`

Per Manum
AS8X06
Originally written by: Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz
Rewritten by: Kristel St. Johns


October 2000


The red-haired woman pants through her contraction, her face contorting into a grimace of agony as a low moan erupts into a primal scream. Her flushed cheeks puff as she breathes. A distant voice--her obstetrician--is encouraging her to push, PUSH. She clings to the hand of the dark-haired man beside her who urges her on with loving words. A final yell, and the agony is gone, replaced with her doctor's voice crowing, "It's a girl!"

A slimy, begrimed infant is laid on the new mother’s stomach and she reaches out a tentative finger to touch a quivering, tiny, blood-smeared fist as the baby's furious cries fill the room. Tears of disbelief pour from her eyes as beside her, her husband sobs and kisses her forehead repeatedly.

"Look at her!" he whispers urgently. "She's beautiful! She's perfect!"

The red-haired woman smiles through her tears as the miniscule fist closes tightly around the tip of her prodding finger. "Yes!" she whispers, her voice choked. "She is!"


* * * * *


The hospital room is dark, balloons and flowers looming menacingly in the shadows. In her hospital bed, Kathleen Haskell's eyes open and she looks at the bassinet across the room. There is no sound; the baby is sleeping.

A block of harsh white light fills the room as the door swings open and a nurse steps quietly inside. The new mother sits up in alarm, using the control panel on the guardrail of her bed to turn on the light.

"What are you--?"

"It's okay," the nurse murmurs reassuringly. She's tall, with a round, wide face and brittle curly hair. "I just need to take her down to the nursery for a moment to check her vitals."

"Can't you do that here?"

"I didn't want to disturb your rest. Go back to sleep--I'll have her back in no time."

The nurse lifts the baby from the bassinet and is halfway out the door with her before Kath can ask, "But why do you have to take her in the middle of the night?"

The nurse pauses for a moment, then continues out the door.

"Hey!" Kath yells, turning to climb out of the bed. She stands on wobbly legs, partially bent over against the pain in her abdomen as her gown slips down her thighs. "Hey! Come back! Bring her back!"

A moment later, another nurse runs to answer the call button Mrs. Haskell presses frantically. She finds the new mother hysterical, crying and screaming.

"MY BABY! They're taking my baby!!"

By then, the nurse who took the infant has entered the elevator and is on her way to another floor. As she looks down at the baby with an expressionless gaze, her face changes; feminine features give way to masculine. The rounded jaw becomes square and the forehead and cheeks angular. The man stares at the infant a moment longer, his face impassive, before the elevator opens and he walks away.


* * * * *


November 27, 2000

Scully pauses in the final check of her appearance in the full-length mirror to stand sideways, scrutinizing her body’s profile as her hand slides down over her belly. In her tight black knit top and black slacks, a small protrusion is visible, though one would have to know what to look for to detect it. But there are other signs. Her face is rounder, softer. Her shirts strain tighter across her breasts. Is there anything else that would betray her secret to someone?

Sighing, she looks across the bedroom. On the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, a large clothing box lies half-opened amidst tatters of merry wrapping paper. The box is emblazoned with the name "MOTHERHOOD," a popular maternity clothier, and on top of the box lies an open greeting card bearing the inscription, "It's a little early for Christmas, but I thought you might need these sooner. Happy Thanksgiving. Love, Mom." Next to the box is a manila envelope and on top of the envelope is a black and white ultrasound photo.

Her feet follow the path of her eyes and she stoops before the cedar chest to pick up the photo. She looks at it carefully, solemnly tracing gentle fingers over its surface. After a moment, she sets it on the white bedspread and picks up a dark green blazer. Putting on the jacket and buttoning it up, the small bulge disappears. She gives her reflection one last scrutiny, then turns and leaves the bedroom.


* * * * *


She enters the X-Files office to find Agent Doggett seated behind the desk she shared with Mulder for years. Across from him is a man she doesn't recognize.

"I'm sorry, Agent Doggett. I didn't realize you had an appointment," she apologizes, her voice frosty, turning to leave.

"Actually, Agent Scully, we've been waiting for you. This is Duffy Haskell, and it was actually you or Agent Mulder he came here hoping to see." The two men rise and Duffy Haskell reaches out to shake her hand. He's a young, vaguely handsome man, thirty-something. Not terribly tall, he is broad, a little out of shape. He's dressed in business casual: slacks, button-down shirt without a tie, and a sports coat.

"I'm sorry--you came to see me or my par--Agent Mulder? Did you know him?"

"No," Haskell shakes his head in denial, taking his chair across from Doggett again. "I got your names through MUFON. My wife is a member."

"I see. Well, what can I help you with, Mr. Haskell?" Scully asks cautiously as she leans against the table on the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. She glances sideways at Doggett, who appears to be intent upon Haskell.

"My wife, Kath--she's an abductee. They've been taking her since she was a little girl. The aliens did these procedures on her. Tests and whatnot. One procedure would give her cancer while another one would cure her. Stuff like that. Her whole life. Strange as it seems, you almost get used to it, just like you almost get used to no one believing you. But then, a couple of years ago, it stopped. She'd been having the feeling she was going to be taken again--a tingling in the back of her neck is how she described it--but then one day in February of last year, it stopped, and she hasn't been taken since. And then this year--this year she became pregnant. We weren't supposed to be able to have children. All the doctors said she was infertile as a result of what had been done to her, but we went through some new fertility treatments. It was a long shot, but it worked. She gave birth to a baby girl a few weeks ago."

Scully's mouth works silently for a moment, her hand creeping up to touch her own neck, then falling away abruptly. "I see," she finally says softly. "I assume something has happened now?"

"The baby--Agent Scully, they took our baby."

Scully's knuckles whiten, gripping the edge of the table she leans against with brutal intensity. "How do you know?"

"Kath saw it happen. They took our baby girl right out of the hospital. Whoever did it was disguised as a nurse, said she was taking the baby away to do some tests, and then walked right out of the damned hospital with her!" Haskell shouts, his eyes glistening with tears. "Here," he calms, sniffling. "Security cameras in the main lobby got a shot of him. Only this man isn't the nurse Kath saw take the baby. That was a woman, so the police think he wasn't working alone."

Scully takes the grainy printout of a video capture from the man and looks at it closely, biting her lip as she does so. The photo is unmistakably of the being she has come to know as the alien bounty hunter. She stares at it longer than she should, and hands it over hastily when Doggett clears his throat, careful not to let him get a good look at the trembling of her hands as she clasps them before her.

"Where is your wife now, Mr. Haskell?" she asks after Agent Doggett gives the photo back to her.

"She just got home from the hospital. She had a breakdown," Haskell replies grimly. "She sometimes has to be kept sedated to avoid injuring herself. Somehow, she survived what those bastards did to her for years, but this--this was too much. This was the final straw."

Scully nods. "I'm going to have to get back to you on this, Mr. Haskell. Do you--can you leave me your number or a way to reach you?"

"Of course." Agent Doggett hands Haskell a pad of paper, upon which the man writes. Haskell tears off the page and offers it to Scully, who tucks it and the picture into the inside pocket of her blazer.

