than 2 minutes warning. It was decided that POTUS should have the ability to get a first-strike off without having any questions asked, as it were.”

Scully nodded, beginning to see.

“He was losing his mind. He was paranoid. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, but it was later revealed that the man was a stark raving lunatic by that time, convinced that everyone from the Boy Scouts to the Red Chinese were out to get him.”

Mulder had a joke suddenly pop into his mind. What’s the difference between the US Military and the Boy Scouts?

The Boy Scouts don’t have nuclear weapons.

“So…anyway…in Threats and Intentions we started wondering what could be done if we had an insane President at the controls. A man with his finger on the button who had…lost it…was not a comforting thought.”

Watts paused, turning to look out the window again. “And so Liberty Bell was born.”

Mulder felt his gut clench. He knew what the next words out of Watts’ mouth were going to be; he would have bet a year’s salary on it.

“Military takeover,” Scully breathed.

Watts nodded. “Yup. Operation LIBERTY BELL was originally conceived as a contingency plan for allowing the military to temporarily take control of the country in case of a…I think the phrase was… ‘a political administration in the last phases of human psychological meltdown.’”

Mulder was confused. “What does that have to do with Goblin teams?”

Watts turned to face Mulder. “Who do you think was going to go in and put a bullet in Nixon’s head?”

Now it was starting to make sense.

“Ok, what was Nixon. He’s not President anymore. What does…”

He stopped. Something was teasing at the back of his mind, a little niggling something. Ordinarily, he’d be able to retrieve it, but for some reason it was escaping his grasp.

“What is the state of LIBERTY BELL now?” Scully asked. “Certainly it’s been scrapped.”

Watts sighed. “Yes. And no.”

He thought about it, trying to find the words. “Officially, it’s off the books. Some of us in the military, however, think we exchanged one kind of madness for another, as far as the politicians go. Some of us think this country is headed down a path that it won’t be able to recover from, Dana. A path that will lead to this country’s destruction. I’m not talking about what’s left of the Soviets or the CIS or whatever the fuck they’re called this week attacking us. I’m not talking about tank warfare across the Fulda gap. I’m not talking about some terrorist smuggling a nuke into New York and detonating it in Times Square.

“I’m talking about civil war, Dana. There are those that believe this country is heading for a civil war in the next twenty years, a war like no country has ever seen in the history of civilization. America is the most heavily armed Western nation in history. We have over half a billion guns in the arms of the civilian population. That’s over five hundred million guns, Dana. And there are those of us that believe that someday, someday soon those guns will be… That we’ll turn against one another.”

Scully spoke, her voice hushed. “Surely you don’t believe that!”

“Not in the way that some of us do, no,” Watts admitted. “But I do think that the policies of this country over the last thirty years are insane. I think that the politicians are more interested in catering to whomever pays them the most money, rather than doing what they were elected to do. I know it sounds corny, Dana, but I do believe that the members of the Congress have a duty to represent the people that elected them, not the special interest groups.”

“Like the Defense industry?” Mulder asked.

Watts ignored him, focusing his attention on Scully.

“And if that day comes, if American turns against American, I wanted to be in a position to stop it in its tracks.”

“I don’t know if you agree with what I just said, Dana, and frankly, I don’t care. I know that my career is over. But I need you to understand why I did it. Why I joined them.”

Mulder’s antennae went up. “Them? What do you mean, ‘them’?”

“We call ourselves the Ronin,” Watts said.

Mulder and Scully both gasped. Memories of Modell washed over them. Mulder felt his gut twist with agony; he remembered the gun, in his hand, pointed at his own head, at Scully, the shaking barrel centered on her head. The click of the hammer dropping on an empty chamber. The look in Scully’s eyes as she tried to reach him, physically … and emotionally.

“You know about the Ronin?” Watts asked.

“Ronin,” Mulder explained. “It’s Japanese. Warriors, samurai without masters.”

Watts nodded. “I’m impressed, Mr. Mulder.”

“Don’t be. I know the rest of the story, too.”

Watts’ eyes darkened. Mulder said nothing, pinning Watts with his gaze.

“Feudal Japan. A great battle took place. Forty-nine of the samurai of one warlord survived, and swore vengeance upon the man who had ordered his death, another warlord. They pretended to switch allegiances, even going so far as to get drunk and laid with their new ‘boss.’ After ten years, when the warlord had relaxed, the Ronin struck. It was a blood bath. The forty-nine Ronin killed every single Samurai, over three hundred of them, then the warlord, and then they committed seppuku.”

Watts nodded again. “I am very impressed, Mr. Mulder, very impressed indeed. Of course, we never intended to take it that far.”

“What’s Seppuku?” Scully wanted to know.

“Ritualistic suicide. You’ve probably heard it called “hari kari” or something like that,” Mulder explained. Scully arched an eyebrow in response, and then turned her attention back to Watts.

“Who are the Ronin?” Mulder asked Watts.

“That’s just it. I only know one other, besides Graves. And the other person I know, only knows another besides me. We’re compartmentalized. None of us know who any of the rest are, save for two. Our contact, and our partner.”

Scully thought about grabbing her notebook to make some notations, and disregarded it. Mulder, the Human Notebook, was here.

“Shit!” Mulder swore.

“What’s wrong?” Scully asked, and then with a flash of understanding, she got it. Graves was brilliant, that much was obvious. If Mulder and Scully arrested Watts, he would have a tripwire, an early warning system. He would have time to execute whatever operation he was planning before the authorities could find and arrest the rest. It would be nearly impossible to arrest them all. They would vanish into the woodwork.

“What do you know about LIBERTY BELL? What’s your role in it?”

“When the operation commences, my main job is to…” Watts looked away, took a deep breath and then began again. “My job is to walk over to Building 1 and kill CINCPAC.”

He saw the shocked look on Scully’s face and looked away, unable to hold her gaze. “My job,” he said, his voice droning, “was to take a .45 and put a bullet into CINCPAC’s head, and then take command of the Pacific Theater of Operations and await further orders from Graves. We have a private communications channel set up, and I was to have all comm links between here and Washington cut or destroyed.”

“That’s all you know?”

Watts shrugged. “My role changes as my assignment does. I’m up for a third star in a year or so…or at least, I was. I would probably have gotten OP08.”

Scully nodded, and it was Mulder’s turn to ask. “What?”

“Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations, Plans and Policy. At the Pentagon.”

“What would your job there have been?” Mulder asked.

Watts shrugged. “Depends. If CNO or my CO was one of the Ronin, nothing direct, I’m sure. If not, take control. Wreak havoc. Do what needs to be done.”

“Are there forty nine Ronin?”

Again, Watts shrugged. “No idea. As far as I know, it could just be three of us.”

Mulder started pacing. “Missing…something is missing. You’ve got to have more. You’ve got to know more, even if you don’t think you do,” he muttered, thinking.

He stopped. “You’ve been a member of the Ronin since 1973?”

“No, since about 1979. Right after Iran.”

Mulder nodded. “Ok…you weren’t a two-star admiral then. You would have been what…a lieutenant commander?”

Watts nodded. “Yes, so?”

Mulder moved to sit next to Scully. “Take notes,” he said to her. Startled, she reached for her pad and pen. “I want you to tell us what your billets were, and what your Ronin assignment was for every job you’ve had since you joined until this morning. Leave nothing out.”

Watts gave Mulder a blank expression. “Why?”

“Because…Graves is still recruiting, I’m almost sure of it. He needs people in the places that you’ve been. His plans require that if you were able to do something for him in a given position, when you LEAVE, he needs someone else to take over your slot. Or at least, close to it. Once we know what jobs you’ve had, we can figure out who to take a closer look at.” Or, figure out his plan, Mulder thought.

Watts nodded. “Makes sense,” he said, reaching for the pad. “Allow me. I can do it quicker.”

Watts bent to his task as Scully and Mulder sat back to watch. They were both thinking, although not about the same things.

Mulder was trying to piece together what he knew. As far as he could tell, the murders were a smoke screen. Danny had been trying to get back at the man who had killed both of his brothers. In preparation for what? And was Stone a Ronin? Was that what was going on? The leader of the Ronin trying to kill one of his own disciples? Stone, a madman, gone off the reservation? And why wait so long after Iraq to start killing Goblins? Or was Stone…actually a good guy, working under, trying to ferret out…

No.

That was insane. Stone was insane. He was in on it. He had to be. It was the only thing that made sense, considering the information they had.

Scully was thinking about her father. How disappointed he would have been in Mike. Or would he? Scully wondered. Her father had loved his country, and had also been convinced that it was heading in the wrong direction when he’d died.

Ahab a Ronin?

Was it possible?

“Mike?” Scully asked. “Was my-”

“No. Never.”

Satisfied, she returned to her thoughts.

And to think that I almost…with one of them….she shuddered.

Mulder felt it, felt the revulsion running through her body. He glanced at Watts and saw that he was still writing. Reaching his hand over below Watts’ sight line, Mulder patted Scully’s leg, just above her knee. She smiled at her partner, letting it reach her incredibly blue, expressive eyes.

Mulder thought he was actually going to swoon when Watts spoke.

“Here’s the list.”

Mulder read it over Scully’s shoulder. “Scully, we have to get to San Diego. We have to find Stone.”

Scully nodded, standing to join her partner. She turned to face Watts. “Mike…we…we can’t arrest you now. It would tip Graves off. We need you to…” She looked at her partner and then back at the Admiral. “I need you to tell me that you’re going to cooperate with us, with the FBI, with NIS in this matter. Do I have your word as an officer and a gentleman that I can trust you?”

Mulder knew that Scully was purposely pushing Watts’ buttons, and he admired her skill at it. The two-star admiral drew himself up to his full height and all but saluted her. “Dana, you have my word. I’ll wait for word from you. What should I tell Graves if he calls?”

“Nothing. Tell him that we had a nice visit and that you told me to give my mother your best.”

Watts nodded. “Flying commercial to San Diego?”

Scully nodded. She glanced at her watch. “Yes, and we have to get moving.”

“When do you arrive?”

Scully did some mental calculations. “About five tonight, San Diego time.”

Watts shook his head. “Fuck that.” He sat back down and grabbed his phone. “I need flight Ops,” he said. Two seconds later he was speaking again. “Tony? Mike. Do you have any 14’s ashore? I need two, ASAP….Mirimar. What?” Watts glanced at his watch. “I need them to have engines started in less than 10. Ferry service. Two…people going to Diego. Fine. Thanks, Tony.” He paused. “Tony…one more thing. Log this as a repair flight, OK? I don’t want this in the books as a ferry job or an escort job. Find two airframes that are old enough to need some repair, but not old enough if you know what I mean. I need this flight to be invisible. Thanks” Watts hung up. “I have two F-14/D’s standing by on runway four right waiting for you. You’ll be in San Diego in a little over an hour.” He pushed his intercom. “I need two zoot suits in here right now!” He released the button.

“Dana, what size are you?” he asked.

***

Runway 4R
Naval Air Station Pearl Harbor
Oahu, Hawaii
1120 Hours

The Admiral’s personal staff car screeched to a stop thirty feet from the two huge Navy fighter planes. They sat on the runway, squatting like two huge prehistoric bugs. The pilots stood by their aircraft, hands clasped at the small of their backs. They were both wondering what the hell was going on. Ten minutes ago they’d been playing a friendly game of cards in the alert shack, and then the klaxon had gone off, but only for the pilots. Not the RIO’s.

Who flew without a backseat?

Watts was first out of the car, followed by Scully and then Mulder. The two FBI agents were carrying their overnight bags, which now contained their clothes. They were both in flight suits, and both carried helmet bags that had been quickly provided by Watts.

The Admiral strode up to the two pilots. They saluted.

“Sir, Commander Adams, sir,” the older of the two pilots said.

“Commander, these two people are traveling on official Navy business, and the nature of that business is highly classified. You will ferry them to Mirimar NAS, refuel, and return here. You are not to ask them any questions aside from “How was your flight, sir?” Is that clear?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Adams said, obviously curious.

“Additionally,” Watts said, taking another step closer and lowering his voice, “This flight is a repair flight. Your two passengers were not in these aircraft.”

“Sir?” Commander Adams asked.

“They were never here. Understood?” Adams nodded.

Watts turned to Scully. “Well, Dana…good luck. Call me. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Scully nodded. “You have both our numbers. Call us if…”

Watts nodded, leaned down and hugged his oldest friend’s daughter and then stepped back. Scully walked over to Adams and held out her hand. “Dana Scully, Commander. Let’s get this show on the road.”

***

Five minutes later, Mulder and Scully were each strapped into the backseat of their own F14’s. The crew chiefs had given a very abbreviated safety lecture, pointing out where the ejection handles were, and what controls were not to be touched. (Which turned out to be most of them, Mulder was amused to find.) After they had both been hooked up to the plane’s internal oxygen and pressurization systems, the canopies were dropped and both planes began to taxi towards the threshold.

Mulder was looking for a place to put his hands when he saw the two handles. He realized with a start that there were no flight controls in this backseat of the plane. What happened if the pilot had a heart attack? he thought.

Eject, his mind answered smugly.

The pilot’s voice filled his ears. “Mr. Mulder, you and I are number one for takeoff. We’ll be rolling in about fifteen seconds. Please hold on, sir…this is going to be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced in your life.” Mulder wracked his brain, trying to remember his pilot’s name. Ferucci, he remembered. Vincent Ferucci.

Mulder was about to answer when the roar of the twin jet engines filled his ears. The pilot had thrown the throttles all the way forward, almost to the firewall, and the agile fighter dashed down the runway and then practically leapt into the air. Ten seconds later, the plane was climbing and banking, and Mulder could hear as well as feel the landing gear retracting.

“Our flight time to San Diego is approximately 54 minutes,” the pilot said. “Do you have any questions?” Mulder looked around for a button to push so he could talk. “It’s on the floor, under your right foot,” the pilot said.

“How fast are we going, Vincent?”

“Right now? About six hundred miles an hour. But when Commander Adams joins up on my left wing, we’ll both be accelerating to about Mach 1.6.” Ferucci paused. “Call me Boombox, ok? Or at the very least, Vinny.”

Mulder gulped. That was fast.

A moment later he saw movement over his left shoulder. He turned and gasped. Scully was ten feet away, slightly below him. He looked down and saw that the right wingtip of Adams’ plane was under the left wingtip of his own. He could see her smiling and waving.

“Can I talk to my partner?” Mulder asked.

“Sure…left foot this time. Just give me a sec to change the freq.”

A moment later, Mulder heard her voice. “Hi, Mulder!”

“Hi, yourself. So…this better than flying commercial?”

She shrugged. “Dunno. What’s the inflight movie?”

“Top Gun?” he suggested, and heard laughter.

A moment later, Boombox spoke. “Oahu Control, this is Ghostrider Two Six Zero, a flight of two 14’s on a repair, requesting vector to Mirimar NAS.”

The response was immediate. “Ghostrider two six zero and two six one, turn to heading zero eight five, ascend to angels 24. You are cleared for Mirimar. Have a nice day.”

“Thank you, Oahu,” Vincent said, and then on the intercom, “Hold on, Mr. Mulder.”

A moment later Mulder was slammed back in his seat as the pilot moved the variable-geometry wings to full back position, added throttle and then kicked the afterburners in. The plane rocketed forward. A moment later Scully’s plane joined their left wing.

“Mulder,” she called over the radio. “This is…amazing. It’s almost…”

Don’t say it, he thought.

“…like sex,” she finished.

“My mother told me to stay away from fast women, Scully,” he said.

She got the message and didn’t reply, instead raising the visor over her eyes and winking at him.

“Commander Adams?” Scully asked.

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Is taking off always…like that?”

He laughed. “You should try it off a carrier some day, Ma’am. At night. In a storm. THAT is interesting.”

Scully nodded. Sounded like it.

“How maneuverable are these planes?” Mulder asked Boombox.

There was an answering chuckle. “How strong is your stomach, Mr. Mulder?”

“Very,” Mulder said smugly. “You should taste my chili.”

There was a pause. “Ghostrider zero to one.”

“One.”

“Wanna play switcheroo?”

“Sure.”

A moment later, Mulder’s world turned upside down. Both pilots cut out of afterburner, dropping the planes under Mach 1. They then rolled the planes exactly one-hundred and eighty degrees so they were flying upside down at over six hundred miles per hour. One pilot applied left rudder and flaperon, the other one applied right rudder and flaperon. The planes slowly drifted towards each other, upside down. Once they passed, one beneath the other, the pilots rolled the planes back level and rocketed through max power and into afterburner.

“That answer your question?” Vinny asked.

Meaning to hit the intercom switch, Mulder hit the radio one instead. “Oh, I don’t feel too good,” he said. “You guys got something in here….oh noooooooooo……..”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 17/38

US Navy F14/D Tomcat, Tail Number N94432
Approaching Mirimar NAS
Outside San Diego, California

“Mirimar approach, this is Ghostrider two six six,” Boombox radioed. “Request approach and landing instructions for Mirimar. We are a flight of two Foxtrot one fours.”

“Ahhhh,” Mirimar approach radioed back, “…roger that, Ghostrider two six six. Turn to new heading zero zero three, descend to angles six and report on final.”

“Roger that, Mirimar approach,” Vinny radioed, banking the huge fighter into a gentle left turn. Switching to the intercom, he checked in with his backseater. “How you doing back there, Mr. Mulder?”

“Fine,” Mulder said, although he didn’t feel it. The aerobatic moves they had pulled on him were still having an effect on his stomach, an effect that worsened every time he thought about it. He’d barely managed to keep his lunch intact, and he wasn’t looking forward to the landing. “Tell me, Boombox, I know you guys use those wire things when you land on an aircraft carrier. Do you do the same on land?”

Vinny’s laughter filled Mulder’s helmet. “Only in training, sir. We just drop right down, set this puppy on the tarmac, and reverse the ‘ol engines. Physics takes care of the rest.”

Mulder nodded, not bothering to answer. Sounded like a normal commercial landing to him. Vinny smiled to himself and reached down to touch a small toggle switch almost lost amongst the dozens of buttons, switches, dials and gauges that made up the Tomcat’s cockpit. The switch cut Mulder’s radio feed.

“Uh, Mirimar tower, Ghostrider two six six requesting a flyby. We have VIPs on board,” he added, hoping that would carry some weight with the controller.

“Uh…two two six, can you specify nature of VIPs?” the tower asked.

“Negative at this time,” Vinny called back.

There was a long pause. Finally, “Uh, two six six, Mirimar tower. Request granted…within limits. Please keep the noise to a minimum. You are cleared for a flyby of the tower in loose deuce formation. Nothing fancy, two six six.”

“Roger that, Miramar…and thanks,” Vinny answered. He smiled. His passenger may not have liked the little stunt they’d pulled above Hawaii, but he might like this…

Vinny knew that his wingman had heard the entire exchange because Adams flashed him a thumbs up from the other aircraft. Using hand signals, they decided who would lead and who would follow on their high- speed approach.

“Prepare for landing,” Vinny called on the intercom, trying to hide the smile in his voice.

Mulder heard it, however, and grimaced.

Vinny cut power and added flaps as he made what appeared to be his final turn on approach to the runway. Mulder looked over and saw that the other plane was not behind or above them, as he would have expected, but was ten feet of their right wing, at the same altitude, descending at the same rate. As they pulled within a hundred feet of the runway, just close enough for Mulder to think that maybe they weren’t going to pull anything, that maybe this damned flight was indeed over, it happened.

At the same moment, both pilots took in the flaps, threw the throttles to the firewall and beyond, and kicked in the afterburner. The sudden acceleration pushed the plane past the speed of sound with a jolt, throwing Mulder back against his ejection seat. As if on cue, Mulder’s plane broke left once it had passed the tower, the other plane breaking right at the same moment. The rocketing explosion of the sonic boom rattled the Tomcat’s canopy, and Mulder was sure that they had blown an engine.

From the ground, the move was spectacular. From the air, the world turned left to right, and then right to left as the pilot executed a perfect two-point snap roll, bringing the plane level with the runway.

With a chuckle, Vinny cut power and added flaps, letting the fierce airplane flare gently before the rubber wheels squealed against the tarmac.

“On the ground at ten past the hour,” the tower called, sounding almost bored. They were used to the theatrics of fighter pilots. A hundred yards behind Mulder’s plane, Scully’s landed equally softly, and together they taxied to the transient ramp.

A Navy Captain was waiting for them in summer whites. He watched carefully as the two planes taxied to a stop and cut their engines. A moment later, two crewmen ran up with ladders and waited for the pilots to pop the canopies open.

Scully and Mulder climbed awkwardly out and descended the ladders, both of them still wearing their flight helmets. The Navy Captain walked over and saluted the both of them.

Scully snapped to attention and returned the salute.

Mulder made a wave in the general direction of his forehead.

“Dr. Scully, Dr. Mulder, I’m Captain Ebert. Admiral Watts called ahead and asked me to provide you with anything you need.”

Mulder and Scully exchanged a glance. The Captain had not referred to them by their FBI titles, which meant that Watts had probably omitted that particular fact when he’d called Ebert.

“Thank you, Captain,” Scully said, unbuckling and removing her helmet. “Right now, all we want is to find a car rental agency and a motel.”

Ebert frowned. “I’d assumed that you’d be staying at the BOQ.”

“No, sir, our business is going to take us off base, and we like to keep a low profile.”

Ebert nodded as if this answer was at least halfway expected. “Very well. I’ve arranged for a car for the two of you. The Admiral did mention that he didn’t want a standard motor pool issue vehicle, so I arranged…something else.”

He indicated a car parked twenty feet away that neither agent had noted.

When they did, they both blinked.

BMW. 735i. Gleaming forest green. And from where Mulder stood, it looked like the car had a leather interior.

“Uh-” Scully started. Mulder shot her a glance.

Scully chose to remain quiet.

Mulder removed his helmet and offered his hand. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll be sure to communicate to the Admiral how helpful you’ve been.”

Captain Ebert beamed at this. Kiss-ass, Mulder thought.

One of the crewman had retrieved both their bags from the two aircraft and was waiting expectantly for instructions. Mulder made a move as if to take them, and the crewman blanched.

“Put them in the car please,” Scully said, pointing to the BMW. At least that sounded like an order, and the crewman almost ran to the vehicle.

Mulder reached into a pocket of his flight suit and came back with the khaki fore-and-aft cap that Watts had provided to make them blend in. It bore the silver oak leaf of a Commander. He made several attempts at affixing it to his head before he succeeded. He looked over to see that Scully’s was already on.

“Well, Captain, we have to be going,” Mulder said. “We’re on kind of a timetable.”

The Captain nodded. “Understood.” He handed Mulder a business card. “My number is on that, pager on the back. When you’re done with the car, please give me a call so I can make arrangements to pick it up. Also, if you need further transportation, please don’t hesitate to call.”

Mulder exchanged another glance with his partner. “You mean you’ll arrange for another flight on one of those?” He asked, indicating the Tomcats behind him with a thumb.

“Yes, sir. My understanding with Admiral Watts is that you get everything you need. Post haste.”

“Thank you, sir,” Scully said, moving towards the car. “But we really must be going.”

The Captain saluted once again, and Scully returned it. Mulder tried to mimic her action, but he failed miserably.

They got into the car, Mulder driving. Finding the keys in the ignition, he started the huge BMW and waved to Captain Ebert as he drove away.

Captain Ronald Ebert, USN, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Commanding Officer, Naval Air Station Mirimar, watched his two charges as they drove away. He waited until they had turned the corner before reaching for the cellphone in his back pocket.

He dialed.

“They just left,” he said, and immediately disconnected the call.

***

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

Mulder threw his bags on the bed and sighed, unzipping the flight suit as he headed for the bathroom. Only problem with an F14 was no facilities, he thought. No way to take a tinkle. He wondered how the pilots flying long missions handled it.

Finished, he returned to the room and flopped on the bed, listening to the sounds of Scully moving around next door. He closed his eyes, and a moment later heard a soft knock on the connecting door.

“Come,” he said, mimicking Watts’ command voice.

Scully entered, still wearing the flight suit and the fore-and-aft cap. She had unzipped the suit enough to show that she was wearing an olive drab tank-top beneath it. There was a small half-circle of sweat darkening the neckline.

Mulder’s eyes opened.

“My God…” he whispered. “There is something about a woman in uniform,” he said. She smiled, reaching up to take the cap off. “Not supposed to wear these indoors,” she smiled, tossing it on the bed. “Against regulations.”

Mulder shrugged. “Do me a favor,” he said softly. “See if you can manage to hold onto that. When we get off this case…”

“Yes?” Scully asked, a grin lighting her face.

“…maybe we can play soldier.”

“Sailor,” Scully corrected.

“Whatever.”

She just smiled, running a hand through her sweaty hair.

“Shower?”

“In there,” he said, pointing.

Scully grunted. “I was asking you to join me, Mulder.”

“Oh.” He stood, working the zipper on the suit. Scully joined him in shedding clothes, and a few seconds later they were both nude.

Mulder stood up, staring at his partner.

Suddenly shy, she crossed her arms across her breasts. “What are you staring at, Mulder?”

“Nothing!” he said, shaking his head to break his gaze. “It was just…” he trailed off.

“What?”

“You’re so…gorgeous,” he said.

She smiled. “Good answer. Now into the shower.” He nodded, moving past the bed towards the bathroom. Once he had the water hot enough and steam was filling the small confines of the bathroom, they both climbed into the shower and proceeded to wash the grime of the trip off.

“So…” Scully said, washing his chest. “What do we know?”

“Too much. Not enough. Pieces,” Mulder sighed, running his hands through his hair. “We know that there is an operation code named LIBERTY BELL that was conceived a long time ago to allow the military to temporarily take over the government in the case that the President goes nuts. That plan was scrapped, or so we think. We know that the killer is most likely one Danny Graves, older brother to Scotty and Sammy Graves, both of whom were killed by our Commander Stone. We know that Stone is somehow involved with the remaining Graves brother. We know that Danny was sending a message to Stone with that playing card on Haynes’ body. What message, we have no idea. How much Stone is involved, we do not know. We think Stone is in San Diego, but we have no idea where, or why.” He paused. “That about sums it up, Scully.”

She nodded, still working on his chest.

“My turn,” Mulder said, taking the washcloth and soap from her. Turning Scully away from him, he began washing her back. “I’m open to suggestions about what we should do next,” he said.

Scully thought about that as Mulder’s hands worked her body over. God, his touch was exquisite. “Well, we have a list of all of Mike’s previous assignments. Assuming we trust Karn, we should have him take a close, personal look at those officers and see if we can find a link.”

“Link?” Mulder asked.

“Sure. There has to be some common denominator. Graves has to be finding them some way. There has to be something that stands out, something in their past, an assignment they had…some way for him to find these men and corrupt them to his cause. Once we find that, we can get a bead on tracking Graves.”

Mulder nodded. Makes sense, he thought.

“Done.” Mulder announced. Scully turned and faced him again, looking up at the eyes of the man she loved. “So, we call Karn. And then what?”

“Well, we know that Watts was stationed in San Diego at some point. We go find the officer that has his job and we flip him. And we keep flipping until Graves shows up. Or shows his hand.”

Scully grinned. This was getting to be almost fun. Jetting around the country on the Navy’s dime, going places no one in the FBI had ever gone before inside the military.

“What do you think he has planned, Mulder?” Scully asked.

“Takeover of the government?”

She shook her head. “Impossible. Even if he…” she trailed off.

“What?” Mulder asked, reaching around her slick, wet body to turn the shower off.

“How was it going to work?” she asked, thinking out loud. “How is the plan supposed to work? The old one, I mean. How was the military going to take over the government if the President went into meltdown?”

Mulder thought about it. “Several ways. Take the President out. Assume control. Or, remove him from the chain of command. Steal the codes and make them vanish.”

“What about…in extremis?”

“What do you mean?”

“Say the President is paranoid enough to think that something like that is coming. What if he takes the codes and vanishes into one of the secure war-bunkers? Secure, isolated communication channels. Hardened steel and concrete. He could start World War III from under some mountain. What would the military do then?”

“Ignore the orders?”

She shook her head. Mulder’s understanding of the military was vague at best, downright narrow at worst. “No…see, the communications are set up so that no one can countermand the President’s orders. It’s not like the Pentagon can just pull a switch somewhere and turn him off. That goes against everything the Constitution stands for regarding civilian control of the military. But what…what if?”

Mulder thought about it.

“Only one possible way.”

“Nuclear strike,” Scully whispered. “They’d have to nuke the mountain. Hard.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“LIBERTY BELL has changed. Instead of wiping out the President’s mountain hideout, I think…oh my God, Mulder…I think that Graves wants to nuke Washington!”

Mulder considered this. “How…how could he? The entire system is set up so one insane man can’t start World War III, let alone launch a missile against the nation’s capitol!”

Scully shook her head, getting out of the shower and reaching for a towel. “Back in the days of ballistic missiles, bombers and submarines, sure. But…nuclear tipped Tomahawk missiles, alpha packs… God, Mulder, if he has access to enough fissionable materials, he could build an atomic device small enough to fit in a fifty-five gallon drum that would turn Washington into a smoking hole.”

Mulder exited the shower and grabbed his own towel. “Ok, here’s what we do. You call Karn. I’ll call Maggie King. I want to know exactly what Stone told her. You find out who’s doing Watts’ old job here in San Diego, or whom, if there’s more than one. Get us clearance to talk to them ASAP.”

He moved past her, heading for the room. Scully’s hand on his arm stopped him cold.

“Mulder…are we sure about this?”

He turned back. “Right now…it’s all we have.”

***

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California
Thirty-five minutes later

Scully punched the OFF button on her cellphone and dropped her pen on the bed next to her notepad. Karn had come through, as always, providing her a list of names. Three officers, all of them assigned to jobs that Watts’ had held at one point or another in his career. Two of them, and their jobs, gave her pause.

Lieutenant (jg) Frank Mahler was the Deputy Planning Officer, Office of the Chief of Staff, Commanding Officer, Naval Air Station, Mirimar. He was a staff puke, an officer in charge of memos and reports.

In other words, no worries…aside from the fact that he had physical access to the CO of NAS Mirimar.

Lieutenant Ally Roche, an Annapolis graduate, was currently assigned as a Project Officer on the TLAM-N. (Tomahawk Land Attack Missile-Nuclear.) She had access to ‘specials,’ TLAM’s with nuclear tips.

Cause for concern. Over two hundred of the TLAM-N’s were stored at Seal Beach, a twenty-minute drive away. The nuclear payload in a TLAM-N was more than enough to turn most of DC into a radioactive rubble.

And finally, Lieutenant Commander Harry Carpenter, a WASPy name if ever there was one, was assigned as Tasking Officer for SUBGRU 12. He had access to the communications systems that linked all of PACFLT’s submarines and surface sub-support ships.

Another cause for concern.

So far, Karn’s computers had been unable to come up with any single fact linking the three officers together. Two out of three had attended Annapolis. The other was a ROTC graduate. One woman, two men. One black (Harry, oddly enough,) two white. Mahler was from New Orleans, Roche from Pittsburgh, and Carpenter was from Quiounchetutoung, Maine.

Karn was running a slightly deeper background check even as Scully waited for Mulder to finish his call to Maggie King. As he talked, she watched him, not listening to his words, but just…watching.

She felt the smile teasing at her face, and wanted to let it bloom, to let him see how much she enjoyed just watching him. He had his glasses on and was asking quiet, direct questions, making notes as King replied. He wasn’t looking at her, but Scully knew he could see her out of the corner of his eye, and she stretched languidly, turning her side to drink in the sight of him.

He was still wearing only the towel. He’d been so caught up in the process once again that he’d just forged ahead. Scully had at least taken the time to don a long T-shirt and panties, and was enjoying the feel of the air conditioning on her skin as she waited for Mulder.

He finally tore his cellphone from his ear. She heard the tinny beep as he ended the call and watched as he tossed it on the chair next to the bed.

“So?” she asked.

“You first.”

Scully gave him a quick rundown of what she’d learned, including the fact that Karn had cleared their entrance to Mirimar that night. Lieutenant Roche was on duty until 1700.

Mulder nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

“So…what did King have to say?”

Mulder shrugged. “She seemed to think that everything Stone had told her was a smooth, calculating lie.”

“What did he say?” Scully wanted to know.

“Basically, the mission to Iraq was to kill Saddam, but with some new information. According to Stone, they had an inside man, someone close to Saddam, a bodyguard. He conspired with some senior Iraqi military leaders to pinpoint Saddam’s location and somehow communicate this to Stone and the Goblin team. Then the team would use the PAVE TACK laser designator, and the F16 carrying that big ‘ol bomb would do the rest.

“According to what Stone told King, the traitor was discovered, Saddam executed him and sent a message to the Pentagon through the Syrians that said if we attempted to assassinate him, he’d launch the sixty SCUD missiles he had aimed as Israel. According to King, all of those missiles had chemical warheads. So, the mission was scrapped, and it was only by divine providence that Stone decided to break radio silence. Scott didn’t want to cancel the mission, but since Stone knew more about the…political implications of letting Iraq fire sixty chemical warheads at Israel, Stone did what he thought was right and killed Scott.”

Scully nodded, absorbing all of it. “Was that all he said?” she asked.

“No, and that’s the weird part.” Mulder looked at his notes again and frowned.

“What?”

“Well…I asked her about this three times. According to Commander King…Maggie…Stone said that if he didn’t get to San Diego that, quote, ‘a lot of people were going to die,’ unquote.”

Scully leaned back against the bed, thinking about this new wrinkle.

“It fits,” she said slowly. “It’s all starting to fit…”

Mulder glanced at her. “What?”

“Mulder, I think Stone may not be the total prick that we thought.”

Her statement rocked him back as hard as if he’d been hit in the face with a shovel. “What?”

She shook her head. “No, personally…as a man, he’s an asshole, Mulder. I’ll never change my opinion about that. But…things that he said to me, before we knew what kind of man he was, things that he said about himself, about his values, and the things he holds dear. I think… I think Stone may be trying to do the same thing we are, only from a different angle.”

She paused.

“I think Stone’s trying to track Danny Graves down as well. I think Stone knows what LIBERTY BELL is about, or what it might be about. I think that he might have caught scent of Danny earlier, and was investigating it, and that Danny reacted by killing all the members of the Goblin team that his brother commanded. All the people that he holds responsible for his brother’s death.”

“Except Stone,” Mulder pointed out. “The man that actually pulled the trigger. Does that make sense?”

Scully shrugged. “Does it make sense to launch a nuclear attack against your own country? Mulder, Graves is obviously not playing with a full deck. He has motivations that we can only begin to guess at.”

“I wonder…” Mulder said.

“What?”

“I wonder if Danny Graves is the fourth man in the hearing room. The man that was standing with Admiral Miles, Stone and the president of the Article 32 board.”

Scully nodded, accepting this. “It would make sense.”

“And there’s a good way to find out.” Mulder grabbed his cellphone from the chair, not noticing that his towel had slipped down and pooled around his feet. Special Agent Dana Scully, MD was presented with a view of her partner that she had spent four years trying to imagine. His deliciously sculpted backside within arms reach.

He put the phone down without dialing. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Hamm told me that Danny Graves was from the page that isn’t even in the books. What are the chances of finding a picture of him that we can fax to Armfield?”

“Slim to none,” Scully admitted.

“Unless…” Mulder said, suddenly snapping his fingers. He dialed again.

***

Apartment of Commander Maggie King
Annapolis, Maryland

The phone rang again, and Maggie seriously considered not answering it. First it had been Richie, calling again and again, begging to come over. She had rebuffed him every time, eager to find a way to end that relationship as soon as possible. And then it had been that Mulder person, bugging her with questions about what she’d been instructed to tell Karn.

My God, she thought, what is my life coming to?

In the end, she answered.

“Hello?”

“Commander, this is Fox Mulder again. I have…a question, and a favor to ask.”

“What?” she asked. She hated the distant, lifeless tone of her own voice. She sounded like a lost little girl, not a Commander in the Unites States Navy, a professional military officer in the peak of her career.

She sounded pathetic.

She hated herself.

“Do you know where Commander Stone lives?”

Maggie nodded, even though Mulder couldn’t see her. “Uh-huh.”

“Do you think you could get in there?”

Maggie paused.

“I have a key,” she admitted.

Mulder chose, wisely, to not press her about how that situation had occurred. “Here’s what I need. I need you to get inside his apartment, and see if he has any information regarding Daniel Graves. Danny Graves, got that?”

“Yes,” Maggie said.

“Pictures…most important is pictures, Maggie. We need a picture of this guy as soon as possible.”

“When do you want me to-?”

“Tonight. If possible.”

Maggie shook her head, again aware that Mulder couldn’t see it, but knowing that he would hear it in her voice. It was too much. It was all too much.

“Where are you?” Maggie asked.

“San Diego,” Mulder answered.

“Have you found him?” she asked, and then hated herself for it.

“No. Not yet. But if we find Danny, we’ll probably find Matt.”

Maggie nodded. “Ok…I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you.”

And with that, she hung up, turned, ran to the bathroom and vomited.

***

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

Mulder looked at the phone and shrugged. “Commander King has a key to Stone’s apartment. She’s going in to see if she can find anything.”

“Like a picture of Danny Graves?”

Mulder nodded. “If we’re lucky.”

Scully snorted. “If we could ever be that lucky, Mulder.” He smiled and looked down at himself, startled to find that he was naked.

“Uh, sorry,” he mumbled, reaching for the towel around his ankles.

“No, don’t,” Scully said.

Mulder stood there, not sure what to do.

“I like…looking at you,” Scully said, and then paused. “Like…that,” she added.

Mulder suddenly felt like a slide under one of Scully’s microscopes.

She moved until she was on her knees, and she glided towards the edge of the bed where Mulder stood. She reached out a tentative hand and touched his chest, her fingers soft, silken feathers on his skin. Mulder closed his eyes, wanting her touch, needing it, but knowing where it was going to lead.

And it wasn’t time yet.

Scully watched, amazed, as Mulder’s nipples hardened without her touching them. Mulder’s eyes slid open, lowering and finding hers and Scully gasped, seeing the arousal swimming in the dark, dilated pupils.

Mulder made a sound, a deep growl from somewhere inside his body, inside his soul. His hands clenched and unclenched at his side, and Scully realized that Mulder was struggling not to touch her, struggling to retain his control, control that was hanging by a thread. She drank in his gaze, wondering.

Has he always looked at me this way? Has he always wanted to?

She had never felt more feminine, more desired, more loved.

She pulled her hand back. The dark light behind Mulder’s eyes faded a little, but not much. His breathing was shallow, strained. A brief memory of Jack Willis slid across her mind and she discarded it easily, tossing it over her mental shoulder. Mulder was breathing normally now, his hands still at his sides.

Scully scooted a little closer to the edge of the bed and reached up with her arms, snaking them around his neck, urging him closer to her.

She felt him through the T-shirt, brushing against her tummy, hot and hard and smooth.

Her mouth searched for his and found it, his lips tugging at hers. The kiss was electric, intense, and then soft, sweet, and then hot and passionate, over and over again. Scully let her legs slide out from under her and she urged him lower, down to the bed, on top of her.

He came willingly, using his arms to keep the bulk of his weight off her. His maleness nestled between her thighs, pushing against her center through the panties.

They broke the second kiss, both of them breathing heavily, struggling for air.

“Dangerous,” Mulder rasped.

“Yes,” Scully said softly. “Arousing.”

“Tempting.”

“I…” She stopped, not sure if she could say the words that were on her lips. “I…want…”

He silenced her with another kiss before she could finish the thought. His mind was whirling, a thousand images spinning across his consciousness, pictures of he and Scully combined in dozens of different ways, erotic visions made more powerful by the fact that the woman he was fantasizing about wasn’t a collection of glowing phosphor dots on a glass tube, but a living, breathing creature moving slowly and sensuously beneath him, a woman he had come to know and love for four very long years. Four years of memories, cases, tragedies, triumphs, moments shared and glances exchanged. Four years of a yearning he almost hadn’t known was there until he’d realized she was gone. And the return of them, stronger than ever, the day she’d regained consciousness.

And then those thoughts vanished quietly.

There was only this woman, Scully, this room, this perfect moment in time.

She moved, using her shoulder and arm to spin him over onto his back, moving with him, not breaking the contact. They ended up with Scully on top of him, her weight warm and comfortable on his waist, the palms of her hands next to his ears, her mouth against his, her hair tickling his face.

Red, like the fires of hell.

Fire.

In his belly; his groin. Flames licking at him, slowly building, getting stronger, hotter, hungrier. A fire needs fuel to burn and the fuel for this blaze was on top of him, her mouth moving slowly, wetly against his. He felt the teasing tickle of her tongue in his mouth and gasped around it, thrilling as she explored. He chased it with his own, his hands coming up from his sides, gliding up the smooth, sleek length of her thighs, sliding under the hem of her shirt and finally coming to a rest against the soft swell of her buttocks.

Scully pushed back against his hands.

Mulder moved them up, and then down, his fingers sliding beneath the elastic waistband, easing them down her hips. Scully’s mouth opened against his, her breath hot against his skin.

“Mulder…” she whispered.

“Scully…” he replied, lifting his head to recapture her mouth. And then they both knew.

It was going to happen.

Scully felt a small resistance, a small niggling voice at the back of her head, her sensible nature trying one last-ditch effort to control this, to control her runaway emotions.

She told the voice to shut up, reaching back with her hands. She grabbed his wrists and pushed, forcing his hands under her ass. She felt one of his fingers sliding through her soaked trench and she gasped.

It’s going to happen, she thought.

Finally.

And of course, that was exactly when the phone rang.

“Ignore it,” she mumbled against his mouth.

“Yeah,” he gasped, not wanting to break this kiss, his mouth searching frantically for hers.

The phone rang eleven times and then fell silent.

Ten seconds later, it began again.

“Shit!” Mulder said, reaching for it.

Scully rolled off him, throwing a forearm across her forehead.

“WHAT?” Mulder almost shouted into the phone.

“Agent Mulder?”

Skinner.

Oh, shit!

Mulder sat up. “Sir?”

“I understand you and Agent Scully are in San Diego?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Care to fill me in on the developments?”

Mulder glanced over his shoulder at Scully, shrugging. “Of course, sir.”

He began to talk, taking Skinner back to his original meeting with Maggie King. Scully sighed and stood, pacing the corridor between the bed and the window. She felt hot, sticky…aroused. The feeling would not go away. She knew he was on the phone with Skinner, that he was working, that she shouldn’t be thinking about the strong line of his shoulders, the delicious cleft between his cheeks, the way his hair rested against the nape of his neck.

Sighing, she turned and moved towards the bathroom.

Cold shower, she thought. Can’t hurt.

***

Apartment of Commander Matthew Stone
Fairfax, Virginia

Maggie used the key Matt had left her and was not at all surprised to see that it still worked. She pushed the door open and entered, shutting it quickly behind her.

“Hello?” she called, wondering if he was living with someone these days. She felt stupid for speaking to what she knew was an empty apartment. Stone wasn’t the type to settle down, whispered conversations over sweaty, damp pillows notwithstanding.

She moved through the apartment quickly, reacquainting herself with the layout. Two bedrooms, the smaller one converted to a makeshift office. A full-sized kitchen that was immaculate. She opened the refrigerator and saw what she expected: A twelve-pack of beer with one corner torn open, three bottles missing, a butter dish with half a stick and two boxes of what appeared to be take-out Chinese.

The office, she thought. That was the place to start.

The office looked just as she remembered it. Two inexpensive folding tables pushed together to make an “L”. Two computers sat on one of them, cables trailing out the back to a rack of peripherals, including a laser printer and modem. The usual desk stuff on the other: blotter, in-and-out boxes, a coffee can pressed into service a pen and pencil cup.

Underneath the ‘desk’ portion, a two-drawer file cabinet, locked. She studied it for a moment and then lifted the blotter on top of the desk. A small gold key winked at her and she smiled.

It didn’t fit.

On the desk, sitting on the corner, was what looked like a cigar humidor. She lifted it. Paper clips, a mechanical pencil, rubber bands, and another, smaller locking box.

The key fit that box. She opened it, and found a larger silver key.

That fit.

She opened the filing cabinet and started rifling through the contents. Bills, tax returns, copies of his OER’s, car insurance, instructions for various electronic components that he’d purchased over the years.

A file towards the back caught her eye.

PHOTOS, it was labeled.

She pulled it and opened it on his desk. She felt her gorge rise and wondered if she could find her way to the bathroom before she vomited again.

Spread out on the desk before here were dozens of black and white glossies. Pictures of men and women having sex. The pictures were grainy, but she could make out faces. It took her a moment to realize that she was looking at still-frame captures from a videotape. The telltale streaks across the bottom of the frame where the NTSC sync track blurred the image gave it away.

She realized that the pictures had been taken in Stone’s bedroom, which was odd considering that none of the men in the pictures was Matt.

She lifted one and held it up.

Maggie felt the blood draining from her face.

The picture in her hand was of a slight Hispanic looking woman and a man.

A man Maggie recognized.

Admiral Jake Karn, Commander, Naval Investigative Service.

She dropped it as if it burned, and reached for another.

Different man…same woman. The Deputy Director, Naval Reactors. The second highest-ranking man in the Navy’s nuclear program was on the bed, engaging in a sex act that Maggie had only heard about.

Quickly shuffling through the rest of the pictures, Maggie felt faint. It was the same woman over and over again, but a different man every time. Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans and Policy in one. Deputy Chief, Naval Intelligence in another. Two were senators, one long since retired but in a lucrative legal practice in Chicago. The other sat on the Armed Services Appropriation Committee.

There was only one reason for the existence of these pictures.

Blackmail.

Shaken, Maggie replaced all the pictures in the folder and returned it to the cabinet.

There was another folder, behind the first one.

PICTURES, it said.

She drew that one out, dreading what she would see.

The first one was of a man and a woman Maggie had never seen. The man’s face was circled in red grease-pencil, with the letters “SG” written next to it. The woman’s face wasn’t circled, but an arrow pointed to her head. “HH,” it said.

Scott Graves. Heather Haynes.

Maggie selected the next picture. It was as grainy as the blackmail pictures, but wasn’t a video capture. It looked as if it had been taken from a great distance.

It showed a man getting into a car, a car with Virginia plates.

The next item in the folder was a photograph from a newspaper. The caption read, “Explosion kills Navy SEAL.” It took a second for Maggie to realize that the charred wreckage of the car in the newspaper clipping was the same car in the previous photo.

There were several more newspaper clippings.

One was a story about a US Army Ranger shot while hunting.

An unidentified man found shot to death in the same apartment as a woman he’d apparently been dating.

She flipped to the next one.

A man found in the parking lot of a convenience store with a broken neck. Police had no suspects. Investigation continues.

A US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant found dead in his apartment of apparently natural causes. Scrawled in the margin were the words “Binary poison.”

A photo of another woman Maggie had never seen before. She was walking out of a government building, her face turned towards the camera. This picture was color, and judging by the clothes the woman wore, it had been taken recently.

“DS” was written along the edge of the photo.

This picture was different. It was in vivid, perfect color, and Maggie thought she had never seen a more vivid shade of red before. The woman’s hair looked like fire, she thought.

She scanned through the rest of the pictures.

She found what she was looking for towards the end.

A man walking through an airport, the picture taken from an oblique angle. The man was older, in his late 40’s, but he was still in shape. The tight shirt he wore displayed his muscles; he was wearing sunglasses, carrying a ballistic nylon computer case in one hand and what appeared to be a ticket in the other.

“Danny” was written in small letters across the bottom.

She turned the photo over. There was a stick-on label, about three inches by five, affixed to the back. Someone had typed all the information Maggie could ever want on the label.

“D. Graves, Los Angeles International Airport, April 12, 1997.”

She continued to read.

“Returning from Little Creek, Virginia, May 21, 1995.”

She remembered. Tony Calandra.

The next picture was of the same man, wearing different clothes, exiting an expensive-looking sports car.

Maggie flipped it over.

“Danny Graves, Dunwoody Georgia. October 9, 1995.”

Gerald Smith, Maggie thought.

She flipped through the rest of the pictures, turning them over to read the captions. They were all here. All the murders. Every single one, some of the pictures taken before the act, some after. All showed Danny Graves arriving or departing the scene of the murder.

He had known. The son-of-a-bitch had known.

Maggie culled all the photos together and jammed them back into the folder. Faxing them to Agent Mulder wasn’t going to do. She’d have to take more drastic steps.

She turned to leave before realizing that she hadn’t checked the bottom drawer. Sighing, she turned back and pulled it open.

The first folder caught her eye.

JOVIAL CLOWN, it said. She opened and read the first page of the after action report. She felt her gorge rising again and fought it down. Interesting, but had little to do with the case. Mulder already had most of this information.

She decided to send it anyway, and turned her attention back to the drawer.

The next folder was thick. It was actually a Pendaflex folder that had several other manila folders inside of it. The little tab on the Pendaflex said, simply, LIBERTY BELL.

Maggie opened it and began to read.

Fifteen seconds later she reached for a phone and dialed.

The line was busy. She swore.

He’d only given her the direct-dial number for his hotel room.

Mulder needed this information, and he needed it now.

Maggie stood and started pacing, biting her thumbnail, thinking. It was way too valuable to send overnight mail. Even via officer courier was risky, if the contents of the file were to be believed.

Maggie snapped her fingers and stopped. Perfect, she thought.

She returned to the phone and lifted it, closing her eyes as she tried to remember the number.

“NIS Duty Desk, Duty Officer speaking, sir,” the voice answered.

Maggie opened the LIBERTY BELL folder and ran her fingers down a column of numbers and words.

“I have a FLASH for TOPCOAT,” she said, using CINCNIS’s code name.

“Stand by one,” the voice said quickly. There was a series of clicks and pops, and then, distantly, the voice of CINCNIS.

“Karn.”

“Admiral, this Commander Maggie King, BUPERS,” she said.

“Yes?” Karn was obviously confused. It was late at night, and the Ops center had told him he had a FLASH message coming through from one of his agents in the field. He hadn’t been expecting another call from the King woman.

“What can I do for you, Commander?”

“I have some information I need to get to our mutual friend in San Diego,” she said carefully, aware that they were on an open line.

“Which friend?”

“Not the hound,” she said quickly.

“Understood. State nature of information.”

“Images. Files. Extremely sensitive.”

“Understood. Get out to Pax, report to the AOD. I’ll whistle you up some transportation.” He paused. “Commander, if you’re working for that…other party, you realize that your career is over.”

“Understood, sir.”

“And that you will spend the rest of your natural life in Portsmouth.” The Navy Detention Center was located in Portsmouth.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Very well. Pax in sixty minutes.”

Maggie hung up the phone and gathered everything together, heading for the door.

San Diego would be nice, she thought.

***

Home of Admiral Jake Karn, CINCNIS

Jake Karn looked at the cellphone and frowned. Things were getting sticky and fast. He reached for the scrambled, secure phone on the corner of his desk and dialed.

“Tom? Jake. I need an emergency transport, and a VC-20 ain’t gonna do it. What do have in the available inventory that’s supersonic?” He paused. “Got any Phantoms? Perfect. Whistle me up a pilot, and arrange for a refueling aloft. I need someone to get to San Diego as quickly as possible.” Another pause. “Thanks, Tom. She’ll be reporting in a little under an hour.”

***

Naval Air Station Paxtuent River
Paxtuent River, Maryland

Even driving like a madwoman, Maggie made it in just over an hour. She flashed her ID to the guard at the gate and drove towards the Flight Ops building. The Areodome Officer of the Day (AOD) was waiting for her, holding a Nomex flight suit in his hands.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I’ll have your car parked. It’s waiting for you.” He pointed to a navy-blue Ford step van idling by the front door to Flight Ops. Maggie ran to the van. The moment she shut the door, the driver hit the gas.

The F4 was idling on the threshold, the canopy up. The pilot glanced at her curiously as she stepped into the flight suit. Zipping up, Maggie raced towards the plane, taking the proffered flight helmet from the ground crewman. She scampered up the ladder and settled into the rear seat, tugging the helmet over her head as the crewman applied the six-point restraint harness.

He quickly pointed out the eject handles and flight controls. Maggie nodded as if she understood but his voice was muddled blur over the loud whine of the engines.

The crewman vanished, and a moment later the ladder vanished, followed by the canopy slowly descending and then locking into place.

“Hold on, Ma’am,” the pilot said over the intercom. “We’re next.”

Maggie felt the plane moving, and then a moment later she gasped as the pilot applied maximum military power in preparation for take off.

As the plane broke the grip of gravity and leapt into the air, a single thought kept running through Commander Maggie King’s mind.

What am I getting into?

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 18/38

US Navy F4 Phantom Tail Number N91620220
Somewhere above Nebraska

“Gascan, Gascan, this is Batman,” Lieutenant Commander Richard Amend called. There was a momentary pause and then the voice of the USAF KC-135 pilot replied.

“Batman, this is Gascan. We have you on radar, approximately six miles in trail. Please climb to angels 13 and turn left to heading two six eight.”

“Roger that, Gascan. ETA, four minutes.”

Amend switched to intercom. “Commander, we’ll be refueling shortly.”

In the backseat, Commander Maggie King was busy trying to read the contents of the LIBERTY BELL folder and barely heard the pilot. “Uh, ten-four,” she said.

Amend smiled to himself. He’d been reluctant to speak to his passenger, because every time he had tried she’d given him some vague, disjointed answer. She obviously had a lot on her mind, and Amend’s curiosity was aroused. Who was she? Why was it so important that she get to NAS Mirimar? So important, in fact, that she hadn’t flown commercial or a regularly scheduled VC-20 flight, but had managed to somehow get a Phantom assigned to ferry her across the country?

A little over three minutes later Amend could see 135.

“Gascan, Batman, I have you in sight.”

“Roger, Batman. Turning you over to the boom.” A moment later the pilot’s voice was replaced by the boom operator’s. The huge KC-135 aerial refueling tanker filled Amend’s vision, and he was struck by the same thought he always was during these refueling. The US Navy insisted on having only officers and gentlemen (and women, for that matter,) qualify as pilots. Enlisted personnel need not apply. The Phantom he himself was flying was 20 million dollars of jet airplane, the KC-135 another thirty or forty million. And who did they have controlling one of the most dangerous and nerve-wracking maneuvers in military flight operations? A twenty-two year old boom operator, a Sergeant in the United States Air Force.

“Batman, this is Nozzle,” the voice called, and Amend smiled into his oxygen mask again. What a great call sign; he could imagine the youthful USAF enlisted man using that call sign to pick up women in Omaha. “Please open your hatch.”

Amend leaned down and flicked the small toggle button. On the nose of his Phantom a small hatch opened, ready to receive the refueling drogue that trailed out of the ass-end of the 135.

“Come up,” Nozzle called, and Amend added a nudge of throttle.

“Come left,” the voice called again, and Amend used a gentle combination of stick and rudder, and the huge fighter aircraft drifted slowly left.

“Up two,” the voice called, and a moment later Amend felt and heard the satisfying click! as the drogue snapped home.

“Connect, connect, connect,” Nozzle called.

“Concur,” Amend replied. “Stand by…” He flicked the appropriate switches in the cockpit and a moment later the twin fuel gauges began to climb up. “We have flow,” Amend called.

“Concur. Six gallons a second,” Nozzle replied. “Approximate refuel time is three minutes.”

This was the most delicate part. Amend had to keep the Phantom practically hovering behind the 135. If he broke the connection before Nozzle shut off the flow, his canopy windshield would be sprayed with JP-4, the standard fuel of all US Military jet aircraft. Similar in chemical makeup to kerosene, once it splashed across the canopy it would freeze instantly, making it hard (but not impossible) to see clearly.

“Batman, Nozzle,” the drogue operator called.

“Go, Nozzle.”

“How much do you need, over?”

“Centerline and both wing tanks.”

“Roger. Thirty seconds.”

Fully loaded, the Phantom would have enough fuel to make Mirimar with no problem. But the Flight Operations Officer who had laid this mission on had made it clear that Amend was to get his passenger to Mirimar as quickly as possible, and that meant climbing to almost forty- thousand feet and applying a healthy dose of afterburner. He would need every single drop of fuel he could get.

Half a minute later, Nozzle was back on the radio.

“Batman, we’re showing full at our end.”

Richard “Batman” Amend checked his gauges. The centerline tank showed full, and the wing tanks were equally teeming with JP-4.

“Concur, Nozzle. Releasing drogue.” Amend hit the switch and a second later he watched as the drogue detached from the nose of his Phantom. Slowly, Nozzle reeled it back in.

“Thanks for the fill-up,” Amend called.

“Roger that, Batman,” Gascan called. “Have a nice flight.”

The mammoth KC-135 banked to the left and descended, turning back towards home.

“Commander, I’m just about to go into afterburner. You might want to hold on.”

“Ten-four,” Maggie called, and Amend could tell by the tone of her voice that she hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

Oh well, he thought.

Lifting the nose, Amend pushed the throttles all the way forward, past the maximum military power stop and into afterburner. The twin Pratt & Whitney engines roared in response, two twin tails of flame leaping out of the plane’s tail.

The folder that Maggie had been balancing on her lap slid to the floor of the cockpit, spilling the papers.

“Shit!” she said.

Amend smiled.

***

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder called. “I have an idea.”

She was in the shower, trying to calm herself down. They had come so close to crossing that line, the line that neither of them was wholly prepared to approach, let alone leap across. It would have been so easy, she thought, letting the water stream across her face. She was still aroused, still so finely attuned to her own senses that Scully thought she could feel every single individual water drop impacting against her face.

“What?”

“Finish up, and I’ll explain.”

He closed the bathroom door, giving her some privacy. She finished quickly, wrapping another towel around her body and returning to the bedroom. Mulder was lying on the bed with the towel wrapped around him.

“Actually,” he said, “it was Skinner who gave me the idea.”

Scully plopped down on the bed and cocked an eyebrow.

“When I told him that Watts only knew one other Ronin besides Graves, Skinner said something like, “How would they recognize each other when the time came?”

Scully nodded. It made sense, in a Skinner sort of way. Skinner hadn’t doubted Mulder’s story, apparently. And his mind had quickly worked out the tactical and strategic requirements of such an operation. How would the individual Ronin know if another of their ilk were in command of a facility, or a ship, or a submarine?

Good question.

“Call Mike. Ask him if there’s some kind of code phrase or something we can use.”

Scully nodded and reached for Mulder’s cellphone. She felt the towel shifting and reached for it, not wanting a repeat of what had happened only moments before.

Too late.

The towel gaped, and Mulder saw her, saw Scully’s wet, slick body. Scully glanced up, saw the look on his face and realized that she had nothing to hide from him.

She let the towel drop.

Mulder groaned.

She moved to him, draping her body across his. “Hand me the phone,” she whispered, kissing his neck. She felt his hand slapping the bed, blindly searching. A second later she felt him pass the phone to his other hand across her back.

“I’ll call,” he said.

“But-”

“Do me a favor. Don’t move.” She smiled against his neck and ground herself against him gently. “Scully…”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, right.” Mulder dialed 1, and then 808, and then stopped. “What’s the-”

Scully gave him the rest of the number and together they waited for the call to go through.

***

Office of the Chief of Staff, Commander, Submarine Forces, Pacific (COMSUBPAC)
Naval Base Pearl Harbor

Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Mike Watts heard his phone ring. He glanced at it and wondered if he should answer it. It might be Betty, and if he didn’t answer it, she’d grow worried. Twenty-six years of marriage had been good to the both of them for the most part, and he hated to worry her.

“Watts,” he said.

“Admiral, Fox Mulder.”

“Agent Mulder. I see you two got to San Diego without any problem.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you for all your assistance. The car is wonderful.”

Watts nodded, impatient. “What can I do for you, son?”

Mulder bristled at this, but said nothing. “Sir, this is an unsecured line, so we’ll have to be obtuse. Do you remember our discussion this afternoon?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How would you recognize another one?”

Watts frowned, thinking, trying to understand what-

Oh.

“A mark.” He paused. “A tattoo. We all have the same tattoo.”

“Sir! This is not a secure-”

“Mr. Mulder, at this point it doesn’t much matter. I am quite sure that Danny Graves has better things to do than monitor my communications. The tattoo is of a Phoenix, all black, somewhere on the chest.”

“What about the women?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Mulder. Have a good day.” Watts hung the phone up and turned his attention back to the blotter.

A Colt M1911A .45 pistol sat in the middle of his desk. Watts picked it up and fingered the envelope underneath it. It was addressed to his wife, and contained…

What?

A confession? Watts decided that that wasn’t far from the truth.

Watts hit the magazine release. The pistol’s clip fell into the palm of his left hand. Seven Black Talon hollowpoint rounds were nestled in the magazine. One was enough, he knew. One would do the trick.

He inserted the magazine back into the pistol and slapped it home. Turning the muzzle towards the door, he grasped the slide with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and jacked it back.

It sounded very loud in the empty room.

***

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

“Call him,” Mulder said, handing the phone to Scully. “He’s on edge.”

“How can you tell?”

Mulder shrugged. “I just can.”

“Do you think he-?”

Mulder nodded and stood, reaching for his clothes. Scully hit REDIAL and listened to the phone ring in her ear.

***

Pearl Harbor

Watts had the muzzle of the .45 pressed against his right temple when the phone rang again. He felt the tears running down his face, tasted their saltiness on his lips. He tried to ignore the phone, but found that he could not.

Swearing, he flicked the safety on and gently laid the pistol down on his desk.

“Watts!”

“Mike, it’s Dana.” She paused. “What are you doing right now?”

“Dana, I don’t have time-”

“Mike…are you doing what I think you’re doing?”

“Dana…please. I know you mean well, but you just don’t-”

“Trying to tie up those loose ends, Mike?” Scully said, hurrying, trying to break through to him. “Trying to make it all right? This won’t do it, Mike.”

“Dana, goddammit, you do NOT under-”

“What? Understand? I understand that a man I used to look up to, a man that I thought was a hero has turned out to be nothing but a coward. A coward that wants to run away when-”

“SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!” Watts roared.

***

Mission Beach

Scully covered the phone with her hand. “Call the base!” she whispered to Mulder. “Provost Marshall’s office! Get someone over there now!”

Mulder reached for the hotel phone.

***

Pearl Harbor

“Dana, I’m sorry,” Watts said after a long moment. He could hear movement at the other end. He knew what she was doing.

“Mike, we need your help. I need your help. We have to fix this thing. We need to make this right. Doing that…won’t make it right. Betty will never understand! She’ll never believe it unless you tell her yourself.”

“I wrote a note,” he said curtly.

“Tell me about it, Mike. What did you say in the note?”

“Dana, you’re stalling for time.”

***

Mission Beach

Shit! Scully thought.

She glanced over at Mulder. He had finally gotten through. “Yes, that’s right, COMSUBPAC’s chief of staff. She’s on the phone with him right now. Hurry!”

He cupped the phone and mouthed “Four minutes” to her.

Scully nodded. Mulder lifted his left arm, clicking the button on his runner’s watch.

4:00

***

Pearl Harbor
03:58 Remaining

“Dana…stalling won’t work. I have to do this. It’s the honorable thing.”

“Honorable? How can you say that? Your entire life has been dedicated to fighting the good fight, doing what you believe is right! Is killing yourself right?”

“I don’t know what’s right anymore,” Watts said softly. “I thought I did…once. But I’m…confused.”

“It’s ok to be confused, Mike,” Dana said, her voice soothing. “I’m confused. I still don’t know exactly what is going on, what his plans are.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Watts admitted. “Since you left, I’ve thought about nothing else.”

I bet, Scully thought.

“Tell me,” she urged. “Tell me what you think he’s going to do.”

“I have some notes…” Watts said, putting the gun down on the desk.

“Get them…read them to me.”

“…here somewhere…” Watts muttered.

***

Mission Beach, California
3:14 Remaining

Scully stood, reaching for her panties. Mulder helped her into them, all thoughts of physical pleasure gone from his mind. She struggled to slide them over her hip with one hand and then gave up as Mulder quickly resorted to dressing her.

He held the phone to her ear as Scully slid her arms through the straps of her bra. He snapped it closed and turned to find her pants.

***

Pearl Harbor
2:59 Remaining

“…tired, so tired…” Watts whispered, looking through the piles of paper on his desk. Off in the distance, he heard something, something that made him stop and look out the window. “…sirens?” he asked.

***

Mission Beach
2:50 Remaining

“Shit!” Scully said. “Tell them no sirens!”

Mulder reached for the phone. “Hello?”

“Sir, we’re still here.”

“Tell your units not to use their sirens! He can hear them coming!”

In the background, Mulder heard, “…headquarters to all units, proceed at code 2, repeat code TWO!”

***

Pearl Harbor
2:34 Remaining

The sirens faded.

Hmm, Watts thought. Must be a car accident or something.

“Found them!” he said triumphantly. He slid his pistol to the side, opening the folder. “Got a pen, Dana? This is a little complicated.”

“Give me a minute,” Scully said.

***

Mission Beach
2:21 Remaining

Scully motioned with her hand to Mulder, mimicking writing. He shook his head and raced for his bag. He rummaged through it, realizing that he was losing time. He found what he was looking for at the bottom and pulled it out.

Stepping to Scully’s side, he quickly attached the two tiny suction cups to the cellphone, trailing the wires to the small dictating recorder. He pushed PLAY and REC and then nodded, twirling his finger in a circle.

Go.

***

Pearl Harbor
2:00 Remaining

“Got it, Uncle Mike. Go ahead.”

Watts nodded, reading his scrawled handwriting. “Well, I figured that he’d need a way to decapitate the leadership of the country. And there’s only one way that he can do it that I can think of.”

He paused. “State of the Union address.”

***

Pearl Harbor
1:48 Remaining

Danny Graves moved quickly up the stairs leading to Admiral Watts’ office. Most of the staff had quit work less than half an hour ago, and the halls were deserted. The communications center was manned twenty- four hours a day, but they were locked behind secure steel doors. The USMC guard at the entrance to communications was taking a piss break, and was nowhere to be seen. And if he had been on station, it was doubtful that he would have paid Graves much attention.

The uniform fit perfectly. Summer khakis, six rows of ribbons, and Captain’s eagles pinned to his collar points. He carried a regulation US Navy briefcase, and his cover was tucked under his left arm.

Perfect.

Watts’ yeoman was gone for the day, sealing Watts’ fate.

Graves placed the briefcase face-up on the yeoman’s desk and opened it.

A Glock .45 pistol sat inside, nestled in form-fitting foam rubber. Next to the pistol was the sleek, deadly form of a suppresser.

Donning a pair of surgeon’s gloves, Graves quickly assembled the pistol, screwing the suppresser into the end.

It was already loaded.

***

Mission Beach, California
1:30 Remaining

“State of the Union? I don’t understand.”

Watts explained. “That’s the only time both houses of Congress, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs and the entire Supreme Court is all together in one place. It would be the perfect time to take out the entire governmental leadership.”

Scully gasped. It was perfect, fiendish, diabolical. It made perfect sense. If Graves could somehow manage to detonate a device in the Congress during the State of the Union address, it would have a dual effect. First, as Watts said, it would totally decapitate the government. Second, Washington would be radioactive for months. The physical manifestation of America’s government, Washington, would be a smoking pile of radioactive rubble. People would be scared, confused. They’d look for leadership, for guidance.

And Danny Graves, the Ronin, would be there to give it to them.

***

Pearl Harbor
1:09 Remaining

Petty Officer Second Class Chris Hayes took the second-to-last turn almost on two wheels. He could see his destination in the distance. Calculating quickly, Hayes realized it would take him another sixty seconds to navigate the twisting, turning series of roads and streets between here and there.

Up ahead, he spotted several dependent children playing in the street, blocking his way.

He’d been told to come in silent and quick, but above all…quick. The Chief of Staff to COMSUBPAC was reportedly planning to commit suicide, and an old family friend on the phone was the only thing keeping him alive.

Deciding to risk it, Hayes hit the siren.

The kids scattered, and he silenced the siren immediately.

***

Pearl Harbor
1:00 Remaining

Graves glanced over his shoulder, one hand on the knob to Watts’ office. He’d heard the siren in the distance. They were alerted, on their way.

No time.

He turned the knob and stepped inside, leveling the pistol at Watts’ face. The admiral wasn’t looking towards the door, wasn’t aware that Graves had entered. Softly, quickly, Graves moved towards the desk, stepping around the edge. He spied the pistol on the corner and grinned.

Watts had been planning to off himself, Graves thought.

Doing my work for me, Mike?

***

Mission Beach
0:55 Remaining

“Do you know where he could get a device?” Scully asked.

“It’s a bomb, Dana. A toaster is a device. And yes, I know where he could get one. Seal Beach is one place. Almost any ship in the fleet that carries them. This man is a shadow, Dana. He’s a ghost. He can come and go anywhere he pleases, any time he wants. He’s got identities, clearances, access to things that I can only dream about. He could steal one during a transport, and no one would ever know what happened to it, where it was, or who had taken it until he used it.”

***

Pearl Harbor
0:40 Remaining

Graves reached down and grasped the pistol on Mike’s desk. Watts didn’t notice until he felt the cold steel of the barrel against his left temple.

He slowly turned and looked up into the face of his assassin.

***

Mission Beach
0:36 Remaining

“I’m so sorry, Dana,” she heard him say.

The noise of the gun going off was so loud that Scully almost dropped the phone.

“NO!” she screamed. “NO!” She lowered the phone. “He did it,” she whispered. “He killed himself.”

***

Pearl Harbor
0:32 Remaining

Graves lowered the pistol and reached down, securely wrapping Watts’ hand around it. He took a single step away from the desk but saw the phone in Watt’s right hand. He knew that he had less than half a minute to make his escape, but he couldn’t resist. The temptation was just too great.

He reached for it.

“Hello?”

***

Mission Beach
0:28 Remaining

Scully heard something, heard the distant, tinny vibration of a voice on the phone. She lifted it to her ear again.

“Mike?”

“No,” the voice said. “Admiral Watts won’t be able to come to the phone, I’m sorry to say. He’s quite dead.”

“Who is this?” she demanded.

“Oh…you know, Agent Scully. You know exactly who this is.”

‘Graves,’ she mouthed to Mulder. He moved behind her, tipping his head towards her, struggling to hear.

“You killed him, you son-of-a-bitch!”

“Quite so,” Graves confirmed. “But it was with his gun, and there’s a very nice suicide note sitting right here on his desk. I’m afraid that you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone that I had anything to do with it.”

Scully took a step towards the door, wanting to dash out into the parking lot, climb into the BMW, drive to Mirimar, demand another plane from Captain Ebert and fly to Pearl, all in the space between two heartbeats. Only then would she be able to put her hands around the neck of this…this…

“I’m coming for you,” Scully said, her voice icy, cold, dead.

“Well, I should hope so. Do remember to bring that lovely partner of yours, won’t you? It wouldn’t be fun killing one of you without…”

***

Pearl Harbor

“…having the other there to watch,” Graves finished. He glanced out the window. The first car from the Provost Marshal’s office was turning the far corner, accelerating up the street. “But I’m afraid I do have to go now. Seems that someone alerted the authorities. But, I must say that I do look forward to meeting the both of you…again.”

Graves hung up the phone, turned and walked briskly back to the outer office. He quickly disassembled the Glock, returned it to his briefcase and closed it. Exiting Watts’ outer office, he turned left instead of right and walked quickly to the end of the hall. The doorway leading to the rear staircase stuck for a moment, and he shoved, hard, forcing it open.

He stepped through and closed it, listening the sound of PO2 Chris Hayes pounding his way up the stairs. Silently counting to fifteen, Graves turned and descended the stairs.

He exited the building into an alley. His car was waiting for him. Casually opening the trunk, he slipped the case inside and closed it, moving quickly to the driver’s side.

He started the car and pulled away, turning right at the end of the alley.

A Shore Patrolman was directing traffic, but his back was turned to Graves. Turning towards the scene of the crime (the last place anyone would look for a potential culprit,) Graves slowly approached the Shore Patrolman, hitting the switch to lower the window.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“Just move along-” the SP said, turning. He saw the twin eagles on Graves’ collar and snapped to attention. “Sorry, sir. We have a situation here, and I’m not at liberty to-”

“Very well,” Graves said, trying to inject a tone of annoyance into his voice. He raised the window and motored past, making sure to slow down and rubberneck like anyone else. He didn’t want to stand out in the SP’s memory.

Graves drove to the gate and exited the base, saluting the Marine guard.

He glanced at his watch, calculating.

Seventy-six hours, and it would all be over.

Perfect.

***

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

Mulder carefully removed the tape and held it up to the light. “Well, if we ever catch the son of a bitch, we have him dead to rights. Capital murder, at least.”

Scully said nothing. She sat down on the bed, hard. Her eyes were far away, and she felt the hot sting of tears building.

“He killed him. Just fucking…I can’t believe he…fucking killed him…put the fucking gun to his head and just…fucking…killed him.”

Mulder turned at his partner’s words. Scully never swore like that; she sounded like a salty Navy veteran.

He kneeled next to her. “Scully…you ok?”

She looked at him and snorted. “No, Mulder, I’m not ‘ok’. One of my parents’ oldest and dearest friends was just murdered, and I had to listen to it! How could you even ask? Of course I’m not OK!”

Without thinking, Mulder said, “Scully, he was going to kill himself anyway.”

He saw the look on her face and knew he’d screwed up.

