This R-rated story--which took me the entire summer to write--is meant as
a paranoid fantasy of Carteresque proportions. Although it contains no
overt spoilers, a bare-bones knowledge of the basic 'mythology' of the
past three seasons would be rather helpful. I wouldn't spend too much time
worrying about the plot, though; just think of it as a very dense, very
complicated, very black comedy. How black? Read the first three paragraphs
and see.

Send all e-mail to lonegunguy@aol.com, and, as always, enjoy.

*     *     *

Blood of Angels (1/18)

*     *     *

August 20, 1996

     Red neon light bled across the concrete. Scully lay splayed on the
sidewalk, breath imperceptibly ragged, eyes darting behind closed lids.
Kneeling, Mulder pulled a cigarette from the front pocket of his blazer,
poked it tremblingly into Scully's unconscious mouth and lit it with a
flaring snap of thumb against flint. The shaft jutted loosely up from her
lips, smoldering.

     He checked his watch. Frowned. Watched, careful not to inhale, as a
thin tendril of greenish-gray smoke curled up from Scully's nose and was
lost in the dense urban night. No tobacco there: oxyphenylcyrine. Burning,
the chemical became a potent acetylcholine inhibitor, entering Scully's
lungs and, instantly, her brain, rendering her peripheral nervous system
inactive--and killing her within seconds. With luck.

     The characteristic reflex--a twitching of occipital muscles around
the eye--told him it was over. His partner's body stiffened against the
pavement, her cigarette fluttering to the ground. Scully was dead.

     If her soul passed by, he did not feel it.

     Straightening up--the sweat pouring down his face, his flesh-toned
makeup dripping--Mulder glanced quickly left and right. The street
stretched emptily to either side, neon dangling down from overhanging
rooftops in hellish frequency, scarlet light spread across the asphalt
like strawberry jam. Had to be timed perfectly. Counting the seconds,
staring down at Scully's motionless form, he groped in his other pocket
for the syringe, disguised as a ballpoint pen; finding it, he pressed the
clip--heard the click of a spring--and saw the needle glisten in the
darkness. Counted: eight...nine...ten seconds into death. Time.

     Dropping to his knees, he rolled Scully over, her body limp and
unresponsive. She was wearing a tight vinyl streetwalker's dress, black,
slit partway up the thigh, fishnet stockings crisscrossing the slimness of
her legs. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her forehead, held at the
nape of her neck by pink barrettes of vague sluttishness; shaking,
Mulder's fingers skittered over her shoulder blades, tore her tank top,
exposed mid-back. He began counting vertebrae.

     Seventeen seconds had passed. Mulder--temples thudding dully--found
the proper juncture, placed the needle against Scully's spine, waited for
the twentieth second and rammed it in, depressing the hidden plunger as he
did.

     Scully's arms flew to her throat. Pseudo-Thornburn position, a
routine reflex. Indicative of nervous system function. Dropping the
syringe, he took her cool wrist between his hands, feeling for a pulse.
She had been dead for precisely twenty-five seconds. Her fists were
clenched.

     "C'mon, Scully," he muttered. "Just a little bit more. You can make
it." Thirty seconds. Movement: Scully's left leg scraped against the cold
cement, her knee lifting, spike-heeled shoe slipping from foot and falling
to the sidewalk. Mulder felt the whisper of blood in her veins. He riveted
himself to that hint of life, seized it, focused on it, massaging the blue
pump of her upper arms, murmuring, "It's been long enough, Scully, you can
come back, you can come back..." For a split second he allowed himself to
consider what might happen if she failed to awaken, if her brain
suffocated and she died like a hooker on this dirty New York street, all
for the sake of a secret so monumental, so unimaginable, that he hardly
credited its existence...

*     *     *

August 19, 1996--One day earlier

     Call it force of habit: whenever unseen hands deposited an unmarked
manila envelope in Fox Mulder's office, he opened it. Today was no
exception.

     His eye kept returning to the 8x10 glossy of the murder scene. The
second murder, not the first. It showed a woman slumped against a thin
prison mattress, dead from asphyxiation, the fabric of her white blouse
pulled up to reveal her abdomen, upon which had been printed--according to
the handwritten caption--twenty-three English words. That is, he assumed
they were English; the lines of text were blurred and indistinct in the
photo. The scrawled annotation noted that each letter in each word was
approximately one-fourth of an inch tall. Autopsy had indicated that the
apparition was psychosomatic in origin: the woman's brain had somehow
caused the capillaries in her skin to break in such a pattern as to create
recognizable, coherent English sentences on her abdominal wall. Unusual,
but not impossible. Mulder knew of several well-authenticated cases of
Christian penitents manifesting Bible verses on their chests or foreheads,
usually in conjunction with stigmata; although obvious hoaxes abounded in
the literature--faux-saints branding themselves with fire or dry ice,
placing crude stencils over the skin and splashing them with acid--some
could not be explained away so easily. This seemed to be a bona-fide case.
But there was no indication as to what the words said.

     In addition, this woman was no saint. A prostitute, she had been
strangled to death while being held in a New York maximum security
correctional facility on charges of first-degree murder. A prison guard
found her lying dead in her cot, a shoelace--not hers--wrapped thrice
around her neck. The body was still warm. No possible suspects had been
found.

     There were further complications. First of all, the woman, Abby
Janneson, was accused of murdering a man whose name Mulder recognized:
Josef Kaun, forty-three-year-old theoretical physicist, veteran consultant
to the Pentagon--and notorious sexual hedonist. According to the police
report, Kaun had been staying in Manhattan on undisclosed official
business when he propositioned the streetwalker for sex. Minutes later, he
was shot in the head by an unknown assailant, possibly the hooker,
possibly someone else. Police found Janneson hiding in an alley two blocks
from the murder scene, face and hair spattered with Kaun's blood and
brains, clutching his thick eelskin wallet in one shaking hand, huddled
behind a row of garbage cans. She proclaimed her innocence; they charged
her anyway. Three days later, someone strangled her.

     Secondly, Abby Janneson was a dead ringer for Dana Scully.

     Each autopsy photo only strengthened the impression. He marveled at
the resemblance. The dead prostitute's features were a little
harder-edged, perhaps, and her nose was more blunt, lips thinner--but
there was no denying the similarity.

     Mulder was tempted to call Scully.  Sitting here alone in the
melancholy darkness of the office, the glowing hands of his watch softly
reading 9:28, it was all too easy to imagine that these photographs showed
his partner on a mortuary slab, red hair tinged with formaldehyde: Dana
Scully, recently dead. He reached for the phone. Stopped, his hand in
midair. Reached for the receiver again. Paused. Vacillated. He argued with
himself, taking the stance of common sense: he knew that Scully was in
South Carolina over the weekend, visiting her brother Charles, and no one
would be home. He could try her cell phone, but--well, Christ, it was a
moot point. The woman in the pictures was not Scully. Best to not even
pretend otherwise.

     But, dammit, it looked just like her.

     Perhaps it was a message from the future, a tangible premonition
slipped across time. This woman, Abby Janneson: who could say that she was
not Dana Scully? A wraith. A double. A doppelganger that foretold--

     Stop. These were crazy thoughts. Night thoughts. Mulder, stiff-necked
and sore, realized for the first time how late it was. Why, he asked
himself, did he stay so long in the office when Scully was away? It was a
habit, a grim habit; years ago, in the bleakest time during Scully's
abduction, he had eaten, slept and worked in this office for days on end,
driven by salt and caffeine and loneliness.... Did the memory of those
days still linger? Written here in these walls?

     Rubbing his eyes, Mulder flipped the casefile closed--and remembered
his appointment at the cathedral. Tucking the folder beneath his arm, he
grabbed his jacket and stepped into the slicing hallways of FBI
Headquarters's lowermost level, his shoes clicking in the darkness. These
basement halls were tightly wound labyrinths, less than four feet wide in
some places, turning in on themselves like the coils of a rectangular
serpent. It was, Mulder mused for the thousandth time, similar to the
third floor of the Holocaust Museum: narrowing walls symbolize the
narrowing choices of the Final Solution--or of the vise of government
incest--until the walls squeeze in so tightly that they might be a
clenched fist. Or a tomb.

*     *     *

     Night. A dueling network of shadows played across the Gothic facade
of Washington National Cathedral, intricate razors of night, shattered
black glass, lacerated buttresses knifing across the stone; stepping into
the cool marble dimness, directly across from the wooden narthex, Mulder
felt like an alien in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, the cathedral seemed
like a mausoleum to a universe where humanity was only an afterthought.
The pews were sticks of kindling strewn among the grandeur.

     The 8:40 weekday compline had drawn to a close long before, but stray
parishioners still filed out of the great double doors, passing Mulder
without meeting his gaze, hands in their pockets, not speaking. Organ
music undulated from the altar in palpable waves. He felt pressure on his
skin.

     Mulder moved forward into the church, passing through great shadows
that split the floor like tongues of ebony. He felt a presence behind him.
Turned. Saw the familiar face, draped in secrecy, the voice beckoning him
to follow. He did. The pair walked silently until they stood beneath the
great blue-and-purple stained glass window on the right-hand side of the
cathedral, circular, depicting the wonders of the Space Age in lead,
copper foil, lapis lazuli, sapphire.

     X spoke first. "You received the casefile." It was not a question,
merely a declaration.

