"Without"

AS8X02

Originally written by: Chris Carter

Rewritten by: Kristel St. Johns

From the journal of Dana Scully

September 25, 2000

"We live in a darkness of our own making, blind to a habitant world all but unseen by us. A world of beings traveling through time and space imaginable to us only as flights of fancy. Who are these beings we dare to imagine but fear to accept? What dark work goes on inside their impossible machines, cloaked from us by invisible forces? If they know our secrets, why can't we know theirs? And in the knowledge of their secrets might not the first step toward finding you lie?"

She sits in a chair in her hospital room wrapped in her robe, staring at the landscape through the window. And for a moment, the Phoenix city skyline and the desert beyond fades, the atmosphere rippling and distorting. The distortion takes on a final shape, triangular and mechanical, for only an instant before fading. The buildings and the mountains beyond them fade back into view, and a tear falls from her eye.

* * * * *

September 21, 2000

3:47 P.M.

...There's an explosion of--something--invisible and silent, that causes her to cry out in agony even as Gibson Praise is thrown twenty feet across the terrain, back behind her, out of her field of vision. The creature wearing Mulder's form turns away from them, ignoring Doggett's shout, and leaps off the rock wall into the canyon below...

She stares impassively at the spot where only a second earlier, a creature who looked like her partner stood. As though from a distance, she can hear shouting. Doggett, she thinks. There are voices; others have joined them, agents Doggett brought with him from the task force in D.C., or shanghaied from the Phoenix field office. She is not aware that she is on her knees in the gravel and dirt. Her mind cannot move past the inevitable moment when she must peer over that cliff and confirm that all she has just witnessed was merely an illusion, that it wasn't Mulder she just saw plummet to his death. She is unaware that her lips are moving, forming silent words.

"It wasn't him. It wasn't him. It wasn't him..."

She's vaguely cognizant of the fact that her head hurts and the muscles of her abdomen ache as though she's been exercising too hard. She is hunched over, holding her belly. Her nose has bled a little. She casts her eyes slowly around the desert, seeking some proof that will appease the skeptic within her who insists that the only reality is what her eyes can see. A distortion in the distance captures her attention. She squints at it, trying to discern a shape, or features, or something that will assure her the rippling in the air is more than waves of heat rising off the sand. For an instant, it seems to take form, floating above the sand, wedge-shaped and pulsing with energy, but then someone is speaking to her, and the shape is gone.

"Agent Scully? Agent Scully, are you all right?"

Doggett.

"I'm fine," she hears herself answer, her voice muted in the din surrounding them. She rises to her feet, disregarding the hand he offers because she isn't even aware it's there. Her body feels heavy as she moves toward the canyon's edge.

"Agent Scully, you don't want to see what's down there," Agent Doggett hastens to stop her, grabbing her by the upper arm to restrain her. "You and Agent Mulder were close. Maybe it's better--"

She shakes off the hand holding her back and bats it away when it tries again to stop her. Agent Doggett subsides into silence. With Doggett hovering behind her, she reaches the precipice to peer over the edge, into the canyon.

"The hell--?" Doggett murmurs from behind her, and then he's off, shouting to the others that Mulder is gone. Untouched by the commotion around her, Scully stares expressionlessly at the empty sand below.

* * * * *

Standing at the base of the cliff from which the creature had plummeted, Scully looks up, squinting at the sunlight, seeking in the sky and on the plateau above some indication of the shape she had espied earlier. She's searching for something she can point to as proof of the theory she must inevitably share with Agent Doggett.

Some distance away from her, Doggett is speaking with another agent. Not his henchman Crane this time, but a woman she doesn't recognize. Their voices drift toward her on the desert breeze.

"I have no explanation..." the woman is telling him, perplexed.

"Neither do I. I'll talk to Scully. You guys head back to the school. If he's after the boy, that's where he'll show up."

Another car, the SUV she and Skinner rented in Phoenix, joins the small fleet already congregated at the base of the cliff and Skinner emerges. Scully glances briefly in his direction before turning her attention to the ground at her feet. If she cannot find her proof above, perhaps she can find it here.

"Where is he?" Skinner demands. "Where's Mulder?"

"I don't know," she hears Doggett answer.

"You don't know? I heard an agent say over the radio that you saw him."

"Oh, yeah, I saw him. I saw him back right off that cliff there and I saw him fall right over it," Doggett snaps, as though affronted. Perhaps he is. Scully can remember many times when she became angry in her disbelief, offended at what she perceived as an insult to the proper order of things when she was confronted with something she could neither understand nor explain. She looks at the other agent speculatively, feeling an unexpected flash of sympathy for Doggett.

"Then where is he?" Skinner asks.

"He's gone."

Skinner scoffs. "Come on, he can't be gone."

"Yeah, he can't be, but he is," Doggett says.

"That cliff there?" Skinner asks, disbelieving. "He fell from there? It's impossible... a fall like that..."

"You know, I've seen things, on the N.Y.P.D. And I've heard of other things. A man drops five stories, dusts his head off and goes back to work. An old lady gets shot point-blank in a Chinese restaurant, plucks the slug out of her egg foo yung. But even if Mulder survived the fall, what he did then is too much. You got your point of impact there where Agent Scully is standing, clear and identifiable. And a set of tracks here leading down to the wash. Look at these tracks. What do you see?"

"Mulder was running," Skinner answers in awe. As they speak, they approach Scully, who ignores them. Seeing something in the sand, she crouches down, inspecting the small spot where the sand has turned greenish-black and appears to be dissolved.

"I need a specimen bag!" she calls to no one in general. She did not come to the desert prepared to collect evidence and has nothing, not even latex gloves, on her.

"What've you got?" Doggett questions, crouching beside her.

"This acidic substance, I've seen it before. First time was in Baltimore six years ago. It ate through a pair of my shoes. Last week Mulder and I saw it twice in Oregon. It acts acidic on contact, and is toxic when inhaled."

"So what is it?"

"Blood," she answers blandly, taking the specimen bag another anonymous agent brings to her. Using the end of a stainless steel pen Doggett provides she pushes pieces of the dissolved and crumbly sand into the bag.

"You saying Mulder *bled* that stuff?"