She stood. “And you think that makes it all right? You think that because he was scared, confused…that he felt he was out of options, that it’s OK? That this man…a hero, Mulder, a genuine, bona-fide, certified hero would think that the country was so bad off, that we’re so fucked up that he would participate in a madman’s plot to take it over? That he would want to kill hundreds of thousands of people just to make a political point?” Her voice was rising.

She’s hysterical, Mulder thought, standing.

“You know, Mulder, for someone who’s supposed to be so fucking smart, you can be really STUPID sometimes!”

“Scully…” he said, reaching for her.

She stepped back.

“Don’t you TOUCH ME!” she hissed.

Shocked, he dropped his arms.

“W-what…?” he asked.

She turned and strode towards the connecting door. “X things, Mulder. First, be ready to move out in fifteen minutes. We’re going to go talk to Lieutenant Roche at Mirimar. Second…I’ll be sleeping in here tonight, Mulder.” She turned, stopped, and turned back.

“Alone.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 19/38

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

Mulder watched her depart and hesitated a moment.

But only a moment.

Shaking his head, he went after her. She had left the connecting door open, and Mulder’s psychologist’s mind took note of that. A little voice in the back of his head was speaking softly now, gently, telling him what to say and how to say it. It didn’t escape that tall, lanky FBI agent that the culmination of the last four years of his life was about to play out, and that if he didn’t say exactly the right thing in exactly the right way, he was never going to be able to repair the damage he’d just caused.

“Scully,” he called softly. She was by the bed, her back turned to him, shoulders hunched. He could tell that she was trying not to cry, trying not to let him know how much his insensitivity had hurt her.

He moved behind her, being careful to keep a respectful distance.

“Please…let me…”

She whirled on him, eyes on fire. “What? Explain?! Go ahead, Mulder. I’d love to hear the overwhelming rationalization your mind has come up with this time!”

Mulder paused, not sure how to handle her anger.

“Scully…Dana…”

“Don’t CALL me that!”

Mulder took a breath. “Scully…I’m sorry.”

Her eyes narrowed, and when she spoke, Scully’s voice was a hiss. “You think that makes it all right? That you’re ‘sorry’?”

“No,” Mulder said quietly. “I don’t think that makes it all right. But I’d like to…to…”

Scully crossed her arms, waiting.

At least she’s listening, the voice inside Mulder’s head observed. You’ve got one chance at this, pal.

Don’t fuck it up.

He decided to let out all the stops. Go for broke.

“Scully, do you love me?”

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened. She took a step towards him, her arms coming up, and for a moment Mulder was sure she was going to hit me.

“You SON OF A BITCH!” she screamed.

He stepped back. “No…wait! Let me finish!”

She stopped in her tracks. “Fine, Mulder. Finish.”

“Answer the question.”

Scully tore her gaze from him, looking around the room, trying to find something, anything to focus her attention on besides him. How on Earth, at a time like this, could he even ASK this damn question?

“Scully…ten minutes ago we were both almost naked, rolling around on the bed, getting close to….to what we’ve both wanted for so long. It’s taken us forever and a day to get here.” He paused, searching. Scully was still staring at the bed, her arms crossed. “I’d hate to think that either of us was so shallow that one sentence from me could crush all that. So I’ll ask again…do you love me?”

Her eyes came up slowly. The anger was still there, he saw.

“It’s just not that easy, Mulder. What you said hurt me. Deeply. Right now, one thing has very little to do with the other.”

Mulder shook his head. “No. No it doesn’t, Scully.” He sat on the bed, purposefully changing his posture from a defensive one to an open, conversational position. “Neither one of us is a perfect human being, Scully. We’re both…” he searched for the word. “Complex,” he finished.

She snorted. That much, at least, was true.

“Scully…being sarcastic and insensitive is my way of dealing with pain, with loss. Since Sam…there’s only been…a few times when I’ve been able to…let go. When I’ve been able to…let myself feel the pain. My father. Melissa.” He stopped.

“Me,” she finished.

He stood, turning away from her, the memories of the Dark Time coming back. “Yes,” he said slowly, softly. “When you were gone… it was the worst, Scully. I thought…I thought you were gone forever, that I’d…never get a chance to…tell you what I felt, what I was beginning to feel. I thought I’d never get a chance to hold you in my arms and whisper how much I love you.”

Scully felt some of the anger beginning to drain out of her. Most of it remained, but she could feel Mulder’s pain from across the room, and it had a steadying effect on her emotions.

“Scully…the way I deal with pain is to make fun of it. To make light of it. And when you told me that Mike had been…that he’d been… my first reaction was to shield you from that pain. To make it go away as quickly as possible.” He paused. “To be like me. To ignore it. To pretend it wasn’t there. I was trying to give you…some of the strength that you’ve always given me.” He stopped, turned and faced her. “To make you more like me.”

He saw the anger clouding inside her eyes again and he took a step forward.

“I know I was wrong, Scully. So, so wrong. No one should be like me. It’s hell having this brain…this mind, doing the things it does to protect itself.” He stopped speaking and turned away from her, walking towards the foot of the bed. “I’m so afraid, Scully. So afraid that if I ever let myself feel all the emotions that I feel…that if I ever let myself feel them fully, that I’d do bonkers.”

“Bonkers?” Scully asked. Mulder glanced at her in the mirror over the dresser and saw her expression, saw the arched eyebrow. He saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

He turned back.

“Scully…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t say it to be insensitive or demeaning. I didn’t say it to minimize your pain, to make it seem like your pain was any less important than the pain I feel about Sam or my Dad or about Melissa or about my Mom. But I did say it because it’s what I would say to myself in the same circumstances.”

He paused.

“Scully…you’ve known me for four years. In good times and in bad. Do you honestly think I said what I said to hurt you?” The silence between them hung, heavy and pregnant. “I love you,” he said softly, shaking his head.

Another long moment.

Scully’s arms dropped.

She took a hesitant step towards him, and he took one towards her.

“I do,” she said quietly. “I do love you, Mulder.”

“I know,” he said. They where whispering, and he had no idea why.

“Mulder…you would never have said that about your mother or your father or Sam or Melissa. Put yourself in my shoes. Say Langley or Byers or Frohike had gotten murdered while you listened. Imagine if I had said the same thing you did.”

Mulder flinched.

He knew there was only one answer.

“You never would have said that,” he whispered. His voice sounded lame, even to his own ears.

She nodded. “That’s right, Mulder. That’s the difference between you and me.”

He nodded, accepting her rebuke. “You’re right, Scully.”

She took another step towards him, her arm reaching out, her fingers touching his bicep gently. “Mulder…” He was looking at the floor, unable to meet her eyes. If he had the damn puppy-dog look on his face when he looked up, Scully thought, I’m gonna slap him.

He looked up.

Scully felt her heart lurch to a stop. His face was a mask of misery. He wasn’t playing, he wasn’t pretending. Mulder looked as unhappy as she’d ever seen him.

“Mulder…” she said, stepping into his space. “If this is going to happen…between us…you’re going to have to learn not to say the first thing that is on your mind the instant it’s in there.”

“No,” he said, stepping back. “No, this isn’t…I’m supposed to be apologizing to you. You’re supposed to be ANGRY with me! Don’t comfort me, Scully! Don’t try and make me feel better!”

She stopped, her arm dropping again.

“Ok, Mulder…what is it you want, then?”

“Be ANGRY with me, Scully! Chew me out! Tell me what a self- centered jerk I am! What an asshole I can be!”

She shook her head.

“No.”

He looked at her, tears streaming down his face. “Why, Scully?!”

She spoke slowly, carefully. “Because no matter what I say to you, Mulder…no matter how angry and indignant I get..I’ll never be able to satisfy this…strange need you have to castigate yourself over every damn thing.” She turned and plopped down on the bed.

“You know, Mulder…sometimes I think you like being a jerk, if only to give yourself a chance to beat yourself up over it. Sometimes I get the feeling you LIKE being miserable.”

Her words caught him short.

“Emotional masochist?” he asked. She nodded.

“Yeah. You have to admit that…the pattern is there.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Anger replaces guilt.”

She nodded. “And you mask it all in this martyr complex. Look at poor Mulder…missing sister…dead father…mother almost killed by the cancerman…chasing aliens and conspiracies…no one understands him. Poor, poor Mulder.”

Her words stung, and Mulder flinched.

“Scully…” he wheezed.

“Mulder…you know I don’t feel that way. But that’s what you want people to feel. It’s yet another one of your incredible defense mechanisms. Push everyone away so you can be lonely and forlorn, so you can exist in that little bubble you call a world. So no one can get to you. You think I don’t know why you watch this porno movies? Much easier to fantasize about a woman that exists up on that screen than deal with an actual, living, breathing female.”

Mulder stood there, taking it, welcoming it.

Scully set her jaw. “You’re even enjoying this, aren’t you? In that twisted way of yours…you’re loving the fact that I can just pick…you…apart. That I can make you feel guilty for wanting to feel guilty.”

She sighed. “You’re hopeless, Mulder.”

He fell to his knees in front of her. “Please…Scully…”

She sighed again. She leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulders. “Mulder…I love you. God knows why I do, or when it happened, or why I can’t just find it in myself to walk away and leave you to your pain. God knows why you have this effect on me, because I sure as hell don’t.” He looked up at her, the tears flowing down his face.

“Mulder…do you love me?”

His shoulders stopped hitching. “Y-yes,” he whispered.

“Are you in love with me?”

He nodded, unable to speak.

“Come here,” she said, tugging on his shoulders. He came to her, and she lay back, bringing him with her. They lay on the bed together, an uneasy truce between them. “Listen to me, you sorry SOB. I fell in love with you so long ago that I don’t remember a part of my life before you. I can’t imagine my life without you. So I have a few choices. I can either accept you as you are, warts and all, and spend the rest of my life being totally antagonized by the man I love. Or, I can screw up my strength and walk out on you, this partnership, and my career. I can go somewhere else and find happiness with someone else.” A sudden mental image of Dana Scully and Matthew Stone walking down the isle on their wedding day crossed Mulder’s mind and he flinched against her, his arms tightening around her.

“Shhh,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere…yet.”

That one word, that single syllable froze Mulder’s blood.

“Or…” Scully continued, “we can work together. As partners. As lovers. As best friends. We can work together to help you find your way out of this pain, Mulder. No one knows more than I do how much happiness you’ve denied yourself over the years in the name of…prostrating yourself on the cross of Samantha and this conspiracy.”

He sobbed against her, burying his face against her neck.

She stroked his hair, comforting him, part of her hating herself for doing it. “Mulder…shhhh….listen to me. I want to do this. I want to be there for you…to be with you…” She rolled over on top of him, pinning him to the bed with her weight. “But…you have to be there with me as well, Mulder. You have to…let…me…in.”

He opened his eyes and stared at her, his angle, his savior. She reached up and tucked her hair behind one ear, letting him see her face, her eyes.

“Mulder…let it go. Let the pain go. I’m here…and if you let me…I’ll never leave you.”

If he let her. The incongruity of her words hit him like a slap. All this time he’d been pining for her, and she for him, it’d been him, Mulder, that had kept her away. He’d constantly pushed her away with his words and his actions, things said and things done carefully, subconsciously calculated to keep her at a distance, to keep everyone at a distance. It’d been him, all along. His stubbornness, his inability to see what was right in front of him.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Oh, God, yes…”

Scully looked down into his eyes, through them, and into his soul. The silent channels opened again, and they spoke without words.

Do you promise? her voice asked.

Yes, he answered.

“Mulder,” she said softly. “There’s one more thing.”

He waited.

“This case…I don’t want to sound like a poster for a really bad Steven Segal movie…but this time…it’s personal.”

Her serious voice, the way she’d paced the sentence, it sounded exactly like a radio trailer for a bad Steven Segal movie. Mulder struggled not to laugh.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Specifically.”

“Mulder…we are not going to stop until Danny Graves is either dead or behind bars. And I am not going to allow you to protect me in the name of your quest anymore. I go where you go, and you go where I go. We tell each other everything: Thoughts, theories, suspicions, every single thing on our minds. That’s what partners do.” She leaned down and kissed him very softly on the lips. “That’s what lovers do.”

He heard her words, but could not believe them. She saw that in his face, in his eyes, heard the strangled, whispered cry in his soul.

She sighed deeply, wondering what she was going to have to do to convince him.

“Mulder…I want to be your lover. I want you to be mine. I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted you. I didn’t realize it myself until Matt came into my life. I spent my entire time with him…comparing him to you. And he always came up short.

“Don’t you realize why I haven’t had a date in almost four years? Why I haven’t…been with anyone? I always compare them to you. And they always come up short.”

He looked at her, his eyes wide, not believing her, but desperately wanting to.

More than he had ever wanted to believe anything in his life.

“Mulder…you said an incredibly insensitive thing. A cruel, thoughtless little phrase. I know now what it was, what you were doing, and in a really weird way, I appreciate it. But, I’m still very angry with you, and part of me wants to just punch the crap out of you.”

He heard it again, the anger, the impatience in her voice and he realized that she had him at a complete disadvantage. She could do just that, he realized. Scully could just start…whaling on him and he would be powerless to do anything about it.

“But…” she added, “the thing I want to do know more than anything is make love to you.”

He glanced up at her again, searching her face, delving into her eyes. He felt like he was falling and he let it happen, descending into her eyes, seeing the truth there, the honesty, the open, warm desire she felt for him, for his touch, his warmth.

He raised his head off the bed and she lowered hers. The kiss started softly, and then caught fire. Mulder had thought that their first time together would have been slow, sweet, gentle. Discovering each other in small bits, learning everything they could about each other, but this was different. This was…hungrier. More eager, more desperate. Each of them had been so alone, for so long, each being the other’s only outlet for affection and desire. Now that the gates were opening, the waters were rushing through, pounding everything in their path into submission.

Scully was using her hands on him, pushing his shirt off. It came over his head and she tossed it over her shoulder, her hands moving to her own shirt, working the buttons quickly. He moved to help her and she slapped his hands away. No time, she thought. No time.

He might change his mind.

She might.

No time.

Mulder watched, amazed as Scully reached behind her and undid the catch on her bra, tossing it to join her shirt. She stood quickly, her compact, perfect breasts bobbling as she moved. She grabbed his pants and pulled, sliding them down and off his legs. He lifted his hips, his thumbs working in the waistband of his boxers, and then they, too were gone. Scully stood before him in just her panties, and she lost them just as quickly.

Naked, she leapt back up onto the bed, pinning him again with her thighs. Her mouth descended towards his, capturing it, devouring it. There was passion…and anger in that kiss. Anger at being made to wait so long for this, for him. Anger at having to deny her feelings for him to herself, to the world, to everyone. Anger at having to have so much pain be the catalyst for so much pleasure.

His hands found her back, and he stroked her, his fingers sliding down to find her buttocks, spreading them, pulling her against him, his hardness.

“In me,” she whispered. “In me…now!”

She shifted on the bed and Mulder’s hand came around from underneath. He felt her, how wet and open and ready she was, and he found himself gaping in amazement. She was soaked, her center dripping. He was iron and steel, so hard he was throbbing with anticipation. She grasped him, using it like a lever, positioning herself and then him, and then he felt it, felt the heat and the moisture at the tip, and then he was inside her and she was sliding down, opening herself, filling herself with him, spreading, accepting. It was a long, wet, hot, slick slide and then she was bottomed out, her ass pressed against his thighs and he was inside her, he was inside her, oh God, he was INSIDE her!

He groaned, flexing his hips reflexively. She gasped as he moved inside her. It had been so long since anyone had been inside her, and Scully had almost forgotten the delicious, glutted feeling of having a man filling her up; Mulder had almost forgotten what it meant to BE inside a woman, a woman he cared about, a woman he loved more than anything else in the world, ever. She was wet and hot and slick and tight, gripping him with her walls, tugging at him, trying to draw him even deeper still.

“Oh, God, Scully,” he whispered.

“Fuck me, Mulder.” Her voice was strained, hoarse, and Mulder thought he’d never heard a more beautiful sound or two more beautiful words in his life.

He started to move, withdrawing and then inserting himself again, setting up a slow, patient rhythm.

“Faster, Dammit!” Scully demanded. Mulder moved to comply, not sure he was hearing right. But then he forgot that as he lost himself in the sensations of making love with Dana Scully. He entire world vanished, replaced instead by the sensations of her surrounding him, tugging at him, pulling at him. Her fingernails were digging into his shoulder, urging him on, pulling him up at her, up into her.

He rolled, moving on top of her, never breaking the contact. Her legs scissored around his back, her teeth bared in a grimace of absolute passion, passion denied too long.

“Harder!” she gasped.

Scully wanted to be with this man, be with him any way she could, for as long as she could. But for that to happen, for her to remain sane in the middle of any romantic, sexual relationship with Mulder, she was going to have to get to the REAL Mulder. And that meant forgetting soft, slow, gentle lovemaking. She had wanted that for the first time as well, had wanted it to be romantic and caring, had wanted it to be remembered between them always as “The First Time” should be remembered. But this was more important; this was what Mulder needed.

Mulder had an epiphany. His concern for her, his desire to make it good for her, to make it memorable and special was another shield. Another way to protect himself and his heart. As long as he was thinking about her, he was thinking only about himself. As long as his only concern was her pleasure, her enjoyment, he had no room for himself, no room for him to give, to give himself instead of just giving OF himself. Scully knew that. Scully wanted him to…be. To be himself.

He roared and began to move, thrusting again and again, filling her over and over. She moved with him, urging him on, her own pleasure, her own desire forgotten. And in that, in that perfect moment of Mulder just being a man, being the big, strong, macho man, Scully found herself climbing towards release. The orgasm took her by surprise and she detonated, feeling the pleasure spiraling out from her center in wet, melting, shuddering waves of emancipation. Freedom to be herself, to be a woman under this man, this complex, flawed, wonderful man that she loved more than life itself.

He saw the tears on her face and thought that he’d hurt her.

He stopped moving.

“Scully?”

She smiled through the tears. “Do you know that’s the first time you’ve been totally honest with me in four years?”

“I love you,” he said softly, leaning down to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and they began to move again, slower this time, more gently. He was huge inside her, and Scully grunted with the effort of holding him, loving the feeling of being…possessed by this man.

By Mulder.

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

And he knew that it was true. Something inside of him snapped, a button pushed, a switch flipped, and he began to move more quickly, wanting her to come with him, wanting her to be where he was, at the center of a nexus of pleasure that had never had an equal. At the very center of a world of love and desire and passion and pleasure.

She felt him moving, saw him with her own eyes as he lost himself inside her, as the pain completely and truly left his eyes for the first time since she’d known him. All your life, the voice inside her head remarked. You’ve known this man your entire life, because whatever came before you knew him wasn’t a life.

This is.

This is real, the voice said.

This is life. This is love. This is what you’ve wanted your entire life, what you’ve waited for since you realized what men and women do together in the dark rooms in the darkest hours of the night.

Only it wasn’t night, it was late afternoon, and the sun streaming in from the window was casting a glow across both of their bodies; Scully felt as if they were being bathed in Life itself.

She felt her eyes roll back as Mulder cranked up another notch towards release. His hands, the way they were moving on her body, touching here, stroking there, grasping a breast only long enough to gently twist and pinch a nipple, only to release it so he could go looking elsewhere, for other treasures, for other secret spots to touch and stroke and caress…it was all building inside her, making Scully ache for another release, making her pant with desire to let go, to dissolve under Mulder, to let him do with her what he would, whatever he wanted…

And then they were both there. Mulder thrust inside her one final time and she felt him growing, expanding, filling her with his hot girth.

“In me,” she whispered.

Mulder lost it at that moment and Scully joined him. They screamed together, her hands tightening on his shoulders, the nails digging into his skin. He shuddered, once, twice…three times and then collapsed, rolling onto his back, bringing her with him.

Their breathing slowly returned to normal. Her face was tucked against his neck and she reached out with her tongue and licked him. He giggled, trying to move away.

“Understand?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” he said.

“I love you, Mulder.”

“I love you too, Scully.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 20/38

“Doing what’s right isn’t a problem. It’s knowing what’s right.”

– Lyndon B. Johnson

“The weak have one weapon — the errors of those who think they are strong.”

– Georges Bidault

“It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”

– Adlai Stevenson

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

They snuggled for a few moments, and then Scully stood, moving to the bathroom. “Join me,” she said softly, over her shoulder. Mulder thought about it for half a second and then rose to follow her into the bathroom.

The shower was more functional than erotic, but they did take a few opportunities to touch favorite places.

“Ally Roche,” Mulder said. “I wonder what secrets she’s going to give us.”

“It’s like playing hopscotch,” Scully said, running her hands through her hair. “We move a box at a time, and we don’t know what’s at the other end. Don’t you just wish we could skip to the end?”

Mulder laughed. “Yeah. But we risk missing something important if we don’t touch all the boxes. I do have an idea, though.”

“I’m listening.”

“Mike told us that he has only one other contact besides Graves. He never told us who that was. We should find out who Roche’s contacts are, and go from there.”

Scully used her hands to wring the excess water from her ponytail. “Only one problem with that theory, Mulder.”

Mulder moved to take his turn under the spray. “And that is?”

“We’re not sure that Roche is in on it. We only know that she once held a job that Matt did.”

Mulder nodded. “You’re right; I’m eager. Too eager, I guess. I want to break her and move onto the next box. I’m hoping that every person we come into contact with over this is going to have a little more information for us, another piece of the puzzle.”

Scully took up the washcloth and began soaping Mulder’s chest. Her fingers danced across his flesh as she thought. Mulder looked down as the diminutive redhead, naked and wet before him, and thanked whatever forces guided the universe for bringing her into his life.

“How do you want to handle it?” he asked.

“I think we go for the jugular. I told Admiral Karn not to inform her that we were coming. We get a few Shore Patrol escorts and show up at her duty station. She’ll know as soon as she sees them and our ID’s what’s up. We tell her we know everything, and her only chance at not spending the next fifty years at Portsmouth is to cooperate with us fully. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll hold her on an Article 16, and then tell her that Watts flipped on her, that he was a blind contact, one she didn’t know about, one that was watching her.”

Mulder nodded. “But what if she’s not in on it?”

Scully glanced up at her partner, smiling. Mulder saw a new smile on Scully’s face, an expression he had never witnessed before. It was the smile of a jackal that smelled fresh meat; it was a killer’s smile. “Oh, I’ll know, Mulder. I’ll know.”

“Woman’s intuition?”

She gave him the same smile again, a twinkle in her amazing blue eyes. “Something like that.”

***

Office of Lieutenant Ally Roche, Project Officer, TLAM-N
Naval Air Station Mirimar
1645 Hours

The two huge, hulking Shore Patrolman flanking them, Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, Federal Bureau of Investigation knocked on the door bearing the name of Lt. Ally Roche.

“Come!” said the voice from inside. Scully pushed the door open and stepped through, closely followed by Mulder and the two SP’s.

Scully sized the woman up in an instant, her gaze never wavering. Ally Roche was about thirty-two, with short blonde hair, alluring green eyes, and a very no-nonsense attitude. Her office, small as it was, was pin-neat and ordered in a precise military manner. She stood at attention when she saw Mulder enter the room.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Please wait outside,” Scully said to the two SP’s. Visibly annoyed at not being privy to this officer’s potential humiliation, the two first class petty officers merely nodded and closed the door behind them as they left.

As if they had practiced the motion, Scully and Mulder presented her with their identification.

“Scully, Mulder. Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Roche’s eyes flickered, and Scully knew they had found their woman.

She looked at her partner and gave a small nod.

Mulder opened his jacket and took out the two folded pages of blank copier paper he’d grabbed on his way down. “Do you know what an Article 16 is?” he asked.

Roche shook her head.

“Remand to civilian custodial authority,” Mulder helpfully supplied. “It’s not signed. Depending on the answers you give in the next thirty seconds, it will remain unsigned, and you will be allowed, for the time being, to remain in your current assignment and grade. If you force us to sign it, it will be the end of your career, Lieutenant Roche.”

Roche slowly sat, folding her hands neatly on top of her desk. “I’m listening.”

“I have six words for you, Lieutenant.” Scully’s voice was firm, controlling. “Daniel Graves. Liberty Bell. Start talking.”

For a moment, it looked as if Roche was going to defy her, and instead was going to deny any knowledge or involvement in the plan. She licked her lip nervously, and Mulder tried not to visibly relax. He knew that she was debating with her demons, trying to gauge which action was going to get her into less trouble.

“You know?” she asked.

“We know everything,” Mulder said. Scully shot him a glance. He ignored it.

“You know about the CBX-3…” Roche whispered. Mulder frowned, making a mental note to call Karn and find out what, exactly, CBX-3 was.

“We are investigating everyone associated with LIBERTY BELL,” Scully explained. “But to make sure we’re getting all the information, and more importantly, that no one is lying to us and making their personal situation any worse, we’re asking that all suspects tell us their stories, from the beginning, as if we don’t know anything.”

Mulder jumped in. “Let me make that crystal clear, Lieutenant. You don’t know what we know. We may know nothing. We may know it all. But if you lie to us about something we do know about, and we catch you in it, my partner will sign that Article 16, and those two burly SP’s will come in here, put you into shackles, and drag you away in front of all your friends and co-workers. You will be remanded to our custody before the end of the night, and two even burlier US Marshal’s will transport you via airplane to Washington, DC to await trial. Are we clear, ma’am?”

Roche nodded, seeing the trap. They had just enough information to make her believe. Danny’s name and the project. One without the other, and she would have denied it all.

“Do we have to do it here?” Roche asked. In answer to her question, Scully reached into her jacket pocket and returned with a small dictating recorder. Setting it on Roche’s desk, she pushed PLAY and RECORD.

“Yes. Here. Now start talking.”

Roche took a deep breath.

***

“It all started my senior year at Annapolis. I had decided to go into logistics, because I have a good mind for numbers. Planning, all that good stuff. I graduated with the class of 1988. My first assignment was as a logistics officer at Pearl Harbor. I’m from Indiana, Agent Scully. The Pacific Ocean was a big thing for me, but I was lonely. Extremely lonely. I was automatically promoted to Lieutenant JG after my first 12 months were up, and transferred to CENTCOM as a Liaison officer.

“That was the summer of 1989. That assignment lasted until the Gulf War.”

Mulder interrupted. “I’m not seeing the connection to Annapolis.”

“I’m getting there. When I was at Annapolis, I had a relationship with a townie. A man I later came to know as Danny Graves. He was older, exciting, and he worked for the same government I did. He made it clear that her worked in secret, classified areas, and I knew that to be true because he was able to get on the base and off without any problem. He never showed me his ID, but whenever he flashed it at the gate guards, they snapped to attention and let him go wherever he wanted to. I felt special, unique, that a man like that would seek me out, would do the things he did. Flatter me, take me out to dinner. He made me feel like a woman, Agent Mulder. More like a woman than any of the assholes I went to school with. Annapolis is the ultimate Old Boy’s Network. A full third of my class were the sons of senior officers. Sure, it’s supposed to be a competitive appointment process, but that’s not the way it works.

“I was discouraged about the Navy from my sophomore year, when I discovered that some of my classmates were cheating on exams. The hard subjects, the ones you needed to take for the hard-science degrees, the degrees you needed to get assigned to the surface or submarine fleet… those classes were riddled with cheaters. Men who didn’t give a rats’ ass about honor, duty or country. All they wanted to do was graduate, get into the fleet, get promoted. Get Admiral’s stars. It was all about getting ahead.”

Scully was nodding, listening to her words. It wasn’t hard to see how Graves had recruited her.

“Anyway…after the Gulf War, I was sent back to the states, still as a Lieutenant, only this time to the Pentagon. Public Information Office. I was a flack, a spokesperson. I briefed the press on very, very low-level issues. The Captains and the Admirals reserved the juicy stories for themselves. I got all the crap.”

Mulder was beginning to sense that Roche was a complainer. Always annoyed that she didn’t get the choice assignments, the flashiest and cushiest jobs.

“So you complained to someone,” Mulder prompted.

Roche glanced at him, her eyes hard. “Yes, yes I did. I was sick and tired of being a second-class citizen in the Navy just because I happen not to have a penis. I’m sure that you would never be able to understand what I’m talking about just as I’m sure your partner knows exactly what I’m talking about.”

Scully bit her tongue and then said. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. The FBI is the same way. I have to work four times as hard to be taken half as seriously as any of the male agents.”

Mulder hid his surprise at her words only be repeating to himself the fact that Scully was ‘working’ the witness, that she was attempting to side with her during the interrogation to get more information from her; there was no reason to antagonize Roche. Not now. Later, he would ask Scully if she’d been serious. He knew that some of the men at Headquarters did treat Scully differently because she was a woman, and he had the sneaking suspicion that although he might treat her better than most, that he was guilty of the same thing.

“See? She knows what I mean. So I told Danny. He’d looked me up when I was reassigned to the Pentagon, and he told me that he could get me a better job in the Navy. He did. He got me this job.”

Now for the fun part, Scully thought.

“So what did you have to do in exchange?”

Mulder couldn’t resist. “Besides sleeping with him, she means.”

Scully shot a glance at her partner that could have frozen lava.

Roche didn’t even blink. “Sure, I slept with him. But I did that because I love him, and he loves me. It wasn’t a pre-requisite to him helping me. He made that much clear. So clear, in fact, that he got me the assignment before we ever slept together.”

Mulder nodded, mentally congratulating Graves. The man did know how to motivate people. Carrot, then the stick.

“So, what’s the deal, Roche. What’s your part in LIBERTY BELL?”

“Delivery system,” Roche explained. “He needs a way to deliver the CBX-3. I’m providing the delivery system.”

Scully mulled this over. “Would have provided, you mean. You would have provided the delivery system. I’m assuming that’s a Tomahawk?”

“Of course.”

“N model?” Scully asked, trying to hide the shake in her voice.

Roche looked at Scully as if she were insane. “A nuke? No way! What are you…nuts?”

“Mulder…stay with her a minute. I need to make a call.”

Scully stepped out into the hall and thought a moment. It was almost eight o’clock back in Washington. Karn was at home. She dialed the number and took a few steps away from the SP’s.

“Karn.”

“Karn, Special Agent Scully.”

“How goes it at Mirimar?”

“Very well. We’ve identified another one of Graves’ operatives. It was Roche.”

Karn grunted. “Ok, what’s the bad news?”

“What’s CBX-3?”

There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone. “Agent Scully, I’m beginning to think that you and Mulder are in over your head. Are you sure you don’t want NIS to take over this investigation?”

No time like the present, Scully thought. “No, sir. This is a rather…personal matter at this time. I spoke with Danny Graves today.”

“What?”

“Right after he killed Admiral Watts.”

“My GOD! Why haven’t I been informed?”

“Well, sir, Watts was the Chief of Staff to COMSUBPAC, so I’m sure that right now, they’re trying to determine what happened. I’m sure that you’ll be contacted soon.”

“I see.”

“What’s CBX-3, sir?”

“Cluster weapon, Biological, Experimental, Flight 3.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a biological agent, Agent Scully. Made to be delivered by a Tomahawk missile. I don’t have the specifics of the effect of the agent, but I do know that a drop the size of the head of a pin can kill everyone in a 10 foot radius.”

“My god.”

“That’s not the worst part. That’s when the agent is inert. When delivered in a airburst situation-”

“Sir?”

Karn sighed. “The CBX is designed to be delivered by Tomahawk only because of the weapon’s innate accuracy. It’s not designed to be an impact weapon. The missile is set to detonate about a hundred feed above the ground. The force of the explosion turns the agent into an aerosol, filling the air for ten or twelve square miles with invisible droplets of the agent. Its effects are close to instant, Agent Scully. Repository arrest, death within minutes.”

“I see. Sir, I’ll need an undercover NIS agent on Mirimar assigned to watch Roche 24/7 until this is all settled. She’s involved; she was going to provide the delivery mechanism to Graves.”

There was a pause. “Do you know the target?”

“Yes, sir,” Scully said. “Washington, DC.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“I’ll call you back when we’re done interrogating Roche.”

“Do you think NIS has been penetrated, Scully? Could Stone be one of them?”

Scully thought about it. “No, sir, and I do want to talk to you about Commander Stone soon. Depending on how the investigation goes, probably in the next day or two. I think that Stone has been onto Graves since the beginning. Since before you were with NIS, sir. For almost ten years.”

“Iraq? Libya?”

“Somewhere in between, sir. I think that Stone has been perusing this case since he stumbled across it during his time with the SEALs. I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that Graves tried to recruit Matt, and that Matt’s working from the inside to try and crack this thing.”

“I see.”

Scully wasn’t sure if she was ready to believe all of it, but at the moment it seemed like the most logical explanation. It would also explain a lot of Matt’s behavior.

Although it wouldn’t excuse much of it.

“One more thing, Scully. Commander King found something at Stone’s apartment. She called me and told me that it was too sensitive to send by courier or fax. She hopped a Phantom out of Pax River. She should be landing in the next half an hour or so.” Scully smiled at that. More information, more nails for Graves’ coffin.

“Thank you, Admiral.” She paused. “Sir, I need to get back to the interrogation.”

“Yes, of course. Please keep me informed. I’ll have someone there just as soon as I can. Take care, Scully.”

“Of course, sir.” Scully disconnected the call and stepped quickly back into Roche’s office.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“No,” Mulder said. “She hasn’t said a word since you left.”

Scully leaned towards Mulder, motioning with her hand. He lowered his head, his ear next to her lips. Scully had a sudden desire to nibble on his earlobe.

Later, Dana, she thought. “CBX is a biological agent. Kills instantly. Airborne. Burst weapon.”

Mulder nodded and straightened, assimilating the information.

“Ok, Roche, we’re nowhere near done yet. Who’s your contact?”

She grinned. “Danny, of course.”

“How do you contact him?”

“I don’t. He calls me.”

“When is the last time he called you?” Scully asked.

Roche thought about it. “Two months ago. He called to tell me that he was in town on business, and asked if I wanted to get together.”

“Getting together…meaning?”

“Yes, Agent Scully. Getting together in that he took me to dinner, made me feel beautiful and wanted, and then took me back to my apartment and put the bed springs to a pretty damned good test. I haven’t heard from him since.”

Scully pounced. “I have. I spoke with him earlier this afternoon.”

Roche’s eyes narrowed. “Is that right?”

Scully smiled, her claws coming out. “Yes. I spoke to him in a motel room, as a matter of fact.” That much was true, Scully said. She, after all, had been in a motel room when they had spoken.

“You bitch.” Roche’s voice was flat, emotionless. “I guess I knew. I mean, I guess I knew that he didn’t have just me…wait a minute.”

She looked back and forth between the two agents. “You’re investigating him, aren’t you?”

Both partners nodded.

“I don’t understand…if you were talking to him in a motel room, why didn’t you just arrest him?”

“Because I was in a motel room in Mission Beach, and he was in the office of the Chief of Staff to Commander, Submarine Forces Pacific.”

Roche’s expression became even more confused. “What was he doing there?”

Mulder supplied the answer. “At the time, he’d just put a bullet into Admiral Mike Watts’ head.”

Roche paled, her hand coming to cover her mouth. “Ohmygod!” she whispered.

Scully nodded, moving around the corner of the desk, leaning over, her palms flat on the surface, her face inches from Roche’s. “That’s right, Ally. Your lover, your friend, your rabbi…Danny Graves killed a Rear Admiral today. He walked up to him and put a bullet into his head.”

Roche started to cry. “It wasn’t…he said he wouldn’t…”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Use it! Do it! It was all supposed to be a bluff!”

Roche broke, her eyes spilling over with tears, her body wracked with sobs. Her voice was choked, her words hitching out between sobs. “He. Said. It. Was. All. For. Money.”

Mulder and Scully caught each other’s eyes.

Money.

Ransom?

“Is this a bluff or not, Ally?”

“He told me that he wanted to…to…threaten the government. Threaten them to detonate the TLAM-B during the State of the Union address unless they agreed to pay him half a billion.”

Now Mulder was confused, his mind racing. Watts had told them that Graves’ activities, his plans were all basically politically motivated, that he didn’t like the direction the country was going, that he wanted to effect change by removing the government in power via force. And now Roche was telling them that it was a blackmail plot, a way to skim a cool half a billion from the Treasury.

Which was telling the truth?

“Who is your other contact?” Scully asked.

“N-no one,” Roche sniffled.

Scully looked at her partner. “Mulder, please leave us alone.”

Mulder started to leave. “Wait,” Scully called. Reaching to the small of her back, she unholstered her pistol and handed it to him. “Take this. I don’t want to be responsible for shooting her.”

Mulder silently took the gun, noting the look on his partner’s face. He almost felt sorry for Lieutenant Ally Roche, USN.

Almost.

***

Once the door closed, Scully turned and faced Roche. “There’s one other thing you should know, Roche. Actually, a few things.” Scully started pacing in the small office. She reached over and stopped the recorder. That fact was not lost on Roche.

“First, you will tell me everything you know. I know that you’ve been cooperative up to now, but I will learn every single thing you know about Daniel Graves before I leave here.”

Scully stopped pacing and turned to face the traitor before her.

“Or you will not leave this room alive.”

Roche scoffed. “I doubt that. One scream from me, and those SPs will be in here pretty damn quick.”

Scully felt the power welling up inside her, and hated it. She hated what she had to do, but knew that it was necessary. The stakes were too big, and this time, as she’d told Mulder, it was personal.

“No they won’t,” Scully said softly, reaching into the pocket of her pants. “They won’t because they’re not SP’s. They’re NSA agents on loan to C16.”

Roche paused to think about that. C16 was the FBI’s elite and highly secretive counterintelligence unit. Rumors abounded to the tactics that C16 employed to secure the ‘uncoerced’ confessions that most spies ended up giving.

“Are you with C16?” Roche asked, more than a little afraid.

Scully flashed her a cold, icy grin. “That’s classified, I’m afraid.”

Roche gulped.

“So,” Scully continued, bringing the small brown-glass vial from her pocket. “If I use this on you, no one will care, and no one will notice.” She paused. “Especially since I’m also a medical doctor, Lieutenant Roche, and if I tell them you died of a rare and undiagnosed heart ailment, they will believe me.”

“The autopsy…” Roche started.

“Oh, did I forget to mention? MULDER!” she called.

Mulder stuck his head in the door. “Scully?”

“What kind of doctor am I?” she asked.

“Forensic pathologist,” Mulder helpfully supplied, seeing the small brown-glass vial in his partner’s hand. He tried to hide his shock. She was playing hardball.

“You’re excused,” she said, and Mulder ducked his head back out the door, closing it behind him.

“So, you see, if I throw this in your face, you’ll be dead before you take another breath. Nothing will show up on the autopsy, I’ll make sure of that. You’ll just be…dead.”

Roche watched the vial with wide, scared eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“Answers,” Scully said. “The truth.”

“Ask your questions,” Roche said, her voice signaling her defeat.

Scully reached over and turned the recorder back on.

“First off…are you providing the CBX? Or does Graves have another contact for that?”

Roche shook her head. “All I’m doing is providing the missile chassis. I found several on the Defense Liquidation Agency rolls, old Tomahawk I flight missiles that are being scrapped. They’re still flyable, just not up to military standards. I arranged to purchase them through a friend of mine. I told him I was going to turn them into planters.”

Scully laughed at that. It sounded just weird enough to make sense.

“Good. Do you know where Graves is getting the CBX?”

Roche shook her head. “I assume he already has it.”

Scully frowned and stopped.

“Why?”

“Well, because no one makes it anymore. It’s too unstable.”

“Define ‘unstable.’”

Roche crossed her arms. “Agent Scully, I’m a logistics expert, that’s all. All I do is move pieces of hardware from point “A” to point “B”. That’s it. I am not a chemical weapons expert.”

“Biological,” Scully corrected without thinking.

“WHATever,” Roche pouted. “The point is, all I know about CBX is that it’s unstable, and no one makes it anymore.”

Scully thought quickly. “What makes you think that Graves already has it?”

“The words he used when he talked about it. He told me that the CBX was already ‘in place’ and that all he needed was a delivery vehicle.”

Scully thought again. “You’re not providing any guidance support? Avionics?”

Roche shook her head. “Just an empty missile shell.”

“How many do you have?”

“Two.”

Scully thought about it again. “Ok…is there anyone that Danny mentioned to you, anyone that you should contact if anything goes wrong? He might not have called it a contact…but anyone he told you about that’s affiliated with him? With the plot?”

Roche bristled at Scully’s use of the word ‘plot’, but didn’t comment about it.

“No.”

“One last question. Where did he get the CBX?”

Roche looked at Scully strangely. “I’d assume Afghanistan.”

That brought Scully up short. “Excuse me?”

“Afghanistan, Agent Scully. You have heard of it?”

“Of course I have,” Scully snapped. “What does that have to do with anything? With this plot?”

Roche shrugged. “I thought you knew. That’s where Danny last served in any kind of official capacity. With the CIA. In Afghanistan. During the Soviet occupation.”

“Tell me more. All of it,” Scully demanded.

Sighing, Roche sat back and scratched her face. “Uh…Um…Danny was assigned to help the rebels with antihelicopter defenses. Those Hind-E models were a bitch. CIA started shipping Stinger AA missiles over, and, well, Danny got the idea that some CBX might be a good idea. The DOD had already decided not to use the stuff anymore, and had decommissioned all the 105 rounds that had the CBW warheads. So there was a bunch of CBX sitting around at China Lake and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Paperwork, and voila! Transferred to the temporary custody of the CIA, and then it became POCMUS-CONUS,” Roche explained.

“POCMUS…what?”

“Positioned Outside Military Custody, United States, Continental United States. That means that the US Army still kept the CBX on the roll as belonging to them, but they had no official way to account for it when the GAO came calling. That way, the Army was still responsible for it in the long run, but they didn’t have to produce the actual canisters when the GAO auditors asked to see it. They could just point to a ledger entry and say, ‘Sorry, it’s on classified assignment for CIA.’ And no one goes to the CIA and asks them to account for shit.”

Scully nodded, and then her phone rang. Grabbing it from her inside jacket pocket, she thumbed SND and lifted it to her ear.

“Scully.”

“This is Maggie King. I just landed at Mirimar. Where are you?”

“Hi, Maggie. Why didn’t you call Mulder?”

“His phone isn’t working. Where are you?”

“Karn told me what you have, or at least the outlines of it. We’re at the Motel 6 in Mission Beach. Meet us there in an hour.”

“Roger that,” King said, and disconnected.

Scully didn’t see Roche mouthing the words “motel six” to herself.

Turning back to her suspect, Scully continued. “So, Graves managed to convince the CIA to transfer custody of a highly volatile, extremely deadly biological warfare agent to…what? A little insurgency problem in the near East? I find that hard to believe, Ally.”

Roche spread her arms. “That’s what I know, Scully. He told me that he’d had the CBX sent to Afghanistan. He never told me that he brought it back, but since that was what he is going to use, I assumed that’s where he got it.”

It made sense, Scully admitted to herself. Maybe too much sense. The fact of the matter was, Scully knew that nothing she was told about Danny Graves should be taken at face value. It was just the kind of thing that the devious son-of-a-bitch would do. Throw a false trail like that out for her and Mulder and whomever was following him to blindly stumble down. It could be another tripwire, another way to let him know how close they were to finding him, finding the truth. He could be getting it from anywhere in the world, knowing his resources.

“Ok, a few more questions, and then we’re done.”

Roche made a face. “Not gonna throw that stuff in my face, huh?”

Scully spun on the younger woman. “You listen to me, you little traitor. Mike Watts was a close, personal friend of mine, of my family, of my FATHER!”

Roche made the connection. “Captain William Scully, right?”

Scully nodded. How many people in the Navy knew Ahab, anyway?

Roche snorted. “What do you think your father would say if he knew you, the big, important FBI agent, was threatening a suspect with death in order to make her talk?”

Scully felt the pain in her chest, the sting behind her eyes. What would Dad think? she wondered.

“I think he would understand, considering the stakes,” Scully said evenly.

“Bah,” Roche said, waving a hand. “I met your father once. He made quite an impression on me, I must say. Iron-stiff, unbending, always by the rules Scully. You know, that’s what some of the men under his command called him? Rulebook Scully. Never make an exception…except when it suited his needs.”

“What do you mean by that, Roche?”

Ally stood, her own palms flat on the desk. “I’m not sure I should tell you. You might get upset and kill me.”

Scully looked down at the vial in her hand and quickly jammed it into her pocket. “Talk.”

Roche considered. “I told Danny about meeting your father, Scully. He made that much of an impression on me. When I was in the PIO, there was a Naval Intelligence operation that went sour. Haiti; I’m not sure if you remember. Some speedboats were discovered, US Navy markings, ready to help Baby Doc get the hell out of town when the time came. It was Naval Intelligence all the way, with a little help from the SEALs. Your father found out about a partial briefing I’d given to some of the press about the capabilities of the boats. Nothing classified, just their speed and range, engines, hull constructions…you know, all the info for those little sidebar stories they do whenever a piece of US military hardware is used. Well, he tore me a new one, to make a long story short. He really ripped into me, telling me that I was as good as a traitor to my country, letting the press have information like that. I pointed out that it wasn’t classified, and he just told me that sometimes the most important secrets are right in front of your face.”

Scully nodded. Sounded like Ahab.

“So?”

“Like I said; I mentioned him to Danny. We had a date that night.”

Roche paused, her eyes glittering. “Danny knows your father, too, Agent Scully. And according to what Danny said, Captain Scully, Naval Intelligence knew about Danny. Knew all about him.”

She crossed her arms and shot Scully an incredibly petulant, snotty little smile. “And did nothing,” she added.

Scully grinned, wishing that the small brown-glass vial in her pocket wasn’t filled with tap water. Wishing it was filled with some deadly, untraceable poison.

“You’re full of shit, Roche.”

“Am I? Your father was in intelligence, Scully. You know the sacrifices they have to make from time to time. For the greater good, you know.”

“MULDER!” Scully called. A moment later her partner was in the office.

“What?”

“Call the SP’s. Have this…person…transferred to civilian authority.”

“Scully! It’ll tip him off.”

Scully spun on her partner. “Can you just FOR ONCE do what I tell you to without giving me a ration of shit about it?”

Stunned, Mulder stepped back into the hallway. “Take her into custody,” he said quietly. “Take her to the Provost Marshall’s office. Some US Marshal’s will be by later to take her to Washington.”

Without a word, the two burly SP’s entered the office and efficiently handcuffed Roche.

“You won’t be able to stop him, you know,” Roche claimed. “I’m not the only source of missile housings. He’s got to have more.”

“She’s right,” Mulder pointed out. Scully looked at the man she loved and wanted at that moment not to hate him. She knew that the emotions running around inside her at that moment were powerful, volatile.

“Mulder, the missile is nothing. We follow the chemicals. We follow the CBX. We find that, it doesn’t matter how many TLAM’s Graves has. He can drop them from an airplane for all the good they’ll do. Don’t you get it? We have to find the CBX!”

Mulder nodded and watched as Roche was led out in cuffs.

“What now?” he asked.

“Maggie King called. She found something at Stone’s apartment and hopped a Phantom via Karn. She’s landed. She’s going to meet us at the motel in an hour.”

Mulder nodded. “Ok. Let’s get something to eat first.”

Scully frowned, rubbing her stomach. Reaching down to the desk, she turned the recorder off and pocketed it. “I’m not sure if I can eat, Mulder. That woman turned my stomach.”

Mulder placed a hand at the small of her back, guiding her out of the room and down the hall.

“Hey, Scully,” he said softly as they waited for the elevator.

“What?”

“You ok?”

She looked at Mulder, trying to find the words. She’d demanded honesty and access from him only hours before, and here she was considering lying to him, varnishing the truth to spare his feelings, to spare his patronizing empathy. “She told me my father knew about Graves and did nothing, Mulder. To answer your question, no, I’m not fine.”

The elevator doors dinged! open and the duo entered.

Mulder said nothing as they ascended towards the lobby.

***

Duty Officer’s Office
Office of the Provost Marshal
Naval Air Station Mirimar

“I’m allowed one phone call,” Roche insisted.

“Yes, you are,” the duty officer agreed. Pausing in his typing of the Article 16 paperwork, he turned his phone around to face her. “Help yourself.”

“In private,” Roche said snidely. “The regulations say it has to be a private call.”

The duty officer sighed. Another guardhouse lawyer. “Very well.” Standing, he moved to his office door, motioning an SP over. “Guard the door. If you hear anything, kick it open and take her down. She’s making a phone call.”

The SP nodded, taking up station beside the door. “Think she’s gonna jump?” he joked. The duty officer’s office was six stories up.

“She might. She’s being charged with treason.”

The SP’s eyes widened, but he kept his mouth shut.

Inside the office, Lieutenant Ally Roche dialed from memory.

“Hel-lo,” the voice answered.

“It’s Ally,” Roche said.

“Ally, my darling!” Danny Graves said. “So good to hear from you, but I assume this is bad news. Am I right?”

“Depends. I just got arrested for treason by two special agents from the FBI.”

“Tall, dour fellow? Short, feisty redhead?”

“That’s them.”

“Not to worry, my darling. By the time they figure out what’s going on, it’ll be done, and you’ll be free, a celebrated hero of the revolution!”

Roche tried to hide the scorn in her voice. “Listen to me, Dan. They know about the CBX. They know you’re going to drop it on the State of the Union address.”

Graves laughed in her ear. “Why, my dear, whatever could have made you think that?”

“They know, Dan. They told me.”

“As I’m sure they did, my darling. But that was never my plan.”

Stunned, Roche said nothing.

“Now, before I leave you to their clutches, is there anything else you have for me?”

“Yes,” Roche mumbled. “I know where they’re staying.”

“Good! Good! It’ll save me the time from triangulating their cell phone calls. Do tell, dear girl. Do tell.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 21/38

“Soldier: A man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men’s iniquities.”

– William Godwin

“Violence is just, where kindness is vain.”

– Corneille

Oahu, Hawaii

Danny Graves hung the phone up and tapped his fingers on the desk before him. Silently, he chastised himself for letting the meddlesome duo from the FBI continue their investigation. He’d thought about killing the woman during the Haynes incident. It would have been so very easy…

But Stone had been there, and Graves wanted to save Stone for the right moment, for the perfect point in time. And in giving into his ego, his desire to prove to his most tenacious enemy who was the better operator, that he’d given the two FBI agents enough rope to hang him with.

Well, he thought, not really. They knew bits and pieces of the plan, but not the entire scope of it. He’d been careful over the years, telling each of his operatives just enough to keep them going, and to keep them guessing. He’d planted more than his share of disinformation in his days, both officially and not. He was a master at playing people, and he’d been doing it so long that he forgot there were others out there, others just as good as he was. Sometimes better. And these two FBI agents seemed to be very good at this particular game.

He glanced at the four thin sheets that sat on the catch-tray of his fax machine. It was the barest information he could get on such quick notice on the two troublemakers. He remembered his conversation with the Scully woman while still standing over the cooling body of Watts. He’d planted one of his seeds in her ear, a single word spoken into the phone in the heat of the moment. He wondered if the word had taken hold yet, if she’d remembered the conversation and had begun to search her past.

“Again.” That’s what he had said. “I do look forward to meeting the both of you…again.” That was all he’d said, and he hoped it would be enough. They would be wracking their brains trying to come up with a case that had caused them to cross paths with him.

How odd, Graves thought. He found himself almost wishing that he had crossed paths with them before now. It would be quite a coup to recruit these two FBI agents. They would have been very useful, he mused.

Very useful indeed.

Glancing at his watch, Graves saw that time was, indeed, slipping away. He had to catch a plane to the states and continue with the preparations. Lifting the cover of his laptop, he glanced at the constantly running digital clock in the upper right hand corner. It was a custom-written program, not just a simple count-down timer. The program took into account all the setbacks and contingencies that he entered into it, and readjusted the timeline. He’d built a rather generous margin for error into the entire affair. Tapping a few keys, Graves realized that he had precious little time to deal with Scully and…he glanced at the fax sheet.

Mulder. Fox William Mulder.

That name…Graves thought. It’s familiar.

William Mulder.

Enough of this, Graves chastised himself. He switched to another program, his version of an electronic Rolodex. He scanned the list of names, cross-matched by category and…specialty. He needed someone good, someone quiet, someone cheap who could do what needed to be done and keep their mouth closed.

He saw a name and smiled.

Perfect.

Reaching for the phone, Graves dialed the number on the screen and waited.

***

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

Scully parked the BMW in the space provided with their room and switched off the engine. The sun had long since set, and the cool San Diego evening air filled the car, tickling her nose, making Scully think of walking down the beach. She had a quick mental image of her and Mulder walking hand in hand down the sand, the waves licking at their bare feet as they talked and laughed. Someday, she promised herself. Some day I will put all this behind me, the FBI, the X-Files, everything, and I will be just a woman walking down a beach with the man I love, and for that moment, that’s all I will need to be.

Sighing, she got out of the car, looking back to see that Mulder had fallen asleep on the ride back from Mirimar. They’d spent the last two hours doing paperwork, arranging for Roche to be taken into custody by the US Marshals, calling Karn and explaining what they wanted done with her (solitary confinement until further notice,) and then trying to explain to Roche’s extremely upset Commanding Officer why two FBI agents (not NIS agents, he kept reminding them,) had swept down in the middle of a work day and made off with one his ‘best’ officers. Scully suspected that Graves was not the only person she had slept with to further her career.

“Mulder,” she said softly. “Wake up. We’re here.”

He stirred but did not wake. Scully leaned back in the car, across the seat and gently ran her nails over his face. That woke him up. With a snort and a start, Mulder sat upright, his eyes looking around wildly, wondering what he was doing in a luxury car with the smell of the ocean in his nose.

“W-what?” Then he remembered, and then he smiled. “Scully…sorry. Must have dozed off.”

“C’mon in. I suspect that King is lurking around here somewhere, Mulder.”

He nodded and yawned, getting out of the car. Unlocking the room, they entered to find Commander Maggie King seated on the bed. The bed that had obviously been used for more than sleeping, judging by the tangle of sheets and twin depressions in the mattress.

“Hi,” she said softly.

“Uh…hello,” Scully said. “How did-?”

King laughed. “Matt taught me some tricks, once. One of them was how to slip a motel room lock with a credit card.”

“Good thing it wasn’t expired,” Mulder remarked dryly. Maggie gave him a wan smile.

All business, hoping to gloss over the fact that the room looked like a sex orgy had taken place only hours before, Scully asked, “What have you got for us?”

Maggie held up several folders. “Everything Matt had on Danny Graves and something called LIBERTY BELL and JOVIAL CLOWN.”

Mulder and Scully exchanged a happy, exuberant grin. The mother lode.

“Gimmie!” Mulder said, holding out his hand. “I want everything on Graves. Give LIBERTY BELL to Scully.”

Maggie juggled the folders and then handed each agent one. Mulder opened his, plopped down on the bed and began to read. Scully took the chair and opened her folder, joining him in digesting the new information.

***

One Hour Later

“So,” Scully said, stretching. “You go first. What have you learned about Daniel Graves?”

Mulder covered another yawn with the back of his hand and sat back, staring at the ceiling. “Danny Graves. Born 1951 to a State Department official and a homemaker, back when they were called housewives and wore high heels to do housework.”

“Mulder…” Scully warned. Maggie giggled. “Ok…Danny Graves, born 1951. His father was in the State Department with the Foreign Service. Moved around a lot at first. Attended public school in England. According to some accounts, he still remains a trace of a British accent, which he has used at times for false-flag recruitment.

“Joined the Army out of high school. Tested off the charts for OCS, and was sent. Graduated OCS, commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. Attended Airborne, Ranger and Special Forces school. Graduated number one from all three. Rare, but not unheard of. A natural special forces type. Liked to live on the edge. This was about 1970 or so. Send to Vietnam to help with the Vietnamization of the war. Training the South Vietnamese to fight for themselves, that kind of thing. Also helped out in the terminal phases of the Phoenix project, as well as something called Gargoyle, which as far as I can piece together, was the precursor to the Goblin teams. Cross-service assassination teams, sent way, way up north to make Mr. Charlie’s life very, very difficult. After the war, the boys in Langley decided that Mr. Graves would be a great asset to their charitable organization, and recruited him.

“He joined the CIA, and after that, things get a bit murky, as one might expect. During the Iranian hostage crisis he was sent in undercover as the British-raised son of some long-dead dignitary. The fact that his mother was slightly olive-skinned helped him pass as an Iranian.”

Mulder paused. “You know they’re not Arabic but Aryan, right?”

“Who?” Scully asked.

“Iranians. Everyone was calling them ‘rag-heads’ during the hostage crisis, but they’re not Arabic. They’re Aryan.”

Scully shook her head, and attempted a very passable Johnny Carson imitation. “No, I did not know that.”

Maggie watched the exchange between the two partners with awe. She’d taken one glance at the bed in the motel room and put it together in half a heartbeat. Along with being partners and best friends, these two were also obviously lovers. As she’d waited for them to arrive, Maggie had wondered how Scully handled working with a man she was sleeping with. And then she saw how; Mulder didn’t treat her any differently when they were working. She had no idea how the romance side of the relationship worked, but if it was half as good as the working side, Scully was a lucky woman, Maggie decided.

“After Iran,” Mulder continued, “he went to Afghanistan. Worked with the rebels there. After that, things get very, very murky. According to Stone’s files, he had some kind of falling out with the higher-ups in the Directorate of Operations at Langley. They disinvited him to return as a case officer, and he left government service. Apparently, not for good. There are instances where…certain people in certain places died under certain circumstances, and Stone tends to believe that these are signature killings, that Graves was leaving his mark.”

“His mark?” Scully asked.

Mulder straightened on the bed. “Graves has this habit of leaving physical evidence at his murders pointing fingers at persons that couldn’t possibly be there. He seems to delight in pissing off the authorities trying to investigate the murders. He’s left all kinds of forensic evidence that points to other people.”

Scully snorted. “We’ve heard that before.”

Mulder nodded. “Yeah, which brings us to another point. From the look of the files, it does appear as if Stone has been investigating Graves for a while now. He knew that Graves was behind the murders that started this entire mess…for us, at least.”

Scully nodded. “It does look like he’s been working Graves from the inside.”

Mulder shook his head. “There’s nothing in the Graves’ file that indicates that Stone was recruited, or that a recruiting attempt was even made.”

“Picture?” Scully asked.

Mulder nodded, holding up two photographs that were in the file. The first looked like an old Army ID photo. The other had been taken more recently, in an airport.

“Matches what I have,” Scully said, holding up the other photographs that Stone had taken while following Graves.

“What’s your file say?”

“LIBERTY BELL,” Scully sighed. “It’s both more and less than we thought, Mulder. Stone apparently stumbled across it just before the Libyan mission when he found out that the case officer for the mission wanted the SEAL team to take along some CBX-3 ‘just in case.’”

“What’s CBX-3?” Maggie asked.

“Biological warfare agent. Kills instantly.”

“Oh my GOD!” Maggie said.

“Yeah,” Scully agreed. “Nasty stuff. Apparently, Stone feels that Graves was pulling the JOVIAL CLOWN case officer’s strings, because Graves wanted the stuff tested under battle conditions. Sam Graves had no idea that his brother was behind it, as far as Stone could tell. He never established if the three Graves brothers were in on the whole plot together.”

“So anyway,” Scully continued, “LIBERTY BELL is a plan to decimate the leadership of the country. But it’s not clear how Graves intends to do it. Stone has uncovered evidence that points to the airburst delivery system that Roche was involved in. He also apparently has plans to release it into the drinking water supply. He also has a plan to detonate a CBX-3 device with conventional explosive, like a bomb. It wouldn’t be as effective, but if it were exploded at the right place and at the right time, the effect would be the same. Five or six square miles of victims, and if the winds are right, ten to twelve, easy.”

Mulder paled as he thought about the potential loss of life.

“My god,” he whispered. “The man’s insane…”

Maggie nodded. “Sounds like it.”

Scully nodded, agreeing. “Sure does. Stone’s investigation has turned up what Roche already told us. Graves already has the CBX-3; he got it in Afghanistan and brought it back. We’re missing two very important pieces, folks. Number one…where is the CBX-3 now? And secondly, where is Graves’ base of operations?”

***

The killer moved swiftly, as silent as the wind of Death itself. The call itself had come has a surprise, but not the mission. As soon as the first call had come, earlier that day, and Graves had informed him of what (and more importantly, who,) was coming, Captain Ronald Ebert, USN, had known that a follow-up call was more than likely on the way. He’d spent the rest of the day mentally preparing for this mission. He’d secured the cold, untraceable weapon that Graves insisted each of his operatives possess. A silenced .22 Ruger, it was the preferred assassin’s weapon.

Parked in his personal car in the Motel 6 lot, Ebert considered abandoning the mission, returning to his home, kissing his wife goodbye and turning himself in to the NIS. At first, LIBERTY BELL had seemed like an interesting idea, an exciting exercise in theory; that time had long since passed. With each new ‘favor’ that Ebert performed for Graves, he found himself sinking deeper and deeper inside this madman’s orbit. To turn back now was to guarantee his death. If he went ahead with it, did what Graves asked, there was a chance there would be a place for him in the new government. Although Graves hadn’t told him explicitly, Ebert could sense that LIBERTY BELL was rapidly spooling up; it was only a matter of time before the psychopath detonated the weapon in Washington.

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Ebert checked the weapon one last time and exited his car, heading towards Scully and Mulder’s room.

***

“I have a question,” Maggie said.

Both FBI agents looked at her expectantly. “Why didn’t Matt tell us at the beginning?”

Mulder shrugged. “As far as we can tell, Graves has recruited people in all four branches of the military. He probably has people in all kinds of senior governmental posts. There was no way he could tell if Scully or I weren’t part of the plot. That’s the sick part of this entire thing. Graves is a pretty damn smart little psychopath; by only telling each of his operatives about one other besides himself, he minimizes the risk of exposure. He also minimizes the risk of these people talking to each other and deciding to pull out. Each one of them is a tripwire; when we arrested Roche, we in effect told Graves that we were not only on to him, but to his plot as well.”

“Oh my god,” Scully whispered, her face paling.

“What?”

“Roche. She knows where we are!”

“What?”

“When Maggie called me from the base, I was in with Roche. She asked me where we were, and I told her to meet us here! Roche must have heard!”

As if on cue, there was a sharp knock at the door.

“Killers don’t usually knock,” Mulder observed.

“Who is it?” Scully called.

“Captain Ebert. I have a message from Admiral Karn.”

Both agents were immediately on the defensive; Karn would have called. He had both cell numbers and the room number. Moving quickly, Mulder and King made their way to the bathroom, Mulder unholstering his weapon.

Scully kept hers hidden, jammed into her waistband at the small of her back, the hammer cocked, the safety off.

Cautiously, she opened the door. “Yes?”

Captain Ebert, in civilian clothes, stood on her doorstep. He held an envelope in his left hand. His right hand was at his side, but Scully couldn’t see it; he was holding it hidden, tucked behind the meat of his thigh.

“Do you want to come in?” Scully said, stepping to her right and holding the door open, hiding her motion from Ebert.

Stepping into the room, Ebert glanced around. “Where’s Agent Mulder?”

Scully reached for her weapon, and Ebert caught the motion. He spun, his gun coming up and around at the same moment Scully’s cleared the door. Moving in exact synchronization, they leveled their guns at each other at the exact same moment.

“Drop it,” Ebert hissed.

“Not a chance,” Scully replied, kicking the door shut. They circled each other slowly, neither gun wavering.

“I mean it, you bitch!” Ebert almost yelled.

The bathroom was between the bed and the door, on the opposite side of the room from the connecting door to Mulder’s room. The duo’s circling motion brought them closer and closer to the bathroom door, and Scully had to hide her grin.

“What did you call me?” she asked.

“I called you a bitch!” Ebert said, an evil grin on his face. At that moment he felt the cold, hard press of Mulder’s pistol against the back of his skull.

“Drop it.” Mulder’s voice was steady, even, deadly.

“As your bitch partner said, not a chance,” Ebert whispered.

Scully moved. Her left hand came up, knocking the gun high. A soft pffft! signaled that the gun had discharged. At that exact moment, Scully’s foot came up, catching Ebert squarely in the testicles. He dropped to the carpet, the gun falling to the floor with a soft thud. His hands in his crotch, Ebert looked up at Scully, his eyes already rolling back into his head.

“Bitch…” he whispered.

Scully saw red. Her gun came around, catching Ebert on the temple, hard. The final blow turned his lights out and he followed his pistol, crumpling to the carpet, out cold.

“That’s Special Agent Bitch to you, asshole!” she hissed.

Commander Maggie King had watched the entire affair with wide eyes and both hands over her mouth. Watching the short redheaded FBI Agent kick the shit out of the male naval officer, a man almost twice her size had been amazing. More amazing to her was the fact that Scully’s partner, the MAN, had gone into the bathroom willingly, without a word of protest or a whispered argument over who was better equipped to handle the problem. Maggie wondered who ‘wore the pants’ in the partnership.

“Nice going, Scully,” Mulder said, moving to her. He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the lips and then turned to Ebert’s crumpled form, quickly handcuffing him. When he stood, Scully’s eyebrow was raised almost two full inches.

“What?” he asked. He followed Scully’s tilted chin and saw Maggie King standing there with a strange smile on her face.

“Scully, she saw the bed. She knows.”

Maggie nodded. “I suspected. But…I didn’t know until you kissed her.”

Mulder shrugged. “Well, now she knows!”

Scully sighed. “Mulder…”

“Agent Scully…”

“Dana, please.”

“Dana, don’t worry about it. Your secret is safe with me. I just think it’s great that you two can work so well together and still… er…”

“Yeah…er, is right,” Scully laughed. “It’s still pretty new to us.”

“Still, you two work so well together!”

Scully moved to her partner and returned the kiss, sliding her arm around his waist. “Yes, we make a pretty good team.”

Studying the unconscious body of Captain Ebert on the floor, Maggie nodded. That much was obvious.

“Well, we have another one of Graves’ operatives. What do we do now?” King asked.

Scully and Mulder smiled. “We interrogate him, of course.”

***

Ten Minutes Later

They put Ebert into the chair. Using two of Mulder’s ties, they secured his feet to the front legs; his hands were still cuffed behind him. After a moment’s thought, they used one of the motel washcloths to gag him, using Scully’s bathrobe sash to tie it into his mouth.

“Remember,” Scully said softly. “I’m the bad guy, Mulder is only slightly better, and you, Maggie…you’re the good guy.”

They all nodded. Scully looked over the setup one last time. Arrayed on the dresser next to the chair was a small kit that Scully had learned to take with her on cases; Mulder got injured so many times that having a basic ‘fix-it’ kit seemed like a good idea. Several instruments had been separated from the rest, and were lying on a pristine white motel towel: Two syringes, filled with tap water, a scalpel, and the small brown-glass vial from Scully’s pocket.

“Get ready,” Scully whispered. Breaking open some smelling salts, she waved them, once, twice, under Ebert’s nose and then quickly jammed them into her pocket, moving to join Mulder and King, who were standing near the bed, their backs to the chair.

Scully kept her eye on Ebert. His head jerked a few times and then he slowly came around. As they always did, he tested his bonds first, and then looked around. He saw his three captors talking quietly just out of earshot. Then he saw the white towel with the medical instruments. His eyes grew very wide.

“I don’t CARE!” Scully said loudly. “This case involves classified nuclear weapons design information. Navy regulations are clear on this point. We can use deadly force! I tell you, we take that little .22 of his and start shooting. Ankles, knees, elbows…by the time we get near his eyes, he’ll start talking!”

Ebert’s eyes widened so much that Scully was afraid they were going to slide out of his skull and ooze wetly down his face.

“Why don’t we just that stuff in the brown bottle?” Mulder asked. “It’s untraceable. Heart attack, as far as they can tell. Same result, much cleaner, less questions.”

“He called me a bitch,” Scully stated flatly. ‘Noticing’ that he was awake, Scully held up a hand. “He’s awake.”

All three turned to face him.

“Mmmph! Mmmph!” Ebert moaned against the gag.

Scully moved to his side and kneeled. “What’s that? You want to call me some more names?” She took the .22, which she’d been holding, and jammed it against his temple. “One shot, Ebert, and it’s lights out. Just sit there and shut the fuck up.” Scully stood, feeling the hated power wash over her again. What was this case doing to her? She closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers, dropping out of ‘character’ for a moment. This was not like her; she was the first to worry about a suspect’s rights. Mulder was the one who had the tendency to punch people when they didn’t give him the right answer.

Just ask Krycek, she thought with a grin.

“Mmmph!” Ebert moaned again. Without turning around, Scully reached back and slapped his head. “Shut up, I said!”

Ebert fell quiet.

“Look,” Scully said. “I hate to be the party pooper, but I really want to shoot this…this…turd in a uniform. I’m a forensic pathologist. I can blow his fucking head off and make it look like a suicide.”

“Yeah,” Mulder agreed. “But how are you going to explain that he came to your room to commit suicide?”

Scully turned back to face Ebert, but continued to speak to Mulder over her shoulder. “Simplicity itself. We tell the investigators that he came her to kill me, got a case of the guilts and did himself instead, but not before confessing to being one of Graves’ little henchmen. All nice and neat, wouldn’t you say, Ronald?”

“Mmmph!”

Scully squatted again, her face inches from Ebert’s. “When I want an opinion, I’ll beat it out of you!”

She turned her head to the side and spied the scalpel. “I’ve got a better idea,” she announced, dropping the gun on the dresser and reaching for the knife. Departing from the script, she grabbed Ebert’s head and brought the knife as close as she dared. “I can cut one of his eyes. The pain will be intense, but not enough to kill him.”

“Mmmmmmmmph!” Ebert said, twisting his head from side to side, trying to escape a sight Mulder never thought he’d ever see: A knife wielding Dana Scully, smack-dab in the middle of violating about six separate civil rights, not to mention about four amendments to the Bill of Rights.

“Scully!” he said sharply.

Scully moved back, dropping the knife back on the dresser and retrieving the gun. “Aww…you’re no fun.” She moved to the bed and sat. “Listen…one thing is for certain. We can’t let him go. He’ll tell Graves that we’re onto him.”

Mulder nodded. “We can’t let him go. And we don’t have time for him to call a lawyer and start screaming about his rights being violated. God, Scully, when you get this way….do you remember the Johansen case? The paperwork!”

“He fell out of that window,” Scully said, deadpan.

“You pushed him! I was there!”

“He pissed me off,” Scully said softly.

“God…remind me never to call you a…” He saw the gun coming up and around and stopped. “What he called you.”

“Good idea, Mulder. I hate that word.”

Mulder nodded, seeing the glint of humor in Scully’s eyes. God, she was amazing. But he’d always known that. There were times in his own career when he’d been close to losing it. The Paper Hearts case came to mind. Krycek. That black-lunged SOB outside his mother’s hospital room. Scully had never lost control, at least not in Mulder’s presence. He’d heard how she’d gone to Skinner the last time he’d gone to the arctic circle in search of the morphing alien bounty hunter. How she’d screamed and yelled and all but threatened Skinner with bodily harm to try and force him to contact X to find out where Mulder had gone. He’d never seen it, but watching the performance of his partner tonight, Mulder knew that he never wanted to make Scully…that angry.

Ever.

“Listen,” Maggie finally said. “You said that stuff in the needles will make him talk. We need to know what he knows. If we make him talk, then he’s no good to Graves anymore. Then we can just arrest him and be done with it.”

Scully shook her head. “We’ve gone too far.”

“Mmmph! Nnnmmmph!” Ebert moaned.

Scully continued speaking over Ebert’s gagged protests. “If we let him go, eventually he’ll start talking about this entire…scene, and I don’t want to have to deal with the paperwork! It’s easier just to kill him!”

Mulder nodded, turning to King. “I agree with Scully. I say we give him the shit, make him talk, and then wax him.”

Maggie marched over to where Ebert was tied to the chair and reached for the scalpel. She cut the bathrobe sash away with a quick, smooth motion and yanked the cloth out of his mouth.

“Listen to me,” she said, squatting to peer into his eyes. “These two have gone off the reservation. They want to kill you. If you tell us everything you know…and we let you live…will you swear that you will never, ever reveal what transpired in this room?”

Ebert nodded, his head looking like a toy dog on the rear deck of a redneck’s car. “I swear. Just please don’t kill me! Please!”

“Pussy,” Scully muttered. “Big, tough man with the gun, huh?” She looked disgusted enough to spit.

Ebert looked like he was about to say something, but he saw the dangerous glitter in Scully’s eyes and thought better of it. “Can I please have some water?” he asked.

Scully went and got him a glass of water and held it to his lips. She purposely overtipped the glass, forcing the water into his mouth, causing it to overflow. The water ran down his shirt, staining it.

“Talk,” she said, slamming the glass down on the dresser.

“What do you want to know?”

“What’s your role in LIBERTY BELL?”

Ebert paled at the mention of the project name. “He’ll kill me,” he whispered. “Even if you let me live…he’ll get me in prison!”

Scully jammed the barrel of the .22 into Ebert’s ear. “Listen to me, you asshole! I can kill you right here, right now! We have enough to get Graves anyway! All you’ll do is help us get him quicker. But I don’t care if I get him tomorrow or next month! He killed a friend of mine, you bastard!”

Mulder frowned. That sounded real. Scully wasn’t sticking to the script anymore.

“O-ok,” Ebert moaned. “I don’t want to die.”

“But you were ready to kill?”