     "Yes," Mulder said, indicating the folder in his right hand. He
looked into the depths of X's shrouded face--cruelty balanced by
intelligence, eyes glinting like obsidian--and decided not to ask any
questions yet.

     The pair moved further into the cathedral umbra, darkness stifling
the stone beneath the windows; their footfalls were crisp, knifing, on the
thin parquet. Said X, "I'll come right to the point. Agent Scully is in
danger. Perhaps you can infer why."

     Mulder remained silent. They came to a small door, lying nearly flush
with the altar canopy, bordered with marble and an unlit EXIT sign.
Locked. X produced a key and opened it, revealing a trim garden path and
the cool night beyond.

     Stepping outside, not waiting for Mulder to follow, X said, "Let me
ask you a question: why do you think the FBI continues to fund the
X-Files?" The door clicked shut behind them. They strode along the path at
a brisk pace, X glancing to either side with quick birdlike movements. He
said, "You've experienced extreme official prejudice. You've been stifled,
denied, discredited. There have been attempts at termination. Abduction.
Extortion. And yet--"

     "--we continue to be given new assignments," Mulder finished. "New
casefiles."

     X nodded. "The Bureau pays for your transportation, allows you to use
official research facilities, provides you with the means and resources to
fully investigate the cases to which you are assigned--only to
categorically deny your work when all is finished. Why? What do they have
to gain?"

     "You tell me," said Mulder.

     The pavement gave way to cobblestones, then dirt. This was one of
many gardens on the cathedral's vast acreage; to one side lay a broad
configuration of hedges that had recently been trimmed into a chi-rho
shape, the ground littered with leaves and coniferous debris. A
crystalline gazebo loomed in the distance. X said, "Knowledge is power. Do
you think that you and Agent Scully are the only individuals in the United
States government paid to research paranormal phenomena? Hardly. Every
government organization of any size has its own division of the X-Files.
FBI. CIA. NSA. Not just intelligence, either: NASA, for example, has used
certain unorthodox discoveries to good effect--"

     "Roswell."

     "--and the Secret Service used psychics to apprehend the six trainees
at Quantico who tried to kill Clinton in 1995."

     Mulder stopped. "I never heard about that."

     "Of course you didn't. It's just business as usual. Nowadays, the
government uses so-called 'paranormal' methods--clairvoyance,
psychokinesis, telepathy--side by side with more conventional
intelligence-gathering techniques. They don't give a fuck about why it
works, so long as it does."

     "It's all competition, isn't it?"

     "Exactly. Every organization for itself. Ever since our current
subdivided intelligence community emerged during the Cold War, we've been
racing to keep up with each other in various fields. A few decades ago,
mind control was the hot item; now it's alien technology. In a few years
it'll be lycanthropy, or time travel. But it's all the same, Agent Mulder.
It's all knowledge. Knowledge is currency."

     They reached the gazebo. Unlit, with wooden benches enclosing a
hexagonal inner deck. X sat across from Mulder, facing the cathedral,
settling himself in the darkest corner. He continued, "We don't care
whether a piece of information is orthodox or heterodox, so long as it
confers an advantage. Fealty to the Bureau comes first. We send you to
investigate these cases because if we don't, someone else will--and reap
whatever rewards are to be found."

     The casefile weighed heavily in Mulder's hands. Sitting, he dangled
the folder between his knees, looking down at the wooden floor of the
belvedere. "So what does this have to do with Agent Scully?" he asked,
speaking to the boards.

     "I'm getting there," said X. He paused. To Mulder, looking across at
him through the chill night air, it seemed that X hesitated, searching for
the right words; simultaneously, though, he seemed impatient with himself,
weary of reciting Bureau history but aware that certain things needed to
be said. "Think back to November 1963. After Kennedy's assassination, the
government scrambled to find answers--because even if Dallas was the
result of a coup d'etat, Agent Mulder, the very organizations in
question--FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Treasury Department, the entire
military-industrial complex, even the Mafia--didn't know exactly what had
happened. They didn't know whether their hands were bloody, or whether
they had pulled the trigger. Understand? There were cabals within cabals,
conspiracies whose members weren't even aware of their own involvement.
There were other factors as well. Unknowns. It was a big fucking mess in
Washington."

     "What does that have to do with this?" Mulder asked, raising the
casefile. As he did, a photograph slipped from the folder, falling to the
ground, face-up; the black-and-white image of Abby Janneson's stomach,
swaddled by a white blouse, was half-visible in the dimness. Mulder
reached down to pick up the photo, but X swept it up first, leaning
forward and taking the picture from the floor. He glanced at it cursorily,
then tossed it back to Mulder.

     "Have you ever heard of Operation Palimpsest?" he asked.

     Something about the name made the hairs prickle on the back of
Mulder's neck. "No, I haven't," he said, slipping the photo back into the
file.

     "Operation Palimpsest was a loose consortium of specially trained
agents from a number of intelligence agencies, including FBI and CIA; it
was one of many operations formed during that time. Understand, Agent
Mulder, that the Warren Commission was just a distraction, something to
satiate the masses. In reality, no fewer than twenty-seven separate
commissions were initiated to investigate the assassination, and many of
them achieved far better results--using much less orthodox means--than the
Warren Commission ever did."

     "Including paranormal methods."

     Clearing his throat, X looked past Mulder. Beyond the gazebo, the
rear of the cathedral towered high above the gardens, stone surface nearly
black, gargoyles etched across the ebony, contorted, scratching at the
sky. Mulder's watch beeped; it was exactly ten o' clock. "Tell me what you
know about the so-called 'mysterious deaths' of JFK witnesses," X said
finally.

     Shrugging, Mulder replied, "Conspiracy theorists have suggested that
certain individuals who knew too much about the Kennedy assassination were
silenced by a federal murder squad. Supposedly more than one hundred such
people have met such mysterious deaths--more than chance would allow."

     "Do you believe that?"

     "I'm not sure. Even if the deaths aren't coincidental--and they might
well be, given the vast numbers of people with circumstantial connections
to the assassination--the pattern of killings doesn't make sense. You'd
expect key witnesses and conspiracy theorists to be first on the list, but
almost all of them are still alive; most of those who died had very
tenuous connections to Kennedy or Oswald. I'm tempted to write it off as
someone's imagination."

     "Well, you're right. Mostly. Most of the people invoked by the
theorists died of natural or unrelated causes." X stood, crossing to the
steps of the gazebo, and paused beneath the overhang. He extended one
large dark hand and placed it against the wood, head down. "On the other
hand," he said, almost conversationally, "nineteen individuals connected
to the Kennedy assassination were indeed killed as part of Operation
Palimpsest." He fixed Mulder with steely gaze. "The conspiracy buffs tell
you that these people were murdered. What they don't tell you is that more
than half them manifested words like _that_"--he pointed to the folder in
Mulder's hands, indicating the photo of Janneson's belly--"somewhere on
their bodies. Words that appeared, psychosomatically, following their
deaths."

     "What? But why?"

     "It was an obvious stratagem," X said, almost ruefully. "The two
major participants in what took place on November 22, 1963--the President
and his assassin--had both been killed. And around this time, certain
parties were beginning to weigh the political advantages of being able to
communicate with the dead."

     Mulder almost dropped the casefile. "You're kidding."

     "I never kid, Agent Mulder. Operation Palimpsest was an attempt to
communicate with Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald from beyond the grave. The
attempt did not succeed, not entirely. So far as I know, neither of the
principals were ever contacted." X's voice was haggard. "But others were."

     "Others." Mulder's mind recoiled from the implications. "Others--in
the afterlife?"

     X nodded. "Back then, they didn't understand what they were doing. No
more than we understand it now. It took much trial-and-error research
before they arrived at a method that yielded workable results. The method
involved murder: to contact the dead, another death had to take place--the
death of someone close to the intended contactee."

     "Someone close..."

     "A next of kin, perhaps. Or a good friend. Or simply a bystander who
happened to be near the person when they died. What happened was this:
Palimpsest operatives killed their target in a strictly clinical manner,
using an acetylcholine inhibitor that shut down the peripheral nervous
system. Twenty to twenty-five seconds after death, a psychosomatic
manifestation would appear on the victim's epidermis. Usually it was a
meaningless bruise pattern. Occasionally words or pictures or symbols
would develop. These apparitions were then subjected to analytical
tests--stylometry, psycholinguistics, even graphology--to determine their
source."

     Moving idly to the other side of the gazebo, X continued, "Although
none of the individuals killed by Operation Palimpsest developed a
spiritualistic connection with Kennedy or Oswald, some of them did appear
to receive messages from their own dearly departed. A deceased uncle. A
spouse recently dead from cancer. Even, in the case of one unlucky
individual, a friend that he had killed and dismembered three years
previously--the message left on his stomach told where the body was
buried. It was like playing roulette. You never knew what was going to
come up."

     "This is incredible," Mulder said, his head pounding with
possibilities. "And you're positive that these are messages from the...the
other side?"

     "Tests supported their veracity. That's all anyone can say." X was
silent for a moment, then resumed speaking at a clipped pace. "As you can
imagine, this technique proved highly useful in years to come. Over the
years, Palimpsest perfected its methodology, so that now, seven times out
of ten, it is able to contact the desired dead. This means that the
organization--existing independently of any other government
bureau--wields tremendous autonomous power. Understand, Agent Mulder, that
this ability is utilized countless times each year by the highest echelons
of government. Consider it: the ability to speak with deceased personages
of power, dead Presidents on downward. Messages from the next world,
written in flesh. The political advantage is unimaginable."