"I--We'll be in touch," she promised.

"Thank you. Thank you very much," Duffy Haskell nods and rises, leaving the office as Scully and Doggett watch silently.

Scully turns a displeased grimace on Doggett. "Well, I'm sure that was quite an interesting diversion for you."

"You don't find it interesting? Seems to me you would."

"By 'interesting' I assume you mean outrageous and preposterous," Scully scoffs.

"Well, unless I'm mistaken you already knew that man's story," Agent Doggett pauses for effect. "The abduction, the tests, a bout with cancer, then a remission..."

"What exactly are you getting at?" Scully demands.

"That's your story, Agent Scully. Right down to a tee. Well, except for the pregnancy part. It's all over there in the files."

Scully mentally curses the time and effort that went into rebuilding those files after the fire destroyed so many of them. "I appreciate your thoroughness, Agent Doggett," Scully says coldly, "and your familiarity with the X-Files in those cabinets, but my personal files are my personal files. Okay?"

"Okay, sure. Just seems to me, with your preoccupation with abduction cases recently, this one would be right up your alley," Doggett replies disingenuously.

"You mean the alley that will give Deputy Director Kersh the excuse he needs to fire me?" she asks with quiet anger. "Sorry, but no thanks."

"Did something happen, Agent Scully?"

Scully gives him a disgusted look. "No," she answers after a moment. "Nothing. I just don't think there's much here that will interest you, Agent Doggett. In this case or in my files."

She stalks out of the office and down the corridor to the elevator before he can respond, punching the button and crossing her arms over her chest until the doors slide open. When they have closed behind her, she leans against the back wall of the elevator and replays Haskell's words through her mind…

"We weren't supposed to be able to have children. All the doctors said she was infertile...."

Sighing, Scully closes her eyes and remembers...


* * * * *


June 1997
George Washington University Medical Center


The elevator opens to reveal the cold, white hospital corridor. Scully steps off the elevator, walking down the hallway as though in slow motion, passing doors on her left and right as she approaches one at the end of the hallway, in the clearly marked Obstetrics and Gynecology wing.

A receptionist greets her, and she introduces herself. "I'm Dana Scully, and I have a ten o'clock appointment with Dr. Parenti."

"If you'll just have a seat, I'll let him know you're here," the receptionist replies pleasantly, and Scully sits in one of the empty chairs, glancing at the pregnant women and the mothers with their newborns. She picks up a magazine and begins flipping idly through it, her attention drawn away repeatedly to the other patients in the lobby, particularly the children.

She looks back down at the magazine and is startled when a drop of blood splashes onto one of the pages. Scully looks up in alarm, the magazine tumbling from her lap as she digs in her pocket for a tissue. Another patient gasps in horror at the sight of the blood trickling down her upper lip and Scully presses the tissue to her nose, just as a voice calls from behind her, "Dana?"


* * * * *


She goes straight to Dr. Parenti's office after cleaning up in the restroom, and the doctor greets her kindly. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine--I'm fine. Some days I wouldn't even know I was sick. Others--aren't so good," she replies with an effort at a smile. It falls flat, and an awkward silence settles between her and the doctor.

"Dana--I know this is a hard time for you," he says at last. "Your oncologist, Dr. Zuckerman, has explained to me that the inoperability of your cancer and its placement means that your only chances, small as they are, are some pretty radical and severe forms of radiation and chemotherapy. Now, you came to me because you were aware that, even if you survive the cancer, the treatments might have some adverse effects, including the possibility of leaving you sterile. This isn't the first time I've harvested ova from a cancer patient so that she can still have a chance to conceive after she's overcome her illness. I understand your need to look to the future, your need to hold onto something, some hope. But in your case--Dana, I don't know how to tell you this...but going over these preliminary tests, I'm afraid that it's not going to be possible in your case."

Scully stares at him, her mouth opening wordlessly, her brow wrinkling in consternation. Finally, she manages to speak. "What?"

"I'm sorry, Dana. The ultrasound shows there's been massive scarring and damage to your ovaries already. To be frank, I've never seen damage quite this dramatic, though I've heard of it, usually in cases where a woman has been exposed to high doses of concentrated radiation. I'd be able to tell more conclusively with an exploratory laparoscopy, but at this point if I had to predict your chances of producing a viable ovum, even with fertility drugs, I'd have to say they're statistically nonexistent. I'm sorry."

Nodding, stricken, she rises from her chair and leaves the office without another word. Dr. Parenti calls out to her, asking her if there's anything he can do, if she needs him to call someone for her, but she ignores him, instead plodding slowly out through the lobby toward the door by which she entered. Her hand reaches for the doorknob...


* * * * *


Zeus Genetics
Germantown, Maryland
November 27, 2000

Scully steps through the door and lets it swing shut behind her. She looks around the white on white on white lobby with distaste. "Hello? Is anyone here?" she calls over the counter at the receptionist's desk, and a harried woman, heavily pregnant, hustles out of the back office to greet her.

"Sorry," the woman gasps, waddling to a halt. "We're understaffed today. How can I help you?"

"So understaffed they have the patients working the front desk?" Scully asks with a hint of amusement, eyeing the receptionist’s protruding belly.

The woman laughs cheerfully. "A patient and an employee," she explains. "Did you have an appointment?"

"No!" Scully denies quickly. She finds her attention drawn momentarily to the pendant hanging around the woman's neck. Etched in silver, it's a human hand with an eye in the palm. She recognizes it, but she's not sure from where. "No. I'm just here hoping to talk to Dr. Zehnder about a patient. I'm Special Agent Scully with the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Scully pulls out her I.D. "I was given his name by Duffy Haskell, who said Dr. Zehnder was Kathleen Haskell's obstetrician."

"Yes, of course," the receptionist nods. "We heard about what happened to Kath's baby. We're all praying she'll be found soon. Let me call the doctor for you, Agent Scully."

Scully wanders away from the receptionist's desk, looking about the white room with its white walls and white chairs and white carpeting. It doesn't appear to be the kind of place someone looking to create and raise a child would go. Too cold. Too sterile. Too...

...A bright white light, reflecting off white walls, blinding her. She's covered in a white sheet, her eyes wide with alarm, while men in white surgical scrubs surround her. The light glints off the stainless steel rod that descends to her navel as her abdomen swells...

"Agent Scully?" A hand falls on her shoulder and Scully jumps, spinning around to face the man who has come up behind her.

"I'm Dr. Zehnder," he introduces himself, reaching out to shake her hand. He's tall, with dark brown graying hair. His face is round and kindly behind wire-framed glasses, middle-aged and decidedly unthreatening. Scully accepts the gesture, swiftly composing herself. "Would you like to step into my office?"

"Of course, Dr. Zehnder. This should only take a moment." She follows him out of the lobby, past several examination rooms into a comfortable office. Decorated in earth tones, it lacks the spotless sterility of the lobby. Scully feels herself relax.

"Can I get you some water, Agent Scully? You looked a bit pale there for a moment."