She shakes her head at him, rising and handing him the specimen bag. "It wasn't Mulder."

"That's the one thing I'm sure of..."

"Then you're sure of nothing. It may have looked like Mulder, but it wasn't Mulder," she replies simply, dusting off her hands.

"I told you I knew Mulder. Okay, maybe I didn't know him that well. But I know who it was up there, and it was Fox Mulder," Doggett insists.

"I was up there, too, Agent Doggett, and I saw the same exact thing you did. It's not the first time this thing has taken on Mulder's appearance--" she stifles an involuntary shudder with the memory.

...her partner's cold and expressionless face as he belted her across a cheap motel room and loomed over her, changing into someone else...

"--It did look like Mulder, and you have every reason to believe that it was him...but it wasn't."

She looks back and forth between Skinner and Doggett, finally facing Doggett squarely. "I told you that I've seen things...things that I can't explain. Well, I have seen what appears to be a man...transform into another man. That's what we saw on the cliff."

"What looks like a man, but who's not a man?" Doggett asks. Scully sighs and looks at Skinner again. If she answers Doggett's question and it gets back to Kersh, it could very well be the end of her job. "So, what is he?" Doggett presses.

"You don't want to know," Scully finally replies, walking away.

"He's not a man? What the hell is he? Hey, don't turn your back on me!"

His voice stops her. The unexpected sympathy is back and she realizes she can't leave him hanging like that. Drawing a deep breath, she turns around to face him. "I'm asking you a legitimate question," Doggett says with no little irritation coloring his tone.

"He's alien," she answers finally, with quiet simplicity.

Doggett gives Skinner a look that asks silently if Scully has lost her mind, while Skinner watches the two of them expressionlessly. Scully knows he recognizes the risk she's taking, telling this to Doggett. "He's a bounty hunter," she clarifies after giving her words a moment to sink in. "Mulder and I encountered him before. One time he took me hostage to exchange for a woman Mulder believed to be his sister Samantha. I saw him transform right before my eyes."

"Right," Doggett nods patronizingly. "And he's looking to collect a bounty on...?"

"On Gibson Praise. Mulder theorized that Gibson was part alien. My own research on Gibson revealed he had certain DNA active within him, DNA that has been dormant in human beings since the dawn of time. It was this DNA that gives Gibson his unique abilities, his ability to read minds. A trait he shared with Mulder and the other abductees from Oregon."

"You're saying Mulder could read minds?"

"No--not anymore. Not since his illness last year, the unexplained activity in his temporal lobe that nearly killed him. On some developmental level, Gibson Praise is equipped to handle these abilities without adverse effects, whereas Mulder and the others were not. But the mechanism that triggers it, this active DNA, is the same. And that's what the aliens want to suppress, this hard and incontrovertible proof of an evolutionary link between humans and aliens."

"So, this alien bounty hunter, he disguised himself as Mulder to come out here and grab the boy?"

"To take him back to his ship, a ship that crashed in Oregon two weeks ago...a ship where we believe Mulder now is."

Doggett shakes his head at her with an almost pitying glance. "You know, Agent Scully, you're, uh, you're starting to remind me a lot of Agent Mulder yourself." He walks away, heading back toward the truck he had arrived in.

"Well then, you explain it to me!" Scully calls after him. He ignores her, slamming the truck door and driving away in an explosion of dust and gravel.

"If it's true or possible," Skinner says softly, though they are now alone at the base of the cliff, "what you're saying--that there's someone like this out there, this bounty hunter--he could just become anyone. You, me, any damn one of us."

"I think that it is true," Scully replies in resignation. "And possible." She gives a humorless smile, shaking her head wryly. "All these years, I never wanted to believe--but I can't not believe now. I don't have a choice."

She glances up at the wall of rock above, searching one last time, biting her lip. "If Mulder were here, he'd sure as hell be smiling right now," she concludes bitterly, and preceeds Skinner back to their car.

* * * * *

The scene back at the school is one of quietly controlled chaos. Gibson Praise is still missing. While Scully's and Doggett's attention was fixed on the alien as he dove from the cliff, Gibson had quietly disappeared. It was assumed he would return to the school, but such is not the case and now the search is on, not just for a missing federal agent, but for a child. Interviewing the children and some of the teachers is a slow process hampered by the need for a translator to interpret the sign language of those who are unable to speak. Gibson's friends are among the first children they talk to, trying to get an idea of where he would run to in the middle of the desert.

Scully watches the proceedings with nearly detached interest. Doggett has continually rebuffed her efforts to help, treating her even more warily than before she shared her theory about the bounty hunter He is instead becoming increasingly irritated with the inability of his own agents to locate "Mulder" or "the boy." They have shepherded the teachers and students into a single room like livestock and are in the process of taking the school apart one room at a time. Scully decides it's prudent to stay out of their way. She is not unmindful of Doggett's threats of charges for impeding an investigation.

"Gibson doesn't want to be found," Scully murmurs to Skinner at one point when he comes to see how she's holding up. "I can't say I blame him."

"How did he end up here? He didn't have any trouble hearing or speaking when you first investigated him two years ago," Skinner points out.

"No, and I don't think he does now. I think maybe he pretended, because if he was hearing and speech impaired he wouldn't be expected to answer any questions about who he was or where he had been. If he couldn't give his name, they'd have no way of finding out where he belonged. That was why he went down in the records as a John Doe. He's been hiding here, because it was the only place he could keep his secret."

Skinner's head lifts and Scully follows his gaze as a young girl walks out of the school, casting nervous glances around her. She picks up a bike that has been lying on its side on the ground and mounts it, peddling away into the desert. Without thinking, Scully begins to follow her. Behind them, a door creaks as someone exits the school building.

"Don't look now but we've got a pair of eyeballs on us. Just start walking, I'll be right behind you," Skinner instructs under his voice. They walk around the corner of the building beside them, and from there, Scully quickly dashes around the next corner and pauses, never taking her eyes off the bicycle slowly fading in the distance. From around the building she hears Skinner stop the agent who was following them and request a moment of his time. Agent Crane, she recognizes the voice. He obviously wants to know where Scully is, but doesn't dare deny an Assistant Director the courtesy of having a word with him. Their voices fade as Skinner leads Crane back the way they came, and Scully sprints after the receding form of the girl on the bicycle.