     "So Abby Janneson was killed by Palimpsest operatives in an attempt
to contact--"

     "--Josef Kaun, the Pentagon physicist whom she allegedly murdered," X
confirmed. "She wasn't strangled; the ligature marks were made to hide the
puncture wound at the base of the neck. Kaun knew secrets, you see.
Contact with him would have been highly profitable."

     X paused, checking his watch. "So this brings us to the matter at
hand: Agent Scully. You've noticed the unusual resemblance between her and
the Janneson whore. I'm not going to bullshit you any longer: if you don't
act soon, Agent Scully will be slain by Palimpsest agents for various
reasons--and I don't want that to happen."

     X's eyes glowed in the dark. "I want _you_ to kill her for me."

*     *     *

End of (1/18)

Blood of Angels (2/18)

*     *     *

10:30 PM--Craneo, South Carolina

     They had been sipping lemonade on the balcony, gazing at the stars
and talking of silly things, when Dana turned to Charles and said, "Excuse
me, brother dear, but there appears to be a midget to see you."

     "Eh?" Charles asked.

     She pointed down. A naked fluorescent bulb was set above Charles
Scully's front door, casting an opalescent circle of light onto the porch.
In the midst of that circle stood a very small man. Although it was
difficult to tell from this angle, he appeared to be about four feet tall,
and was spectacularly dressed. A large white derby, spangled with silver
sequins, sat on his head at a jaunty angle. A sky-blue cravat was tied
beneath his chin. The remainder of his clothes were lime-green, including
his overcoat, trousers, vest, dress shirt, and suspenders, all stretched
over a surprisingly burly frame; his shoes were shined, slacks neatly
pressed. In front of him--reaching nearly to his chin--sat a large
cardboard carton sealed with strapping tape, rim lined with holes the size
of silver dollars.

     "Eh, excuse me, sir?" Charles shouted down. "May I help you?"

     The little man tilted his head back. Dana saw that the word (name,
perhaps?) "CUSO" was sewn onto the front of his derby in bold scarlet
thread, raveling at one corner--a homemade job. Those sequins were quite
blinding. Placing a hand on the hat to keep it from falling off, he called
up to Charles: "Might you be Dana Scully?"

     "No, that's me." Dana raised her hand, not quite processing the
incongruity of the situation.

     "Ah! So it's a woman's name!" Digging into his pockets, the little
man produced a much-folded piece of yellow paper, which he smoothed out
and consulted briefly. "Ah yes. Right. Dana Scully. Should have recognized
the face, silly me..." He straightened up, cleared his throat. "I have a
package for you."

     This was beyond strangeness. "A package?" Dana felt a surge of old
instinctive mistrust in her veins.

     Smiling, the small man said, "When you say 'package' you're obviously
thinking 'bomb.' But it isn't! Trust me!"

     "What's in the box, then?"

     "An albino kangaroo. And sixteen tubes of sunscreen. So long!" The
small man quickly spun on his heels and waddled off into the
darkness--quite literally waddled. Dana, doctor that she was, quickly
diagnosed achondroplastia, a genetic type of dwarfism characterized by
lumbar irregularity and orthopedic problems.

     Not that this explained much. "Wait!" Dana cried as the two Scullys
turned and tumbled through the sliding glass door of the balcony into
Charles's second-story living room--rushing to the staircase--Dana rapidly
trying to remember if she'd learned anything at Quantico about handling
mysterious packages... They took the stairs two at a time, reached the
front door, flung it open. The package still sat on the porch. Dana
ignored it for now, sidestepping the box and running into the street,
glancing left and right for any indication of where the dwarf had gone.
Nothing. The street was empty, or so it seemed; the small man could be
hiding anywhere, though, in any patch of shadow large enough to conceal a
small child or even a cat...

     She realized that she was still holding her glass of lemonade. Taking
an absent sip, she jogged a short way down the block, kneeling to peer
beneath parked cars, behind garbage cans, searching for some sign of the
dwarf's passing--a scattering of sequins, lime-colored thread hanging from
a scrabbling claw of tree branch--but finding nothing. It was pointless to
continue the pursuit further; the Craneo streets became a twisted maze
beyond this point, curving sinusoidal between hillsides and housing
developments, offering any number of routes for escape. The dwarf had
vanished.

     Damn. In this moonlight, it was impossible to see anything: the light
was almost autumnal, ripe and red, rendering the details of the street
virtually anonymous. Things blurred. Asphalt was the color of old
marmalade, blank newspapers blown through gutters by the breeze. It could
have been any street. In any city.

     Suddenly the scent of black tar was overpowering.

     For a split second, Dana forgot about the dwarf. Forgot about the
package. Forgot where she was. She felt herself shift sideways like a
section of film cut from one reel and spliced into another, the scene
before her dimming, wavering. Her head pounded; she blinked uneasily.
Knees wobbled. Standing among suburban hedges and parked cars, she felt
herself overtaken by sudden, uneasy vertigo, mouth filling with the taste
of lemons--

     --and she saw the future. Behind the facade of this street lurked an
infinity of possible streets, or perhaps just one, a street on which she

     (might lay splayed on the sidewalk, breath imperceptibly ragged, eyes
darting behind closed lids, arching against the pavement, occipital
muscles fluttered, twitched--cigarette--wearing a tight vinyl
streetwalker's dress, black, slit partway up the thigh, fishnet stockings
crisscrossing the slimness of her legs, she gasped, cold like stone, and
she)

     shook her head. Shivered. The moment passed. The street coalesced
back into the mundane.

     "Just a fugue," she muttered, a trifle shakily. It was nothing. The
chase had left her tired, cold, dizzy. She'd suffered a nervous reaction,
a psychological cold pocket. Meaningless. After a minute, she forgot about
the pseudo-premonition, drained her glass, and turned back to the house.

     The porch. Seeing Charles crouching alongside the mysterious box, she
was curiously reminded--or perhaps forced herself to think--of how much
her brother had changed since she had last seen him. He'd turned thirty
only two weeks ago, but his hair was already thinning at the back, lines
of pink scalp visible through the reddish strands; he was also veering
dangerously close to pudgy, elbows and clavicles padded with soft
good-natured flesh. She thought he looked nice this way.

     Now, though, he poked his plump fingers through the holes in the
carton--and withdrew them almost instantaneously. When he looked up, his
face was pale. "There's something alive inside."

     Dana steeled herself, still uneasy. "Well, we can't leave it here
forever." She dropped to her knees beside him, digging into her pockets
for her Swiss army knife. Unfolded a small blade. Hesitated. The apertures
punched in the cardboard exuded an odor that she couldn't quite identify,
somewhere between fresh straw and dry pellets; she could hear no sounds,
no breathing, and there was nothing about the box's design that hinted at
a violent purpose. The carton's edges were not reinforced, simply taped.
She pushed the box slightly across the concrete, estimated that whatever
was inside did not weigh much more than a small dog.

     Nothing they couldn't handle. They slit the tape. Lifted the
cardboard flaps. Saw what lay inside.

     Their jaws dropped.

     An albino kangaroo poked its head out from the carton, blinking its
pink eyes confusedly in the light. Snout quivered. It was young, just a
joey; its pelt was damp and whiter than snow, hair wiry and straight along
the flanks but curling and soft at the belly. Nose and ears were
strawberry-pink and lightly furred. It had long lashes, heavy lids opening
and closing with almost human sleepiness, as it bobbed its head and peered
at the two Scullys with marsupial trepidation.

     "Holy mother of God," Charles said in awe. "Dana, explain this one."

     She couldn't reply. The kangaroo climbed further out of the box,
extending one slender forepaw in their direction. Dana saw a layer of
chopped hay packed tightly along the bottom of the carton, some of it
dusting the kangaroo's hindquarters. Nestled in among the fodder, true to
word, were many tubes of sunscreen, still wrapped in plastic. SPF 50.

     The kangaroo stretched. Opened its mouth, licked incisors and lips.
Perked up a pair of long rabbity ears.

     And it leapt out of the carton. The movement was sudden, startling:
an uncoiling spring, a scattering of hay, the box falling over on the
porch--and the kangaroo bounded through Charles Scully's open front door.
Large hind feet thumped on the rug as it landed. It held itself perfectly
parallel to the ground as it jumped once, twice, into the foyer, onto the
living room couch, upsetting an end table, sending a lamp and lampshade
crashing to the carpet with a swish of heavy tail. The lamp shattered,
bulb breaking, and the room was plunged into near-darkness.

     Charles shouted incoherently and scrambled after it. The joey paused
for the briefest of moments in the center of the room, tensely down on all
fours--and then they heard it hop from the floor to the love seat, cushion
springs squeaking. From the love seat, it leapt--a white blur--to the
coffee table. From the coffee table, back to the foyer. There was a
muffled thud as its tail hit the linoleum.

     But wait: somewhere along the way, the joey had picked up something
in its mouth. Something small and black and expensive-looking.

     "Oh God, my phone!" cried Dana. She made a leap for the kangaroo's
mouth--then cursed when she heard plastic crunch.

*     *     *

     Mulder's mind whirled. No, fuck that: it spun like a frictionless
top, dizzy and charged with kinetic motion, tip digging down like a
stiletto, gyroscoping and ready to topple. He sat, numbed, in the
innermost heart of the cathedral. A fallen speck of the Eucharist lay at
his feet--although perhaps it was just dust. X sat next to him, highly
animated, talking more than Mulder had ever heard him talk before, as if
any fear of discovery had been wiped away by this odd, reptilian
excitement.