"No. No, thank you," Scully shakes her head, seating herself in the chair the doctor indicates. "I've been asked to look into the disappearance of Kathleen Haskell's baby and I understand from her husband that you were her obstetrician."

"Yes, Duffy called me, told me it was all right to share confidential information with you if need be. Actually, I'm a reproductive endocrinologist. I've been working with Kathleen for a number of years," the doctor replies, sitting behind his desk.

"Was she undergoing fertility treatments, then?"

"Yes. She had severe scarring and damage to her ovaries. We were forced to use a laparoscopic procedure and laser surgery to take care of the worst of the scarring in order to enable her to ovulate. Most of the follicles were damaged beyond hope, but there was still a chance we could get a few ova from what was left with fertility drugs. It was a long shot, but the procedure worked. Embryonic transfer and implantation took place without incident."

"And as far as you could tell, the pregnancy was normal?" Scully prompts.

"Yes. Kathleen was closely monitored the entire time, and as far as the usual obstetrics tests were concerned, her pregnancy was 100% healthy and normal the entire time."

"And you were there for the birth?"

"Um, no...Mrs. Haskell went into labor a couple weeks early while I was out of town at a conference. My associate, Dr. Bartell, attended the delivery."

"And there is no reason you can think of that anyone would have any reason to kidnap the Haskells’ baby?"

"No. It's so sad, after everything they went through to have the baby in the first place. You hear of this sort of thing all the time--people who can't have children of their own steal someone else's child, or taking infants to sell on the black market. I suppose there's a dozen reasons anyone might have had for doing it, but that doesn't make it any less tragic for the Haskells."

"Do you have Mrs. Haskell's ultrasounds and test results? I'm also a medical doctor, and I've dealt with people exposed to high doses of radiation before. I'd like to take a look at them and compare them to others I've seen."

"I don't have them available immediately, but I can have our filing clerk pull them and courier them to you tomorrow."

Scully's mouth tightens, and her first reaction is one born of too much betrayal--paranoia. She doesn't trust that the records will actually be the ones she's looking for if she waits to receive them. But she cannot come up with any logical reason why they would be changed, and she knows how complicated the filing systems at medical clinics can be.

"That will be fine," Scully murmurs. "Well, I think that's everything. If you can think of anything, remember anything that might relate to this case, here's my card. Please don't hesitate to call me."

"Of course. Is there anything else you need?"

"No, thank you. I'll just--see myself out," she says softly, walking quickly from the room. She hears the doctor following her and pauses by a drinking fountain, pushing her hair back as she bends over to drink. She can feel the doctor pause behind her for a moment before returning to his office and closing the door. She rises slowly, looking around the empty hallway.

A sign on a nearby door proclaims it to be Dr. Bartell's office. Stepping carefully and silently, she approaches the door. It's cracked open slightly, and she can hear a male voice from inside. "Everything's fine...right on schedule...we'll be ready for delivery on time...I'll take care of the arrangements..."

Cautiously, Scully peers around the doorframe and into the office. A dark-haired man in a lab coat is pacing behind a desk, holding a medical file in his hands and a phone receiver between his ear and shoulder. Suddenly, he turns in her direction, still looking down at the file. She gets a look at his face and for an instant, the past and the present collide.

"Dana? I'm Dr. Scanlon..."

"...You're going to feel like dying."

She gasps, jerking back away from the doorway in shock. The face of the man she has just seen is undeniably that of Dr. Kevin Scanlon, the oncologist who first treated her when she was diagnosed with cancer four years ago. After a moment, she turns and hurries down the hall and out the door.


* * * * *


Kathleen Haskell frowns in her sleep, tossing her head back and forth. On the table next to her side of the bed, an open and half-empty bottle of pills stands beside a dark lamp. There is a loud crash from somewhere in the house, and her eyes fly open.

"Duffy?" she calls groggily into the darkened room.

A muffled thud comes from downstairs, and a muted groan, and Kath sits up. "Duffy?!"

She rises from the bed, revealing a long flannel nightgown, her body thin beneath it. Her eyes and cheeks are hollow, her hair stringy and tangled. She sways drunkenly on her feet, then shuffles slowly toward the door, calling out her husband's name again. She creeps down the stairs, clutching the handrail carefully.

When she reaches the bottom step, she turns to the kitchen, bare feet slithering across the tile floor. A countertop, the stove and the refrigerator line the wall to her right. To her left, the sink rests in a tile-topped island. On the other side of the island is the dining room table. Directly ahead of her, a French door that leads to a patio dominates the wall on the far side of the kitchen, and Kath can see it hangs open, swinging on its hinges. Glass glitters over the floor in the distant glow of the streetlights outside.

"Duffy!" she cries frantically, turning left past the island to go around it, but she cannot avoid the glass in her bare feet. There is a tinkling sound as her unprotected soles crush several pieces, and she cries out in pain, limping as she leaves small speckles of blood on the floor. She rounds the island and passes the dining table, approaching the threshold of the living room. As she nears the sofa, she trips over something and crashes to the floor, her sharp cry cut off abruptly with the shock of impact.

"Oh, my God, Duffy!" she whispers. It is her husband's feet she has tripped over. He is lying sprawled on the floor at the end of the couch, one hand on the glass-topped end table where the telephone rests, as though he had been trying to reach the phone when he collapsed. Kath rolls him over and cries out again when she sees his eyes are swollen shut, the skin discolored and angry reddish-purple.

She is reaching for the phone when feet appear before her, visible through the glass surface of the table. Whimpering, she looks up for what seems like an eternity until her husband's face comes into view, towering above her.

Her scream echoes through the silent neighborhood.


* * * * *


Outside F.B.I. Headquarters
November 27, 2000 10:00 P.M.


"I can get a warrant, have him brought in for questioning," Skinner offers, standing across the walkway from her. It's a cold night, their breath frosts the air. The sky is winter dark, clouds obscuring the starlight so that all that remains for illumination is the glow of street lights across the lawns and walkways.

"On what grounds? We never had proof that Dr. Scanlon had anything to do with the deaths of Penny Northern or the other women in Allentown. We don't even have Mulder now to testify that it was Scanlon's name he saw at the Lombard Research Facility," Scully paces on the paved sidewalk. "Besides, if Kersh gets wind I'm following up on another 'alien abduction' case, I'm liable to find myself out of a job."

Skinner frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. "But you don't think it's an accident that this man is the doctor who delivered Kathleen Haskell's baby."

"I don't know what I think," she sighs, finally sitting on a bench, rubbing her forehead tiredly.

"Scully, you can't personalize this too much. That woman--she's not you," Skinner says softly. "Her baby isn't yours."

"No, but I could easily have been her, couldn't I?" Scully lifts her eyes to his. "Agent Doggett pointed out the similarities between Mrs. Haskell's history and my own, and he was right. More right than he knows..."

"You still haven't told him?"

Scully shakes her head. "I can't. Not until I'm sure I can trust him. Reporting me to the Deputy Director didn't exactly help."

"You can't keep it a secret for much longer, Scully."

"I know," she whispers. "But if they decide to use this against me, then what?"