She follows the girl until she disappears from sight, and then follows the tracks of the bicycle wheels. The walk is hard in the deadly afternoon heat of the desert, and Scully wishes she brought a bottle of water with her. Surely the girl can't be going far, though. With a wistful frown, her hand rests on her belly for a second as she jogs to keep up.

After a half-hour of walking, the tracks stop, surrounded by a jumble of shuffling footprints. Dismayed, Scully glances around, trying to pick up an indication of where the girl might have gone. Her foot strikes something that makes an empty, echoing noise. Glancing down, she can see a small sand-covered square, slightly raised from the ground. A small rope lies in the dust and Scully grabs it, lifting. The plywood square lifts to reveal a small underground cavern and within it, Gibson Praise and the girl she followed.

"You shouldn't have come here," Gibson says accusingly.

"Hello, Gibson."

"You'll lead them to me."

"I'm here to protect you," Scully says, trying for a reassuring tone as she descends the small flight of steps and approaches the children.

"That's not true," the boy replies sagely. "You didn't come here for me. You came here to look for Mulder. They took him, and now they've come to take me."

Scully sighs deeply. "The only reason they want to take you, Gibson, is because you're a special boy. They want to take you because of what you are."

"That's what you want, too," he answers. "You don't want to hurt me like they will, but you don't want to help me, either. You just want to find him. You think I can help."

Scully pauses in her approach, taken aback. Her expression is stricken.

"No, Gibson--" she murmurs, shaking her head.

"It's true," he answers, his voice shaming her with its resignation and lack of malice. Her head ducks to hide her guilt. She can't deny the truth of his words.

"I'm sorry," the girl, Thea, speaks, talking to Gibson. She signs as she speaks. Her words are garbled and slow, the words of someone who has been taught to form the correct sounds with her lips without ever hearing what the sounds are. "I didn't know that someone was following me."

"My friend Thea knows about me," Gibson explains to Scully. "She's the only one at school I've told. She says the F.B.I. is looking for me, too. She's afraid for me."

"She's right to be afraid," Scully answers quietly, her voice distant with the shock of her self-discovery. "We don't know who to trust now." There is an awkward silence, and Gibson tries to shift where he sits, then winces and looks down at his leg. Kneeling beside him, Scully lifts a cloth lying over his shin, revealing his torn and bloodstained pants.

"I fell when I made it let go of me," he answers her unspoken question.

"I think you might have broken it, Gibson." He'll need a hospital, she realizes.

"If they find me, they'll take me," he says in response to her unvoiced thought. "I know it. I've always known it."

"I'm going to make you a splint, Gibson, okay? I can set your leg, but I'm going to need a car to get you out of here." She rises and looks around the small cavern. A small wooden crate serves as a little table. Scully claims it and breaks off two of the slats. "I can't carry you. Can Thea go back and get someone--no, wait. She wouldn't know who to trust. If he--it's--there...I'll have to go. I'll come back for you, though. I promise. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you."

"You said that to me once before."

Scully frowns as she begins preparing to set his leg. "Maybe. Maybe you're right, Gibson. Maybe I want more than just to help you. But that doesn't mean I don't want to help you, too. I know you know my thoughts. I know you know it's true. If you are right, I'm sorry, Gibson. I can't help it; I need to find him. Nothing else matters to me."

*Nothing else matters to me.* Mulder's voice from long ago, as he sat on the floor at the side of the bed in a dark motel room, on a rainy night in Oregon.

"I'm sorry, Gibson," she mutters again, denying the recollection with an abrupt shake of her head. Gibson stares at her for a long moment, then nods solemnly.

* * * * *

"You've been hiding at the school all this time?" Scully asks after Gibson awakens. He passed out when she set his leg. Thea has since returned to the school to offset suspicion before she is missed. Scully waited for Gibson to regain consciousness before she would leave him to go get a car.

"At first I was hiding, but then I realized that everything was quieter here. Without all the voices, I could hear the thoughts better. Everyone was honest here; nobody said one thing while thinking another. And everyone here was different, so it didn't matter to them that I was different, too."

"How did you get away this afternoon? What did you do?"

"I don't know," he answers groggily. "It was just like--like I was pushing him away. But not with my hands."

"Telekinesis," she murmurs, feeling foolish even saying the word.

"You don't believe that," Gibson says reproachfully. "You're trying to, but you're only saying it because it's what *he* would say."

"I am trying to believe, Gibson. I have to--if I don't, I might miss something, something that will help me find him. I'm just not used to it--yet," she adds with a wry, self-deprecating smile.

"Your...powers. Your abilities. Whatever it is you do--you're getting stronger," she muses after an awkward moment, touching his forehead, where she can feel the beginnings of a fever. "You can do more now than you could before."

Gibson nods. "It used to be like a radio with a hundred stations playing all at once. So much was happening that I couldn't understand any of it. But now, I can tune it out, tune in only one station and listen for as long as I want. Or I can still listen to all the stations, but they make more sense than they used to, like they're all coming in clear. And I can make people do things, make them think things. One teacher saw me talk once, but I was able to make him think he hadn't seen me. I like it here--I didn't want them to take me away."

"As you grow up, your abilities grow with you," she observes, and Gibson ducks his head shyly, as though embarrassed. But her hypothesis makes sense. It also goes a long way toward explaining why Gibson can easily handle what he does, while the same manifestations nearly killed a number of adults. "That's why Mulder almost died when it happened to him--the body isn't equipped to handle this sort of power. You have to grow into it, build up tolerance levels and make adjustments. Mulder didn't have that prolonged adaptation period. Everything simply hit him at once, and his system wasn't equipped to handle it."

"That's why they want me now," Gibson replies. "They're afraid of me. Of what I can do to them when I grow up. And I'm not the only one."

"What?"

"There are other kids like me, somewhere. I can feel them. They want to take us all."

"Do you know where they are? Can you find them?" Scully asks desperately. "The other children? The aliens? Mulder?"

"Yes," Gibson answers slowly, his voice getting softer. He closes his eyes, as though in a trance. "I think I can. But so can you. It's inside you."