     This building was full of secret passages. X had led him to a door
half-hidden by kudzu vines, set into the ground a hundred yards from the
cathedral, that swung open on silent hinges when unlocked. Stepping within
with only a moment's hesitation, Mulder found himself in a dry, cool,
rather musty-smelling catacomb, apparently recent in origin, with
luminescent arrows painted on the brick flooring. He was not surprised:
Washington D.C. abounded in such cthlonian secrets. Tunnels ran between
the White House and the Treasury Annex. A hidden monorail connected the
Capitol to outlying buildings. An underground world, a secret world: a
side of the capital that tourists never saw.

     Moving along the passageway, stooped, Mulder and X came to a trapdoor
caked with light mildew. Mulder opened it and, astonished, found himself
_within_ the elaborately carved wooden sanctuary behind the altar,
standing uneasily among delicate webbings of oak, pine, sandalwood, carved
Christs, unvarnished Madonnas, dead scrollwork leaves.

     Behind the largest crucifix was a kind of raised stump, a wooden
pillar extending to knee-height. It was, evidently, a chair. Settling
himself into the makeshift seat, Mulder realized that although his vantage
point offered a nearly complete view of the now-empty church, the
arrangement of icons around the stump hid him from anyone looking into the
sanctuary. Sit, and he was concealed to the point of near-invisibility.
Stand, and the illusion was broken.

     X spoke. "I brought you here for a very specific reason. There are a
handful of places in Washington where American history has repeatedly hung
in the balance--and no one knows it except a select few. The soundproof
conference gallery beneath the Capitol dome, for example; or the pay phone
in Union Station with a direct link to Strategic Air Command. This is
another. You wouldn't be able to imagine the secret meetings that have
taken place at this very spot. Three weeks ago, I conferred here with Dr.
Josef Kaun while Mass was performed less than ten feet away."

     Mulder said, "Wait, listen. I still don't understand why Scully is in
danger. She never knew Kaun; she only looks like the hooker who was with
him when he died."

     "Sometimes, Agent Mulder, that is enough." X absently placed his hand
on the head of a wooden lamb that lay curled by his feet. The lines of
fleece were carefully shaved into the wood, large blank eyes staring up at
the beneficent Christ that loomed behind them, right arm raised,
conferring a blessing upon the empty hall. "Understand, Agent Mulder, I'm
only talking to you in such detail and at such length because I have to.
Usually, I'm content to give you a small amount of information to start
with--"

     "If that," Mulder said.

     "--and let you work from there, but now, that won't suffice. There's
a time conflict, of course, but the more pressing problem is that
Operation Palimpsest never existed. Not officially. It isn't like trying
to track down information on the Kennedy assassination or abductions or
even Roswell: those are events that affected scores of individuals, any
number of witnesses, leaving trace evidence in our government's coffers
that anyone can find. The Palimpsest consortium, on the other hand,
consists of perhaps a dozen hardened intelligence officers, many in their
sixties and seventies, who deal with the same people again and again. They
keep to themselves. It's tight. Incestuous. Your usual channels of
information are useless now."

     "All right," said Mulder, "all right, I understand. But please: tell
me why Scully is a target."

     "All right," X echoed darkly. "Listen carefully. No one knows how
Palimpsest's methods work, least of all the operatives themselves. They
have no time for philosophy or pure research: they need results. For this
reason, the scientific rationale--if there is one--behind this apparent
transfer of information between the dead and the living is completely
unknown. The advancements they have made over the years are the result of
blind experimentation."

     "On human beings." Mulder shifted forward in his seat. The shadow of
the crucifix fell across his face.

     "Yes," X conceded. "But Palimpsest's work led to several important
advances over the past three decades. The first came in 1969, in the wake
of internal troubles that threatened to destroy the operation."

     "Troubles? Such as?"

     "There are obvious practical difficulties to their standard
procedure. It requires, first of all, that a close relation to the
deceased--whether through blood, friendship or circumstance--be killed
off. Repeated contacts are often necessary. After a while, as was the case
with the initial JFK attempts, people are going to notice a pattern to
these deaths."

     "Which is the last thing Palimpsest wants."

     "Precisely. It also presents certain other problems: for example, it
is nearly impossible to kill a relative or close friend of a deceased
President without attracting attention. As they learned with Kennedy, you
can't just use a casual link. You can't use a bystander or a face in the
crowd; you need someone whom Kennedy knew personally, someone whom he
would recognize." X clasped his hands around the wooden lamb's neck,
leaning forward, flexing tired arms. "A spiritualistic connection is a
two-way street: not only must the victim be attracted to the spirit, but
the spirit must be attracted to the victim."

     Mulder understood. "The murders are bait. Luring these dead souls out
into the open."

     "Right. A friend is bait; a relative is bait. In Kaun's case, even
Abby Janneson was bait. They were alone together when he died; she was the
last thing he ever saw." Leaning back in his sanctuary seat, X's broad
shoulders brushed the legs of the oaken Christ figure that towered behind
him; sensing a backrest, he reclined more firmly against those legs,
tilting his head so that it rested on the Savior's handcarved abdomen.
"Anyway," he said, looking up at the Gothic ceiling, "Palimpsest
eventually realized that whenever you have bait, you also have a potential
bait and switch."

     "What do you mean?"

     "Figure it out for yourself. Think: what are the usual
characteristics of a ghost?"

     Sitting here among the spectral Mysteries of the Incarnation, Mulder
had little trouble coming up with a few: "Well, according to modern
spiritualist beliefs, ghosts are psychic shadows or entities, usually
formed by some violent loss of human life. Their physical nature is still
debated: a Kirlian fingerprint, perhaps, an aura somehow burnt onto the
astral field; or perhaps they are the product of a skin-level
electromagnetic fluctuation interacting with atmospheric phosphors; or
perhaps ectoplasm..."

     "Nice textbook recitation--did you learn that in catechism?"

     "I'm Jewish."

     "Fine. But what do ghosts usually look like?"

     "Ghostly, I guess. Shadowy, insubstantial. They often wear the
clothes they wore when they died, and some of them are still bleeding from
mortal wounds inflicted years before..."

     "Exactly," said X, silencing Mulder with an raised finger. "Exactly.
That's the crux: ghosts retain their physical appearance at the time of
death. Same clothing, same eyeglasses, canes, shoes, hats, rings--same
fucking hairstyle. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Christian dogma"--he
gestured at the mute icons that sat around them like oversized chess
pieces--"talks about the immortality of the soul, the trappings of the
body shed like a chrysalis, and yet it seems that your scars and fat and
leisure suits are given equal weight in the hereafter, preserved for
eternity: ugliness or beauty, deformity or transcendence--either way, your
face is scorched onto the astral plane. If you are ugly, you remain so
until Armageddon."

     "Well," Mulder said, "it does seem strange."

     "But not to Palimpsest operatives. To them, it only began a long
chain of associations. If the spirit body is due to some kind of
discharge--ectoplasmic, aural, whatever the fuck you want--at the time of
death, then it can be thought of as a kind of radiation. A ghost is an
image produced by this energy."

     "Like an X-ray."

     "And how do X-rays work? Different radioactive particles penetrate
materials to different degrees. Visible light is stopped by skin; X-rays
penetrate skin and flesh but are stopped by bone; beta particles pass
completely through the body. The nature of an image depends upon the level
of penetration."

     "So...something similar happens during a murder. A violent death
produces this hypothetical radiation, passing through some things, like
cloth; blocked by others, like hair and skin..."

     "...and the result is a shadowy image," X said. "A photograph, an
apparition. With the passing of the soul, a doppelganger is formed."

     With slow dread, Mulder began to see the significance of Scully's
resemblance. "Go on," he said.

     X began to speak more quickly, as if conscious of the passage of
time. "Palimpsest realized that a victim's appearance was vitally
important. Perhaps spirits in the afterlife recognize each other in the
same manner as the living do: _visually_, based upon the face, the
movements, the clothing. If you passed Abby Janneson on the street,
wouldn't you think she was Agent Scully?"

     Mulder admitted that he would.

     "Agent Mulder, the reason that fly fishermen don't use live bait is
because it isn't necessary: an artificial colored lure that looks like the
real thing works just as well. Similarly, if you want to attract a dead
President just long enough to obtain a message, it doesn't matter whether
your victim is his brother or cousin or best friend, so long the _look_ is
convincing." X turned to Mulder, his gaze mild. "The dead can't tell the
difference, no more than you could casually distinguish between your
partner and this whore."

     "So--"

     "This simplified things enormously. No longer was it necessary to
kill someone close to Lee Harvey Oswald to trigger a response from his
soul: now Palimpsest could simply find a random derelict with a passing
resemblance to Marina Oswald, drug her, perform roughshod plastic surgery
on her face, cut her hair in a Russian upsweep, dress her in appropriate
clothes, drag her to Dallas and kill her then and there. And it worked.
God help us, it worked."

     "And Scully--"

     "Usually they search the DMV photo archive," X went on. "Their
face-recognition software is very sophisticated; they have an algorithm
for everything from color of hair to ratio between lip and eye width. They
find someone with the desired looks, track them down, fake a disappearance
or a kidnapping, then kill them in their ritualistic fashion. Very high
success rate. It's a lucrative game."