* * * * *
Dana Scully’s Apartment
November 27, 2000 11:30 PM

Scully sighs and settles onto her sofa, staring into the fireplace, cradling a large mug of tea in her hands. She sits frozen for a moment, taking a slow sip, as she gazes, mesmerized, at the flickering flames...



* * * * *


January 1998

...A long-fingered, masculine hand intrudes into the picture of the flames before her and sets two vials on the coffee table. One vial is long and slender, filled with clear pink fluid. The other is shorter and wider, filled with something green and viscous. The only thing they have in common is that they each bear her name.

"Those are the ova I found at the Lombard Research Facility when you became ill, Scully," Mulder's saying softly, so softly she can barely hear him with the pounding of her heart in her ears. "I wanted to take them all, to get them out of their hands, but there wasn't time. I couldn't get them to a proper storage facility in time, either, so they're not viable. I'm sorry."

Scully nods solemnly. She sits in her black suit with her hands clasped in her lap, her mouth pressed in a grim line. Her cross glitters at her throat. She is still thin from her illness, haunted by the ordeal of watching the death of the daughter she barely knew. "And that one?" She points to the vial filled with greenish fluid.

" I found it last week at the nursing home in San Diego, where I found Anna Fugazzi. It’s an embryo. I think it’s like Emily. Scully--"

With effort, she turns her eyes to look at him. His face is earnest and sad as he says, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. You were sick and I didn't want to lay more on you. I know--I know you've had a lot of choices taken away from you. And if I could put those choices back in your hands, I would. But this is all I can offer you. This is all I've been able to find."

"It's enough," she says hollowly, picking up the two vials with one hand and looking at them for a moment. "These are mine. They can’t have them. They can't touch them. They can't use them."

She rises from the sofa slowly, feeling Mulder's dark eyes intent upon her, and kneels in front of the fire. She stares into the flames for a long moment, then pulls the screen aside and tosses both vials into the fireplace. She looks down at her hands where they rest on her thighs, the hands which have just executed one of the few decisions she's been allowed to make for herself in recent years.

She kneels there silently, watching the vials as they're engulfed by the flames, disappearing and reappearing with the motion of the fire. Presently, Mulder kneels beside her and pulls her to him, pressing her face against his chest. Her arms lock around his waist as she begins to sob and he murmurs soft reassurances into her hair. She turns her head and opens her wet eyes to look once more into the flames...


* * * * *


...A loud knock startles her out of her reverie. Scully's hand jerks, sloshing tea over the rim of the mug, and she quickly sets her cup on the coffee table and rises from the couch. She grabs her gun off the table behind the sofa and takes it from its holster as she crosses to the door.

She doesn't know who she expected to see this late at night, but she's quite certain it wasn't the pregnant receptionist she encountered earlier that day at the Zeus Genetics office.

"Agent Scully," the woman gasps, hunched over and panting as though she has been running a great distance. Her eyes are wide and afraid. "My name is Mary Hendershot. My baby's in danger. I need your help."


* * * * *


November 28, 2000
The Haskell Residence

Agent Doggett is kneeling beside the body of the man on the floor in the living room when Scully enters through the front door. Scully pauses a minute to straighten her shoulders before approaching him.

"Recognize this?" he asks, gesturing down at Duffy Haskell. The man's eyes are discolored and swollen shut and he's been dead for some hours.

"Yes, I do," Scully nods. "It's the retro-virus A.D. Skinner was exposed to in Arizona a few months ago."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Kathleen Haskell is missing, presumably taken by whoever did this."

"Undoubtedly taken," Scully corrects, turning from him to proceed on to the kitchen, where a crime scene photographer is taking snapshots of the broken and open French door. She looks at Doggett, who has followed her. "By the same party responsible for the kidnapping of her baby."

"We got no proof of that," Doggett denies.

"Actually, we do. The picture Duffy Haskell gave us when he first visited was the being I told you about, the alien bounty hunter. The one whose blood transmits this retrovirus."

"And you didn't see fit to inform me of this at the time? Agent Scully, I can't do my job if you're holding back information from me."

"Seems like we've had this conversation before, Agent Doggett," Scully replies coldly. "I offered not to hold back any information and you reported me to Deputy Director Kersh in return. I can't share information with you if the first thing you're going to do is relate it to someone who would like nothing better than to see the X-Files shut down and these sort of cases closed for good. Whether you believe their stories or not, something has happened to these people, and I can't help them if you're going to stand in my way. I don't expect you to believe. But I do expect you to work with me, and if you're not going to do that, then I don't see what we have to discuss."

"Report? Look, I didn't--" Doggett breaks off, nearly growling in frustration, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. "Okay. So, assuming this is true," Doggett finally continues. "That this alien has taken the Haskell baby and now Mrs. Haskell, why?"

"I have a witness out in my car who claims she knows what's going on here. Why Mrs. Haskell's baby was taken...and why hers is next."

"You brought a witness to a crime scene?"

"She's under protective custody. A.D. Skinner is out in the car with her now until we can take her statement and get her to a safe place. She came to me last night. She says the Haskells’ pregnancy was orchestrated, from conception to delivery, by the same people who are responsible for Mrs. Haskell’s abduction, and that of her baby."

Doggett frowns. "How exactly does one 'orchestrate' a pregnancy?"

"That's what I'd like to know, Agent Doggett," Scully answers with grim intensity. "As soon as possible."


* * * * *


Mary Hendershot plays with the pendant hanging around her neck as she faces Doggett, Skinner, and Scully at the table in the diner. She is surprisingly composed. The occasional tear rolls down her face and her voice sometimes hitches, but otherwise, she is calm. Scully recognizes her brand of composure all too well; it's the kind that comes from being hurt so badly and so often that it takes an extreme disturbance to provoke any show of distress.

The woman speaks slowly, with intelligence.

"It started on a MUFON website," she murmurs softly. "A pharmaceutical company was sponsoring a study for a new infertility treatment protocol. Most of us...we don't have a lot of money. And some of us have a hard time getting medical insurance. So it was a chance for those of us who can’t afford fertility treatments to have a child, to have what they took away from us."

"Kath Haskell and I belonged to the same MUFON chapter, and we went to the same clinic, with about a dozen other women from the D.C. metro area," she explains. "And that's how I got my job as a receptionist at Zeus Genetics. Dr. Zehnder and Dr. Bartell were both so wonderful and kind, so sympathetic to all these women and what they were going through, and they seemed to take such joy in helping them. I wanted to be a part of that, and so when their receptionist quit I applied for the job. But for the last month, since the abduction of Kath's baby, things have been strange. Dr. Zehnder has been extremely upset. He began canceling appointments with other women who participated in the study, and he's been hinting to me that I should get away, go someplace else before my baby is born, but I have no place else to go. I know he's afraid my baby might be taken, too, but I didn't understand why until yesterday.