"Inside me?" Scully's hand creeps of its own volition to her belly, shaking her head. "No..."

"My leg hurts," Gibson says plaintively, his words slurred, his eyes drooping. "Can we go to the hospital now?"

Scully opens her mouth to demand an answer, clarification of what he's told her, and then closes it again. Whatever answers he can give her, she's not going to extract them at the risk of his health. She wants to, but she can't make herself do it. She sighs.

"Stay here, Gibson, and try to stay still. I'll be back soon."

She crosses the small space to the steps and begins to climb, looking back at him once. He's already asleep.

* * * * *

Night has descended on the school as Doggett continues his search for Mulder and Gibson. Skinner watches when he must, helps when he can. Though his rank is considerably higher, this is Doggett's investigation, and Skinner and Scully could easily become the target of it if they aren't careful. Instead, he keeps an eye on Doggett's efforts and pitches in when needed.

He has the pleasure of being witness to Agent Doggett's end of a conversation with a no doubt highly perturbed Deputy Director Kersh. Skinner has had enough dealings with Kersh that he thinks he can fairly well fill in the blanks.

"Yeah, this is John Doggett."

"Agent Doggett, I'm getting reports from Arizona..."

"Yes, sir."

"...That you found Agent Mulder."

"I'm afraid somebody jumped the gun on that. I saw him, sir, but I..."

"What do you mean, you saw him? What the hell is going on out there?"

"Well, we're 'round the clock here. I've got local SAR, a rolling ground cordon and an eye in the sky. We're on top of the situation."

"How does the F.B.I. find a man and then lose him in the middle of the desert? 'Cause I'd like to know."

Doggett doesn't answer. How can he? The only answer that's been provided so far is Scully's, and Doggett refuses to even consider it.

"Agent Doggett, are you there?"

"Yeah. I heard the question."

"Yeah, well *I'd* like to hear the answers. I put you in charge out there, Doggett. Now do the damn job."

Doggett turns off the phone, looking dejected. He catches sight of Skinner then, as he watches the spectacle with a knowing smile. "This amuses you? I amuse you?" Doggett demands, insulted.

"No," Skinner answers calmly. "It just made sense to me. What you're doing here, in charge of an investigation you are in no way qualified to be running."

Doggett's back stiffens defensively. "I've conducted manhunts before."

"This isn't a manhunt, Agent Doggett. And our new Deputy Director knows that. You're being made a pawn in a rigged game."

Doggett stares at him for a long moment, then begins to walk away from the school, nodding when Skinner joins him. "All right, you've painted me a picture, now put it in a frame."

"All right," Skinner complies. "You've got a good rep, Agent Doggett. You don't compromise, you don't quit. You're a damned good F.B.I. agent--best of the best. Lot of guys put you in the Director's chair one day. Which is why you've been set up to fail. There's no amount of search and rescue or rolling cordons or eyes in the sky that are going to turn up Mulder. It's just the wrong approach."

"It's not a question of approach. It's the only approach I've got."

"The only way you're going to find Mulder is to give in to the truth," Skinner states flatly. "To listen to Scully. But even then...say you did find him, even then you lose. You put anything about aliens or UFOs or alien bounty hunters in your report...Kersh will ruin you. I'm betting that was his plan. Or maybe, maybe it's even more than that. Maybe Scully's right. Maybe someone doesn't want Mulder found. And maybe that someone has Kersh's ear."

Doggett stares at him for a long moment, and Skinner returns the look evenly. "Is Agent Scully here?" Doggett calls to the agents nearby. "Where's Agent Scully?"

One of the agents, Mosley, pulls out his radio. "I need someone who's with Agent Scully to put her on a radio. Anyone got a twenty on Agent Scully?"

A crackling voice replies, "Landau here. I'm with Agent Scully."

"Then who's this?" Mosley asks softly. Skinner and Doggett both look across the dusty schoolyard to see Scully walking slowly toward them.

"Go for Agent Scully," the voice on the radio repeats.

Scully eyes the agents watching her warily. "What?"

"Give me the radio," Doggett tells Mosley, who promptly hands it over. "Landau? You're with Scully?"

"Right across the room from her."

"From who? From me? Where?" Scully demands suspiciously. "What room? Where are you?"

"Bunkhouse. We're in the dorm."

"It's him! Tell them to hold her!" Scully instructs brusquely, breaking into a run as she heads for the school. "Tell them not to let her out of their sight!"

"Hold Scully. We're coming to you," Doggett says into the radio as he, Skinner and the other agents follow her.

They burst into a scene of pandemonium as they enter the dorm, just in time to see a diminutive red-headed form drop Agent Landau from where he had been suspended by his throat. He lays on the floor, bleeding and choking as his attacker disappears into the throng of teachers and students congregated inside the dormitory.

"Hey!!" Scully yells. She breaks off, pursuing the figure into the crowd. The other agents join her, catching only glimpses of red hair. They duck and weave through the crowd, ignoring startled gasps and exclamations. Faculty and students are signing frantically at one another, and across the room, they can hear someone trying to tend to Agent Landau.

Scully calls back and forth to the other agents every time someone gets a fix on their suspect.

"You got her?"

"Got her! She's gone!"

"She's over here!"

As soon as someone sees her, she's gone again. Several times, someone calls out that they have her in their sights, only for it to turn out to be Scully herself. All too soon, they've crossed to the other end of the room with nowhere left to run. The only exit is the bathroom, from which Agent Crane emerges.

"Where did she go? Did you see her?" Scully demands.

"No," the agent shakes his head in bewilderment.

"She ran right back here. I saw her!" she turns to face Doggett. "You saw her!"

Doggett doesn't answer, and it's a silence Skinner recognizes all too well. It's the silence he's seen Scully assume a hundred times in his office, when she has no explanation to offer but refuses to accept the one that Mulder presents.

Sighing, Scully returns to the other end of the room, kneeling beside Agent Landau who's struggling for air.

"Agent, can you breathe?" she asks, trying to inspect the wound on his neck. He struggles, trying to shy away from her, and rather than make it worse, Scully backs away. "He thinks it was me," she says sadly. "He thinks that I did this to him." She turns on Doggett. "How is that possible?"