He nodded. “I had no choice.”

“We’ll get to that,” Mulder said, stepping in between Scully and Ebert, giving his partner a warning glance. “Tell us about LIBERTY BELL. What’s your part?”

“Real Estate.”

All three interrogators exchanged a glance. “Excuse me?” Scully asked.

“Real estate,” Ebert muttered. “My wife. She’s a Realtor. She has her license. Graves needed…land. Hideouts. Safehouses. Storage space. Everything was purchased through my wife. Under different names. Dummy corporations.”

Scully felt her pulse quickening. “Do you know if Graves purchased all of his…land, houses, whatever…through you?”

Ebert shook his head. “I doubt it. He’s too careful, too safe.”

Mulder looked at his partner. “Would Graves send someone to kill us who knows where the CBX-3 is? Would he be that stupid?”

“Stupid? No. Nervous? Maybe. Threatened? Possibly.” She turned back to Ebert. “Does your wife keep records?”

“Yes.”

“How much does she know?”

“She thought it was a classified military operation; she thought she was doing her duty.”

Scully nodded. This was good. She walked to the bedside table and grabbed her cellphone, intending for Ebert to call his wife and tell her to bring the records to the room.

No, she thought. If Graves had Ebert’s line tapped, that would give it all away.

“What kind of records?” Scully asked, returning to Ebert’s chair.

“What?”

“Paper? Computer? What?”

“Computer.”

She thought quickly. “Do you have Internet access?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to give you directions on how to mail something anonymously through a server in Japan. You are going to go home, zip up your wife’s records into a single file and then mail them to me with the directions I’m about to give you.”

She leaned down and pressed the gun against his eye. “Listen to me, Ebert. You have exactly two hours to do exactly what I tell you. If you fuck with me…I swear to God I will call the head of NIS myself. There will be a warrant out for your arrest…worldwide…before the sun rises tomorrow. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I’ll find you. And when I do…you’ll wish I killed you here tonight.”

“Can Graves tap a modem call?” Mulder wondered aloud.

“Not at the source,” King said. “Only the NSA can, when the signal goes from landline to a microwave tower, and then only if they are looking for it.”

Scully regarded the female naval officer. “How do you know that?” she asked.

King blushed. “My friend told me,” she explained.

Scully shot an eyebrow at her partner. “Frohike,” he said.

King smiled. “That’s his name? Frohike?”

Mulder grinned. “Yup.”

King thought about it for a moment. “Hmm…what’s his first name?”

Mulder opened his mouth and then closed it. The shock was clearly evident on his face. “I…I don’t know!”

Scully had moved to the bed. Opening her laptop, she quickly booted it and looked for the program she needed. She wrote the instructions quickly, in her neat, precise hand. “Follow these instructions, Ebert. To the letter. If you fuck any of the instructions up, I will come for you. Make sure you use the password I’m providing when you compress the files. It’s two words, all capital letters.” She folded the instructions in half, then in half again. Walking over to where he sat, she jammed them into his jacket pocket. “I’m going for a walk,” she announced. “Give me a minute, and then unlock this turd and let him go.”

She turned to face her captive one final time. “The clock starts the moment the door shuts behind your skinny ass, Ebert. Two hours. If you make it in two hours and five seconds, pack your bags, because you’re going to Portsmouth.”

“There’s one thing-” Ebert said.

“WHAT?!”

“Graves. He’s going to call. To find out if…if you’re dead.” Ebert paled. “Oh my God! What time is it?”

Mulder looked at his watch. “Almost eight. Why?”

Ebert swallowed loudly. “Graves is going to call me in ten minutes.”

“Home or cell?”

“Home.”

Shit! Scully thought. There was no way he could get home in ten minutes.

“Do you have call forwarding?” Mulder suddenly asked.

“Yes…why?”

Mulder said nothing. He reached for Scully’s cell and dialed quickly.

“Lone Gunmen,” the voice answered.

“Rush job, Byers.”

“What kind?”

“Phone. I need a number in San Diego forwarded to my cell. Transparently forwarded. I need you to get to the PacBell East switch in San Diego in less than ten minutes.”

Byers whistled. “Ok, lemme see if Frohike can do it.”

“Tell Frohike my video collection is his if he does it.”

“That’ll motivate him. Gimme the number.”

“What’s the number Graves is going to call?” Mulder demanded. Ebert gave it to him, and Mulder relayed it to Byers.

“Is Frohike there?” King asked softly. Mulder nodded, not saying anything.

In the background, Mulder heard Byers calling to Frohike. A moment later the little troll came on the line. “Mulder, are you insane? That’s impossible.”

Mulder covered the phone with his hand, offering it to Maggie. “You know how important this is. Convince him.”

Maggie took the phone. “Hello?”

“Who’s this?” Frohike demanded.

“Maggie. Maggie King. Is this DrLuv?”

There was a pause. “Hello,” Frohike said, his voice a squeak.

“Listen…I know we only know each other on the computer…but I really need you to do this. It’s important. Can you do it? For me?”

There was a pause.

“Hold on,” Frohike said. There was the sound of movement in the background, and then the sound of computer keys clicking. “Ok…dialing into the local switch,” he said.

“He’s calling the local switch,” Maggie said to Mulder and Scully.

“…ok, I have a LD trunk… seizing it now…ok, I see US West… I’m crossing on a trunk-to-trunk transfer…I can see the PacBell NoCal switch in San Francisco…shit!”

“What?” Maggie asked.

“The transfer trunk to SoCal is down for maintenance…hold on…I’m backing out to Ameritel…maybe they can get…there it is…Pac Bell…ok…I’m in Los Angeles…” Mulder looked at his watch. Four minutes had elapsed.

“Tell him to hurry,” he whispered urgently to Maggie. She waved him off. She knew Frohike would do it.

After all, she’d asked him to.

“Ok…I can see the SoCal PacBell switch. It’s letting me in with a backdoor maintenance password…the exchange map is all messed up… ask Mulder if the local exchange was recently changed.”

“Was the exchange recently changed?” Maggie asked Ebert.

He nodded. “It was 738. Now it’s either 738 or 882. You can call either, for about another six weeks.”

“Either 738 or 882,” Maggie called, checking her watch. Five minutes.

“Got it,” Frohike said. “Ok…the problem is that the number is cross-linked twice to make sure…damn, damn.”

“What?”

“The line’s in use.”

“Someone’s on the line,” Maggie said. “It’s in use.”

“Trace it back!” Mulder almost shouted.

“Trace it,” Maggie repeated, although she didn’t need to.

“Already on it…Kansas. Lindsborg, Kansas. North of Wichita. Single exchange, looks to be about four hundred numbers.”

“Lindsborg?” Maggie asked the room. “Kansas?”

“Sister-in-law,” Ebert wheezed. “My wife’s brother’s wife. They were best friends in high school.”

Mulder nodded. “Does your wife like to talk on the phone?”

Ebert shook his head. “She’s a cheapskate.”

Mulder grabbed the phone from Maggie. “Where did the call originate?”

“San Diego.”

“Length?”

“Almost…coming up on ten minutes….wait…ok, the line is free.” Mulder glanced at his watch. Seven minutes.

“Ok…Mulder…”

“What?”

“You’re on roam, right?”

“Of course! I don’t live here, Frohike!”

“Sorry…it’s just that I have to get a signal lock to make sure that the forward takes…Mulder…is your goddamn phone even on?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in another Telnet window trying to access the DC cell exchange roam transmitter, and you have no signal strength!”

“Shit!” Mulder handed the phone to Maggie and sprinted across the room, looking for his jacket. He found the phone. It was off.

He turned it on, waving at Maggie.

“It’s on,” she said into the phone.

“Ok…waiting for a signal…his phone has to interrogate the local cell and then switchback to the roam transmitters…ok, getting something, a little tickle…got it! Tell Mulder….just a second… ok! It’s done. That number has been forwarded to his cell.”

“Done,” Maggie said. To Frohike, “Thanks, DrLuv.”

“Don’t mention it,” Frohike said. “By the way…you have a beautiful voice.”

Maggie smiled shyly, even though she knew he couldn’t see it.

“What happens if Ebert’s wife tries to make a call?” Scully asked.

“Uh…” Maggie said, “Miss Scully wants-”

“Let me speak to him,” she said, holding out her hand. Reluctantly, Maggie gave her the phone. “Frohike? This is Scully. What happens if someone at that house tries to make a call?”

“They’ll get no dial tone.”

“Ok…thanks, Frohike.”

“Put Maggie back on,” he said.

“Later, Frohike. We’re in the middle of something.” She could sense the disappointment in his voice. “I promise, ok? We really have to go.”

“Ok…call us back when you want the forward taken off.”

“You got it. And thanks again.”

Scully hung up the phone and turned to see Mulder standing there, his face pale, devoid of color.

“What?”

He handed her the phone. She looked down and saw the same thing he had. The LCD display said LOW BATT.

“I didn’t turn it off,” he whispered. “It ran low and self- terminated.”

“Find the charger, Mulder!” Scully smiled as her partner realized what she was saying. The charger that came with his phone was exactly like hers; it could charge the battery AND allow the phone to be used with wall power.

Mulder dug through his overnight bag, searching for it.

“Mulder…” Nine minutes.

“Found it!” He ran back to Ebert’s chair and dove to the ground, searching for a socket. “It’s in!”

Scully plugged the small end into Mulder’s phone.

CHARGE, the LCD display said.

All three let out a huge breath.

Then the phone rang.

***

“Shit!” Mulder swore.

“What?” Scully asked.

“I forgot to tell Frohike to trace this call!”

Scully glared at her partner, and then forgave him. He looked so miserable that he’d forgotten that Scully’s heart went out to him.

The phone rang again.

Scully picked up the pistol and leveled it at Ebert’s head. “One wrong word, anything that looks, feels or sounds like a signal to this asshole, and you’re going to be able to carry your brains around in your hat,” Scully warned.

“Go to hell,” Ebert hissed.

“You first,” Scully replied, hitting the SND button and holding the phone up to Ebert’s ear.

—

“Bad Medicine” Copyright (c) 1994 Music & Lyrics by J. Bon Jovi, R. Sambora, D. Child. Produced by Bruce Fairbairn. Copyright (C) 1994 Polygram Records. All rights reserved. Used without permission.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 22/38

“Take up thy sword and let the rage of battle flow in thy veins.”

– Anonymous

Motel 6
Mission Beach, California

Scully picked up the pistol and leveled it at Ebert’s head. “One wrong word, anything that looks, feels or sounds like a signal to this asshole, and you’re going to be able to carry your brains around in your hat,” Scully warned.

“Go to hell,” Ebert hissed.

“You first,” Scully replied, hitting the SND button and holding the phone up to Ebert’s ear.

“Hello?” Ebert asked.

“Ronald, my friend. How did it go?”

“Fine, Graves.”

“Is that so? So I should be able to turn on the television and see the press mobbing the Motel 6, all asking the same question over and over again? ‘Who would have perpetrated such a horrible crime? What a tragedy, two young FBI agents cut down in the prime of their careers?’”

“I don’t about the press, Graves. I used a silenced weapon. It might be a day or two before the bodies are found.”

Scully nodded at Ebert’s improvisation.

Silence on the other end of the phone. Scully watched as sweat broke out on Ebert’s brow.

“Tell me, Ronald. Tell me everything. You know how I do love the details.”

“Uh…I came to the door, knocked. The Scully woman answered from inside. I told her I had a message from Karn.”

“You WHAT?” Graves exploded.

“What?”

“Put her on.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ronald, you simpering fool, Karn has both their cell numbers plus the number of the room. If you told her you had a message from Karn she would have seen right through you, which means they managed to capture you, which also means you’re probably sitting in the room, handcuffed, with your own gun to your head.”

“Graves, I swear-”

“Ronald, you have one more chance. If you don’t put the Scully woman on the phone this instant, I will kill your wife. Right after I fuck her.”

Ebert’s eyes widened. “He knows,” he said to the room. “He said he’ll kill my wife if Scully doesn’t talk to him.”

Sighing, Scully lifted the phone to her ear.

“Scully.”

“Ah, my dear Special Agent Scully. Well, this round goes to you, I suppose. I apologize for sending such a moron to do my bidding.”

Bidding? Scully thought. He sounds like a villain from a cheesy B-movie thriller.

“Whatever.”

“Not in a talkative mood, are we? That’s fine. I’m just glad that neither Roche nor Ebert has any real grasp of my plans, or I’d have to step the timetable up a tad. I must say, Scully, that you and your partner are making this a most interesting game…”

“Game? Is that what you think it is, you son of a bitch?”

“Tsk, tsk…don’t lose your temper, Scully. A mind clouded by emotion can’t think clearly.”

Scully turned away from Ebert and began pacing. “I remember another quote, asshole. ‘Take up thy sword and let the rage of battle flow in thy veins.’”

“Who said that?” Graves asked. “I’ve had the benefits of a classical education, and I can’t say as I remember that particular quote.”

“Does it really matter, Graves?”

A sigh on the other end of the phone. “I suppose not, my dear. I was wondering if you would perhaps like a clue.”

“A clue?”

“Yes, you know, a clue. I assumed you investigative types lived for that sort of thing. Clues, evidence, witnesses, all that lovely law enforcement minutia. Skulking around crime scenes with a magnifying glass and all that.”

The man’s deranged, Scully thought. He’s acting as if he’s in a movie!

Mulder had picked up the LIBERTY BELL folder and was scribbling on the back. He held it up so Scully could read it.

“Megalomaniac” it said, and under that, “Feed him!!!” The second line was underlined twice. With a start, Scully got it. Mulder thought that Graves was more than likely insane, that he had delusions of grandeur. By the way the conversation was going, Scully was ready to agree with him. It was almost as if Graves actually saw himself as the main villain in a real-life movie. He had his lines down pat; would he fall to the same clich,s that the movie villains always did?

“Fine, Graves. Give me a clue. I suppose it’s going to be a riddle to solve or some other mind teaser. You know, something to prove your overwhelming mental prowess.”

There was a laugh. “Oh, my dear Scully, you know me to well! No, no riddles, no mysteries to solve before uncovering the underlying meaning. After all, what sort of megalomaniacal villain would I be if I kept staying true to form? No, I’m going to give you an actual clue, something you can use. Ready?”

Scully nodded, even though Graves couldn’t see her. “Go ahead.”

“Stone. Stone has the key, but he doesn’t know which lock to open. I know how trite that sounds, Scully, but the truth is Stone has had the key for years. He just doesn’t know he has it. Once Stone figures out what he’s got…you’ll be able to find me. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t know where Stone is. So, you must decide. Pursue me, or pursue Stone. You don’t have time to do both.”

Scully hesitated. “How much time do we have?”

Graves considered. Telling them his timetable posed minimal risk.

“Very well. Perhaps it will be…motivating. It is Thursday night, almost eight fifteen. You have until Sunday noon. A little over two days. At Sunday noon, the world comes to an end. At least one specific part of it, that is.”

“Why are you doing this, Graves?”

Graves laughed. “Oh, my dear! You flatter me so! To want to know so much about me…doesn’t your psychologist boyfriend slash partner have any ideas as to why I’ve slipped my mental moorings and am slowly drifting on this sea of madness?”

Scully glanced at her partner. “He thinks you’re fucking nuts.”

“And so right he is, my dear. But I will tell you this. Somewhere between madness and sanity is the truth. Another cryptic quote, I know, but that is the truth. I may be heading towards the shore of insanity, but my boat left from your side of the river. If you’d seen what I have and done what I’ve done…you might be helping me paddle this metaphorical boat.”

“I doubt that. I have respect for human life.”

“As do I, although that may be hard to believe. Let me ask you this…are you familiar with chaos theory?”

“Yes. The basic parts of it, anyway.”

“Very good; you are aware of the maxim about the butterfly’s wings causing hurricanes days later?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Let me ask you a question: If I could promise that I would provide a cure for cancer, a cure that would work on any form or kind of cancer in the world, forever…would you kill a stranger in cold blood?”

Scully held her breath, wondering if there was a right or wrong answer.

“I don’t understand.”

“I thought I was clear. Let me try again. It’s a question of morals, Agent Scully. Does the need of the many outweigh the needs of the one? If I could hand you a cure to cancer, would you kill a stranger in cold blood?”

“I don’t know.”

Graves laughed. “I applaud your honesty. But to answer your original question, the question as to why I am doing this bad, evil, heinous thing…there is a cancer in this country, Scully. It’s eating us up from the inside, and it kills innocent people. Just think of what I’m doing as…the ultimate chemotherapy.”

Scully saw the picture now. It was all becoming clear.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Stone is, would you?” she asked lightly.

“Well, now that you mention it, I do have a good idea, yes.”

Scully held her breath. “Will you tell me?”

“Hmmm, perhaps. Let’s play a game. I like playing with you, Agent Scully. And since I’m feeling particularly evil tonight, I’ll ask you a question. If you can answer the question in less than five seconds, I’ll tell you where I think Stone is at this moment. Ready?”

“What kind of question?”

“Your normal evil villain-type brain teaser, of course.”

Scully took a deep breath. “Can I repeat the question aloud?”

“Of course. You have Mulder and Ebert there. Maybe they can help. But remember, you only have five seconds. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

Speaking quickly, Graves said, “If it takes nine men nine days to dig nine holes, how long does it take one man to dig half a hole?”

Scully repeated the question, and began counting.

At three, Mulder’s eyes widened. He wrote a large number 0 on the back of the folder.

“None,” Scully said, her eyebrows arching.

There was a long pause. “Very good, Scully. I applaud your mental acuity. This game is getting more interesting by the moment.”

“Where’s Stone?” Scully demanded.

“Very well. At this moment, I suspect he is breaking into Ebert’s house to get the computerized Real Estate records of his wife. I assume you know why.”

“Yes.”

Graves laughed. “Well, it won’t do you any good to get your hands on those records. But if you hurry, you might be able to get your hands on Stone. Good day. Oh, and tell Ebert that…I won’t kill his wife. For now, anyway.”

There was a click, and Graves was gone. Scully dialed Frohike’s number.

“Lone Gunmen.”

“Frohike, Scully. Tell me you traced the most recent call to this phone!”

An answering chuckle told Scully what she wanted to hear. “Of course, Scully. But…it’s not good news. It came from another cellphone, one registered to a charter air service. The caller is apparently on board an airplane.”

Scully shook her head in frustration. “Whatever. Take the forward off. I’ll call you later.”

She hung up and turned to Ebert. “Call your wife. Tell her that a man is coming to…”

She thought about it. No…if Stone knew that they were onto him, there was no knowing what he might do. Stone was just as unstable, as unpredictable as Graves, but for a different reason. Two madmen, each racing the other to a finish line that could result in…

Scully didn’t want to think about it.

“Coming to what?” Ebert asked.

They had to get Stone.

“Nothing. How far away do you live?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.”

“C’mon,” she said to Mulder, grabbing one of Ebert’s elbows. “Help me get him to the car. We need to get there, now.”

Mulder nodded, grabbing the other elbow. “You want to tell me why?”

“Stone’s there, going for the computer records. We need to get our hands on him. Pronto.”

***

Enroute to 4981 Bache Avenue

“Tell me why we’re doing this again,” Mulder repeated. He was behind the wheel, shifting gears like mad, weaving in and out of traffic.

“Stone has the key to this entire thing, only he doesn’t know it. That’s what Graves said.”

“You believe him?” Mulder asked, the uncertainty clear in his voice.

“Yes,” Scully nodded. “I do. Strange as it seems, it’s almost like he wants to give us a fighting chance. Almost as if…” she trailed off. “I wouldn’t say that he wants to be caught. He likes the power too much, the feeling that he’s pulling all the strings. He doesn’t want to get caught, that’s for sure. But he wants it to be close. And if we can get our hands on Stone and figure out what he knows, or thinks he knows, or even what he doesn’t know he knows, we…well, we have one more Ace up our sleeve.”

Mulder downshifted and changed lanes to a symphony of honking horns. “What’re the others?”

“Only one,” Scully said softly. “You.”

Mulder looked at his partner, confusion etched on his face. “I don’t…”

“Graves may not know how that mind of yours works. How you’re able to make logical leaps and bounds with the smallest bits of information. He’s feeding us Stone like…like a tidbit. He’s giving us just a little taste. But he may not know how far you can take a little taste. I’m counting on the fact that…if we can get Stone, you can talk to him and figure out what the hell is going on.”

Mulder turned back to face the road, his jaw a grim line. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to talk to Stone without wanting to kill him, Scully.”

“Take a left here,” Ebert called from the backseat. Maggie was seated next to him, the .22 pointed at his midsection.

Mulder shifted again and took the corner sharply.

“Take the first right after the next light,” Ebert said.

Up ahead, about fifty yards away, the light turned from green to yellow.

Scully felt the car slowing. “Blow it!” she screamed. Mulder floored the powerful car and blasted through the intersection a second after the light had switched from yellow to red.

Sitting just out sight on the cross-street was Deputy Tom Sanders, San Diego Sheriff’s Office. He saw the expensive BMW run the light frowned. He hated speeders, but hated light-blowers more. Reaching down to the console mounted on the hump, he hit the five switches that turned his flashing grill lights, the overhead light bar, and the siren on.

Pulling into traffic, he began pursing the forest green BMW.

**

Scully twisted in the seat, looking back to see the revolving lights of the police car through the rear window.

“Think you can lose him?” she asked Mulder.

He shook his head. “I doubt it. Never took EVOC.” Emergency Vehicle Operator’s Course was required at the academy, but Scully didn’t have the time or the inclination to ask Mulder how he’d managed to graduate without taking it.

“Ok…let’s try and tin him. If that doesn’t work…we’ll play it by ear.”

Mulder nodded and slowed the car down, signaling that he was going to turn right. He turned onto the street that Ebert had indicated and moved to the curb. The police car slid in behind them, and a moment later the high-intensity takedown lights flooded the care with pure, bright white light.

“Driver!” the cop called over the PA. “Show me your hands!”

Mulder reached into his pocket and grabbed his ID, opening it and hanging it out the window. “FBI!” he called.

Back in his patrol car, Deputy Sanders frowned. Not many FBI agents could afford BMW’s, even the higher-ups. Something was fishy.

“Driver, exit the car, keeping your hands in the air!”

Mulder swore and reached for the door handle. “I’m ARMED!” he called.

“Understood,” Sanders called back. “Move slow, pal!”

Mulder got out of the car very slowly, his hands held high, his ID dangling from his right hand.

“Oh, screw this,” Scully said. She cocked her weapon and put the safety on, tucking it into the small of her back. Retrieving her own ID, she held it out the window. “DEPUTY, I’m coming out!” she called. “I’m unarmed!”

Sanders looked over to where Scully was exiting the car, her own hands held up.

“Ma’am, return to the car!” Sanders commanded. He saw the matching FBI ID in her hands and relaxed a little. Realizing that he probably did have two FBI agents to deal with, he holstered his weapon.

He met them between the two cars. “Just what in the hell is going on here?” he asked. “Do you have any idea how fast you were going? You blew through that light!”

Mulder nodded, trying very hard to appear contrite. “I know, Deputy. But we’re on a case, and in a very big hurry.”

Sanders leaned between the two partners to peer in the back windows. He noticed that they had another passenger, and what looked like a handcuffed suspect in the back seat.

“They with you?” he asked with a smile.

“No,” Scully said quickly, at the same moment Mulder said, “Yes.”

Looking between the two partners, Sanders frowned. “Well, which is it?”

“Yes,” Scully said, right as Mulder said, “No, not reall-”

Sanders sighed. “Ok, folks, lemme see those IDs again. We’ve got to get this straightened out.”

“Sorry, Deputy,” Scully said softly. “We don’t have time.” Sanders had been looking at the backseat again, and when he turned to tell Scully that he was, in fact, going to have to ask them to make some damn time, he found himself looking down the barrel of Scully’s gun.

“Mulder, cuff him.”

“Scully!”

“Mulder, DO IT!”

Sighing, Mulder moved behind Sanders. “Deputy, I know this is going to sound like pure insanity to you, but…we have to do this. We have no choice.”

“Are you her hostages?” Sanders asked, his eyes wide. He was chastising himself for ignoring the short, pretty redhead.

Mulder laughed. “Sort of.”

“Mulder!” Scully warned. “Hurry up!”

Mulder relieved Sanders of his duty weapon. “Backup?” he asked.

“Right ankle,” Sanders said sullenly.

Mulder reached down and found the .38 five-shot revolver holstered just above Sander’s boot and took that as well. Removing a pair of the deputy’s handcuffs, Mulder quickly restrained him.

“Now what? We can’t leave him in his cruiser.”

“I know,” Scully said. “Maggie, pop the trunk!”

King moved around inside the car, quickly finding and releasing the trunk. It yawned open, revealing perhaps the most luxurious, plush trunk either FBI agent or the Deputy Sheriff had ever seen.

Motioning with her gun, Scully said, “In.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Sanders complained.

“Hey…I’ve been there. It’s not too bad.” Sanders still looked undecided. “It’s not a request, Deputy. Go easy or go hard, but you’re going!”

Sanders nodded and shuffled to the trunk. Folding his body inside, Scully looked down at the man and had a sudden memory of the trunk she’d been held in a few short years ago. Leaning down, she smiled her warmest smile at the man. “Deputy, I know you don’t understand, and we don’t have time to explain it to you. I know you were just doing your job, and believe me…we’re doing ours right now. We aren’t going to kill you, and we are FBI agents. When this is all over, I’ll tell you as much as I can.” She thought about saying something more, but glancing at her watch, Scully decided she didn’t have the time. “Hold on,” she said, closing the trunk.

“Mulder, shut the patrol car down.”

He nodded and trotted over, reaching inside to kill the engine and the lights.

Mulder and Scully got back into the BMW and started it up again.

“Where to?” Scully asked.

“Uh…five blocks.”

Mulder hit the gas and the car lurched into motion.

***

4981 Bache Avenue
San Diego, California

Wearing thin surgeon’s gloves, Commander Matthew Stone, USN, quietly worked at picking the lock on the back door. It had taken him years of investigation to get this far, and the tantalizing reality of what was on the other side of this door was making him crazy. Once he had the list of Graves’ safehouses, it was only a matter of time before he had the bastard.

And when that happened…

Stone’s face was set in a grim, stark mask. The original orders had come from a very, very high…lofty perch. Higher than the director of NIS. Higher than the Joint Chiefs. Almost as high as it went. The orders had been specific: Find Graves, break the plot. Get all the names, all of Graves’ operatives. Every last one. The orders had been delivered in such a way that left little to the imagination. What was not said was almost important as what had been said. Stone understood his explicit orders clearly: Do whatever it takes to break Graves, but don’t kill him. Get the names, and then round them up.

Stone had another plan, a plan he was sure his superiors weren’t aware of. He would get the names, by any means possible. And then he would kill Graves anyway.

His mind distracted from the various methods he planned to use to bring immense amounts of pain and suffering to the person of Daniel Graves, Matt swore as the pick slipped out of the lock and fell to the ground. He bent to retrieve it and straightened.

Right into the barrel of a pistol leveled at his face.

Stone followed the path of the pistol all the way to the face of the person holding it.

Fox Mulder, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Trick or treat,” Mulder said.

***

Stone tensed, ready to spring.

He felt the cold press of another gun at the back of his head.

“Don’t.” That voice!

Scully!

Slowly, he twisted at the waist, struggling to look over his shoulder. She was there, holding her pistol at his head with two steady hands.

“Freeze, Matt. I mean it.”

“You don’t understand,” he said softly. “Didn’t Maggie call Karn?”

“Yes,” another voice said to his right. “Yes, I did.” His head spun, finding the third and last person Matt would ever have expected to see. Maggie King, holding a silenced .22 Ruger in her hands.

“Hi, Matt,” she said softly.

“Maggie.”

“Well, now that the introductions are all finished,” Scully said sarcastically, “maybe we should all go inside so the neighbors don’t call the police.”

Stone frowned at her tone, and then felt his jaw drop as he watched Scully lean over and insert a key into the lock.

“Much quicker than a pick,” she said softly.

“How did-?”

“Never mind,” Scully said, prodding Stone with her gun. “Just walk.” His hands held at shoulder height, Matt walked slowly, looking for an opening, an opportunity. Anything. They entered the house, ending up in a small rear foyer. He could see the kitchen ahead of him, a pantry to the left, the shelves stocked with boxed and canned food, and what appeared to be a mud closet to his right. There was just enough room for the five of them to fit.

He should have known. They were in on it; from the beginning, he’d suspected the attractive FBI agent. She was too rigid, too inflexible to understand what was truly at stake her.

“Tell me one thing,” Stone said softly.

“I’m listening.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

Scully stopped walking, but the gun never wavered. “With who?”

“Graves.”

The last sound Matt Stone expected to hear was laughter. Huge, great peals of it. Scully was almost doubled over, holding her sides. “You idiot,” she said. “We’re on YOUR side!”

“Then why the guns?”

Abruptly, Scully stopped laughing. It was almost as if someone had pulled a hidden switch. She walked up to Stone, invading his personal space, the gun coming up. She placed the barrel against his neck.

“Listen to me…you shit! I’ve read the files in your apartment, seen the pictures. I found two of Graves’ operatives without your help. I know that you’ve been after this prick for years, but that doesn’t excuse anything you’ve done. Not one single thing. You should have told us!”

“You wouldn’t have believed me,” Stone said.

She laughed. “You remember that discussion we had in the car coming back from NRO? About who had the bigger one? Well, Stone, you stupid moron, if you knew half the things that I do, you’d know that you could trust us! We’ve seen things that you haven’t imagined in your worst paranoid nightmares!”

Mulder was standing a bit back from the duo. Seeing Scully standing so close to Stone was driving him insane, slowly but surely. He held his Bureau-issued SIG Sauer in two hands, the front sight blade in sharp focus, the white blob of Stone’s head centered between the rails of the rear sight. The hammer was back, and his finger was on the trigger. He’d taken all the slack out of the trigger. Source or no source, key to Graves’ plot or not, if he made a single fucking move to hurt Scully, it’d be the last thing he ever did.

Scully stepped even closer. “And as for the other…I don’t know what I was thinking, Stone. The thought of you…touching me… makes me want to fucking puke.” She stepped away, lowering her gun. “But right now, we need each other.”

Stone smiled thinly. “I doubt that very much, little girl.”

It came so quickly that neither Mulder, King, Ebert or Stone saw it happen. One moment Stone was standing there, his arms held at shoulder height, a little smirk on his face. The next moment he was on his knees, holding his hands over his crotch, groaning.

“Don’t CALL me that!” Scully hissed. Mulder closed his eyes and added another item to the list of names not to call Scully. She was really good with that foot.

“Ronald? Dear?” The sixth voice to enter the party called down from upstairs.

“Janet, please come down here,” Ebert called. Turning to Scully he said, “Please take off the handcuffs. There are four of you and only two of us.”

Scully thought about it and then nodded to Maggie, tossing the Naval officer her keyring. Maggie worked the cuffs quickly. Ebert brought his arms around, rubbing his wrists. “God, that feels good,” he said.

Janet Ebert appeared in the kitchen.

“Ronald? What are all these people doing here?”

“Janet, please come here,” Ronald said, not unkindly.

“Ronald! I’m hardly dressed-”

“JANET! RIGHT NOW!” Ebert said, using his Command Voice. Janet simpered for a moment and then acquiesced, moving slowly across the kitchen to the foyer.

“What’s going on?”

Scully sighed. This was going to take a while. “Ma’am, I’m Special Agent Dana Scully-” she started.

“NIS?” Janet Ebert asked fearfully.

“No,” Scully continued, “FBI. This is my partner, Special Agent Fox Mulder. This,” she said, indicating Maggie, “is Commander Maggie Stone, US Navy-”

“NIS?” Janet asked again.

“No,” Scully repeated, slowly, “BUPERS.”

Janet Ebert’s face clearly displayed her confusion.

“And this is Commander Matthew Stone, also US Navy.” Holding up a hand to stave off Janet’s unspoken question, Scully added, “And no, he’s not NIS, either. He was, though. But not anymore.”

“What is he then?”

Scully regarded the man on his knees. He was still gingerly holding his crotch. “In pain.”

To Mulder, she said, “Help me.” They reached down and helped Stone to his feet. “Where are they?” she asked Ronald Ebert.

“Den. Through the kitchen, down the hall. Last door on the left.”

Nodding, Scully and Mulder half-dragged and half-carried Matt Stone to Ebert’s den. Maggie followed, herding the Eberts in front of her. Too bad the SEALs don’t let women join, Maggie thought.

This is kinda fun!

***

Once in the den, Scully and Mulder dumped Stone on the long leather couch that sat against one wall. Sitting at a forty-five degree angle to the couch was a large desk. Two computers sat on it, a desktop unit and a laptop.

“Which?” Scully asked, pointing at them with her gun.

“The laptop,” Ebert said softly, drawing his wife against him.

“Ronald?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

“Ma’am,” Scully said, moving towards the desk, “I need to access your Real Estate records.”

Janet Ebert drew herself up to her full height of five feet six inches, her hands on her hips, her face a beacon of indignation. “Do you have a warrant ‘special agent’ Scully?”

“No, ma’am. We don’t need one.”

“I know my rights!” Janet cried. “You need a warrant, or a writ, or a subpoena, or some such thing!”

“Shh,” Ronald said to his wife, reaching for her.

“You be QUIET!” she said to her husband. To Scully, she continued, “I mean it, Special Agent Scully! I want to see some kind of paperwork on this, or I will call my attorney!”

Scully sat back in the desk chair, placing her gun on the blotter softly. “Mrs. Janet Ebert, you are under arrest,” she said slowly, carefully. “For suspicion of interstate wire fraud, land fraud, and…oh, let’s just say espionage.”

“WHAT?!” Janet Ebert screamed.

Scully stood, curling her hands into fists and pushing her knuckles against the blotter. “Mrs. Ebert! I am a federal agent! I have probable cause and reasonable suspicion to believe that several ongoing federal felonies have occurred on these premises. I do not NEED a warrant at this time! Please, sit down and be quiet, or I will be forced to take you into custody.”

Janet Ebert’s mouth worked once, twice, but no sound came out. Turning to her husband, she glared at him. “Well? Don’t just stand there, Roger! Do something!”

“Janet, shut up,” Ronald said. “It’s over. Just sit down and be quiet.”

The slap was shockingly loud in the small room. A bloom of color appeared on Ronald’s face. “I’m really getting sick and tired of being punched around,” he said softly. “Janet…I will explain all of this to you when it’s over, but right now, we really need to cooperate with these nice people.”

Mulder raised his chin towards Maggie and indicated Stone with a twist of his head. Maggie nodded, moving to cover both the Eberts and Stone with her pistol. Moving to where Scully was pounding on the laptop’s keyboard, Mulder leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“Forgetting for the moment how sexy you look when you go into superhero mode,” he whispered, “what are you doing? Graves said those records are worthless!”

“I have an idea,” she said softly. “Bear with me.”

Shrugging, Mulder straightened. Scully quickly located the records she was looking for. She patted her pockets, looking for a diskette. No luck.

“Disk,” she said. “I need a diskette.”

“Bottom drawer,” Ronald said.

“RONALD!”

“Janet, will you just SHUT UP!”

Mulder leaned down to whisper to Scully again. “Do we sound like that?” he asked.

“No, and God willing, we never will,” she answered.

Opening the bottom drawer, Scully found what appeared to be a blank diskette. Inserting it into the PowerBook, she waited until the computer mounted it. The small disk icon appeared just below the hard drive icon, and she double-clicked it.

Six files. All of the images, judging by the icons. Out of curiosity, Scully double-clicked on one of the file icons. It took a moment, and then the image appeared. She felt herself smiling.

“Well, we’ll just add child pornography to the list of charges,” she said loudly.

Janet Ebert’s mouth dropped open and she stood, marching across the room. She leaned over the desk, twisting her head to see the screen. On it, the image of a grown man and a young girl, obviously underage, engaged in a sex act, stared back at her. Spinning on her husband, she began screaming.

“What is the meaning of THIS?”

Ronald shrugged.

“Is that how he recruited you?” Scully asked quietly.

Ronald Ebert nodded. “Before we got married,” he said to Janet. “I was…picked up for…statutory rape.”

Janet Ebert staggered at her husband’s words. She groped for a chair and shakily took a seat. “W-what?”

“That’s why we never had children, Janet. After the arrest, after…it all blew over, I had a vasectomy. I didn’t want to risk…”

Janet Ebert’s eyes narrowed as she took in the man she’d been married to for almost twenty years. “You son of a bitch.”

“Mrs. EBERT!” Scully said, loudly, trying to capture the woman’s attention.

“WHAT?” she asked, spinning on Scully.

“Your husband is involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the government of this country. You helped him. Unknowingly, I realize, but you did help him. Your husband has decided to cooperate with the US Navy and the FBI in this matter.” Scully used the trackball and quickly closed the offending image, and then selected all five of the image files on the desk. Dragging them to the trashcan icon, she quickly erased them from the disk. “I see nothing on this disk that warrants federal attention.” She paused, fixing the woman with a harsh stare. “If, however, you continue to be a problem, I will be willing to testify in court that the disk belonged to you, ma’am.”

“You could never prove that,” Janet asserted.

“I’m aware of that, ma’am. But the fact remains that you would be forever be painted with the same brush as your husband. Even if you were acquitted, or the charges were dismissed, people would always suspect that you knew more than you did. Imagine what kind of effect that would have on your career as a Realtor. You were either a child molester, or were harboring one. So do me a favor. Sit there, shut up, and let me do my goddamn work.”

Mulder felt his eyebrows arching. Scully was playing some serious hardball.

“Fine,” Janet said. “Do what you must. But if this is the way the federal government treats its citizens, it’s not surprising that my husband wants to overthrow you people.”

Ignoring the woman, Scully copied the files she needed to the diskette and then ejected it. Turning to the Ronald, she said, “Captain, you’ve cooperated with us, and as far as Graves is concerned, you’re out of this. He promised me on the phone that he wouldn’t kill Janet-”

At the mention of her potential murder, Janet Graves threw a melodramatic hand across her forehead and promptly fainted. She slid out of the chair and fell in a boneless heap to the carpet. Ignoring her, Scully continued, “…so you have a choice. You can remain here and take your chances, or you can come with us and try to stop this madman. If you remain here, I will have the US Marshall’s arrest you after this is all over. You can have your day in court, sir. Or you can come with us and chance death.”

Ebert looked at his wife and frowned.

“I’ll go with you,” he said after a minute.

Scully nodded. Coming out from behind the desk, she walked to where Ebert sat on the couch. “Fine. You’re with us. One false move, one mistake, and you’re history. Understand?”

Ebert nodded.

“Fine. Does your wife have a car?”

Ebert nodded again. “We have three. I have a jeep for the weekends.”

“Fine. Take the jeep. Maggie, you go with him. Stone, you’re with us.”

Stone opened his pained eyes and looked at Scully. “God, you’re one tough broad,” he moaned. Scully thought about kicking him in the balls again, but heard the unmistakable tone of admiration in his voice and decided to let it slide.

This time.

“Ok, here’s the deal. We need a place to go. The motel is out. Graves will probably have someone watching it. We need some place safe and secure, away from prying eyes.” She looked at her entire team: Ebert, King, Mulder and Stone. “I’m open to suggestions.”

Stone stood on wobbly legs. “I know a place,” he said softly. “I have…a house…on the beach.”

“Perfect,” Scully said. She knew that Stone was paranoid enough to make sure that it was isolated and secure. “We leave now. Matt, how far away is it?”

“About an hour…north.”

“If anyone needs to use the potty, now’s the time,” Scully said. She felt it again, electricity, power tugging at her chest. There was something so…free about not playing by the rules. The words she had spoken to Mulder just that afternoon came back to her. It was personal, and she was not going to stop until Graves was either dead or behind bars. The rules were forgotten.

“We have until noon Sunday to grab this asshole,” she said to the room. “The clock is ticking. Let’s move.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 23/38

“The world is a dangerous place to live
not because of the people who are evil
but because of the people who don’t
do anything about it.”

– Albert Einstein

“What counts is not necessarily the size of
the dog in the fight…but the size of the
fight in the dog.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

They moved as a unit. Ronald Ebert stopped long enough to locate an afghan and spread it over the slumped form of his wife. The fivesome made their way out to the kitchen, and exited through the rear door. Ebert led the way to the garage. Maggie King and Ronald Ebert climbed into his CJ-7; Scully, Mulder and Stone into the BMW.

Stone settled in the backseat with Mulder, who kept his pistol handy.

“You can put that away,” Stone said softly. “I’m not going to try anything.”

“Humor me,” Mulder said softly. “People say I’m paranoid.”

Stone just nodded, turning his head to look out the window. Scully seated herself behind the wheel and quickly adjusted the seat forward, wiggling to try and get comfortable.

“Directions,” she said crisply. Mulder knew that tone of voice and tried to hide a wince. It was killing Scully that she needed this man, that she needed Stone to crack the case. The last time they’d seen each other, Stone’d had his hand around her throat, and she’d had her gun jammed into his eye socket. Mulder sighed, thinking how far Scully had come since then, and how far the both of them had come as well.

“Take the 5 North,” Stone said. “I’ll give you directions when we get closer.” Scully nodded, not replying, and started the engine. The powerful car roared to life. Putting it in gear, she pulled out, Ebert’s jeep following them.

It took the two cars ten minutes to find the freeway, and then they accelerated, putting as much distance as they could between the Ebert household and themselves as they could. They had no idea if Graves had someone watching the house.

***

Graves did have someone watching the house.

The man in the Dodge Caravan noticed the two cars leaving and did a quick head count. As far as he could tell, there were five people leaving the Ebert household. His orders were clear.

Observe.

Report.

Follow if necessary, but do not intervene.

He dialed his phone.

“What?”

“It’s me,” the man said softly.

“Talk to me, dear boy!”

“The two FBI agents, Stone, Ebert and some woman just left.”

“Follow them. Report.”

“Roger that,” the man said, and disconnected.

***

“Scully,” Mulder called softly.

“Hmm?

“What’s your idea? About the real estate, I mean.”

“Oh…that.” She’d been distracted, thinking about the two men in the seat behind her. One of them represented a future that was almost certain; a future of running from case to case, peering into the dark shadows of existence, uncovering that which was sometimes better left alone. Days and nights and weeks and months spent away from her family, away from the people that she loved, putting herself into danger, into the line of fire, risking it all for the sake of the Truth. Mulder’s Truth, as she’d come to think of it.

The other represented a future that might have been, once, save for the fact that the man in question was an unmitigated asshole, and that he had little, if any, redeeming qualities. The simple fact that he was trying to do the right thing, that he had been tracking and hunting Graves far longer than she and Mulder had did little to redeem him in her eyes.

Stone’s One Possible Future had been the old-book kind, the husband and family and kids and houses on bases all across the world, following her husband around…

Husband?

Dana shook herself. This case was getting to her. All that mattered was Graves, Mike’s killer. She had to focus on that, just that. All thoughts of Mulder and nights spent entwined with him after hours of sweaty, naked passion had to be forgotten, pushed aside. All that mattered was avenging Mike’s death. She would think about the rest of it later, after she’d had time to put some distance between herself and the situation.

“I was thinking…” she said after a moment. “Graves is an egocentric megalomaniac. He might not have purchased all the safehouses though Janet Ebert. He might, however, have been egotistical enough to use the same cover names and dummy corporations with other real estate agents. And if I remember correctly, most of that stuff is computerized. And if it’s on a computer, the guys can probably get into it and do a quick search for it. If I’m wrong, we’ve lost nothing but the time it takes them to do it.”

“Time we don’t have,” Stone pointed out.

Scully nodded. “True, but while they’re doing that, you can inform us of all the wonderful, interesting things you’ve learned about Danny Graves, and perhaps these two FBI agents you seem not to trust might be able to come up with something you haven’t thought of, you arrogant prick!”

Scully’s voice had started soft, but by the time she had finished speaking, she was almost shouting at Stone. Mulder noted with more than a little satisfaction that he actually seemed to cower.

“Scully,” Stone said softly. “Dana…”

“Mulder, if he calls me Dana again, I want you to gag him.”

“You got it,” Mulder said, turning dark, dangerous eyes on the man seated next to him. His eyes sent a message, a message that Stone got loud and clear. Go ahead. Give me a reason.

Please.

“Who are the guys?” Stone asked.

“What?” Mulder replied.

“Scully said ‘the guys’ could get to the information. Who are the guys? Not feds, I hope.”

Scully reached over and flicked the turn signal, intending to change lanes. She caught something out of the corner of her eye.

“Stone…did you come alone?” she asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“We’re being followed,” she said. “Damn! I wish we had radio contact with Ronald and Maggie.”

“I knew I should have gotten my key back or changed the locks,” Matt muttered.

“Shut up,” Mulder said, twisting in his seat to look out the back window.

“White Caravan? California plates?” he asked.

“That’s the one. Been matching speed and course since we got on the freeway.”

Mulder nodded. “Well, we do have one ace up our sleeve.”

Scully’s eyebrow in the mirror asked the only question Mulder needed to hear.

“Deputy Sanders,” Mulder explained. Scully’s answering smile was radiant.

“Who the fuck is Deputy Sanders?” Stone wanted to know.

“Watch and learn, boy. Watch and learn,” Scully said cryptically.

“Gimmie a phone,” Mulder said, reaching over the seat. Scully handed him hers. He dialed quickly.

“Lone Gunmen.” It was Frohike.

“Need a favor,” Mulder started.

“Let me guess. You want a million dollars transferred from the Federal Reserve into your checking account.”

“No, but keep the good thoughts coming. I need you to get into California DMV and run a plate.”

“Gimmie.”

Mulder read the plate off. “Ten seconds,” Frohike said.

“He’s running it,” Mulder told Scully quietly.

“Who ARE these guys?” Stone asked again.

“An extreme watchdog group,” Scully said, repeating Mulder’s words of introduction to her almost four years ago. She paused, thinking about the three men who had become like brothers to her since then. “And some of the best friends I could ever hope for,” she added.

“I heard that,” Frohike muttered in Mulder’s ear. Mulder smiled.

“Ok, got it. Registered to one Stanley P. Boland, 331 Garnet Place, San Diego.”

“Thanks. One more thing. Can you get into the national MLS?”

“Multiple Listing Service? I dunno…never tried. Why?”

“We need for you to try and find out if there’s some centralized database of real estate transactions, or if there is a way to search specific states for a name or a company name.”

Frohike thought about it. “I’ll get right on it. How long do I have?”

“About an hour.”

“Wonderful,” he grumbled. “Call me.”

“Later,” Mulder said, hitting the END button. “Frohike’s on it,” he said to Scully.

“Frohike,” Stone muttered. “I’ll have to remember that name.”

Mulder turned to face his seatmate. “If you live through this, I’d forget you ever heard that name,” he said.

Stone didn’t reply.

“What’s the plan?” Mulder asked.

“I’m going to pull off and speed up, find a place to hide for a moment, release Sanders, explain to him as best I can what’s going on, and let him handle our guest-”

“One Stanley Boland,” Mulder provided.

“Boland!” Stone said, obviously shocked to hear the name.

“What?” Scully asked. “Who is he?”

“Deputy Chief of Staff, Naval Investigative Service Command, Pacific.”

“NISPAC?” Scully asked. “Whoa.”

“Whoa is right. I’d never pegged him to be a Graves disciple.”

Scully nodded. “How about Admiral Mike Watts?” she asked.

Stone scoffed. “You’re insane.”

“No she’s not,” Mulder said softly. “He confessed to us, and Graves killed him earlier today.”

“Graves is in Hawaii?” Stone asked. “I have to get to an airport!”

Scully shook her head. “That’s your problem, Matt. You keep that up, and you’ll never get him.”

“What the fuck are you-”

Stone felt the hard press of the gun against his side and turned to see Mulder looking at him with death in his eyes.

“Play nice,” Mulder warned.

“It’s just an expression. Jeez! Take it easy!”

“YOU take it easy, asshole!”

“Whatever.” Stone sighed. “What did you mean, Miss Special Doctor Agent Scully?” he asked sweetly.

“Better,” Mulder nodded. “Work on it.”

Scully smiled at her partner’s antics. He could be such a mother hen sometimes. She had to admit that, normally, his actions would have upset her. But the idea of him back there with Stone, poking the moron with a sharp stick (or in this case, a loaded SIG Sauer,) was not exactly unappealing.

“What I meant was that you wait for Graves to make a move, and then you go there. He’s long gone by then. You’re reacting to him instead of acting proactively.”

Stone scoffed again. “There’s no way to predict that madman’s actions.”

“Actually,” Mulder said, “I think this is where I come in. Commander, I’m what’s known as a profiler. I can perform a psychological evaluation of a subject through his actions, and then extrapolate future actions from that.”

“Voodoo,” Stone said. “Magic. Bullshit.”

Mulder let the epithet slide. “Whatever you want to call it, it’s true. We catch serial killers that way all the time. I personally caught Jimmie Lee Dysan and Walter Lee Clancy that way.”

“Why is it that all serial killers have three names, and more often than not, the middle name is ‘Lee?’” Stone asked.

Mulder shrugged. “You noticed that too, huh?”

“What about all the serial killers that go undetected, huh?”

“You said it yourself, Stone. Undetected. If we get enough evidence, we can build a profile.”

“Enough bodies, you mean,” Stone said.

“True,” Mulder nodded. “But the fact remains that Graves fits into a very specific psychological type, a profile, if you will. If we get enough information, I think we can build an accurate enough profile to predict some of his actions to the point where we can figure out what the hell he has up his sleeve.”

Stone shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“I spoke to Graves,” Scully interjected. “Twice so far. He’s told me that the deadline is noon Sunday. It’s almost Friday, Matt. We don’t have the time to fuck around.”

Stone nodded. “After I tell you everything I know, will you let me go?”

Scully considered it. “Sure. If you want to run off and play hero, good riddance. If you want to catch this bastard before he does anything, you’ll stay with us.”

Stone laughed. “Us? Two FBI agents that investigate little green men, a personnel clerk and a bureaucratic dweeb? I’m a trained intelligence agent, an ex-SEAL, and a NIS Special Agent. I think I’ll take my chances with Graves, thank you very much.”

“Whatever,” Scully said, waving her hand. The upcoming exit loomed on the horizon, and she signaled. “Get ready. By the way, Matt, do you have your NIS ID?”

“Yes, of course. Even though it’s no good anymore.”

“Karn wants a piece of your hide, that’s for sure,” Mulder said. “But maybe if you play nice, we’ll whisper in his ear what a good boy you’ve been.”

“Fuck you, Mulder.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“No, I kiss your moth-”

The sound of the hammer ratcheting back was very loud in the car, even over the roar of the engine.

“How’s that again?” Mulder asked.

“Behave, you two!” Scully admonished. “It’s showtime!” She took the exit at high speed, downshifting smoothly to let the engine slow the car. Ronald and Maggie followed her, as did the Caravan. At the bottom of the ramp, Scully all but blew the stop sign, punching the gas to speed down the street. After a moment’s surprise, Ebert’s CJ-7 followed suit.

The Caravan knew it had been spotted and hurried to catch up.

Scully sped through a light that was in the middle of going from yellow to red; Ebert blew it completely. She looked back to see that the Caravan had gotten trapped at the light, and was inching forward, trying to work its’ way into traffic. Scully turned right, and then right again, and found herself pulling the car to a stop in a gas station. Reaching down, she found the trunk release and hit it. The trunk yawned open as she exited the car, her gun in her hand.

Sanders was still in the trunk, his eyes wide with either surprise of fear; she couldn’t tell.

“Get out,” Scully said, reaching down to grab his arm. He came willingly, shaking his head to clear it.

“What the hell-?”

“Shut up and get in the car. Unless you want to continue riding in the trunk.”

Sanders looked at her as if she was crazy, and then moved to the front passenger side. He waited for Scully to open the door. The CJ-7 pulled up with a screech. “Who’s that?” Ebert called from the driver’s window.

“Never mind!” Scully ordered. “Get out of here! Go down two miles, right two miles, right again two miles, and then right again two miles. Keep circling until this car is gone! Then meet us at the next exit!”

Ebert nodded and sped off.

Scully unlocked the door and all but pushed Sanders inside.

Running around the other side, Scully glanced up the road. Nothing yet. She had perhaps sixty seconds before the Caravan found them.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, she turned to face Deputy Sanders.

“Listen very carefully, Deputy. I’m sorry we took you from your car, but we really don’t have time for the usual police bullshit.” She held out her ID for him to study. “I am Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI, and you know my partner. The man next to him is Special Agent Matt Stone. He’s from the Naval Investigative Service and Naval Intelligence.”

Matt obligingly held out his ID for Sanders’ inspection. The cop looked at all the identification and nodded. “Ok, you have my attention. Care to tell me what this is all about?”

“In about thirty seconds, a white Dodge Caravan is going to go speeding by here, pull a quiet U-turn, and come back the other way. It’s trying to follow us to where we’re going. We can’t allow that, for reasons that are classified, I’m afraid. What we need you to do…” Scully paused, deciding how deeply she should pile it on. “What your country needs you to do,” she asked, speaking slowly, seriously, “Is arrest the man in that Caravan.”

“For what?”

“Make something up. I don’t care what it is. Just keep him from following us.”

Sanders thought about it a minute. “Is there someone I can call, after this is all over? Someone to verify your story?”

“Skinner,” Mulder said.

Scully nodded. “Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner, Headquarters, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC. Call him, tell him you ran into Scully and Mulder, and explain what we asked you to do. If we don’t check out, put a APB out on us. If we do, you’ll know that you did the right thing.”

“What about this joker?” he asked, indicating Stone.

Stone flushed, but said nothing.

“Long story. He’s not exactly his bosses’ favorite person right now, and we’ll straighten all that out later.” Scully paused. “Will you do it?”

Sanders thought about it, looking from the petite red-haired woman pointing her gun at him, the NIS agent in the seat behind her, and the other FBI agent behind his seat.

“Ok,” he said. “I have no idea what I’m getting into here…but… sure. I’ll do it.”

Scully searched his eyes, looking for any sign of deceit. “Ok,” she said, putting her gun down on the dashboard. Reaching over, she quickly unlocked his handcuffs and then handed the man his own gun. “Here you go.”

Sanders hefted the pistol in his hand, as if weighing his decision. “This is important, right?”

“More important than you’ll ever know,” Stone said quietly.

Sanders nodded and got out of the car, quickly moving into the shadows.

“Where on Earth-?” Stone started to ask.

“What?” Scully interrupted. “You don’t take your own cop on your missions?” Shaking her head, she laughed. “You might learn something if you hang around with us more often.”

Mulder and Stone both shuddered at the thought.

The Caravan made it’s appearance, turning onto the street and passing the gas station slowly. Just as she’d expected, it made a slow, careful U-turn down the road and came to a stop about sixty yards away.

“Now…we wait,” Scully said.

It didn’t take long. Less than a minute later, Sanders appeared behind the van, moving up in the driver’s blind spot. It was over in seconds. One moment Boland was looking…staring at the BMW, trying to make out who was inside and what was going on.

The next, Sanders was at the door, the gun pointed at Boland’s head.

“Time to go,” Scully said, starting the car again.

“Jesus,” Stone muttered. “Your own pet cop.”

“Whatever works,” Scully said, turning left, heading back towards the freeway. “Whatever works.”

***

“Oh, no,” Scully muttered. “You MUST be kidding.”

“Just take the damn exit,” Stone said. “I bought the house years ago.”

Nestled just north of San Clemente and Doheny Beach, and just south of Laguna Niguel was the small town of Dana Point, California.

“I don’t believe this,” Mulder whispered.

“Tell me about it,” Scully replied.

“Will the two of you just-” Stone started.

“Maybe it’s some kind of sign…an omen,” Mulder observed.

“Good or bad?” Scully wanted to know.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Mulder answered. They had cut over from US 5 to State Route 1 twenty minutes ago. Stone gave quick, precise directions to his house. He owned a fair amount of land (for California,) and the house was isolated and apparently secure.

“Is there a chance Graves knows about this house?” Scully asked.

“He should,” Stone muttered. “I bought it from him.”

The squeal of brakes on the driveway’s tarmac was loud in the still night air. “WHAT?” Scully asked, spinning in her seat as far as the seatbelt would allow.

Stone held up his hands. “It’s the perfect place. He’ll never think in a million years that I would come here. When I bought it from him, he thought he was recruiting me. He didn’t know…at the time… that I had sought him out, that it was all part of my…”

“Plan?” Mulder helpfully suggested.

Stone nodded, miserable. “Yes. My plan. A plan that has turned to shit, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”

Mulder scratched his chin, saying nothing.

Turning to Mulder, Scully frowned. “This is fine…for about five or six hours. Then we’ll need to find a place.”

Mulder shrugged. He didn’t know anyone in California.

Sixty seconds later, the CJ-7 carrying Ebert and Maggie pulled up alongside the BMW and parked.

Stone found the hidden key and unlocked the door. “I haven’t been here in months,” he started.

Scully turned and found Maggie. “Maggie, provisions. Go.”

Maggie nodded and held out her hand to Ebert, who reluctantly turned his keys over to her. She handed the silenced 22. Ruger to Mulder. Almost sprinting to the jeep, Maggie climbed in, started the engine, and was gone.

“Why her?” Mulder wanted to know.

“She’s the only one that has a choice in this, as far as I’m concerned. She doesn’t need to hear what we’re going to talk about inside. This gives her a way…an exit, if she wants it.”

Stone nodded, accepting her logic. “Makes sense.”

They entered the house and busied themselves with making it livable again. Most of the furniture were covered with sheets, and Scully and Mulder quickly divested the two couches and several armchairs of their covering.

“Ok…first things first,” Scully said, all business. “Mulder, call the guys. I’ll have a list of names for you by the time you get through.”

Mulder busied himself with the cell phone while Scully booted her PowerBook.

Stone and Ebert took a seat, watching the duo in action.

“Ron Ebert,” he said, holding out a hand.

“Matt Stone,” Stone replied, shaking it.

“You one of his?” Ebert asked.

“Whose?”

“Graves.”

“No,” Stone said sharply. “I’ve been trying to catch the bastard for almost ten years.”

“Oh,” Ebert nodded.

“Frohike?” Mulder asked. “Scully has a list of names for you. Here,” he said, handing Scully the phone. Taking it, Scully began reading cover names and dummy companies to Frohike, who was rapidly copying them down and repeating them back for verification.

“What are the chances that’ll work?” Stone asked.

“If Graves is as nuts as we think, I’d say about average. We might get a huge list of names and places that we’ll have to check out. We can’t risk bringing anyone else in on this and risk tipping Graves off.”

“Do you have a phone?” Ebert suddenly asked Stone.

“Sure. Why?”

“I want to call my wife.”

Scully covered the cellphone with her hand. “Belay that. Graves may have it tapped. Send her a letter or an email or something.” She returned to her whispered conversation with Frohike.

Ebert looked upset.

“Look at it this way,” Mulder said. “Either way, it’ll be over by Sunday.”

Neither man looked pleased with Mulder’s reasoning.

“Ok,” Scully said, hanging up the cellphone. “Frohike’s on it. Byers is looking for another safehouse. Langley is trying to find us some quiet transportation. We have about three hours to…rejuvenate.”

All three men nodded.

To Stone, she said, “Intel dump. Nutshell.”

Stone nodded; someone was finally speaking his language. “Danny Graves,” he started, “wants to run the world. And he figures he can run the world by grabbing this country first…and then nuking the rest.”

***

“What did you just say?” Mulder asked.

“The entire LIBERTY BELL plan is Graves’ idea. At least, it was at the beginning. The original plan, as I’m sure you know, was for the military to take over the government in the case of a mentally incapacitated President. That plan was scrapped at the highest levels, at least officially. It went underground, into the intelligence community, where it landed on Graves’ desk. He saw the opportunity it presented, and…well, like a Phoenix rising out of its’ own ashes, the plan came back to life.

“Graves improved it, and adopted it. It became his personal crusade. He plans to release…something, some kind of..”

“CBX-3,” Scully helpfully provided.

Stone paled. “Oh my Lord,” he whispered.

“And then some,” Mulder continued. “Finish it.”

“Anyway…he plans to release the CBX-3 in such a way as to decimate the leadership of the country. The military will take over, and then…then…he plans to turn the keys. Launch. His plan calls for the senior military…what’s left of it…to think that the Soviets have launched on us.”

“There are no Soviets anymore,” Mulder pointed out.

“I’m aware of that,” Stone snapped. “But there are still six or seven thousand warheads pointed at us. The Chinese, for one, have at least two thousand warheads pointed at this country. It doesn’t matter which country is supposed to have launched…all that Graves needs to do is make them think that someone has.”

“And then what?” Scully asked.

“No matter what the newspapers are telling you, we still have launch-on-warning capability. Graves’ operatives are very highly placed. Admiral Watts would probably be ordered by Graves to send an Emergency Action Message to all the PACFLT subs, telling them to come to launch depth. Then, when Graves gets his hands on the codes, the birds would fly, the world becomes a smoking hole, and Danny Graves emerges from the rubble to lead the planet into a new world order, with him at the helm.”

“That’s insane!” Scully exclaimed.

“No shit,” Stone said.

“Could he get away with it?”

Stone nodded. “If the President, Vice President, Congress, Cabinet, Joint Chiefs and Supreme Court are all gone, the line of succession stops. There’s no one legally entitled to run the country. When the 25th Amendment was written, there was no concept of what a biological agent could do to the government.”

Scully was thinking, her brow furrowed. “Let’s spec this out,” she said. “He would need access to the defense communications system so he can send the launch codes-”

“No,” Stone said. “No he doesn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because of the redundancy. He could use a satburst transmitter, available from your local arms dealer. As long as he has the right codes and the right frequencies, he could launch from anywhere in the world. Everything’s electronic these days.”

“What about the PAL?” Ebert asked.

“The what?” Mulder asked.

“Permissive Action Link. In the old days, it was an electronic lock on the nukes. A two-step process for launch. The President, or NCA, gives the GO for launch as one code. A separate code, sent on a separate channel, was the actual code to release these ‘locks.’ That way, if someone stole the football, they couldn’t launch.”

“Football?” Scully asked.

“The briefcase with the launch codes that follows the President around,” Ebert explained.

“Oh,” Scully nodded. “But that’s not the case anymore?”

“No,” Stone said. “PAL was phased out after the cold war ended. The thinking was that if we wanted to keep the launch-on-warning capability, we didn’t have the time to send both signals to all our delivery platforms, that all we’d need was the GO order. See, each separate nuke had it’s own PAL code. That way, even if someone got one valid launch code, and the same, matching PAL code, they could only launch one nuke. But with launch-on-warning times of less than 2 minutes if we have a sub offshore, we decided that it would take too much time to get all that information out the door. So, one code, a global code, to all delivery systems. B52’s, subs, silos. One code. It changes hourly.”

Scully thought. “That’s a lot of codes.”

“Yes. Over eight thousand per year.”

“All in that little briefcase?”

Stone laughed. “No, not anymore. Well, yes…and no. What’s in the briefcase is not a big book with the SIOP anymore. It’s a laptop computer with a CDROM drive. The CDROM has the codes for a year on it.”

Scully nodded, understanding. “Is the code breakable?”

Stone shook his head. “No, the encryption key is totally random.”

Mulder scoffed. “Nothing is totally random.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong, for once,” Stone pointed out. “NSA is responsible for generating the codes. They need a truly random encryption key, because a powerful enough computer can recognize any non-random sequence, and given enough time, can break the code.”

Mulder nodded. “I understand that part. Where does the NSA get a truly random series of numbers? Eight thousand…” Mulder did the math quickly. “…seven hundred and about sixty or so.”

Stone grinned. “What they did was sample background noise from space, from a satellite. Then they translated that noise to a digital signal, ones and zeroes. They printed out a years worth of those ones and zeros. Made a printout about sixty feet tall, from what I hear. They went down to the secretarial pool, grabbed a woman at random, and told her to point.”

“Point?” Scully asked.

“Point?” Mulder repeated.

“Point,” Stone confirmed. “They told her to point at a page. A single page, somewhere in the middle of that huge printout. They started from there, taking 256 binary digits in a row, and those became the encryption keys. Totally random.”

“Because,” Scully said, her undergraduate physics degree coming to the forefront of her brain, “even if the Soviets or the Chinese or the Iranians knew that we sampled background space noise, and even if they knew what the exact starting point was in the series, the celestial conditions would never be exactly the same again, even at that precise moment in time a year later. The background noise would have changed. Even the slightest change would be enough.”

“Right,” Stone said. “So, the codes are unbreakable. The only way to launch is to get your hands on that laptop. That’s the crux of the launch part of Graves’ plan. And once he detonates the CBX-3 device in Washington, it’ll be child’s play to get his hands on that laptop.”

Mulder stood and began pacing. “That’s the part I still don’t get. How is he going to get his hands on the laptop? Isn’t the guy that carries it armed or something?”

“Of course,” Stone said. “With orders to shoot to kill if someone not authorized tries to take it away. But…Graves has people, highly- placed people, ready to move the moment the device goes off. The first thing the military is going to want to do after that thing detonates is get their hands on those codes. And you can be sure that the first person to touch it will be a Graves operative.”

Scully frowned. “How can you be sure?”

“Because I am,” Stone said softly. “I just am.”

“Do you trust Karn?” Scully suddenly asked.

Stone nodded. “To a point. Not enough to tell him my mission.”

“That’s another thing,” Mulder interjected. “Karn knows nothing of your mission. Who gave it to you?”

“That’s classified,” Stone said quickly.

Scully threw up her hands. “Matt! How can it be classified? We’re all in this together!”

“It’s classified,” Stone repeated.

“Enough of this,” Scully said. She turned to face Stone head on. “You will tell me who gave you your mission. Now.”

She reached for her pistol, grasping it lightly in her hand.

“No,” Stone said softly. “I won’t tell you. I can’t.”

Scully looked at the man seated not ten feet away from her. He’d tried to kill her only days ago. She could still feel his fingers around her windpipe.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you will.”

“Go ahead and shoot me,” Stone said smugly. “I still won’t tell you.”

A commotion at the door signaled Maggie’s return. She entered, struggling under four bags of groceries. She took in the scene in a heartbeat: Scully, her gun in hand, seated facing Stone.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Matt?”

Scully stood. “Mulder, help her.” Mulder moved and took all four bags from her, setting them down on the floor.

“No, Matt…you will tell me,” Scully said slowly, moving from the couch. “I know you. I know that the thing you hate more than anything in the world is an innocent’s death. That’s why Libya messed you up so much. Having to kill all those children…it must have been tough.”

“Children?” Ebert asked.

“Shhh,” Mulder said, touching the barrel of his own gun to his lips. “Let her talk.”

“Yes, children, Captain Ebert. Mr. Stone there personally executed thirty children, and had a direct influence on the execution of thirty more on a classified mission into Libya in 1982. He also killed Graves’ brother Sam. Later, in Iraq, during the Gulf War, he killed Graves’ other brother. So you could say that Stone is a little bit responsible for not only those thirty children and the two Graves brothers, but for all the people that will die in Washington if the CBX-3 device detonates, and all the people that will die in the exchange of nuclear weapons if Graves get his hands on those codes.”

Scully moved slowly, coming up beside Maggie.

“All those deaths…but, aside from the Graves brothers and the kids, most of those deaths are theoretical, aren’t they?”

“What do you mean?” Stone asked.

“Well, you won’t know any of them. Oh sure, one or two. But it’s not really anyone you’re close to, is it, Matt?” Mulder saw where she was going in an instant and felt his stomach knot.

Scully felt it, felt the power singing in her veins and hated herself for it. This was going too far, she thought. Just too damn far. She hardly recognized herself, hardly understood what she was about to do. But she knew it had to be done, that she had to know everything, that she and Mulder had to have all the facts they could before continuing the mission.

Placing the barrel of her gun against the side of Maggie King’s head, Scully said, “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me, Matt?”

“You won’t pull that trigger,” Matt said.

Scully lowered the pistol, her hand shaking. She tried to hide it, but failed.

“I knew it,” Stone crowed.

Mulder saw the pain and resignation on Scully’s face. He also knew that it was only one card to play. If she did it, if she pulled the trigger to make the point to Stone…Maggie would be gone, forever. There was no way he could let her do that. There was no way Mulder could let her-

“You’re not like me,” Stone interrupted. “You can’t kill in cold blood, Scully.”

“Kill?” Mulder interrupted. “Who said anything about killing?”

Reaching to the small of his back, grabbing the silenced .22 Maggie had given him before she’d left to go for food, Mulder pointed it at Maggie’s foot and pulled the trigger.

Maggie looked down. The bullet had missed by inches. She screamed and fell to the floor, holding her foot. The couch hid Stone’s view; he had no idea that Mulder had missed on purpose. Mulder, his back turned to Stone, winked at Maggie, smiling.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” Stone screamed, leaping out of his chair. Scully, eager to have a target she could shoot at, raised her gun and leveled it at Stone. “Don’t, Matt! I will shoot you if you make a move!”

Moaning, Maggie looked up. “W-why?” she asked.

“Nothing personal,” Mulder said, feeling the guilt twisting in his gut, the buzz of emotional pain bright and harsh in his ears.

Scully glanced at her partner, her eyes sending a message.

Thanks.

“OK, ok,” Stone said, holding up his hands. “Don’t shoot her again!”

“TALK!” Scully ordered.

“Uh-” Ebert said. He could see Maggie’s foot. He turned to say something to Stone and saw the look in Scully’s eyes.

He said nothing.

“Who gave you your mission?” Scully asked.

Stone sat down, hard.

“Lenoid Breshnev,” he said softly.

Scully’s gun wavered. “Excuse me?”

“Lenoid Breshnev, Premiere of the Soviet Union.”

“I don’t-” she started to say.

“I’m…”

“…a double agent?” Mulder asked.

Stone laughed. “Nothing so trite, Agent Mulder. It’s a very, very long story.”

“Help her up,” Scully said to Mulder.

Reaching down, Mulder grabbed Maggie and helped her up. Maggie, her walk spry, made her way to the couch.

“You-” Stone started. Then he laughed. “Very nice, Scully. Very, very nice. Sure you weren’t a SEAL?”

“Positive. Talk.”

“I am what is known as a Guardian,” Stone started. “Selected very early in my military career to perform a very special task. I keep an eye on the US military machine for the Soviets. For what used to be the Soviets, what are the Russians today. I report anything that I feel is a danger to the stability of the world.”

“A spy,” Scully said. “You’re a fucking spy.”

“No, Agent Scully. Certain…factions…in our government are aware that there exists the possibility of…what’s happening right now. A madman, bent on destroying the world. The Guardians exist to make sure that if the world is destroyed, it happens for a very good reason.”

“I don’t…” she started. “That makes no…sense!”

“Sit down. I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Scully moved back to the couch and sat, keeping her pistol close by.

“Basically, we’re…neutral, for lack of a better word. There are some two or three dozen Guardians all scattered throughout the military and intelligence communities of several countries. What was once the Soviet Union is now the Commonwealth of Independent States. With the coming of the Nuclear Age, a top-secret meeting took place between the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France, Great Britain, Israel, even the South Africans were there. They have ‘em, you know? Nukes, I mean. Anyway…it was decided that the threat of nuclear war for no good reason was insane. So the Guardians were created. In time of war, a real, honest, balls-to-the-wall war, we revert to being soldiers, sailors and pilots. When the war has specific political motivation, we do nothing. We fight and die just like the rest of the military. But during peace, when…when strange things happen, we’re there. We’re very highly placed, very, very secret. Not two dozen people in this country even know that the Guardians exist.

“In 1979, I traveled to the Soviet Union and had a private meeting with Breshnev. He explained that he’d heard about some CBX-3 being removed from Afghanistan and returned to the US. He asked me to find it. To return it to where it belonged: to the custody of the US military.”

“He’s been dead for almost twenty years!” Mulder objected.

“I know. But the mission remains, Agent Mulder. And this mission is too important to worry about who works for who.”

Scully nodded. “Does Karn know?”

“Of course not. He’s not a Guardian.”

“Do you know anyone else who’s a Guardian? Anyone that can verify your story?”

“I know of one,” Stone said. “He does not know of my mission, and he does not know that I am a Guardian. But, there are code phrases that I can use to identify myself, and he will vouch for me.”

Scully nodded. “Get him on the phone. Now.”

Stone held out his hand.

Scully held out the phone.

Stone took it, and dialed.

He waited for an answer.

“Hello?” a voice asked.

“When fire and water are at war, it is the fire that loses,” Stone said slowly.

“I understand,” the voice said. “What is the status?”

“I need you to vouch for my identity,” Stone replied. “This is Special Agent Matthew Stone, NIS.”

The voice gasped. “Very well. Put one of them on.”

Stone held out the phone.

Scully took it.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Hello, Agent Scully,” Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner said. “I would suggest that you listen to this man.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 24/38

“Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy…and taste good with ketchup.”

– Seen on a bumper sticker.

“Oh my God…” Scully whispered. Her free hand felt for the couch as she moved to sit.

“Not quite,” Skinner said, and Scully thought she could almost detect the hint of a smile in his voice. “In a way, I’m glad this happened Agent Scully, although I’m sure your erstwhile partner will waste little time reading more into this than is warranted.” Scully knew he was right. As soon as Mulder found out that Skinner was a member of the Guardians, he would go ballistic, spinning multiple conspiracy theories, combining the hated, nameless chain-smoker, the Trilateral Commission and the Freemasons. Scully said nothing, letting Skinner continue.