"After Agent Scully came to speak with Dr. Zehnder, a man came. He and Dr. Zehnder argued, or I should say, Dr. Zehnder argued. The man didn't say much of anything that I could hear, but whatever he did say, it upset the doctor. Dr. Bartell walked into the lab where they were arguing. I'm not allowed back there, no one who hasn't scrubbed is supposed to go in there, but I walked up to the door and looked through the window just in time to see the visitor shoot Dr. Bartell. Then he told Dr. Zehnder to clean up, and that he would, quote, 'take care of the women.' I hid behind a wall while the man left, and then Dr. Zehnder left. I went into the lab to try to help Dr. Bartell, but he was already dead. And then I looked around. The walls were lined with shelves filled with jars. And in those jars were fetuses. Like this."

Mary Hendershot reaches into her large purse and brings out a specimen jar. Inside it, a small fetus floats in clear yellowish fluid. But the fetus is deformed, its eyes too big, too slanted. Though mostly human, the deformities are clearly alien features.

"I think this is what they put inside Kath Haskell. What they put inside me, and who knows how many other women. I think this is why they took her baby, and why they'll take mine when it's born," the woman concludes, a tear slipping from her eye.

"That isn't what I think it is," Doggett says quickly and adamantly.

"Not if you think you can explain what else it might be," Scully replies with a hint of sarcasm. Skinner gives her a warning look.

"Duffy Haskell never mentioned any deformities in their baby," Doggett declares.

"Perhaps there weren't any," she replies. "Perhaps whatever this is, these were the failures, the ones that didn't turn out right." She looks back at Mary Hendershot, who now visibly trembles on the verge of hysterics. "When are you due?"

"I'm at 39 weeks," she sniffles.

"We're going to take care of you, Mary," Scully declares. "You and your baby, I promise."

Hendershot nods tearfully and Scully pats her hand in sympathy. "I need you to go with Assistant Director Skinner to the car. I'll be along in a moment."

Skinner leads the woman from the booth and out the doors of the diner while Scully looks back at Doggett, who is clearly fuming. "Anything else I should know?" he demands.

"Yes," Scully answers, then pauses, drawing a deep breath. "The man Ms. Hendershot referred to as Dr. Bartell has another identity: Dr. Kevin Scanlon. He is--was--suspected of abetting the deaths of the cancer patients in Allentown, Pennsylvania around the time I had cancer. Agent Mulder went into the Lombard Research Facility investigating records of those same women seeking fertility treatments--records on which my name was listed as well, despite my never having sought any such treatment--and found that Scanlon was on staff there. Whatever is going on here, Agent Doggett, it goes deep. It goes right back to my own abduction and the abductions of all these women. And that goes right back to people within our own government--within the Bureau. People like Section Chief Blevins, who up until his death worked contrary to the interests of the X-Files and the truth. Now, you can call me paranoid all you like. You can scoff and refuse to believe, but understand when I tell you that if anyone learns of what Ms. Hendershot has told us, her life will be in grave danger. What happened to Mrs. Haskell could easily happen to her. No one can know about this."

"I may not believe in a lot of this stuff," Doggett answers, "but I'm sure something has happened to these women--that something happened to you. Whatever’s in that jar--that's not normal. Not right. It needs to stop."

"It's not just what's in the jar," Scully replies pensively. "It's what's happened to these women--to all these people. What's been happening all along. They've been violated, used--dehumanized. They've had their most basic human rights and choices systematically stripped from them to serve an agenda that--whether it's of this world or not--is almost certainly not concerned with the greater good."

"I understand you take this personally..."

"Yes," her voice is firm. "I do."

"Look, Agent Scully," Doggett says gravely. "I don't know how to make you believe this, but I didn't report you to Deputy Director Kersh. I don't know how he learned about your investigation in Boston. You do what you have to do to protect that woman and get to the bottom of this--no one will hear about it from me."

Scully closes her eyes and sighs, nodding in resignation. She doesn't know if he's telling the truth, but she has no choice but to accept his words.

"What do you need from me?" he asks.

"I need you to get to Zeus Genetics and see what evidence you can find--before it all disappears. The murder of a respected reproductive endocrinologist should be a perfectly legitimate investigation. A.D. Skinner will sign off on the 302."

"You got it," they slide out of the booth in tandem, Scully preceding Doggett out of the diner. Skinner stands beside Scully's car, where Mary Hendershot occupies the passenger seat. Drawing a deep breath, Scully approaches Skinner as Doggett returns to his truck.

"Can you accompany Agent Doggett to the Zeus Genetics clinic?" she requests. "I'll take care of our witness."

Skinner nods. "What about you?" he asks solicitously.

"I'm fine," she dismisses the inquiry.

Skinner studies her closely for a moment, then nods. "Call me if you need anything."

She agrees with a stiff jerk of her head and gets into the driver’s seat. In her rearview mirror she can see Skinner, and Doggett by the truck behind him, watching her drive away.

"Where are we going?" Hendershot asks after a moment.

Scully hesitates before answering, then says decisively, "To get a second opinion."


* * * * *


Zeus Genetics
Germantown, Maryland


Special Agent Gene Crane greets Skinner and Doggett as they pull up to the building that houses the fertility clinic.

"I've got a crime scene team inside, but it looks like someone went through here pretty thoroughly already. We've found some traces of blood in the lab on the floor and walls, which holds true with the theory that someone was shot and killed in there, but everything else is gone. There's no body. The shelves are empty, the cold-storage equipment cleaned out."

"What about paperwork?" Doggett demands, leading the way into the clinic. Crime scene analysts mill through the offices and laboratories. "Patient records, that sort of thing."

"There's not much left," Crane answers. "Whoever did this, they did a good job on the place. The computers were all trashed--we're going to take them back to the labs and see if we can get anything off them."

"I'll do that," Skinner interrupts. "I'm heading back to the Hoover building myself. I'll take them with me."

Crane opens his mouth on the verge of protesting, then closes it again, nodding brusquely. "Yes, Sir," he answers, and walks away, calling out, "Jenkins--I need those hard drives gathered up for A.D. Skinner!"

"You're not staying to look around?" Doggett questions once Crane is out of earshot.

"No--and neither are you," Skinner replies. "They're not going to find anything here. Any evidence that was here, it's gone. Those hard drives--if they are the original hard drives--that's another story. But if there's anything left to be found on them, we can't just leave them in the Bureau labs. They’ll disappear, or they'll come up blank, or they'll be replaced."

"Then what are you planning to do with them?"

"I plan to take them through unofficial channels," Skinner answers, pulling out his cell-phone and hitting the speed-dial. "Byers, it's Walter Skinner--turn off the tape."


* * * * *


George Washington University Medical Center


"Dana, I'm sorry I kept you waiting," Dr. Parenti smiles warmly as Scully enters his office.

"I'm sorry to barge in without an appointment, Doctor, but this is an emergency," Scully answers, sitting across the desk from him and gesturing Hendershot into a chair beside her. "I'm here in an official capacity as an F.B.I. agent. This is Mary Hendershot. She's thirty-nine weeks pregnant, and she's in my custody for her own protection. We believe that someone may be after her baby, possibly because of genetic abnormalities resulting from experiments performed prior to embryonic transfer in the course of fertility treatments she was undergoing."

Parenti hesitates, taken aback. "Excuse me--experiments? What sort of experiments?"