Doggett once again refuses to answer, and Skinner gives him a knowing look. If Doggett wanted the truth, this is it. That no matter how sane or reasonable you purport to be, it's not enough. Not when dealing with the X-Files.

"It's someone in this room," Scully mutters, casting a suspicious glance around, then backing out of the door.

"Now wait a second--!" Doggett finally protests. "Exactly what are you implying?"

But she's gone, not bothering to justify the question with an answer. Skinner hears another agent murmur, "She's crazy."

"That's it, I want this building sealed off," Doggett commands. "No one leaves or enters unless I say so. We question everyone again, starting right back at the beginning, now move!"

The other agents disperse, but before they can block the door Skinner ducks out, following Scully into the night.

"Agent Scully!" he calls to her retreating back as she heads toward the SUV they arrived in. "Where are you going?"

She ignores him and climbs into the car, locking the door.

"Agent Scully!" he demands again from beside the window. Inside, he sees her movements as she searches for the keys, which he holds up for her to see. "Get out of the car."

She stares at him a long moment through the glass, then crawls over the front seat and out the passenger side, watching him warily. "Who are you?"

"Who am I?" he repeats, disbelieving. Suddenly, he's staring down the barrel of her gun. Pulling his own is almost reflexive, instinctive. "We've played this scene before," he comments humorlessly as they stare at each other over their firearms.

"Drop your weapon and turn around," Scully commands brusquely.

Skinner shakes his head. "No. Put the gun up, Agent Scully, and we'll talk about this."

"Just do it!" she snaps. "I know how it works--kill shot to the back of the neck."

"Scully, you're pointing your weapon at a friend."

"Turn around, or I'm going to assume that you're not who you say you are."

Skinner might have expected hysteria, but this sort of cold purposefulness is different. She'll do it, he thinks, amazed by the revelation. She'll kill him if she has to, if she thinks he's a danger to her.

"Scully, it's me! Skinner!" he tries to reason one last time, then finally lowers his gun and turns his back to her. He can almost feel the cold steel of her gun against his neck, though he knows she hasn't moved. "I can prove it. I know your secret. Who else knows it?"

"Okay," Scully says calmly, "then tell me."

"You tell me. How do I know it's you?" He whirls suddenly and snatches her weapon from her hand. Looking at her, he realizes that if he'd been only a split second later, she might actually have pulled the trigger. As it is, she stares up at him, anger and fear warring in her expression. If he was who she fears he is, she could be killed easily now.

"Between you and Mulder," he says finally, still staring her down, "I've had more weapons pointed at me than in my entire career with the F.B.I. At this rate, it's genetically probable your kid's going to be born waving a gun at me."

There's a long moment, and then Scully lets out a relieved breath, her shoulders slumping. He hands her gun back to her slowly. "This has gone too far, Scully."

"No," she shakes her head in adamant denial. "That's what's wrong here. It hasn't gone far enough. I need those car keys."

"And what do you think you're going to do?"

"I have to get to Gibson. He's injured. I left him alone out there--I couldn't carry him, and I couldn't bring him back not knowing who would be here waiting for him."

"Get in the car," Skinner says immediately. "I'll drive."

In the car, Scully takes a moment to regain her composure. Skinner remains tactfully silent as she wipes her eyes. "Look," she says, her voice still rough with emotion, "we are being hampered here by the F.B.I., by John Doggett, by doubt, by our own mistrust. Whatever it is, it's working--as long as we let it."

"You told me Mulder wouldn't allow it. Wouldn't let me ruin my career over this. Over him. But what about you, Scully? I mean, my god, you've got even more at stake."

Her face crumples, her eyes shining. "I-I can't take the chance that I'm never going to see him again. That I'll never get to tell him--"

"Mulder could just come walking out of the dark--we don't know."

She shakes her head again, rebuilding her composure. "We've got one last chance here waiting for us out there in the desert--Gibson Praise. It may just come down to who gets to him first."

"Then it will be us," Skinner answers firmly, and pushes harder on the gas pedal.

* * * * *

Scully leads him to the spot where she found Gibson and Thea. The trapdoor stands open, but the small space it leads to is empty.

"Gibson!" Scully calls, an edge of panic in her voice.

"He's not down there," Skinner informs her, emerging from the hideout.

"I shouldn't have left him," she mutters, walking rapidly away from the cavern. " If I've lost him...I told him to stay here. He was supposed to stay here! Gibson!" She looks around the darkened desert and sees a small form sitting on an outcropping of rocks several yards away. "I found him!" she yells to Skinner, running toward the boy.

"Gibson," she says softly. "What are you doing out here? Why didn't you answer me, huh?"

Gibson looks up at her, his eyes half-lidded, trembling. "He's here. I hear him."

She exchanges concerned glances with Skinner. "What are you talking about?"

"Mulder. He's somewhere out there."

"Where?" Scully demands sharply, then hesitates. She reaches out and touches the young boy's forehead. To Skinner she says, "He's got a really bad fever. I think his leg might be infected."

"All right," Skinner acknowledges, approaching the boy. "We've got to get you to the hospital, okay, buddy?"

Gibson continues to stare at Scully. "You're so close now. You know you are. You can feel him, too."

Skinner gently lifts the boy in his arms. "I'll carry you," he says gently. "Put your arm around my neck. Watch your legs." He heads back to the car, walking slowly so as not to jostle Gibson, then turns around to face Scully, who hasn't moved since Gibson spoke to her.

"Agent Scully?"

"You take him to the hospital," she says softly, looking around the empty desert.

"What about you?"

She doesn't answer. Instead, she focuses on the night, on the vast expanses of nothingness around her. Presently, she hears the car leave, and then she is alone in the darkness.

* * * * *

MacLaren Regional Medical Center

12:48 A.M.

"I got a boy here who needs emergency medical attention," Skinner demands, charging through the entrance to the emergency room of the hospital. In short order, a gurney is provided for Gibson. His leg is examined and set and a Velcro-wrapped steel cast strapped around it. Skinner remains protectively by his side, insisting, even arguing with hospital personnel when faced with the possibility of the boy being removed from his sight. He is aware that anyone, anyone at all, could be the being who's after Gibson. Some time later, Skinner rests in a chair beside the hospital bed where Gibson is sleeping. His eyes open when he hears the boy gasp, watching as Gibson's eyes dart around in panic.