     "And Scully is their next target," Mulder finished.

     "Yes. Janneson yielded a connection to Kaun, but only briefly; they
received some psychosomatic text, but not nearly enough. Agent Scully is
the next logical victim, because of her resemblance, of course--but also
because the DMV search is costly, can take days, and isn't necessary in
Scully's case. Do you understand why?"

     Mulder did. "They know her already," he said. He leaned forward,
placed his hands on his face, ran his fingers through his hair, staring at
the floor of the sanctuary with slowly gathering horror. "They know her."

     "Correct. They got lucky. The two of you are infamous at certain
levels of government. They know her face, they know where she lives, and
they know that using her to contact Kaun--"

     "--will kill two birds with one stone." Reaching inside his coat,
Mulder fumbled out his cell phone, flipped it open, dialed Scully's
number: there was a monotonous beeping, no ring. Either her phone was
turned off or out of batteries or damaged. Christ. He began a feverish
search of his pockets--Scully had given him a slip of paper with her
brother's home number written on it--he'd pocketed it, he was sure he had,
and it was here somewhere... "Dammit," he said under his breath. He'd
waited too long, should have called her as soon as he saw the picture of
Janneson...

     X continued, oblivious to Mulder's agitation. "Warn her. Fine. But it
won't end there. They'll keep looking for her--and for you--and eventually
they shall succeed, and kill you both. Unless." He didn't trail off,
simply stopped in midthought.

     Mulder glanced up quickly. "Unless what?" His fingers found the paper
with the number, unfolded it. He dialed tremblingly, bringing the phone up
to his ear with spastic quickness.

     "Unless you do exactly what I tell you. There is a great deal at
stake, much more than one woman's life. When I spoke to Josef Kaun three
weeks ago, sitting at this very spot, I made an attempt to buy the
information he possessed, but he spurned me, rightly: what he knew went
beyond any attempts at bribery or coercion. It is a secret that I would
pay dearly for. I would kill Agent Scully for it, if I had to--but I
don't," he said. "Not if you follow my directions to the letter."

     The phone rang. Once. Twice. "What was Josef Kaun researching?"
Mulder asked, heart thumping.

     "You couldn't imagine," X said levelly. "This is the most important
Palimpsest operation in more than a decade--and they will not accept
failure. Neither should you."

     The fifth ring. Mulder waited, his fear increasing with every second
that the phone remained unanswered. X regarded him with apparent coolness,
but his gaze cut like carborundum: Mulder knew that X wanted Scully alive
for his own reasons, wanted her as bait, a worm on his spinning hook,
impaled between shaft and barb... Beset on all sides by cruciform wood and
unfeeling Virgins, Mulder closed his eyes. Hoped. Seventh ring. Tenth
ring. Twelfth ring.

     On the sixteenth ring, someone answered. "Hello?"

     Mulder heard crashing in the background, oaths, collisions. "Scully?
Are you all right? What's happening there?"

     There was a brief pause. "Guess," she said.

*     *     *

End of (2/18)


Blood of Angels (3/18)

*     *     *

     After a few moments of harried searching, Dana found one of
Queequeg's old leashes beneath the front seat of her car. Although the
collar was small, it would fit snugly around the kangaroo's swan-like
neck, a slim leather strap buckled to the nape; the only difficulty would
be in getting the joey to wear it.

     She slammed the car door and jogged back up Charles's driveway, leash
in hand. Reaching the still-open front door, she winced. Although the
living room was unlit, enough moonlight seeped within to illuminate a
scene of utter chaos: tables overturned, cushions leaking feathers, small
bits of porcelain peppering the carpet, a dot-dot-dash of faint muddy
footprints along the rug. Bending down, she picked the cardboard carton up
from the porch, tucking it beneath her arm, straw and tubes of sunscreen
rolling around within.

     The sunscreen served an obvious purpose. All albinos, human and
animal alike, are extremely susceptible to sunburn; the most sensitive
organisms sustain severe blistering after a few minutes of exposure to UV
rays. Albino kangaroos are especially at risk. Although they instinctively
seek shade when confronted with direct sunlight, they're accustomed to the
climate of the sunny Australian outback and don't know that overcast
skies--which do not block the more dangerous radiation--also pose a
hazard. In the cloudy region of the Carolina coast, this is a definite
cause for concern. The kangaroo would need to be smeared with the SPF 50
lotion whenever it ventured into daylight. Assuming that they kept it that
long.

     Setting the box down on the living room floor, Dana took the one
unwrapped tube, uncapped it and squeezed a small amount onto the palm of
her hand. She frowned. It wasn't sunscreen. A semitransparent ointment, it
had a jelly-like consistency and smelled strongly of ammonia. She wiped
her hand on her jeans and slipped a second tube out of the plastic
wrapper. Squeezed it. The familiar white lotion oozed out. Odor of
bananas. Apparently the first tube was the only strange one.

      A sudden noise from the kitchen distracted her. Taking the leash and
tubes, she found Charles crouching by the stove, a rolling pin in one
hand, several slices of Wonder Bread in the other. The kangaroo perched on
the counter across from him, sitting above the sink. It regarded her
brother with a mixture of curiosity and amusement, head cocked to one
side, pink eyes wide and innocent.

     "Little bastard," muttered Charles. He turned, noticed his sister,
tossed a slice of bread in her direction. It landed at her feet. "Use this
for bait."

     "Wait a minute." She moved to where the phone sat on the floor,
receiver lolling off the hook. Picking up the handset, she said, "Mulder?
Are you still there?"

     His voice was fuzzy and confused. "Yeah. Uh, Scully, getting back to
what you said before: your brother has a _what_ in his house?"

     "An albino kangaroo. Hold on a second."

     "An albino--" She put the phone down, not hearing the rest. Five
hundred miles away, still sitting in the cathedral sanctuary, Mulder
placed his hand over the mouthpiece, turned to X and said, "I don't think
either of us expected her to say _that_."

     Back to the joey. Dropping the sunscreen tubes, she picked up the
Wonder Bread and held it temptingly at arm's length, leash hidden behind
her back. Charles reached surreptitiously in her direction, took the
leash, and began to work his way around the periphery of the kitchen,
crabstepping across the linoleum with the collar unbuckled in his hands,
rolling pin beneath his arm. The kangaroo shifted its gaze back and forth
between the two of them, leaning slightly forward on the counter so that
its forepaws touched the spigot of the sink, arching its back and resting
its front legs on the faucet like a gymnast on a balance beam. It slipped
slightly on its perch--and brushed the cold water tap. A thin stream of
water trickled down, filling the sink. Another distraction. It nuzzled
down, extending a pink tongue to taste the liquid.

     Charles chose this moment to strike. Darting forward, he took the
frontal assault, letting the pin fall rolling to the floor, dropping the
bread, going blindly with the collar for the joey's neck.

     Neither of them quite saw what happened next. With a flick of its
tail, the kangaroo somehow jumped _sideways_ across the kitchen and landed
on the range of the stove, sending salt and pepper shakers skidding.
Charles ran bodily into the sink, bumping his head on the cupboard above;
Dana made a lunge for the joey, slipped on a pepper shaker, managed to
regain her balance but then stepped solidly on the rolling pin, slipping
again and falling beside the telephone. The kangaroo stayed where it was.

     She took the receiver, aiming for nonchalance. "So, Mulder, what's
the occasion?"

     "Scully, you're in great danger. Get out of the house. _Now_."

     Dana looked across at the kangaroo; it stood upright on the stove,
exposing a pouchless belly, and sniffed at a roll of paper towels. Her
partner's words didn't register immediately. "What? Mulder--what are you
talking about?"

     "I don't have time to explain. Please--just trust me--when's the
soonest you can get back to Washington?"

     "Um--I don't know--we've got a bit of a problem on our hands here..."
The kangaroo was eyeballing her from across the kitchen. She realized that
she still clutched a slice of Wonder Bread in her other hand, clawlike,
and hastily tossed it midway down the floor. It plopped near where Charles
sat on the linoleum, listlessly rubbing a red spot on his forehead,
casting suspicious glances in the joey's direction.

     "Believe me, Scully, this is more important than..." Mulder trailed
off. Faintly, she heard him put his phone down, speak briefly to someone
else in the room, a quick back-and-forth exchange of hushed words. He
picked the phone up again, said, "Explain the albino kangaroo."

     "I will, but..." A sudden surge of hot suspicion flooded her veins.
"Mulder, who's there with you?"

     "Someone with an interest in the case. He, um, contacted me this
afternoon, told me that you might be in danger."

     She wasn't stupid. "Mulder, is it X?"

     "It doesn't matter." As good as confirmation. "Listen, Scully, I'm
not kidding: there's a certain group of people, killers, assassins, I
don't know--and you're their next target; I have no idea how close they
are to Craneo, but I want you to leave the house _right now_."

     His words were punctuated by a crash. The joey leapt down from the
range, landing heavily on the kitchen floor, tail whipping like a length
of raw dough. Licking its lips, it inched toward the Wonder Bread. Its
large rear feet brushed a plastic bread bag, catching it briefly between
its slender toes, uncrumpling it and revealing some red lettering--which,
oddly enough, reminded Dana of the scarlet word embroidered on the dwarf's
derby hat: CUSO.

     The smell of ammonia wafted up from the sunscreen tubes--and she made
the connection. CUSO. Ammonia. Obvious in retrospect.