“Or…” her boss said, “are you not going to tell him?”

“I haven’t decided,” Scully admitted. “Both positions have their advantages and disadvantages.”

“True enough, Agent Scully. But I think that in the long term, it would be better not to hide anything from Agent Mulder, lest you get branded as a member of one of his countless conspiracies.” Scully nodded wordlessly into the phone, her mind going a thousand miles an hour. “Especially considering the…newly developing nature of your relationship.”

“W-what?” she asked.

“Agent Scully, this is an unsecure line. I imagine that your case is beginning to enter the last phases. Am I right?”

“I…I think so.”

“Very well. I think that your needs in this matter can best be served by a face-to-face meeting. If you can arrange for transportation through Admiral Karn, I can be there within a few hours.” Scully checked her watch. It was almost two a.m. in Washington.

“Of course, sir,” she said. “Immediately.”

“Very well. Tell Admiral Karn that I’ll be at Pax within the hour.” And with that, Skinner rang off. Scully lowered the silent phone to her lap and stared at it as if it would answer her thousand unasked questions.

“Who was that?” Mulder asked.

“Give me a minute,” Scully said quietly. “I’m thinking.”

“Scully?” he asked again, ignoring her. “Who was it?”

“Mulder!” Her voice was strident, commanding, and he knew enough to keep quiet. For the moment.

Could it be? she thought. She tried to think clearly, but the room was beginning to swim, her peripheral vision contracting and expanding as her brain tried to compensate for this new development. Mulder, she thought.

I have to think like Mulder. What questions would he ask?

“Could you all….would you give us a minute, please?” she asked.

Stone nodded and stood. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

Maggie looked at him, distrust clearly evident in her eyes. “Take the pistol if you want,” he said, indicating the silenced .22 Mulder still held.

Maggie thought about it and then shook her head. “Your balls are probably still a little tender. I’ll just give ‘em a little jolt if you misbehave,” she said.

“I’ll go with you,” Ebert said.

They left.

Mulder moved to the couch and sat down next to his partner. “What?” he asked.

“That…on the phone…was Skinner.”

Mulder was on his feet in an instant. “I knew it!” he said, already starting to pace. “I knew that son of a bitch was involved in…something! I just knew it!”

“Mulder-” Scully said softly, trying to interrupt.

Ignoring her, Mulder continued to pace, talking more to himself than to her. “All those times he pulled us off of cases that weren’t closed, when we were so close to finding the truth! All those times evidence vanished right after we reported to him that we’d found something! Those cryptic remarks, the stonewalling, the deceit, the lies-”

“MULDER!” Scully shouted. He stopped, stunned.

“What?”

“Sit down!”

Slowly, he sat in the chair facing the couch. “What?”

“Skinner is not our enemy, Mulder. Even you must realize that.”

“But-”

Scully sighed. “Mulder, there are certain things that you don’t know.”

His eyes darkened. “Oh? And that you do?”

Scully saw the trap coming and moved to avoid it. “Remember our conversation last night in the motel room? About how you blame yourself for everything? About your emotional masochism?”

Mulder nodded.

“Well, sometimes…over the course of our partnership…I haven’t told you everything about certain…events.”

“You WHAT?” he exclaimed.

“Let me finish, please…?”

Mulder relaxed back into the chair, shrugging. “Sure. Go ahead. Finish. Finish telling me how you’ve lied to me. Just like everyone else, Scully, right?”

The last few days’ worth of frustration, anger and annoyance welled up inside Scully so strongly that she was sure she was going to explode. Physically explode, shattering her body and splattering her internal organs all over the walls of Stone’s living room.

He’s such a hardheaded ass, she thought. Always sure that his take on any situation is the only right one, the only correct one, the only acceptable interpretation of any given set of events. The fact that more often than not he was right did nothing to encourage him to look elsewhere for answers, to consider other possibilities.

“Mulder,” she said, softly, slowly, “please think about it for a minute. Skinner has had more than once chance to totally derail the X- Files, to ruin your career, have you thrown out of the Bureau. He’s had the opportunity to have you arrested and charged, for God’s sake. And each time, he’s covered for you, or helped you get your ass out of those cracks you seem to be so fond of.” She hesitated, trying to find the words to convince him, and then a sudden thought occurred to her.

It’s not my job.

“Mulder, Skinner is coming out here. I have to make a call to arrange transportation. When he gets here, you can ask him point-blank what the hell is going on. And then you can your make your own decisions.” Standing and moving to the kitchen to make the call, Scully tossed one parting comment over her shoulder. “My mind is already made up.”

Mulder sat, stewing in his own juices. Once again, he’d gone off the handle. Once again, he’d pissed his partner off. His tendency to jump to conclusions was really going to get him into trouble one of these days.

A few minutes later, Scully re-emerged from the kitchen, folding the cell phone closed. “Karn’s going to get a VC-20 warmed up. Skinner’ll be here by six am, latest.”

She eyed the laptop sitting on the coffee table. “Part of me wants to boot that thing up and go through the records. The rest of me wants to take a long, hot bath and soak for hours, and then sleep for a month.”

Mulder nodded. “We don’t have much time, Scully. Get some sleep. I’ll check into the records.”

Scully thought about rejecting his offer on general principles. She was an equal partner in the relationship, both professionally and personally. She didn’t want him carrying her, or to ever give him an excuse to accuse her of slacking off. It was just the kind of thing that he would do in a moment of anger, using his mind, his words, his incredible recall of events and details that others would have forgotten to pin her down into a position that was advantageous to him.

How did I ever fall in love with such a nut case? she wondered.

But, she reminded herself, the relationship had changed. For better or worse, they were lovers now. The dynamic had shifted into a new position.

“You don’t mind?” she asked softly.

“No. Of course not. Go. I’ll call Frohike and have him transmit the data. Take a bath and then get some sleep. I’ll be in in a while.”

Scully wasn’t sure she wanted him joining her in bed. Saying nothing, she turned and went to find Matt and Maggie.

Sighing, Mulder reached for the laptop.

***

Aboard US Navy VC-20 N4911905
Two Hours Later

Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner, Federal Bureau of Investigation, sat back in the plush leather chair usually warmed by the backsides of Admirals and wondered what he was going to tell his two favorite agents. He knew that Scully would be easy to reach, that she would understand most of the motivations and meanings behind what he had prepared to tell them. Mulder, he knew, was going to be a problem.

Problem, hell, he thought. Mulder’s going to be a huge pain in the ass.

The truth was, Skinner was having a bit of trouble explaining to himself what he was doing involved with such a group. He thought back to his recruitment, as he’d come to call it, in the jungles of Vietnam almost thirty years ago, a jungle that had no trees, no foliage, no trails…

Lost in memories of a war he had asked to fight, Skinner drifted off to sleep.

***

Dana Point, California

Scully stood from the tub and grabbed the towel that Stone had supplied. It was large and fluffy, and she wrapped it around her body, shivering in the cool California night air. Mulder was still in the living room working with the laptop.

Frohike had managed to generate all the data they’d requested, and Mulder was busy running cross-checks.

Stepping to the mirror over the sink, Scully reached out a hand and wiped some of the fog away. The sight of her own face startled her, and she took a staggering step back.

I look so…hard, she thought. Hard, taut, wired. Ready to kill at a moment’s notice.

Which, with a start, Scully realized she was all those things… and more.

“Enjoy your bath?”

Scully almost screamed in surprise. She turned and found Matt standing in the doorway, arms crossed, leaning against the jamb. He had a very strange smile on his face.

“How long have you been there?” she asked, furiously tugging the towel tighter around her.

“Only a second. I saw you rubbing the mirror, Dana.”

“What do you want?”

He arched an eyebrow. “I figured that since we’re friends again…” He drifted off, not finishing the sentence, his intentions clear.

Scully felt the bile rising in the back of her throat.

The gall of this man. The unmitigated gall!

Turning back to the mirror, she sighed. “We’re not friends, Matt. We’re barely even colleagues.” As an afterthought, she asked, “Where’s Maggie?”

“Asleep in a guest room.”

“She turn you down? That why you’re here?”

Stone straightened, his smug smile vanishing. Ah-ha, Scully thought. Bingo.

“No…but the fact remains that I find you attractive, Dana.”

She didn’t flinch at his words. There was something in his voice, an undercurrent of danger, a slight threatening that made her skin crawl. “I find you repulsive,” she said softly. She glanced at the top of the toilet tank. Her pistol was there, hidden under her clothes. She estimated that she could get to it before he could get to her.

“That’s a lie,” he replied. “You find me attractive, but you hate yourself for it. I’m sorry I put my hands on you in the restaurant, Dana, I truly am. But I see the way you look at me, and I know what you want.”

She didn’t answer.

He took a step closer. Scully tensed. If he moved six inches closer, he’d get one hell of a surprise.

“You must heal fast. I’d imagine that your balls would still be aching.”

“I’m all man, Scully. A little kick in the balls only puts me down for a little bit. I’m ready to go, go, go!”

“Matt, leave me alone. Go find a hole to crawl into and get some sleep. We’re probably not going to get another chance until this is all over.”

Matt grinned, switching tactics. “I know. We could all be dead by Sunday. Don’t you want to grant a dying man’s last wish?”

“And what wish would that be?” Scully asked, leaning in close to the mirror, angling her body ever so slightly towards the toilet.

“You know,” Matt teased. “You know what I want. What you want. What we both want.”

“Is that so?” she asked.

“Yes,” Stone said, taking the last step towards her. Scully moved as if she’d rehearsed it. Her hand slid under the pile of clothes and closed around the butt of her SIG. At the same time, she turned, letting the towel slide off her body. It gathered along her right arm, completely hiding her hand as she turned to face him.

Stone’s eyes widened as he took in her nakedness.

“Is this what you want?” Scully asked, her voice dead, devoid of emotion. “Is this it, Matt?”

Stone licked his lips, his eyes devouring her. “Yes,” he said, a glint in his eyes.

“This?” Scully asked, pointing at her body. “You want this body?”

“My, God…yes,” he whispered again. “You have…a beautiful body.”

Scully snorted. His eyes on her had no effect whatsoever. She didn’t feel ashamed or violated. She felt…free. He was staring at her the way she imagined men stared at centerfolds or porno movies; like an object, a thing to be used for pleasure and then discarded.

“What part do you like best?” she asked.

“Breasts,” he gasped.

“These?” Scully asked, looking down. She reached out and found his hand and pulled it to her left breast. “It’s just a bag of fat and skin, Matt. Nothing more.” She felt his fingers closing around her flesh. “We both know that you’re a big, strong man, and I’m just a weak, little woman,” she started. He was only half listening to her, she saw. “We both know that if you really wanted to, you could take me anytime you wanted, make me do whatever you demanded.” She stepped closer to him, her right arm coming around, the towel sliding to the floor. She was inside his space now, the pistol appearing from behind her right thigh, the barrel coming up, up, and then sliding neatly between his legs. He felt the front sight blade pressing against his scrotum through his pants and he gasped, his hand dropping from her flesh.

“But you’ll never touch my soul, Matt. You’ll never touch my heart. Those belong to another man, Matt. A man that has more of a warrior’s spirit in the tip of his nose than you do in your entire body.” She lifted the pistol slightly, digging it harder against his crotch.

“You’re nothing but a fucking bully,” she spat. “You could fuck me anytime you wanted, and I couldn’t stop you. But you’d better kill me, you bastard, because the second you let me out of your sight…” She thumbed the hammer back, the sound loud in the small room. “…the second you let me go…I’ll kill you where you sit.”

Stone raised his hands, slowly stepping back. He moved away from her, his eyes on hers, seeing the truth in them.

He stopped on the threshold.

“This is about Mulder, isn’t it?” he asked. Scully didn’t answer him, so Stone continued, his voice taunting. “What do you see in that little pussy, anyway?” he asked.

Scully felt like she wanted to laugh, but she wasn’t able to summon the energy. “There’s something about Mulder that jerks like you will never be able to understand, Matt. Just because he’s gentle… doesn’t mean he’s weak.”

“You’re an amazing woman,” he said softly.

“Fuck off,” Scully said, shutting the door in his face. Stone stood, staring at the door, wondering how he’d managed to misjudge her so badly. Shrugging, he turned and walked back to the living room. He found Mulder working the laptop, absently pulling at his bottom lip.

“You’re a very lucky man,” Stone said quietly.

“Hmmm?” Mulder asked, not really hearing him.

“Scully. Dana.”

The mention of his partner’s name caught his attention. “What about her?”

Stone wondered if he should try and play with Mulder’s head.

“I just did something very stupid,” he started. The laptop clattered to the table as Mulder stood. “Relax,” Stone said, holding up a hand. “I just tried to…let her know how…how gorgeous I think she is.”

Mulder took a step towards Stone, fire burning in his veins. “If you hurt her…” he said slowly.

“Relax, Mulder! I’m trying to tell you that that little… firebrand made it more than clear to me that…well, she’s in love with you.” Stone paused, and then added, “I think she always was.”

Mulder looked at the doorway leading down the hall. He took a step towards it, meaning to go and see if Scully was OK. “Wait,” Stone said, reaching out to grab Mulder’s arm.

“Listen to me,” Matt said softly. “She can more than take care of herself, Mulder.”

“What happened in there?”

Matt considered telling him. “Nothing, Mulder.”

Mulder saw the lie in Stone’s eyes and chose to ignore it.

For the moment.

“What’s your problem, Stone? Why do you have to fuck with people so much? Maggie, Scully…God only knows how many others.”

Stone grinned at Mulder. “I guess the doctors were right. They told me I have poor impulse control. I see something I want and I go after it.”

Mulder felt his jaw tightening, but said nothing. “That helps when I’m chasing asshole dirtbags like Graves. Doesn’t help me too much when I’m trying to impress a lady, though,” Stone said.

“Oh, you made an impression on her, all right,” Mulder said softly. He felt the heat in his chest rising as he turned to face Stone fully. He leaned in, his nose an inch from the other man’s face. “On her neck, you asshole!”

Stone nodded. “I already apologized to her.”

“And you think that makes it all right? What kind of sick fuck are you, anyway?”

Stone had had enough of Mulder. “The kind of sick fuck that cost millions of your tax dollars to train! The kind of sick fuck that you and all your liberal friends whine and bitch and moan about all the damn time, until you need us, until you need someone killed in a particularly brutal way. Then we’re professional soldiers that are ‘regretfully’ needed to preserve democracy, Mulder.”

Mulder put a hand in the middle of Stone’s chest and pushed, hard. Stone stumbled back a step and then hit the wall squarely with his back. Mulder was in his face a moment later.

“Listen to me, you sanctimonious moron! I understand better than anyone the need for Green Berets and SEALs and Force Recon Marines! I know what they ask you to do! I know what they make you do! But that doesn’t mean you have to be…whatever it is that you’ve become! You’re the worst kind of operator, Matt! You like it too much! No one should enjoy your job as much as you do!”

Stone pushed Mulder back, stepping away from the wall. “Of course I like it! When I’m on a mission, I’m God, Mulder. I have the power of life and death in my hands. I am the avenging God of War, come down to visit death and destruction on my enemies, the enemies of my country, of my way of life! When the brass unlocks my cage, I am death! I become it! You can’t do that for as long as I have, as well as I have and not like it! You don’t get a taste for it and you’re dead.” Stone stopped, hands on his hips, his voice mocking. “But then again, I forget who I’m talking to! How many men have you killed, Mulder? Hmm? How many lives have you taken?”

Mulder flinched. Every person he had ever been forced to kill flew through his mind. He could hear his pistol going off, the kick against his hand, the shock of the gun’s explosion rocketing up his arm, the thunderclap of death and dying loud in his ears, the scent of gunpowder and cordite in his nose.

“More than you probably imagine, Stone. The difference between you and me is that I can understand the difference between the necessity of killing someone and the pleasure of it.”

“We’re more alike than you’d like to admit, Mulder. I’m just better at it, that’s all.” And with that, Stone turned and stormed out of the living room.

Shaken, Mulder took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. What was it about that man that made him so infuriating? He was always so sure of himself, so sure that he was right all the damn time! God, Mulder thought, that gets so annoying!

The irony completely lost on him, Mulder returned to the couch, shut the laptop down and went to Scully’s bedroom.

***

Aboard US Navy VC-20 N4911905

Fire.

Heat.

Pain. Agonizing pain.

Light. Bright white light.

Hospital. The odor of antiseptic. Flashes of white, the smell of soap, of clean, fresh hair. The gentle undercurrent of a woman’s unique, distinct smell.

Voices.

Doctors, talking about him.

Later, through the haze of drugs, an interview. A debriefing. Questions, endless questions. The drugs made him loopy, made it easier to talk about what he’d seen, what he’d been forced to do by circumstance. The promise by the voice asking the questions that they understood, that it was required by the situation, that no one need know what had happened in the burnt, scorched hole that had once been green, lush jungle. And then the offer.

Make sure, the voice had said. Help us make sure that it will never happen again, that others would never be in the same position you found yourself in. Become one of us.

Higher duty.

Moral imperative.

Go on with your life, they’d instructed. We’ll contact you. Remember us.

Remember them.

The names, the faces. All of them. 11 men, all dead. Remember them.

When we come again, you’ll be asked to join for real. You’ll have time to think about it, to mull it over, to make sure it’s what you want to do. You can turn us down. But if you accept…

If you accept, you are one of us.

Guardians.

Knights, in the realm of the 20th century world. Don your armor, mount your steed, grasp your lance and ride out to do battle against the enemy.

Six years. It had been six years later. Three days after the letter from the FBI had arrived, inviting him to join the Bureau, telling him when to report for indoctrination. The phone call had come just before bed, the words ringing in his ear.

“When fire and water do battle, it is firez that loses,” the voice whispered.

“I remember,” he said.

“Your decision?”

“Another year. Please. I need to…think.”

There was a pause, and then a voice that belonged to a face that he would never see agreed.

“A year, then. One more year. Be well, Walter.”

That first year had flown by in a flash. Academy training, and then graduating, getting his first assignment. Kansas City. Bank Robbery squad. Prestigious for a rookie agent. He’d made his bones quickly. It was 1976.

And then it had happened.

His trust shattered, his beliefs cast aside. The suspect, in custody, confession completed and signed. Then…two agents. CI13, they said. Counterintelligence. This man knows things, things we need, the men had said. He cannot be charged. He’s too important, too vital to the national security interests. You have no case. Trust us.

He’d argued, holding up the confession. Proof, he’d said.

What confession? they’d asked, taking it from his hands and ripping it to shreds. We don’t see any confession.

When the call had come again, a year to the day, a year to the minute, he’d been sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring.

Lifting the phone, he hadn’t even waited for the recognition phrase. “I’m in,” he’d told them.

“We’ll be in touch,” the voice said, and rang off.

They had been true to their word.

In his sleep, Walter Skinner mumbled “Guard…” and shifted in his seat.

***

Dana Point, California.

Mulder entered and found Scully already in bed. She was lying on her side, facing away from him. He glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight. Sighing, he stripped down to his shorts and slid into the bed next to her.

“Shut the door,” she said softly.

Mulder got up and shut the door and then quickly moved back to the bed. Sliding between the sheets, he made his way over to her and gently slid an arm around her waist.

Scully stiffened and pulled away slightly.

Withdrawing quickly, Mulder scooted back across the bed, away from her. He felt the panic welling up inside him.

She doesn’t want me to touch her, he thought. Oh my God. What happened? What did I do wrong?

Scully thought about telling Mulder what had happened in the bathroom, but knew that he would probably get out of bed and try to kill Stone. How could she explain what had happened to him? So he’d seen her naked. Big deal. As a physician, a pathologist, Scully understood better than most that the body was a shell, a vessel, nothing more. A naked body was just a body without clothes. It held no intrinsic sexual pull; it was only when you felt something for the person inside the body did nakedness hold any magic, any heat, any fire.

Her breast. Stone’s hand on her breast. If Mulder ever found out about that… It’d been a tactic, Scully knew, a way to distract him long enough to get him to drop his guard. Mulder would never understand that. Mulder wouldn’t understand that it was his touch she craved, not Stone’s. That she wanted to feel his hands on her, on her body, all over her body, touching and tracing and stroking and…and…

The memory of Mulder’s hands on her body slid through Scully’s mind. A holy place, he’d called it.

She turned over, reaching for him. She needed him, needed him to touch her the way she wanted to be touched, the way she ached to be touched by him, by no one else but him.

Only Mulder.

Ever.

“Make love to me,” she whispered.

“Scully! There’s-”

She silenced him with a kiss, her hands insistent, searching for and finding his secret places. Her hand slid beneath the elastic waistband of his briefs, finding and grasping his hot, hard length. She used it like a lever, tugging him over to her, on top of her. She was ready for him, wet and eager, and he slid inside her effortlessly, filling her with himself, with his love. They moved slowly, gently, her arms around his neck, her own neck arched to allow him to trail kisses down her throat, across her chest. She made inarticulate little sounds, moaning and keening, losing herself in the moment, wanting to feel alive, vital, treasured…worshipped.

He began to move more quickly, sensing her approach to that final release, that little death. “Oh yes,” she whispered. And then louder, and louder still, until the moment of sexual apogee, when they were both there, on the brink together, Mulder’s fingers clutching her arms as he filled her again and again.

“Oh my GOD YES!” Scully screamed.

Down the hall and around the corner, Commander Matt Stone thought evil thoughts about Dana Scully, and then smiled in the darkness of the guest bedroom.

Touche, he thought.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 25/38

0550 Hours
Naval Air Station Miramar
Approaching San Diego, California

One of the nice things, Skinner thought, about flying aboard a plane normally reserved for Admirals, was all the creature comforts. The small jet-powered VC-20, (much like it’s civilian counterpart the Lear Jet,) came equipped with a bathroom much larger than those found aboard commercial airliners. It wasn’t as large as a bathroom at home, but it was much easier to move around in than he ever would have thought.

Which was a good thing, considering what he was doing. Skinner studied his reflection in the mirror as he worked at tying his tie. Field scarf, he reminded himself. It’s called a field scarf, which was strange, because no one ever wore one in ‘the field.’

Skinner finished tying the knot and tugged against the collar button of his shirt. Looking down at the small vanity, he picked up the small plastic box that he carried in his toiletry kit wherever he went. The small gold tie-bar with the globe and anchor logo stared back at him, and he gingerly picked it up and turned it over in his hands a few time before smiling shyly at his reflection and affixing it to his tie and shirt.

Blouse, he thought. Oddly enough, they call it a blouse.

Skinner studied his reflection and liked what he saw. Never a particularly vain man, he would admit at times like this that he had changed little since he was a teenager, at least physically speaking.

Not counting the hair, Walter, an inner voice remarked softly, wryly.

Yes, yes, he was a little thin on top. Ok, bald as an egg. But his waist had gained less than an inch, and he was within fifteen pounds of the weight he’d held when he entered the Marine Corps almost thirty years ago.

Thirty years later, and the uniform still fit, he thought.

He wondered what his two favorite agents were going to say when they got a load of him. It wasn’t something that was commonly known, but after he’d been medically discharged from the Marine Corps as a result of wounds suffered in battle, he’d spent the next year or two recovering physically. Then it was back to school, and then graduate school, and then the FBI. Two years after joining the FBI, he’d decided that he missed the corps, and he’d approached a recruiter about possibly enlisting again in the reserves.

The recruiter had taken one look at Skinner’s resume, and the fact that he’d honorably served before, and been wounded in battle, and had decided to talk to his commanding officer about waiving some of the medical regulations. Skinner had never had the suspicion confirmed, but he had always thought that some member of the Guardians had seen fit to make sure that he was kept happy, and the offer of re-enlistment was accepted, and then sweetened.

We have enough grunts, he was told. What we need are officers, officers that have heard shots fired in anger, officers that know how to lead from the front. And so, Walter S. Skinner had been commissioned as a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps. After attending Platoon Leader’s course at Quantico, he was immediately transferred to Marine Corps Intelligence, where he had spent his one weekend a month and two weeks every summer for the last twenty-two years, rising in that time to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He had served the country, the Corps and the Guardians well from his post as an analyst and translator/interrogator.

The silver oak leaves of his rank glittered from his collar points, and Walter Skinner made one last check of his uniform before exiting the bathroom.

“How much longer?” he called forward.

The US Navy pilot, a Lieutenant, glanced back and, seeing Skinner in uniform, gulped. “Uh, about fifteen minutes, sir,” he said.

“Very well,” Skinner said, smiling at the ease at which he fell back into what he liked to call “Command Mode.”

Returning to his seat, Skinner considered what he’d been told by another member of the Guardians, a man he had never met, a man that seemed to have a deeply vested interest in Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

It was always the same: A call, usually early in the evening, at his desk or at his townhouse. The code phrase employed to ensure identification, and then an update of what Skinner’s two favorite agents were up to.

The report that they had become lovers was not unexpected nor unwelcome, but it was slightly…surprising. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. On the one hand, he had known years ago how Scully and Mulder felt for each other, even if they hadn’t. On the other, unless they were both very, very careful, the slightest indiscretion could ruin otherwise promising careers.

Not to mention The Quest. Skinner had begun to call Mulder’s never-ending search for the Truth “The Quest” long before Scully or Mulder himself had articulated it as such. And Skinner knew, probably better than Mulder did, how very, very important that search was.

But now…Skinner sighed. The fact that Scully and Mulder had become lovers was not the only complicating factor in the unique relationship the three of them shared. He, nominally their boss, was going to have to look the other way when it came to the relationship, and, it seemed, a lot more now that Commander Stone had revealed him as a Guardian. He was still wondering why, exactly, Stone had done that when he felt the squeal of the rubber tires against the tarmac.

The plane taxied quickly to the transient ramp. Gathering his bags and briefcase, Skinner thanked the pilot and exited the plane. He made his way to the Base Transportation Office and secured a motor pool quickly. His USMC ID made it clear to the Bo’sun’s mate behind the counter that he was not to be trifled with; it carried an AAAAA peacetime priority. Only General Officers and Colonels in the Intelligence directorates of the three other branches of the service had a higher priority, and Skinner was glad that he got a chance to use it.

He requested a map from the Bo’sun’s mate and was immediately provided one. He located Dana Point on the map and turned the car north, racing to join Scully and Mulder, Stone, Ebert and King.

****

5774 Pacifica Rim Drive (Home of Commander Matthew Stone)
Dana Point, California
0709 Hours PST

Skinner parked the motor pool car in Stone’s driveway and quickly killed the engine. He spotted the forest-green BMW roadster parked next to the Jeep CJ-7 and wondered who was driving what. Deciding that he probably didn’t want to know, not really, he got out of his car and quickly made his way up the walk to the front door.

It almost two minutes of knocking and pausing and then knocking again before the door was answered…

By a very startled Commander Matthew Stone, who was wearing boxers and not much else. The naval officer looked hung over; hell, Skinner thought, he looks like something the cat dragged in! And out and in again! Twice!

Stone was in the middle of preparing to berate whomever it was that had woken him from what little sleep he’d gotten that night when he took in the uniform, the silver oak leaves, and lastly, the face of the man inhabiting the uniform.

“Skinner!” he said.

“Is that normally how you greet officers of the Marine Corps, Commander?” Skinner asked dryly.

Stone blinked, and then seemed to understand that this was not some sort of nightmare that was going to go away. He snapped to a reasonable semblance of attention and was about to salute when Skinner interrupted him. “As you were. Go put some clothes on.” Stone turned to leave, and Skinner called out, “Wait!”

“Sir?”

“Scully. Mulder. Where are they?”

A look Skinner couldn’t place or articulate crossed Stone’s face.

“There,” Stone pointed. “First door on the right.”

Skinner frowned, wondering if he was understanding Stone right. He had little time to pursue the matter, because Stone had vanished into the bowels of the house.

Sighing deeply, hands on hips, Skinner realized that he had to do this. If only to re-establish command of the situation; his Guardian contact had told him some of the antics that Special Agent Dana Scully had been up to, and catching her in bed with Mulder would probably help knock her down a notch or two.

He walked to the bedroom and, without knocking, opened the door.

The sight that greeted him was not what he had been expecting. Although, privately, if pressed, Skinner would admit that he hadn’t known exactly what to expect.

But certainly not this.

Scully, wearing what appeared to be a pair of black men’s silk boxers and a Marine Barracks, Quantico T-shirt, was curled against her partner, her arm thrown across his chest, her leg casually tossed over his hip. Mulder, for his part, was wearing a pair of royal blue silk boxers, his arm curled around her back, cupping one shoulder, the other on her right forearm, holding her gently against him as they both slept.

Skinner felt his jaw tightening; he hated having to do what he was about to. He had to admit that they looked very good together, entwined like that. Like it was…right, somehow.

Expected.

Destined.

Shaking his head sharply from side-to-side to clear the traitorous thoughts, Skinner said softly, “Scully. Mulder.”

They both stirred in their sleep, but neither woke.

“Scully! Mulder!” he said, a little more loudly this time.

Scully was the first to realize that she and Mulder were not alone in the room. Moving faster than Skinner had ever seen her, than he had ever seen anyone move, she was off the bed, hidden behind it, and then she was coming up, her duty-issue SIG in her hand, the barrel centering on his chest in the space it took for Skinner to blink.

“Scully!” he shouted, his hands coming up. “It’s me! Walter!”

Scully tossed some sleep-tousled hair out of her eyes and studied the man standing in the doorway to the room. It looked like Skinner, her sleep-addled brain announced, but what the hell was he doing in the uniform of a Colonel of Marines?

“Sir?” she asked.

“Yes, Scully. It’s me. You can put the gun down now.”

Scully looked at her hands, the hands wrapped securely around the butt and frame of her weapon; her expression seemed to communicate puzzlement, as if she wasn’t aware of how the gun had come to be in her hands.

“Sorry, sir,” she said, dropping the weapon and thumbing the safety on quickly. “It’s been a strange few days.”

“So I have heard,” Skinner allowed.

Scully nodded, thinking to herself that now there was another issue to discuss with her superior. How, exactly, had he known about the developments regarding Mulder?

“Mulder!” she called sharply. Mulder groaned, but didn’t move. “He gets this way,” Scully explained. “He’s such an insomniac, that when he finally does fall asleep, it’s a bear to wake him up.”

Skinner refrained from asking her how she knew this, considering that his Guardian contact had informed him that the relationship between them had only deepened sometime in the last few days.

Scully got up on the bed and knee-walked over to her partner.

Lover, Skinner reminded himself. Her lover.

“Mulder,” she said softly, reaching out a hand to his shoulder and shaking it gently. “Time to wake up.”

“mmmmph,” Mulder moaned, and turned towards her, his arms coming out in his sleep to find her. His strength was no match for hers, and he pulled her down against him.

“Mmmoring,” he said softly, his lips moving to find hers.

Skinner glanced out the window, trying not to look.

“Mulder!” Scully said harshly.

“Whassamatter?” he asked sleepily. “No goo-morning kiss?”

“Mul-der!”

Mulder was almost fully awake now. “What, don’t you love me anymore?” he teased.

When Scully spoke, her voice was clipped, hard, each word a separate sentence. “We. Are. Not. Alone.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that for years-” Mulder said, releasing her and swinging his feet out of bed. It was at that moment that he caught sight of Lieutenant Colonel Walter S. Skinner, USMC, FBI, standing in the bedroom with a VERY exasperated expression on his face.

“Sir!” Mulder said, standing.

“Good morning, Special Agent Mulder,” Skinner said evenly.

“Good morning,” Mulder replied, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “How was your flight, sir?”

“Uneventful,” Skinner said through suddenly-gritted teeth. “Do you think that you and Scully can managed to get dressed and meet me in the living room with the rest of your rag-tag band of amateur commandos?”

“Uh..yes, sir,” Mulder mumbled. “Right away, sir.”

Skinner turned on his heel and left without another word, shutting the door behind him.

Mulder sighed. “Curiouser and Curiouser ,” he said softly.

“Tell me about it,” Scully replied, just as softly. “Did you know he was a Marine officer?”

“I had no idea,” Mulder admitted. “Although it does make sense.”

Scully nodded, silently agreeing. It did make a whole bunch of sense, in a weird, Skinner way.

They dressed quickly in yesterday’s unwashed clothes. Scully shuddered as she realized that she was putting on the previous day’s underwear. That was one of the first things that was going to have to be addressed : Clothing.

The partners entered the living room to find Stone, King, Ebert and Skinner waiting for them.

“Sleep well?” Stone asked, a nasty smile on his face.

Scully’s return smile was saccharine. “Very well, thank you.”

Mulder glanced between them, wondering what had gone on last night.

“Good morning, troops,” Skinner said, an uncharacteristic smile on his face. “As of this moment, this operations is no longer an FBI or US Navy matter.” He paused for effect, and then added, “Never fear, the MARINES ARE HERE!”

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then a moment of nervous laughter. “Oh, lighten up,” Skinner teased. “I was kidding.”

“Sir, if I may,” Scully said gently, “none of us are particularly in the mood for…frivolity. It’s Friday morning, and we have just over forty-eight hours to find Graves, the CBX, and the delivery system.”

Skinner nodded, returning to his usual countenance of gruff, distant leader. “Very well, Agent Scully. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind briefing me on the state of your…investigation.”

His pause before the final word told Scully more than he’d intended. Somehow, word of her…antics had gotten back to him. She felt her own jaw settling, knowing that no matter what he said to her, she would never apologize or attempt to explain what had gone on. If he didn’t understand, she reasoned, he never would, no matter what she said or did.

“Before that,” Mulder interjected, “I’d like some information from you, sir.”

“I’m sure you would, Agent Mulder, but as Agent Scully has just so adroitly pointed out, time is the one thing we do not have.”

Mulder crossed his arms. “Well, we’ll just have to make time, sir, because Scully isn’t going to tell you jack shit until I’ve satisfied myself on a few issues.”

Skinner turned to Scully. “Is that so, Agent Scully?” He almost added, ‘letting your partner speak for you now?,’ but didn’t.

Scully stood there, silently fuming, thinking dark, evil thoughts about her partner, about her best friend, about the man she was crazy-in-love with. Once again he’d jumped the gun and put her in a position of having to choose between her job and her love for him.

And as always, she knew which would win out.

“Yes, sir,” she said softly. “That’s so.”

Sighing theatrically, Skinner moved to the couch. “Very well.” Twisting to face Mulder, he said, “Ask away, Agent Mulder.”

Mulder glanced at his partner as if inviting her to begin. Scully held out her hand, as if she were showing him to his seat. “No, I insist, Mulder. This was, after all, your idea to begin with.”

Mulder turned to the other three people in the room. “Uh, Matt? Do you know of a good breakfast place anywhere around here?”

Stone nodded, understanding at once. “Maggie, Ronald, why don’t you both come with me so we can give these folks some privacy? I know a great place down by the beach. Omelets to die for.”

Maggie and Ronald nodded, and the trio made short work of getting ready and departing for the restaurant.

Once the door closed behind them, Skinner turned back to face his most challenging agent. “Ok, Mulder…we’re alone.”

“You make it sound so romantic,” Mulder said, sitting in the chair that faced the couch. “Walter…” he started, and seeing the sudden narrowing of his superior’s eyes, held up a hand. “I figure that since the rules of this particular game have changed, we can forget the normal Bureau courtesies?”

Skinner thought about it for half a second and then nodded; the rules had changed.

“I mean, I assume you are here as a member of the Guardians, not just as an Assistant Director of the Bureau. Am I correct in that assumption?”

“Yes, yes you are,” Skinner allowed.

“Good,” Mulder said, surprised at how smoothly he’d managed to switch into interrogation mode. After all, it was his boss of almost five years that he was busy interrogating!

“Stone told us a fantastical story about the Guardians last night, Walter, but I want you to assume that Scully and I have never heard anything about it. I want you to tell us what your understanding of the organization is.”

Skinner was impressed; he hadn’t had a chance to get Stone alone to inquire as to how much he’d told Mulder and Scully. By using this tactic, Mulder had ensured that he would learn as much as he could about the organization. Well, Skinner thought, there was a reason you call them your best pair of agents. They are good.

Taking a deep breath, Skinner began to talk. “The Guardians,” he started, “are a rather loosely organized group of men and women that believe that…how should I put this…? That those who run the world should not be trusted with it. That’s about as concise a definition as I can give you, Mulder.”

“Military? Paramilitary? Political?”

“No, more theoretical. The fact remains that most of the power in this world is centered around those who control the men with guns.”

“And women,” Scully interjected.

“And women,” Skinner agreed, nodding. “Basically, the assumption is that the corruption of the soul that is required to achieve the kind of power that can threaten the stability of the world needs to have checks and balances. Not all the countries that have the power to end the world, by whatever means, have the same sort of…control that this country does over the actions of those that govern.”

Mulder nodded, accepting that statement at face value.

“Who are your enemies?” he asked.

Skinner shifted. He sure didn’t waste any time, Skinner thought.

“I assume you mean our smoking friend and his cronies?”

Mulder said nothing.

“You think that I should have been able to do more in your… campaign to thwart that man and his associates?”

Again, Mulder said nothing. Skinner sensed the technique and fought not to smile.

“Mulder, the position of the Guardians in the world power structure is tenuous at best and downright shaky at worst. We are observers, nothing more. By creating a loose association of people in semi-powerful positions, people that are career diplomats, intelligence and military officers, people that remain in place as governmental administrations come and go, we’ve managed to create an information network that helps prevent some of the more nasty surprises that come along.”

“Like Iraq attacking Kuwait?” Mulder pointed out.

Skinner nodded. “That’s the problem, Mulder. You can only point to the dozens of failures that make the CNN newscast. You have no ability to point to the thousands of little brushfire incidents we’ve managed to catch before they turned into a full- scale invasion.”

Mulder pursed his lips.

“Don’t you think that it’s rather convenient that the reason for your very existence is built upon the foundation that only be being successful can you remain anonymous?”

Skinner nodded. “I can see how it would be hard for you to accept.”

“Give me an example of…an action that the Guardians have undertaken successfully.”

Skinner stood and began pacing, obviously lost in though. Scully took the opportunity to lean down and whisper in her partner’s ear. “Do you believe him?”

Mulder just nodded. “I do,” he whispered back.

Skinner turned to face his two agents. “North Korea. You read about it in the papers all the time; shots fired across the demarcation line, tunnels dug by the north into the south. What you don’t hear is the efforts by Guardians in the North to…stem the tide of efforts to invade the South.

“You see,” Skinner continued, “the fact is that if North Korea attacked the South, if they cross the DMZ with the over sixty tank battalions they have…our men, and most of the South Korean army would simply be tossed into the Sea of Japan. And there’s…more.”

“More what?”

“More about the Korean situation than is obvious to the casual observer.”

“Like what?”

Skinner sighed. “When Truman forced the South Koreans to agree to the 1953 Paris Peace Accords, there was a secret agreement signed between the United States, South Korea and Japan. Remember, these were simpler times, when we actually thought it was possible to win a nuclear war. And this was years before China got nuclear capability. The agreement says that if the North Koreans reach a certain point on a map, a certain latitude, the US will use nuclear weapons to end the North’s aggression.

“So, you see, the Guardians on both sides of the DMZ realize that an invasion isn’t practical. And, when they can, they communicate what they know to the other Guardians, and the word makes it to where it needs to go so that some low-level intelligence officer assigned to the ROK units on the line ‘finds’ the tunnel or the midget submarine attempting to put North Korean operatives ashore. The system, such as it is, works.”

Mulder nodded again.

“Now for the $64,000 question.”

Skinner nodded. “Yes, we have enemies. We have those amongst us that believe that the world would be better served by going to war, that they alone should decide what is best for the rest of us.”

Mulder pounced. “But isn’t that what the Guardians are doing?”

Skinner had seen it coming. “Yes, in a way. Mulder, if I’m going to have to spend the next forty-eight hours convincing you that what I’m doing is right, morally right, then you need to tell me now so I can call my wife and have her leave DC. I don’t want her there on Sunday morning when this…device detonates and wipes out the leadership of this country.”

“You haven’t evacuated her?” Scully asked.

Skinner turned to her. “No, Agent Scully, I have not.”

“Answer the question,” Mulder said softly. “Answer me this question, and I will drop the entire matter for the time being.”

Skinner faced his most challenging agent. “Yes, Mulder. Yes to all of it. The smoker you hate so much is part of the group that opposes us. They have no name; we refer to them simply as ‘Them’ or ‘They,’ depending on the context.”

“And your group’s efforts have been unable to contain him?”

Skinner said nothing for a long moment. “It’s not as simple as that,” he finally said.

“Isn’t it?”

“No, Mulder, it isn’t. It’s much more complicated.”

“Give me the Reader’s Digest condensed version.”

Skinner sighed. “Very well, Agent Mulder…you are beginning to meddle in affairs that don’t concern you-”

Mulder stood, his eyes on fire. “Don’t concern me? DON’T CONCERN ME? Listen to me, you son of a BITCH! Nothing concerns me MORE than the actions of this…cabal of…whatever the hell they are! Do you understand? NOTHING!”

Skinner withstood Mulder’s tirade with a blank, stony face, saying nothing. “Mulder…I can say now, without reservation, that the group that opposes the Guardians had nothing to do with your sister’s disappearance.”

“How can you be sure?” Mulder asked.

“I am,” Skinner said flatly. “I just am.”

Mulder returned to his seat. “I don’t know if I can believe you, Walter.”

“Look, Mulder…Fox…just as I belong to the FBI and the Guardians, there are those that belong to other organizations, other… groups…as well as belonging to them.” He paused, and then added, “The smoker is one of them. He moves in…several circles. It’s never as easy as ‘us versus them.’ It never has.”

“So you’re saying that the group…one of the groups…had nothing to do with Samantha. But the Smoker might have.”

Skinner said nothing. “He’s very…obtuse on that matter, Agent Mulder.”

“Oh, I would imagine so,” Mulder said dryly. “I would imagine so.”

“What you have to understand…what would help you understand, is that there are members inside the Guardians that don’t believe in everything the group stands for, that don’t believe in everything we are supposed to believe; the think that some conflict is good, that some conflict is cleansing. It helps in the process of rebirth. And just as there are those that think this way inside the Guardians, there are those that feel the same way about the other organizations, the other groups. And…what this translates to is that there are unofficial channels between the groups themselves. Channels that are kept purposely open so that when…duties, operations, interests…spheres of influence overlap, that communication can exist between the groups. Messages can be sent and received.”

“What kind of messages?” Mulder asked, but Scully already knew.

“Me, for one,” she said softly.

Skinner nodded at her, too tired to answer.

“What?”

“My…disappearance. My…abduction.”

“What?” Mulder asked.

“She’s right.”

“What is she right about?”

“Scully was…returned by the Smoker.”

Mulder was out of his seat again, moving towards Skinner, death in his eyes.

“Hold it!” Skinner said, holding up a hand. “I never said the Smoker took Scully. Truth is…I don’t know for sure who took her, or why, or where she was kept.”

“What do you know then?” Mulder demanded.

Skinner’s face twisted into half a smile and half a grimace. “I know,” he said softly, quietly, “that I told the Smoker that keeping Scully away from you was turning you into a dangerous instrument. That if Scully were to vanish forever that there would be no way that I could control you, no way of preventing you from going all the way. From doing whatever it took to destroy them. All of them.”

Scully felt the hot sting of tears behind her eyes and struggled to control herself.

“I did what was necessary to get her back.” He stopped and then said each word, slowly, carefully. “I. Got. Her. Back. For. You.”

“What do you mean, ‘for me’?” Mulder asked.

“I wont’ bother answering that,” Skinner said dismissivly. “Seeing you two curled up in each other’s arms this morning more than answers that particular question.”

Scully walked over to Skinner, her approach fearful, hesitant. Slowly, she reached up a hand to stroke his face. Leaning up on her toes, she kissed him softly on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you for…bringing me back. Back to…him.”

“Agent Scully…” Skinner sighed.

“Just say ‘You’re welcome’,” Scully said.

“You’re welcome,” Skinner said.

“Although I don’t necessarily agree with the fact that you brought me back for him,” she said.

“No, of course not,” Skinner amended. “I brought you back because it was the right thing to do. Controlling Mulder was just a side benefit.”

“Wait a minute…controlling me?” Mulder asked.

“Yes, Mulder…controlling you,” Scully said, turning to face her partner. “Ever hear the parable about the two bulls?”

“No.”

Skinner laughed. He’d heard it.

“Two bulls, a papa bull and a sonny bull are sitting on a bluff overlooking a meadow full of cows. ‘Let’s run down there and fuck one of those cows!’ the son says. ‘No, son, let’s walk down there and fuck ‘em all.’”

Mulder frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Mulder,” Scully said, love in her voice, “You’re like the young bull. You only care about what’s right in front of you. You care about with an intensity that’s…scary. Passionate. It’s one of the things I love about you. But the fact remains that you give very little thought to the big picture, the end result. You think you can just go through the members of what you call the Consortium one by one, chewing each one up and spitting him out before moving onto the next one. You have to learn to slow down, think about the whole thing, the Big Picture…and make your plans accordingly. Only then can you fuck all of them.”

Scully’s words stung, mostly because Mulder knew she was right.

“Don’t you see?” she added. “That’s Graves’ advantage. He’s waited almost twenty years to pull this operation off. He’s carefully cultivated his operatives, made sure through whatever means he has at his disposal that they are selected for and assigned to sensitive positions, that they’re all in place when he needs them.” Scully paused. “We have to do the same thing. Once this operation is over…we need to take a step back and look at the Big Picture. With Walter’s help…with the Guardian’s help… we can finally get enough pieces of the puzzle, make our plans, and bring these bastards down once and for all.”

Mulder nodded. It made sense. And then he realized something, a thought that had never occurred to him, a thought that was so foreign, so alien to his way of thinking that it made his heart physically skip a beat. I’m not alone, he thought. I have Scully. Now I have Skinner. I have the Guys at the Gunmen. I’ve done it; I’ve created a team.

“Just answer me one last question,” Mulder pleaded.

“If I can, I will,” Skinner said.

“Do you have any idea of what happened to my sister?”

Skinner didn’t hesitate. “None.”

“Do you think….she’s alive?”

Skinner knew he was on dangerous ground. “To be honest, Mulder…I don’t think it’s likely…but I do think it’s possible.”

“Do you think the Smoker knows?”

“If anyone does…he does.”

“Is the Smoker involved with Graves?”

“No.” Skinner paused. “He’s actually working with us on this one.”

“WHAT?”

“His group…one of the groups he belongs to…is also concerned about Graves. They are also looking for him, looking to stop this little party before it starts.”

“Whatever for?” Mulder asked.

“Power,” Scully answered. Skinner nodded; she understood.

“I don’t-”

“Don’t you see, Mulder? The consortium, or whatever you’re calling it this week…they depend on the current power structure remaining intact. They derive their power through association with those that are elected and appointed into it. If the current government goes away…they’d have to start over again. From scratch.”

Mulder sighed. “Great. I have the chance to bring these assholes down once and for all, and I have to help keep them in power!”

Skinner nodded wisely. “Now you are beginning to see the contradictions of being a member of the Guardians. There is a definite right and wrong, Mulder. But there are also…other questions, other…issues that need to be addressed whenever you make a decision.”

“You make it sound as if I’m a Guardian.”

Skinner paused, a smile on his face. “You are.”

“Excuse me?” Mulder asked.

“Oh, I could say something trite and empty about how you’ll probably be asked to join once this mess is over, but that would be a lie.”

“A lie?” Mulder asked, fear in his voice.

“A lie?” Scully echoed.

“Yes, Mulder, Scully…a lie. You see, there is more than one code phrase. And not all Guardians are even aware they are one.”

“What-” Scully started.

“Oh no…” Mulder moaned. “No, no, no, NO!”

“Yes,” Skinner said softly.

“What?” Scully asked her partner.

“Don’t you see? My therapy! Your disappearance!”

“I still don’t-” Scully started to say.

And then Skinner spoke. “The art of putting the right men in the right places is first in the science of government,” he said softly.

And, in unison, Scully and Mulder both answered. “But that of finding places for the discontented is the most difficult.”

“Oh my-” Scully started.

“God.” Mulder finished.

“Post-hypnotic suggestions,” Skinner confirmed.

“How long have you-” Scully asked.

“How did you-” Mulder asked at the same time.

“Is it really important?” Skinner asked.

Scully began pacing. “This changes everything…” she started. “Everything! Do you understand? EVERYTHING!”

“No,” Skinner said softly. “It doesn’t.”

“How COULD you?” she demanded. “How long have you known?”

“About you, Scully? Since you were returned.”

“How about me?” Mulder asked.

“Since I became your boss.”

“Why…now?” Mulder finally asked.

“Because it’s time, Mulder. It’s time for you to stop running around the country investigating crop circles and devil worship and start doing what you were meant to do. What you have been destined to do.”

“And that is…?”

“You know. You don’t know you know…but you do.”

“I feel like the last three years have been a lie,” Scully said.

“No!” Skinner said. “There has been no attempt to…post any suggestions inside you that would cause you two to do anything that you wouldn’t normally do. All that was done…all that was done was… you were…challenged. You were…investigated, I guess. You were probed to see if you were made of the stuff that the Guardians need.”

“Wait a minute!” Scully said. “Are you saying that the Guardians had something to do with my…my…”

“No. Nothing. We had a lot to do with your return, though, and when the Smoker gave you back to us, we took another day or two to find out…to do the work. Then you were returned.”

“This is insane,” Scully said. “You’re…screwing with people’s lives…with their minds!”

“As I said,” Skinner patiently pointed out, “…all that happened was that the code phrase was implanted in your subconscious. That when someone said the first part of the phrase, you would respond with the second. That you would realize that I was telling the truth. That’s all that happened.”

Skinner turned to face Mulder. “And you’ll be happy to know that we discovered that Scully had been sent to spy on you, but it took her all of about ten minutes to discard that mission and come over to your side.”

“What-?” Mulder asked.

Skinner turned to face Scully. “You want to tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“I guess you haven’t realized it yourself, then,” Skinner said softly.

“Realized what?”

Skinner laughed. “Under hypnosis…Scully admitted to falling in love with you practically the moment she met you.”

Scully blushed deeply. “I really don’t think that this is-”

“No, no,” Mulder interrupted. “Tell me more.”

Skinner frowned. “Don’t be flattered, Mulder. You revealed the same thing, that you had fallen for her practically the moment she walked into your office.”

Now it was Mulder’s turn to blush.

“I see,” Scully said.

“Don’t you two see what this means? You are destined to be together. As man and woman, as partners, as friends, hell…one day, I’m sure, as husband and wife. And the Guardians saw the potential in the both of you. They saw that, together, you would be the most valuable, most…dedicated agents we could ever hope for.”

Skinner held out his hands. “Join us. Part of the deal is that you have to accept of your own free will. You’ve said the implanted phrase. You know that I’m telling the truth. Join us.”

Scully turned to Mulder, shooting him a warning look. “We need to think about it,” she said.

“I see,” Skinner replied, dropping his arms.

“When this is all over,” Scully promised, “We’ll talk about it. But we have to get through the next forty-eight hours alive and intact. Once that’s over…we’ll see.”

Mulder nodded, agreeing with his partner.

“We’ll see,” he said.

“Very well,” Skinner allowed. “Now…what say we get the hell out of here, find the rest of our team and come up with a plan of action.”

“We’re going to need all the help we can get,” Mulder said.

“What-?” Scully started to ask.

“Last night…the info Frohike gave us. I’ve narrowed the potential locations of the CBX down to three. Pave Creek, Montana; Lindsborg, Kansas; and Jacksonville, Florida.”

“There’s no way we can cover all three in 48 hours!” Scully argued.

“Yes,” Mulder said. “We can. But we’ll have to split up.” He hesitated. “I don’t trust Stone or Ebert,” he said to Skinner. “I think we should each take one. I’ll take Stone, you take King, and Skinner and Ebert will be the third team.”

“No,” Scully said softly. “Two women…I hate to admit it, but… and King’s not trained as an agent. If it were two female FBI agents, we might stand a chance…”

“Ok, I’ll take King, you take Ebert, and Stone and Skinner can…”

“No,” Scully said softly again, seeing the look on Skinner’s face. “There’s only one chance to do this the right way, Mulder. You and King. Skinner and Ebert. Me and Stone.”

“No. No way,” Mulder said.

“Yes. Yes way.”

“Why?”

“Because when you said for Skinner to go with Stone…I saw the look on his face. And there’s no way I can let you and Stone go out together. I’m the only one that can handle him.” She paused. “I’ve proven that. Twice.”

Skinner spoke, his Command Voice coming through. “Ok, it’s settled. Scully and Stone will go to Montana. Mulder and King will go to Lindsborg. Ebert and I will go to Jax.”

Mulder glanced at his partner. “Are you sure, Scully?”

“As sure as I am that I love you.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 26/38

“So then, it’s settled,” Skinner said. “Ebert and I will go to Jacksonville, Mulder and King to Lindsborg, and Scully and Stone will go to Pave Creek.” He glanced at his two agents. “We’re all agreed?”

Mulder and Scully, gazes locked, nodded slowly.

“Ok, what else is there?” Skinner asked.

Scully turned to her superior. “Sir?”

“Scully, I’ve been hearing…things. Reports about your actions during this investigation.”

Scully crossed her arms. “Such as?”

Skinner gritted his teeth; he hated doing this, but it was a requirement of the job. She had no idea how close she’d come to being pulled off the case, censured, transferred and ultimately terminated.

“Such as your…interrogation of the Roche woman. She had a great deal to tell the US Attorney in Washington. Such as your… interrogation of Ebert. You are skating on awfully thin ice, Agent Scully, I hope you’re aware of that.”

“More than aware, sir,” Scully said, biting each word off. “I hope you are equally aware of the importance of this case to me, both personally and professionally.”

Skinner paused in his diatribe. “Yes, I was sorry to hear about the loss of Admiral Watts. He was a fine man.”

“He was a traitor!” Scully screamed, taking a step towards Skinner. “He sold out his country, the Navy, even his friendship with my father!”

“I’m confused, Agent Scully,” Skinner admitted. “You said this case has personal implications for you. If there’s no love lost between you and Admiral Watts, I fail to see the personal nature.”

Scully sighed, dropping her arms to her side. “You just don’t get it? You’re as thick as Mulder sometimes.” She turned to walk back to the couch and then realized what she had said. Turning back to face Skinner, her face reddening, Scully stammered, “Uh, sir…I didn’t mean-”

“Finish your thought, Agent Scully. It’s true; sometimes I don’t see the entire picture of an investigation when I’m stuck behind my desk in Washington. But I’m here now in the field with the both of you. Why don’t you…educate me as to my shortcomings as an investigative supervisor?”

His voice was soft, devoid of reproach, but Scully could hear it just the same. “I’m sorry, Walter,” she said, using his first name to make it clear to him how sincere she was. “I spoke without thinking. This case has…been very straining.”

“I would assume,” Skinner said dryly. “Why don’t you explain to me exactly why this case is bothering you so much.” He paused. “Aside from the obvious, I mean.”

Scully plopped down on the couch. “Mulder, would you mind making some coffee?” she asked.

Mulder nodded and departed for the kitchen.

Scully waited until he was out of earshot before continuing. “Sir, I know what you saw this morning…in the bedroom-”

“Scully, I’m aware of your feelings for Mulder and his for you. As I said, it’s been something I’ve been aware of for a long time now.”

“It’s not just the feelings, sir…it’s all the other stuff that goes with it. God knows I love the guy…as you said, I’ve loved him for years. It’s…everything. It’s a friend of my father’s turning his back on his sworn duty…it’s finding out about these…Guardians… it’s having to do and say things that I don’t do and say in order to stop this madman Graves.”

Skinner nodded. “I’m beginning to see your point, Scully.”

Mulder stuck his head in the door. “Instant OK?”

“Fine, Mulder,” Scully said tiredly. After he’d gone, she continued. “And another thing…I’m not sure how well Mulder and I are going to fare after this mess is over.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sir, can I speak freely?”

Skinner took the seat across from the couch. “I think that under the circumstances, you should feel free to say anything that comes to mind, Agent Scully…Dana.”

Scully smiled at her boss. “Are you going to split us up? When this is all over, I mean?”

Skinner sat back, a hand going to his chin. “No,” he finally said. “Although that’s a conditional no, Scully.”

“On what conditions does that ‘no’ depend?”

“On the condition that you confine your relationship to off hours. This case aside, I don’t expect to be explaining to my own superiors the reasons that your hotel room bills have suddenly shrunk by fifty percent and why there is a sudden increase in room-service orders of champagne and strawberries.”

Scully blushed, first at his words, then at his implications, and finally at the mental image he evoked. “Sir, I can assure you-”

“Scully…I was kidding about the room service. What I mean is that I expect you two to be discrete. To realize that you are in a very special position inside the Bureau. As a Guardian, I have the ability to protect you, and your situation…to an extent. You and Mulder are… elite. The best of the best. If the FBI were a military unit, agents like Crawford and Douglas would be the infantry, the grunts. You and Mulder are…like the Special Forces, the SEALs. Elite.”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted,” Scully said lightly.

“Flattered. Trust me; I worked with some of the best in that particular nasty business.”

Scully nodded. Mulder reappeared from the kitchen, holding two cups. “Can I come in?” he asked.

Skinner and Scully exchanged a guilty look. “Of course, Mulder,” she said softly. “Why would you think otherwise?”

“Small house,” Mulder said. “Sound carries.”

Scully felt the blush creeping back into her face. “Sorry,” she said softly.

“Think it’s time for me to find some cream or milk,” Skinner said, standing and exiting the living room.

There was a very long silence between the partners. Mulder finally broke it. “Sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

He shrugged. “For not being Mr. Right. For being Mr. Right Now.”

Scully sighed. “Mulder, one of your less endearing traits is to take every single thing I say at face value and not hear the truth around the edges. I told Skinner that I love you, and I do. But you have to be honest, you have to be realistic. This relationship is going to cause problems. We both know that; that, piled on top of all the other CRAP I’ve had to deal with in the last few days has kinda stretched me to the limit. When this is all over, we’ll take some vacation time and go somewhere and just…be, ok?”

“Ok,” Mulder said quietly. “But, if you ever change your mind…about us, please be honest with me.”

She spun on him, fire in her eyes. “What have I ever done that would make you even think that I would ever be less than honest with you?”

“N-nothing,” he said.

“Well?”

“Sorry. Sorry I made it seem like-”

“Like you don’t trust me?”

“I do! Scully, I trust only you.”

She stood. “Then start acting like it, dammit!” Striding angrily from the room, she left Mulder sitting on the couch.

***

Thirty minutes later

The sound of the trio of Stone, King and Ebert returning from breakfast brought Mulder out of his funk. Scully hadn’t returned from the kitchen, and God only knew what she was talking to Skinner about in there.

“What’s up?” Stone asked.

“We have our assignments,” Mulder said dryly.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I think AD Skinner should be the one to give them out; I was outranked.”

Stone grinned. That meant that he was going with Scully.

Skinner re-entered the living room, joined by Scully. She moved to the couch and sat down next to Mulder, purposefully reaching out and taking his hand in her own. He looked at her in surprise but said nothing, not wanting to disturb her obvious change of heart.

“All right, people, here’s what we have.” Quickly, Skinner outlined the general plan. “So, then, we should probably plan to move out in the next hour or so. We have a lot of ground to cover, and very little time to do it. Questions?”

“Transportation. Weapons. Cash. Clothes. Communication. Intelligence,” Stone said, ticking each off on a finger.

Skinner grimaced. “Good point. As for the first, we can use the Navy’s air fleet; Karn assured that of me before I left Pax. All we have to do is call him, and transportation is taken care of.”

Stone nodded. “That’s ok for the other two, but I prefer to fly myself. I’ll rent a jet at SAN.”

Skinner nodded. “Fine. Scully, Mulder, call Karn and arrange transportation.”

Scully nodded. She’d started taking notes on her laptop.

“Uh-” King interjected. “I also happen to be a multi-engine jet pilot.”

Stone glanced at her, surprise written all over her face.

“Not military planes,” she said quickly. “Commercial. I’m rated and checked on the Lear and the GulfStream III. If we can rent a plane, I can fly Mulder and myself to Kansas.”

“Fine,” Skinner said. “That’ll help us keep a lower cover. I can use Karn’s plane, Scully and Stone can use his. Transportation is covered.” He paused. “Weapons,” Skinner said next. “The three FBI agents are all armed-” he started.

“Those little popguns aren’t going to do dick against Graves,” Stone said, “but that’s OK. I got that covered.”

“Covered?” Mulder asked.

“C’mon,” Stone said. “We should all go.” He stood, leading the other five down to the basement. It was tastefully finished, and looked like any rec room in a million suburban homes. Except for the six-foot high bank-quality vault mounted against one wall. “Triple redundancy security,” he said, pointing to the bank of electronics mounted to the left of the door.

“Fingerprint check,” he said, touching his thumb against a recessed pad. A small LED turned from red to green with a light beep!

“Retina scan,” he continued, lowering his face to a rubber eyepiece.

“Confirmed,” a computer-synthesized voice said.

“And finally, a numeric entry code.” There was a twelve-key numeric keypad mounted above the retinal scanner, and he punched an elaborate sixteen-digit code in.

“Access granted,” the voice said.

“Where did you get-?” Scully asked.

“Guardians had it built for me when I got this mission,” Stone explained.

“That’s another thing,” Mulder suddenly said. “Why can’t we call the rest of the Guardians? Get some backup, as it were.”

Skinner and Stone both shook their head. “We’re breaking the rules by working together,” Skinner said, jerking a thumb towards Stone.

“That’s nuts!” Mulder said.

“Be that as it may, the rules do make sense in another context. The Guardians have full faith in Commander Stone to execute this mission. With you, Scully, Ebert, King and myself helping, of course. They’re not about to reveal their position or risk exposing the rest of the network on this little pisstant Graves.”

“A little pissant that can decimate Washington and the leadership of this government with the push of a button,” Scully pointed out.

“Whatsamatter, Scully?” King teased. “Afraid of a little challenge?”

Scully shrugged. “I’ll be honest; the six of us against Graves and God only knows how many of his operatives? I don’t like the odds very much. Too uneven.”

“Well,” Stone said, swinging the door to the vault open. “Let’s even those odds a little.”

Together, the six entered the vault. The fact that there was enough room for all of them, with room to spare, astounded Scully. Not to mention what was in the vault: An arsenal. And not just weapons, although there were more than enough to go around. There were shelves and shelves filled with the materials they would need to wage this private little war: Plastique in packed 10-pound bundles; electronic detonators, remote-controlled radio and mechanical versions; black cotton ripstop BDUs; flashlights; waterproof body radios with lip mikes and earpieces; tactical knives of all shapes and sizes, ranging from an Emerson CQB-6 titanium-hulled eviscerator to a 12-inch survival knife that looked like it had been stolen from the set of a “Rambo” movie; load-bearing assault vests; ballistic body armor; surveillance gear of all different shapes and descriptions.

“My God,” Mulder whispered.

“Welcome to Stone’s Army/Navy store,” he said proudly. “One-stop shopping for arming the team that will take down the pissant.”

“Very nice,” Skinner said, nodding.

“I’ll say,” Scully grinned, reaching for a Heckler & Koch 9mm MP5- PDW.

“Careful with that-” Stone started to say.

Scully glanced at him disdainfully. She turned the short assault weapon over in her hands, sliding the bolt back to the locked-open position and then peering down the barrel. She could see the fine sheen of oil and knew that it had been kept well-maintained. Reaching for a magazine of what looked to be Winchester Black Talon 9mm rounds, she slapped it home and turned the weapon back around in her hands, slapping the bolt closed and thumbing the safety on all in one single swift motion.

“I’ve used one before,” she said softly.

Stone said nothing, visibly impressed. “Ok,” Skinner said. “Time to get packed. Stone, start giving out clothes and weapons. We’ll divide the other stuff up later.”

“Gotcha,” Stone said, looking at Maggie. “So, what’re you? A six?”

“Eight,” she said softly.

“Eight…no problem. Here…I think this will fit.”

“Basic black?” Maggie teased.

“No pearls,” Stone added.

***

Forty Minutes Later

“We look like the FBI Militia!” Scully said, smiling.

“Yes, well, remember that when we’re out in the world, unless we’re operating at night or in a remote location, we should probably keep the assault vests off, and so forth…” Skinner said, looking at his rag-tag team of commandos.

Mulder was wearing a tight black T-shirt, six-pocket cotton ripstop BDU’s and metal-toed, heavy-soled boots. His Bureau-issue SIG Sauer hung from a thigh-mounted nylon tactical assault holster. He’d added two other weapons to his collection: A MP5-PDW like Scully’s and a Winchester Witness Protection Shotgun, thirteen inches of room-clearing, badguy-sweeping death; short enough to hide under a trenchcoat, the WPS was indeed an evil weapon.

“Can I keep this?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” Skinner remarked.

He turned to Scully. “That too much to carry?” he asked.

Scully was dressed much the same way Mulder was, but she had exchanged the T-shirt for a black cotton ribbed tank-top. She wore a Bianchi shoulder rig, into which she’d slid a H&K USP .45 semiauto pistol; the huge gun looked out of place on her tiny frame, but Skinner had no doubt that she could use it. Her Bureau-issue SIG was in a tactical thigh-mounted nylon holster. She’d kept the MP5 and had added to that the silenced .22 Ruger she’d taken off of Ebert.

Stone was dressed exactly like Mulder was, but he carried a Stoner SMG in .223 instead of the H&K assault weapon. He had two Colt Officer’s pistols swinging under his arms in Galcom side-by-side shoulder rigs. His belt was dotted by extra magazine pouches, all of them full of .45 clips loaded with MagSafe frangible ammunition. He had a Winchester standard Police-issue assault shotgun, complete with infrared site mounted across his back.

King had opted for what Skinner was beginning to call “The Scully Look,” but had opted out of the assault weapons, choosing to arm herself with two Glock 9mm pistols instead. Ebert had tried to go as macho as possible; he wore not one but two knives, two pistols, a PDW and the Witness Protection Shotgun.

For his part, Skinner remained with his Bureau-issue SIG and an extra shotgun.

“Ok, Radios and boom-boom next,” Stone said, distributing the items evenly. “Aside from that, all we need now are brains, guts, and the will to use them both.”

The six exchanged grim glances, each of them saying a silent prayer to whatever God they believed in to deliver them from this nightmare of an assignment.

“Synch time,” Skinner said. They all checked their watches.

“Ok…one last thing,” Stone said, reaching into a drawer. He returned with six small cellular phones.

“We already-”

“Not like these,” Stone interrupted. “These are secure, scrambled, satellite units. These never go out of range, and they can’t be tapped. Each one is programmed with the other’s numbers. We can stay in constant communication.”

“Can they be used as regular phones?” Scully asked.

“Sure…if it doesn’t detect the encryption signal, it just reverts. But, it never goes out of range, like I said.”

“Well,” Skinner said, “This is it.” The six people in the vault fell silent, each of them staring off in a different direction.

“Good luck,” Skinner finally said, shaking hands with Scully and Mulder, King and Stone. “Keep in touch.”

Skinner left to return upstairs.

Ebert and King exchanged a glance and then left, followed shortly by Stone. They had all seemed to realize that Scully and Mulder would want a moment alone.

Mulder reached down and found his load-bearing vest and shrugged into it. “Well, as the man said…I guess this is it.”

“Yeah,” Scully said softly.

They fell silent again.

“Listen-” they both said at the same time.

Laughing, Mulder waved his hand. “You first.”

“No, go ahead.”

“I insist.”

“No, really.”

“Scully!”

“Fine,” she said, turning and leaning into his arms. “Listen to me, you arrogant, mule-headed, genius son-of-a-bitch…don’t do anything dumb, ok? It’s taken us so damn long to get this far, I don’t want to lose you. Whatever you do…watch your back.” She paused, and then added, “Even if Washington DC has to go up in smoke, Mulder…don’t get yourself killed.”

“Me? Killed? I have nine lives, Scully. Just like a cat.”

She laughed. “You are also the most curious man I have ever met, and you know what killed the cat, Mulder.”

“Yeah…” They fell silent. “Hey, Scully…you too, ok? Watch your ass. Especially around Stone. I still don’t trust him.”

She nodded. “Me either. But we’re finally on the mission, the real mission. I think he’ll be fine, as long as he feels he’s making some progress towards getting Graves. And in either case, I can take care of him.”

Mulder sighed. “I love you,” he finally said.

“Love you,” she said quickly, leaning up and kissing him softly on the lips. “Now lets go get this asshole.”

Together, they left the vault.

***

Mulder and King had departed for the San Diego airport. Likewise, Skinner and Ebert had departed for Miramar.

“Well, darling,” Stone said to Scully, “Looks like it’s time for us to be heading out.”

“Don’t call me that,” Scully said.

“What? Darling?”

“Yes. I’m not your darling. For this mission, I’m your partner. Try to remember that.”

“Just one of the guys, huh?” Stone asked.

“If that helps you get through this, sure.”

Stone put the BMW into gear and reversed out of his driveway. “In that case, can I tell you about this sexy redhead I want to fuck?”

Scully sighed. “You’re such a pig, Stone.”

“Oink, oink,” he said, totally remorseless.

***

San Diego Airport
Aboard GulfStream III Tail Number N669831

“Ready?” Maggie asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Mulder said gamely. He was seated in the right- hand co-pilots seat, busy trying to keep his hands and feet as far away from any of the flight controls as he could.

“Ever flown up front?” King asked.

“Never.”

“Ok, hold on, this is going to be cool,” she said. Hitting the transmit switch for the radio, she spoke into her headset. “San Diego Tower, this is November six six niner, requesting taxi and takeoff from the Butler ramp.”

A moment later the distracted voice of the ground controller came back. “Six Six Niner, take taxiway six alpha to Runway 12 November. You are number three for takeoff.”

“Roger,” Maggie said, applying throttle and releasing the brakes. She taxied the plane well, Mulder thought. It was almost like driving around in a really complicated car.

Except your car isn’t supposed to leave the ground, his mind remarked.

Soon they were on the threshold to the runway, waiting for an American 737. The huge jet rumbled and shot down the runway, gaining speed and then gently gliding into the air.

“We’re next,” Maggie said, and then into the radio, “San Diego Tower, November Six Six Niner is rolling at thirty two past the hour.”

Maggie pushed the throttles all the way forward, and then after a moment, released the brakes. The small business jet exploded down the runway.

Maggie watched the gauges and dials, waiting for her transient speed. At one-hundred and sixty knots, she pulled back gently on the yoke and the small plane almost leapt into the air.

“Up, up, into the wild blue yonder!” she sang.

“That’s the Air Force song!” Mulder pointed out.

“Anchors Aweigh seemed a bit inappropriate,” she remarked.

“Whatever.”

***

Pacifica Airport

“Once we’re airborne, you should try and get some sleep,” Stone said. Scully had insisted in riding in the cabin, not wanting to be confined with Stone in the cockpit for the four-hour flight to Billings Municipal Airport.

“We’ll see,” she hedged. Scully doubted she’d be able to relax enough around Stone to actually fall asleep.

“Get ready, we’re next,” Stone said. “Please return tray tables to their upright and locked position.”

“You’re hilarious,” Scully called forward.

As Stone piloted the small Lear down the runway, adding power and pulling back on the stick, he called back, “Hey, Scully… ever wonder why they call it a COCKpit?”

“Asshole,” she muttered. Raising her voice so he could hear it over the screaming whine of the three jet engines, she called, “Because there’s a DICK driving?”

“Oooh, Scully…good one!”

****

Naval Air Station Miramar

“Gotta pee,” Ebert said, pointing at the men’s room door.

“Make it fast,” Skinner growled. “We take off in ten minutes.”

Ebert nodded and dropped his bags, making his way into the men’s room, searching for and finding an empty stall. Locking himself inside, he removed the satellite cellular phone Stone had given him and quickly dialed.

“Hello?”

“They fell for it,” he said softly.

“All of it?”

“All of it. When that bitch Scully put a gun to my head, I started crying like a baby. I begged her not to kill me. They think I’ve deserted you and switched sides.”

“Perfect,” Danny Graves said. “What’s the plan?”

“Scully and Stone are going to Montana. Mulder and King to Kansas. Skinner and I are going to Jacksonville.”

“Let me think…” Graves said. He was silent for so long that Ebert was afraid that Skinner was going to grow suspicious and come investigating.

“Graves?” Ebert whispered.

“Give me a minute, damn you! I had no idea they would be able to put the Real Estate records together so quickly. I underestimated them again, dammit!”

“Where’s the CBX?” Ebert asked.

“Montana. Along with the rest of the material. If Scully and Stone get there before I do…” Graves didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Kill Skinner. At your first opportunity. Then fly to Kansas and kill Mulder and King.” Graves paused. “I’ll take care of Stone and that Scully woman myself.”

“Got it,” Ebert said, ending the call.

At that moment the door to the men’s room crashed open. “You finished in here?” Skinner yelled.

“On my way!” Ebert said, tucking the phone back into his pocket. He counted to three and then exited the stall, making as if he were zipping his pants.

“Oh, that felt good,” he moaned, stopping to wash his hands. Skinner waited, standing in the doorway, saying nothing.

“Let’s go,” he finally said, turning his back on Graves and moving towards the tarmac exit.