"What? Are you okay? What's wrong?" The boy doesn't reply to his concerned questions, instead staring at the open door to his hospital room. The doorway is empty. Gibson struggles to sit up, causing Skinner to gently restrain him. "It's okay, Gibson, lie down. Lie down."

The boy's struggles increase, his eyes returning again and again to the doorway. Skinner glances around to see a young girl from the school standing there, watching them with a blank expression. Questions fly through his brain. How did she get here? At this hour?

While Gibson watches in terror, the girl enters and closes the hospital room door behind her.

* * * * *

Scully sits on the outcropping of rocks where she found Gibson, her eyes searching the darkness beyond. "Mulder," she murmurs softly.

You can feel him, too, Gibson's voice haunts her. She closes her eyes and images assail her.

"I'm not going to risk--losing you..."

"I won't let you go alone," she replies, stepping into his embrace. When they part, she searches his eyes for a long moment, then reaches around to the back of her neck and unclasps the thin chain from which her small golden crucifix hangs.

"You kept this for me once, when I came back to you, because I had the strength of your beliefs," she murmurs softly. "Now I'm asking you to promise me you'll come back--on the strength of mine."

"I will," he swears with all the solemnity of a holy vow. No matter how many times she has become separated from this dainty emblem of her faith, it always finds its way back to her. Mulder knows this, and lets her secure the chain around his neck without comment. Afterward, she strokes his face, her thumbs brushing his lips in an intimate caress, before she precedes him back into Skinner's office to solidify his plan for returning to Oregon.

"Mulder," she repeats, her voice a whisper on the desert wind. With her eyes closed she reaches out with her mind, embracing the night around her, searching for something inside herself that will tell her what direction in which to look. She ignores the nagging voice of doubt that tells her the endeavor is foolish--surely she knows Gibson's right, that she can feel Mulder. Surely after all these years, he's a part of her, bound by something stronger than logic and science. Surely, just this once, believing will be enough...

Her eyes open and settle on the starscape painted across the night sky. There, in the distance, is that the rippling effect she saw earlier in the day? Can it be more than waves of heat rising off the ground and distorting the atmosphere? Focusing on it she rises from the rock, making her way slowly across the dusty ground. She turns on her flashlight only as a concession to necessity, aware of her chances of stumbling over something and breaking her leg out here where no one would find her, but her eyes never leave the rippling and wavering skyline ahead. She wills it to take some sort of solid shape, something real, something she can recognize and label as more than a figment of her own desperately reaching imagination.

"Mulder!" she cries, breaking into a run. If she can just get close enough... A light appears ahead of her from where the air wavers and she smiles in joy and exultation and hope. "Oh my God," she whispers, shielding her eyes as the light descends from the sky above her, painfully bright. "Please, oh, please God," she whimpers, standing in the light, waiting for it to reach her.

An unwelcome sound reaches her ears, the steady WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH of helicopter blades, stirring up dirt and wind as Scully shakes her head in denial.

"No," she whispers, then yells, "Dammit, no!"

The shape from which the light shines coalesces into a black and white police helicopter, which descends and settles onto the sand while Scully watches dejectedly, her elation of a moment before fading to bleak despair. Soon, a figure emerging from the helicopter turns out to be Doggett and Scully faces him irately.

"What the hell are you doing here?" She demands angrily. "For someone who denies spying on me, you certainly have a knack for showing up wherever I am."

"Hey, you're where the action is," he shrugs.

"What does that tell you? That I'm crazy or that I'm right?"

"Wandering around in the desert in the dead of night? You make the call," Doggett retorts.

"You say you want to find Mulder but you won't do what it takes. You're afraid that I'm right," she accuses.

"I'm not afraid of anything. Except that maybe Mulder's got even you believing in this crap now. I can't find your partner if I can't find an ounce of credibility in anything you say."

Scully gapes at him. "You've seen this crap for yourself now. How do you explain what took place today? What happened to Agent Landau? Do you have an explanation? Of course you don't. And how do I know, Agent Doggett? Because I've done the exact same thing a hundred times, closing my eyes to the truth because I didn't *want* to believe it. Come on, Agent Doggett--admit it. You're just afraid if you give in to the truth, you'll look foolish in front of Kersh."

"Let me ask you something hypothetically," Doggett shoots back. "Now, if you were to find him out here or this ship or this alien bounty hunter, what would you do then?"

"I know what Agent Mulder would do. He'd do whatever it took. And so will I."

"You mean lie," Doggett says flatly. "Like you've been lying to me. And flout orders like you've done every step of the way on this thing. Is that what it takes, Agent Scully?"

"When the orders are specifically designed to *prevent* me from finding my partner, then yes. That's what it takes."

"You knew where the kid was, you knew where the kid was and you wouldn't tell me--why?"

"What kid? I don't see any kid." Scully glances around, shrugging nonchalantly. There's no way she's entrusting Gibson to anyone else.

"You're lying to me again! Assistant Director Skinner took him from here to the hospital."

Icy fear settles into her stomach. "How do you know that?" she demands, alarmed.

"There's one thing I know for sure in this case and that's that Mulder is after this boy Gibson Praise. Why? It beats the hell out of me," Doggett states bluntly. Scully doesn't bother to contradict him. He's already heard her theory and is willfully ignoring it. "But when he goes after that kid, my men are going to be waiting for him."

"Your men followed Assistant Director Skinner?" she asks. When Doggett nods, she curses and begins to stride purposefully toward the helicopter. Doggett runs after her.

"Hey, where you going? Agent Scully, where you going?"

"I have to get to the hospital!"

"My men got it controlled. Nobody goes in or out of that building without them knowing about it," Doggett states confidently.

"How do you know that they're *your* men?" she asks, whirling to face him. "You could very well have just handed Gibson Praise over to the person you're trying to protect him from."

"Not this nonsense again--!"

"You can call it whatever you want, Agent Doggett, but are you really going to wager a young boy's safety on your arrogance?" Scully queries with venom. She climbs into the helicopter, and a moment later, Doggett joins her.