     Dana dropped the phone. Stood. Took the tubes and went back into the
living room, back to the kangaroo's box, uncapping the strange ointment
and squeezing it onto her hands. She rubbed her hands together, feeling
the stickiness, palms tingling, knelt--and began to spread the salve on
the carton. She coated the cardboard, the sides, the lid, ammonia fumes
stinging her eyes. She inverted the box and daubed the bottom with the
greasiness, smearing the translucent sticky chemical emollient on all six
surfaces: and then she stopped.

     Words began to appear on the lid and sides. It was a fascinating
special effect, the words fading in like a slowly developed exposure,
first in light khaki against the darker khaki of the cardboard, then tan,
light brown, darker brown, maroon, amaranth, then deep rich scarlet: words
like blood. Words written in copper sulfate--CuSO4--that were colorless,
invisible, when first written and dried, but quickly turned red when
doused with ammonia fumes.

     Invisible ink. All over the front, back and sides of the carton, the
same phrase, scrawled again and again in dripping letters:

     HE'LL KILL YOU HE'LL KILL YOU HE'LL KILL YOU

*     *     *

     "Skin," said X.

     Mulder glanced up, face pale. Scully had just returned, telling him
of the message on the box and attempting to explain the circumstances of
the albino kangaroo. She and her brother were endeavoring to capture it
and somehow leash it to something, after which further plans could be
made; the noise of their attempts--crashes, grunts, falling cutlery--could
faintly be heard. Scully had switched the conversation to speaker phone;
at the moment, however, only muffled thuds and mutterings emerged from the
handset.

     Now Mulder placed his hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Excuse me?"

     "Skin. It's an obsession. Not just for Palimpsest, but for any number
of other government agencies. Understand, Agent Mulder, that many
organizations were formed in the wake of Palimpsest's initial flush of
success, attempting to duplicate its achievement. It was unthinkable,
obviously, that so stunning a power as the ability to communicate with the
dead might be restricted to a single group of individuals: the political
stakes were enormous. A vast web of technological espionage was thus put
into play, attempting to steal Palimpsest's knowledge."

     "Yes, yes," Mulder said irritably, "you've already explained this."

     "No I haven't. I need you to ask Agent Scully something."

     "What?"

     "Ask her if she sees any small white scars on the kangaroo's knees
and ribcage."

     Removing his hand from the mouthpiece, Mulder relayed the question.
After a few moments, the fuzzy reply came: "Yes," said Scully, "it does.
About an inch long, running beneath the patella and sternum, these
small--oof!--puckered scars. Why?"

     "Um, I'm not sure." Mulder turned to X. "Why?"

     X motioned for Mulder to cover the mouthpiece again. After he did, X
said, "This confirms a suspicion of mine. That kangaroo was sent to Scully
by one of the groups acting in opposition to Palimpsest--and it means that
she's at the center of an enormous struggle between cabals."

     "Explain. Explain it now."

     "All right. After news of Palimpsest's triumph became known to an
_extremely_ small minority of government officials, attempts were made to
appropriate its knowledge. This meant the formation of new groups, all
devoted to spiritualistic research. FBI had one. So did most other
agencies. Think of it as a subsidiary of the universal X-Files program:
scores of competing pseudo-Palimpsest groups, all trying to outdo and
outperform each other and the original innovators. Hot property, Agent
Mulder. Winner takes all."

     "Okay, I understand."

     "So these new groups spied on each other. They dug up the corpses of
individuals that Palimpsest had used, usually in vain--in the rare cases
when decomposition had not gone too far, the psychosomatic manifestations
had been doused with acid, obliterating them and any trace of their
origin. Autopsy notes were often useless, usually clandestinely destroyed.
I was only able to obtain those Janneson photos"--he gestured towards the
folder still in Mulder's hand--"through bloodshed and luck. And the new
groups were still unable to get usable results. They were missing
something, doing something wrong, something that Palimpsest had seen and
anticipated. After a while, they forgot espionage and began their own
research. Plowed their own paths into the unknown." X shifted in his seat,
bumping his elbow on one of the sanctuary effigies. "What they eventually
realized was the importance of the skin."

     "Keep going."

     "Think about it: the manifestations appeared only on the epidermis.
Why not the duodenum, or the pancreas, or the inner lining of the brain?"

     "Why not?"

     "There was something special about skin itself, something in its
properties that was conductive to spiritualistic transfer. If the X-ray
model of spirit formation was true, then skin-level characteristics
determined the nature of the spirit body. Something in the collagen," X
said, clenching his hand in a fist and releasing it, "something in the
tissue, the cutis, the derma. They focused their research on the skin. The
nature of psychosomatic manifestations. The pattern of blood vessels,
nerves, sebaceous glands. Perhaps that was the correct route to the dead:
perhaps skin contains the soul."

     "And so this explains the albino kangaroo?"

     "Experimentation with albinism was the first thing that occurred to
the new groups. They speculated that melanin--skin pigment--could be used
to form manifestations; ghosts, after all, are pale, sickly, so perhaps
something in melanin is consumed or transformed during the spiritual
transfer. They used tissue cultures, albino humans and albino animals,
exposing them to different stimuli, deadening the nerves, trying to bridge
the gap."

     "But why kangaroos?"

     "Test animals were bred ectogenetically, the embryo grown in an
artificial womb. Kangaroos are ideal for this technique because of the
marsupial life cycle--the immature fetus crawls out of the birth canal
after a few weeks of gestation and develops further in the mother's pouch.
This process can be easily modified for ectogenesis. Placental mammals are
far more difficult to raise in this manner."

     "And the scars...?"

     "One side effect to their primitive ectogenetic apparatus was that
the organisms were born with knees and chest fused together. Some kind of
irregularity in the development process; I'm not sure of the details. But
surgery was necessary to correct the deformity. Simple.

     "Now," X continued sharply, "listen to me very carefully. Evidently
one of these groups is attempting to contact Agent Scully, warning her of
the threat to her life. The kangaroo is part of the message. Under no
circumstances is she to let that kangaroo out of her sight."

     "All right, but..."

     "Secondly," X said. "As soon as I leave, I want you to hang up your
cell phone. If you wish to divulge any sensitive information to Agent
Scully, you're to do it on land lines. Keep off the airwaves; use only
phones that you know to be safe. Anyone could be monitoring these
frequencies. In all likelihood, Palimpsest has been listening--and now
knows Agent Scully's whereabouts."

     "Shit." Mulder knew X was right. Even hobbyist radio scanners could
receive cellular transmissions. Christ, of all the stupid mistakes... "Why
didn't you warn me?"

     "Think of it as an impetus to move quickly. Last point: I don't want
Agent Scully to return to Washington. She is to proceed to Manhattan, and
you are to meet her there at a time and place specified by me."

     "Manhattan?" Mulder looked into X's eyes, trying to detect a glimmer
of purpose. "Why?"

     "You know exactly why, Agent Mulder. There are already two groups
attempting to contact--or kill--Agent Scully, presumably for the
opportunity to communicate with Josef Kaun. There will soon be more. She's
a commodity, pure and simple: they're weighing her, evaluating her,
deciding whether to inject the poison in the back of the neck or the base
of the spine. But _I_ want that goddamned information," X said. "And I
will obtain it."

     "How?" Mulder asked, voice cracking. "By having me kill Scully?"

     "There are alternatives, I assure you." In a sudden non sequitur, X
inquired, "Agent Scully said that the kangaroo was delivered to her door
by an achondroplastic dwarf--is that right? A word of advice: read the
April 10, 1983 issue of the journal 'Clinical Abstracts.'"

     X stood abruptly and opened the trap door on the floor of the
sanctuary. Turned to Mulder. "Consider this. Psychosomatic manifestations
usually appear on the bodies of Palimpsest victims twenty to twenty-five
seconds after death--physical death, that is. The brain, on the other
hand, can survive without oxygen for several minutes. Therefore, it is
theoretically possible to quickly and cleanly kill the victim, await the
appearance of a message--"

     "--and then resuscitate them immediately," Mulder said,
understanding.

     "You're beginning to catch on, Agent Mulder. I plan for you to do
exactly that." X lowered himself into the trap door, a few steps away from
entering the bowels of the cathedral.

     "For Christ's sake," Mulder said, looking down, "the human body
doesn't have an On-Off switch--you can't kill someone and resurrect them
without the risk of brain damage or embolism or permanent
dehabiliation....Do you really expect me to take that risk with Scully?"

     "It's up to you. I won't lie; there are dangers involved--dangers
that are more psychological than physiological."

     "What do you mean?"

     "When Palimpsest victims are resuscitated after being used to contact
the dead, some residue often remains. Mental residue. The entire process
is akin to possession, after all; in some cases, subjects begin to take on
personality tics and quirks--unusual speech patterns, for example--that
belonged to the contactees, as if some of the foreign soul had poisoned
their own brains, permanently. Small things, but profound. This explains
why Palimpsest usually doesn't bother with resuscitation."

     "I can't let that happen to Scully."

     "But Palimpsest will not offer you the choice. They'll just kill her
and take the message and obliterate her skin with acid." X paused at the
threshold to the catacombs. "Besides. If you knew what Kaun was working
on, you would not hesitate."

     "Then why won't you tell me?" Mulder demanded.

     X tilted his head slightly, as if about to answer--and then ducked
into the darkness. The trap door slammed shut behind him. Halfheartedly,
Mulder tried tugging on the handles, but the portal was locked securely.
The meeting was over.