As he walked, Skinner considered his options. Ebert might have been a Captain in the US Navy, but as far as being an operator went, he sucked.

Stupid asshole didn’t even flush to try and cover his call, Skinner thought.

Ebert would have to be watched.

And then dealt with.

***

Offices of the Lone Gunmen

“There!” Frohike said, pointing at the screen. “It happened again!”

Langley looked over his friend’s shoulder and nodded. “Concur,” he said softly. “Call Mulder.”

***

Aboard GulfStream III Tail Number N669831
Altitude: 12,000
Climb Rate : 300 feet per minute

Mulder’s ringing phone startled him badly. “What’s that?” King asked.

“My phone!”

“Well, turn it off! It’ll screw with the navigation avionics!”

Mulder found his phone and punched SND. “Whoever this is, I can’t talk!” he said.

“Mulder, wait!” Frohike.

“What?”

“That phone…the phone that called your cell in the motel room last night.”

“What about it?”

“Mulder!” King said, a warning tone in her voice.

“What?”

“Now!”

“Just a minute! This is a lead…Frohike…what about it?”

“Another call was made to that phone from San Diego only moments ago. According to the roam cell data, it started off as a satellite call, and the bounced down to a earth-station microwave transmitter.”

“Did you say satellite?”

“Yes…”

“Can you tell from where in San Diego?”

“With some….” Frohike faded out and then in again. “…-ntal work. It’ll take…”

“Frohike? If you can hear me, DO IT! Trace that call back! I need to know where it came from!”

Frohike was gone.

Mulder turned to face King. “Will the satphone work?”

“Not at altitude. You’ll have to wait until we land, big guy.”

“Shit!”

“What?”

“I think we should…” He stopped. Should what? his mind asked. You have no idea what was said on that phone call.

Ok, he thought. What do I think, what do I know, what can I prove?

I don’t think it was Stone, for obvious reasons. Strange as he may be, I know he’s not working for Graves. That would go against everything he’s said…

But not everything he’s done, Mulder mentally corrected himself. There was the chance that the call had been made by Stone. He knew it hadn’t been made by Scully or Skinner. Or Maggie. He’d been with Maggie since they’d left Dana Point; there was no way she could have made the call.

I trust Scully and Skinner and I’ve been with Maggie. That leaves Ebert or Stone.

Ebert.

But that did mean the CBX was in Jacksonville?

No, not necessarily.

It could mean just about anything. All it did mean that was one member of the team, either Stone or Ebert, most likely Ebert, had been in contact with Graves. Or, it could be Stone.

Which meant that the two most important people in Mulder’s life were in danger.

“How fast can you get us to Kansas?” Mulder asked.

“Well…I can probably get us there in a little under two hours if I really push it.”

“Push it. Next question. Is there ANY kind of radio or telephone that I can use to contact someone on the ground?”

Maggie thought about it for a second. “We can see if any ham operators are monitoring the Guard frequency.”

“The what?”

Maggie sighed. “All aircraft, no matter what the manufacturer, if they fly anywhere in the world, have to have a radio capable of sending and receiving on a specific frequency, called the GUARD frequency. It’s the international…oh, how do I put this?” Maggie chewed her lip. “You watch Star Trek?”

“Of course.”

“Ok, remember whenever they want to open a communication channel? The use something called ‘hailing frequency?’”

“Yeah….so?”

“GUARD is like that; it’s the international aircraft hailing frequency. Sometimes, ham radio operators listen to it for fun. If you get someone on the MARS network,”

“Excuse me?”

“Military Assistance Radio Service; it’s a group of hams that can form a fifth column of communication services in times of disaster, things like that. When town get flooded or hurricane, and all the phone lines are down, the MARS operators can transmit phone calls and things like that. I don’t understand most of the technology, but I know it works.”

Mulder nodded, understanding. “Make it happen. I have to place a very important call.”

Maggie worked the radio, bringing up the GUARD frequency, and after about five minutes of trying, raised a MARS operator who was willing to use his radio as a phone-patch.

Mulder gave him the number.

A moment later, Frohike came over Mulder’s headset.

“Lone Gunmen-”

“Frohike, it’s Mulder. We’re on an open channel. I’m airborne. This is a…MARS operator?”

“Hello, sir,” the MARS radioman said.

“Mulder, are you insane?”

“Frohike, be quiet. Listen to me. Papa Bear and Goldilocks are in danger. Are you understanding what I’m telling you?”

There was a pause. “I think so.”

“Ok, starting in about an hour, I need you to start trying their cell phones. Keep calling until you get through or you hear from me. Don’t stop, no matter what. We’ve split up, but we have someone on the team that’s a traitor, and it’s either Goldilocks’ partner or Papa Bear’s. Are you reading me?”

“Loud and clear. What message should I send?”

Mulder thought about it. “For Goldilocks, send ‘Purity Control.’ For Papa Bear, send ‘Avatar.’ Got it?”

“Got it,” Frohike said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to clear this channel.”

“Clear,” Mulder said.

“Clear,” Frohike responded.

“Clear,” the MARS operator replied, and the call ended.

Mulder let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding.

“Ok, now what?” Maggie asked.

“Get us on the ground as quickly as possible. Do whatever you have to. FAA regulations don’t apply to us unless you hear different from me. Got it?”

“Got it,” Maggie said.

***

Aboard Lear Jet Tail N911243

“Lear November Niner One One, say again?”

Stone sighed. “Billings Tower, this is a Navy VC-20 with an O-5 with AAAA priority aboard. Requesting priority descend and landing instructions forthwith.”

“Uh…Lear Niner One One, is there someone we can call to verify this? This is a civilian airfield; we don’t normally recognize military priorities.”

Scully stuck her head in the cockpit. “What’s up?”

“Billings is fogged in. They’ve racked, stacked and packed the pattern. We could be up here for at least another hour.”

“Do we have fuel?” Scully asked, alarmed.

“Plenty. For at least another three hours; but that’s not the point, dammit!”

Scully held out her hand. “Let me try.”

Stone shrugged and handed her a spare headset.

“How do I-?” she asked.

He showed her the transmit button.

“Who am I-?”

“You’re talking to Billings Tower. You’re Lear November Niner One One.”

Scully nodded. “Billings Tower, this November Niner One One.”

“NOW who am I talking to?” the controller asked.

“This is Special Agent Dana Scully, Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are a US Government transport aircraft on a priority mission involving National Security. We have to get on the ground NOW, Billings.”

There was a long pause, and then a sigh came over the radio. “I ask again, is there someone I can call to verify your claim?”

Scully shouldered her way into the cockpit and dropped into the co-pilots’ seat. “Billings, please call the FBI Headquarters, Washington, DC. The number is in your phone book. And make the call quick.”

“And who should I ask for?”

Scully thought a moment. “Section Chief Blevins.” She read her badge and FBI ID number over the radio.

The response took less than ninety seconds.

“Lear November Niner One One, you are cleared to turn to heading zero one eight, descend to four thousand feet. You are cleared on a priority IFR landing on runway six six right. The ceiling is five hundred feet, winds are southwesterly at ten knots. Please watch for civilian aircraft transiting the area. Billings tower to all aircraft; please begin two minute turns at altitude until further notice.”

“That was quick,” Scully said over the intercom.

“Nice work,” Stone said, meaning it. Scully accepted the praise with a grim smile, removed the headset and headed back towards the cabin.

Stone thought about making a smart remark, but decided to hold his tongue.

They were at two thousand feet when Scully’s FBI cellphone rang.

“Scully,” she said.

“Frohike. I have a message for Goldilocks,” Frohike said.

Goldilocks? Scully thought.

“Fro-” she started to say.

“No names. The eater of the sour grapes left a message for you,” he said.

Sour grapes? Oh…Fox.

“Go ahead.”

“He said to tell you ‘Purity Control.’”

Scully felt the blood drain from her face. If Mulder had sent that message, it meant that something had gone dreadfully wrong.

“Did he say what it was regarding?”

“He said to give the same message to Papa Bear.”

Scully chewed her lip. Papa Bear had to be Skinner. What would cause Mulder to send a message to the both of them? Had he landed in Lindsborg and found the CBX so quickly?

“When did you talk to him?”

“Almost two hours ago, Goldilocks.”

“Understood. Have you contacted Papa Bear yet?”

“Negatory, Goldilocks.”

Scully grinned; Frohike really got into all this ‘code name’ stuff. He was probably having a ball. He probably didn’t even realize what a valuable function he was providing now, and had no concept of all the help he’d given over the last two or three days. Silently, Scully vowed to go to the Gunmen’s Liar and thank him in person.

“Understood, Aseop,” she said, giving Frohike a code name of his own. He’ll probably get it tattooed on his ass, she thought.

“What are your orders?” she asked.

“Keep trying to contact Papa Bear until I hear from the grape eater.”

“Got it. Continue with your mission,” she said, and disconnected.

“Who was that?” Stone asked.

“My mother,” Scully answered.

Stone glanced over his shoulder at her, disbelief written across his face.

“Whatever,” he said.

“How long until we land?” she asked.

“About five minutes.”

She nodded, and then started to think. Why had Mulder issued that alert? It was almost an ‘abort’ message. For sure it meant ‘danger,’ but what kind?

What kind of danger were they susceptible to?

Graves.

If Graves knew that they were coming, he could be there to meet them. And that would be bad. Very, very bad.

How could Graves have found out? Scully wondered.

Traitor.

Who?

Mulder and Skinner she trusted absolutely.

That left Stone, Ebert and King. King was probably out, otherwise Mulder wouldn’t have been able to send the message, or if he had, he would have sent another message, like ‘Krycek,’ or something like that.

So that left Ebert and Stone.

Scully wracked her memory, trying to remember if she’d let him out of her sight since leaving the house.

Yes, for about thirty seconds. Was that enough time to make a call and communicate all the information? Yes. Dial, say three words. “Montana, Kansas, Florida.” That would be all that Graves needed to have his operatives waiting for them.

Shit!

***

Aboard US Navy VC-20 N9662001

Skinner had pretended to sleep for the entire journey. He’d taken the time to study Ebert when the man hadn’t though he’d been watching. And with every passing moment, Skinner was convinced that Ebert was not who or what he claimed to be.

What had he done in that bathroom? Skinner wondered. Left a message for someone? Called someone?

Graves.

Skinner had an sudden thought. Ebert wasn’t an operator, as he’d already observed. The man was running scared, that much was for sure. But, if after all Ebert had been through over the last 24 hours, he was still working for Graves, that made him a fanatic, and that made him dangerous.

Skinner ‘woke’ slowly. Ebert saw him come awake and grimaced. “I have to pee,” he said again. Skinner ignored him, making as if he were stretching.

Ebert locked himself in the lavatory.

Skinner reached for his bags. He found what he was looking for in the outside zipper pocket. The satellite cellphone Stone has issued all of them.

He turned it on.

And pressed REDIAL.

The number flashed. A 808 area code. Hawaii.

Graves.

Shit.

The pilot opened the cockpit door and stuck his head out. “We’re about five minutes out, sir,” he said.

“Very well. Lieutenant, can you lock that lavatory door from this side?”

The pilot thought about it for a minute, the question obviously confusing him. “Yes, sir.”

“Do it. Quietly.”

The pilot moved to the lavatory door and did as he was told.

Twenty seconds after he returned to the cockpit, Skinner’s FBI phone rang.

“Skinner.”

“You don’t know me,” the voice said. “But I have a message from a sly red animal.”

Sly. Red.

Fox.

“Go ahead.”

“‘Avatar.’”

Mulder’s danger signal. Skinner grunted; somehow, Mulder had discovered Ebert’s duplicity. He shook his head; you had to give Mulder credit. The man was probably the best field agent Skinner had ever seen.

“Message received. Tell the sly red one that…”

“Your code name is Papa Bear,” the voice explained.

Skinner rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Of course,” he murmured. “Very well. Tell the sly red one that Papa Bear is aware of the problem and has taken steps to correct it.”

“Is that so?” Ebert’s voice said at the exact moment Skinner felt the cold, hard steel of a gun barrel pressing against the crown of his skull.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 27/38

“Your code name is Papa Bear,” the voice explained.

Skinner rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Of course,” he murmured. “Very well. Tell the sly red one that Papa Bear is aware of the problem and has taken steps to correct it.”

“Is that so?” Ebert’s voice said at the exact moment Skinner felt the cold, hard steel of a gun barrel pressing against the crown of his skull.

***

Skinner tensed.

“Hang it up,” Ebert hissed.

Moving slowly, Skinner reached down and thumbed the OFF switch.

“You won’t get away with this,” he said slowly, evenly, through gritted teeth. “My contact heard your words; he’ll tell the others. Even if you kill me, you won’t get away with it.” Skinner let a calculated amount of fear creep into his voice.

“It doesn’t matter of I die,” Ebert explained. “All that matters is that LIBERTY BELL go off without a hitch.”

Skinner felt his stomach roll at the man’s words.

“My wife is in Washington…” he started.

“Too bad for her,” Ebert sneered.

“Why are you doing this?” Skinner asked, playing for time.

Ebert laughed. “You’re so predictable, all of you. ‘Why are you doing this?’ You all think you’re in a movie or something. Ask questions with long answers; give yourself time to think of a way out. Let the bad guy, that’s me by the way, let the bad guy talk himself into a corner.” Ebert pressed harder, the barrel of the gun digging into Skinner’s scalp. “Well, Skinner my man, this isn’t a movie, and you’re not James Bond.”

Quicker than he had ever moved before, Skinner pounced.

He ducked under the barrel and stood, twisting from the hips. His right arm came across in a sweeping motion, catching Ebert under the chin. His arm dropped, and Skinner felt the man’s elbow slap into his palm. Lifting the arm to give him a target, Skinner stepped and twisted, crashing his left fist into Ebert’s rib cage. Skinner heard the satisfying crunch of at least two ribs giving, and Ebert’s breath left him in a whoosh.

Ebert dropped to his knees, his arm still outstretched. Quickly straddling the arm, Skinner jammed his thumb between the hammer and the frame of the pistol, rendering it, for the moment, inert.

Skinner’s other hand wrapped around Ebert’s from above, trapping it against the pistol, Ebert’s finger still sandwiched inside the trigger guard.

With a savage, bare-teeth grimace on his face, Skinner twisted Ebert’s wrist. The loud pop of the delicate, fragile bones in Ebert’s wrists snapping were music to Skinner’s ears.

“Auugh!” Ebert screamed, finally dropping the pistol. Skinner stepped over the arm again and pulled, flipping Ebert onto his back.

“You,” Skinner announced, “are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during all questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you by the government. Do you understand all these rights?”

“Y-yes,” Ebert whispered. “But I’ll never talk.”

Skinner grinned. Somehow, he doubted that.

“Lieutenant!” he called. The pilot stuck his head out of the cockpit door. Seeing the gun on the floor, and Ebert holding his wrist, the pilot put two and two together quickly.

“Sir?”

“How high are we?”

“Four thousand feet, sir,”

“How long until we land?”

Skinner grunted. He’d need only half that time. “Land this plane, Lieutenant. Call ahead. Tell the tower that I want to NIS agents to meet this plane with two large, burly SP’s.”

“Sir, yes sir!” the Lieutenant said, returning to the cockpit and locking the door behind him. He’d seen the look in Colonel Skinner’s face, and knew what was about to happen in the cabin was something that he wanted to be able to testify to at a court martial was something he’d never seen, never heard.

Skinner grinned down at his prisoner.

“What you fail to understand,” he said, “is that the Tomahawk missiles that Graves planes to use to deliver the CBX are still classified as nuclear devices, even if they have conventional or high explosive warheads.”

Ebert’s face showed his confusion.

Leaning close, Skinner explained it slowly, carefully. “They still fall under CNWDI statues, you pogue.”

“W-what? So?”

Skinner’s grin widened even more, and Ebert felt like he was looking into the face of Death itself.

He was.

“That means that the use of deadly force in the protection of those weapons…and anything associated with it…is not only permitted by Navy regulations…but encouraged.”

Ebert paled.

“W-what are you going to do?”

“You..are going to talk.”

“N-never!”

“Oh…I doubt that.”

Skinner moved to the door and quickly worked the controls.

“Don’t open it!” Ebert pleaded. “We’ll get sucked out!”

Skinner shook his head. Moron. They were at almost three thousand feet; the pressure had been more then equalized. The door flew open and the cabin was filled with the roar of rushing wind.

Walking back to Ebert, Skinner leaned down and grabbed the man by the shirt. “Talk, or you fly,” he screamed.

“N0!”

Dragging Ebert to the door, Skinner let him have a good look at the ground below. “TALK!”

“No!” Ebert screamed back. “NEVER!”

Ebert was convinced that Skinner was bluffing; there was no way that an Assistant Director of the FBI would throw a suspect out of a moving airplane. There were too many witnesses; the pilot, for one.

“You’ll never do it!” he said confidently.

“I resigned!” Skinner screamed, reading the man’s mind. “I’m not with the FBI anymore, asshole! I’m a Marine now, with a prisoner who has information about nuclear-classified weapons. I can throw you out of this plane and they’ll pin a medal on me.”

Skinner dragged Ebert to the edge. “Last chance. Talk.”

Ebert glanced over his shoulder and then back at Skinner. The man was reaching up, grabbing onto a pole that had been mounted lengthwise along the interior fuselage. With a start, Ebert realized that Skinner was preparing to kick him out of the window.

“Montana!” he screamed. “The CBX is in Montana!”

Skinner dropped from the pole and reached for Ebert. Ebert closed his eyes, sure that Skinner was going to push him.

Instead, Skinner wrapped his hand in Ebert’s shirt and pulled the man back inside, and then quickly shut the door.

Walking to the closed door of the cockpit, Skinner knocked sharply twice. “It’s Skinner! Open this door!”

A moment later, the door opened. “Sir?” the pilot asked.

“As soon as we land, request immediate refueling. How long will it take us to get to Billings, Montana?” he asked.

“Uh…Five, six hours.”

“No good,” Skinner said. “I’ll have to grab another ride. Let me know as soon as I can use a phone,” he said.

“You can use one now,” the pilot pointed out. “You just did.”

Skinner nodded. In the excitement, he’d forgotten.

Returning to the cabin, he fixed Ebert with a steely glance and reached for the satphone.

He dialed Mulder’s number.

***

Wichita, Kansas

“Mulder,” he said quickly.

“Skinner. I got your message. Ebert was the inside man.”

Mulder released a sigh. “Great. Did you get anything-”

“Montana. Get going. I’ll call Scully and Stone.”

Mulder turned the phone off and turned to his temporary partner. They were taxing towards the Butler Aviation ramp. “How soon can we refuel?”

Maggie sighed and turned to Mulder. “Where are we going?”

“Montana. Skinner turned Ebert. He was the mole. The CBX is in Montana.”

Maggie frowned. “How do we know Ebert was telling the truth?”

Mulder smiled. “If I know Skinner, he probably threatened to throw Ebert out of the plane.” He laughed. “If Skinner says the stuff is in Montana…it’s there.”

Maggie nodded and picked up the radio.

***

Billings, Montana

“Scully.”

“Agent Scully, this is Skinner. Ebert was a mole. The CBX is there in Montana. I am Enroute to your location; I’ll probably be hopping an F-14 or something faster than the VC-20.”

“Understood…should we wait for you, sir?”

“If possible. I think you and Stone should perform a recon of the target site, and then wait to be contacted by Mulder and King or myself.”

“Understood, sir,” Scully said, and rang off.

Turning to Stone, Scully said, “That was Skinner. The stuff is here in Montana.”

Stone’s eyes lit up. “I knew it!”

Scully sighed and shook her head. “Skinner wants us to wait for Mulder and King or him. He wants us to recon the area and then wait for assistance before attempting to take it.”

“Fuck that,” Stone said, his tone brooking no argument.

Scully nodded. She’d predicted as much.

***

Washington, DC

The room was filled with men who had made a life out of being invisible. They were the governing council of the Guardians, although they didn’t call themselves that.

They called themselves The Council.

“Give us an update,” the de facto leader said. All eyes in the room turned towards a single man seated at the end of a long conference table.

Through a haze of smoke, the man spoke.

“All is going according to plan.”

“I understood that our plan was to get the Mulder man and the Scully woman to Montana together,” the leader said softly.

“That was the plan,” the man agreed. He let out another lungful of air.

“What has gone wrong?”

“Another Guardian has taken command of the situation,” the man explained.

“Who?”

“Walter Skinner.”

The rest of the men in the room exchanged glances.

“I see,” said the leader. “This is most unusual.”

The smoking man just nodded.

“Two of us…together…that can cause problems. Skinner knows of things, of plans…operations…that the Stone man does not.”

The smoking man just nodded.

“What would you have me do? Reveal myself to them? Reveal our plans?”

The room was silent.

“I thought so,” the smoking man said. “Have I not served you well? Do you not trust me?”

“It is not a matter of trust,” another Guardian said, his voice quiet, intense in the dimly lit room. “It is a matter of…years of planning, of anticipating every possible move and countermove… of preparing for the day…”

“I know what we are preparing for,” the smoking man said, biting the words off. “Better than you. Lest you forget, kind sir, I have been part of this project since its inception.”

“We are aware of that, of course,” the leader said, trying to play peacemaker. “But you did not always play by our rules,” he pointed out.

The smoking man ground his cigarette out and lit another one almost immediately. “I am not playing,” he said softly.

“None of us are,” the leader said. “It was a figure of speech.”

“If we are to prepare for that eventful day, this… operation must continue, unabated, and uninterfered with. We must be sure. By now, Skinner will have told Mulder and Scully something… something about their individual roles in our plan.”

The leader shifted. “How much as Skinner been told?”

The smoking man exhaled another lungful of beautiful, relaxing smoke. “He has been told enough,” he said, his voice melodious.

“What has he been told?” the leader asked.

The smoking man pursed his lips. “He has been told of our need for Mulder, of our need for Scully. He has no idea how we know about them, how we’ve known for years about the both of them. He knows that they must remain together. That they must be partners for the next few years, that they must be…prepared for what is to come.”

There was an appreciable pause. “Does he know what is coming?”

The smoking man shook his head. “He has little idea. I’m sure that he suspects some of our…abilities, but he knows that he himself has many miles to go before he is asked to join the upper echelon of our organization.”

A ripple of relief spread through the room.

“Explain,” the leader instructed.

The smoking man sighed. “He has no idea of our ability to… predict the future, to turn a phrase.”

“No one but the people in this room are aware of our abilities in that…area, are they?”

“No,” the smoking man said. “I am the only person in the world aside from your group that is aware of…the project’s ultimate plan.”

“Not even Skinner?”

“Skinner is an instrument, nothing more. An instrument of control for our two angels.”

“Angels?”

“Disciples seemed a bit much,” the man explained. “Especially since they have yet to grasp their role in the salvation of our race.”

Glances were exchanged, eyebrows raised. No one, aside from the sixteen men in this room, and the lone, smoking man at the end of the table knew what was coming. No one could be told, ever, until that day arrived.

Not even the only two people on the face of the Earth that could save them from themselves.

“I have a question,” the newest member of the Council said.

The leader nodded, giving him the floor.

“When will they be told?”

“Told what? Of their unique position in the chain of events?”

“Yes.”

The smoking man considered this. “They will be told, of course, eventually. But we must be certain that they have been prepared. Remember what we have learned over the last fifty years. Remember what the salvage operation told us. What information we gleaned from the hardware that was recovered. We must be sure that they are ready for the ultimate mission, or we are all doomed.”

Heads nodded around the table.

“When will we be sure?”

The smoking man ground out another coffin nail and reached for yet one more, the sixth he’d had since arriving. “I think that another two or three years will prove profitable.”

“Bah!” another Council member said, waving his hand. “I think they can be told now, after this mission. Skinner first, and then our two… saviors.”

“I disagree,” the smoking man said mildly.

“They must be told!” the man insisted. “They must be aware of what they are getting into!”

“They are already involved,” the smoking man pointed out. “They have both chosen this path. Him first, because of what was done to his sister. She, by our design, after we’d identified her from the vaccination records.” He leaned forward, his arms on the table. “But you must trust me on this. I have been through this before. Twice before.”

The men around the room sighed as one, all of them shifting slightly away from the man at the end of the table. The fact that he had been through this exact scenario twice before was not a comfort.

To any of them.

It bespoke of this man’s unique origins, origins that some would say were unholy.

Evil.

“Now, if you will excuse me,” the smoking man said, standing to go, “I must be off. I have an operation to oversee.”

“When will they be told?” the newest member insisted.

“When I am convinced that their love for each other transcends all other issues; when they trust each other with more than their lives. With more then their hearts. When I decide, and I alone decide, they trust each other with the fate of humanity.”

With that, the smoking man left the Council chambers.

After the door had closed, the newest member spoke. “He gives me the creeps,” he said softly.

“He has that effect on many people,” the leader noted. “But remember…he does have the credentials for this…project.”

No one had a response to that, although they were all thinking the same thing.

After all, they thought, when confronted with a problem the scope and size of this one, when confronted with a threat that came from without instead of within, when confronted with a threat that every single person in the room had marked on a mental calendar that wouldn’t be printed for another half-decade, who better to turn to, to trust, than a man…a being…that had been through this entire mess two previous times, and had prevented it both times? A man who had come to them with the proof they had sought, proof that could not be faked, could not be manufactured?

A man that was not of this world?

A man that was over four hundred years old?

***

Billings, Montana

Stone parked the Ford Expedition he’d managed to rent next to the Lear. Scully sat under the wing Indian-style, her legs crossed in front of her, her elbows on her thighs.

“Took you long enough,” she teased.

“Bite me,” he said, getting out. “You’d think that renting one of these things would be-”

“Let’s get moving,” Scully said, wanting to cut the conversation off at the knees. She didn’t want to find herself falling under the unexplainable charm of this man again.

No matter how good he looked in those tight black BDU’s and clinging T-shirt.

Stone nodded, a small smile crossing his face. He knew that she was reacting to him again, that some part of her that she was unable to control or reason with was trying to assert itself inside her soul.

“Yeah,” Stone said, moving to the plane to grab his gear. “We have a ways to go.”

He thought about what he’d been told about “the Scully woman.” Not much, but the Guardians had made sure that he’d had access to her complete psychological profile. One thing had stuck in his head. “Subject tends to react positively to strong male role models,” it had said.

Reacts? Stone thought. Yes, she reacts. The same way a cobra reacts to a mongoose.

They loaded the truck quickly and drove off.

***

Pave Creek, Montana
Four Hours Later

The itch was so bad that Scully thought she would go insane.

Hiding in the edge of the woods that bordered the land that Graves had purchased, Stone and Scully peered through binoculars and a spotting scope at a lone, apparently empty farmhouse that stood in a clearing. It was larger than most, and looked dilapidated and deserted.

“Looks empty,” Scully said, reaching for another bug that was crawling up her arm.

“No…look at the windows,” Stone whispered.

She focused the spotting scope on the front of the house; a huge bay window filled her field of vision. “I don’t see…” she started, and then she did see.

There was alarm tape around the perimeter of the window, and by the looks of it, new alarm tape. And then, in the corners, four small clear disks.

Pressure sensors, her mind informed her. The tape was for breaking the glass, the pressure monitors in case someone tried to cut a hole in the window.

She began scanning the house more carefully.

There.

In the bushes near the front walk, or what had once been a front walk, was a small black rectangular box mounted on a pole about ankle- high. Wires led from the box underground.

Infrared sensor, she thought.

Switching the scope from daylight to infrared, Scully’s thoughts were confirmed. There were emitters and mirrors mounted everywhere. The entire house was cris-crossed with invisible beams of light, indoor and out.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“And then some,” Stone muttered.

“How do we get in?”

“We could dig,” Stone suggested.

“Very funny.”

He turned to her. “I’m not kidding. We may have to dig.”

Scully snorted. “That would take way more time than we have. Try again.”

Stone turned back to his binoculars. “Lemme think about it.”

“Think fast,” Scully said, returning her own gaze to the spotting scope.

***

Billings, Montana

Due to the incredible supersonic speed of the F14-Tomcat fighter arranged for by an almost-out-of-favors Admiral Karn, Walker Skinner arrived at the Billings Municipal Airport within minutes of Scully and Mulder, who’d had to stay stacked and packed in the overflowing arrival pattern.

They caught up with each other near the Butler ramp, Skinner driving a hastily rented Chevy Caprice Classic.

“Get in,” he said sharply, hitting the internal trunk release. Mulder and King quickly piled their equipment on top of his and jumped in the car, Maggie in the backseat, Mulder in the front next to Skinner.

“Hey, boss,” Mulder said lightly.

Skinner glanced at him but said nothing. If only, he thought. If only Mulder knew the plans that others had for him…

“I’ve already contacted Scully and Stone,” Skinner informed them. “They have the position under surveillance. According to Scully, it’s almost impenetrable. We’re going to have to head-shed on this one big time.”

Mulder nodded, already thinking about-

“Frohike,” Maggie helpfully provided. Mulder nodded.

“Who?”

“Friends of mine. One of them is who called you,” he said softly. “They prefer to remain anonymous, but if anyone can get in…they can.”

“Get them here,” Skinner ordered.

“Not possible. Not enough time, and they’d have a … philosophical problem with flying on military transport aircraft. So, they’ll have to phone it in.”

Skinner gritted his teeth. “I can have ten Marine MP’s at their door in half an hour and have them forcefully escorted here, if it comes to that.”

Mulder shook his head. “Then they’d develop convenient amnesia. No, it’s better this way, trust me.”

Skinner nodded. He was going to have to learn to trust Mulder more anyway.

***

Pave Creek, Montana
32 minutes later

“We’re in position,” Skinner radioed. The lipmike from the Motorola CMX-100 body radio was positioned below his right nostril, just above his lip.

“Roger,” Stone said, and then a moment later, Scully added, “Ten- four.”

“Ok…” Skinner started. “We’re going to get help via a phone from friends of Murder’s on cracking this bitch,” he said softly. “Once we defeat the systems, we can go in and retrieve the CBX.”

Skinner, Mulder and King had taken up position on the opposite side of the clearing, hidden by the heavy woods. Mulder reached for his satphone when a shrill ringing shattered the quiet.

“Secure that!” Skinner ordered tersely.

“Sir,” King said, “It’s you…”

“What?” Skinner realized that she was right. The ringing noise was coming from his thigh pocket. He reached for the offending instrument and studied it.

“It’s Ebert’s,” Skinner explained.

Skinner pushed SND.

“Hello?”

“Walter Skinner, I presume?” a voice answered.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Daniel Graves. I assume that you and the other five members of your ragtag little group have my Montana house surrounded? After all, I haven’t heard from Ebert in hours, so I assume you managed to capture him?”

Skinner said nothing. Let the little fucker wonder, he thought.

“Oh, we’re going to play the silent game, are we?” Graves prodded. He sighed. “Very well, if we must.”

‘Graves,’ Skinner mouthed to Mulder.

“Skinner’s got Graves on Ebert’s phone,” Mulder radioed to Stone and Scully.

“Is that Agent Mulder I hear in the background? Say hello to him for me, Colonel Skinner.”

“Where are you?” Skinner demanded.

“Oh, close. Very close,” Graves said. “In fact…closer than you might think.”

“Movement,” Stone radioed. “We have movement in the house. Looks like the-”

“Oh my god,” Scully radioed. “Graves is in the house!”

***

Skinner almost dropped the phone. This was too good to be true.

“Oh, before you get your hopes up,” Graves said over the phone, “I want to make you aware of a few things, Colonel. The first is that you guessed right, or you managed to beat it out of Ebert. The CBX is here, in the house I am currently occupying.”

Graves paused.

“However…that is not the only CBX that I possess.”

Skinner closed his eyes.

Stalemate.

“Where is it?”

“Right now? Underneath a bench in Hutchins Park, directly in the center of Billings. It has a C4-charge and a time-delay detonator. In about…oh, thirty minutes, unless I send a very specific, very encrypted signal, it will detonate, and the city of Billings, Montana will grind to a halt. Hundreds of thousands of people will die, Colonel.”

“What do you want?” Skinner asked.

Graves laughed over the phone. “Oh, come now, Colonel! Isn’t it obvious? This is your basic Mexican standoff! In about twenty minutes a Bell JetRanger III helicopter is going to land practically in my driveway. And if I make it to the aircraft, with my little package intact, you have my word that I will disable the bomb in Billings. Then we can all meet again in Washington and do this all over again.”

“You’re insane, Graves.”

“Be that as it may, COLONEL, you have two choices. You can storm the house now, and take me. I have no doubt that the five of you could overpower me quite easily. But then the bomb in Billings will go off. Or, you can choose to let those people live, and we can play again on Sunday.”

Graves paused. “Truth be told, I was looking forward to Sunday. These people here mean nothing to me. It’s Washington that I want.”

“Why, Graves?”

“You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?” Graves asked.

“Why don’t you just tell me,” Skinner growled.

“I’m sure that if you put your mind to it, you could manage to come up with one or two scenarios that fit the situation. A nice smart man like you? A pillar of the community? An assistant director of the FBI? A Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps? I’m sure you would be able to figure my reasoning out.”

Graves paused, and then revealed it all.

“I’m sure that being a Guardian only helps matters.”

The phone clicked in Skinner’s ear, and Graves was gone.

Shit! Skinner felt his loyalties splitting inside him. He knew a little about the ultimate objectives of the Guardians. He’d guessed at much of it, figured the rest out by speculation and by questions that were left unanswered when asked of his superiors. He knew a little of what was coming, the barest outlines. He couldn’t let anything happen to Mulder or Scully; that much was certain. But he couldn’t let Graves get to Washington, either. Couldn’t let the CBX device detonate and decimate the entire leadership of the country. More than one man in a powerful post in the nation’s capitol was a Guardian, although the specific names and positions were unknown to him.

And finally, Skinner thought, Graves had to be taken alive. He had to be interrogated. What the man knew about the Guardians had to be discovered, examined, disseminated.

Skinner toggled the push-to-talk button mounted by his throat. “Listen up, people,” he said quickly. “We have a situation.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 28/38

Pave Creek, Montana

“What’s the situation?” Stone radioed back. Quickly, Skinner brought him up to speed.

“No way,” Stone said. “No way am I letting that asshole get out of here with a device that can decimate Washington. No frigging way, Skinner.”

There was the sound of movement on the radio.

And then silence.

“Scully…” Skinner radioed.

***

On the other side of the clearing, Matt Stone was unlimbering an H&K MP5, getting ready to move into position.

“…you know what to do,” she heard in her headset. Sighing, Scully nodded. She knew what had to be done. Skinner’s assessment of the situation was correct. They had to let Graves go; there was no defense against risking the lives of the people of Billings, Montana, just to save Washington. Someone else, someone like Stone, would have argued loud and long that the loss of a hundred thousand lives was nothing when compared against losing the government. To Scully, there was no choice.

She drew her SIG.

The sound the hammer made as she thumbed it back into the single- action position was extremely loud in the woods.

“Matt,” she said softly, leveling the gun at his back. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

His head turned, looking back at her. “That’s the second time you’ve pointed a gun at me. I don’t recommend a third.”

“Matt,” she said again. “Please.”

She watched the emotions battling behind his eyes. First there was the irrational anger of having her…a woman!…pointing a gun at him. Then resignation, as the rational part of his mind tried to convince itself that Skinner was right, that this had to be done, distasteful as it was. And then something new, something Scully had never seen before.

She didn’t like it.

It looked like…some form of sick, twisted determination. With a shudder, Scully realized that she was going to have to shoot him, that Stone had lost the ability to distance himself from the mission, that the entire affair had become too personal; he had become too involved. Fifteen years of hunting this man, only to have him slip away at this last moment had sapped Stone’s ability to think clearly and rationally.

“I could take that away from you,” he announced.

“I doubt it.”

“Do you have the balls to shoot?”

Scully said nothing. Any words, at this point, were useless..

“I can’t let him leave like this,” Stone said, a pleading note creeping into his voice. Scully wasn’t buying it. The man was trained too well to let that happen. He was playing her, playing her like he had from the start, playing her like he had Maggie King and God only knew how many others over the course of this quest of his.

“You have no choice in the matter,” Scully announced quietly. “It isn’t up to you.”

“You bitch…” he said. Scully decided to let him have that one. His words towards her meant nothing. Nothing at all.

“Whatever,” she said.

And then Stone was moving, twisting on the ground, his hand moving to the holstered sidearm on his thigh. Scully watched in slow motion as he drew the weapon and chambered a round, all in one smooth motion.

“Noooo!” she started to say, and then training and instinct took over. She didn’t want to kill him. Every single facet of FBI firearms training, and the additional SWAT training she’d undergone was focused on one single, inescapable fact: You shoot to kill. Always. Without exception. If you draw your weapon, you must be prepared to kill. Do not shoot to wound, to disable, to render inert.

You shoot to kill.

Scully fired first.

The shot took Stone high in the right shoulder, the bullet digging a meaty furrow, missing the clavicle by half an inch, missing the subclavian artery by not much more. The MagSafe frangible ammunition didn’t exit his body, but instead disintegrated, transferring the kinetic energy to his body.

“Augh!” Stone cried, dropping his pistol.

“Report!” Skinner ordered over the radio.

“Sir, Commander Stone has been wounded,” Scully said, her hand at the push-to-talk switch. “He needs immediate medical attention.”

Skinner, on the other side of the clearing, wondered if she’d forgotten she was a physician.

“Scully…” he radioed, the unspoken portion of his transmission more than clear to her.

“Sir, I’m afraid that if I approach him, he’ll try and disarm me, and I’ll be forced to kill him this time.”

“Acknowledged,” Skinner radioed back. “I’m sending Mulder to help you.”

“Make it fast; he’s losing a lot of blood.”

Stone rolled on the ground, his left hand coming up to compress the gaping hole in his shoulder. “I can’t believe you shot me!” he gasped.

“I told you I would,” Scully pointed out.

“Yeah…never thought you had the…guts.”

“That’s your fatal mistake, Stone. You underestimate everyone around you.”

“I think I’m beginning to learn,” he gasped. “My legs are cold,” he announced.

“You’re going into shock.”

“Help me?”

“Not a chance. Not until Mulder gets here to cover my back.”

“I promise-”

“Your promises aren’t worth a hill of beans, Stone. Just compress the wound and hope for the best.”

***

Skinner felt the phone starting to ring before he heard it.

“Hello?”

“Shots fired, Colonel? What on Earth is going on out there?”

Skinner took a deep breath, resisting the urge to tell Graves to take a flying leap. “Commander Stone had to be…convinced to let you go.”

“Ah, I see. He is a rather…tenacious lot, isn’t he?”

“Graves, if you didn’t have the CBX bomb in Billings, I’d be in that house myself taking you apart piece by piece.”

Graves laughed over the cellular. “Oh, I doubt that, Colonel. But, we’ll never know the answer to that particular question, will we? My helicopter is just over three minutes out. Please make sure that the rest of your merry little band has better fire discipline than Commander Stone.”

There was a pause.

“Colonel, tell me…who shot him?”

“I have no intention of telling you that,” Skinner said.

“I’m afraid I must insist. Or that little package in Hutchins Park will go off as originally planned, Colonel.”

Skinner gritted his teeth. “Scully.”

“My, what a little firebrand she is! I’m looking forward to meeting her, face to face.” Graves voice turned cold, tomb cold. “So I can kill her. And Mulder. And King. And you, my dear Colonel.”

“You just name the time and place, Graves. We’ll be there.”

“Washington. Nine am. Sunday. Wait for me to call you on this number. I can’t have you mucking up my plans, now can I? I’ll give you one last chance to foil my evil deeds, Colonel, and then I’m afraid that I’ll have to go through with my original desires.”

“We’ll be waiting,” Skinner said, twisting his neck. He could hear the distinctive whop-whop-whine sounds of a Bell JetRanger III in the distance. “Your ride is hear, asshole.”

“Ah. So it is. I must leave you now, Colonel. Good day.”

And Graves was gone. Electronic static and hisses filled Skinner’s ear as he watched the chopper circle the house twice and then slowly settle down in the front yard. A moment later Danny Graves exited the front door and waved at Skinner.

Right at me! Skinner fumed. The gall!

Stooped over, Graves ran to the chopper and threw open the cargo door. Running back to the house, he disappeared inside for less than ten seconds and then reappeared carrying what appeared to be a full-size military duffel bag.

“Maggie,” Skinner called. “Call someone and find out what the physical dimensions of both an assembled and a disassembled Tomahawk missile are.”

“Roger that,” Maggie said, grabbing her own satellite phone and furiously dialing.

Graves tossed his cargo into the chopper and slid the door shut. A moment later he climbed into the co-pilot’s seat and shut the door. Ten seconds after that, the chopper pilot pulled pitch. The huge chopper’s engine revved up to takeoff speed, and then, slowly, the skids came up off the grass, the nose dropped, and it glided smoothly away, heading south.

***

Mulder crashed through the bush, looking for his partner.

There! Up ahead, he could see Scully, still holding her pistol on Stone, the SIG held in a steady, practiced two-handed Weaver combat grip.

“Took you long enough,” she smiled at him.

“Hey, Scully…I’m not the outdoors type. My idea of roughing it is to park the RV in the 7-11 lot.”

“Cover me,” she said, dropping her gun as Mulder drew his.

She worked quickly, assessing her marksmanship. This was the second time she had shot a man for his own good. The first had been Mulder, and now Stone. She was getting good at it, she saw. The wound was messy, but not too bad. The MagSafe ammunition wasn’t designed for the use she’d put it to; it was a killing around, designed to shred everything in it’s path and render the recipient deader than a doorstop.

“You’re lucky,” she announced. “You’ll get full use of the shoulder back. But you do need surgery, and need it pretty quickly, or the muscle tissue is going to atrophy. You also need a tetanus shot,” she said, mentally ticking off all the things she wanted to do once she got Stone to a hospital.

“No,” he said softly. “The round is sterilized by the heat of discharge.”

“Yes, but a secondary infection can cause gangrene. You want to lose the entire arm, you dumb son of a bitch?”

“Don’t call my mother a bitch,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Why not? You’ve called me one…more than once,” Scully pointed out.

At hearing that, Mulder’s hands began to shake. He was beginning to get a much better idea of what Stone had put Scully through.

“You bastard,” he whispered.

Scully glanced up. “Chill out, Mulder. He’s a jerk. We both know that.”

He smiled at his partner, a woman so strong that he would never fully be able to comprehend the depths of her strength, the reserves of iron will that she drew on.

“What are you smiling about?”

“Remember when I told the CO of the Georgia that you’d shot me? Well, now I’ve got another story to tell uncooperative witnesses. ‘Be careful, I saw her take out a Navy SEAL with her duty weapon. Do not trifle with this woman.’”

“Damn straight,” she said, standing. She’d applied a pressure dressing to the wound. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do until they got Stone to a hospital.

As if reading her mind, he gasped, “No hospitals.”

“Don’t even start,” Scully began. “You are going to the first Level I trauma center we can find. I will brook no bullshit about this, Stone. You are going, and that is final.” She hooked a thumb at her partner. “Or I’ll let Mulder here explain to you why I dislike being called a bitch so much.”

Stone glanced at Mulder and saw murder in the FBI Agent’s eyes and decided, for now, to play along. “Fine. Just get me there quick. I want to be ready for Sunday.”

Scully seriously doubted he’d be ready for any Sunday without at least six weeks of physical therapy, but she decided not to point that particular fact out at the moment.

Walking to her partner, she said, “You can put that away.”

Mulder holstered his weapon and glanced down at her. “How are you doing?” he asked, and then quietly, “Really?”

“Pretty shitty,” she admitted. “I’m getting tired of this. I just want to shoot Graves and get it over with.”

He nodded, understanding.

Two minutes later, as they stood there holding each other with a wounded Commander Stone lying on the ground in a jealous rage as he watched them, Skinner and King broke through the bushes and approached.

“We re-group,” Skinner announced. “Maggie will fly us all back to DC aboard her plane.” He glanced down at Stone. “Can we walk?”

“Probably,” Scully said. “Although he’ll be in a lot of pain.”

“Fuck him,” Skinner said. “Let it hurt.” Turning to Maggie he said, “Go get the Expedition. We can all fit in that.”

Maggie saluted, turned and dashed off.

“What a mess,” Skinner observed. “We had him dead to rights.”

“Have you called the HRT?” Scully asked.

“Yeah…they’re handling the CBX device in Billings. They have strict orders not to make a report until they talk to me. We should be able to keep this under wraps at least until Sunday.”

Sunday. As if on cue, all three FBI agents glanced at their watches. It was just after four thirty in the afternoon Friday. They had less than two complete days to get to Washington and plan for the final showdown with Graves.

***

Washington, DC

The smoking man sat alone in one of the two dozen offices he used, staring at a phone that resisted every one of his silent mental urges to ring.

He lit another cigarette, perhaps the thirtieth of that day. His thoughts, as they were most days, were filled with two very special federal agents, the Project, and the plans that he had made.

Would they ever understand? he wondered.

Probably not.

It was a road, he knew, a road that they had started on together almost fifty years ago. Fox Mulder had been picked, selected for this assignment before he’d even been born. His sister similarly selected for a role in the entire scheme of things before she’d been a gleam in her parent’s eyes. And the woman.

The amazing Dana Scully, the smoking man thought.

She had worked out better than anticipated.

Everything had.

They hated him, he knew, as did Skinner and all the rest. As did the men that he reported to, at least nominally. Having several different sets of masters was nothing new to this man; he’d been doing it for as long as he could remember. And, really, when it came down to it, none of them were really his masters. He could, they all knew, just up and leave one day, return to where he had come from, leave them to the horror that was slowly approaching, closer every day. They could predict within forty-eight hours as to when they would arrive. And God help them if they weren’t prepared. He’d seen what could happen to those that were not prepared mentally, physically and spiritually.

It was not a pretty sight.

The current situation was just another…test, he thought, a wry smile teasing his face, a smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. A test of the…resolve of his two hand-picked agents. To see if they had the stuff. If they had the heart, the mental toughness required for what was really coming.

The time to tell them was looming, he knew.

The time to reveal all was not far away. A year or two, nothing to a man like him. A blip on the surface of time.

Time.

Their arrogance amused him sometimes.

How long had it taken to convince them? How many dog and pony shows had he been forced to put on to demonstrate the seriousness of the situation. Those in charge, the ‘elected officials’ didn’t believe him. Not at first. Those first ones, the early ones, had believed it to be some kind of trick, a parlor stunt.

Tunek had convinced them. Tunek, of the liquid face and the fierce heart. Tunek, sent from home to help soften the blow, to help prepare the weak against the strong. They still misunderstood. Even Mulder, with his brilliant mind, his openness to the extreme, misunderstood Tunek.

Alien Bounty Hunter, that was what Mulder called him.

Drill Sergeant was more like it, the smoking man thought. Had he been allowed to speak more openly, Tunek would have told Mulder, told him on the ice, told him what was coming, why he was there. Tunek would have told Mulder that he, Tunek, had been where Mulder was. He had seen what Mulder was going to see, had fought the battles that Mulder was scheduled to fight.

But the time hadn’t been right.

It had been too soon, too early.

The phone rang.

The smoking man lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

“It’s Graves,” the voice said.

“Of course it is,” the smoking man replied.

***

Washington, DC 0003 Hours

The Lear jet piloted by Commander Maggie King, USNR, touched down with a squeal of rubber against tarmac. Immediately reversing the engines, she taxied the small business jet to the Butler ramp and quickly killed the engines.

“We need a car,” Skinner announced to the cabin.

“I’ll go,” Maggie said. Skinner just nodded, turning to his two agents. They’d left Stone at Billings Memorial Hospital. Scully’d had a word with the ER doctor, and the man had agreed that Stone’s condition required sedation.

Lots of it.

It was down to the three of them, they knew. King was a gopher, their support system. There was no one else they could count on, because it was impossible to know who was working for Graves and who was not.

“Ok…here’s the deal. Go home. Get some sleep. We’ll meet at…”

He stopped, embarrassed.

“Uh…where?” he asked.

Scully frowned, and then got it. Skinner was asking where they were going to sleep tonight. She glanced at her partner and saw the hopeful look on his face. Truth be told, she’d wanted a night to herself to regroup, to calm down….to cry in the shower and let all the anger and pain and rage out of her so she could be clear come the morning.

One look at Mulder forced that thought from her mind.

“My apartment,” she said softly.

“Fine. We’ll regroup tomorrow at Scully’s apartment. Noon.”

“God, I’m tired,” Mulder said softly.

“Tell me about it,” Scully moaned.

***

Apartment of Dana Scully
Annapolis, Maryland
0114 Hours

The duffel bags containing their assault gear, weapons, explosives and other assorted nasty toys and gadgets were incredibly heavy when one was bone-tired, Mulder discovered. He had one over each shoulder and was struggling to keep up with Scully.

Quickly unlocking the door, she let them both in and then locked it behind them, testing the knob to make sure it was secure.

Mulder dropped the duffel bags in the foyer and turned to her, wanting to do nothing more than fall into a shower, followed shortly by a soft, warm bed.

The look on Scully’s face froze him in his tracks.

“Mulder,” she said, and then stopped. “I need…a minute.”

“Sure,” he said. “Want something to drink?”

“Tea,” she said softly. He nodded and walked to the kitchen, hoping that he could remember where it was.

Tired, he thought. So tired.

Scully moved to her couch and sat, forearms on her thighs.

She felt numb.

Cold.

Dead.

She tried to remember the last seventy-two hours and found that she could not. Bits and pieces, images, fragments of moments, conversations, sounds. It was all whirling in her head, threatening to overpower her, make her go slowly and completely insane.

“Here.” It was Mulder, at her side, handing her a cup of tea. He held a freshly-opened bottle of beer in his hand, a sign of his own fatigue since he rarely, if ever, drank.

She took it, gratefully, and sipped.

“Mmm..nice.”

He said nothing for a long time, letting her sit and think. And then, finally, “Do you want me to go?”

She thought about saying yes.

Thought hard.

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t know if I’ll be much company tonight, but-” And then it was too much. All of it was just too damn much. Scully felt her fingers opening, watched as the cup descended towards the hardwood floor and disintegrated as it hit, spilling hot tea everywhere.

She sobbed, drawing her legs up to her chest, her arms going around her knees. “Why?” she asked no one. “Why is he doing this?”

Mulder put his beer down on the coffee table and moved to the couch, drawing her into his arms. “Shh,” he said, because it was the only thing he knew to say. “I don’t know, Scully…I don’t think anyone does.”

Mulder didn’t know how wrong he was.

Someone did know, someone that was, if not close to him, at least known to him.

***

Washington, DC
0130 Hours

“Report,” the smoking man said.

“I planted the CBX device in Billings, as you instructed,” Graves replied. “When Skinner and the merry band of marauders arrived in Pave Creek, they fell for the bait. They let me go with the CBX for Washington.”

The smoking man nodded. That was to be expected. They hadn’t been pushed far enough at this point to make the hard decisions.

That would change.

There would come a time when Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would be forced to make hard decisions, decisions more complex and difficult than any that had preceded them.

“Let’s go over the final stage one more time,” the smoking man said. “It is imperative that this go off without a hitch.”

Graves nodded. “I know.”

The smoking man considered Graves from across the desk.

Such sacrifice. A plan almost twenty years in the design, a plan that had been put into motion when Mulder was still a young boy. A plan that had involved thousands of people over the years, had resulted in the deaths of more than one, a plan that had one single purpose.

To teach a lesson.

To teach a lesson to two specific people.

Graves knew what the stakes were, knew that Mulder and Scully had been selected for this task long ago. Knew that he was going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

His life.

“Are you sure?” the smoking man said. “This all hinges on you, you know. If you…waver…at the last minute, it will all be for naught.”

Graves nodded. “We have little choice.” After a pause, he added, “I have no choice.”

“Explain,” the smoking man requested.

“My brothers,” Graves said, a little sadly. “They think me mad, Scully, Mulder, Skinner. They think I am an insane person, wanting to demolish Washington and reduce it to a smoking hole. To kill all those people. They have no idea why I do this. Why it must be done. I do. I understand. I embrace it. I will willingly sacrifice my life in this battle to prepare them.”

He paused.

“To prepare the Chosen for what is to come.”

The smoking man almost choked on his smoke. Those words; that phrase.

The Chosen.

Scully.

Mulder.

Each, chosen, for different reasons, separate and apart from the others.

Now, together.

Chosen.

Chosen for another reason, another mission.

For the battle that was to come.

“I don’t want my brother’s death to be for no reason. I want my own death to be for a reason.” He hesitated. “Promise me that when the time is right that they will be told what this was all about. Tell me that. Promise me that.”

The smoking man nodded. “If they make it. If they all make it through what is to come, I will tell them. You have my word.”

Graves nodded.

“Then you have my life.”

***

Apartment of Dana Scully
Annapolis, Maryland

In time, she quieted. Mulder continued to hold her, gently rocking, until the sobs lessened and then quit.

“Shower,” he said softly, and she nodded.

Together, they moved to the bathroom. He undressed her, although it was not erotic, not sexual. He simply removed her clothes until she was nude, and then his own. She stood there, waiting for him, her expression numb, empty.

He started the water, adjusted the temperature, and helped her under the spray. He worked quickly, efficiently, not trying to arouse or inflame, but to cleanse, to wash away.

He washed her body, and then her hair.

And then he used his fingers on her back, her neck, her shoulder, trying to relax her. Trying to get the tension out of her muscles and into the humid air that surrounded them.

Finished with her, he washed himself quickly.

Grabbing a towel, he dried first her and then himself, and the led her to the bedroom. Like a child, she let him guide her.

Together, they slipped into the bed.

“Mulder,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting me go. For letting me just feel…nothing for a while.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said gently, his arms around her. Her back was to his front, and they snuggled, two spoons in a cotton drawer, waiting for the night to claim them.

“In the night,” she said softly, gently, her voice already approaching sleep. “If I reach for you…it’s because I need to feel you, need to feel alive, loved, vital. Do you understand? It’s not about…us. It’s about me.”

“I understand,” Mulder whispered in her ear.

And he did.

And she did.

Hours later, she rolled over and reached for him, using her hands to slowly wake him, to make him ready for her.

It was slow.

It was passionate.

And contrary to what she had said, it was not just for her, it was for them.

It was a new way for them to connect, a new way for them to show love for each other.

Scully, opening herself, welcoming him into her, into her body as well as her heart and soul. Showing him that side of herself that she’d always kept hidden, kept under lock and key, under iron-clad control.

Later, after they’d finished, she cried again.

Cried for what she’d been forced to do.

Cried for what was to come.

If only she’d known, Scully would have cried until the sun rose.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 29/38

Apartment of Walter S. Skinner
Crystal City

Tired, he thought.

Exhausted. Bone-weary.

Twelve hours of sleep, at a minimum, and the chance to only get nine or ten before he had to be back at Scully’s apartment.

Heeling the door shut behind him, Skinner dumped his equipment duffel bag in the foyer, and then reached under his FBI windbreaker and unclipped his duty weapon and gently put it on the table. His ID case flopped down next to it a moment later. Contrary to what he’d told Ebert, he hadn’t resigned from the Bureau, and had no plans to. A sympathetic superior had promised to cover for him, and Skinner had taken an “extensive field supervision assignment,” according to the paperwork.

As if saving the world could be called that, he thought.

As if it had been waiting for his arrival, the phone began to ring.

“Skinner,” he barked into it.

“Mr. Skinner.” The voice of the smoking man filled his ears, and Skinner ground his teeth in annoyance and frustration.

“What do you want?”

“I think that question is rather obvious, Mr. Skinner. I would like a status report of our two agents.”

“Resting comfortably, if I know them.”

“Excellent.”

“Do you have any news for me?” Skinner asked.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Cut the crap; I know you’ve been in contact with Graves.”

There was a momentary pause on the other end of the line, just long enough to let Skinner know that his blind shot in the dark had hit home. “You have talked to him, haven’t you?”

“I don’t believe I know what you are talking about, Mr. Skinner.”

“Sure,” Skinner said, repeating something he’d heard Scully say more than once. “Fine. Whatever. Are we done?”

“Almost. On Sunday, Mr. Graves will be contacting you, as I’m sure you’re more than aware. I must impress upon you the need to allow Agent Mulder to make any…important decisions.” The smoking man paused. “That cannot be stressed enough, Mr. Skinner. The future of certain…efforts rides on Mr. Mulder’s ability to think under pressure.”

Skinner glanced around his townhouse, looking for something to focus his fury on. To think that this man thought he could change standing Bureau policy at his merest whim was galling.

Feeling the twist of a grimace reaching his face, Skinner gave the only answer open to him. “Whatever you say…sir.”

“Mr. Skinner; I know that you despise me, and viewed from your standpoint, you have every right to. I can only attempt to assure you that this is all for the greater good.”

“Who decides?” Skinner demanded. “You?”

“Under certain circumstances, yes. Things I have experience with, things I know about. Other issues? Other issues I leave to those with the experience.”

“And what experience do you have preventing the end of the world as we know it?” Skinner demanded.

“Are you referring to Mr. Graves or something else?”

“You know what I’m referring to.”

There was another pause.

“Do I?”

“I am referring to Graves. Why? Is there another plot afoot? Another mission I have to send my two best agents on? Another death- defying leap of faith for a man that has earned little trust and absolutely no respect from me or anyone who works for me?”

There, Skinner thought. I finally said it.

It felt good, bucking the system.

“Mr. Skinner. Need I remind you of the commitment you’ve made over the years?”

“No. And you’d better not try, either.”

“Very well. Just make sure that Mr. Mulder is in charge of the…affair this weekend.”

“Whatever,” Skinner said, slamming the phone down. Every time he saw that man’s face in his mind’s eye, Skinner found himself wishing for the chance to wring his neck.

Sighing, Skinner walked upstairs to his bedroom, losing clothes as he moved. By the time he entered the bedroom proper, he was down to his briefs.

He was asleep a moment after his head touched the pillow.

***

Apartment of Dana Scully
0903 Hours

Sometime during the night she had risen and donned a pair of his boxer shorts and his cut-off Knicks T-shirt. She slept, fists curled under her chin, her body turned to face him, her face slack and peaceful in slumber.

Mulder had been watching Scully sleep for close to an hour, letting his mind drift, thinking about her and him and their newfound closeness. The lovemaking during the night had been tender, not unromantic, but more…therapeutic, he thought. Calming, soothing.

He glanced at his watch. Twenty-four hours until the time of reckoning, he thought. A full day until…whatever came next.

Mulder gently rolled onto his back and tried to think of what would happen if Graves’ plan succeeded. What would happen if he managed to detonate the CBX device in Washington at noon Sunday?

With dozens, hundreds…thousands of his operatives moving into key posts around the country and around the world, the face of the United States’ political landscape would change forever. Graves would crown himself king. He would suspend the constitution under the FEMA guidelines for national emergency, declare martial law, dissolve the Congress and the Supreme Court, and bring the military both at home and abroad to full alert.

Graves was, by training and experience, a man used to affecting policy by the threat and use of violence. He was a man who saw the gun and the sword as the solution to all problems. Before long, Mulder knew, if Graves succeeded, some two-or-three-bit dictator somewhere would try and force America’s hand, try to see if the new iron-willed leadership of the country was just that, or a paper tiger.

Mulder shuddered at the thought; he had no doubt that once Graves had the keys to the nuclear kingdom he wouldn’t hesitate to use it to put down anyone, any country, who opposed him. And just as he would use weapons of mass destruction abroad, who’s to say that he wouldn’t use more of the deadly CBX to put down revolts at home? Saddam had done it to the Kurds. Pol Pot had done it to his own countrymen. In America’s not to distant past, police dogs and water hoses had been used to put down demonstrations for civil rights. Attempting to force people to agree with your thinking via force and coercion was not exactly unheard of.

Three people, Mulder thought. Three people stood in the way of this plot. Him, a paranoid paranormal investigator, nominally an FBI agent trained in law enforcement and investigation, cross trained as a psychologist. No one’s idea of a Protector of Freedom. Captain America he was not.

Scully, a medical doctor, a fierce woman with a warrior’s heart and a Zen Buddhists’ soul. Not exactly Wonder Woman, Mulder thought, but still…if he was going to bet real money on someone being able to pull it off, it’d be on the tiny, delicate redhead sleeping next to him. He alone, aside from her family perhaps, knew the depths of her strength, the reserves of will she was able to draw upon when needed. She had the precise, logical mind of an excellent military commander, and knew the difference between force and violence, and knew how to apply both at the correct time for the maximum effectiveness.

Skinner, a former (and current) Marine, a leader of men (and women,) a man who led from the front when he was able. A man who believed strongly in the beauty of strength, the Godliness of standing up for what was right. A man who understood as equally as Scully did that there were distasteful things that had to be done at times, and being able to do them didn’t make you bloodthirsty or violent or ugly; they made you proud, in a strange way, proud to be able to look the monster in the eye and slay it, and emerge with most of your soul intact.

Not exactly Superman, but not a bad resemblance, Mulder thought. He could almost see Skinner ripping his shirt open to reveal the large red “S.” The image brought a smile to his face, and he fought not to laugh out loud.

“What’s so funny?” Scully mumbled.

“Skinner. I was imagining what he’d look like in tights and a cape.”

Scully frowned at her partner, not fully understanding the reference. “Red cape, red tights,” Mulder explained. “A big red “S” on his chest.”

Scully smiled at that. “If anyone…” she started, and then stopped. The entire topic, as nutty as it was, intrigued her. If Skinner were Superman, which Superhero would Mulder be?

Batman, she thought without pause.

The tortured Dark Knight was perfect for Mulder. The aloofness, the aloneness, the twisted depth of soul.

And the car, she thought, remembering Kilmer’s line in the movie. Chicks dig the car.

What does that make me? she thought. Batgirl?

She remembered the 60’s series, with Batgirl’s skintight purple outfit and the flaming mane of red hair poking out the back. Not too far off, she thought. She might even look good in the bodysuit.

“So who are you?” Mulder teased.

“Batgirl,” she replied, before thinking.

“Oh. So I guess that means I’m the morose flying bat, huh?”

“Mulder…” she started, hating the whining tone that had crept into her voice. Sometimes, the emotional energy required to keep Mulder’s spirit up was draining.

“Nah…you’re right. Plus…all the cool toys. Frohike would be jealous.”

She leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. “Morning breath aside, he’s already got a reason to be jealous.”

“Oh? And that would be?”

She got out of bed and turned to face him, crossing her arms in front of her and casually lifting the Knicks shirt up and over her head.

Hands on hips, she faced him. “You figure it out,” she said, softly teasing. “Me? I’m going to take another shower.”

Mulder gulped as she turned and walked into the bathroom.

Oh my Lord, he thought.

Scrambling out of bed to join her, Mulder wondered if there was a costume store open on a Saturday that had a good Batman costume, and more importantly, a good Batgirl costume.

Might be interesting.

***

“So what next?” Scully asked.

They had showered together, made love, and then showered again. It was almost time for Skinner to arrive, and they found themselves pacing the apartment, bumping into each other, driving each other up the wall.

“If we get the time, I want to go to Quantico and go through some re-familiarization with our weapons. It’s been a while since I had to play very seriously with these particular toys. I’m going to call Dawkins over at Little Creek and see if he’ll let us go through the Death House.”

The Death House, also known as the SEAL Team Six Hostage Training Center, was a series of cinderblock buildings constructed on the grounds of Marine Barracks, Quantico, designed to be used by SEAL Six, the FBI HRT, and the Army’s Delta Force. The inside walls were moveable so that the internal configuration could be changed at a moment’s notice. When the SEALs trained on taking down a building full of hostages and tangos, the commanding officer was inside playing a hostage during all live-fire exercises.

The FBI was not so generous with their employees.

“You think this is going to go down inside a building?”

“Almost certainly. You can’t sit in the middle of Potomac Park with a loaded Tomahawk missile and not expect to get noticed, Scully. It’s just figuring out where that’s going to be the problem.”

She nodded, accepting his logic. “Unless he disguises it.”

“As what? A big firecracker?”

She shrugged. “I’ve learned not to underestimate the bastard,” she said softly.

“Let’s just hope he hasn’t learned a similar lesson.”

Lesson. The word stuck in Scully’s mind, refusing to be budge.

“Sounds like a good idea. But if you’re going to go, we all need to.”

Mulder nodded. “Yeah.”

There was a knock at the door and Scully moved to open it. Glancing down at her attire, (gym shorts, Mulder’s Knicks T-shirt and nothing else,) she decided that Skinner wouldn’t mind. Mulder was wearing jeans and nothing else, the water from the recent shower still matted in his chest hairs.

She opened the door to find Skinner standing there.

“Good morning, Dana,” he said.

“Walter,” she replied.

Skinner entered the apartment and found Mulder seated at the kitchen table.

“Fo…Mulder,” he said.

Mulder grinned. “Sir, if you don’t mind, I’ll still be calling you ‘sir.’”

Skinner grinned. “That’s fine, Mulder.”

He glanced at his favorite agents and then at the ground. Their easy familiarity, their obvious comfort with each other’s body was still new to him, and a bit disconcerting.

“Can I ask a rather unprofessional question?”

The partners exchanged glances, and then a secret smile.

“Sir?”

“How do you manage it? Being…involved and still working together?”

Scully shrugged. “It’s still new to us, sir.”

She saw his face and held up a hand. “The newness of the reality of it, sir. As for…before, all I can say is that it was hard.”

“But it’s easier now? Now that it’s out in the open?”

Both agents nodded. “We’ve been through so much together as friends and partners, each of us wanting…this, wanting it to be more, knowing that it would be right if it wasn’t for the rules and our own innate stubbornness that…to finally be here is a relief.”

Skinner nodded, accepting the explanation. “Makes sense.”

“So what’s the plan?” Mulder asked.

“Quantico. Death house,” Skinner said, the eager growl evident in his voice.

Mulder nodded and arched an eyebrow at Scully.

“Sir,” she started, “That’s spooky, pardon the expression. Mulder was just saying-”

Mulder was waving a hand behind Skinner’s head, trying to stop Scully from letting the cat out of the bag.

“Was just saying what?” Skinner asked.

“Nothing,” Mulder and Scully replied at the same time.

“Mulder…are you actually turning into an ass-kicking, name- taking, widow-making silent wind of death behind my back?”

Mulder just shrugged.

Scully laughed. “Oh, yeah…that’s him. Deadliest paranoid in the world.”

“Can we change the subject, please…Batgirl?”

The look that passed between the partners carried enough heat to melt ice.

At the North Pole.

In January.

At midnight.

“Batgirl…?” Skinner prodded.

“Sir,” Scully started.

“Can’t you see it?” Mulder said, an evil smile on his face. “The purple body suit, the mane of red hair, the motorcycle?”

“Ok, BatMAN,” Scully chided. “That’s enough.”

“So who am I?” Skinner asked. There was an unfamiliar expression on his face, an expression that took both Scully and Mulder a moment to place. It was a smile; a soft, friendly, Hey-I’m-just-one-of-the-guys smile.

“Uh…” Scully said, looking at her partner.

“Er…” Mulder added.

“What? Aquaman?” Scully and Mulder shook their heads, cheeks flaming.

“Captain America?”

Skinner tried again.

“Not Robin…please, tell me I’m not Robin!”

That was too much, even for Mulder. He lost his trademark cool, dissolving into a fit of laughter, laying his head down on the table, shaking with mirth. Scully leaned against the kitchen counter, a hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her face.

“What?” Skinner demanded. “What’s so funny?”

“Well, sir,” Mulder said through gasps of laughter, “I was thinking about your last name, you know, the big “S”, and….well, ripping your shirt open…and…” He dissolved into laughter again and Scully joined him.

“Superman?” Skinner said incredulously.

Mulder and Scully just nodded, laughing too hard to speak.

“Cool,” Skinner said, sounding very much like either Beavis or Butthead.

That brought the two agents up short. They stared at each other in silent shock, their gazes moving from Skinner to each other, and then they broke up again, laughing even harder. Skinner joined them.

This felt good, he thought.

Right.

Several minutes later, they managed to collect themselves. “Ok, troops, time to mount up,” he said.

Scully this time, sounding like Butthead. “Huh huh…he said ‘mount.’”

Again the trio burst out laughing. This time, they recovered quickly.

“We gotta get dressed…c’mon, Mulder,” Scully said, dragging her partner down the hall and into her bedroom.

Their bedroom, Skinner reminded himself as he watched the door shut behind them.

***

Ten minutes later, Scully emerged from the bedroom, dressed once again to kill…literally. The black ribbed-cotton Tanktop was back in place, as were the cotton ripstop six-pocket BDU’s and the matching shoulder holsters.

Mulder emerged as she was threading her hair into a ponytail.

“Ready?” Skinner asked. “This is going to be a hard morning, troops.”

“He said ‘hard,’” Scully said again.

“Enough!” Skinner barked, although there was a smile on his face. Stooping to grab her duffel, Scully winked at her boss.

“What about King?” Mulder asked.

“Commander King will be acting as a liaison between ourselves and any other federal, state or local law enforcement or other agencies that will be needed. She has no training in these matters, and would be more of a hindrance than a help,” Skinner explained. “I’ve already called and explained it to her.”

Mulder nodded, one annoying concern put to rest.

***

Marine Barracks, Quantico

“You want to do WHAT?” the facilities Commander said.

“We need to do several runs through the Death House,” Skinner explained.

“You need authorization, there are forms, the time needs to be reserved, there’s all sorts of-”

Skinner leaned forward, thrusting his chin into the man’s face. “You don’t understand. We don’t HAVE any time.”

“Sir,” the FC said, “It’s just not that easy.”

As it turned out, it was.

***

“Ok, let’s go over it one last time,” Skinner said. “We have two bad guys, three good guys, and a device. We have to hit the room, triple-tap the bad guys, not hit any of the good guys, or the device. We have to get to the device within six seconds of hitting the door and pull the plug.”

Scully nodded.

Mulder nodded.

Skinner looked at his two agents and smiled. They had donned body armor and goggles. They had decided to forgo ear protection to get used to the sound of 9mm gunfire in an enclosed space. Their radios were donned and tested, weapons locked and loaded.

“Let’s do it,” Skinner said. It was the fourth evolution they had undergone. The first one had been horrible; Scully had almost shot her partner in a crossing field of fire. The second one had gone better, as had the third.

“I want this one perfect, boys and girls,” Skinner said.

They lined up outside the door. Scully first, since she was the smallest, then Mulder, then Skinner. When Skinner was ready, he squatted next to Mulder and reached over to squeeze his shoulder. Once Mulder felt that, he repeated the action on Scully’s shoulder.

She held out one Nomex-gloved hand. One, she counted.

Two.

Three.

Pulling the pin on a flashbang, she tossed it in the door and leaned back.

WHUMP!

The flash was incredibly bright, designed to work in concert with the jarring bang, rendering anyone inside disoriented and blind.

As a unit, they moved in. Scully, gun already at her shoulder, finger inside the trigger guard, hit the wall and started moving left, to the corner, her MP5 moving in carefully prescribed arcs. Mulder was next, hitting the wall and moving to the right.

There. Spotting a bad guy, Scully touched the trigger. Three shots rang out, the first two hitting the ‘terrorist’ in the heart, the third in the head. An answering series of shots from Mulder’s MP5 signaled that he’d found and downed the other terrorist.

Scully was lowering her weapon when she caught something out of the corner of her eye. In a moment, she understood. Skinner had lied, had told her there were only two bad guys.

There were five.

Three of them, seated around the device, bent over. Without stopping, without thinking, just reacting, Scully threw the MP5 to her shoulder and stitched them, firing three three-round bursts. Each bullet hit its intended target.

“CLEAR!” she called, and moved to the device.

It was a faux bomb, designed more for being obvious than for being devious. All that had to be done to disarm it was to unplug it from the wall.

She yanked the cord. Nothing.

She looked at the device again; Skinner had lied once again. There was a backup power line snaking underneath a couch. With strength she didn’t know she possessed, Scully reached down, her gloved fingers sliding underneath the bottom lip and she heaved the couch upright, moving for the power cord in the same motion and yanking it out of the socket.

“CLEAR!” Mulder called, and then checked his watch.

Six point seven seconds.

Not bad, considering.

Skinner was in the doorway, crouched, his Baretta Assault Shotgun held at port arms.

“Back out, weapons on safe!” he called, as per procedure.

Scully thumbed her MP5 to SAFE and stepped out, pulling her goggles down to dangle around her neck.

Mulder joined her, sweat streaking his face.

“Not bad, people. Scully, you reacted too slowly to the three unexpected tangos.”

She nodded, accepting the criticism. “I assumed,” she started, and then finished, “and made an ass out of ‘U’ and me.”

“Correct. Mulder, you have specific firing arcs, but that doesn’t mean that once your area is clean you can’t look elsewhere. You should have spotted them and called them out to Scully.”

Mulder nodded. Skinner was right.

“As for the device..Scully, I’m impressed.” She nodded, accepting his compliment.

“Ok, let’s do it again.”

***

This time, it was four tangos and three good guys and two devices. And this time, it was pistols only. Scully had switched to a specially modified Glock. It held a laser sight in the frame, where the spring rod would normally be mounted, and also had an external flashlight attachment as well as Trijicon night sites. Mulder had decided to try, for this evolution, a highly-modified Colt Officer’s 45. It was smaller than the normal Government model, and he liked the way it fit his hand.

Against Skinner’s advice not to switch primary weapons this close to D-Day, Mulder had insisted that he wanted to try it. Skinner had agreed, if only to teach Mulder a lesson.