* * * * *

She storms into the hospital, Doggett on her heels, to find herself confronted by several of the agents from the task force he brought with him to Arizona.

"Where's the boy?" she snaps at them.

"Door at the end of the hall, with A.D. Skinner," Agent Crane replies, glancing warily between Scully and Doggett.

"Are you certain about that?"

"Why don't you get yourself a visual in the exterior window," Agent Mosley suggests. "The night nurse has been checking the boy every 20 minutes--he's fine."

Agent Crane reassures her, "We have hospital personnel going about their business. We're just laying back, waiting for Mulder."

"Yeah, every minute that you wait, that boy's in danger," Scully scoffs. "He's exposed."

"No one's getting past us, Agent Scully," Mosley denies. "No one's *gotten* past us."

Scully favors Doggett with an impatient glance. "You believe that, Agent Doggett?"

Doggett meets her eyes for a long moment, then turns decisively and walks down the corridor to the room the agents indicated. Scully follows, pulling her gun from its holster inside her jeans. Doggett glances back at her with a pointed look at the weapon.

"Hey, if something tries to rip your throat out, I got you covered," she answers the unspoken question acerbically.

Snorting, Doggett turns from her and knocks on the closed hospital room door. "A.D. Skinner, this is John Doggett."

Doggett pushes the door open when there is no response to reveal an empty room. A chair next to the bed is overturned. "What the hell is this? What the hell is going on?!"

Scully sprints from the hospital room back down the corridor. "There's no one in that room!" she snaps at the agents, who look at her, alarmed. Ignoring them, she begins to open doors to other rooms and the nearby stairwell. "I'm looking for a patient, a boy, 12 years old. He may still be in this building," she tells the nursing staff who watch her quizzically. She doesn't wait for a response.

* * * * *

In the room that had housed Gibson Praise, Doggett's agents crowd in, watching as he tests the window. "The window doesn't even open," he snaps. "How's a grown man and a boy get out of the room except by that door? Did you see ANYONE leave the room recently?"

"No one," Crane replies.

Doggett espies a closet and opens it. Skinner tumbles out, unconscious, his eyes swollen shut and discolored.

"What the hell--we need a doctor in here! Get a doctor, now!"

* * * * *

Scully enters another hospital room, this one larger; an examination room lined with glass-fronted cabinets. It's empty as well, and she turns away, ready to walk out. Another door, this one leading to a small lavatory attached to the room, opens and Skinner emerges. "Agent Scully."

Instinctively, Scully raises her gun, aiming it at him. He says, "It's okay, I've got him. Gibson."

"How did you get here?" she asks. "How did you get him out of that room?"

"We went up through the ceiling. I don't know who to trust."

Scully looks up at the drop-panel ceiling and frowns. There was no way it would ever support the weight of a grown man. A child, perhaps, but not a man Skinner's size. She lifts her gun higher, her eyes sharp on the man before her. "Where's Gibson?"

"He's right here, Scully," Skinner says reasonably. "They're going to find him."

Cautiously, Scully moves into the room, sidestepping to keep her gun trained on Skinner. She cranes her neck to look around, searching for the boy. Finally, she catches his reflection in one of the glass fronted cabinets and begins to lower her gun, until she sees him shake his head wildly back and forth in denial. Her gun swings up again, only to be struck from her hands by a numbing blow as Skinner whirls on her and swings. An instant later, he has her by the throat, her toes dangling above the floor.

Desperately, she claws at the merciless hand at her neck while Skinner's face watches her impassively, almost curiously. There is no malice in his gaze, but simply cold, brutal efficiency. He doesn't care if she lives or dies, only that he fulfills his goal.

"NO!" she hears Gibson yell and sees him limping forward, staring at the bounty hunter in Skinner's form. An instant later, the buzzing she felt earlier in the day on the plateau fills the room, fills her head. She feels it vibrating through her mind, her stomach muscles cramping with it. But it's not as powerful as it was that afternoon on the cliff. Gibson has been injured, already she can see him faltering, slumping against the nearby examination table. He may have been able to fight to a standoff earlier, but this time he's going to lose, Scully thinks as the world begins to darken around the edges, on the verge of losing consciousness.

The hand clasping her throat weakens and she falls to the floor, collapsing and gasping. She rolls over, fumbling for her gun, which lies several feet away. The humming stops abruptly, simply dropping off, unlike the climactic explosion of energy that had passed between the two that afternoon. The bounty hunter in Skinner's body moves toward Gibson, towering over the boy. Desperately, Scully struggles to her feet and tries to place herself between the two.

"You're not taking him," she gasps hoarsely with a bravado she doesn't feel, weakly raising her gun with hands that tremble uncontrollably.

"You can't shoot me," he says in Skinner's voice, "You'll die if you do, and the boy as well."

"Tell me where Mulder is, or I'll take my chances," she rasps, fighting the urge to yield to a series of debilitating coughs. She can taste blood in the back of her throat. If his grip had been any harder, he would have crushed her trachea.

The being doesn't answer, but approaches them menacingly. "Gibson, run!" Scully commands, but of course he can't run, not with a broken leg. He'll never make it, and she'll die here for nothing, because she won't let him be taken while she's still alive. "Where's Mulder?!" she demands again, not taking her eyes from the creature. "TELL ME!"

"Is the answer worth dying for?" he asks coldly, and swings.

The blow is almost casual, as though swatting at an insect, but Scully finds herself flying across the room to crash into the glass-fronted cabinets. Slivers of glass tinkle almost musically to the floor around her while the bounty hunter walks casually past her inert form toward the boy who stumbles painfully away from him. In her head, Scully feels small fits and starts of that vibrating resonance as Gibson tries to muster more energy to fight, between his injury and exhaustion, he's powerless. Scully struggles, ignoring the shards of glass that prick her hands as she pushes herself up, aims her weapon at the creature's head, and fires.

The bounty hunter drops to the floor before a stunned and terrified Gibson, green foam bubbling from the wound at the base of his skull. Slowly, he begins to dissolve, Skinner's features fading in a wash of green ooze. The nose and forehead collapse, then the chest cavity, and by the time the door bursts open and Doggett charges through, there's nothing left but an unidentifiable puddle on the floor.