     Dimly, Mulder heard Scully's voice, heard her say that Charles had
collared the kangaroo, that he had wrapped the leather leash around the
handle of the refrigerator door and tied it securely, making sure that the
joey could not venture from kitchen. Mulder raised his cell phone to his
ear, was about to reply, when he happened to glance down at the wooden
seat upon which X had been sitting.

     On the seat--cradled in the shadow of the crucifix above it--sat two
objects. Left for him. One was a slip of yellow paper, folded once. Words
written in permanent marker, the ink bleeding through: Mulder could see a
time, a date, a place in Manhattan.

     The other object was a pack of cigarettes.

*     *     *

End of (3/18)

Blood of Angels (4/18)

*     *     *

     "All right," Scully said. "Summarize. Cliffs Notes version."

     Mulder took a deep breath; they'd gone over this ground before.
Following X's departure, he had exited the sanctuary, found a pay phone
that stood some distance from the cathedral grounds, and redialed Charles
Scully's number. Huddled in the booth, overcoat wrapped around his slender
frame, he spoke as quickly as he could: "Okay. This group, Palimpsest,
communicates with the dead using selected lookalike victims. They're after
you because you resemble a prostitute who allegedly murdered a physicist
with a profitable secret--a secret that they might be able to obtain by
killing you and reading whatever manifestations appear on your epidermis.
Meanwhile, for an unspecified reason, an opposing group has sent you an
ectogenetically-raised albino kangaroo as a message or warning. And X
wants me to kill you in Manhattan and then bring you back to life. Simple,
right?"

     "Right." Scully was tossing suitcases around the living room, packing
her clothes in one, throwing sunscreen and makeshift kangaroo
food--starches and grains, or, more accurately, bagels and Rice
Krispies--into the other. She slipped her S&W 1076 into her shoulder
holster and checked her watch. The decision had been made to drive to
Manhattan: she doubted that she could sneak an albino kangaroo through
airport security. "Charles has a pet carrier in his garage," she said, "I
think it'll be large enough to accommodate our kangaroo friend, at least
until we get to New England."

     Their conversation was taking place in her brother's absence--he was
outside, getting the car started. Dana was still debating over how much to
tell him. "I'm concerned about Charles's safety," she murmured.

     "Bring him to a safe house, then. Let him stay there for a few days.
Remember, Palimpsest will take pains to capture you alive--when they kill
you, it'll be under clinical conditions--but they have no such obligation
in your brother's case."

     Mulder's voice betrayed his impatience. Nearly half an hour had
passed since his first warning, and Scully still hadn't left the house.
"Listen, just get out now," he said for the dozenth time. "I'll send a
field agent to take care of Charles. Bring the kangaroo, take the
interstate to Manhattan--if you start driving now, you should get there by
noon..."

     The front door banged open. Charles stepped inside, walking quickly
past Dana into the kitchen. The kangaroo was still leashed to the
refrigerator, curled up on a warm spot on the linoleum, eyes open, staring
blankly at the side of the dishwasher. Its ears flickered as Charles
reached over gingerly and cracked open the refrigerator door, peering
inside and examining its contents. He called, "Dana, how old do you think
this joey is?"

     Dana snapped the suitcase closed. "Under a year old, I would say."

     "Then it's going to need plenty of milk, right?" He emerged from the
kitchen with three plastic jugs--two of whole, one of skim--and slipped
them into a paper bag. The kangaroo perked up and tried to follow, tugging
fruitlessly at its leash, biting at the strap without effect. Glancing
nervously over his shoulder, Charles set the bag by the front door and
turned to his sister: "So--are you ready to put the joey in Louie's cage?"

     "Ready if you are."

     Louie. A golden-faced cocker spaniel, well-remembered and
dearly-departed, he had been Charles Scully's only live-in companion for
more than ten years before succumbing to a case of Kibbles 'n' Botulism.
The pet carrier--made of hard molded plastic, green grille door swinging
on hinges--had lingered in limbo ever since. Now, though, Charles scooped
it up by the handle and carried it to the kitchen, setting it a few feet
away from the joey. Dana tossed a few slices of bread into the carrier and
carefully undid the kangaroo's leash, bracing herself for the worst--but,
to her surprise, the joey went for the bait immediately, bending its head
docilely, as if used to cages. (Perhaps it was, she reflected. Even if it
had been bred ectogenetically--in a spongy neoprene womb, she imagined,
lined with amniotic fluid and rubber nipples--the marsupial instinct made
it seek out small cozy places. Pouch, carrier, cardboard box: all were one
and the same.)

     Snuffling slightly, the joey went all the way in, tucking tail
between legs. Charles closed and latched the door behind it, exhaling
audibly. "Whew," he said. "That was pretty damn simple."

     "Don't relax yet." Hefting the cage, Dana carried it into the next
room, shifted her grip and lugged it outside. The kangaroo remained
silent. She reached the car, opened the front door and slid it into the
passenger's seat. As an afterthought, she took the seat belt and looped it
through the handle, buckling it securely to the backrest with an offhand
tenderness. Charles brought her suitcases, then turned back for the milk;
she followed him inside. Returning to the darkened living room, she found
the phone and said, "Mulder, I'm leaving now."

     She could hear his relief: "About time." There was a rustling of
papers, a sound of unfolding. Mulder said, "Do you have the address I gave
you?"

     "Yes, got it." The yellow slip of paper left behind by X had named a
certain street corner in the reddest sector of Manhattan where she and
Mulder were to meet tomorrow night. He had promised to check out the
rendezvous-point beforehand, making sure that they weren't being
entrapped. "Eight o' clock tomorrow evening, where X said. Mulder, I'll
see you there."

     "Listen. I want you to call me tomorrow morning. At ten o' clock.
Just so I know you're safe."

     "All right. What number should I use?"

     "Call me at this pay phone." Mulder glanced at the number printed
above the keypad, rattled it off twice. "Got it?"

     "Got it. Ten o' clock exactly."

     He paused; she heard him clear his throat embarrassedly. "Take care
of yourself, okay?"

     "I never do otherwise." There was a moment of awkward silence; Dana
hung up softly, then stood. A salty ocean wave of weariness suddenly swept
across her. Nerve endings felt dull. Powdery. It was only 11:30 and the
flesh beneath her eyes was already sore; in all likelihood, another
sixteen hours would pass before she could even consider sleep.

     God. Standing there in the unlit living room floor, cushions and
kangaroo footprints scattered all about her, Dana Scully felt rather like
a marsupial herself: pouchless, homeless, and denied placental comfort,
ready to begin the long crawl from canal to crevice. A bit of jelly with
legs.

     But Lord: how she relished the feel of a Smith and Wesson at her
side. "Here we go again," she mumbled. "God help me: here we go again."

     She turned and marched to the door. Taking her coat from its hook,
shrugging the familiar fabric across her shoulders, she glanced outside
and saw her brother carrying the jugs of milk down the driveway, paper bag
clutched heavily to his chest: awkward, pudgy, ever faithful. She smiled
slightly, suddenly swimming with sisterly affection. Charles's hair was
ruffled, clothing mussed. One shirttail had come untucked.

     Dana sighed, stepped onto the porch.

     Pop.

     Then, again: pop.

     It could have been her imagination. It could have been a minor blip
of blood in eardrum, something in her head--a small, quiet fingersnap, a
firecracker, a champagne cork. But Charles had heard the sounds too--he
was looking around, standing motionless in the middle of the driveway,
brow furrowed, still holding the paper bag in his arms--and Dana was about
to call out when she saw.

     A thin stream of milk was pouring down from the bag. More than a
stream: a jet. It gushed in a white arc, finger-width, splashing on the
concrete and puddling by Charles's feet, a shimmering tail of milk
shooting from a perfectly circular hole, the kind that a child makes with
a sharpened pencil on a sheet of paper....For the briefest of moments,
brother and sister stared together at the stream, united in unspoken
sibling awe. They stood stock-still as the thick droplets splattered on
the pavement--

     --and as, with startling suddenness, the stream turned red.

     Charles gasped, pulled the bag away from his chest, saw the front of
his shirt soaked through with blood. He stayed on his feet, dropped the
bag. Staggering, he managed to shamble sideways to the open back door of
the car, falling halfway within, legs protruding. The ground was a mess of
blood and milk, streaking the cement, mixing into pink ropy strands where
the two liquids touched: red and white, a Rosicrucian smear of death. She
could smell blood. Gunpowder.

     Dana dropped to her knees, fumbling out her pistol. The shots had
come from the left. She oriented herself in terrified bursts of
perception. In front of her was the driveway, empty except for the paper
bag spilling jugs and puddling milk; the car sat alongside the curb. A low
hedge separated her from the next yard, two feet high. Scant protection.
Enough to crouch-tumble to the middle of the driveway where the bag had
fallen, gun in ready position, cocked. Her knees scraped against the
concrete. She was shaking. Low, above the sound of her own heartbeat, she
could hear Charles breathing steadily in and out, breath not ragged, no
sucking sound--good, the bullet had missed his lungs--but in obvious pain.
Scratch of tennis shoe soles against sidewalk; she heard him try to crawl
further into the car, cursing softly beneath his breath. He climbed all
the way onto the seat and slammed the door behind him.