"Whatever sort of experiments would produce this--" she takes the jar containing the alien-like fetus out of the bag she brought with her and sets it on Parenti's desk.

The doctor pauses perhaps an instant too long, blinking. Scully looks at him sharply; whatever she is expecting--shock, horror, disbelief--comes just a beat too late for her comfort.

"Dear God..." he breathes at last. After a moment he shakes himself. "What do you want me to do?"

Scully exchanges a glance with Mary Hendershot, who folds her hands nervously across her belly. "We want you to induce labor. There's a good chance that Ms. Hendershot will need to go into protective custody or a witness protection program to protect her and her baby. That will be easier to do without having to worry if she's going to go into labor and then providing conditions for the safe birth of her baby. I also want to run a DNA analysis and comparison between her baby and this fetus. If our suspicions are correct, there will be similarities."

"Of course. I'll arrange for her to be admitted to maternity at once," he agrees, reaching for his phone.

"Dr. Parenti--" Scully extends her hand, holding the phone down. "You can't use her name."

Parenti pauses again, then nods stiffly. Scully sits back in her chair with a frown of unease as Parenti lifts the phone and begins to dial.


* * * * *


Scully sits by the hospital bed as a nurse withdraws a syringe from Mary Hendershot's arm. Mary ventures a nervous smile at Scully.

"How long should this take?" she asks softly.

"Probably somewhere between four to twelve hours if there are no complications. We need to be cautious--without any medical records of your history or your pregnancy, we're operating blind here."

"I'm afraid, Agent Scully," the woman whispers. "All these years, with the abductions and being sick and getting better, all I could think of was the day when everything would be normal again. And then it all stopped, and I thought I could get on with my life, and what I wanted more than anything else was a child and I couldn't have it--and then all of a sudden, I could. I was so happy; I thought this would be the start of a whole new life for me...but now I'm scared. I'm scared of what may be growing inside me."

Scully smiles compassionately, reaching out to squeeze the woman's hand. Her eyes are drawn once again to Hendershot's pendant, the open hand with an eye in the palm. She hears herself asking without intending to, "Your necklace, what is it?"

"The Hand of Fatima," Mary replies, releasing Scully's hand to touch the charm. "Kath Haskell gave it to me after she found out she was pregnant. She said it brought healing. I didn't have the heart to tell her it's actually an Islamic talisman not for healing, but for protection from harm in the first place. Muslims believe it wards off the Evil Eye and ill-wishing. Either way, I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a little extra help...Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Scully shakes herself, pulling her eyes away from the pendant. "I thought I might have seen it before."

A flash of memory causes her to blink, and for a moment, she is staring not at the silver charm, but at a black and white photograph in a sea of similar photographs, covered in symbols...

"...a passage from the Koran..."

She remembers a ship in Africa, etched with hieroglyphs and symbols and passages in Navajo. Was this talisman among them?

Scully rises from her chair abruptly. "I need to check in with Assistant Director Skinner," she says. "Try to rest while you have a chance. I'll be back soon."

She opens the hospital room door and exits, letting it close softly behind her. She gazes through the window for a moment at the pregnant woman who has dutifully closed her eyes, and then Scully turns away...


* * * * *


August, 2000


She closes the door and turns to face Mulder, who has entered her apartment with a large box in his arms.

"Moving in?" she asks with a teasing smile.

He gives her a goofy grin and shrugs. She moves past him to the couch as he sets the box on the coffee table before her.

"How was the Vineyard?" she inquires.

"Fine," he replies dismissively. "I've almost got everything packed up, thrown out or delivered to Goodwill. One more weekend should do the trick. I just, um--brought by some stuff I found in my mother's attic."

Scully stares at him a moment, touched by both the gesture and the hesitation with which he makes it. He is offering to share something deeply personal with her.

"May I?" she asks when he falters, gesturing toward the box. He gives a short nod and she opens the cardboard flaps at the top of the carton.

Lying on top of the other contents is a cloth doll. It's slightly yellowed with age and smells of dust. She handles it gently, knowing instinctively that despite its age and disuse, this is an item that was once loved.

"It was Samantha's," Mulder explains after a moment. "When I saw it this weekend, I thought about you. About us. About everything we've lost, everything that's been taken from us. My family. Your chance at one. Your sister. Your health. And suddenly it was important to me for you to have this. Because--because even with everything they've taken, they haven’t taken everything."

He reaches and takes her hand, which rests on the doll in her lap. She unfurls her fist and intertwines her fingers with his so that their hands rest palm to palm. She finds her eyes drawn to the sight of their joined hands.

"After everything that happened this year," he continues, "after being operated on, and losing my mother, and finding out what happened to Samantha...it seems like maybe--maybe it's not too late to take back some of what we've lost. Maybe we still have choices, options, alternatives..."

"Yes, we do, Mulder," she says finally, clenching her fingers a little more tightly around his. "We have choices," she assures him. "And we'll make them in our time."

Mulder looks at her searchingly for a moment, then nods. There is a moment's pause and Mulder leans forward, toward her. The phone rings suddenly, surprising them both. Scully unlocks her fingers from Mulder's and reaches for the cordless phone where it rests behind the sofa...


* * * * *


"Scully." She brings the cell phone to her ear in the hospital corridor outside Mary Hendershot's room.

"Agent Scully, this is John Doggett."

"Agent Doggett. I was just about to call you to see what you found at the clinic."

"Well, I got bad news on the front. The place had already been cleaned up by the time we got there. No body, not this Dr. Scanlon or anyone else. No little jars with fetuses in them, either. All the paper files were gone and the computers had all been wrecked, but I'm told that's probably just for show."

"'Told?' By whom?"

"I'm in A.D. Skinner's office with some friends of yours. They say to tell you it's a real shame when someone busts up a computer with a perfectly clean, brand new hard drive in it."

"Well, tell them we're fairly certain whoever's behind this never read the hacker's code of conduct," Scully mutters, grimacing.

"When they failed to pull anything off the drives, they went online to see what they could find on this Dr. Zehnder and his partner Dr. Bartell. Something tells me I could haul them in right now for a dozen counts of accessing classified data without authorization committed in the last half hour alone..."

"Yeah, Officer Krupke? You and what army?" she hears Frohike challenge belligerently in the background.

"Whoever these doctors were, they weren't working alone," Doggett continues, ignoring the interruption. "Zeus Genetics is on record as being owned by two other doctors as silent partners. One of them was a Dr. Lev. Name ring a bell?"

"That's the doctor who prescribed the medication you found in Mulder's apartment."

"Right. I'm starting to wonder what a fertility doctor is doing prescribing drugs for a neurological condition Agent Mulder was supposedly being treated for."

"Well, Agent Doggett, there's always my explanation," Scully points out.

"Suddenly, your explanation is the only one making any sense around here. At any rate, these guys are turning up nothing on Scanlon, Zehnder, or Bartell, and they already got everything they could on Lev two months ago, so now they're trying for the last partner, a Dr. Parenti--"

Scully inhales sharply, her fingers going numb where they hold the phone. Agent Doggett's voice is droning on, suddenly very faint and distant through the pounding of the pulse in her ears. She's not sure how much time passes as she stands there in the corridor, surrounded only by the sound of her own harsh breathing and heartbeat. When Doggett's voice reaches her again, he is calling out her name in an urgent, worried tone.