They hit in reverse order this time, Skinner first, then Mulder, then Scully.

Mulder, second through the door, felt himself come alive, felt himself come into his own.

There were only four tangos this time. The modified Officer’s model only held six rounds, and Mulder put two into the first three tangos, and then rolling on the ground, reloaded and emptied two more into the last…all in the space of five seconds. Skinner hadn’t had a chance to acquire or draw on a target.

Seeing that Mulder had things in hand, Skinner moved to the device as Scully provided rear guard.

Seven seconds.

Not bad.

“Again,” Skinner insisted.

Neither agent protested.

***

Washington, DC

The smoking man sat at the desk in another one of the several offices that he kept, silently regarding the man that sat across from him.

“Before you go,” the smoking man said, “I do have a question or two.”

“By all means,” Graves said.

“Why was it necessary, in your mind, to kill all the members of Stone’s Goblin Team?”

There was a pause.

“There was no other way to get Mulder and the Scully woman onto the case.”

The smoking man considered this. He’d suspected as much.

“You seemed to take a particular…enjoyment in your work.”

“It is who I am. What I do.”

“Yes, but…the best of those that do what you do don’t enjoy it nearly as much.”

“Why are you asking this?”

“By this time tomorrow, we both expect you to be dead. We still have a long ways to go on this project. There are others, others like you that have been trained to…operate in the same manner that you did. I want to know why you enjoy something like that so much.”

“Don’t you get off on playing God?” Graves asked.

“Not particularly, no. Neither should you.”

“I know,” Graves said. “But I do. It’s very hard to find someone to be good at this who doesn’t like it.”

The smoking man nodded, agreeing to the logic. “I suppose I am asking if it were possible to train someone to be like you, to be as ruthless and efficient as you…yet still remain…distasteful about his actions.”

“Or her actions. Don’t forget Heather.”

“I haven’t. I won’t.”

“I don’t know,” Graves admitted. “It’s a difficult subject. I’ve known operators, good operators, who still had a conscience. But they eventually got done in by it. They hesitated…or had second thoughts. The best of them, the ones with the most of their souls still intact… went insane.”

“Yes, I know of them,” the smoking man nodded. “Our agreement with the Mexican government still holds. Sadly, they will never see the light of day again.”

Graves shuddered.

“You think it too much to ask? To give your life for a countryman?”

“No, of course not. If you’ve learned nothing about us in the time you’ve been here, learn that. As a people, we live for the glorious heroic gesture. We live for those that would die for us.”

The smoking man nodded. “I’ve noticed that. Most curious. Our Mr. Mulder has come very close to losing his life on more than one occasion performing such heroic deeds.”

“But you were watching out for him.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t you think that’s counter-productive?” Graves asked.

“How?”

“When it comes down to the real deal, he won’t have any backup.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the smoking man grinned. “I wouldn’t say that at all. Now…let’s go over your plans one more time.”

***

Marine Barracks, Quantico

After ten evolutions, the team was exhausted.

“Ok, let’s call it a day,” Skinner ordered. “Showers, and then dinner.”

Scully and Mulder nodded and trudged off to collect their equipment. Mulder had decided to keep the modified Colt Officer’s .45 instead of his duty SIG. Every shot from the pistol had been true, on target, and deadly. It didn’t carry as many rounds as the high-capacity duty weapon, but what it hit…stayed hit.

“Hey, Scully…” he called.

“Yeah, Mulder?”

“You’re one deadly broad,” he said, just before entering the locker room.

“Thanks. I think.”

***

Later, at an Italian restaurant in Fairfax, Skinner outlined the rest of the plan. “I’ll be spending the night on your couch, Scully. I thought about splitting us up, about positioning each of us in a different sector of the city, but he would have thought of that. I expect that we’re going to go on a wild goose chase tomorrow for most of the time. Graves will probably send us all over the city, defusing bombs and all sorts of things before we get to the main event.”

“Any idea of where that will be?”

“A few. Graves will probably want to make a statement of some kind. So it will probably be somewhere famous, somewhere historic. But before we get to that, I’m sure he’ll have us running around, trying to tire us out, distract us, put our nerves on edge. So, it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re together.

“I’ve arranged for the use of a Secret Service Suburban. It’s big and black and has tinted windows…”

“Very common in the District,” Scully commented. “Traffic cops are used to clearing the way for them, no questions asked.”

Skinner nodded. “And three heavily armed Federal Agents swooping out of one probably won’t cause nearly as much terror. People expect that sort of thing to happen with those suburbans.

“I’ve also arranged for air cover with the Park Police, if we need it.”

“How can you be sure that Graves didn’t infiltrate-”

“The man I arranged it with flew over two hundred medivac missions in Vietnam, Agent Mulder. One of them my own. I’m as sure of him as I’m as sure of you.”

“Accepted,” Scully said. “But still-”

“End of discussion,” Skinner growled.

“And now for the touchy subject,” Skinner said softly. Both agent’s heads came up at that.

“Sir?”

“When we get back to your apartment, Agent Scully, I will be taking a walk. Exactly two hours. No shorter, no longer. If, in that time, you and Agent Mulder feel the need to express any opinions or feelings to each other of a personal nature, I’d appreciate you doing it then so we can all get a good nights’ sleep. And that is all I will say on that subject, now, or ever.”

Both agents blushed to the roots.

“Thank you, sir,” Scully said softly.

“You’re welcome.” Standing to go and pay the check, he added, “Make the most of it, troops. It may be your last time.”

With those sobering words, Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Colonel, United States Marine Corps, left the two people who would, both the next day, and in two years, have a profound impact on the fate of the world.

If only they knew, he thought as he reached for his wallet.

If only they knew.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 30/38

Billings, Montana

Pain.

Throbbing pain. Not shooting, but throbbing.

Stone opened his eyes and glanced around the hospital room. Carefully, slowly, he lifted his left arm and spied the IV catheter inserted into it. He sighed, slowly, carefully, knowing that any sudden motions would only cause waves of dizziness and pain to wash over him. But the good news was, he reminded himself, he wasn’t being restrained. He could leave any time he wanted.

He moved his head to the side, checking the other arm. He had an IV in that one, too. Blood, he thought. I lost a lot of blood. He glanced up at the IV pumps mounted on twin poles on either side of his bed. The bags were a liter each, and judging by the instrument displays, the machines were scheduled to deliver the full contents of the two bags within the hour.

Closing his eyes, Stone drifted off thinking, I can wait.

***

Apartment of Dana Scully
Annapolis, Maryland

The trio returned from the restaurant tired, cranky and ready for sleep. True to his word, Skinner went for a walk, leaving Scully and Mulder alone for two precious hours.

The moment the door clicked closed behind Skinner, Mulder turned to his partner and smiled thinly. “I’m not sure we’re going to be able to use the two hours,” he said softly. “I just don’t feel up to it.”

Scully nodded, smiling just as softly. “I’m not really in the mood, either. Firing over a thousand rounds in an afternoon kinda takes the romance right out of me.”

Mulder chuckled. “But you do look so sexy in body armor, toting an MP-5 and opening up a can of whoop-ass on paper targets.”

“Watch it, G-man,” Scully teased back. “Or I might open up that can on you!” They moved towards each other and into a comfortable hug. Mulder gave silent thanks that things between them had progressed to this point. He didn’t know how he would have been able to face what was coming had he not had the chance to tell Scully how he felt, and more importantly, act on it.

“I have an idea,” Scully mumbled against his chest.

“I’m listening.”

“Let’s take a bath.”

Mulder nodded. “Good idea.”

So they did.

***

Sterling, Virginia

Graves sat in his workshop, going over his handiwork one last time. The six devices were in various stages of construction. Each of them would be placed in strategic locations around the DC metro area, the better to run the little rag-tag band into the ground before the big event.

His fingers flew over the keyboard of one of the laptop computers, writing and debugging the arming and disarming software. It had to be perfect. It had to be hard enough to force Mulder to make decisions, difficult decisions, but not hard enough to defeat. Mulder had to be tested, Graves knew. Those were his orders.

Odd thing to be doing on the eve of your death, old boy, he thought. The simple, known fact of his own death didn’t bother Danny Graves in the least. He’d taken an oath years ago, an oath similar to the ones the Guardians took, but different in many ways. While the Guardians weren’t supposed to sacrifice their lives for the greater good, the oath Graves had taken had all but specified exactly that. He was a tool, he knew, nothing more. A conduit. A way to bring a certain set of circumstances about, a way to make sure that certain events happened in a certain order. To deviate from the plan was insanity itself.

He was quite insane, he knew. The last vestiges of what could be called normal thought had left his mind close to a decade ago. The hunt, the chase had replaced all manners of rational thought. All that mattered was the Project, and his specific role in bringing the desired results about.

His mind considered taking that ultimate, final step, and actually making it so the six CBX devices couldn’t be disarmed. It was one way to end the suspense, he knew; one way to bring about a final end to the waiting, the planning, the almost soul-crushing expectations that he, and every member of the Project Team lived with every single day.

All except that smoking bastard.

No one knew who he was or where he came from. He had suddenly appeared years ago, somehow entrenched in the shadowy world of intelligence and an arena that was quaintly described as “executive action.”

Assassination, sabotage, disinformation. There was no one better at it, no one better suited at manipulating long, dangling tentacles of foreign policy and military actions. You had to give the son of a bitch that much, Graves admitted. His world was a stinking pit of lies, deceit, double-crosses and death dealt close up and personal. But he was damn good at it.

Graves knew enough of what was coming to know that his role was vital, critical. That if he were to fail tomorrow, the repercussions would be felt for years.

Generations.

He wondered if the makers of the first atomic weapons felt this way, sequestered in the New Mexico desert in the 1940’s, working towards something they barely understood, hoping to create a weapon of such devastating destruction that their country’s enemies would be brought to their knees, crying and begging to surrender.

He wondered if they had felt the same Godlike power that he did at this moment.

***

Annapolis

Walter S. Skinner ducked into the small pub and bellied his way up to the bar. Never a heavy drinker, he decided that tonight, at least, he could afford one or two.

The bartender was leafing through a copy of the newspaper, peering as the race results and silently mouthing numbers and names to himself, mentally calculating his profits and losses for the day.

“Help ya?” he asked, more of a challenge than a question.

“Draft,” Skinner replied, not caring particularly what was on tap. A moment later a tall, cool, foaming glass of beer slid in front of him. Taking a sip, Skinner began to feel the first clutching fingers of panic twisting in his belly.

His role in all this had changed. At first, when he’d been brought in as Assistant Director, his brief had been clearly laid out. Keep an eye on Mulder. We’ll give him the cases, make sure he has enough information to get to the point we need him to be. And then we’ll take it all away, again and again, over and over. We’re going to stretch him to the breaking point…

And then push him over.

It wasn’t cruel, at least, the intention wasn’t cruel. The effects sometimes were. Scully’s abduction had been an unplanned facet of the entire operation, explained only in retrospect, and Skinner had found himself, against his better judgment, in agreeing that the decision to let Scully almost die had accomplished its intent: Scully and Mulder’s bond was forged steel, harder than titanium, more dense than a neutron star. Nothing could separate them. And that had been the requirement, almost from the beginning.

They had to be a team, a single functioning unit that thought as one, moved as one, acted as a unique, forcible entity that did what had to be done.

What had to be done, Skinner mused. He had less information than Graves did, knew little of the ultimate objectives of the Project. But he’d been told enough, been given a glimpse of what was to come in one possible future, and he agreed with the general outlines of what needed to be done.

He had problems with the specifics sometimes, but he kept reminding himself of two facts. First, he had asked to join this. Being a part of the Guardians was only one small part of his presence in the general outline; there were other, deeper connections, connections that he could never speak of, never reveal, even under the most extreme conditions.

As he sat there sipping his beer, Skinner thought back over his association with Scully and Mulder. The fights, the accusations, the things that he’d been forced to do by design and circumstance. He’d hated himself after most of them, found it hard to look at his own face in the mirror. But he knew, intellectually at least, that they had to be done.

Like Terry.

The name, almost forgotten by everyone that had ever known him, was the only thing Skinner had to remember him by. He remembered the last time he’d seen his old friend. In an elevator, in Mulder’s building, with Terry holding a high-capacity 9mm pistol in his face. The shock of recognition as the elevator doors had slid open on oiled tracks had almost stopped Skinner dead. Pieces of the puzzle had slammed together in his mind and he’d acted before he’d had a chance to think.

Skinner’s mind wandered back, back to Vietnam, back to the jungle fire that had forged the steel in his soul. Terry, assigned to his unit, a ‘consultant’ for operations and plans. Not military, not CIA, not State. Somewhere in the middle, in the darkness, in the shadow. Even back then, when the United States was just getting its first taste of moving in the spaces between darkness and light, Terry was there, already experienced, already growing more powerful, stronger.

Terry, who believed in the ultimate objective with his entire being, who had known about Mulder since before Mulder was born. Terry, who had shown Skinner the ropes, who had instructed him on the facets of the project that Skinner was allowed to know. Using the trust forged in the jungle fire between them to convince Skinner that the Project’s objectives were true, were right, were morally acceptable; required.

“Freshen that?” the bartender asked.

Skinner looked up, surprised, and then down again. His glass was empty.

“Sure,” Skinner said, sliding it across the bar. Moments later it was returned, filled to the brim, one lazy tendril of foam sliding down the slick surface of the stein.

He lifted the glass in silent toast.

Here’s to you, Mulder. May your aim be true, your mind be clear, and may the love you have found in your heart guide you to the destiny that others have planned for you. Skinner hoisted the glass to his lips, paused, and raised it again, finishing the silent toast.

Here’s to you, Mulder, and guys like you. Damn few left.

He drank, and then raised the glass again. To Scully, he thought. To the tiny woman with the fierce warrior’s heart, the genius with a scientist’s mind and the soul of a romantic poet. To the only woman who could ever be Mulder’s equal. To the only woman who could find it in herself to love that man the way he needs to be loved.

He drank, almost a third of the glass, and raised it one last time.

To the both of you, he thought. To Mulder and Scully.

Saviors of the world.

He drank.

He had one last sip-and-a-half left. He held the glass by the rim, rotating his wrist slowly, watching the amber liquid swirl against the sides.

To me, he thought dourly. That I might live to see another day past tomorrow.

Somehow, he doubted it.

***

Billings, Montana

Stone woke again and looked up. Two fresh bags had been hung while he slept, but he felt immeasurably better. The fluid replacement was doing it’s job, and he knew that he should wait for the rest of it, but after glancing at his watch, he decided that he didn’t have the time to spare.

Sitting up carefully, he reached with his left hand and carefully worked the catheter out. A small drop of blood appeared. Stone jammed a finger against it and raised his arm for a silent count of sixty. When he checked again, the oozing had stopped. Repeating the process on his other arm, Stone glanced around the room, wondering where they’d hidden his clothes.

Clothes, he thought. Weapons. I need money, weapons and a plane.

The plane was no problem; the Lear he and Dana had flown up was still sitting at BMA. Money would be no problem, if he could find his gear bag. He’d stowed over ten thousand dollars in it on the off chance that he would need it.

Carefully getting to his feet, Stone made his way over to the closet. Opening it, he found his gear bag and his clothes. Gently leaning over, he slid back the zipper on the gear bag. Skinner had left a single pistol, a Glock, and half the money.

That was all right, Stone thought. They may need it. But what they really need is…me.

No one knows Graves like I do.

No one.

With that thought in mind, Stone reached for his clothes and gingerly began to dress. He was almost finished when he felt the swirl of cool air around his shoulders signaling that someone had entered the room. He looked up to see a young nurse standing in the doorway, her mouth hanging open in surprise.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“Isn’t that rather stupid question?” Stone replied. “It’s patently obvious what I’m doing. I’m getting out of here.”

“Oh no you’re not,” she said primly, marching over to him, just in time to see Stone’s Glock leveled at her face.

“Oh yes I am,” Stone said softly. “Listen to me very, very carefully, young lady. I am not going to hurt you. But I must leave.”

“You’re in no condition to-”

“Be quiet,” he said softly, “and listen to me. There is no room for discussion. I have to catch a plane to Washington. Tonight. Now.”

She gulped, and then nodded. “Why?” she asked.

He smiled his best smile. “To save the world, ma’am. To save the world.”

***

Apartment of Dana Scully
Annapolis, Maryland

They had dressed after the bath, he in track shorts and a soft cotton T-shirt, she in a pair of his boxers and his old Knicks shirt. The comfort of his familiar clothing was something she needed at that moment; the shirt smelled like him, the soft cotton against her skin reminding Scully of his touch.

They hadn’t made love, as much as each of them might have wanted to. It seemed…desperate, somehow, as if they were trying to force it, trying to make it happen so that they would have just one more, just a single encounter to cry against the despair that was beginning to fill their hearts.

They were at her kitchen table when Skinner returned. He let himself in with a spare key that Scully had given him before he left, and found them preparing for the next day. Boxes and boxes of ammunition were scattered on the tables, the plastic and Styrofoam carriers discarded in a huge pile on the drainboard.

Mulder had the ten magazines he’d acquired for his new Colt Commander loaded, and was working on what looked to be the tenth or twelfth magazine for his MP5. He was grunting, thumbing the rounds down, his face straining with the effort.

“They don’t call ‘em thumbusters for nothing,” Skinner observed.

“Tell me about it,” Mulder said.

Scully, ever the pragmatic one, was using an autoloader. A plastic device with a rotating crank on the side, the autoloader jammed the cartridges into the magazines as easily as feeding quarters into a slot machine.

“Why don’t you use the autoloader?” Skinner inquired, pointing at the device with his chin.

“He says it’s a girly thing,” Scully replied dryly.

“Oh,” Skinner said, because that was the only thing he could think of. “Well, I’d better get started.”

“We already did yours,” Mulder said, hitching a shoulder at Skinner’s duffel. Walking over to it, Skinner opened it and saw that Mulder was telling the truth. All of his magazines were loaded, and judging by the faint smell wafting from the interior, they’d also re- cleaned and lightly oiled his weapons.

“Thanks.”

“Sure, no problem,” Mulder said, gritting his teeth as he tried to force just one more round into a magazine.

“Don’t overload it, Mulder,” Scully chastised. “Or they’ll all come spitting out the first time you pull the trigger.

Nodding, Mulder relented, dropping the now-full magazine and picking up another.

“Do you really think we’re going to need all these?” Scully asked.

“Never need a fresh magazine more then when you need one and don’t have one,” Skinner observed.

Scully nodded and cranked.

***

Sterling, Virginia

Done, Graves thought. He looked at the six devices, all of them small enough to fit in a standard briefcase. He walked down the workbench, running one more diagnostic each. Typing the commands into the keyboards, he watched as the software interrogated the hardware and reported back.

No problems.

Time, he thought. Time to make the delivery.

He picked up his cellphone and the six index cards he’d written.

The first call went to the Pentagon. A high-ranking operations analyst with the Army’s Department of Logistics answered, and Graves gave him the code phrase.

“Where?” the Colonel asked.

Graves told him.

The next call went to the Department of Energy. A White House speechwriter, seconded to the DOE to escape the legally-imposed limit on White House employees, answered the phone. Phrases were exchanged, and Graves told him where the second device was to be planted.

Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Army Corps of Engineers.

And finally, the last one. Graves dialed the last number with shaking hands.

“White House Switchboard,” the voice answered.

***

Apartment of Dana Scully
Annapolis, Maryland

Scully made up the couch for Skinner and then said good night, taking a moment to give him a brief hug and a soft kiss on the cheek. Mulder shook his hand and retired with his partner to her bedroom.

They snuggled in the bed, arms wrapped around each other, waiting for sleep to take them.

“Are you scared?” Scully asked, her voice quiet in the dark room.

“Shitless,” Mulder admitted.

After a minute, Scully replied, “Me, too.”

They held each other tighter, fighting against the demons.

“I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a very strange day,” Mulder said wryly. Then his tone turned serious. “But I want to tell you some things, Scully.”

She waited for him to continue. She had some things she wanted to say as well, but she’d wait for him to finish.

“No matter what happens tomorrow, I want you to know that I wouldn’t change a thing, Scully. Not about us.”

“Or me,” she said. “But-”

“I know. The flukeman.” She giggled in the darkness, and it was a beautiful sound to both of their ears.

“I feel safe,” she whispered. “Safe here with you, in your arms. I feel like nothing can get to us when we’re in here together. I feel like I never want to get out of this bed again.”

Mulder nodded against her. “I feel the same way. Funny, though, that I feel like you’re protecting me, shielding me from the monsters in the dark.”

She poked him in the chest. “Why is that so hard to believe, Mulder?”

“Not that it’s hard to believe, but that it’s just…different.” He paused, and then added, “Not that I would change it for anything.”

“Different how?” Scully insisted.

“Well, I’m the man, and you’re the…” His voice trailed off as he realized the mistake he’d been about to make. “Forget I said anything,” he added hastily.

After a long, long pause, Scully said quietly, “Forgotten.”

Mulder said something that had been on his mind for a while. “You ever get the feeling that Skinner knows more than he’s letting on?”

“Like what?”

“Oh…I don’t know specifically. Just that he’s got more information about this whole deal.”

Scully considered it. “Well,” she finally said, “I’m not sure if he’s necessarily hiding anything from us; I’d hate to think that. And he’s given us no concrete reason to believe that. He may know things in general that we don’t, Bureau policies, what the ultimate aim of the X- Files are in the overall scope of the Bureau. Sometimes…”

Sensing her hesitation, Mulder refrained from prompting her.

“Sometimes…,” she continued, “…I feel like he’s watching us.”

“He’s our supervisor,” Mulder pointed out.

“And you, technically, are mine. But you don’t watch me the way he watches us. Like’s he’s…evaluating us.”

Mulder thought about what Scully had said, chewing his lip in the darkness.

“I love you,” Scully said softly, tightening her arms around him. “So much.”

“I love you, too,” he replied, meaning every scary word of it. Something was nagging him, teasing the back of his brain, something started by Scully’s observations of Skinner.

He turned the full attention of his considerable mind towards the problem, turning it over and over in his head, looking for the handle.

“Sleepy,” Scully yawned.

“Shhh,” he said, and she knew that sound. Mulder was thinking. Smiling, Scully tucked her head against his chest and let sleep claim her at last.

***

Sterling, Virginia

The six operatives had all come and gone, each of them spaced twenty minutes apart. All six devices were on their way to their designated locations.

Graves stood over a map of the Metro DC area, using a stopwatch to gauge times and distances. Each of the devices was equipped with two- way radio communications. He could adjust the timers on any of the six devices in either direction.

Right up until the moment of detonation, he thought.

Sighing, he sat back, contemplating the plan. When they had first come to him, after Afghanistan, and told him what they wanted from him, Graves had thought them all insane. To start a plan in motion that was so grandiose, so complicated, when the primary focus of that mission was still in junior high school was laughable.

But they’d shown him.

They’d shown him one possible future, and that had scared Danny Graves, had scared him badly. And so he’d done what they’d asked, he’d tarnished his name in the intelligence community, becoming a ‘rogue’ to those that had once counted him as a friend. He’d slowly cut the bonds that had tied him to friends, family, co-workers. He’d started recruiting, using the paranoia of the times and the ever-worsening criminal and political situations to his advantage. He smirked, wondering if he should thank the moronic, imbecilic politicians that had made it all possible.

Had they only seen what he had, there wouldn’t be the problems there were today, he thought. If the knew what was coming, they’d understand what had to be done, and why.

But they could not be told, for there were more than one or two of Them amongst the elected officials. It was up to me, he thought, and men like me to do what had to be done.

“Mr. Graves.” The voice was steady, almost melodious. To his credit, Graves didn’t jump or start. He twisted his neck and spoke to the smoking man.

“I expected you an hour ago.”

“Unforeseeable delay, I’m afraid. My apologies.”

“Accepted,” Graves grunted.

“How is the plan?” the man inquired politely.

“Moving according to plan.” He pointed to the map. “Device 1, the Naval Observatory. Device 2, Arlington National Cemetery. Device 3, Watergate Hotel. Device 4, Department of Energy. Device 5, Supreme Court. And, device 6,” Graves said.

“The White House,” the smoking man muttered. “Devious, I must say. They’ll never be able to get that one.”

Graves nodded. “Mulder’s going to have to make some very tough choices.”

The Smoking Man smiled, and then frowned. “I have little doubt that he will make the correct ones, at least as far as this mission goes.”

“What are the correct choices?” Graves wondered. “You never did tell me that.”

The smoking man lit another one, took a drag and held it a long time before exhaling. “Think of it this way,” he finally said. “It’s not so much which choices Mulder makes, but that he proves that he can make tough choices. This little jaunt is but on small step on a very long path for Mr. Mulder and his partner. Once he proves that he can make the hard decisions, we will advance him and Miss Scully to the next stage, where the decisions will be even harder.”

Graves nodded. “I still don’t understand all of it,” he muttered.

The Smoking Man considered this. “Would you like to?” he offered.

Graves slowly turned to face him. “Very much. But why now?”

The other man’s gaze turned to one of pity. “Oh, I get it,” Graves said. “I’ll be dead within 24 hours. Who am I going to tell?”

The Smoking Man nodded. “Precisely.”

“Well, then, shit. Lay it on me, old fella. Tell me what I want to know.”

The smoking man stubbed his cancer stick out and took a step towards Graves. “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be better to show you.”

The Smoking Man reached a hand out to the other man, cupping his forehead in his palm, as if taking his temperature. Graves watched as the man closed his eyes and then-

The images impacted against Graves’ mind like a barrage of gunfire. Pictures, sounds, smells, thoughts. He heard the screams of a billion dying people, saw the reality of cities dissolving in walls of flames, smelled the sound of total and complete destruction, of the annihilation of an entire planet in a matter of…

Minutes?

“That’s all it took?” Graves asked the room. “Minutes?”

“Less time than that,” The Smoking Man gasped. “Less time than you can comprehend, Mr. Graves.”

And then Graves realized something; the world he was seeing was not his own. It was another world, somewhere in the Universe. The people there looked very much like the people on this planet, except for the skin tone, which was somewhere between red and not so red. And their eyes. Their eyes were different somehow. Not alien, in the classic sense of the word, but…different. Strange.

“Where was this place?” he asked.

“It is not visible from this planet with the current technology,” the Smoking Man replied, “and so the scientists have not given it a name. The word that was used to describe it translates roughly to “sanctuary.”

“Were you there?” Graves asked, suddenly scared.

The Smoking Man smiled. “Are you afraid, Mr. Graves?”

“Not…exactly.”

“Curious, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“It is impossible to describe to you, the…level of my participation in what you are seeing. In one way, a part of me was down on the surface of that world, looking up, while another part was above, looking down.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. It must be that way; to show you any more would most likely render you useless for the mission.”

The smoking man removed his hand. “Do you understand a little more now?”

“That? That’s coming here?”

The Smoking Man nodded. “Yes. And very soon.”

“How soon?”

“Soon.”

Graves thought about the images that he’d seen. “Was that your home?”

The Smoking Man grinned. “No.”

“Can you show me your home?”

Shrugging, he said, “If you insist.” Again, he placed his hand against Graves’ forehead.

After a minute, Graves saw…

Nothing.

Empty space. A vacuum of space between dead star systems. There was nothing there and it was cold.

Very cold.

“Where is this place?”

“Everywhere. Nowhere.”

“Cryptic, aren’t you?”

“It is hard to describe.”

“Who are you?”

The Smoking Man laughed again. It was a cold, chilling noise, Graves thought. “A better question, or at least a more accurate one might be ‘what are you?’ But that, again, is not easy to describe, and even harder to illustrate.”

“Are you a man?” Graves asked.

“Enough questions,” the Smoking Man replied. “This is serving little purpose.”

“Please!” Graves begged.

“Very well. Yes, I am a man, in much the same way that you are. And in other was, more important ways, I am not a man.”

“Can you be killed?”

“What would make you ask such a question?”

“Curiosity.”

“Yes, I can be killed. But by nothing on this world.”

Graves chewed his lip for a moment. “Tell me something.”

The Smoking Man sighed. “Now what?”

“Can you stop it? What you showed me. Can you stop it from happening here?”

The Smoking Man turned his gaze on Graves, trying to show his sincerity. “Directly? No. But that is what Mr. Mulder and Miss Scully are for. That is why this all must happen according to my plan. I have stopped it twice before.” He paused. “But I failed to stop it three other times. I’d like to even the score this time.”

“How long?”

“Four years, Mr. Graves. Four more revolutions around this puny star you call a sun, and then the day I have been waiting for will arrive.” He paused and offered a thin smile.

“Of course, by then, I will be long gone.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 31/38

The smoking man sat in another of the many offices he used, his thoughts far away. His craggy, lined face was creased in concentration, his considerable mind working overtime, trying to foresee every possible outcome of what was about to happen. One of the problems of serving so many different masters, he thought, was the impossibility of keeping all of them happy.

Control, he knew, and more importantly, control of information, was the key. He’d worked long and hard to earn each group’s support and trust, and each thought that he was working for them, helping them further their objectives, helping them obtain their goals. While it was true that he helped most of them in small ways here and there, the smoking man’s true agenda was his own, and it was secret. There were perhaps two or three people on this forsaken planet who knew his true agenda, and those people he trusted with more than his life: He trusted them with the truth.

He smiled wryly around the cigarette in his mouth. The truth. The truth, as one of his operatives had once remarked, didn’t exist. It was created from whole cloth, bent and shaped to fit needed circumstance. There were known outcomes and possible outcomes, and the smoking man’s job was to make certain possible outcomes into the only outcome.

He opened one of the slim file folders on his desk and reviewed the notes he’d made in the margins. The next few hours were critical. Everything had to go according to plan. It was interesting, he thought, that he found himself having to trust and encourage a man that he had tried to kill on more than one occasion. Then again, he mused, if those that seek the reasons, the explanations behind my actions were to know the truth that I know, they might agree with the decisions that I’ve been forced to make.

Take New Mexico, he thought. When the full scope of the project was revealed to Mulder, the smoking man was sure the young FBI agent would at first refuse to believe. As much as he professed to, when confronted with the ultimate truth, he would do what he always did, return to the past to try and predict his future, to try and fit the facts of his life to his own paranoid interpretation of that same life. On the one hand, it had looked like a cold-blooded attempt to murder a federal agent who had gotten too close to the truth. And, viewed through the prism of other events, such as the murder of his partner’s sister, it might seem as though Mulder’s death had been preordained.

But, when viewed through the prism of reality, of the true facts, it was just another step towards the ultimate objective. Or, seen through yet a third view, it was an attempt to control a rogue element that had learned too much too quickly.

The smoking man sighed. That had always been the problem with this project. Mulder. Too eager, always ready to throw caution to the wind, ready to ditch anyone at anytime in his efforts to discover that malleable entity he called the Truth.

But they’d known that. Or, they thought they had. Projections had been performed, risks and dangers calculated, options weighed. And of all the possible choices, Mulder had been the best option. Before he’d been a zygote, before he’d been a genome, Mulder’s choice as the savior of this world had been made. And shortly on the heels of that, the choice of Scully had been made as well.

And then the plans had been set in motion; plans that had to be in place before either of them had been born. The staged ‘crash’ at Roswell, public hysteria carefully encouraged and then quashed, the thin veil of suggestive conspiracy delicately placed over the entire affair, giving just enough information to tantalize and hiding the rest. Creating what intelligence agents called a “legend,” enough of a background to give something credence, weight, believability. But it was all smoke, he thought, and then grinned again.

They thought him weak, because he always smoked the damn cigarettes. Had they known that he needed the mixture of poisonous gasses, the life-giving carbon monoxide, they would be stunned. For that would set him apart, make him different. He would be chased, caught, dissected and studied. They would be amazed at what they found were they ever to x-ray him.

When Mulder, and shortly thereafter, Scully were brought into the project fullfold, when they were told and shown what had been done on their behalf, he knew they would not be grateful. They would hate him, curse his name, wish him dead; they might even try to accomplish the task themselves.

Mulder had almost succeeded, once. Appearing in his apartment, a wrathful God of vengeance, pointing a gun. He’d almost wanted to let Mulder shoot, if only to spring the trap early. Imagine the federal agent’s surprise when the bullet passed through his body like smoke through air, leaving no blood, no wound, nothing to mark its passage through his body. The stunned look, the sudden understanding…it would all have been so delicious, such a wonderful twist to the entire affair.

But it had been too soon. Mulder might have snapped, might have finally given in to the demons that tortured his dreams and waking hours both. Scully had been weak then, on the brink of death to all outward appearances.

O’wan had been sent, ‘her’ gifts needed at that time. She had done what had been asked of her, had guided the Scully woman back from the brink. There had been a few tense moments, when the curious customs of this brave race had almost caused them to use the legal intricacies available to them to give up on a life that was nowhere near being ready to end. O’wan had made sure that she had come back before the wrangling over what was ‘compassionate’ and what was ‘justified’ had finished.

The smoking man glanced at his watch. Funny how time matters so much to these people, how they’d managed to concoct an artificial system based on planetary revolutions and celestial mechanics. To the smoking man, time had little meaning, because for him…

For him, time had no beginning and no ending.

Time just was.

***

Dana Scully’s Apartment
0630 Hours Sunday

Scully turned over in her sleep and snuggled closer. Mulder, awake for hours, smiled and tightened his arms around her, reveling in her warmth, her softness. This could be the last morning we greet the day together, he thought. One wrong move today, and either or both of us could be dead.

Or Skinner.

His mind had been chewing on something all night, trying to poke holes in something that Mulder just couldn’t reach, even with his formidable mind. It was tantalizingly out of reach, on the tip of his mental tongue, and the wasted effort was frustrating.

“Morning,” Scully muttered, kissing his chin. He tipped his head and brushed his lips against hers.

“Good morning, I guess.”

She smiled softly. “We should get up.”

Mulder nodded, casting the bedcovers aside and swinging his feet to the floor. He stood, moving to the window and parting the blinds. “Looks like it’s going to be a bright sunny day,” he remarked.

“Yeah, right up until the moment that thing blows,” Scully replied.

“Happy thoughts, lover. Happy thoughts.” Scully blushed, and wasn’t sure why. The fact that Mulder had used that forbidden term of endearment so casually, with such a soft, familiar tone in his voice? Or the fact that he had pleased her so inordinately?

“Whatever. Haven’t had my coffee yet,” she grumbled. She stood and joined him at the window, her arm sliding around his waist. She tipped her head against his shoulder, wondering if this was going to be the last peaceful moment of the day.

Of her life.

“Shower,” Mulder said.

“Thought you’d never ask,” she smiled at him.

***

45 minutes later

“Look!” Mulder whispered urgently, his expression making it clear he was making a monumental effort at not laughing. Scully tiptoed over to where Mulder stood, behind the couch that Skinner was sleeping on.

Her boss was deep in the zone, Scully realized. His mouth was open and a small trickle of…

Drool?

Scully clapped a hand over her mouth and ran back towards her bedroom, fighting the giggles with every step. Mulder joined her and they closed the bedroom door softly, gently, and then collapsed against it, silent laughs wracking their bodies.

Nervous laughter, she thought.

Stress relief, he thought.

In the living room, Walter Skinner awoke.

Where the hell am I? he thought.

***

Sterling, Virginia

Danny Graves was looking at his last sunrise, and the thought filled him with sadness. As with all driven men, he had waited for this day for the majority of his adult life, and now that it was upon him, he didn’t know quite how to feel. The fact that he knew with utter certainty that he would be dead within ten hours felt strange rolling around in his mind.

He glanced back at his desk. Two envelopes waited, one addressed to Mulder, the other to Scully. He’d been up a good part of the night writing them, laying out his life story for them, filling in some of the blanks. Despite the smoking man’s assurances, Graves wanted to be sure that someone knew his story.

Two identical copies of a safe-deposit-box key were inside the envelopes. In the boxes, Scully and Mulder would find the truth they had been seeking. The will he’d completed was already in his attorney’s hands, and the details were quite specific. The safety-deposit box could not be opened until the year 2001.

Until June 20, 2001, to be exact.

And on that day, if the smoking man had not kept his promise, Mulder and Scully would be able to find the truth.

Time to go, Graves thought. He took one last look at his workroom and sighed. He’d spent so many hours here, and in Hawaii, building this dream, fighting this dragon, that seemed anticlimactic to have it all end with a whimper instead of a bang.

Six bangs, to be exact.

And, as with all men who did what he did, or had done what he’d done, Graves had left himself an escape hatch. If the smoking man decided to take him out early, the devices would detonate, no matter what anyone did to them. The fail-safe code had to be entered remotely. If the code wasn’t received by a certain time, each of the devices had a specially crafted, almost undetectable subroutine that would doubly arm them. First, with a collapsible virtual circuit, so any attempt to clip wires or remove blasting caps would instantly detonate the device. And secondly, a heat-proximity detonator. Anyone that got within two feet of the device would trip it.

Insurance, Graves thought.

Insurance by one madman to check the moves of another.

***

“Let’s go,” Skinner said. They were dressed. Weapons had been checked and double-checked; ditto for the radios. Maggie King had checked in by telephone.

The knock surprised everyone.

Scully moved to the door and leaned up to peer through the peephole.

“I don’t believe it!” she gasped. Twisting the lock, she flung the door open, revealing a very pale, weak Commander Matthew Stone.

“Stone!” Skinner barked. “What are you doing here?”

“Graves,” he croaked. “I came to help you with-”

Skinner shook his head.

Mulder looked at the man and saw the feral intensity in his eyes and knew what was going to happen next with the same certainty that he was sure the sun would rise the next day.

Mulder was reaching for his pistol when it happened.

Moving faster than anyone had thought possible, Stone snaked out an arm and caught Scully around the neck, twisting and pulling her against him in an effective choke hold. The pistol he’d kept hidden behind his right thigh came up, the barrel leveling against her temple.

“Either I help, or you’re going to be short one member of this little team,” Stone gasped.

Mulder’s pistol was up and leveled at Stone, as was Skinner’s.

Mexican standoff.

“Jesus, I feel like I’m in a John Woo movie,” Stone said dryly, his grip on the pistol tightening. “Drop ‘em.”

“Not-” Mulder started.

“A chance,” Skinner finished.

Mulder took six steps to the entwined duo and quickly jammed the barrel of his pistol into Stone’s face. “Let her go. Now.”

Stone looked at Mulder.

Mulder looked at Stone.

Scully’s free hand came down and found Stone’s testicles. She gripped, twisted and pulled.

“Augh!” Stone cried, dropping the arm around her neck. Scully pivoted and brought her knee up, finishing what she’d started. Stone collapsed in a heap, his hands going to his groin.

“What a fucking idiot,” Skinner exclaimed.

“Yeah, he shouldn’t have left the hospital,” Scully said, almost as an afterthought.

“I meant for screwing with the two of you. Shit! You’d think he would have learned by now.”

Scully smiled over her shoulder at her boss and, with Mulder’s help, dragged Stone into her apartment. “Mulder…dresser, top drawer, in our bedroom…handcuffs.”

Skinner rolled his eyes, not wanting to know.

Mulder grinned. “The regular ones, or the fur-lined ones?”

“MULDER! GO! NOW!” she ordered. Turning to her boss as her partner trotted off to the bedroom, her face flushed, Scully attempted to explain.

“Sir-”

“Scully, I do not want to know,” Skinner said, holding up a hand.

“Sir-”

Mulder returned, carrying a standard-issue pair of Smith & Wesson stainless steel handcuffs. “Sorry, I guess the fur-lined ones are at my place,” he said, a smile still on his face.

Scully spun on him. “Asshole!” she hissed. Seeing her expression, Mulder pulled out his kicked-puppy look.

No go.

He tried for contrite.

Nothing.

“Sorry,” he finally said.

“You will be, believe me. If we live through this, I’ll KILL you!”

Skinner grinned. Watching the two of them was somehow uplifting, he thought. That in the middle of all this they could make…sex jokes.

“Cuff him,” Skinner ordered. Mulder quickly cuffed the still- moaning Stone and dragged him to the couch. “Stay,” he said, as if talking to a recalcitrant pet.

“Fuck off,” Stone mumbled.

Scully looked at her watch. “Time go to,” she said.

Mulder leaned down into Stone’s face. “Be a nice boy, and I’ll bring you a present,” he said softly.

“Graves’ head. On a platter,” Stone requested.

“See what I can do,” Mulder said.

The trio left.

Stone counted to five hundred in his head. Mulder had cuffed his hands behind him. Moving slowly to minimize the pain, Stone rolled off the couch onto the floor. Bending his legs to his chest and lifting his ass off the floor, he brought his arms around his waist and then over his legs.

Now the hard part, he thought.

Grimacing against the flash of pain he knew was coming, Stone carefully dislocated his left thumb and then quickly slid the cuff off his hand before snapping the joint back into place. Repeating the process with his other hand, Stone stood and worked both his hands, trying to rub feeling back into his fingers.

“Handcuffs,” he muttered. “Amateurs.”

***

Sterling, Virginia

Graves loaded the last and the largest of the CBX devices into the back of his PathFinder. He had to smile; the entire Tomahawk deception had worked like a charm. They thought that the ultimate CBX delivery vehicle would come raining down from the skies, airborne death from above.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

He patted the device, wondering if they would ever figure it out.

***

Washington, DC
0840 Hours

“In position,” Skinner radioed.

“Roger that,” Maggie called back. “All frequencies showing nominal.” She’d been equipped with six or eight police scanners, all of them programmed to different departments. The Secret Service were on one, Park Police on another, FBI tactical on a third, DC Metro on a fourth. “We have a few fender benders on the beltway, and DC Fire-Rescue has several ambulance calls. Park Air 1 is on standby, and Secret Service is on stand-down since the President is at Camp David this weekend.”

“First lady?” Scully asked.

Skinner glanced at her.

“If Graves is anything like Stone, he has a problem with women,” she explained. “Especially…uh, powerful women.”

Mulder hid a grin behind his hand under the guise of wiping non- existent sweat off his brow. They were inside the four-door Suburban Skinner had requisitioned for the mission, parked near Capitol Hill.

Skinner nodded at her logic. “Check on the status of the First Lady,” he ordered. “And the First Daughter.”

King radioed an acknowledgment and went to work. She’d been instructed on how to contact the various federal, state and local authorities. She was to identify herself as Special Agent Maggie King, and Skinner had made arrangements so that anyone calling the Hoover building to verify her identity would receive the correct, reassuring answer.

“So now we wait,” Mulder said, beginning to sweat for real. He was behind the wheel, Scully to his right, Skinner in the back seat. The AD had decided he’d man the radios, since he had experience coordinating such missions in the past.

And Mulder always drove anyway.

Skinner glanced at his watch.

8:45

“Mulder…time for your call.”

Mulder nodded and reached for his cell. He dialed quickly.

“Lone Gunmen.”

“It’s me. You ready?”

“As we’ll ever be. You going to tell us what this is all about?” Byers asked.

“When it’s over…as much as I can.”

“Mulder…” the warning tone was clear in his friend’s voice.

“Byers…if you ever wanted to make sure you and your two cronies will earn your junior G-man badges…this is the time.”

“Ok, we’re set up to cell-trace. We have some other toys in place in case you need them. We’ll keep this line open.”

“Roger. Start tracing any call that any of the three of us get. Page me when you have a fix.”

“Got it.”

***

Naval Observatory
Northwest Metro DC Area

Graves parked the Suburban and got out. His Navy uniform was impeccable, as were his credentials. No one would question him, and since no one would see him enter or leave with any devices, witnesses that were questioned later wouldn’t remember him.

He made his way inside to the men’s room. The device was hidden where he requested, in the duct work above his head. He pulled a small USR Palm Pilot from his pocket, specially modified for this mission with an RF modem.

He interrogated the device.

All systems normal, it reported.

He keyed in the first sequence and checked his watch.

8:55.

Close enough.

He pulled a small flip-fone from his pocket and dialed a number he’d memorized.

“Skinner.”

***

Capitol Hill

“Good morning, Assistant Director Skinner. I assume you are ready to begin?”

Skinner nodded to his agents. Mulder started the engine and shifted into drive, his foot on the brake. Scully’s hands were poised over the controls for the blue-and-red lightbar and the electronic siren.

***

Headquarters of the Lone Gunmen

“Got a tickle,” Frohike said, fingers flying on the keyboard. “Localizing…”

Byers picked up the phone and dialed six digits, his finger itching to dial the seventh.

“Naval observatory, or thereabouts,” Frohike said after a minute.

“Lock to the roam signal,” Byers ordered. “If he leaves it on, we can track him.”

“Doing it now,” Frohike added. “Call Mulder.”

“Just did,” Byers replied.

***

Capitol Hill

“Where are they?” Skinner demanded. He knew the answer would be worthless, but he had to play by the script. Not a script that he, Graves or the Guardians had written, but a script that all involved knew by heart.

“Tut-tut, Skinner. All in due time. Ask Mr. Mulder what his dearest wish is.”

“His dearest wish is to get his sister back,” Skinner said without asking Mulder.

“Point granted. Ask him what his second dearest wish is.”

Skinner gritted his teeth. “To marry Special Agent Scully.”

Both agents twisted in the front seat to stare at their boss. He waved them off, pointing to his watch. Time. Playing for time. Mulder nodded, and then wondered: How did he know?

“Skinner, I grow tired of these games. Ask Mr. Mulder where he would go to discover what which he’s searched his entire life-”

Mulder’s pager went off.

Quickly, Mulder hit SPD 3 and SEND.

“Lone Gun-”

“Byers! Who else would be calling?”

“Naval Observatory,” Byers said. “Or thereabouts.”

“Got it.”

Mulder pulled into traffic and waved Scully’s hand away from the siren controls. “Not until he’s off the phone,” he whispered. She nodded, understanding. The lights did most of the work, the blue and red rotating beacons clearing the light Sunday morning traffic quite nicely.

Mulder figured time and distance in his mind. About thirty minutes to the Observatory.

“Graves…why are you playing this game?” Skinner demanded.

“Because it’s so much fun. You have exactly twenty minutes to get here, dear boy. Or you know what happens.”

The line went dead.

“Hit it!” Skinner ordered. “We have twenty minutes!”

Scully hit the siren at the same moment Mulder hit the gas.

***

Naval Observatory

Moving quickly, Graves exited the Observatory and headed towards his truck. Climbing in, he turned south, towards Arlington.

He waited fifteen minutes, and then dialed again.

“Skinner.”

“Mr. Skinner. Time for device number two,” Graves said.

“But we haven’t found the first one yet!” Skinner yelled.

“Well…that’s not my problem,” Graves said solicitously.

“I’m listening,” Skinner said.

“Since this is the last sunrise that any of you will ever see, I wonder if your thoughts have turned to what lies beyond this world, what will happen when the light dies? Do you rage?”

Skinner frowned. “I need more.”

“Sorry. That’s all I have,” Graves said, and disconnected.

Mulder’s pager burred. He dialed again.

“Lo…Byers,” Byers answered.

“Where?”

“Near Arlington!”

“The cemetery!” Mulder said. Skinner nodded. That made sense.

“He said something about the light dying and raging,” Skinner said.

“Rage against the dying of the light,” Scully offered.

Skinner’s phone rang again.

“Skinner.”

“Graves. Oh, and by the way, the second device is timed to go off in…oh, my…fifteen minutes after the first.” He paused. “Have fun.”

“Shit,” Skinner said.

“What?” Scully asked.

This is it, Skinner thought. This is where I have to let Mulder make the decision.

“The second device is scheduled to go off fifteen minutes after the first. There’s no way we can make it to both of them.”

Mulder frowned. “Hand me the radio!” he said. Skinner handed it to him.

“Maggie, this is Mulder,” he radioed.

“Go ahead.”

“Have Park Air 1 meet us at the observatory, forthwith. Tell ‘em to run the red lights!”

“Roger that,” Maggie radioed.

“What’s your plan?” Skinner asked as another thought ran through his mind. Mulder didn’t even hesitate; he’d demanded the radio and formulated a plan in the half-second it took me to tell him what the problem was. Maybe that black-lunged asshole is right; maybe Mulder was chosen for a reason.

“We all know what we’re going to have to do,” Mulder said. “As soon as we find the device, we have to figure out how to disarm it. Each of us has about the same skill level, so it doesn’t matter which of us goes where. When the chopper gets to the Observatory, you take it to Arlington. It’s only a two or three minute flight across the Potomac to Arlington. We’ll meet up with you later.”

Skinner nodded; this was working better than he’d planned. Mulder was taking control of the situation without being asked or told. Skinner was almost proud of him.

***

Naval Observatory

The Suburban screeched to a halt in front of the building, and three very heavily armed FBI agents swarmed out of it in full assault gear, MP5’s cutting the pie and sweeping every corner. The ran into the building.

“Where is it?” Mulder asked the air.

“How big is it?” Scully asked.

Mulder stopped. “Let’s think: How big does it have to be? Remember, he wouldn’t be able to stroll in with a Tomahawk missile housing; he’d be noticed. So it has to be small enough to carry, and look like something else, like a briefcase or something.”

Skinner nodded; that made sense.

“Building search! Go!” he ordered, glancing at his watch. Six minutes.

It took them five and a half. Skinner found the device in the men’s room ductwork, and radioed Scully and Mulder to join him. They skidded into the men’s room ten seconds later, weapons clattering onto the counter.

“Where is it?” Scully demanded. The noise of the rapidly approaching helicopter rattled the building.

“Up there!” Skinner pointed. The grille covering the duct was swinging open on its hinge, swaying gently.

“Go!” Mulder screamed at Skinner. “The chopper!”

Skinner glanced at his two agents and nodded. “Good luck!” he called, sprinting out of the room. Scully glanced at her partner and used her chin to point at the duct. “Lift me up!”

Mulder thought about debating her but decided he didn’t have the time. He moved into the stall and cupped his at knee level. Scully grabbed his shoulder, stepping into his hands and he lifted her straight up. Her arms found purchase in the duct and she twisted, spotting the device instantly.

00:19, the display said.

“Twenty seconds!” she called. “What do I do?”

“Look for the power supply! There has to be some kind of power supply!”

Scully looked at the device, not concerned about a proximity detector at this point; the entire purpose of this game was to make them run around DC until they were mentally and physically exhausted. Graves wanted his fun; he wouldn’t want the game to end quickly.

“I don’t see one!” she called down.

“What’s it look like?”

“A laptop computer, connected to a metal box. The box has two latches…” She reached over and snapped the latches and lifted the top. “Inside are two canisters of liquid, one red, one white. There’s some kind of intermix chamber between them. What do I do?”

Her voice was starting to sound panicked, Mulder thought.

“What’s the laptop’s screen say?”

Scully glanced at it. “Enter Disarm Code!” she called.

Mulder thought. What the hell was the code? It would have to be something Graves knew that he, Scully and Skinner would all know, but not something obvious. Not something-

“Ten seconds!” Scully called.

Mulder’s mind raced. Code! What was the code?!

Where was this device? The observatory. What did the observatory do? It looked to the stars. Stars. Outer space. Aliens. Samantha-

“Samantha!” he called. “Type in Samantha!”

Scully hesitated for a fraction of a second; it seemed like a stretch, even for Mulder. Then she decided to trust him, to trust his instinct.

Reaching out, she typed, hoping that the password wasn’t case- sensitive.

S-A-M-A-N-T-H-A…ENTER.

There was a momentary pause. The counter moved to 00:04…

And stopped.

***

Aboard Park Air 1

“What the hell is going on?” the pilot asked the moment after Skinner, assault gear and all, climbed aboard.

“Walter Skinner, FBI,” Skinner said. “Get this bird to Arlington, now!”

“I’m not going-” The pilot felt the cold steel press of Skinner’s weapon against the back of his head. “Fly now, talk later.” Skinner said.

The chopper lifted off seconds later, nosed over and headed southwest, gaining speed.

***

Naval Observatory

Scully gingerly handed the device down to Mulder, who took it and carefully brought it over to the vanity counter. Gently placing it on the counter, he returned to the stall and helped Scully down.

She hit the floor and threw her arms around him, kissing him, hard.

“What was that for?” he asked when it was over.

“For saving my life, dummy!” He smiled at that and turned to look at the device.

“What do we do with that?” he asked. Then he had an idea. He reached for the radio on his belt.

“Maggie…come in, Maggie.”

“Maggie here. Go ahead, Mulder.”

“Call the DC Bomb Squad. Tell ‘em they have a device at the Naval Observatory second floor men’s room. They’ll know what to do.”

“Where are you going?” Maggie radioed back.

“Nowhere,” Mulder said. “We’re going to drive about a mile away and park and wait to hear from Skinner.”

Maggie radioed her acknowledgment and the duo quickly walked outside. It was a good idea, Scully knew, to be as far away as possible when the Bomb Squad showed up. Too many questions to answer otherwise.

“Why are we only going a mile away?” Scully asked. “Shouldn’t we head back to Capitol Hill?”

“That’s what he thinks we’re going to do, Scully. He thinks that we’ll want to be centrally located. My bet is that the next site is going to be close to here, so we’d get frustrated at having to drive all the way back again.”

Again, Scully’s first impulse was to argue, to point out that if the next site was on the other side, the far eastern side of DC, then they would be in poor position to get there quickly.

Then, again, she decided to trust Mulder’s instincts. He might not look it, she mused, but he had a knack for this stuff.

Skinner radioed in. “I’m about twenty seconds from landing… how did it go?”

“Aces,” Mulder radioed back. “You just have to figure out the password.”

“Any ideas?”

Mulder thought about it. Arlington, where the war heroes were buried. The last time he’d been at Arlington had been…

“Deep Throat” Mulder radioed back.

“Mulder!” Skinner’s warning tone could clearly be made out over the radio.

“It was the code name of a contact I had…before your time. Trust me.”

***

Park Air 1
Approaching Arlington National Cemetery

“Any idea where I can find it?” Skinner asked.

There was a pause. “My guess would be Tomb of the Unknown Soldier…since I never knew his name.”

Skinner nodded; Mulder’s capacity for wild leaps of logic never ceased to amaze him, even when they infuriated him. The chopper put down in a grassy knoll a hundred and fifty yards from the tomb. Skinner erupted from the chopper at a dead run, the MP5 carried at port arms. He made it in twenty seconds.

The sharply-dressed guard walking post at the Tomb saw the armed man coming at him. Not just show troops, the members of Company E of the United States Army 3rd Infantry were crack soldiers. They reacted as they’d been trained.

The lone soldier marching sentinel duty stopped, spun and leveled his weapon at Skinner.

“HALT!” the man called. Skinner froze, raising his arms.

“FBI!” he called, out of breath.

“Advance and be recognized!” the solider called. Slowly, Skinner stepped forward. His assault vest had FBI stenciled in four-inch-high gold letters across the back, and a stenciled representation of his badge above the left breast.

“Sergeant,” Skinner started. “I have no time to fool around. I have reason to believe that there is an explosive chemical weapon located in the immediate vicinity. I need your help locating it.”

As Skinner spoke, the First Sergeant of the Guard came running up, carrying not the ceremonial M14, but a much more sinister-looking M16A1. He was trailed by a corporal carrying a Baretta 92F.

“FREEZE!” the Sergeant called.

Skinner moved slowly, keeping his hands in view, and repeated his message. The Sergeant took one look at Skinner and realized he was serious.

“Corporal Ricks!” he called to the sentinel. “Keep marching! We’ll go look for this…whatever it is.”

The sentinel saluted and resumed marching. Shaking his head in amazement, Skinner turned to the sergeant. “Four pairs of eyes would be much better than three,” he said.

The Sergeant looked at Skinner as if he were insane. “Even in times of war, sir, there is always a guard marching in front of this tomb. That ain’t gonna change on my watch. Now…what exactly are we looking for?”

“Briefcase, something about that size, may look like a laptop computer. Would have been left here in the last day or two.”

The Sergeant’s face paled. “I think I know what you’re looking for, sir. A man came here last night and left a box for our CO, Colonel Brooks. Said not to open it until the Colonel returned.”

“Where is it?”

“Guard shack,” the Sergeant replied, the confusion evident on his face. He turned and started walking towards it, Skinner following closely on his heels. “I remember thinking it was pretty damn strange, when I heard about it.”

“Why?” Skinner asked.

“I wasn’t on duty last night, and the duty officer told me that the man that had left it here flashed some pretty high-powered ID. Told us that the Colonel was expecting it and not to open it. Strange, because the CO has an office over at Ft. Belvior. I’da thought it’d be delivered there.”

Skinner nodded. “Ok, get your men out of there. I’m going to go in and try to disarm it.”

“Negative, sir,” the Sergeant said. “This is a military reservation. Army EOD will be called to disarm that device.”

Skinner shook his head. “We don’t have time. It’s set to go off in…” he checked his watch. “Less than two minutes!”

The Sergeant’s face paled even more, if that were possible. He debated with himself for only a moment. “Do it,” he finally ordered.

Skinner entered the guard shack, which was more of a small shed. The box, wrapped in brown paper and addressed to “Colonel G. Brooks, Commanding Officer, 3rd Infantry, US Army, Arlington National Cemetery,” sat on a table in the corner. The ZIP code was even written on the brown paper.

Skinner took out a folding Emerson CQB knife and slit the paper off. It was an aircraft-metal briefcase. He tried the locks. They opened.

He lifted the lid and saw the cover of the laptop. Lifting it, he saw the same screen that Scully and Mulder had.

ENTER DISARM CODE.

Gritting his teeth, Skinner typed DEEP THROAT and hit ENTER.

The clock on the screen stopped at 01:12.

Skinner sighed and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Mulder…you did it again.

He returned outside and motioned the guard over. “Call EOD now. Tell them this is a federal matter, and agents from the FBI will be over to collect the device soon.”

“It’s disarmed?” the Sergeant asked.

Skinner nodded. “Sure, but I wouldn’t screw with it if I were you.”

The guard nodded; sounded like good advice.

Skinner picked up his radio and transmitted. “Mulder, Skinner.”

“Go, sir.”

“Where are you?”

“A mile or so, eastbound of the Observatory, waiting. How’d it go?”

“You were right on with the password,” Skinner radioed back. “What now?”

“Wait until Graves calls you. We’ll decide from there.”

No we won’t, Skinner thought.

You will.

Shrugging, Skinner started trotting back to the helicopter. He was halfway there when his phone rang.

“Skinner.”

“Ah, Walter, my good man. I can see that you managed to find and disarm the first two devices. My compliments on the use of the helicopter. Very good thinking. Ready for the next three devices?”

Three? Skinner thought. Of course. He was going to split them up.

“Go ahead,” he growled.

“Ok…here are your clues. Tricky Dick was a man filled with purpose that almost felled the constitution. Have fun!”

Skinner stared at the phone, ready to throw it at the whirling blades of the helicopter. He turned the phrase over in his mind. It made no sense! How could Graves expect him to…?

Then he remembered.

Graves didn’t expect Skinner to figure it out. He expected Mulder to.

“Mulder!” Skinner radioed. He repeated the phrase and waited.

***

One mile east/southeast of the Naval Observatory

Mulder chewed his lip. “Ok, you’ve got the fastest transportation,” he radioed back. “You’re going to the Supreme Court. Scully is going to the DOE. I’ll head for the Watergate Hotel.”

Scully sat back, amazed that he had taken less than two seconds to figure it out. “How did-?” she started to ask.

“Tricky Dick. Nixon. Watergate. Watergate hotel. Purpose, filled with purpose, filled with energy. Department of energy. Constitution? Only one place that document could have been felled, the Supreme Court.”

“Or the Senate,” she pointed out. “Impeachment hearings. Or the National Archives, the actual document. Why the Supreme Court?”

“Gut feeling,” Mulder admitted.

She nodded; she’d learned to trust his gut.

“Drop me at the Watergate and head for the DOE building.” Mulder reached for the radio. “Maggie, I need another chopper!”

“Where should I-?”

“I don’t care! Find me one! Have it meet me at the Watergate in…twenty minutes.”

Maggie radioed that she’d try, and Mulder hit the gas.

“What are the passwords?” Scully asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Mulder admitted.

“Think fast.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 32/38

Washington, DC

The smoking man studied the computer screen and frowned, resisting the impulse to light another smoke. Things were progressing, progressing further and faster than he’d expected. Mulder had dispatched the Scully woman to the DOE, instead of keeping her with him. Skinner, that insubordinate bastard, was on his way to the Supreme Court. Mulder had done what was expected…to a point. He’d made tough decisions, but not the kind of decisions that the smoking man had anticipated. He’d hoped that Mulder would have decided to sacrafice one of the three establishments in order to save one or two of the others. And that had been the design from the start.

Which would he chose? The Watergate was full of innocent people, people that had no part in what was going on. Civilians, apart from the fray, innocent. Or the DOE, with the vast amounts of classified nuclear data, plans and designs for both nuclear weapons and power-generating nuclear reactors. Or the Supreme Court, the seat of justice in the country, the ultimate voice on what was allowed and what was not according to the document that had framed this curious country.

Had he been a betting man, the smoker would have chosen DOE.

But Mulder had made an even harder decision, according to his psychological profile; he’d sent Scully out to operate on her own, against all projections and predictions. What had happened on this case? In the past, Mulder would have insisted that Scully stay by his side, even going so far as to send her off on a “safe” assignment if he wasn’t able to convince her to stay with him.

Had he figured out the game without even knowing it?

Or had something else, something deeper, more sinister taken place?

The smoking man made a decision.

He lifted the telephone and punched three numbers.

“Control,” a voice answered.

“It’s me,” the smoking man said. “We have a situation.”

“I’m listening.”

“In about twenty minutes, a very heavily armed woman claiming to be an FBI agent is going to attempt to enter the DOE building.” He paused, giving into the temptation to light another smoke.

“What do you want us to do?” the voice asked.

“Prevent her from doing so,” the smoking man answered, and then added, “By any means possible.”

There was a hesitation. “Do you mean-?”

The smoking man nodded, even though he knew the other man couldn’t see him. “You have sanction authority. If she resists attempts to prevent her entry to the building…kill her.”

***

Washington, DC

“Control to Baker six,” a voice called on the radio.

“Six,” came the reply.

“Uh…be advised, we have a report from C16 that a woman claiming to be an FBI Agent will attempt entry to DOE in about twenty minutes. Please respond.”

“Ten-four, Control, Six out.”

“Uh…six, come back.”

“Six.”

“Uh…six, we’ve been advised that the woman is to be considered armed and dangerous, and that you are authorized to use deadly force in preventing her entry to the building.”

“Uh…confirm that, Control?”

“Remember Oklahoma City, six. You are cleared to use deadly force. Gotta problem with that, six?”

“Negative. Do we have a description of the woman?”

Yeah, Matthew Stone thought. Redhead, about five two, five three, and mean as a bobcat.

Don’t fuck with her, he thought. She’ll kick your ass and eat cornflakes out of your skull. Putting the car into gear, Matt Stone pulled into traffic and headed towards the DOE, wondering where Mulder and Skinner were.

***

Watergate Hotel

Mulder pulled into the wide semi-circular drive in front of the hotel and jumped out of the Suburban. Without pausing, Scully climbed into the driver’s seat and punched the gas, sending the huge vehicle screaming out of the driveway.

A bellboy, noticing Mulder’s attire, and more than noticing the deadly looking MP-5 the agent cradled in his hands, approached slowly.

“Um..may I help you?” he asked.

“FBI,” Mulder replied. “Get the head of building security down here, now.”

“It’s Sunday,” the bellboy protested. “Mr. Sanchez isn’t here today.”

“Who’s in charge of security in his absence?”

“Miss Griswold…but-”

“But what?”

“She’s at breakfast. She’s not here.”

“Damn!” Mulder muttered. “Ok, listen up, and listen very carefully. We have a situation here. There’s a small device that I’m looking for, and if I don’t find it in the next…” He checked his watch and grimaced. “…six minutes, a lot of people are going to die.”

The bellboy gulped.

“I’m just summer help,” he protested. “I go to Georgetown, and I…I…don’t…”

Mulder patted him on the shoulder. “It’s ok. I’m sure they never told you what to do in this kind of situation. What I need you to do is find the highest-ranking member of the staff you can and have them join me at the front desk right away. Try and get as many people out of the lobby as you can without attracting attention.”

“How-?”

Mulder thought about it. “Announce a free breakfast on the other side of the hotel or something — just get them out of there. Gas leak. Anything. Be inventive…but be convincing.”

The bellboy nodded and ran off. Mulder took a quick glance around, trying to orient himself. A series of steps led up and into the hotel’s foyer. He glanced up; twenty-four stories of hotel, about sixty rooms to a floor. He grimaced; it could be almost anywhere…

Then he had a thought.

Running into the hotel, he found a desk clerk talking excitedly into a phone.

“That’s right!” she was saying. “The FBI! A bomb!”

“Excuse me?” Mulder said. She waved at him with an arm, twisting her body so she could listen to whomever was shouting over the phone.

“I don’t know!” she insisted. “Billy just told me that an FBI agent had-”

“EXCUSE ME!” Mulder said, pointing to his body armor.

She noticed who he was and pulled the phone from her ear. “Are you the FBI Agent?” she asked.

Mulder thought about a typical snide reply, and immediately discarded it.

“Yes,” he said, “Mulder. FBI.”

“Here,” the woman said, holding out the phone. “My boss wants to talk to you.”

Mulder took the phone and spoke as rapidly as possible. “Sorry. Can’t talk now. Bomb. Goodbye.” He hung the phone up and turned to the clerk.

“Dumb question,” he started. “Do you have a package for a Fox Mulder?”

***

Aboard Park Air 1

“Supreme Court…and step on it,” Skinner ordered. The pilot nodded, changed course and added some speed. The chopper sped across the Metro DC area, the scenery whizzing by in a blur.

“What the hell is going on?” the pilot shouted above the noise of the engine.

“Bombs. Six of ‘em,” Skinner replied.

The pilot nodded and gritted his teeth, adding as much power as he dared.

***

Department of Energy

Scully brought the Suburban to a halt by the front entrance of the DOE building, jumping out before the transmission had time to unspool into park, carrying the MP5 at port arms. She’d taken two steps when the voice called out to her.

“HALT!”

She turned and saw four very heavily armed and armored Federal Protective Service officers swarming towards her, their own CAR-15’s levelled at her chest.

“FBI!” she called.

“Drop the weapon!” one of them ordered, bringing the CAR-15 to his shoulder. She saw his finger slid from the frame into the trigger guard.

The MP-5 hit the ground with a harsh metallic clatter.

“FBI!” Scully insisted. “There’s no time-”

That was all Scully had a chance to say. Two of the other FPS officers jumped her, twisting her body to the ground. She felt first one arm, and then the other twisted behind her back. She felt the cold metallic clasp of the handcuffs closing around her wrists, faster than she would have thought possible.

“But-” Scully started.

“You are under arrest,” one of the FPS agents said. “You have the right to remain-”

“I know my DAMN RIGHTS!” Scully screamed. “Call the Hoover building! Ask for AD Skinner’s office!”

All calls to Skinner’s office were rerouted, she knew, directly to Maggie King’s home.

“Tell it to the judge,” the other FPS agent muttered, lifting her to her feet.

“FREEZE!”

The four FPS cops froze, turning to the sound of the voice, bringing Scully with them.

Scully snorted. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever thought that she would be glad to see Commander Matthew Stone, USN, standing on the sidewalk with a very nasty Uzi SMG levelled at the four officers.

“Drop your weapons,” Stone ordered. “And then uncuff her.”

Grumbling, the FPS officers dropped their weapons and did as Stone had ordered. Scully gathered the CAR-15’s together and approached Stone. “What the hell are you doing here?” she demaned.

He gave her an eyebrow. “Not happy to see me? I could have let those nice gentlemen do their job, you know.”

She nodded. “I’m not ungrateful. But you are off this case, and you know it.”

He turned to her, careful to keep the Uzi pointed at the four FPS officers. “Listen to me, Scully. You couldn’t take me off this case any less than you could prevent the sun from rising today. You have two choices — you either include me in your little party, or I’ll turn you back over to them and do it myself. Your choice.”

Scully nodded. “Ok, fine. Whatever. But I am in command here, Stone. You do what I say, when I say it, or I will take you out.”

He nodded. He had little doubt that she was both capable and prepared to execute that particular threat.

“Cuff ‘em,” he said, nodding towards the FPS officers.

***

Washington, DC

The smoking man frowned. He’d heard the radio call when Scully had pulled up, and then nothing for close to ten minutes.

Surely one woman hadn’t taken down four of his best men?

He lifted the phone. “Report,” he ordered.

A moment later, there was a squawk, and the radio squelched on. “Control to Baker Six.”

Long pause.

“Six,” came the reply.

The smoking man sat upright, shock written over his lined, craggy face. He knew that voice!

“Status report.”

“Suspect in custody. Code four.”

The smoking man frowned. He knew that voice, but couldn’t place it.

“Ah…ten four, six. ETA to the house?”

“Ah, we’ve got some DC police on the scene making trouble, bitching about jurisdiction — give is a few, Control.”

“Roger that. Need a supervisor to come down?”

“Negative, we have it in hand. Six out.”

The smoking man sat back, lost in thought. Who was that voice?

***

Watergate Hotel

“Why…yes, yes we do,” the clerk stuttered. “It’s in the back. Should I-”

“No! I’ll get it!” Mulder said. “Just show me where it is.”

The desk clerk led him back into the office, and then through a small door into what looked like a vualt. There were bank-quality safety-deposit boxes, and a waist-high floor safe. “It’s in the safe,” she said, pointing.

“Open it,” Mulder ordered. The clerk nodded nervously and bent to the safe, quickly working the lock.

“There,” she said, standing back. “It’s unlocked.”

Mulder nodded and moved next to her, reaching out and opening the door. There was the device, waiting inside an aircraft-metal briefcase. Lifting it out, he gently laid it on top of the safe and opened it.

The laptop was there. He flipped the screen up.

02:34, it said. Just over two minutes.

Password, he thought. Password. Watergate hotel. Dick Nixon. Truth. Lies. Tapes. Missing minutes. The beginnings of America’s distrust towards it’s leaders. Vietnam. He wracked his brain, looking for a password that made sense to his mind.

01:50, the monitor chided.

China? No, too obtuse. Nothing to do with what was going on.

What was Nixon’s problem? He lied. About everything. About Watergate, about Vietnam, about Laos.

Gritting his teeth, Mulder leaned foward and typed TRUTH and then hit ENTER.

The clock stopped at 01:02.

He turned to find the desk clerk peering in from the doorway.

“Is it…off?” she asked.

“Disarmed…yes,” Mulder replied.

She ran into his arms, sobbing. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!” Mulder pushed her away and looked at, a sudden fear running through him. She was overreacting completely.

“Liberty Bell,” he said, and saw the change in her eyes. She was one of them, she was a Graves operative. He spun her around instantly, pushing her up against the wall, kicking her legs apart. “You’re under arrest,” he said slowly, reading her the Miranda warning.

“You’ll never stop him!” she hissed. “He’s a genius!”

“Right, sure. Genius. Whatever,” Mulder said distractedly. He reached down and toggled the push-to-talk button on his radio, speaking through his throat mike.

“Unit One to Unit Two…come in.”

No response. He looked down and checked. The radio was on. He hit the transmit button again, and the small red light on the radio glowed. It was transmitting…why-?

Of course. He was in what amounted to a vault. It was probably sheielded or something. Reaching into one of his thigh pockets, Mulder found a pair of white flexi-cuffs and quickly applied them.

Guiding the clerk out of the vault, he waited until he was outside the vault before transmitting.

“Unit One to Unit Two…”

A moment later, a breathless Scully came back. “Two, go ahead, partner.”

“Watergate is secure. How are you doing?”

“We’re still searching.”

We’re? Mulder thought. Who the hell is “we?”

“Scully…?”

“Our friend from the coast showed up, Mulder.”

Mulder swore loudly before responding. “Is he giving you any trouble?” he asked.

There was a pause, and when Scully retransmitted, it sounded as if she were…smiling.

“Negative on that, Mulder. As a matter of fact, he got me out of a pretty sticky situation. Someone’s onto us, someone aside from this Graves nonsense. When I showed up at DOE, there were some Federal Protective Service types waiting for me, but they were unlike any FSP officer’s I’ve ever met. They arrested me, or at least they tried to. Matt showed up and…convinced them to let me go. We have only a few more minutes before they figure out that it was Matt who answered their radio message a while back.” She paused, releasing the transmit button in case Mulder wanted to say something.

Unlike the movies, you can’t have a two-way conversation over the radio.

Mulder was fighting the mixed emotions that were moving through his mind; on the one hand, he was very glad that Stone had been there to save Scully’s bacon. On the other, he was fighting a tremendous amount of jealousy over the fact that she was calling him “Matt” again.

“Ok…have you heard from Unit Three?”

“Negative.”

“I think I’m too far away…why don’t you give him a call?”

***

Department of Energy
3rd Floor

They’d searched the first two floors quickly, hoping against hope to stumble across the damn thing. Scully glanced at her watch and realized they had about nine more minutes before the device was set to go off. She motioned with her hand to Stone. “Go ahead…I need to get a hold of Skinner.”

Stone nodded and moved down the hall, a CAR-15 he’d liberated from the FPS men in his hands.

“Unit Two to Unit Three….”

No response.

“Unit Two to Unit Three…Come back.”

After a very long moment, the radio squawked back.

“Uh…hello?”