"Agent Scully, are you all right?" Doggett inquires, running over to her as she stands hunched over, her gun dangling from her limp hands.

"I'm fine," she mutters, brushing away his concern. She stumbles past him as he stares at the green mess on the floor.

"What the hell happened here?"

Scully ignores his question. "Where's A.D. Skinner?" she whispers painfully.

"They're working on him now in Gibson's room. It doesn't look good. What happened to him?"

Scully breaks into a limping run, charging from the room and down the hall to the room Gibson had been staying in. She bursts in to see Skinner on the bed, a crowd of doctors and nurses surrounding him.

"You can't come in here!" One of the nurses tries to deny her access, but Scully pushes past him, staggering as she does so.

He grabs her, trying to stop her. "Hold on. If you need a doctor, I'll take you to another room and get someone to treat you there. You can't be here!"

"I'm--I'm a doctor," she rasps, unable to shout, "and I've dealt with this condition before," she adds, nodding to Skinner. She sways dizzily, falling back against the wall behind her. "Please--he's going to die if you don't let me help him!"

"Doctor!" the nurse calls, and one of the team surrounding Skinner turns to look at them.

"Get her out of here!" he yells.

"I'm a medical doctor!" Scully's voice breaks as she tries to speak louder. She pushes herself off the wall.

"She says she knows what's wrong with him," the nurse interjects, picking up on her difficulty speaking.

"Then talk fast," the doctor snaps, turning away. "Because we don't have a damned clue."

Scully shuffles forward and elbows her way into the throng surrounding Skinner. "He's been exposed to a retro-virus, an inhaled agent. His blood is congealing in his veins. He needs heavy doses of epinephrine, and we need to get his body temperature down at least five degrees, or he's going to die..."

One of the doctors, presumably the one in charge, stares at her for a long moment, then nods grimly. "You heard her, let's move! I need another amp of epi, and let's get him to a tub. Someone get a gurney, call for ice packs..."

"Are you all right?" The male nurse asks as Scully sags, stumbling back from the people circling the bed. The world is beginning to darken again, her heartbeat is pounding in her ears. The voices of the medical team working on Skinner are fading and becoming otherworldly and distant. "Come on, let's get you out of here..."

Her face crumbles as she staggers from the room under escort of the nurse, falling on the door more than pushing it open. She just makes it into the hall when her knees give out and she huddles there in a heap, sobbing weakly. The concerned nurse who has followed her gives a gasp of alarm, but Scully barely hears him call for help before the world fades to black.

* * * *

Doggett stares at Kersh from across the elegant wooden desk behind which the Deputy Director is seated. The man is perusing a report, his lips twisted disdainfully.

"The best I can say is it's lucky it all happened at a hospital," Kersh pontificates.

"Very lucky, yes, sir," Doggett says diplomatically.

"I assume the hazardous chemical which caused this must have been medicinal."

"No, sir, we don't believe so. It has yet to be identified, but it's nothing that was present in the hospital at that time. It does, however, match a sample of a substance we found in the desert. We have yet to determine what exactly it is."

"So much here is undetermined, as remain the whereabouts of Mulder," Kersh comments censoriously. "But some of your--*facts*--like 'a man falls from the cliff and disappears...' and 'An agent has his throat crushed by an assailant who vanishes into thin air.' This reads like a piece of pot-boiled science fiction."

"You mean it reads like an X-File. But that's what you intended, wasn't it, Sir, when you assigned me to the case?"

"I'll ask the questions, John. You just give me some damn answers." Kersh hands him the file. "Don't come back until you do."

* * * * *

From the chair in her hospital room, Scully stares listlessly out the window at the sunlit day beyond, a notebook on her lap. She turns as the door to her room opens and Skinner enters, wearing a robe over his hospital gown. His eyes are still puffy and discolored, but he offers her a stiff smile.

"How are you feeling?" he asks solicitously.

"We're fine," she replies, a hand settling over her abdomen. Her voice is soft, her own neck bruised and sore. "The doctors just want to run a few more tests. How is Gibson?"

"He's doing all right. There hasn't been any luck locating his parents at their last known residence in the Philippines, so for now he's being considered a ward of the state of Arizona. I've requested extra protection for him. Whoever was after him might not have been working alone. Agent Landau is okay, too. The damage to his larynx wasn't too bad."

"You're looking better than when I last saw you," she comments with forced cheer.

"Yeah, I think they might give me my walking papers in a day or two. I gotta get back to D.C. Kersh is foaming at the mouth over the report Agent Doggett handed in."

"Have you heard from Agent Doggett?" she queries with detached curiosity.

"He called me this morning. Scully--you need to be aware--Agent Doggett's been officially assigned full-time to the X-Files."

Scully stares at him a long moment, then looks away, plucking listlessly at the edge of her robe. "And the missing persons case for Mulder?"

"It's still open and active. We both know that sometimes doesn't mean much. They've called off the manhunt, but I think Agent Doggett is taking this seriously. He'll keep looking for Mulder--and so will we. One way or the other, we'll find him."

Scully nods, not meeting his eyes. Soon, Skinner rises from the chair and leaves, and Scully is again alone. Her hand drifts to her abdomen once more.

From the journal of Dana Scully

September 25, 2000

"Long ago, I said that loneliness was a choice. Long ago, we discussed the choices we have made and where they have led us. In a world of infinite possibilities, I can't help but feel now that there's a certain inevitability to the crossroads at which I find myself. I've attempted to approach this situation as I know you have approached my own disappearances, unwilling and unable to yield, stopping for nothing until I have found you once more. I find myself now confronted with a reality I cannot deny, cannot avoid, that the day will soon come when I must make a choice to continue searching, or to protect myself and our child. I know what choice you would make for me, but am I strong enough to accept that I'll never find you?"

She lifts her hand to touch the base of her throat, where the symbol of her faith she's borne her whole life no longer resides.

"You lived your adult life acting on a simple faith that what was once lost could be restored to you. If we can accept on faith the presence of the unknown, be it alien or divine, then surely we can also accept that when our own efforts fail, there might still be room for a miracle?"

The End