"Agent Scully? Agent Scully!"

"Put A.D. Skinner on the line," she says woodenly, her expression bleak.


* * * * *


Scully enters Mary Hendershot's room to find the woman resting. She blinks awake, giving Scully an alarmed glance before subsiding in relief. "Is everything all right, Agent Scully?"

"Everything's fine, Mary," she replies, her tone comforting and her head lowered to hide her expression. "Go back to sleep."

She walks past the hospital bed into the adjoining lavatory of the hospital room, gently shutting the door behind her. When it is closed, she stares at the mirror above the sink, her eyes wide and shocked, her face ghastly pale. Her hands splay out across her abdomen, covering the as-yet imperceptible swell. Her lips tremble and her face contorts; she presses a balled-up fist to her mouth to stifle the sobs welling up within her. She sinks to the floor, pulling her knees protectively to her chest as she cries in silent anguish.


* * * * *


She meets Skinner and Doggett in the corridor outside Hendershot's room as they march purposefully down the hall. She closes the door on a low moan from the woman.

"Parenti's gone," she tells them as they reach her. Only the pallor of her face and the slight redness of her eyes betray her earlier emotion. "He's not in his office and he hasn't been back to check on Ms. Hendershot since I spoke with you. She's gone into labor--we can’t move her now. She'll have to deliver here."

Skinner falls back, snapping orders into a radio he carries with him. "I want a room by room search conducted. I want the exits and stairwells covered. If Parenti's still in the building, he doesn't get out."

"You wanna tell me how, out of every obstetrician in Washington D.C., you brought our witness to this guy?" Doggett demands.

"Dr. Parenti is my obstetrician," Scully answers carefully. Doggett stares at her unbelievingly, comprehension slowly taking hold, and Scully meets Skinner's eyes past his shoulder. The Assistant Director nods his approval. "A.D. Skinner is the only one I've told so far. It--it looks like I may have more in common with these women than you originally thought."

"I see," Doggett says slowly. An awkward moment passes before he nods again. She is grateful when instead of asking questions she's not comfortable answering, he returns to the business at hand. "So what do we do now?"


* * * * *


"You did the right thing telling him," Skinner assures Scully, bringing her a cup of hot cocoa after Doggett has left to help with the search for Parenti.

She nods wordlessly, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. She looks down the hallway at the door to Hendershot's room, where two agents stand guard. "There's a nurse practitioner midwife in with her now. It should only be a couple of hours. She's dilating fairly rapidly."

"Scully--"

"No matter how careful you are, you can't be careful enough," she sighs. "When my oncologist referred me to Parenti, I checked him out. I had the Gunmen check him out. No government connections. Complete career history available. How--how can you ever know who to trust?"

Skinner has no answer for her; he, too, is aware it's often the most innocuous-seeming people who are the most dangerous.

"When I first found out I was pregnant, it never occurred to me that it might be anything other than luck, or a miracle--whatever you want to call it," she states, her voice quivering slightly. "After everything that had been done to me, after the ways I had been violated and used, I thought surely--*surely* there had to be an end to it. I thought there was nothing left they could do to me. I never--" her voice breaks and she draws a deep, shuddering breath, "never thought there would ever be a day that I would consider not having this baby."

"You don't know that it isn't a miracle yet," Skinner points out urgently. "You don’t fit the pattern of these other women. You weren't seeking treatment for infertility."

"No. I wasn't. But we both know that might not matter. We both know they can get to anyone." She takes a sip of her cocoa, her movements mechanical. "What if it isn't just a happy coincidence?" she asks at last, her voice muted. "What then? Do I let them do this to me? Again? Where does it end?"

Skinner has no answer for her and after a moment, she turns away to return to the hospital room where Mary Hendershot labors.


* * * * *


From the Journal of Dana Scully
November 30, 2000

"We call it the miracle of life. Conception. Reproduction. A union of perfect opposites, an act of love magically transforming essence and emotion into physical being--an act without which mankind would not exist and humanity cease to exist."

...A smile on her face, Scully entertains a baby on her knee one sunny summer afternoon in Oregon under Mulder's enraptured gaze...

...Mary Hendershot, her face flushed and sweaty, folded nearly in half, straining and crying out as Scully holds her shoulders and encourages her...

"Or is this just nostalgia now? An act of biology commandeered by modern science and technology? Godlike, we extract, harvest, implant, inseminate..."

...A squalling infant, perfect and covered in gore, is laid in Hendershot's arms as she smiles up at Scully, dazed. Scully cannot help but smile back, her mouth trembling...

"But has our ingenuity rendered the miracle into a simple trick, devoid of life's very magic and subject to abuse at a whim? In the artifice of replicating life, how is it decided who becomes the creator? Can humanity's act of greatest love and hope be perverted into a supreme violation of a person's physical and emotional self?"

...Scully, lying in a hospital gown on a bed, her eyes dark and bloodshot from sleepless nights and aiding a stranger through childbirth, watching cautiously as a long needle is withdrawn from her abdomen. Under her unfaltering gaze, a vial of clear fluid is presently laid into her waiting and expectant hand...

"And what of the women and men who are left to bear and care for these children that have resulted not of their love and choice, but by the devices and designs of another for a purpose they cannot fathom? Will their love ultimately lead to their destruction?"

...In a laboratory, her red hair pulled back, wearing the uniform of lab coat, goggles, and gloves, Scully carefully and meticulously extracts a drop of the clear fluid from its vial and transfers it into a beaker...

"How did this child I carry come to be? What set its heart beating? Is it the product of our union? Is it the work of a divine hand, or a construct of the hand of man? Is it an answered prayer, or an invasion of the most intimate and devastating kind, turning our own hope and desire for continuation against us?"

...Her lips tremble and tears glisten on her lashes as she looks at the DNA analysis in her hand and compares it to another...

"And if it's not the miracle I once prayed for, what will I do? How can I continue? And if I must think the unthinkable, what will I ever tell you when you return?"


* * * * *


George Washington University Medical Center
November 30, 2000 9:37 PM


Outside Mary Hendershot's hospital room, Agent Gene Crane stands guard at the door. He holds his cell phone to his ear.

"The midwife has been in and out to check on her and the baby a couple times today, and a few nurses, but so far, no sign of anything out of the ordinary."

"Johnston will be there to relieve you at eleven," Doggett's voice answers. "Call me if anything happens."

"Will do," Crane says decisively. He disconnects and folds the phone up, tucking it in his pocket as he peers through the doorway window for a second. Inside, Mary Hendershot sits with her back to him in a chair, nursing her baby.

His attention is drawn away as a nurse approaches the door and mumbles for him to excuse her. He steps aside and she enters the room, a tall woman with a homely, almost masculine face.

He turns his back to the door as it closes and surveys the hallway once more.