***

Aboard Park Air 1
Supreme Court of the United States Parking Lot

The pilot of Air 1 held Skinner’s radio in his hand. It had started making noise only seconds after the muscular, balding man who’d identified himself as an FBI agent had departed the chopper for the Supreme Court.

“Identify yourself,” a female voice on the radio commanded.

“Scott Ryan,” the pilot replied, and then added, “I’m the pilot of the helicopter.”

There was a pause. “Where’s your passenger?”

“He just went into the building to look for…a bomb, I guess.”

“Very well.”

Scott hesitated and decided to risk it. “Did you get all of them? All six, I mean?”

***

Department of Energy
3rd Floor

Six? Scully thought. A sudden dread filled her.

“Scott, this is Special Agent Dana Scully with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have an extremely serious question to ask you, and I need you to be absolutely sure of your answer.”

There was a pause, and then a tenative, “Go ahead.”

“Did Mr. Skinner receive a telephone call while he was aboard your helicopter?”

“Come again?”

“Skinner has a satellite cellular phone with him. Did he use it at any time while in your presence?”

“Negative.”

Scully thought about it. “Did he say that there were six bombs, for sure?”

“Yes, he said ‘bombs. Six of ‘em.’”

Scully chewed on her lip. Unless Graves had called Skinner while he was on the ground in Arlington, while he’d been out of the pilot’s line of sight…

“When you were at Arlington, was there any time that you didn’t have Skinner in your sight?”

“Yeah, for about six minutes.”

Time enough, Scully thought. “Ten four, thank you Air 1. Scully out.”

She opened her satphone and dialed Mulder’s number quickly.

***

Watergate Hotel

Mulder was talking to a captain of the DC Police department when his satphone rang.

“Mulder.”

“We have a problem,” Scully said. Turning and walking away from the DC cop, Mulder frowned.

“Talk to me.”

“Skinner may be in on it.” Mulder stopped dead in his tracks.

“Come again?”

Quickly, Scully explained that Skinner had said there were six bombs when in reality they were only aware of five. “But the pilot didn’t have Skinner in his sight for about six or seven minutes when he was on the ground at Arlington.”

Mulder nodded. It was possible that Graves had called during that time. But if he had, why hadn’t Skinner mentioned it?

“Scully…find your bomb and call me back when it’s over.”

“Ok…any idea what the password for this one is?”

Mulder chewed it over. “No…not yet. Call me back when you find it. I’ll think about it. But be prepared to disarm it.”

“Roger that,” Scully replied, and then added, “Watch your ass, Mulder. It’s a nice one. I’d hate to lose it.” And then she was gone.

Mulder keyed the radio. “Unit One to Base…”

“Go, One.”

“Any news on the chopper?”

“I called Karn. A Navy Bell UH1-N should be there within five minutes.”

Mulder twisted his head. He heard the far off whop-whop of the blades. “That’s an affirm; I hear it coming now. Good work, Maggie. Do me a favor, though. Call Karn back and ask…stand by. I’m going to call you.”

Mulder switched to the satphone and dialed Maggie’s home number. She answered after half a ring. “Hello.”

“It’s me. Do me a favor. Call Karn and ask him to run Walter Skinner through their intel computer. I want anything and everything. Have him fax it to you. Radio me when you have the information, and use the phrase ‘parcel.’ Just tell me you have the information on the parcel, ok? Then I’ll find a quiet place and call you.”

“You think he’s in on it?” she asked.

“Pays to be safe,” Mulder replied.

King asked, “Should I run Scully?”

Mulder didn’t even blink. “Of course not. I trust her implicitly. There is no way she’s involved in this.”

“Ok, Mulder…you got it.”

***

Home of Vice Admiral Jake Karn

“You want me to WHAT?” he asked.

“You heard me,” Commander Maggie King replied. “Mulder was very specific. Can you help us out?”

Karn sighed. He’d known this day was coming.

After all, he was a Guardian, too.

“Of course. Give me your fax number.”

***

Aboard US Navy Bell UH1-N
Tail Number N934882

“Where to?” the pilot asked.

“Department of Energy. Put me down right in front.”

The pilot twisted in his seat, an incredulous look on his face. “Are you insane? That’s a public thoroughfare!”

“I know. But we have no choice and less time. Go!”

The pilot shrugged and twisted the collective pitch control; his orders had been specific. Pick up an FBI Agent at the Watergate Hotel and transport him wherever he wants to go, no questions asked. When you got an order from a 3-star Admiral, you did as you were asked and forgot about questions until it was all over.

***

Department of Energy
3rd Floor

“Found it!” Stone radioed to Scully.

“Location,” she replied.

“End of the hall, last door on the left. The director’s assistant’s office.”

Scully moved to where Stone was, her mind running a thousand miles an hour. As if they needed this, wondering if Skinner was somehow involved. Knowing Mulder, he was working on discovering the truth in the middle of all this. His ability to do such things never ceased to amaze her.

She found Stone in the office, standing over an aircraft-metal briefcase, a matte-black construction that looked stealthy and deadly on the desk.

“Any idea about the password?” she asked.

“None. Any ideas?”

“Well, Mulder figured out the password on three others…I’ll give him a call.”

Stone turned to face her. “How many of these damn things are there?”

She shrugged. “Five that we know about.”

“What is this?”

“Four.”

“Where’s the fifth?”

“Supreme Court. That’s where Skinner is. Mulder just finished one at the Watergate. If I know him, he’s on his way here.”

Stone nodded. “Call him.” He frowned. “How did he figure them out?”

“Somehow, these are all connected to him. For some strange reason, Graves is using Mulder’s history as a basis for all the passwords.”

Stone’s expression changed and Scully took a moment to decipher it. She was amazed to see…jealousy?

“Matt? Are you…jealous?”

“No, no. Of course not. That’s insane. It’s just…”

Scully suddenely understood. “You’ve been chasing him for fifteen years, and he decides to use Mulder during the endgame.”

Stone nodded. “Pathetic, huh?”

“And totally human.” She reached for her cellphone and dialed.

“Mulder!” She could barely hear him over the noise of the helicopter engine.

“Mulder! Scully! We found it! I need a password!”

Long pause. “Beats the shit out of me, Scully! Try for a manual disarm!”

She cupped the phone. “He says we should try for a manual disarm. How much time?”

Stone lifted the laptop screen. “Just over four minutes.”

“Can you do it?”

“I’ll sure as hell try,” he replied, frowning.

“Stone’s going to try,” Scully said into the phone. “Where are you?”

“Enroute to your location. ETA is about seven minutes…Scully, get the hell out of there.”

Shocked, Scully responded immediately. “Never! Mulder, how could you even-”

“Sorry,” he said. “Automatic response. I’m…I’ll be there shortly. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Mulder.”

“Scully?”

“What?”

“Watch your ass. It’s a pretty nice one, too.”

She smiled and hung up, moving to Stone’s side to check his progress. He had the laptop seperated from the rest of the device. He glanced at the laptop, then at the complicated innards of the device, back at the laptop, and froze.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“What?”

“This is a CBX device, right?”

“So we’ve been told…why?”

“Gimme a minute.” Stone reached inside a pocket and came back with a small screwdriver. He poked around inside the device, making Scully incredibly nervous.

“Uh…Matt…”

“SEALs trained me in EOD,” he said softly. “I know what the hell I’m doing.”

“Glad to hear it. What the hell are you-”

“I said to give me a minute!”

Scully glanced at the laptop’s screen. “You have three of them. Use them wisely.”

Stone muttered something under his breath.

***

Washington, DC
Undisclosed location

The smoking man frowned as the report came in. Control reported that a passing DC police car had found his four operatives flexi-cuffed togeter and then cuffed to the door handle of their Expedition, all of them disarmed. They’d reported nothing to the DC cops, claiming that it was a prank of some sort. The DC cops weren’t buying it, and the situation was rapidly careening out of control. The DC police had discovered the Suburban driven by Scully and had quickly traced it to the Secret Service, who were reporting that it had been “leant” to a Walter Skinner, Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Which meant that both the Secret Service and the Metro DC Police were now involved.

Not good.

The smoking man lifted the telephone.

“Graves.”

“It’s me. We have complications. Things are not going according to plan, and I’ve had to make some decisions that have regretfully only made the situation worse.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“We need to escalate things a bit. What is your status?”

“I’m approaching the White House now.”

“Very well. Please call me when you’re next to the device. After that, contact Director Skinner and give him the good news.”

“What good news?”

“That you are going to vaporize the White House and there is nothing that he can do about it.”

“I am?”

“Yes,” the smoking man grinned. “You are.”

***

Department of Energy
3rd Floor Director’s Office

“I don’t fucking believe it!” Stone whispered.

“What?”

“See this?” Stone pointed. Scully leaned in and peered to where Stone was pointing with the small screwdriver.

“What am I looking at?”

“An inert device.”

“Inert? As in…won’t go off?”

“Correct. See, the barrier between the intermix chambers doesn’t have any way to…be removed. Normally, there’s an electrical selnoid, something to remove the barrier so the electronic pumps can force both pairs of the binaries into the intermix chamber. Even if this clock reaches zero, this thing won’t detonate.” He straightened. “It’s a fake…”

“Diversion?”

Stone cocked his head, thinking about it. “Maybe. But we can’t take a chance. Radio Skinner; tell him to look for the barrier between the intermix chambers. If it’s like this one, he can ignore it and we can move onto other issues.”

Scully nodded. She had a few “other issues” she wanted to discuss with Skinner herself.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 33/38

Department of Energy
Washington, DC

Scully stepped out of the room, away from the CBX device, before she attempted to radio Skinner. Despite Stone’s assurances that the device was inert, she didn’t want to chance setting anything off with a stray radio transmission.

“Three, this is two,” she called on the radio. A long moment passed with no response, and Scully was getting ready to try again when it squelched.

“Three,” Skinner’s voice came back. “Took me a second to remember who I was.” There was a pause, and then, “How did I get to be three, anyway?”

There was amusement in his voice, and Scully frowned. This was not the time for levity, no matter what Skinner thought. “Sir, our friend from the coast has reappeared.”

There was a moment, and then Skinner came back with, “Understood. Problems?”

“Negative. He’s being cooperative for the moment. Unit One has fixed that problem at the hotel, and we’ve just found our device. We discovered that it’s inert, sir. It’s a…fake, or something. A diversion.”

“Roger that. Do you think mine is, too?”

“Affirm, sir, but of course you’ll have to check for yourself.”

“Understood. What am I looking for?”

“According to our friend, there should be some kind of way to remove the barrier between the intermix chambers. If there isn’t any, then the device, as far as the primary concern goes, is inert. I’d keep checking for a secondary concern, if you know what I mean.”

Almost immediately, Skinner came back. “Understood. Where’s Unit One?”

“Aiborne at this time to my location. When he gets here, we’ll come to you.”

“Roger that. Three out.”

“Two out,” Scully called, and then switched frequencies. “Unit Two to One,” she called.

“One…go ahead.”

“What’s your ETA?”

“About two minutes. What’s your status?”

“The device is inert, One.”

“Affirm. Good work. See you in a few.”

Scully killed the radio and wondered what Mulder was going to want to do about Skiner. She had an idea of what Mulder would propose, and although she didn’t agree with it on many levels, she knew that it had to be done.

The familer whop-whop of the chopper’s blades caused Scully to look at the ceiling. “Mulder’s here,” she called to Stone.

“Wonderful. I’ll alert the media.”

***

United States Postal Service Headquarters
Corner of D and 12th Streets
Washington, DC

Mulder glanced down and saw that they were still about fifty or sixty feet from touchdown. He was standing on the right skid of the UH1-N, the MP5 still cradled in his right hand, the butt against his ribs. His left hand held onto a rail mounted to the chopper’s bulkhead. He waited until the pilot was about five feet from the ground and then jumped.

“Get out of here!” he called to the pilot. The pilot nodded and twisted the collective, dropping the nose and speeding off. With luck, Mulder thought, no one would notice the chopper and call police asking why a US Navy aircraft had almost landed in the middle of metropolitian Washington, DC. It was a slim hope, but it was all Mulder had at this point.

He started walking towards the building and was met halfway by Scully and Stone.

“Good work,” Mulder said to Scully, ignoring Stone.

“It was a diversion,” Stone said.

“What?”

“The device would never have detonated.” Quickly, Stone filled Mulder in on the intermix chamber limitations. Mulder nodded, his brow creased thoughtfully as he absorbed the information.

“I wonder if they are all fakes,” he said. “Diversions to keep us busy until the son of a bitch tells us where the real one is.”

“Whatever’s going on, we have to get this Skinner mess settled,” Scully said.

Mulder nodded. “Yeah…that’s a problem.”

“What Skinner mess?” Stone asked.

Mulder and Scully exchanged a glance. Scully shrugged. Mulder scowled.

Mulder handed Scully his MP5 and drew his sidearm in one smooth motion. Stepping foward, he placed the barrel against Stone’s forehead.

“What the fuck-!” Stone screamed.

“Do I have your attention?” Mulder asked.

Stone’s gaze locked with Mulder’s, and the Navy SEAL saw something he never thought he would: The flat, dead eyes of a killer peering out from Mulder’s face.

I underestimated him, Stone thought wildly.

“Do I have your attention?” Mulder repeated softly.

Stone nodded. “Undivided.”

“If I find out you are working for Graves, I will shoot you. I don’t care if I die, Stone. If you are working for that son of a bitch, you will die.” He paused, then thumbed the hammer back. “Do I make myself clear? You have one chance to come clean, and this is it.”

“Why…what the hell did I….what the fuck is going on?” Stone asked quickly.

“Answer me, Stone. And be convincing. Because if I think you’re lying…I will shoot you where you stand.”

Stone looked to Scully. Her face was just as impassive as Mulder’s, and she held her own MP5 lightly in her hands, the barrel pointing as his gut. He saw with some concern that her finger wasn’t lying alongside the trigger guard, but was inside it, curled softly around the trigger. Four pounds of pressure and I’m a dead man, he thought.

“Guys…” Stone started, opening his hands. “Listen to me…I’m on your side, I swear to God.”

“God isn’t listening,” Mulder said. “I am. Convince me, Stone. Convince me that you’re not working for Graves.”

“I don’t know what I can say-”

At that moment, Mulder’s phone rang. Mulder didn’t flinch.

“Scully,” he said softly. She reached into his pocket and retrieved it, flipping it open.

“Scully,” she said.

“It’s Maggie. Where’s Mulder?”

“He’s otherwise involved right now. What can I do for you?”

“He asked me to have Karn run Skinner through the NCIS system. I just heard back from the Admiral.”

Scully covered the phone. “It’s King; she’s got Karn’s reply about Skinner.”

Mulder turned his head slightly to the side, never letting his eyes drift from Stone. “Talk to me,” he ordered.

“Go,” Scully said into the phone.

“Skinner’s career in Marine Corps Intelligence is filled with gaps. Most of it is marked as classified, but when Karn tried to access the files, he hit a brick wall, even with his security clearance.”

“Is that all?” Scully asked.

“No…there is evidence that Skinner’s alligences might be questionable.”

“Details, Maggie. Give me details.”

“Karn has believed for a long time that there is a group within the government, but not answerable to it, that…does things. Things outside the control of the elected and the appointed, outside the view and scope of the military. Karn has always called them the Council or the Group in his private memos. He’s managed to identify some people that might be members of the group. Skinner has had contact with some of those members.” Maggie paused. “And so have you and Mulder, Scully.”

Scully’s mouth dropped open, her mind racing.

“What?”

“Does the name Alex Krycek mean anything to you?”

Scully put it together in a heartbeat. “Are you telling me that there’s evidence that Skinner has had contact with the people that Krycek works for in his capacity with Marine Corps Intelligence?”

At the mention of his nemesis, Mulder almost tore his eyes away from Stone’s face.

“You got it, Scully. It looks like Skinner knows the people that Krycek used to work for.”

“Any connection between Krycek and Graves?” she asked.

“Only the most tangential. They were both assigned at one time or another to a common unit, but never at the same time. Something called the 12th Signals Group. As far as I can tell, it’s not a military unit in the strictest sense. Kind of like what Phoenix was during the Vietnam war; a psuedomilitary-intelligence unit, staffed by military members, career intelligence officers and contractors. But they were never there together, never at the same time. That’s the only connection that I can find.”

“Any connection between Stone and Graves?” Scully asked.

There was a pause. “Surely you don’t suspect Matt of being part of this?” Maggie said.

“Maggie, how can you of all people even ask me that question? Of course I do!”

Again Maggie paused. “Listen to me, Scully…remember those pictures we found in Stone’s apartment.”

“Could be plants,” Scully pointed out. “Left there for you or someone to find to clear him. That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You know Matt,” Maggie insisted. “You may not like him, and you may not agree with his methods, but you know him. Remember that Graves killed every single member of his GOBLIN team. Do you think that Matt could have been a party to that? And why would he bring you in on an investigation that would end up implicating himself?”

“Alibi. Again, that proves nothing. He could have brought us into this so that he’d be in the clear. Serial murderers do it all the time, insinuating themselves into an investigation so that they know where it’s headed, so they know what the authorities know. Maggie, do you have any evidence that links Stone and Graves, and most importantly, any evidence that exculpates him?”

“I’ll look into it,” Maggie said, “and call you back.”

Scully hung up.

“Skinner’s involved…somehow. The links are tenuous at best, but he’s in league with the smoking man,” she said.

Mulder nodded. “We knew that a long time ago, Scully.”

She sighed. “Yes, but we always thought that it was based around his career in the Bureau, that it was related to the X-Files and us. Maggie’s uncovered evidence that Skinner has dealt with the smoking man and his cronies in his capacity with Marine Corps Intelligence. And…Graves and Krycek served in the same unit at different times.”

Mulder nodded. “Makes a strange sort of sense, you know.” He sighed, lowering the gun. “My arm is killing me.”

Stone stepped back, letting out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. “Shit, I am so sick of people pointing guns at me and questioning my motives!”

Scully and Mulder ignored him, turning their attention to each other. As Stone watched, he saw an amazing conversation taking place without a word being spoken. The words were body language, questions asked with facial expressions, queries answered with shrugs and hand motions. It took only a few seconds and then it was over.

“Yeah,” Scully finally sighed. “We have to find out for sure.” She hesitated and then giggled, a totally unexpected sound. “We must be the only partners in the FBI that have ended up drawing down on our boss not once, not twice, but three times.”

Mulder smiled. “Hey, Scully…I never promised you a rose garden.”

Stone glanced around. A few passers-by had stopped and were pointing at the three heavily armed, body-armored people standing in front of the DOE building. Questions were bound to be asked, questions that Stone didn’t want to answer.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Mulder nodded. “For once, I agree with you.” The trio headed towards the Suburban, still parked by the sidewalk. Scully’d taken three steps when she stopped and looked around.

“Where’d they go?” she asked the air.

Stone stopped in his tracks. “Yeah…where did they go?”

“Who?” Mulder asked.

“The FPS agents. There were four of them, handcuffed to their truck!”

“No time for questions,” Mulder prodded. “Let’s get to the Supreme Court. We have some questions to ask Walter S. Skinner.”

***

United States Supreme Court
Constitution Avenue & 1st Street
Washington, DC

Walter S. Skinner, Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Lieutenant Colonel, USMCR, Infantry, detailed to Military Intelligence, glanced at the device in front of him and wondered what the fuck was going on.

Just as Stone had predicted, this device was a dud. The barrier in the intermix chamber was in place, and there was no visible way for it to be removed. He’d carefully investigated the remainder of the device and had discovered that there was no charge to this one, either. No way for it to explode or do anything even remotely dangerous, except perhaps beep or blink or something. It was a dud.

A diversion.

He unhooked all the electronics and closed the suitcase again, carrying it downstairs and out the front door. The Deputy United States Marshal who had let him into the building eyed the suitcase warily.

“That it?”

“Yup.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Take it to the FBI lab,” Skinner said. “Tomorrow morning, several dozen FBI agents are going to be swarming all over this place asking questions. You might want to prepare your people for it; there’s going to be an investigation, Deputy, and whomever is responsible for letting this thing get into the gowning room is going to be spending a great deal of time in prison.”

The Marshal nodded. “Glad it wasn’t me. Six months until retirement…I don’t need this in my life.”

Skinner’s radio squelched. “Unit One to Three,” Mulder’s voice called.

“Three,” Skinner said after touching his throat-mike.

“Status?”

“Inert, as you said. I’m on the steps in front.”

“Our ETA is about four minutes. We’re turning onto Constitution now.”

“Affirm.” Odd, Skinner thought. Mulder’s voice sounded strange, tight.

“Your ride?” the Marshal asked.

Skinner nodded. “Yeah, two of my best agents and a NCIS investigator.”

“Why weren’t they here?”

Skinner said, “They were working on another…device.”

The Marshal’s eyes grew. “How many of them are there?”

And at that moment Skinner knew why Mulder’s voice had sounded to strange. He remembered telling the chopper pilot that there were six devices. And somehow, as he always did, Mulder had found out.

Shit.

***

The Suburan screeched to a halt and the back door opened. “Get in!” Scully called. Skinner took a deep breath and trudged towards the truck, carrying the suitcase.

He got in and tossed it in the cargo compartment, slamming the door shut behind him.

Once the door was shut and the tinted windows kept curious eyes from seeing inside, the weapons came out, just as Skinner knew they would. Stone’s was first, an evil-looking Glock that was pointed directly at the bridge of his nose. Scully’s piece was levelled at his throat, and Mulder’s at his left eye.

“Talk,” Mulder commanded.

“It’s not what you think,” Skinner said. “Trust me.”

“As you well know,” Mulder said dryly, “trust is something I have in rather short supply these days. You’ll have to do better than that, I’m afraid.”

“It’s complicated!” Skinner insisted.

Scully felt her anger and sense of betrayal threatning to overwhelm her. She leaned foward, catching Skinner’s chin with the front sight blade of her pistol. “Answer the question, Skinner. Are you working with Graves?”

“NO!”

“Then how did you know that there are six devices?”

Skinner hesitated.

Scully thumbed the hammer back on her pistol, as did Mulder and Stone.

“Unofficial channels,” Skinner finally replied.

“Is that bastard in on this?” Mulder asked through gritted teeth.

“Yes, but not the way you think. He wants…wants you to succeed,” Skinner said, thinking quickly.

“I find that hard to believe,” Mulder observed. “Considering that he’s tried to kill me half a dozen times.”

“Not generally, Mulder.” Not yet, anyway, he silently added. “Just on this mission. On this mission, you and he have the same objectives.” In a roundabout way, he thought. “He wants you to stop Graves just as much as I do.”

Mulder tilted his head. “You know, for someone that claims he can’t get ahold of that black-lunged maggot when I need him to, you seem to be a wealth of information about his wants and needs. Care to explain that…sir?”

Skinner could hear the venom dripping from Mulder’s voice, and could see the same thing in Scully’s eyes. Stone…Stone was just along for the ride at this point.

“Trust me, Mulder…this all has a purpose.”

“Which I’m sure you’re going to share with us,” Mulder said, and then added, “That is…if you want to live.”

Skinner saw his life flashing before him, all the choices that he’d made, all the sacrifices that he’d endured over the years in the name of this and all the other ‘projects’ that the Guardians had handed him.

“I can’t,” he said sadly.

“Oh yes you can,” Mulder said, leaning foward, jamming his pistol against Skinner’s left eye socket. “And you will.”

“Mulder!” he shouted. “I can’t!”

Mexican stand-off, Mulder thought. He’s betting that I won’t kill him. He’s betting that there’s some kind of loyalty left in me towards him for all the things he had done for me over the years. All the times he’s looked the other way when I’ve begged him, pleaded with him. He’s betting that I don’t have the capacity for cold-blooded murder inside me.

He’s right.

“You’re lucky,” Mulder said. “I don’t have it in me to kill someone that’s not directly threatning my life.” His eyes flicked towards Stone, who caught the movement, glanced at Mulder and nodded.

“Sadly,” Mulder continued, “my pet Navy SEAL here doesn’t feel the same way. Do you, Mr. Stone?”

“No, SIR,” Stone said, glad to have someone in charge who knew the effectiveness of intimidation, of fear, of the threat of direct, personal physical violence.

“Now, I could ask Mr. Stone here to take you away to a dark, cool place and slowly extract the information from you a piece at a time. I’m sure that the SEALs and the GOBLINS have taught him very…effective ways of extracting information. Isn’t that right, Mr. Stone?”

“That’s an affirmative, SIR,” Stone said, an evil light appearing in his eyes.

“But we don’t have that sort of time, I’m afraid. Mr. Stone, do you have a way of getting the information quickly and effectively?”

“I’m sure I can think of something, sir,” Stone said, moving a little closer to Skinner and lowering his pistol.

Now, Skinner thought.

He moved faster than anyone in the car would have thought possible. His right hand came out and found Scully’s wrist, twisting it sharply to the right, enough to cause pain, but not enough to break it. Scully, unprepared and untrained to resist, cried out and dropped her pistol. As he was doing that, Skinner reached with his left hand and grabbed Mulder’s wrist, repeating the action. Mulder fought the pain for a moment and realized that if he didn’t let go, Skinner was going to break his wrist.

Skinner lashed out with his foot, catching Stone in the gut, and when the SEAL doubled over in pain, Skinner applied a healthy dose of knee to Stone’s nose.

The crack! was loud in the closed confines of the suburban, and Stone fell back, his hands moving to his face, blood streaming from between his fingers.

Skinner sat up, Mulder’s gun in one hand and Scully’s in the other.

“Now then,” he said softly, “Let’s talk.”

***

Mulder sat back, rubbing his wrist. “Is this where you shoot us all and you and Graves walk off hand in hand into the sunset? Because frankly, sir, Graves never really struck me as your type.”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Mulder.”

“Fuck you, SIR!”

Skinner sighed. It was so hard to believe that this man was… chosen.

Skinner looked at the two pistols in his hands and then snapped his wrists foward, catching the barrels in his palm. He held them out to Scully and Mulder.

“Take them,” he offered.

Stunned, both agents took back their weapons.

“Now listen to me, the two of you. I can’t tell you much, because it is not my decision. If it were my decision, I would tell you everything I know, which isn’t much. It’s a lot less than either if you think or suspect I know. But…you are going to have to trust me, the both of you.” He paused, searching for the words, looking for a way to tell them without actually revealing anything.

“We’re listening,” Mulder said. Scully nodded, following his lead.

“This mission…is only one piece in a larger puzzle.”

“Which mission is that, sir?” Scully asked.

“The entire thing. From the beginning,” Skinner said softly. “The moment you entered my office the first time Stone and Karn were there.”

He wanted to tell them that the entire X-Files was nothing but a piece in the larger puzzle, but dared not. The ramifications of revealing that particular piece of information before it was time had been made more than clear to Skinner, and he wasn’t willing to risk the future of the entire planet on it, not when he didn’t have to.

“And you knew about it?”

“Bits and pieces, yes.”

“Are all our cases like that, sir? Puzzle pieces?”

Skinner sighed. He should have known better. “Some of them, yes. Not all of them.” Liar, he thought.

“Who’s puzzle?” Mulder asked.

“I don’t know,” Skinner said. That much is true, he thought.

“What would cause you to serve nameless, faceless masters?” Scully asked. “I know you, sir. That’s not who you are. That’s not what you’re about.”

“It’s complicated, Agent Scully. And I can’t tell you all of it. And if Mr. Stone here decided to try and get it out of me, he wouldn’t get anything. That is the strength my convictions. Just as strong as yours or Mulder’s.”

“Sir-” Scully said softly.

Skinner’s phone rang. He moved to answer it. “FREEZE!” Mulder shouted, reaching for the phone. “I’ll just get that if you don’t mind, sir.”

He opened the phone and hit SND and listened, saying nothing.

“Skinner?” the voice hissed.

Mulder said nothing.

“I’m in position,” the voice said again. Mulder’s eyes flicked to his bosses, calculating, his eyes narrowing.

“Are you there, Skinner?” the voice asked again. “Dammit man! Say something!”

“Mr. Skinner can’t come to the phone right now,” Mulder said evenly. “But I’ll be happy to take a message, Graves.”

Silence.

“Bravo,” Graves said, and Mulder heard hands clapping in the background. “I applaud you, Mr. Mulder. You are quite the adversary. Finally, someone to challenge my talents.”

“So, you’re in position, Graves. Where might that be, if I may ask?”

“Oh, you may ask, dear boy. And this time, I will tell you, since there’s no way in hell you’ll be able to get to me or the device in time.”

Mulder waited, saying nothing.

“Here…listen. You may be interested in what’s about to happen next.”

***

The White House
East Entrance

The Secret Service Uniformed Division officer saw the truck with the tinted windows approaching and frowned. Glancing down at his clipboard, he saw that there were no scheduled visitors today. Grabbing the clipboard, he stepped out of his shack and approached the truck, noticing that it did have a White House parking sticker on a magnetic placard mounted on the front bumper.

“Welcome to the White House,” he said as the window slid down. “Can I help you?” The guard noticed that the driver was alone and that he was talking on a cellular phone, although it was unlike any cellular phone he’d ever seen before.

“Good morning, officer,” Danny Graves said. He handed over his ID.

The guard glanced at it, his eyebrows rising. He’d heard about these passes but had never seen one. It was quite rare. Six purple stripes ran diagnoally from the upper left corner to the lower right. The picture was of a military officer in a Colonel of Marine Corps uniform. The organization field identified the bearer as a member of the National Security Council, with 24-7 access to the White House. That much was near-normal for the White House. But the small green triangle in the upper right corner with the number 99 was something that the guard had never seen before.

It meant that the bearer was entitled to enter the White House without being searched or molested by him, by any Secret Service agent or any other federal or military employee. It meant that his vehicle could not be searched. Someone with a 99 clearence could smuggle a nuclear missle into the White House, and there was nothing that the Secret Service could do about it.

“The Man’s on vacation,” the guard pointed out.

Graves smiled. “I know. I have a package for the National Security Advisor.”

The guard nodded. “He’s in there today,” he agreed. “Ok, sir, normally I’d stop and search, but…”

“It’s all classified, I’m afraid,” Graves said.

“Understood sir. I guess you know your way around then.”

“Affirmiative, son. Have a nice day.”

“Good day, sir.”

The guard stepped back into his shack and hit the gate release button and waved as the truck drove past him.

Nice man, he thought.

***

Supreme Court

“Did you get all that?” Graves asked.

“Yeah,” Mulder said, cupping the phone. “Graves just waltzed into the White House.” Scully’s head snapped around, her eyes wide.

“Thirty minutes, dear boy. And then the White House goes boom.”

“Bullshit. All the devices were fakes. You’re bluffing.”

Graves smile could be heard over the phone. “Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. Your choice, Mulder. By the way…I’ll be in the National Security Advisor’s office. You have…ooh, twenty-nine minutes and forty-six seconds. Ta.”

The line went dead.

Mulder twisted in his seat and keyed the ignition, barking orders. “Stone…call Karn. Get SEAL Six spooled up. Tell them they have twenty minutes to get to the White House. Scully, call Maggie. Have her pull every string she can at the Secret Service. I want a platoon of agents waiting for us at the East Entrance. Make sure she makes it informative enough that they’re scared and listening, but not specific enough so they go looking for Graves.”

Stone was dialing when he asked, “What is Six going to do?”

“They’re going to give me the diversion I need. They always have an alert platoon ready, right? Sixteen men?”

“Two boat crews,” Stone confirmed.

“Fine…warm ‘em up, and have ‘em hold until Karn hears from me. I want them in the air, but outside of visible and audible range of the White House until I call. They’re going to divert the Secret Service while Scully, Skinner and I go in.”

“I’m gonig in?” Skinner asked.

“Sure,” Mulder said over his shoulder. “That way, when I kill Graves, I won’t have to walk so far to kill you, too.”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 34/38

Washington, DC

Scully glanced over at Mulder, concern written all over her features. Her eyes seemed to beg the question: You aren’t really going to kill him, are you? Mulder glanced at her, feeling a wave of love and concern washing over him. She was just so beautiful, he thought. I can’t believe she’s chosen me of all people to give her heart to. To give her life to. She’s given me so much and asked for so little, and every time she asks for something I resist, a mule, stubborn to the end.

No more, he thought.

He sent a silent message back: No, of course not. Scully visibly relaxed and set about checking first her weapons status and then his.

Light bar flashing and siren wailing, the Suburban turned west on Constitution and sped up, weaving in and out of traffic. Mulder reached down to the siren console, using the electronic air horn to clear traffic. The wonk! wonk! coupled with the siren, the blue and red lightbar and the alternating high-beams scattered the cars to the curbs. As the Suburban cleared 3rd street, it hooked a little to the left and Mulder hit the gas harder, wanting to make the right turn onto Pennsylvania as tightly as possible.

“Mulder, look!” Scully called, pointing.

At the corner of 6th Street and Pennsylvania avenue there was a small fender bender. That was not so bad, but the four DC police cars, the huge fire truck and the two DC Fire-Rescue ambulances were a big deal. Traffic was snarled for almost a full block, and Mulder hit the brakes, twisted the wheel and called, “HOLD ON!” as the Suburban left the street and bumped over the curb in front of the United States Court House, roaring across John Marshall Park and then, just before he would have hit the Canadian Embassy, Mulder wrestled the Suburban back onto the sidewalk, careening down Pennsylvania towards the 6th Street intersection.

A DC police officer directing traffic saw the unmistakable shape of a Secret Service unmarked truck roaring down on him code 3 and did what any prudent law enforcment officer would do: He got the hell out of the way.

The Suburban piloted by Mulder flew through the intersection at over fifty miles per hour, firemen, cops and paramedics watching with mouths agape as it bumped over the curb and hit Pennsylvania with a screech of rubber against tarmac. The back end fishtailed before Mulder regained control, and then it straightened, roaring towards the White House.

Inside the Suburban, Scully was holding on for dear life as she glanced across the cockpit at her partner. His face was tight with concentration, his eyes narrowed as he kept one eye on the road and the other in the rearview mirror, scoping Skinner as he drove.

What is he thinking? Scully wondered. Judging by the expression on her lover’s face…not good thoughts.

***

Maggie King dialed her telephone hurridly, double-checking each digit as she punched them.

“Secret Service, White House Office.”

“Watch Commander, please,” Maggie requested.

“Stand by…” There was a series of clicks and pops, and then a new voice. “Watch Commander.”

“This is Commander Maggie King, US Navy.” Maggie took a deep breath. This was something she’d never thought in a billion years she’d have to do. Karn had given her a phrase, a very specific phrase to use with the Watch Commander, a phrase that would guarentee instant cooperation with the Secret Service.

“TOPHAT sends: Juno One. Juno One.”

There was only a slight pause. “Understood. Status?”

“We have three agents heading your way in a black suburban. From my understanding they’re going to want to get in the East Entrance. Is there going to be a problem?”

“Stand by…”

***

The White House

Special Agent Ron Burke glanced at his watch.

“How long until they arrive?” he asked the telephone.

“Stand by,” Maggie said. He heard her using a radio in the background.

“Base to Unit One…ETA to the House?”

There was a garbled reply.

“Three minutes, tops,” Maggie said into his ear.

“Understood. East entrance in three minutes. Stand by.”

Ron Burke, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Executive Protection Detail, Washington Field Office, United States Secret Service, closed his eyes and prayed.

“This is Bruke. East Gate, lemme hear from you.”

“East Gate.”

“East Gate, you’re going to be seeing a big-ass black Suburban heading your way with lights and sirens running in about three minutes. You are to let it in the gate unmolested. Is that clear?”

“Uh…roger that, sir. Sir, is that unit part of the NSC contingent that came in a while back?”

Burke’s head snapped up.

“Excuse me, East Gate?”

“Sir, about ten minutes ago, another black truck came in. Guy flashed NSC credentials and went up to the House.”

Burke was incensed. “Why wasn’t I notified?”

“Sir, the driver had a 99 clearence. The Regs say-”

“I’m aware what the Regs say, young man! Shit! Did he say where he was going?”

“Affirmative, sir. He said he was going to the NSA’s office.”

“Ok, East Gate. Keep an eye out for that Suburban.”

“Roger that, sir.”

Ron switched back to the telephone. “Tell your friends that the front door is open. Can you tell me what this is all about?”

“Stand by,” Maggie said.

***

Secret Service Suburban
Approaching Pennsylvania and 12th

“Base to Unit One,” Maggie called.

“One,” Mulder said, fighting with the steering wheel. The traffic congestion was increasing as they approached the White House. Still about four blocks away, it was getting harder and harder to maintain his speed.

“Secret Service reports that the East Gate will be open for you. No need to slow down or stop; just blast right through. Got that?”

“Affirmative,” Scully radioed back for her partner.

“Uh, Scully…the Secret Service is asking what this is all about. Can I tell him?”

Mulder sent her a glance as he twisted the wheel to avoid a bus full of tourists.

“Only if the First Family is in the mansion,” Scully radioed back, correctly interpreting Mulder’s expression. In the backseat, Skinner and Stone exchanged a look that communicated their individual senses of awe at what they had just witnessed.

“Roger that,” Maggie radioed back.

***

The White House

“Sir?” Maggie asked.

“Go ahead,” Ron Burke prompted.

“Is any member of the First Family in the mansion or on the grounds at this time?”

“MCNUGGET is on the grounds,” Ron replied, using the Service’s radio call sign for the First Daughter.

He heard Maggie’s sigh in his ear. “Ok, listen up. We have an intruder on the grounds. From my information, he has ID listing him as a member of the NSC. He has a device-”

“What kind of device?” Burke prompted, suddenely woozy. His worst nightmare was coming true. It was his job and his job alone to make sure that nothing happened to the First Family when they were actually on the grounds of the White House. He had over two hundred agents, plainclothes and uniformed both, reporting to him. He had two platoons of USMC Force Recon at his disposal; he had Stinger missles on the roof and hidden machine gun emplacments around the building. He had everything he needed to stop an attack.

Except an attack from inside.

“Stand by,” Maggie said.

***

Secret Service Suburban
Approaching Freedom Plaza

“They want to know what kind of device,” Maggie radioed.

Again, Mulder and Scully exchanged a glance. This time, even Skinner and Stone could decipher it.

“No way, Maggie. Just tell ‘em you don’t know.”

***

The White House

“We’re not sure, but we know that it’s pretty bad.”

“Who is coming in the suburban, anyway?” Burke asked. Far off,in the distance, he could hear the rise and fall of a siren.

“Three FBI agents and a Navy SEAL, all hand-picked and specially trained for this mission,” Maggie lied.

“What kind of training?” Burke asked.

“Chemical warfare,” Maggie said, carefully pretending to slip. Fuck Mulder, she thought. This shit wasn’t worth screwing with.

Ron Burke thought for sure that he was going to faint. A checmical weapon on the grounds of the White House? For an agent, there was no greater nightmare.

Nightmare, he thought.

That’s it, I’m dreaming!

He reached down with one hand and pinched his thigh as hard as he could. The rocket of pain that flew up his leg into his brain confirmed the fear; he wasn’t dreaming. He was awake.

“What should I do?”

“Wait until the team gets there, and then do whatever they tell you.” She paused. “Trust me, Mr. Burke…they’re the best. If anyone can make this have a happy ending, they’re the ones.”

***

Secret Service Suburban
Approaching Pennsylvania and 15th Street

“Hold on!” Mulder called again, turning the wheel hard right. The Suburban screeched around the corner and fishtailed again. Mulder added power and let the huge truck steer itself out of the turn.

Up ahead, there were cars pulling to the curb. A uniformed Secret Service agent stepped out from the driveway into the White House, and spotting the Suburban, waved it in, motioning to the guard still in the shack to hit the gate release.

It slid open slowly as Mulder navigated the truck through the traffic, winding in and out of the stopped cars. “Move! Move!” he yelled at a cab who refused to budge. Mulder watched in amazement as the driver’s arm appeared from the window, displaying the Mr. Digit Hand Puppet.

“Hold on!” he called again, reaching down to shift into Low. The front bumper of the Suburban contacted lightly against the rear of the cab and Mulder applied gas, pushing it out of the way with a loud screech of metal-against-metal. The smell of cooking brakes was in the air, and the cab started to move.

“Hold on!” Stone said, jumping out, the CAR-15 held in his hands. He took the six steps to the cab and jammed the rifle into the driver’s face.

“MOVE THIS FUCKING CAB NOW!” he screamed.

The cabbie looked down the barrel of the CAR15 and nodded, shifting his car into drive and edging to the curb. As Mulder drove by, Stone stepped onto the running board, grabbing part of the roof rack for support.

Good idea, Mulder thought.

“Scully, Skinner…get on the outside of this thing.”

They nodded and mounted up; Skinner and Scully opened their doors and stepped onto the running boards, holding the roof rack as Stone was. As the Suburban turned into the White House driveway, it made quite a sight: Black, sleek, moving at quite a clip, blue and red light bar flashing, siren wailing, and three extremely pissed-off and heavily armed people hanging off of it.

The suburban screeched to a halt just inside the gates. One of the uniformed Secret Service officers came running up.

“What’s going on?” he shouted.

Oh what the hell, Mulder thought. One last one, in case this IS my last one.

“Domino’s,” he said lightly. “You ordered one with onions?”

The guard blinked at this man, his jaw hanging open.

Skinner stepped down and glanced at Mulder, who nodded. For the time being, he needed Skinner’s rank to make the Secret Service heel. A man in a suit came running up, out of breath, his sidearm in hand.

“Ron Burke,” he gasped, “ASAC-EPD.”

Skinner stepped towards him, a hand reaching for his shoulder. He guided Burke away from the commotion. “Listen very closely. I’m Assistant Director Walter Skinner, FBI. We have a situation inside the mansion. There’s a device, a chemical weapon in there. We have to go in and get it, and the man who brought it in.” He turned to face Burke head on, turning his Command Voice up another notch. “I may be assigned to the FBI, Burke, but right now I have no loyalty to them. I don’t care who gets credit for this, and as a matter of fact, I want you and your guys to take the credit for this. I don’t want the FBI’s name involved in this at all.”

Burke frowned, not getting it.

Skinner stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I don’t want any fucking around with jurisdiction, Burke. You call your fucking dogs off, because in about thirty seconds, me and my team are going into the mansion and we’re going to find that fucker. And I don’t need nosey, prima-donna Secret Service Agents pissing and moaning about how the White House is their detail. Until this is over, this fucking piece of Real Estate belongs to me and my team.” Skinner paused. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Clear,” Burke said. “But you may want a piece of information from me.”

Skinner looked at him. “Well?”

“Your NSC imposter told the front gate he was going to the National Security Advisor’s office. Second floor.”

“First Family?” Skinner asked.

“MCNUGGET will be leaving in about…”

Behind the mansion, near the Rose Garden, a huge racket could be heard. A moment later, Marine Air One lifted off, dropped its nose and headed south, towards Camp David.

“…now,” Burke finished. “No more members of the First Family are on the grounds, Skinner.” He stepped back, sweeping his arm towards the White House. “She’s yours. Bring her back in one piece.”

Without turning, Skinner shouted over his shoulder. “Mount up!”

Mulder climbed back behind the wheel; Burke, Skinner, Scully and Stone all jumped up on the running boards and Mulder peeled out.

Skinner was on the radio. “Three to Base. Get the two air units here, pronto. I want them on the South Lawn ASAP.”

“Roger that,” Maggie radioed back.

***

The White House
National Security Advisor’s Office

It was amazing, really, Graves thought, that you could fit so much into such a tiny little space. The device, the real device, fit into his inside jacket pocket. A HP Palmtop PC coupled with a piece of engineering that was so diabolically simple that it still amazed him, even though he had built it himself.

The actual device was a small metal box, about the size of an old-style Sucrets tin. If one were to open it, they would find two small cannisters, about the size of the CO2 cartridges you’d use in a pellet gun. Two halves of a binary agent that, once combined, would render most of the metro Washington DC area inhabitable for four to five generations. CBX was some very nasty stuff, Graves knew.

Only this wasn’t CBX.

This was the next generation of biochemical warfare. The existence of this agent was classified code-word secret, and the code name for it was classified even higher than that. During the life of the program created to design and implement it, the agent had undergone several name changes; when Graves had come across it, the code name had been MEDUSA.

Just like the mythological creature, MEDUSA was one hard bitch to kill, Graves thought. It was designed to attack on several fronts at once. Most biochemical agents were designed to attack a specific body system; some were nerve agents that stopped the life-giving impulses in the body, some affected the lungs and respritory system. Some caused massive internal hemmorages. MEDUSA attacked on several fronts at once.

And that was only half the story.

Graves smiled. He was waiting for a call from the smoking man. HE would have the final decision as to whether or not this device would actually be armed.

Or detonated.

***

Washington DC
Undisclosed location

The smoking man glanced at his watch. Time, he thought. Time to make a decision. And it was a decision that he didn’t relish, a God-like decision that had been coming for years. And it would not be the last, but in fact was one of the first in a series of decisions that he would have to make.

He lit the thirty-sixth smoke of the day, took a drag and exhaled, watching the smoky tendrils rising lazily towards the ceiling. He’d been thinking about this day, this particular day, for close to six years.

He had two choices.

On the one hand, he could let things play out as they would and see if Mulder had it in him to make the tough decisions. Not the everday tough decisions, the shoot-don’t-shoot decisions that every law enforcement officer was faced with. Not the decisions that Mulder routinely made to place his own life and Scully’s life in danger.

Those were cupcakes compared to the decisions he was going to have to make…if this all worked out.

The smoking man’s thoughts turned to Graves. It was going to be a shame to lose one of his best operatives. Graves’ death was preordained, something that could not be changed. Graves had been loyal, and the smoking man almost felt regret for lying to him. Regret was not an emotion he was equipped to handle very well. Reget slowed you down, made your decisions that much harder.

The smoking man opened his desk drawer and pulled out a metal container the size of a cigar box. On the top of the box was mounted a glass plate. Placing his hand on top of it, the smoking man waited for his palm print to be recognized. There was a soft hum, and then a beep, and the box unlocked.

Opening it, the smoking man took out two devices. The first was a standard long-distance radio transceiver. The other device was something that hadn’t seen the light of day for close to twenty years. In one sense it was a photo album. In another sense it was something completely different.

The smoking man touched a control on the second device. A three dimensional transparent image appeared at chest height above the device, slowly spinning and rotating.

Home. the smoking man thought.

So far away. So long ago.

To anyone else looking at the image, it would not have seemed like much. The image was of what appeared to be a desert landscape. But where one might expect to see brown, beiege sand it was red, deep red.

The smoking man frowned. That was not what home had looked like…before.

Before, it had looked much like this place, with lush, green grass, deep blue oceans, mountains, forests…all the things needed to sustain life. And there had been life there, rich, florusing life, a civilization so far beyond what this puny little rock held to be almost laughable. At times, the smoking man had to fight not to feel superior. He knew that his attitude was percieved by many as being cold, aloof, even evil. And, viewed one way, some of his actions did seem evil. One day, he knew, one day the people of this planet would understand what he had done, and more importantly, why he had done it. By that time, of course, he would be long gone, off to the next world that needed him.

And need him they did. So few people knew of what was coming. And of those that did know, so few of them understood what it meant. At first, decades after he’d arrived, he’d listened to the men that ran this country after explaining and showing them what was coming. To a one, they’d all scoffed. They’d promised weapons, more advanced than the nuclear arsenal they currently posessed, weapons that could destroy any invader.

Patiently, the smoking man had explained that yes, their plans for particle beams and phased-array lasers were good ideas, wonderful defenses against weapons that the other side, the Soviets, might build and deploy. But to think that you could use those weapons against… against…Them was to invite disaster.

It was suicide on a global scale, he explained.

They hadn’t listened, even after they’d believed. They’d come to accept what was coming, and in their typical smug arrogance, believed that they would prevail.

“Fools,” he muttered. They didn’t understand that to defeat Them you didn’t use weapons. You didn’t fire guns or launch missiles at Them. You needed something else. Something deeper, something these people didn’t understand.

But one of them did.

Mulder.

Mulder understood, even if he didn’t know it yet. And what he didn’t understand, the missing pieces inside him, were found inside Scully.

Together, correctly trained, properly motivated, Scully and Mulder could save this world.

They would have to.

There was no other choice.

The smoking man grunted as a trite phrase from a recent movie wound its way though his mind. It was overused by now, adopted into the national lexicon like all popular phrases.

Failure, he thought, is not an option.

***

Washington Dulles Air Traffic Control

Tony Craig glanced at his scope and did a double take. Without glancing away he reached over and hit the switch that would illuminate a special light on his supervisor’s console.

“What’s up?” his supervisor called over.

“Two aircraft converging on the White House,” he reported. “One of them has a military transponder…Navy…and the other is civilian, law enforcement, Park Police.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“We haven’t heard from the Secret Service yet. And they’re within the five-hundred-yard zone.”

Tony’s supervisor frowned. “That’s odd.”

“You’re telling me,” Tony said. “If the Secret Service isn’t expecting either of those birds, in about twenty seconds they’re going to be flaming balls of twisted metal on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Tony’s supervisor made a snap decision. “Get the Service on the phone and find out what the fuck is going on; I’ll take your flights.”

Sitting down at a nearby console, the supervisor quickly assumed control of all of Tony’s flights.

Tony Craig lifted a special phone and dialed six numbers.

***

The White House

The four Secret Service agents assigned to the roof of the White House all moved to the north wall and almost in unison raised four matching pairs of binoculars to their eyes.

“Get ready,” the detail leader called. Two of the agents moved away from the ledge to a series of black Anvil shipping cases. Opening them, the agent quickly assembled two Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and returned to the North ledge.

“Roof One to EPD One,” the detail leader radioed.

No response.

“Roof one to EPD One,” he called again.

Nothing.

“Sir,” one of the agent said. “Five hundred feet and closing; they’re almost over the outer perimeter!”

The detail leader gritted his teeth, wildly calculating the times, distances and probabilities.

“Roof One to EDP One, we have inbound unauthorized aircraft! I’m getting ready to release the batteries!” he screamed into the radio.

“Four hundred feet,” one of the agents called. “And closing.”

“SHIT!”

***

Burke glanced down at his shoulder and saw the dangling radio earpiece; in all the excitement it had fallen out. Jamming it back into his ear, holding onto the speeding Suburban with the other hand, he heard the end of the roof detail leader’s transmission.

“…the batteries!”

Burke’s mind froze. What the hell was he talking about-?

Ohmygod! The Navy and Park Police Helicopters!

***

“Navy bird first, fire when ready,” the leader called.

The agent manning the first Stinger touched the trigger. The body heat sensor set off the tracker head and it began seeking, looking for a heat bloom. It took half a second, and then the tone was high, clear and loud.

“Good tone,” he called. “Good tone….3…2…”

***

“ROOF!” Burke transmitted. “ABORT! ABORT!”

***

“HOLD FIRE!” the detail leader called.

Too late. The Stinger fired. All four agents watched in horror as the missile lept from the launcher, tracking directly towards the US Navy helicopter.

***

“Jesus H. CHRIST!” Burke screamed. In unison, four other heads turned and followed the missile. Mulder’s mouth opened and he winced, trying to prepare himself for the image of the Stinger destroying the Huey. He knew he should look away, but his mind screamed that there was no time, no time, no TIME!

***

Aboard US Navy Bell UH1-N Tail Number N934882

Helicopters, rarely the target of missiles, are not equipped with either countermeasures or warning systems. Unlike US Navy jet aircraft, the pilot had no warning that one of the Secret Service agents manning the roof of the White House was pointing a heat-seeking missile at him. There was just a flash of light and a puff of smoke.

A Stinger missle travels at two times the speed of sound, roughly 1,400 miles per hour, or 19 miles per minute. It would take less than a second for the missle to cross the four hundred feet between the roof of the White House and the fat, white-hot bloom of the Huey’s engine.

The pilot didn’t have time to think. If he had hesitate for even the smallest fraction of a second, he would have died in an explosion of flame and metal. Instead, some random neuron in his brain fired, and he reacted without thinking. His hand pushed forward on the cyclic stick, and the aircraft nosed over, trading altitude for airpseed. The Stinger, still accelerating, didn’t have time to register the aspect change of it’s target. It sped on, looking for a new target, its heat-seeking head scanning the area directly in front of it.

The Navy helicopter was dangerously low now and gaining speed. The pilot pulled hard on the collective, trying to unload some of his airpseed, trying to gain some altitude. The stall warning blared a moment before he felt all his transitional lift vanishing; the Hyey stopped being aerodynmic and began to fall towards the East Lawn of the White House. Glancing out the window, the pilot saw that he had less than a hundred feet to work with. After a moment, the blades stopped turning as the engine died.

One chance, he thought.

He waited until he was at about fifty feet and began emergency autorotation procedures. The technique and concept are easy to understand: The rotating blades of the helicopter are a wing; their motion forces air over them in the same way that air flows over the the wings of a normal airplane. The resultant lift brings the helicopter along with it only because it’s attached by the rotor mast. When a helicopter is in free fall, the only way to save it is through autorotation. Basically, it’s like letting the clutch out of a car after pushing it downhill in an effort to jump-start the engine. Just before impact, you rotate the pitch of the blades in the air, hoping that the air will catch them and spin them back up to speed; then at the last moment you use the lift to slow your descent.

Easy to describe.

Not to easy to do with a seven-ton aircraft falling towards the lush green lawns of the White House.

“Hold on,” he radioed his co-pilot. “This is going to be close.”

***

“Gonna be close,” Skinner shouted. Burke looked over and nodded and felt an instant kinship with Skinner. Only someone who had been in the ‘nam would be able to glance at a Huey autorotating and know a) what was going on, and b) what the chances of survial were.

***

On the roof, the detail lead shouted to the missileman, “DESTRUCT!” The shooter glanced at his boss with a dazed, shocked expression, not fully understanding what he’d meant. Then he remembered; the Stinger was equipped with a small radio-detonated auto-destruct device.

A Stinger searching for an airborne, heat-generating target in the Washington DC Metro area was not a good thing, he realized dumbly. He reached for the autodestruct button and pressed it.

The other three agents were trying to track the Stinger with binoculars. Only two seconds had passed since it was fired. It was almost thirty miles away. The powerful Zeiss binoculars they used only provided the barest glimpse of the missle.

“Climbing,” one of the agents called, slowly leaning back as he tracked the missle.

“What’s it doing?” the detail leader asked.

“It will climb to altitude and then detonate. Hopefully out of range of any commercial carriers,” one of the agents explained.

“Oh my God,” the detail leader said, his face white. “What about when it falls down? The pieces?”

The four Secret Service agents glanced at one another, none of them speaking, none of them ready to deal with what had just happened.

The leader keyed his radio. “BURKE!” he called, disregarding standard Service protocol. “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

***

Below, near the East Entrance, Ron Burke winced at the shout in his ear.

“STAND BY!” he called back.

He glanced at the door to the East Entrance and smiled. There were no Secret Service agents in sight. Seeing the Suburban screaming up the driveway with what appeared to be three insane, heavily-armed militiamen hanging off of it, they’d done what they’d been trained to and vanished inside. They were probably breaking out the heavy arms right about now.

“East Door 1, this is EPD-1,” he radioed.

After a moment there was a hesitant, “Uh…come back, One.”

“Open the East Entrance.”

“Uh…sorry, boss. No can do.”

Burke sighed. Again with the training; they were trained not to listen to anyone, repeat, underline, bold, italic…ANYONE on the other side of a door when there were guns involved. Most especially machine guns.

“Teddy, it’s Ron. Listen to me. You have to open the door. I swear to God I am not kidding and I am not under duress.”

A pause. “What the fuck is going on?”

“It’s a long story. Open the door and we can talk.”

“Uh…”

“Teddy…have I ever lied to you?” Ron radioed.

Teddy was about to reply when Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner grabbed the radio from Burke’s hand, ripped out the earpiece connector and microphone and raised it to his lips. Burke could see the throbbing vein at his temple and winced, knowing what was coming. One Marine can always recognize another, and Burke knew what a Marine officer looked like moments before he was about to open up a can of whoop-ass on some poor grunt.

A can? Make that a 55-gallon drum, Burke thought.

“TEDDY?!” Skinner shouted into the radio.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“This is Lieutenant Colonel Walter Skinner, United States Marine Corps, Teddy. We have a situation inside the mansion that you are not aware of. I am out here with…” Skinner thought fast. “…SOG Omega Detachment NBC-Xray.”

There was a pause. “What the hell was that again?”

Good, Skinner thought. At least he wasn’t saying no.

“Speecial Operations Group, Nuclear, Chemical, Biological warfare. Listen to me, Teddy. There’s a chemical device inside the White House. We were sent to get it. Things just happened to fast for us to tell you.”

Skinner started walking towards the East Entrance, his hands in sight. He still carried the MP5 in one hand the radio in othe other. “Look out the window, Teddy. Do I look like some limp-dicked militia man hell-bent on starting World War III?”

There was a pause, and Skinner detected movement inside the White House.

“Your body armor says FBI,” Teddy radioed back.

“I am also an FBI Agent, Teddy. I’m an Assistant Director as a matter of fact.”

The laughter could be heard through the door without aid of the radio. “Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You’re a United States Marine in some elite special-forces-nuke thing, AND an assistant director in the FBI? Right, and I’m Barney!”

Skinner snapped. “AGENT, YOU WILL OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR RIGHT THIS INSTANT OR I WILL CLIMB THROUGH IT, FIND YOU, BREAK YOUR GODDAMNED NECK AND EAT CORNFLAKES OUT OF YOUR DEAD SKULL!”

Still seated in the Suburban, Scully and Mulder blinked, looked at each other and then back at Skinner.

Holy… Mulder thought.

Shit… Scully finished.

Stone, in the backseat of the Suburban smiled. He’d heard the cornflakes line from a Command Master Chief in Coranodo a long time ago. Shaking his head with admiration, Stone realized that the classics never truly went out of style.

A moment later the door opened and Special Agent “Teddy” stepped through, smiling. “You’re a Marine all right,” he said. “Now what was that about a chemical weapon?”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 35/38

The White House

“What was that about a chemical weapon?” Teddy asked again.

Skinner ignored him, turnning to Burke. “Is there any way you can get all your agents out of the mansion to assemble here?”

Burke’s brows creased. “Why?”

“Because I’ve got a surprise for our friend inside, and I don’t want any of your men to get hurt,” Skinner explained hurridly, his eyes never leaving the East Entrance.

“What…kind of surprise?” Burke asked slowly.

Skinner spun on him, eyes blazing. “Listen to me, Burke! There’s no time to fuck around. Get your men down here, NOW, or I won’t be held responsible for what might happen!”

Burke locked eyes with Skinner for a long, silent moment and then slowly nodded. Reaching for his radio, Burke searched his mind for the proper code. It had to be perfect.

“Teddy,” he called. “Come here.”

They conferred for a moment, and then Burke nodded. Raising the radio to his lips, he transmitted.

“All House Units…this is EDP-1. Code 35, East Entrance.”

Burke pulled the earpiece from his head as the barrage of answering messages came back, all asking the same question: What the FUCK was up?

“What’s a code 35?” Mulder asked.

“Sorry,” Burke said, shaking his head. “That’s classified.”

Mulder turned his back on the man, looking for his partner. Scully had stepped down off the Suburban’s running board and was busy readjusting her assualt vest, making sure the load of extra magazines and other goodies was distributed evenly on her small form.

“Well,” Mulder said quietly, “…it’s about showtime, Scully.”

He glanced at his watch. 11:45am.

Almost at the same moment, Secret Service Agents started pouring out of the East Entrance. “Teddy,” Burke called, “get a headcount. Let me know when everyone’s outside.”

Mulder did the math in his head and quickly dialed his satellite cellular. A moment later Vice Admiral Jake Karn answered.

“Mulder? That you?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Mulder said. “What’s the status of Six?”

“SEAL Team Six is airborne, awaiting further orders.”

Mulder nodded, stepping up onto the hood of the Suburban, looking around. Cupping the mouthpiece, he shouted to Burke, “Where’s the National Security Advisor’s office?”

“Second Floor, near the end!”

Mulder saw where Burke was pointing. To Karn, he said, “Ok, have them come in from the west and set down on the front lawn. I want one platoon to enter through the west entrance, and one from the south entrance. We’re going in from the East. Have them come up on frequency two.”

“Two, got it. Stand by…”

Mulder glanced up as he heard the high-pitched sound of an overpowered turbine engine pushed to the limit. He saw the helicopter, a RH-53D in SOC configuration come screaming in, low over the trees.

The side doors were off, and Mulder watched as two ropes, one on either side, streamed out of the helicopter, just barely nudging the ground. From a height of almost a hundred feet, SEALs started appearing on the ropes, moving so quickly towards the ground it almost looked as if they were actually falling out of the chopper.

In seven seconds, all sixteen men were on the ground. Eight moved west, eight moved south, MP5’s up and ready, cutting the pie, scanning the target zone.

“SIX SIX,” a voice called on the radio.

Mulder smiled. Karn wasn’t fucking around; these men were disciplined, ready to shoot and loot.

“Six,” Mulder called back. “This is Unit One. Hold at the entrance until further word. Get ready to take the doors and windows out. Our target is on the first floor.”

“What’s the status?” the CO called back.

“Chemical weapon,” Mulder radioed.

There was a pause, and then an out-of-breath “Roger that…”

Mulder turned to Skinner and Burke. “Ok…here’s the plan. SEAL Six is going to assult the first floor from the west and south. Graves wants us to come and find him. Of that I’m sure. But the SEALs will worry him, because if they threaten his mission, he’ll have to detonate. He’ll wait until they start coming upstaris, which they won’t. As soon as I give the GO order to the SEALS, I’ll tell them to make as much noise as possible, to make it loud and noisy. That will give us the cover we need to get upstairs and to the Advisor’s office before Graves can figure out what’s going on.”

Scully thought about it. Not bad for a plan ripped together in about five seconds. She would have liked more time to plan and explore other, less violent and destructive options, but time was the one thing they were sorely lacking.

Skinner didn’t even blink. “What are our orders?” Burke asked.

“Stay here. When we get the weapon, we’ll call you and you can come in and take all the credit. If we’re lucky, this will all go down with a minimum of shit.”

“Teddy!” Burke called. “What’s the count?”

“We’re one short!” Teddy called back.

Burke glanced around, matching names to faces. “Who’s missing?”

“Roche!” he called back. “Adam Roche!”

Scully and Mulder exchanged a quick glance. Brother? Husband?

***

The White House
First Floor Secret Service Command Center

Adam Roche, brother to Lieutenant Ally Roche, quickly dialed the combination on the heavy-weapons locker and cracked it open. He took a Witness Protection Shotgun and a CAR-15, quickly loading both. His orders were clear: He was to make life as difficult as possible for any persons attempting to enter the White House until he heard from the man upstairs.

He felt the tingle of excitement running through his body and smiled. He’d waited a long time for this day. The day of Change, he’d started calling it years ago. The day when all the bullshit he’d put up with protecting one prima-donna president after another were over. A New World Order, he thought.

Pulling back the charging lever on the CAR-15, Roche moved to the East Entrance. Time to rock and roll, he thought.

***

The White House
Outside, East Entrance
11:47am, Sunday

“Shit!” Mulder hissed. “We should have thought about that!”

Scully nodded; Graves wasn’t the type to leave any angle unexplored. Well, she thought, at least it was only one Secret Service Agent they had to deal with.

Mulder turned to Burke. “Intel dump. Nutshell Roche for me. Everything you can remember. All of it. Leave nothing out. Now.”

Burke scratched his head, thinking. Roche had been on the executive protection detail for four years. He was a good agent, a little aloof, but a crack pistol and rifle shot. He was certified with the shotgun and automatic weapons. He’d come from the Marine Corps, where he’d been a Platoon Leader, assigned to Camp David, when he’d met a female Secret Service agent and had decided that the military life wasn’t for him. Burke told Mulder all this in fast, gasping breaths.

Mulder nodded, absorbing it all. He wondered if Roche knew his sister was in federal lockup in DC. That might be a bargaining chip. Mulder turned back to Burke. “Listen to me,” he whispered urgently, “you have got to know this…if he resists, he’s one dead motherfucker. But if we have to kill him, I’ll testify that he lost his life defending the White House.”

Burke nodded, instantly understanding it. The political fallout that would follow the relevation that Graves had managed to get an operative not only in the Secret Service, but on the Executive Protection Detail would cause an investigation that would rock the Service, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department to their cores.

Skinner observed all this, saying nothing. That smoking bastard was right, he thought. Mulder’s a born leader. He just doesn’t know it.

Yet.

Mulder glanced at his watch. 11:49. Time to stop fucking around, he thought. He glanced at Scully, wondering if there was a way to get her to stay here. Her return glance told him everything he needed to know.

Do it, her eyes said, and you’ll lose me forver. My place is by your side…partner.

He nodded, understanding.

Stone leaned over to Skinner, whispering. “How the fuck to they do that?”

Skinner shrugged. Might as well ask why the sun rises, he mused.

“Stone, Skinner…when we go inside, I want you two breaking left, covering hi and low. I don’t care who does which. Scully and I will go right, her low, me high. Hand signals. Always keep each other in sight. No talking. Nothing on the radio after I give the GO order to the SEALs. Questions?”

All three shook their heads in the negative.

Mulder checked his equipment one last time.

“Let’s do it,” he said grimly.

***

Vice President’s Office

Daniel Webster Graves glanced out the window and saw the SEALs crouched by the west entrance. They were all looking towards the door, or behind them, making sure they wouldn’t get flanked.

Glancing down at the small, baseball-sized object in his hand, Graves shook his head. Mulder’d had a good idea, but he had to learn that abject force was only effective when it was unexpected. Graves hadn’t planned on Mulder calling SEAL Six, but he’d been prepared for it.

Graves pulled the pin.

He loosened his fingers, watching the spoon fly off the anti-personnel grenade. It was fused for seven seconds. He counted to four and tossed the grenade through the open window.

***

West Entrance

The grenade took just over three seconds to fall forty feet. It was six feet off the ground when it went off.

The SEALs never knew what hit them.

The grenade was designed with a two-tier impact concept. The explosive charge hurled a mixture of razor-sharp shrapnel and white phosporus in a 360-degree arc. Body armor was designed mostly for small-arms ammunition, but it did stop a majority of the shrapnel from tearing into vital organs.

It didn’t stop it from shredding the heads of four SEALs who happened to be within six feet of the blast. They went down, dead before they’d started to fall.

The WP did the rest; Phosphorus burns at air temperatures, and will continue to burn until smothered. Two additional SEALS were incapacitated as the chemical burned into their faces, arms, legs and neck. They danced, screaming and clawing at their skin, weapons and mission totally forgotten in the blinding pain.

There were two of the eight original SEALs remaining. They looked at their fallen comrade and thought the same thing: One DEAD motherfucker, coming right up.

***

East Entrance

“Shit!” Mulder swore. The SEALs were now alerted that the danger was on the second floor, not the first.

“SIX SIX!” the radio screamed. “We need a GO ORDER!”

Mulder hesitated, but only for a second.

“GO GO GO GO!” he called, running towards the East Entrance, trailed by Scully, Stone and Skinner.

They hit the door running, wide-jawed Secret Service Agents watching them go by.

***

Washington, DC

The smoking had heard the radio call ordering SEAL Six into action. It had disturbed him. To think that Mulder, his most prized student, the one man he’d thought would be able to understand the true nature of the mission, subconciously at least, had failed him. Reacting to this situation with a show of overwhelming force did not bode well for Mulder’s…or the Project’s future.

After thinking about it, the man decided that perhaps his judgement had been too rash. Knowing Mulder as well as he did, the smoking man suspected that perhaps Mulder was using the SEALs as a diversion, to focus Graves’ attention away from something else, something Mulder had cooked up for himself.

Interesting.

Diversions could be useful. Knowing how, when and why to use them would prove very useful in the not-so-distant future. Mulder was a natural leader, he mused. He was stubborn, opinionated, always convinced that he was right, that his vision was the one true, correct vision, and all that chose not to follow him were destined for defeat.

How true that is, the man thought, and smiled. A grim, death’s-head smile.

A decision had to be made, and soon. The smoking man glanced at his watch. He had four minutes to make a decision. He had to be sure. He had to be one-hundred-percent sure that Mulder was the sort of man that was needed, that he had the capability to make the hard decisions when the time came. For all the effort that had gone into this mission, the smoking man now saw that it had almost been for naught; Mulder had performed so well through it that it hadn’t been a challenge. Mulder hadn’t been quite pushed to his limit. He hadn’t had to make the sort of choices that he would in the future.

Twenty years, the smoking man thought. Twenty years of planning, preparing, and my prize student waltzs through it like a training exercise at his precious FBI academy. Hardly the sort of thing that Admiral Watts had needed to give his life for. Hardly the sort of thing that would…

But wait, he thought.

There was still time to pull this out, time to make sure that Mulder was the one.

The smoking man dialed his phone.

A moment later, Graves answered.

“There’s a new plan,” the smoking man informed Graves. “The moment they enter the room, shoot them. Shoot them both.”

“They’ll be wearing body armor!” Graves protested.

“Go for a leg wound. Make it look good, though.”

There was a pause. “And Scully?”

“No,” the smoking man said. “Never her. Not yet.”

“Understood. The device?”

“Which ones?” the smoking man asked. There was a short pause on the other end, just long enough for the smoking man to make his point known. “Do you really think I would have left something like that to chance, Graves? My people already defused the secondary devices in your six little toys. That was very clever, using molded plastique to line the insides of the screens. Only someone as devious as you would have thought of that.”

Graves waited a moment; the smoking man could hear shouts in the background, the SEALs swarming the bottom floor. “I need a decision,” Graves prompted.

“Go to plan 3,” the smoking man ordered, and hung up.

***

The White House

Plan three, Graves thought. Not plan 1, and (Thank God,) not plan 2. He let out a breath slowly, trying to calm himself. He knew what would happen next. Skinner, Scully, Stone, all lead by Mulder, would slowly approach the office, toss in a flash-bang grenade, and attempt to take the room by force. It was their way, their training. It was expeected, part of the typical FBI playbook. Force, always take by force, especially when the White House was at stake.

But he would be ready for them. Quickly donning a pair of deeply-tinted welder’s goggles and jamming soft wax plugs into both ears, Graves waited. The flash-bang would have no effect on him. The second they stepped through the door, he’d shoot.

***

East Wing Staircase, Rear
The White House

Mulder turned back and looked at Scully, who was less than three feet away. He made the ‘stop’ signal with his hand, and then ‘look’. Pointing at his own eyes, and then forward, he moved the vee of his fingers side to side, telling Scully to recon the area. She nodded, quietly moving past him, MP5 tight against her shoulder and cheek.

Pointing at Skinner, he gave the sign for ‘rear guard.’ Skinner nodded, pivoting in place to make sure that no one came up from behind.

Stone glanced at Mulder, a question on his face. Mulder made the ‘hold’ motion and Stone nodded.

Scully looked back at Mulder, pointed left, shook her head, pointed right, and shook her head again. All clear to the left and right. Mulder indicated ‘forward,’ and Scully nodded, taking point.

She moved slowly, letting the noise and confusion of the SEALS downstairs cover her advance. If Mulder was right (and when wasn’t he? she thought,) Graves would be concerned with the 10 SEALs swarming the first floor of the White House, not the four of them.

She took another step.

***

Four doors down, Special Agent Adam Roche grasped the Witness Protection Shotgun in his hand and took a slow, deep breath. He’d caught Scully’s reflection in a hall mirror, the angle such that he could see part of her, but she couldn’t see him. In about thirty seconds she was going to be in range, and Adam would kill the first person in his entire life. The thought filled him with such a delicious joy that he thought he might die from happiness. The woman coming down the hall, wearing the ballistic body armor of the hated FBI, stood for everything about this government that he despied.

It was a good day for a killing, Adam thought, taking another deep, shuddery breath.

A good day, indeed.

***

Scully stopped, sniffing the air. She felt like a hunting dog on point, sensing something out there, but not knowing the direction or type of danger. Her eyes flicked back and forth quickly, looking for something, anything out of place.

There.

Slowly, her eyes tracked. Mounted on the wall was an antique-looking brass lamp. A series of them, in fact, mounted on both sides of the hallway, spaced evenly about ten feet apart. There was something odd about one of them, and it took her a moment to figure out what. She took a soft, small step towards it, hoping to clarify her analysis.

***

There, Adam thought.

Close enough.

He stepped into the hallway, bringing the shotgun up, seeing the small FBI agent in his sights. Die, bitch, he thought.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

***

Scully reacted without thinking. She saw the threat moving into her field of vision from the left, saw the short, stubby shotgun moving towards her. Her mind calculated times and distances immediately. She didn’t have the time to move the distance she would need to be covered; Mulder was behind her, but she was blocking his shot.

The face of the man holding the gun wasn’t even human, she thought, her finger tightening on the trigger.

Her first shot took him low, in the gut on his right side. She felt the kick of the MP5 against her chin and shoulder and let it drift with the recoil, hoping for a second shot directly on center mass. The bullet tore the man sideways, and her second shot impacted him just above the kidney.

He tumbled back into the room from which he’d come, the shotgun clattering to the floor.

Mulder was behind her in an instant, his own MP5 sweeping, protecting her flank, her six, making sure that there was no one else lying in wait.

Slowly, Scully advanced on the man, her weapon pointed at his feet; his head was inside the room.

So was his arm.

Inside the room, Special Agent Adam Roche glanced down at his body, seeing the blood spreading in a thick, sticky pool from his two wounds.

Die, he thought. Gonna die soon. Losing blood…a lot of it.

The room started to gray out, and in one final act of desperation, he reached for the baseball-sized anti-personnel grenade lying by his hand, pulled it to his face, gripped the pin between his teeth and pulled. The pain was agonizing; it wasn’t like the WWII movies he’d watched as a kid. But it had the same effect; the pin came free. With his last remaining bit of energy, tossed the grenade in a gentle arc through the doorway and into the hall.

Several things happened at once.

Scully saw the object…whatever it was, arcing through the air. Her first instinct was to shoot it, until her adrenaline-fueled mind identified what it was. A grenade.

Mulder, on her right side, against the outside wall, saw what it was and realized what was going to happen in an instant. He saw Scully’s rifle dropping, clattering to the floor as she reached for the grenade. He pivoted, saw the window in front of him and realized that if she threw it at the window, it would bounce off the bulletproof glass and explode in the hallway, killing them all.

With strength he didn’t know he posessed, Mulder swung his right arm in a half circle, shattering the window seconds before Scully caught the grenade in one Nomex-gloved hand, spun neatly on one foot and threw the grenade through the now-shattered window. Mulder’s one thought as he watched his partner pitching the deadly object through the window would give them reason to laugh in the coming weeks and months: She sure doesn’t throw like a girl.

Skinner was moving at the same instant, shoulder-rolling by Scully’s left side as she turned. He came up in a crouch, the MP5 levelled at Roche. Three rapid shots barked from his weapon, and then there was a brief, silent moment before Mulder realized that they were still in danger. Flying shrapnel from the grenade could still come flying back through the hole he’d created for its exit. He tackled Scully without thinking, rolling in midair as the moved, landing on his back with her on top of him a half-second before the grenade exploded.

Shrapnel peppered the side of the mansion, a few stray pieces raining in through the broken window. The concussive wave of the explosion rocked Scully against Mulder’s body, and they ended up with their faces inches apart.

They locked gazes, and something happened inside Mulder. Like the final piece of the puzzle snapping into place, he realized that Scully truly did belong by his side. Not just as a lover or a future wife, not just as his partner, but something above and beyond both of those, something more. His efforts in the past to protect her, to leave her behind when the going got rough had been pathetic attempts to deny the true nature of their relationship. His mind replayed the last ten seconds again and again, how Scully had dropped the file and caught the grenade in her hand without thinking, and how he had known she would almost before she had; how he himself had moved towards the window, understanding in an instant that’s where the damn thing had to go. And Scully, twisting, winding up to throw before the window had been broken, knowing he would do it, not having to tell him or ask him.

Knowing.

Knowing that they could literally read each other’s body language in such a way as to be almost telepathic. She was his partner, not in any FBI sense, but in a larger sense, larger than he was able to grasp or describe. She was, simply, his other half.

Scully saw all this and more cross his features in seconds. She understood immediately what he was thinking, and a huge flood of relief washed through her body. Finally, she thought, the most stupid brilliant man I have ever known or loved…understands.

Mulder opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. Words, he thought, were so inadaquete sometimes. Scully smiled, resisting the temptation to kiss this perfect, wonderful man.

Skinner stood and moved into the room, Stone backing him up. They cleared it silently, looking for any more pockets of resistence. Finding none, they returned to the hallway to find Scully and Mulder standing, brushing glass off of each other.

Mulder pointed down the hallway with two fingers, and then at Skinner and Stone, making the sign for “point” and “advance.” They nodded and moved off, leaving the partners to take up the rear.

Slowly, the team of four approached the office at the end of the hall. They stopped twenty feet away, turning to Mulder for direction.

Mulder leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes and thinking furiously. Graves was an expert at this kind of shit. He would expect us to do the typical FBI bullshit: Flash-bang and take the room by force. Which meant that he’d be prepared for it.

So that was out.

What was left?

Mulder knew in a flash what he had to do.

Quickly, using a combination of hand signals, he told the other members of the team to spread out and wait for his command. He told them that they weren’t going to assualt the room, but wait Graves out. He was expecting an attack; never give the enemy what the expect.

Skinner frowned but nodded.

Stone looked fit to be tied. He was urgently pointing down the hallway, using complex combinations of hand signals, telling Mulder that he would go in first, taking the low left-quarter, that he would find Graves and wax his ass in a heartbeat.

Mulder shook his head and repeated his instructions.

Stone repeated his.

Mulder drew his pistol, placing the barrel against Stone’s forehead, quirking his eyebrows in a silent question.

Stone looked back. Mulder could see the reflection of his own death in the SEAL’s eyes.

Mulder thumbed the hammer back.

Stone sighed silently and nodded, moving into position. Mulder quickly holstered his pistol, wondering how he was going to be able to control assholes like Stone in the future.

Future? he asked himself.

How many more of these missions do you forsee, you moron? he wondered.

***

Washington, DC

The smoking man glanced at his watch. 11:59. Sighing, he tried to concentrate on the task before him. There were other students, other Mulders spread out across the country, all of them in different stages of the smoking man’s version of training. He had to keep up with all of them, even if Mulder was his secret favorite. In a few moments, the future for Special Agent Fox William Mulder would be decided by his own actions staring down a govermnent-trained madman, a man who’s insanity had been carefully cultivated over the years, a certain fanatic craziness that had been nurtered as a delicate flower might have been.

He took a moment to think. If Mulder made it through this, it was even money that Skinner would reveal what he knew. That in and of itself was not dangerous, except for the fact that telling Mulder what little Skinner did know was like giving fresh meat to a wolf. Mulder wouldn’t stop until he had the whole story, and Skinner did know enough to set Mulder off in the right direction.

So, the smoking man decided, if Mulder makes it through this little test…he and I will have to have a little chat.

***

The White House
12:01

Danny Graves glanced at his watch and frowned. There was nothing but silence in the hallway. There had been no attempt to storm the room, no flash-bang grenade skittering along the floor, no heavily-armed FBI agents swarming all over everything.

What the fuck was Mulder up to?

The deadline was up!

Graves glanced at the small device on the desk before him. He hadn’t armed it yet; all he had to do was to push the small ENTER key with his pinky-nail and the device would start counting down.

“Mulder!” he called.

No response.

Out in the hall, Mulder started at the sound of Graves’ shout.

He sounds…rattled, Mulder thought.

Good.

“MULDER! I’m not fucking around! I’ll set this thing off!”

Stone was visibly restraining himself from charging the room. He glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes begging permission from Mulder to storm in and take Graves out.

Mulder shook his head, signalling “Hold position.”

Stone snapped his head around, grinding his teeth.

“MULDER!” Graves shouted again. “I know you’re out there. If you’re not in here in ten seconds, I’ll set this thing off!”

Mulder signalled “Hold” again, and they all nodded. Skinner’s first instinct was to follow Stone, to storm the room. But Mulder was calling the shots, and he said hold.

Graves started shouting his countdown. “Five! Four! Three! Two!…”

“ONE!” he finished, and pushed ENTER.

The screen on the HP Palmtop cleared, and four digits appeared.

05:00.

04:59.

04:58.

“Five minutes Mulder! You have five minutes to live, you fucking asshole!”

Mulder touched his throat mike three times, clicking the frequency open and closed.

Two answering clicks. SEAL SIX was waiting for an answer.

“Roof,” he whispered. “Southeast corner. Wait for my signal.”

Two answering clicks.

Frantically, Mulder signalled his intentions to the rest of the team.

Stone felt a white-hot rage running through him. After all this, after fifteen years of tracking this bastard, Mulder was going to let the prima-donnas from SEAL Six to take Graves down. He felt an overwhelming wave of sadness pass through his body, followed closely by a resentment towards the fed that he never thought he was capable of feeling.

Fuck this, he decided.

Stone moved before anyone else could stop him. In one hand he held the flash-bang that he’d been aching to use for the past six minutes. He let the spoon fly and tossed the grenade into the room, following behind it, knowing to keep his eyes closed and holding his nose and blowing at the same time, trying to equalize the pressure in his ears.

Graves was waiting. He saw the grenade skittering in and focused his attention on the door, the Glock 9mm levelled. He saw Stone enter the room holding his nose.

The flash-bang detonated, filling the room with over a million candles worth of light, followed instantly by a crushing wave of concussive power.

Graves calmly centered the sights on Stone’s face and pulled the trigger.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 36/38

The White House

The first shot took Matthew Stone, Commander, US Navy, on the bridge of the nose. The hollowpoint bullet entered his skull moving at almost nine hundred feet per second. The hydrostatic force of the impact was instantly transferred to Stone’s skull, cracking it in several places. Microseconds later the bullet entered the brain, tearing a transverse furrow through the frontal lobes, and then across the hemispheric bridge. The bullet continued onward, exiting the back of Stone’s skull, bringing bone, hair and bloody brain tissue with it.

The second shot, fired an instant after the first, went through Matt Stone’s left eye and exited two inches below the first shot.

Dead, Stone tumbled to the ground.

One down, Graves thought. One to go.

In the hallway, Mulder, Scully and Skinner watched in shock as Stone toppled backwards into the hallway, his suddenely boneless body falling in a heap onto the carpet.

Graves’ laugh could be heard up and down the hallway. “WHO’S THE MAN?” he screamed. “Big, bad-ass Navy SEAL?! WHO’S THE MAN?!”

Scully and Mulder exchanged a glance; Graves was becoming unhinged, and that was dangerous.

Time to bring this to a close, Mulder thought.

“GRAVES!” he called.

“MULDER, YOU SOD!”

“GRAVES! WE’RE COMING IN!” Mulder called, motioning to Skinner and Scully.

Slowly, they advanced into the room. Graves stood behind the desk, the Glock still in his hand. “DROP IT!” Skinner ordered.

Graves fired again.

Skinner went down, clutching his thigh. Scully glanced at her boss, saw the oozing wound in the meat of his left leg, and fell to her knees, scrabbling across the carpet to him.

Mulder, his MP5 pointed at Graves’ head, advanced fully into the room. He said nothing, waiting for Graves to speak.

“It’s armed, you sod!” Graves said gleefully.

Scully quickly unthreaded the belt from her pants and wrapped it around Skinner’s leg just above the wound, tightening it as much as she dared.

“He needs an ambulance,” she said to Mulder, sotto voice.

He ignored her.

“What do you want, Graves?” he asked.

“Anarchy,” the man answered, the light dancing in his eyes. “I want the country as we know it…no, the world as we know it…to end. A New World Order! Start the revolution, old boy!”

Mulder snorted. “You know you sound exactly like those nutty militiamen?”

Graves lowered the pistol. “Be aware, Mr. Mulder, if you put a bullet into my head, the six square blocks around the White House will be a quiet neighborhood for a few hundred years. Pity to waste all that good real estate, what with DC land prices and all.”

Mulder nodded. He understood. Only too well.

“That’s not CBX, is it?” he asked.

Graves smiled and gave a small bow in Mulder’s direction. “Bravo, Mr. Mulder. You come as advertised. You are a worthy adversary.” Graves pointed to Stone’s rapidly cooling body. “Not like the knuckle-dragger in the hall, there. He was about as challenging as the TV Guide crossword puzzle. You’re more of a Sunday London Times, I might say.”

Mulder smiled in spite of himself.

“Graves, what do you want?”

“I told you. An end to what we have known as government in this country for the last sixty years. That’s all. I don’t want anything more, and I won’t accept anything less.”

Mulder lowered the MP5; this wasn’t going to be settled with force.

“Mulder!” Scully hissed. He glanced at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. “He needs an ambulance, Mulder. Now.”

Mulder glanced back at Graves, asking permission with his face.

“No. The woman stays. If he can crawl out of here, let him.”

Skinner grunted, gritting his teeth through the pain.

“I’ll make it,” he hissed. He turned on his side, using his good leg to push him out of the office. Just before he vanished into the hallway, he caught Mulder’s gaze with his own. The message was unmistakable.

Kill the fucker.

Mulder didn’t nod, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe.

Skinner pushed his way out, and for Mulder…was gone. He turned back, his attention focused on the madman in front of him.

“He’s gone,” Mulder said. “You’ve got what you wanted, Graves. Scully, me and you. All together.” Cocking his head to the side, Mulder added, “although I’m not sure exactly why.”

“All in good time,” Graves promised. “All in good time.”

Reaching down, Graves touched a few buttons on the palmtop’s panel. “There,” he said. “It’s in a holding pattern, like the Space Shuttle.”

Mulder’s eyes flicked to the device and then back to Graves.

“Don’t even think it, Mr. Mulder. It’s only a modified version of the hold; if I don’t enter another code in a few minutes, the countdown will contine unabated. And that…that would be bad.”

Mulder twitched his nose, fighting for control.

Graves turned his attention to Scully. “At last we meet, Agent Scully.” His words triggered something in her memory, a vague comment made in a hotel room less than a week ago, while he’d been standing over the dead body of one of her father’s oldest friends.

“No,” she said suddenely. “You said we’d met before, Graves.”

“We have,” he said casually, spreading his hands. “After a fashion.”

Mulder felt a flicker of doubt in his heart and reached out to Scully without words, wondering…testing…questioning. She felt the probe and turned to him, letting him see her eyes. As long as Mulder could see her, he would know.

He saw her and nodded, ashamed that he’d doubted, if even for an instant.

“So where was it, Graves? When?” she asked.

“Not so much…when, Scully…but how.”

“How?”

“Ever wonder how you got assigned to the X-Files?”

At the mention of their main assignment, the two FBI agents exchanged a shocked glance.

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t really think that Section Chief Blevins came up with that idea all by himself?”

Scully shook her head, not believing him. “Are you saying that you…you had me assigned?”

“After a fashion, Scully. But you…you’ve always been a narrow thinker. Always looking for the answer right under your nose instead of thinking bigger, wider. That’s why I like Mulder here; he thinks biiiig.”

Mulder didn’t say a word, letting the scene play out.

“So what are you saying…exactly?” Scully asked. “Since I’m such a narrow thinker and all.”

“Tut, tut, Scully. Ever wonder why you never went into private practice?”

“No,” Scully said quickly. “Never.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Graves said, sliding the chair away from the desk and sitting down. “I think that it all goes back to a single day, Dr. Scully. A single solitary day. Do you remember that day?”

Mulder watched as Scully paled before him, her jaw tightening. What did this man know about her that he didn’t? He thought he’d known everything about her. Everything.

Apparently not.

“Scully?” he asked, his voice tenative.

“Mulder…” she warned, her eyes ice.

“Go ahead, Dr. Scully. Tell him. Tell him about your…last patient.”

“Oh GOD!” Scully wailed, leaning against the desk. “Don’t do this, Graves. This has no bearing on this situation. None at all.”

Graves leaned foward, his fingers spread on the desktop. “Oh, but it does, Dr. Scully. It most certainly does.”

Mulder heard the radio click in his ear, two quick clicks. The SEAL Team was on the roof, waiting for a signal to attack. Moving slowly, Mulder trailed his hand down to the radio on his belt and clicked once.

Stand by.

An answering click was his only response.

“Mr. Mulder, you can stop signalling the SEAL Team on the roof now. If they even come near this office, I will detonate this device.”

Mulder frowned, but said nothing.

“So, then,” Graves continued. “Where were we? Oh yes…Dr. Scully’s last patient. I believe it was during your trauma rotation, was it not?”

“Graves…please!” Scully cried.

“Do tell,” Graves prodded. “Please. I’m afraid I must insist.”

Scully sighed, glancing over at her partner. Don’t hate me, her eyes said. Don’t ever hate me for what I’m about to tell you.

Never, he answered.

“His name…” Scully started…and then stopped. Her brow creased. “I can’t remember…I can’t remember his name!”

Graves chuckled. “Of course you can’t, my dear. We took the name from you.”

“Took? How?”

“During your three-month vacation, of course.”

At the mention of her abduction, Scully drew her pistol in a single, smooth motion and levelled it at the man across the desk from her. When she spoke, her words came out in a single long stream. “Tell me what happened you son of a bitch before I splatter your brains across the fucking wall you asshole talk!”

Graves chuckled. “Do that, and you’ll never know.”

Scully slowly lowered her pistol and reholstered it.

“So what was his name?” she asked.

“Graves,” Graves said. “Timothy Graves. My son.”

***

Scully gasped, remembering. A four year old boy, shot twice. He’d been rolled into ER already circling the drain, having lost massive amounts of blood. Both wounds in the abdomen, Scully had taken one look at the tiny, battered, broken body and said a silent prayer to a God she was already starting to doubt. There was no way a merciful God would let such things happen, she remembered thinking. No goddamn way.

They’d started in almost immediately. The supervising ER physician had known that Scully was a good doctor, that she just needed experience, tempering, like a fine blade. She needed to be forged against the anvil of fire, of pressure, of heat. And this was a perfect case. Not an evil or angry man, the doctor had known that this particular student needed to learn the most important lesson every doctor does: Loss.

And so he had turned the code over to her, letting Scully run it. The ACLS procedures running through her head, she’d started ordering meds. The EMT’s hadn’t taken the time to intubate him, and that was the first order of business. She remembered her ABC’s. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. Grabbing a lyrangescope, Scully had quickly snapped on a number 3 pediatric blade, grabbed an ET tube and moved to the head of the gurney.

She inserted the scope and saw the vocal chords. The tube slid in easily, and she inflated the cuff, attaching the ambu-bag in a single motion. Grabbing her stethescope from around her neck, she hastily checked breath sounds. Bilateral, smooth. The bubbling she heard was from the wound below the diaphragm.

Ordering four units of whole blood hung, Scully continued working the code, calling out orders for medications and procedures. The ECG was attached and the scope started beeping.

And promptly stopped.

Asystole.

Ordering the standard drug regimens as she herself started pumping on the patient’s chest, Scully glanced at the monitor, hoping against hope that something, anything would show up.

Please, God, she remembered praying. Don’t let this little boy die under me.

It had taken almost forty minutes for her to admit that it was over. By that time she’d cracked his chest for open-heart massage. Holding a four-year-old heart in her hand, feeling the unmoving, still mass, Scully had snapped.

Quietly, in the true Scully tradition, she’d snapped.

Stepping away from the body, stripping off her bloody gloves and tossing them on the floor, she glanced at the clock mounted above the trauma room doors.

“Time of death…” she said.

***

“Six nineteen,” Graves finished. “Now do you remember?”

Scully nodded, her face ashen. “There was nothing I could do,” she said softly. “Nothing.”

Graves didn’t reply.

Mulder spoke. “Bullshit.”

They both turned to face him. “What?” Scully asked.

“Excuse me?” Graves said.

“Bull-shit. What part of that don’t you understand?” Mulder asked.

“Mulder…” Scully said. “You don’t understand. He’s right. I let his son die.”

“Scully…I’m not saying you didn’t. But this not why you are here today. Remember…LIBERTY BELL has been an ongoing operation for close to twenty years. This did NOT happen in the last seven or eight.”

Scully nodded, slowly and then more quickly. Turning to Graves, she said, “He’s right. I mean, I remember your son… but that’s not why I’m here.”

“In a way,” Graves said, “it is. You see, Scully… you were chosen. Specifically for this mission.” He spread his arms, indicating the room. “And not even this specific mission. LIBERTY BELL is just a tiny piece in a much larger plan. You were picked, recruited into the Bureau, trained, assigned to Quantico to teach for the two years before Mulder became obsessed with the X-Files. And then you were partnered with him. This has all been part of a larger plan, Scully.”

Again, his partner paled as Mulder watched.

“That’s…that’s not possible!” she said.

“Of course it is. Mulder has always suspected that there are people behind the scenes, the real power brokers, the real string-pullers. And he was right.” Graves laughed, turning to Mulder. “You have no idea how right you are.”

Again, Mulder’s radio clicked in his ear.

“They want to come in,” he said to Graves. “I’m just telling them to hold.”

Graves nodded his permission, and Mulder clicked once in response.

“So what’s the bigger plan?” Mulder asked.

Graves grinned. “As if I’d tell you, Mulder. That…that is for another time, another place, another day and someone else to tell you. I’m just a pawn…like you.” He paused. “No…that’s not right. I’m a pawn. You’re a knight.”

Mulder frowned. “A knight?”

“Sure…you fight the good fight, Mulder. I’ve always admired that about you.”

“Always? How long have you-”

Graves dropped the big one. “Almost since before you were born.”

Mulder snorted. “I’m almost thirty five years old, Graves. Are you telling me that…no, that makes no sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t…only becuase you don’t know what I do.”

“And what might that be?”

“That your entire life is a lie, Mulder. All of it.”

Mulder took a step backwards. “What?”

Graves sniggered. “Mulder, why did you start investigating the X-Files?”

Mulder didn’t hesitate. “To find out what happened to my sister.”

Graves nodded. “A sister that you never had. A sister that never exsisted.”

***

Mulder blinked. Once. Twice.

“You’re lying,” he finally choked out.

Graves shook his head. “Ask me anything, Mulder. Anything about your sister. Right down to Stratego.”

Mulder gasped. There was no way he could know about that unless Graves had known his parents, or Samantha. That wasn’t in the official X-file that he’d created.

“I don’t believe you,” Mulder croaked.

Scully stared at her partner, her heart breaking. A lot of things were falling into place for her, and she was beginning to suspect that it was true, that everything was a lie. That it had all been a lie.

“Mulder…what did you do for the six months after your sister disappeared?”

Mulder opened his mouth to reply and then shut it with a snap.

“Can’t remember…can you?” Graves teased.

Mulder shook his head. “No.”

Graves nodded. “There’s a reason for that, Mulder. A very good reason.”

“Tell me!” Mulder begged.

Graves shook his head. “Not here, Mulder.” He pointed at the boundries of the office. “The walls have ears,” he said cryptically, waggling his eyebrows. “You get me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

The partners exchanged a glance.

Scully knew that she would be unable to deny Mulder anything he wanted on this topic. To do so would destroy every last vestige of their relationship. She would, quite simply, lose him forever. In one way or another.

Scully touched her throat microphone. “Six, this is two.”

The hushed voice of the SEAL CO came back. “Six.”

“Stand down. Please get ready; we’re taking the suspect and the device out. I want the Navy Huey warmed up and ready to go.”

“Come again, two?”

“We have to get the device out of here, Six,” Scully said, thinking quickly. “We need to get it out over the sea ASAP. Just do it!”

“Roger, two. On the way.”

Graves nodded. “Very inventive, Scully. I might even tell you what happened during your vacation!”

Scully ground her teeth together. She had a sudden thought. If this son of a bitch is lying…I’ll put a bullet into his head myself.

Outside, they heard the signature whine of a Huey’s turbine turning over. “It will take exactly one minute and six seconds for that engine to spool up,” Graves said. “I expect us to be aboard and airborne in two minutes.”

Mulder took a deep breath. Two weeks chasing this asshole, tracking him across the country and back, only to corner him in the National Security Advisor’s office…and then have to be the ones to effect his escape.

The irony was almost overwhelming.

“Let’s go,” Mulder said shortly. He reached for his left-hand thigh-pocket. “If I don’t cuff you, questions will be asked.”

Graves thought about it and nodded. “Fine. But I’ll have a small knife in my hand so I can cut them lose if anything fucked starts happening.”

Mulder nodded. “Fair enough.”

Graves took a small pocketknife and hid it in his hands, turning his back to Mulder and offering them. Quickly, Mulder cuffed him, the desire to wrap his hands around this man’s neck almost overpowering him.

Taking an elbow, he guided Graves towards Scully. “Here…you take him. I’ll just take…the device.”

Reaching for it, Mulder lifted it into his hands and turned it over. Didn’t look like much.

“Kinda small, Graves,” he said.

“Maybe so, Mulder, but I wouldn’t drop it if I were you. One drop of that stuff hits the air, and everyone within a hundred square yards will die within seconds. Rather nasty stuff and all that.”

Mulder nodded and gripped the device more tightly.

Scully leading the way, the trio made their way down the hall towards the stairs. Halfway there they met Skinner, still pushing his way along with one good leg. He was pale, weak, and sweaty.

“Can we-?” Scully asked.

Graves nodded. Mulder handed Scully the device and bent to help his boss.

“What–?” Skinner asked.

“Later,” Mulder promised.

Skinner just nodded, glad for the help. Slinging his arm across Mulder’s neck, Skinner began limping down the hall.

“God, don’t we look just the dance couples?” Graves asked.

***

Special Agent Ron Burke, United States Secret Service, held his breath as the East Entrance door opened. Mulder was first, helping an obviously injured Skinner. Special Agent Scully was behind him, guiding a handcuffed Graves with one hand and holding the device with the other.

Burke motioned to two of his agents to take custody of Graves, but Mulder held up his hand. “We have to go to the chopper!” he shouted. Burke glanced over at the Navy chopper spooling up on the West Lawn and shook his head. Despite their promises, the FBI was going to grab the suspect and all the credit.

And Congress wondered why the Treasury and Justice Departments were at each other’s throats.

“Goddamit!” he shouted. “Skinner, you promised!”

Skinner shook his head, hooking his chin towards Mulder. “Talk to him, Burke. He’s in charge.”

Burke turned his attention to Mulder. “What about it, pal? Your boss told me that you were going to turn him over to us. That all bullshit, or what?”

Mulder closed in on Burke, lowering his head to speak quietly. “Listen to me…that device is still armed. He said that when he gets off the grounds, he’ll disarm it. But not until, and not with the Secret Service. He’s convinced that if we leave him alone with you, you’ll kill him.”

Burke pursed his lips. Good instinct, he thought. We might find an excuse to cap his ass, and no one would care. Talking about the White House here, folks.

“Ok, so after he deactivates it, THEN what?”

“He thinks we’re going to take him to headquarters and process him there. We’ll bring his ass back here and let you boys have a crack at him.”

Burke looked Mulder directly in the eye. “Your word on that?”

“Word of honor,” Mulder said, holding out his hand. Burke shook it, smiling. “No,” Mulder hissed. “You can’t act like this is OK, or it’ll blow the deal. Make noise; get mad. Scream and yell at me about taking your prisoner.”

Burke nodded as Mulder turned back to Scully and Graves. He was relieved to see that Skinner was receiving the medical attention he needed; two Secret Service Agents had broken a rather large First Aid kit out of the back of the Suburban and were quickly and competently attending to his wounds.

“Well that’s just fucking GREAT!” Burke called, throwing his arms up. “The FBI comes in here, all high and mighty, and takes our fucking prisoner! What the fuck is up with that, Mulder? Huh?”

Mulder started wedging his way through the suddenely hostile crowd of Secret Service agents. “Let us through,” he insisted, glancing at his watch. He had less than forty seconds to make it to the chopper.

Some of the crowd reached for Scully as if to seperate her from Graves. Drawing her weapon, but keeping it pressed against her thigh, the short, redhaired agent struck a very imposing figure. Ice chips in her eyes, she stared them all down, one by one, all the while guiding Graves through the crowd with a strong hand at his elbow.

They made it to the Huey with a minimum of commotion and climbed aboard. “Where to?” Mulder shouted in Graves’ ear.

Graves shouted his answer in Mulder’s ear, who promptly relayed it to the pilot. A moment later they were taking off.

As soon as they were out of sight of the White House, Graves freed himself, tossing the flexi-cuffs out the helicopter’s window.

“Talk!” Mulder ordered.

“Soon, my boy, soon. I promise, in less than half an hour, all your questions will be answered.”

Mulder glanced at the man, saw his eyes and nodded. This had better be fucking good, he thought. Ten SEALs down, plus Mike Watts. No matter what Graves said, though, he was either going to jail or going into the ground, six feet under.

Scully glanced at her partner, worry written all over her soft, pale face. She knew how important anything and everything having to do with Samantha was to him, and she was getting the feeling that whatever happened in the next thirty minutes would change his life, and by extension, her life…forever.

***

The chopper set down next to the warehouse. Mulder did a double-take as soon as he saw it.

“Zeus?” he asked Graves. The former intelligence operative just nodded, a grin lighting up his face.

“Trust me, Mulder…it will be worth it. I reccomend you get rid of all that…stuff before we go in. Our host won’t like it very much if you show up loaded for bear.”

Mulder glanced at him and shook his head. “No. I’ve given as much as I can, Graves. We go in armed, or we go back to where we came from, and I’ll let the Secret Service deal with you.” True to his word, Graves had disarmed the device during the flight.

“What?” Graves protested, his voice mocking. “And miss all the fun? Dear boy, you can come in with a tank if you want…just please do come in! I’ve waited almost twenty years for this day, and I don’t intend to miss it!”

Scully, Mulder and Graves hopped down out of the chopper and quickly walked around the corner to the front door of Zeus Storage. Using a key on a ring full of similar keys, Graves let them in, and then locked the door behind them. “This way,” he said, leading them down what was an almost-familar hallway.

They came to the same room and stopped. Graves opened the door and waved his arm as if to escort them in. “Please…I insist.”

Mulder went in first, his hand hovering near his pistol. The room was dim, but not quite dark. None of the contents that Mulder had seen there over four years ago were there now, even though he half-expected them to me.

Although what was there both surprised and angered him.

“Hello, Mr. Mulder.”

Fox Mulder looked into the softly smiling face of the smoking man and felt the rage, anger and murderous desire of the past few days welling in his veins.

“You son of a BITCH!” he screamed, reaching for his pistol and drawing it. “I should shoot you where you stand!”

The smoking man pulled the cigarette from his mouth, blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling and said, “Go ahead.”

Mulder’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“Mulder! NO!” Scully’s voice.

He loosened his finger.

The smoking man smiled again, pulling his own free hand out of his overcoat pocket. There was a Walther PPK in it.

“I really must insist,” he said quietly, pointing the gun at Scully. “You either shoot me, Mr. Mulder, or I shoot your part-”

BANG!

The shot hit the man in the shoulder, spinning him around. His PPK clattered to the ground, and he grunted softly. Mulder took a step towards him, reaching with his foot for the small PPK and kicked it behind him.

No choice, his mind said. I had no choice.

The smoking man straightened back up and smiled at Mulder. The FBI agent could see the hole in the overcoat where his bullet had struck, but…but…

There was no blood.

His mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing. “If I may?” the smoking man asked, shrugging out of first his overcoat, and then his suit jacket. All that was left was his dress shirt, also with a small, neat, round hole, but no blood.

“What the hell…?” Mulder asked.

“Mr. Mulder, you can shoot me all day long if it will make you feel better, although I would assume that after the first few magazines the theraputic value of such actions would be diminished. The truth remains that you chould shoot me for the rest of the day, this week and into next month, and it would have the same overall effect.

“None. None at all.”

Mulder stepped back, beginning to understand. “Who…are you?”

“Who is not as important as “what”, Mr. Mulder. You are here for a reason, my friend.”

Mulder’s gun came back up. “Don’t CALL me that, you SON of a BITCH!”

The smoking man’s eyes twinkled. “But, Mr. Mulder, you are…well, perhaps an explaination is in order, Hmmmm?”

Quicker than Mulder would have thought possible, the smoking man moved, ducking around Mulder and finding his PPK. Gathering it in his hand, he turned back to the FBI agent and smiled again.

“You were brought here, Mr. Mulder, for one very important reason. This entire mission…your entire career…indeed, your entire life from the time you were ten years old…has been about one thing, and one thing only.”

“And what is that?” Mulder demanded.

The smoking man pivoted on one foot, levelled the gun at Danny Graves, and fired a shot point-blank into his forehead. The former intelligence officer, decorated with three classified Silver Stars, and two Intelligence Stars by the CIA, collapsed in a dead, boneless heap at the smoking man’s feet.

Turning back to face Mulder, he said, “To see if you can make the tough decisions, Mr. Mulder.”

“I…I…” Mulder stammered, not believing what he’d just seen.

“…don’t understand,” Scully finished. “We…don’t understand.”

The smoking man nodded. “I’m sure you don’t. That is why you are here, after all. To understand, finally…” He jammed the gun into his pants at the small of his back and turned to point to a long table in one corner. “Come, let’s sit and talk. I’ll explain as much of it as I’m able in the time we have.”

Time? Mulder thought.

As he turned towards the table, Mulder asked a question that had been on his mind for almost five years. “What do I call you?”

The smoking man considered this. “Under the circumstances, I think ‘Dad’ might be a good start.”

Mulder felt the blood draining from his head and he swooned, reaching out for the table that was just out of his grasp. Then Scully was there, her arm around his waist, steadying him. Being there for him.

As always.

“You…you’re my father?” he asked, flashing back to The Empire Strikes Back.

“No…not in the sense you think. Not biologically. But I am the person that has made you the man you are today, Mr. Mulder, so in a very real sense, I am the father of the son that stands before me.”

Mulder shook his head. “I don’t accept that.”

“Oh…you will, Mr.Mulder. You will.”

They sat down at the table. Mulder could see Graves’ body over the smoking man’s shoulder.

I’ll be dammned if I call him ‘Dad’

“So…where do I start?” the smoking man said. “Well, to quote a favorite movie of yours, Mr. Mulder…‘a long time ago… in a galaxy far, far away…”

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 37/38

“Half the work that is done in the world is
to make things appear what they are not.”

– E. R. Beadlel

“The truth is forced upon us,
very quickly, by a foe.”

– Aristophanes

“The enemies of the future are always
the very nicest people.”

– Christopher Morley

“A man cannot be too careful in
the choice of his enemies.”

– Oscar Wilde

“Cut the shit,” Mulder said. “Give me one good reason why I should trust you.”

The smoking man looked at Mulder as if questioning the young FBI Agent’s sanity. “Mr. Mulder, you just shot me point-blank and it didn’t affect me in the least. Surely you understand the implications of what you’ve witnessed here tonight.”

Mulder shook his head. “I don’t give a flying FUCK about implications. I asked you a question. Give me a reason to trust you.” Mulder turned his head towards Graves’ body. “Tell me why you killed that man. Why you used him to draw us in, to draw us to you. That is what happened, right?”

The smoking man nodded. “Yes. Graves was used to…test you, to see if you were worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

“Of the destiny that has been set out for you, of course,” the smoking man replied, his voice even and melodic as always. It was so annoying, Mulder thought.

“By whom?”

The smoking man shook his head. “Not yet, Mr. Mulder. We have to get there…together. You have to earn the right to ask certain questions and expect to have them answered.” He shook his head. “You know, that always was your problem, and it concerned me for a very long time.” He nodded at Scully. “That was one of the reasons we put you two together; we knew that…among other things, Scully would teach you patience, teach you that there is a proper way to do things, that there is a time and place for everything.”

Scully looked very pleased with herself for a moment until the smoking man turned his attention on her. “Don’t look so smug, Dr. Scully. You were partnered with Mulder for other reasons as well. One of them is to learn what he has to teach you: That there is a time to break the rules and do what’s right.”

Scully, having spent almost five years as Mulder’s partner, didn’t even hesitate. “Who’s definition of right, sir?” The way she said it, ‘sir’ sounded like it was spelled c-u-r.

“Ah,” he said. “That is the question, is it not?” Turning his attention back to Mulder, he continued: “Remember the time you came to visit me, Mulder? When you asked me who was I to decide what was right?”

Mulder nodded.

Scully shot him a glance, questioning.

Later, he thought to her. She nodded, refocusing on the man across the table from her.

“Well, you’re very close to finding that particular bit of information out. But before we go there, I have some questions for you.”

“I’m not in a particularly talkative mood,” Mulder snarled. “I’d rather you do the talking and I do the questioning.”

The smoking man silently shook his head. “But, a compromise. You ask one, and then I ask one. Is that acceptable?”

Mulder nodded. “You first.”

“As you wish.”

“Did you order Scully’s abduction?”

Interesting, Scully thought at the same time the smoking man did. His first question wasn’t about Samantha, but about his partner. Scully felt a warm wave of affection washing through her. The smoking man cocked an eyebrow. Good, he thought. This bodes very well for Mulder’s ability to grasp…objectives.

“Yes,” he answered.

He watched as Mulder fought to keep control. His hands clenching and relaxing by his sides, Mulder felt fire flowing in his veins, saw nothing but white-hot flashes behind his eyes; he could hear the blood pounding in his ear, could feel the desire to leap across the table and just…just…

How do you kill something that can’t die? he wondered.

“My turn,” the smoking man said. “Do you consider yourself a brave man, Mr. Mulder?”

Mulder opened his mouth to give a snide reply and then thought better of it. He’d probably never get a better chance; the man had agreed to answer questions as long as the dialog remained two-way. Antagonizing him wasn’t on the agenda; he could kill the man later, after.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Let me ask it another way. Do you ever get afraid?”

Mulder nodded. “All the time. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t get afraid.”

The smoking man nodded. Mulder grinned. “That was two questions.”

The smoker thought about it and nodded again, conceding the point. “Proceed, Mr. Mulder. I do reserve the right to defer answering a question…temporarily.”

“Why the fuck did you kidnap her?”

Again with Scully, the smoker thought. He considered his response, wanting to give the impression of sharing information, but not ready to reveal certain…aspects of the overall Project until he was sure Mulder was on board.

“It’s complicated. Part of it was to distract you, of course. You were getting close…too close to certain aspects of the Project. We were aware of how closely you’d…bonded with your partner, and we knew that her disappearence would cause you to…falter in your search.”

“The rest of it?”

“Not quite yet, Mr. Mulder. But I will say this. Part of the reason she was taken was to…explore a thing or two about her. So much of our time has been wrapped up in you, in making sure that you were the right man for the job that certain…research items were overlooked when it came to your beautiful partner.”

Hearing that man call her beautiful made Scully’s skin crawl.

“My turn. This is a hypothetical question, Mr. Mulder. Please think about it carefully before you answer it. Are you ready?”

Mulder nodded.

“If I could promise you a cure for cancer, would you kill an innocent person?”

Mulder sat back, letting his breath out. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“It’s quite simple, Mr. Mulder.” The smoker stood, slowly pacing as he spoke. “Assume that I am what you have been looking for your entire adult life; I am an extraterrestrial that has come to this planet for reasons unknown; assume that I posess technology beyond your wildest dreams. Now, I come to you, as the leader of the world, and I ask you to kill one person, one innocent person in exchange for a cure for all known and future forms of cancer.” He stopped pacing next to Graves’ body and looked down at the slumped form before glancing back at Mulder. “Would you do it?”

Mulder wrestled with the question, but he already knew the answer. “Yes. I would.”

The smoker dropped his cigarette on the floor of the warehouse and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. “I’m very pleased to hear that, Mr. Mulder. I believe it is your turn to ask a question.”

“I’ve been wanting to ask this forever. What is your name?”

Scully smiled. Just like Mulder to ask such a question. Then she frowned. Something the smoking man had said a moment ago was nagging her, playing at the back of her mind. What was it? Leader of the world; that was it. He’d told Mulder to assume he was the leader of the world! Scully shivered.

The smoker moved back to the table, his face open and friendly. “Where I come from, we don’t have individual names for each…well, what you would call a person, or a soul. We’re not numbered or…counted in that way. It’s not important for each… person, again, your word…to have an individual way to be addressed. But what I am called…how I am referred to, when such things are necessary, is much like what you might call an…advisor. Or perhaps consultant. The word…the sound we make, at least, means that in the context we’re discussing. So that’s what I am…a consultant.”

Mulder asked, “On what topic?”

“You are so curious, Mr. Mulder, but I believe that it is my turn to ask?”

Mulder nodded.

“A second part to the question I asked previously. You’ve already indicated that you would kill an innocent person in order to secure a cure for cancer; that is admirable, Mr. Mulder. Very brave. But…would you kill your mother for it?”

Scully pursed her lips, thinking. If the smoking man was betting that Mulder’s answer was going to change because of that, he might be losing this particular wager.

And again, Mulder surprised both of them. “If by ‘my mother,’ you mean someone close to me, someone that I know personally as opposed to some stranger, I’d have to say that it would depend. If you literally mean my mother, yes, I’d kill her. She’s lived a long, somewhat difficult life. If you mean someone like Scully, I’d have to say no.”

The smoker nodded, and then added, “Dr. Scully is never in danger, Mr. Mulder, as least as far as I and this Project are concerned. You need to believe that, for reasons that will become clearer later.” He waited a beat. “But I admire your honesty in answering, because it displays a trait in you that I admire. I believe you would kill your mother to secure a cure for cancer for this world. But I also know that you wouldn’t be able to put a bullet into her head. You’d make it as painless as possible, and you’d grieve for her, and you’d be wracked with guilt for the rest of your natural life. And that is what I need, Mr. Mulder. That is what we all need.”

And now the questions were piling up in Mulder’s head.

He asked the first one to pop into his mind. “Who is ‘we’?”

The smoking man sat down, sighing heavily. “I will defer that question until later. You may ask another.”

“So what kind of consultant are you?”

“I guess that actually is another question in disguise. What you are really asking, of course, is ‘Why am I here?’ Isn’t that right?”

“I suppose,” Mulder acknowledged.

“Quite simply, to save this planet.”

“From who? Ourselves?”

The smoker grunted. “As capable as you all are at blowing yourselves to bits at the slightest provocation…no. Not from yourselves. From…something else. The reason I am here, Mr. Mulder, is not to take your planet over. I am not the point man in an attempt to colonize your world.”

“Are you a shapeshifter?” Scully asked.

“No,” the smoking man answred. “They are…bodyguards, if you will. They help me with certain aspects of my job.”

“I have a question,” Mulder said. “Why was Melissa killed? And my father?”

The smoking man sighed. “Mistakes, both of them. You are aware that Melissa was killed because the men that were sent were looking for Agent Scully.” He paused. “I did not send him.”

“Krycek,” Mulder muttered.

The smoker nodded. “Yes, Alex was…a protogee of mine, you might say. But…he was seduced by the power, by the pull of being able to make life and death decisions. He felt that you two were getting too much…attention. That he could do everything that we had planned for you, Mr. Mulder.”

“My father?” he prompted.

The smoker grinned. “We seem to have gotten away from the agreement. But I will answer your question. Your father was also killed by Krycek, as you suspected. But he was acting alone. Your father was aware of a great deal regarding the Project, Mr. Mulder, and he was going to tell you too much too soon. I sent Alex to speak to your father, to explain more of the plan to him. Your father and I had a falling out a great many years ago; he disagreed with what he knew of the plans for you. He thought that it was too much to ask one person, that person being you. I felt that if he knew the stakes… the real stakes, that he’d understand and at least agree to remain silent a short while longer. But when Krycek got to the Vineyard, you were already there, and your father was preparing to talk. He took the action that he thought was necessary, dictated by the situation.”

Mulder nodded, absorbing this.

“Your father’s death has caused me no end of grief, Mr. Mulder. Hard as this may be for you to believe or accept, he was my closest friend for a long time.”

Mulder didn’t answer.

“So Melissa was the innocent that had to die to cure this planet of the cancer you metaphorically speak of?” Scully asked.

The smoker turned sad, tortured eyes to Scully’s face and nodded.

“So..it wasn’t my fault,” Mulder whispeed. “Dad. Melissa. Samantha. None of it.”

“Not a single whit of it, Mr. Mulder,” the smoker said. “I am powerful…but I am not a god. There is only so much that I can control. Sadly, some of the plans escaped my ability to do so, and innocent people died as a result.”

“What about my sister? Samantha? Graves said that she never existed.”

The smoker nodded. “Samantha Mulder never lived, was never abducted and never died. She was a plant that was inserted into your memory by…me. And some others.”

“Why?”

“I suppose the answer might be ‘motivation.’”

“Motivation for what?”

“Now we’re getting into the areas that are sensitive, Mr. Mulder. Areas that are going to cover things that you have always wondered about, things you have always suspected.

“One of the abilities that my…people, if you will, possess is the abilty to see certain eventualities. You might call it predicting the future, but it’s not as easy, as simple as that phrase makes it seem. I can see…possible futures, if that makes any sense. I have the ability to see what might come next, if certain circumstances occur.

“One of the things that I have seen is this cancer that I speak of. Another was your birth. Your father and I were so close that I was able to see one of his possible futures. And when I saw you, I got an…impression, if you will. That you were the one. I’ve never had a stronger impression on any other world. You are the chosen, Mr. Mulder.”

“Chosen for what?”

“You will be the savior of this planet. I could see that happening, but only if certain other things were to happen. Part of who you are is based on your ability to see beyond the moment and into other possible moments. Your ability to think in non-linear terms. Your fantastical memory. Your ability to, as you say, accept extreme possibilities. But…your birth was not an easy one, Mr. Mulder. Your mother was unable to have any more children. And…although it is impossible to fully explain, it was a requirement that you suffer a great loss, that you become a haunted, driven man. Those of us that understand the full scope of what is to come decided that we would give you a loss. And so the memory of Samantha was custom-made for you, and implanted into your mind when you were twelve years old.”

Mulder stood and walked away from the table, one hand on his hip, running the other hand through his hair. “Let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “The past twenty or so years of my life have been spent being tortured by a memory that doesn’t exist?”

“That is one way to describe it, yes,” the smoker said slowly.

“I should kill you,” he said softly.

“As I said, I can understand you anger. I will accept responsibility for it. But you must understand that we have no choice. YOU have no choice, Mr. Mulder. They are coming. They will be here soon.”

Mulder held up a hand. “Wait a minute. My friend…the one that you had killed…told me that ‘They’ had been here for years.”

The smoker nodded. “Another ruse to get you to continue your search. He was an accomplished liar, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“Was he human?” Mulder asked.

“In a sense.”

“What about all the other things we’ve seen? What about the hybrid experiments?”

The smoking man nodded. “Now you’re beginning to see the pieces of the puzzle, the outline of the project. You assumed, as we wanted you to, that there are aliens trying to colonize the planet. That is not the truth. There are those that are here that are working to create hybrids, but not for the reason that you suspect. We are trying to become…better, Mr. Mulder. Better able to defend ourselves. Humans have things that we do not, things that we need to survive. You are a young race; you have only been walking upright for a few thousand years. We, on the other hand, have been around for millions of years. Tens of thousands of generations of us.

“And there are only a handful of us left. We do have the survival insinct, Mr. Mulder. We are only trying to survive.”

“Abductions?” Scully asked. “The women that died? The implants?”

“The implant was…a mistake. It was originally intended to allow us to control certain aspects of your physiological and emotional development. But the original design for the implant was not for human beings; it was for another race. We made what we thought were adaquete changes, but they had an opposite effect. They ended up killing the women. And only the women. The men that have implants do not get sick; they do not die.”

“What went wrong?” Scully asked.

“We underestimated you,” the smoker replied. “Part of the implant’s technology works to strengthen individual resolve. To make you stronger, more able to stand up to hardship. We had no understanding of the native ability of this race to do so. Certain people, when exposed to the implant’s…influence, if you will, react by producing what you might call antibodies. And that reaction causes the health problems.” He hesitated “We have stopped using the implants.”

“Am I going to get sick?” Scully asked.

“Yes.”

She shuddered. “Am I going to die?”

“No. You will be sick for a time…but you will not die.”

Scully sighed.

“So lay it all out for me,” Mulder said. “Who are you, what are you doing here, what are the shapeshifter’s role…Jerimiah Smith…the oil-worms…all of it.”

The smoker shook his head. “Some of those things…the worms, for instance…are just tangential issues, things thrown in your path to frustrate your search and strengthen your resolve to find the truth. You may not believe it, Mr. Mulder, but you are this planet’s last, best hope.”

“Why should I believe you?”

The smoker shrugged, turned to Scully and focused on her eyes. She felt something tickling the base of her brain, almost as if the man’s nicotine-stained fingers were probing around inside her skull, prodding, rearranging things. In her head, she heard…his voice.

[Can you hear me?]

“Yes,” she said, amazed.

Mulder felt something tugging at the back of his mind. He heard…Scully.

[Mulder…he won’t believe this.]

“Believe what?” he asked.

Shocked, she turned to him. [Can you hear me?]

[Yes,] he responded, his eyes widening. [Can you hear ME?]

[YES!] she shouted in his head.

[One of the reasons you were both selected is that you have innate psychic abilities. You have a very strong telepathic link. We knew, by examining you both, that you would work well together as a team.] The smoker’s thoughts hesitated for a moment, and Mulder had a sensation in his head as if he was reaching for something, trying to grasp something just outside of his range. [Falling in love was not what we had planned, but it has turned out to be an advantage. It has only strengthened the link between the two of you.]

[I loved Scully from the moment I saw her,] Mulder thought. He saw Scully turn to him, a smile splitting her face.

[Me, too,] she thought, and he heard.

[You will learn how to control this process, how to hide things from each other and from others like you. It is a requirement. You will need to learn how to protect your thoughts from being captured.]

[Why?] Mulder asked.

[Because the cancer that is coming can read thoughts. And the one thing you must not allow is for them to know your thoughts, Mr. Mulder. That is the only way to defeat them.]

[Mr. Mulder,] the smoker said in his head, [now comes the difficult part. This mission, the LIBERTY BELL mission, was half truth and half lie. It was put into place for a reason, similar to the reason you were led to believe that it was. In the event that the… cancer arrived early, we needed a way to take over the military of this country in order to defend this planet against invasion. Only when it became apparent that you were working out was the specific objective of the mission shifted. It became a test of sorts, a way to see if you had what it took to make the tough decisions.]

[Why?]

[Because there are tougher decisions coming, Mr. Mulder. I cannot reveal more to you at this time. To do so would risk you losing your mind, becoming what you call ‘insane.’ And if that were to happen, this planet would be doomed.]

Mulder felt the frustration welling up inside him. “What happens now?” he asked aloud.

“Several things. First, I will turn down the ability in both of your minds to communicate in the way that you have been. I will not turn it off. You will still be able to sense feelings, emotions, certain base thought patterns. But not specific words. You must be trained, first, how to keep those thoughts private before learning how to share them correctly.” He turned to Scully and focused on her.

[Mulder?]

No answer.

[Dammit! Mulder!]

[Scully?] she heard, but it was faint, fading.

[DAMN YOU!] she thought to the smoker. He frowned and spoke.

“It is for the best, Agent Scully.”

“Fuck you, asshole,” Mulder said.

“You’re not going to like the second procedure, either. I will be erasing your memory of this discussion. Well, not erasing, exactly. More like…hiding it from your concious mind. In another few years, we will have another discussion, another talk about what is to happen.”

“But-!” Mulder said, taking a step towards the smoker.

“No…it is for the best, Mr. Mulder, and I will show you why. Please come here.” The smoker held out his hand, offering it to Mulder. Not knowing why, Mulder took it. The smoker offered his other hand to Scully, who also took it. “Please join hands,” he said softly, nodding to their free ones.

Scully took his hand.

“Now…what I am about to show you is an image of my world, my home. A before and after, if you will.”

He closed his eyes, and both FBI agents felt a tickle at the back of their brains…and then images started flowing. Slowly at first, and then gaining speed, they saw what the smoking man wanted to show them.

They saw a planet, flush with greens and browns, with shimmering lakes and softly bubbling streams. They saw…creatures, obviously intelligent, walking on two legs, but with four arms, two of the arms short and stubby, close to the body, used for purposes that neither agent could divine. The images speeded up; Mulder saw the planet dying, saw the slow encroachment of the invaders, saw the pain and torture, heard the screams of tens of millions of beings as they were cut down in an instant, a brief flash of pain and death and dying and hatred towards the invader, saw the planet start to die, withering on the vine of life, slowly wasting away…until there was nothing left.

“Scavengers,” he whispered.

“Yes,” the smoker replied. “Very apt.” He hesitated. “Now… a little more.” He closed his eyes and increased the frequency and intensity of the images. Mulder twitched, his eyes screwed shut, trying to ignore the horrific images the man was sending his way.

“Stop…” he whispered. “Please…stop.”

They dropped hands. “That,” the smoker said softly, “was… how can I say this so you’ll understand? That was a grain of sand, Mr. Mulder. The reality is all the beaches of this world…and the deserts combined.” He paused. “Squared.”

“How long?” Mulder asked.

“Five years, minimum. Agent Scully is right; the energy needed to move across the galaxy at the speeds required are almost impossible to comprehend. More fuel than has ever been known to this world. But they will come here, Mr. Mulder. That I can promise you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this is not the first time I have done what I am doing here.”

Mulder gulped. Scully gasped.

“Tell us.”

“No. Not now. It is not the time. You still have more training to undergo, more battles to fight before I can allow you to know more.”

The smoker moved back to the table and sat. “And that is why I must remove your memories of this meeting. I must return you to the memories that you had just before you came into this room. Graves brought you here, he resisted, and you shot him dead, Mr. Mulder. You will be hailed as a hero, as a savior of the White House. But you will still hate me, even if you do now. You will still think that I am out to stop you. You will still think that your sister was abducted by aliens. You will still search, still question, continue on with your work, because I need that time to train you, to show you what is to come and to prepare you for it.”

Mulder nodded. “You said this isn’t the first time you’ve done this. Have you saved other worlds?”

The smoker nodded. “Not as many as I’d like, but more than I expected.”

“Do you think we can be saved?” Scully asked.

“I certainly hope so, Miss Scully.”

“How much does Skinner know?” Mulder asked suddenly.

“Not much. He is a Guardian, so he knows some…aspects.”

“Stone? How much did he know?”

“Next to nothing.”

“Did Graves sacrafice himself?”

“After a fashion. He knew more than Skinner. Last night, he learned most of it.”

“Would you have let those people die?” Mulder asked. “The CBX devices? Graves’ device?”

“In a heartbeat, Mr. Mulder. In an instant.”

“WHY?!” Scully cried.

“Because dying of a chemical weapon is much more preferable way to go than…what is coming.”

“So what happens next?” Mulder asked again.

“This,” the smoker said.

There was a flash inside Mulder’s mind, and Scully’s mind.

And then nothing but blackness.

–x–x–x–

“Umbra” 38/38

Zeus Storage

Scully came to first. Blinking her eyes, she glanced around the abandoned room. There was a table in the back, three chairs, and nothing else. Sitting up, grunting with the effort, she rolled to her side and stopped.

A body.

She looked down at the misshappen skull and remembered. Graves. Reaching out a hand, she turned the head towards her. A single, neat bullet hole was in the center of his forehead. She remembered…entering the room, with Graves. Mulder asking why they were there…Graves reaching for the device in Mulder’s hand, kicking Mulder in the leg, the device falling into his hands, Graves sick, mad, twisted laugh as he triggered it.

The gas, escaping from underneath. Choking against it, Scully drawing her weapon and firing. Graves going down, and then… blackness.

Scully glanced at her watch.

2:30pm, Sunday afternoon. Graves dead. Mulder!

Over her shoulder, Mulder, face down, breathing shallowly.

She moved to him, her hands reaching. “Mulder!” she whispered. He moaned and shifted, his lips moving, no sound coming out. “Mulder!” she said, a little louder.

“Scully,” he whispered, and opened his eyes.

“GRAVES!” he shouted, sitting bolt upright.

“It’s ok…I shot him,” she said. “He’s dead.”

“W-what happened?” Mulder asked. Scully filled him in quickly and he nodded, remembering. “So…it’s over?”

Scully nodded. “Stone’s dead, Graves is dead. It’s over.”

Mulder thought about it for a long, long moment and then shook his head. “No…no, it’s not. The network still exists. All of Graves’ people are out there, waiting. Sooner or later one of them is going to figure out that the king is dead, and start the net up again.” He stood, helping Scully to her feet. “We have a lot of work to do.”

***

Forensics was still working the scene when Mulder’s cell chirped.

“Mulder.”

“Skinner,” his boss said. “Talk to me.”

Mulder brought his boss up to date.

“Sounds like a clean shoot.”

“It was,” Mulder said, slightly offended that Skinner would suspect Scully of assassination. “We had no choice.”

“The gas?”

“Knocked us out for a few hours, but that’s about it. As soon as we’re done here, Scully and I are going to the hospital to get checked out.”

Skinner made noises of approval and rang off.

Scully was in the corner, going over the events with the shooting team. They were working slow and easy, aware that what had transpired was not an ordinary Agent-involved shooting.

The SAC of the forensics unit found Mulder. “Secret Service is chewing us a new one. Some moron named Burke wants to speak to you.”

“Where is he?”

“Outside. We’ve got uniforms from Metro holding everyone back.”

Mulder nodded; it was standard procedure. “Let him in. He’ll want to see what happened, and he’s due.”

The SAC nodded and picked up a radio. Twenty seconds later Ron Burke came tear-assing into the room, his face red with anger.

“What the FUCK happened, Mulder?”

Mulder took him by the shoulder and guided him to the corner furthest from Scully. “Graves told us he wanted to show us were he mixed the stuff; said there was a lot left that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. When he got here, he managed to get the device away from me and set it off. Just before we went down, Scully waxed him; once in the forehead.”

Burke looked at the sheet-covered body in the middle of the room and sighed.

“Dammit.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I wanted to interrogate him. He managed to get onto the White House grounds with a chemical weapon. He had a level 99 clearence. There’s no way something like that should happen!”

Mulder nodded. “Listen…is there anyone you want me to talk to? Your boss? There are some things about this case that I can’t tell you. Classified and all that. But if I can talk to your boss, take some of the heat off…I’d be happy-”

Burke nodded. “I’d appreciate it. Right now, the SAC of the Washingtion Field Office and the Director are waiting for me back at the mansion. And I have a feeling they have their kick-ass shoes on.”

Mulder grinned. “Hey, at least I had the good sense to have a boss that steps into the line of fire.”

Burke regarded Mulder silently. “It kinda looked like you were giving the orders out there,” he remarked.

Mulder nodded. That was true. He remembered how Skinner had turned the operation over to him without a complaint. Another thing to talk to Skinner about.

“Lemme check on my partner, and we’ll come back to the Mansion with you,” he said.

Burke just grunted, moving to Graves’ body and lifting the sheet. “Asshole,” he said to the body.

***

Walter Reed Army Hospital

Skinner grunted when the phone rang. Who the hell?

“Skinner?”

“Mr. Skinner,” the voice said.

“What do you want now?”

“Mr. Mulder and Miss Scully and I had a very interesting conversation. Too bad they won’t remember it for a few years.”

Skinner sighed. More games.

“What do you want?”

“Just have a good story prepared when they show up. Things are going according to plan, Mr. Skinner. I wanted you to know that I am very…pleased with your performance through all this. The trust I have placed in you is obviously well-founded.”

“Kiss my ass,” Skinner growled.

“As I recall, this is the second time you’ve offered such services. I wouldn’t take the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy too far, Mr. Skinner. I’m not sure what the Marine Corps would say if they discovered that one of their most capable officers was-”

Skinner hung up.

Asshole.

***

The White House

The Suburban piloted by Ron Burke pulled into the East Gate and up the drive. It took them a few moments to navigate security. Scully and Mulder were weaponless, having surrendered all of their hardware, including duty weapons, to the shooting team. It was standard practice, and neither on of them was bothered by it. Still, after the last few days, they both felt naked without their weapons and armor.

The Director of the Secret Service and the Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office were waiting for Burke, as he’d promised. Neither one of them looked happy.

“Agent Burke,” the Director started, as soon as they’d entered the Secret Service Command Post. “Would you mind explaining how a madman managed to get a chemical weapon onto the grounds of the mansion?”

Mulder started. “Sir, I’m Special Agent Mulder with the FBI. Perhaps I can shed some light on what transpired here today.”

The Director turned to the lanky FBI agent, hands on his hips. “And you! Shooting up the mansion like some wild west town! What the hell were you thinking, man?”

“Sir, I-”

“SILENCE!” the Director bellowed.

There was a knock at the door. Vice Admiral Jake Karns, Commander in Chief, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, stood in the doorway.

“Yes?” the Director asked, obviously annoyed at being interrupted.

“I’m Admiral Karns,” Karns stated. “Perhaps I can add something to the party.”

“Well, come on in,” the Director said sarcastically. “Perhaps we can expect a visit from the Joint Chiefs next!”

Letting out a huge breath, the Director sat down behind the desk and drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Very well. Agent Mulder, why don’t you begin? You seem to be the head honcho in this mess. And I’m warning you, Mulder — make it good.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, approximately six days ago, Admiral Karn approached the FBI with a rather…sensitive problem.” Mulder went onto explain as much as he could, omitting certain facts that he would go over with Karn later, and dropping any references to certain issues that were too explosive to be discussed in the open. The story took almost half an hour to complete.

When he was done, the Director’s eyebrows were crawling up his face, and his mouth hung open in disblief or surprise. Mulder couldn’t tell which.

“And you expect me to believe that the FBI let you two agents chase this madman across hill and dale, directly to the front door of the White House? Just the two of you?”

“No, sir. Commander Stone and Assistant Director Skinner were also involved in the final assualt,” Scully provided.

“I see,” the Director said. “That would explain the dead body in the hallway.”

“His body is still here?” Scully asked.

“Yes. My own forensics team is working the scene.”

“Sir, if I may…I’d like to go and…”

“Yes, whatever. I still have some questions for your partner in crime here.”

As Scully left the office, she heard the Director asking some very pointed questions about checmical weapons.

***

National Security Advisor’s Office
The White House

The sheet covering Stone’s body was bloody at one end. Scully felt her face tightening as she took in the scene. Half a dozen Secret Service technicians scurried around the office, dusting for prints and taking pictures and God only knew what else. There was an ugly red splotch of blood, tissue and hair against the wall opposite the door.

She identified the man in charge by the way he barked orders at the rest of them. Plus, he held a clipboard in his hand and seemed to be an insufferable asshole.

“Sir?” she asked, reaching for her ID. “Special Agent Scully, FBI. Are you almost through here?”

“What are you doing here?” he snapped. “This is not an FBI matter.”

“Uh, sir, I was here when this went down, and is most certainly is an FBI matter.”

“Not any longer,” he pointed out. “What do you want?”

“I’d like a moment with my…partner,” she said, indicating the body.

He stared at her, seeing something in her eyes that brooked no compromise. His features softened and he nodded. “Of course. Losing a partner is always difficult.”

How many have you lost? she thought of asking, but decided against.

The SAC herded the technicians out of the room and down the hall, leaving Scully alone with Matt Stone. Steeling herself, she squatted next to his head and peeled the sheet back. His left eye was missing, nothing but a bloody, gory hole left. His right eye was open.

She closed it gently.

“You moron,” she whispered, a smile on her face. “Had to go down in a blaze of glory, huh? Couldn’t wait for Mulder to pull it out.” She felt odd, speaking to a dead body, but she knew that wherever he was, Matt could hear her. “Well, partner…we didn’t always see eye to eye, and you were an insufferable prick…but we got the bastard, Matt.” She paused. “I got him for you.”

“Rest in peace.” Scully covered his face with the sheet and stood. Glancing around to see if anyone was watching, Scully drew herself to attention and saluted the body. “Another SEAL to guard the gates of heaven,” she whispered, and dropped her arm.

Turning, she hurried back downstairs to the Command Center and her real partner.

***

“Mr. Mulder,” the Director was saying as she re-entered the office, “I expect that you will make yourself available for this investigation.”

“Of course, sir. But if we’re done for now, I’d like to go and see my boss, who was injured in the assualt.”

“Very well. You are dismissed.”

Burke touched his ear, listening. “Uh, Mr. Mulder? There’s another Navy officer at the East gate demanding entrance, and demanding that she speak to you.”

“Maggie King,” Mulder said. “Let her in.”

Burke radioed Mulder’s request to the guards at the gate. Mulder and Scully started walking back towards the door, and encountered a flustered Maggie on the way in.

“Matt?” she asked, looking first at Mulder, then at Scully.

Scully shook her head, and Maggie collapsed, sobbing. “Oh GOD!” she wailed. Scully kneeled by her side, gently embracing the overwrought woman. After a few moment she collected herself.

“I want to see him!” she demanded.

Scully and Mulder exchanged glances. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Scully said softly. “He was torn up pretty badly in the crossfire.”

“Did he suffer?” she asked.

Scully shook her head. “He never knew what hit him.”

King nodded, sniffling. “I want him buried at Arlington!”

Scully nodded, agreeing. “With full honors.”

***

Arlington National Cemetery
Two Days Later

“Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me!”

Scully mouthed the words to the mournful screech of the bagpipes. Maggie had insisted on it, even though the Navy had been equally eager to have a bugler play “Taps.” In the end, they agreed on both.

The casket was poised over the grave, covered with an American flag. The Chaplain had finished his invocation. Mulder, Scully and King stood graveside. Karn, in full uniform, sat in the second row. Next to him, perched on a pair of crutches, was Skinner. Ron Burke, Frohike, Langley and Byers made up the rest of the funeral party.

The honor guard approached the casket, lifted the flag from it and folded it in the prescribed military manner. The commanding officer of the color guard presented the folded flag to Maggie, and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“Please accept this token of gratitude from a grateful nation,” he said softly, then straightened and saluted crisply. Maggie, in uniform, had no choice but to return the salute.

Scully and Maggie had white roses in their hands.

The casket started to descend into the grave.

Scully stepped up and watched the casket as it lowered. “Goodbye, Matt,” she whispered, tossing the rose into the pit.

Maggie followed suit.

Mulder stopped, glancing down. “Rest in peace,” was all he could manage.

Karn saluted as the rifles started firing. Overhead, four F-14 Tomcats flew by, the middle one peeling up into a steep dive at the last moment, the other three peeling off. When the echo of the rifle shots had died, the bugler began blowing “Taps.”

Skinner hobbled over to Mulder, Scully and King. “Beautiful ceremony,” he said, trying to find something to say.

“No one came,” Maggie said softly. “No one but us.”

“Stone made a lot of enemies along the way,” Skinner replied. “I think it’s fitting that the last unit he served with…us… were the ones to see him on.”

Mulder grinned. “So we’re a unit now?”

Skinner nodded. “More than you know, Agent Mulder. I take it that your friends over there,” he hooked a chin at the Gunmen, “are the ones that help you out with all your…esoteric technology needs?”

“What friends?” Mulder asked innocently. “As far as I know, they’re funeral junkies.”

Skinner grunted.

“I imagine you have some questions for me,” Skinner continued. “And I’ll be seeing you next Monday at the office. Take the rest of the week off. On the Bureau.”

“Actually sir,” Scully started, “we were hoping for a little more time.”

“Scully?” Skinner asked.

She slid her arm through Mulder’s and smiled at her boss. “Agent Mulder and I have tickets to the Bahamas. We leave tonight. For two weeks. When we we get back…we can have that discussion.”

Skinner grimaced. “Have you filed for time-off?”

“Of course, sir. It’s sitting on your desk.”

“Very well. Granted. Just do me a favor.”

“Sir?”

“If you get married on vacation, don’t tell me about it!”

Laughing, he hobbled off.

“Married?” Mulder said, his eyes wide.

“Not a bad idea,” Scully whispered to herself.

They turned to Maggie. “So…what’s next for you?” Scully asked.

“Admiral Karn has transferred me to NCIS. I’ll be helping him track down the last of Graves’ Ronin before he takes over the Sixth Fleet.”

The arrests had started the day after Stone’s death. They were up to almost sixty officers and enlisted men in all branches of the service. They were all being held in special cells at NCIS, totally out of communication. The President, after learning what had transpired in ‘his house’ while he was at Camp David, had signed a Special Presidential Intelligence Finding, authorizing the DIA and the NCIS to operate outside of normal channels in investigating and arresting those responsible.

“And then, who knows?”

“Good luck,” Scully said, offering her hand. Maggie shook it, and then on impulse leaned up and kissed Mulder on the cheek.

“Take care,” she whispered. “You’ve got one hell of a woman.”

“I know it,” he whispered back.

***

Epilogue

Scully and Mulder returned to Washington after two weeks in the Bahamas. They had a very private, very detailed discussion with Assistant Director Skinner, who was as forthcoming as he could be. He’d been instructed carefully by the smoker on what to tell his two favorite agents.

“So, he was helping us on this one?” Mulder asked.

“Yes. Despite what you might think, he doesn’t always operate to hinder you, Agent Mulder. In some ways, he has actually operated to help you in the past, and I would imagine, the future.”

“But what about-”

“Agent Mulder. Please understand that there are some things that even I don’t know.” And I hope I never will, Skinner thought. “That man operates in the darkness, in the shadows, and although you may feel from time to time that he’s hiding things from you that are your right to know, there are others, above me…above him, that do not agree. But, I will tell you this much. It is my opinion that if you keep performing the way you have during this mission, that there will come a day soon when you will know everything that man does.”

Skinner paused. “And I dearsay there might be a time when you will regret your constant pursuit of him and his agenda.”

Mulder said nothing, understanding. Sometimes the devil you knew was better than the one you didn’t.

In the two weeks they’d been away, the NCIS and DIA had finished the investigation into Graves’ Ronin. All in all, over three hundred officers had been arrested. Confronted with the overwhelming evidence against them, to a one they had plead guilty. Two had comitted suicide while in custody. The others would be given short prison sentances and dishonorably discharged, losing all pensions and beneifts. The spectre of their involvement in the LIBERTY BELL operation and their participation in Graves’ plan would follow them for the rest of their lives.

Captain Ronald Ebert had been one of the suicides.

Followed shortly by Ally Roche.

“So,” Skinner said, reaching for a file in his IN box. “Next case. The Seattle police department and the Kings County Sherriff’s office has requested your assistance in a series of ghost sightings inside a college library. According to the-”

As Skinner trailed off, Scully and Mulder exchanged a glance. Their shared, secret smile spoke volumes of the distances they’d covered in the last three weeks.

Scully glanced down at her left hand, at the small, thin tan line that showed there. Mulder glanced at his own hand, seeing a matching tan, slightly wider. They glanced at each other again and smiled wider.

Things were looking up.

***

Two months later, Lieutenant Colonel Walter S. Skinner, United States Marine Corps, was promoted to Colonel, USMCR. He was decorated with a classified Distinguished Service Medal for his actions in dealing with the White House Crisis. His promotion ceremony was attended by Special Agents Mulder and Scully, who, off-duty, were sporting to very odd-looking pieces of jewlery for agents whose personnel file listed them both as single.

Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were similarly decorated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the Justice Department Medal of Valor. Assistant Director Skinner declined to be so awarded. Commander Maggie King, USNR, was decorated with the Legion of Merit for her role in the White House Crisis, and frocked to Captain.

Vice Admiral Jake Karns was promoted to full Admiral, and given command of the Sixth Fleet, and was similarly decorated with the Legion of Merit, his third.

***

Nine months later, Captain Margaret King, USNR, gave birth to a son, Matthew Fox King. Fox William Mulder and Walter S. Skinner were named as co-godfathers. Dana Katherine Scully was named as godmother. Special Agent Fox Mulder was given a time-in-grade promotion from Supervisory Special Agent of the X-Files Division to Assistant Special Agent in Charge. Special Agent Dana Scully was promoted to Supervisory Special Agent.

Special Agents Mulder and Scully quietly approached a certain Senator and asked for a waiver from FBI and Justice Department regulations dealing with the marriage of co-workers. After a similarly quiet discussion with the Attorney General, the Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Assistant Director Walter Skinner, it was decided that the interests of the country, the Justice Department and the FBI would best be served by quietly granting the waiver. Shortly thereafter, Special Agents Mulder and Scully-Mulder purchased a house in Sterling, Virginia.

Of the thirty or so Special Agents who approached Skinner for similar waivers, all were denied. Two threatened to sue the FBI and the Justice Department for ‘discrimination and selective enforcement of regulations.’ The X-Files division was shortly classified as a National Security project, and all matters dealing with the division were moved into a Need-To-Know designation, thus barring testimony regarding any projects or personnel related to the divsion from being discussed in open court. Both agents dropped their suits.

Special Agents Mulder and Scully were selected to attend the National Law Academy, a perogative usually reserved for Deputy Assistant Directors and above; their selection was considered to be an indicator of their elevated status as “fast-trackers” to senior leadership and supervisory roles inside the FBI.

***

Washington, DC

One month after the White House Crisis, (as the Washington Press Corps had come to call it,) the Council met again.

The smoker sat at his customary position.

“Status report, please,” the leader requested.

“All is going according to plan. I wish to take this opportunity to explain what transpired in the storage unit. There have been many rumors, all of them unfounded and untrue.”

“Perhaps you could…expand on those rumors.”

“They were told,” the smoker said. “And then they were un-told. I wanted to be sure…sure that they were ready for what was coming.”

“And what was his reaction?”

“He understands what is required of him. He will do the right thing. But he needs seasoning, training, experience. Therefore, I removed the memories…temporarily. When next we meet under similar circumstances, I will refresh his memory, and he will see why he has been put through what he has.”

“Will he lead us?” the leader asked.

“Quite well, I’m sure.”

“Will he save us?” another voice asked, this one timid, scared.

“They both will,” the smoking man said, lighting another cigarette. “After all…it is their destiny.”

–-

THE END

–-

I have written a rather lengthy “Thanks and Other Notes” piece about “Umbra” that was originally included at the end of this chapter. Realizing that not everyone would want to read it, I have broken it out. It was sent to the mailing list members, and is available on my website at http://www.azstarnet.com/~drambo/umnotes.txt. Archivist’s note: not it’s not.

Once again, this story is dedicated to the readers. It has been my deepest honor to write for you.

Dawson E. Rambo
Tucson, Arizona
9 September 1997

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Archivist’s Note: Umbra II: Ellipsis was started, but never completed. Only 13 chapters were posted before it was abandoned. Dawson did say he’d post the outline to show where it was going after he stopped but I haven’t found this. You can find the chapters here if you want to feel incomplete – you’ll just need to change the last 2 digits of the URL to get to the other parts. I love the artwork and wish there was a completed story to accompany it.

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