* * * * *


"I just have to take her down to the nursery to run some tests," the nurse says reassuringly, holding out her arms for Hendershot's baby.

"No," Hendershot shakes her head. "They told me--no one is supposed to take the her from the room unless there's an agent to accompany her."

"Of course there's an agent," the nurse says reasonably. "He's right outside the door."

"Bring him in here, then. Let me make sure." Her eyes are defiant, her posture protective as she clutches the infant close to her chest. Shrugging nonchalantly, the nurse turns away, toward the door. Mary relaxes, and in a split second, the nurse whirls back to face her, grabbing her by the throat and cutting off her air. Her feet kick futilely as she's lifted from the floor and her baby begins to squall. Before her eyes, the face of the nurse transforms into that of a man with chiseled, square features.

"Give me the child," he intones, his voice deep and accented. Hendershot is about to black out when suddenly the hand around her throat drops her. She falls to the floor, still clutching her screaming baby, gasping desperately for air as the man who had assaulted her collapses and begins to dissolve, his skin turning green and running like liquid as his body caves in on itself.

Shocked and terrified, she looks up and sees first a hand holding a thin, sharp silver device, almost like an ice-pick. Her eyes travel up the arm holding the pick and she gives a low whimper of fear, trying to push herself back and away from him with her feet, scooting across the floor until she backs into the wall.

...A figure with a receding hair-line purposefully pulling a gun from his suit coat and shooting Dr. Bartell in the lab as she watches through the window in the door...

Agent Crane holds out his other, empty hand to her. "You have to get up if you want to save your baby," he says bluntly.

Trembling and hiccoughing with fear and a bruised throat, she hesitates briefly, then accepts his assistance.

"You need to go with him," the agent turns and nods to someone standing behind him. "He'll protect you."

Hendershot looks at the second man warily, for he doesn't look like an F.B.I. agent, but then she shuffles forward in her slipper-clad feet to join him. She is alarmed when Agent Crane pulls his weapon, but he turns it and presents it butt-first to the other man. Crane turns his back to them and a leather-clad arm flashes out and pistol-whips the agent. He goes down abruptly beside the still-dissolving form, the green puddle eating at the linoleum.


* * * * *


"She's gone," Skinner tells Scully as she hurries down the hospital corridor. Behind him, Agent Doggett tends Agent Crane, who holds an icepack to the back of his head. "The baby, too."

Scully's shoulders slump in defeat, and she blinks against the tears in her eyes. "How can we protect her--or anyone--against the kind of beings we're dealing with?"

"It's possible they weren't taken," Skinner replies. "In her room there’s a large corrosion on the floor, apparently the same stuff we've seen in Arizona and elsewhere. Whatever these things are, one of them went down in there. Maybe she escaped with her baby after the attack."

"How's Crane?"

"Fine, but he saw nothing. Someone got him from behind."

Scully nods, her mouth drawn into a tight line. "I had just returned from the lab when I got your call," she says finally. "I think I know why these women and their babies are being taken. I ran a DNA analysis on Mary Hendershot's baby, and compared it to the fetus in the jar. There was no direct match."

"No match?" Skinner's eyes widen. "What about your--?"

"It will take a couple weeks to culture enough genetic material from the amniocentesis specimen to know anything for certain," she says unhappily, unwilling to think too hard on the issue.

"Then what about Hendershot's baby? Why--?"

"The baby is definitely Ms. Hendershot's, of that I'm certain. We don't have any data on the donor whose sperm she used for the in vitro fertilization, so we can't be certain of paternity. But though I am certain that the fetus we saw in that specimen jar is not directly linked to her child, there was one similarity between them," Scully draws a breath, pausing before she explains. "A part of her child's DNA matches samples we've seen elsewhere, a genetic remnant--junk DNA that is normally inactive in all human beings, but it is active in her child--and in the fetus."

"Where have you seen it before?"

"In a claw sample from a creature Mulder believed to be an extraterrestrial biological entity. And in a virus I was once infected with. And in one other child--a child who is capable of fighting these creatures. Gibson Praise."

"You mean--"

"Mary Hendershot's baby is like Gibson Praise. And Gibson Praise can combat these things. Which means that wherever Mary Hendershot is, these beings aren't going to stop looking for her or her child. That child isn't just an evolutionary fluke, or an experiment--if I'm right, that child is a weapon. Not against us--but against them."


* * * * *

TWO WEEKS LATER

Scully once again settles onto her sofa with a mug of tea. Spread on the coffee table before her are an ultrasound photo and transparencies with the DNA analysis she has run. A plain white piece of paper tells the rest of the tale in clear type:

YNH24/D2S44:
Mother - 1.56, 1.97
Child - 1.97, 1.65
Father - 1.65, 1.13

* * * * *

"There has to be an end, Scully."

She feels his lips on her cheek, and she holds Mulder's hand in hers, pressing her lips against it. Tears tremble on her eyelashes for a moment before she draws a deep breath and wipes them away.

"No," she murmurs, rolling over to face him.

* * * * *

TBQ7/D10S28
Mother - 2.02, 2.05
Child - 2.05, 1.46
Father - 1.46, 2.37

* * * * *

"What?" His eyes are tender and concerned as they scan her face. They lay practically nose to nose on the pillow.

"You said there's more I need to do with my life, that there's more than this, but you're wrong."

"Scully--"

"I'm here because I want to be. Because I choose to be. Because *this*," she takes his hand and interlocks her fingers with his, pressing their palms together, "is all that matters. What we make with our own hands and our own choices."

* * * * *

PH30/D4S139
Mother - 9.97, 6.63
Child - 6.63, 4.32
Father - 4.32, 7.25

EFD52/D17S26
Mother - 1.39, 6.63
Child - 6.63, 5.70
Father - 5.70, 1.25

* * * * *

"I don't want you to lose anything more, Scully. I want you to have all the things you've already lost."

* * * * *

A tear slips from Scully's eye. Mulder got his wish for her, but until she finds him she won't be able to rejoice in that fact.

* * * * *

"I will, Mulder," she says with understated confidence. "But if we let them take this, too, then what have we won? It took me so long to stop mourning what I had lost. But there comes a time when you have to stop grieving for the past and look to the future. When you have to stop praying for a miracle and make one happen. We have that choice. And I choose not to let them take any more away from me."

* * * * *

LH1/D5S110
Mother - 9.30, 2.06
Child - 2.06, 5.75
Father - 5.75, 2.14

SLI1335/D1S339
Mother - 2.70, 2.18
Child - 2.18, 2.85
Father - 2.85, 3.41

PATERNITY INDEX: 100

* * * * *

Mulder stares at her searchingly for a moment, then releases her hand to lay his palm against her face, rubbing his thumb gently over her cheekbone. He slides forward until their foreheads are pressed together, their noses touching, and his lips a breath away from hers. "Never give up on a miracle, Scully," he whispers.

"I haven't," she replies, lifting her hand to stroke his hair.

* * * * *

Scully's hand leaves the coarse brown hair of the doll that somehow found its way into her lap and drifts downward to cover her belly where her child rests.

"I won't," she whispers tremulously, and smiles.


THE END