     Footsteps. From above and to the left. Dana crouched down in the
driveway, back brushing the needles of the hedge, and heard men coming,
two distinct sets of feet. Oh God. Scent of pine sap filled her nostrils.
She thought rapidly--couldn't shoot two men at once, didn't want
to--Palimpsest would want to keep her alive--but what about Charles? Dana
placed a hand on the paper bag, found an intact jug. Pulled it out with
soft rustling. Footsteps came closer--within two or three yards of the
shrub, a moment within view. No time to think. She hefted the jug. Whole
milk. Heavy and cool, rimmed with runny refrigerator frost. Pistol in
other hand, she held her breath, only half-sure of what she was doing,
feeling the milk's weight, gauging the distance, waiting until the
footsteps came within...

     Now. No thought. No weighing of options. Conscious only of the fact
that she needed to act now, get Charles to a hospital, Dana rocketed to
her feet and whirled in the direction of the footsteps. For a single
thunderclap of a second she saw two shadows, men in black standing _right
there_ in the next yard--within touching distance--drawing guns
lightning-quick in response to her movement.

     She saw them. They saw her.

     Dana threw the milk jug into the darkness. Raised her gun. Fired
point-blank.

     It was no contest: the bullets were mushrooming wadcutters, designed
to flatten on impact. The jug exploded in midair. Milk burst outward in
fine cold droplets, spattering Dana, spattering the men, blinding all
three of them for an instant. The milk felt like chilled blood,
needlelike, in her mouth, eyes, nose, hair, ears--she was covered head to
foot--but before she could think she was scrambling down the driveway,
bumping her head on the doorframe as she pulled herself across the front
seat, over the pet carrier with the whimpering kangaroo and into the
thrumming driver's side. She was in the car.

     The world cleared. Her hair was slimy, skin streaked with white. She
floored the accelerator, car shrieking and lurching from the curb, called
back for her brother to hang on. God, the milk was _everywhere_. Her eyes
flicked to the rear view mirror. The two men ran after her in the middle
of the street, guns drawn. There was a metallic ping, another--bullets
peppered the trunk, the bumper, the chrome--and she swerved spastically to
the wrong lane, making a hairpin turn on the twisty Craneo street. She
overcompensated, grazed a row of parked cars. Yellow sparks showered on
her left. Aluminum squealed against aluminum.

     Her sticky hands sliding across the steering wheel, Dana screeched
onto a side street, hoping to lose her pursuers--but a leonine engine
roared, high beams flared in the night, and a black Impala came barreling
down the dividing line. "Jesus holy almighty Christ," she hissed, hunched
down low in the seat, belt unbuckled, pressing the pedal as far down as it
would go--passing fifty-five, sixty miles per hour in this residential
neighborhood, trees and trash cans flashing by, the whine of tires rising
to a frenzied crescendo--and praying for a widening street.

     She got the opposite. With terrifying suddenness the houses
disappeared, the asphalt narrowed and began to climb--this area of Craneo
sat upon some of the hilliest terrain in the Blue Ridge Mountains, streets
and houses following the curvature of the soil: the road rose, fell,
making her stomach lurch. She buckled up hastily. Behind her, Charles
moaned and lifted his head from the seat, hand still pressed convulsively
on the leaking hole in his stomach, bleeding all over cushions and
floormats. Grim balance: back seat coated in blood, front seat coated in
milk. Dana felt more like a marsupial than ever, buried halfway between
menstruation and lactation.

     A second later, the analogy was underlined. The car took a hump in
the road too quickly, the front wheels losing traction with the ground,
rear wheels lifting completely from the cement: and the car hung suspended
for a nerve-jangling second in thin air, landing with a bone-jiggling
crunch an instant later. She lost control and the car strayed onto the
shoulder. Only a railing stood between it and the sheerness of the
hillside. "Shit-shit-shit," she muttered, yanking the wheel all the way to
the right, brushing the dirt embankment that bordered the lane. She
glanced quickly over her shoulder. The Impala still followed, taking the
curves like a professional. Firecracker bursts came from the windows of
the pursuing car, pinpoints of light, and Dana's rear view mirror--six
inches from her left hand--was struck by a bullet, shattered, tore cleanly
off. Next to her, the kangaroo whined. She shushed it, teeth clenched in
adrenaline fever. She heard its claws scratch the inside of the carrier,
feet thumping in agitation, tail whipsawing back and forth in the confined
space.

     The speedometer passed seventy. Twin lights blossomed on the road
ahead: oh God, an oncoming vehicle. Blue Volvo station wagon. Dana swerved
to miss, grazed the hillside again. Horns blared; she checked the mirror,
saw the Volvo and the Impala bearing down on each other like bullocks in a
rage, the station wagon braking sharply, the Impala smashing through in a
burst of crumpling headlights. Darkness fell on the street behind her, but
only briefly. Engine gunned, wheels spun and caught on asphalt. One of the
Impala's lights flickered back on, blazing yellowly--and now a cyclopean
Chevrolet howled along the roadway.

     Dana tried to get her bearings. If she continued in her current
direction, she would eventually come to level ground, and from there could
quickly reach Craneo Boulevard and proceed to the hospital: at the moment,
however, she was more concerned with staying on the road. Charles coughed
in the back seat. She turned, flashed a passable smile, said, "Don't
worry, we'll--"

     A bullet shattered the rear window, spiderwebs bursting across the
glass. Cold night air suddenly filled the car, the sucking sound of
rushing wind multiplied a hundredfold. Charles shouted hoarsely, "What's
happening? Who are these people?"

     "Don't talk, Charles, please, don't talk." Dana turned back to the
road and said, "I'll get you to a doctor as soon as I can."

     "Hurry...God, Dana, I'm bleeding to death..." Charles held up his
fists, full of blood. He seized the back of the seat to keep from falling
off.

     "Don't die, okay?" Still high on the hillside, they reached a brief
section of uncurving road--and Dana allowed herself to take a chance.
Rechecking the steering wheel, she kept her foot on the gas and turned all
the way around in her seat, drawing her gun and shouting, "Charles! Duck!"
Her brother fell back on the seat, hand slipping. Aiming carefully, she
squeezed off two shots at their pursuers. Flash: flash: the interior of
the car blazed as brightly as if someone had taken a picture. The cracks
were deafening. The bullets passed through the gap where the rear window
had been; one glanced off the roof of the Chevy; the other penetrated the
windshield, punching a hole in the glass. The Impala slowed, weaved
slightly--and began to fall behind. Perhaps she'd hit the driver.

     Dana turned back to the wheel and tossed her gun onto the dashboard.
Glancing into the mirror, she saw the Impala drift still farther behind,
slowing perceptibly, straying to the shoulder. She allowed herself to
breathe for the first time in minutes, inhaling the thick stench of
cordite and warm milk. "Almost," she murmured. "Almost there." Only a mile
or so left until zero elevation, until downtown Craneo. Until the
hospital. "God help me, Charles, I think we might make it."

     They turned a corner, and her hopes were dashed.

     A second Impala straddled the road. Four men, all in black, stood
before the makeshift roadblock, guns drawn and carefully aimed.
Silhouetted in the glare of headlights, they loomed in shadows,
construction paper cutouts. Features etched like onyx. Sig Sauer pistols
jutted out of the gloom.

     There was no escape. Dana slid the car to a stop, numb with despair.
The men blocking her way began to walk silently forward, guns still
raised, approaching the car like barracuda lured by the scent of blood.
She heard the Impala pull up and brake behind her, doors opening. More
footsteps. Her forehead pounded, energy draining from her arms and legs in
sickening deflation, failure beating down with every heartbeat.

     In the back seat, Charles groaned. Muttered: "How steep is this
hillside?"

     Interesting question. Dana glanced along the side of the car. The
asphalt ended a few feet away and became dirt, a corrugated steel railing
separating the road from the precipice beyond. Tangled brush and loose
soil descended from hill to valley at a fairly steep angle, interrupted by
boulders and outcroppings of rock--perhaps eight hundred feet of rough
limestone scrub. Far below lay a highway.

      A dramatic descent--but not suicidal. Not completely. Which meant...

     Again, she didn't allow herself to think. Skewing the wheel all the
way to the left, she revved the engine and roared straight for the
hillside. Shouts--dark shapes scattered, men falling to the ground--a
volley of shots peppered the sides of the car--and for an instant, one of
the men in black was caught full in her headlights. She saw his face.
Recognized it. Her brain tried to supply a name.

     But there was no time. The car blundered from paved road to
soil--front tires kicking up dirt--and collided with the barrier. Steel
tore; the hood crumpled; the wheels howled in protest, caught the fence
and nearly brought it down. There were more gunshots. One passed through
the rear window, buried itself in the roof of the car an inch from Dana's
head. She swore, backed up a foot, rammed the fence again. One more
chance. The car gave a pained, elephantine lurch, chassis straining over
the barrier--Dana willed it across, mouthing silent words, jaw clenched so
tightly her fillings ached--and it tumbled down and over. Front wheels hit
the scrub. Rear wheels followed with a thunderous crunch.

     Suddenly they were on the hillside, plunging down the slope at
seventy miles an hour.

     Except for the lights of cars far below, the depths of the ravine
were in utter darkness. Dana kept the wheel straight, arms rigid, teeth
clattering as the car jounced over rock, sand, soil, brush. Its bumper
caught a low twisted tree head-on, trunk smashing across the hood and
windshield, shattering the headlights. Everything became black velvet
chaos. She tried the brake to no avail. The car crashed into a mound of
dirt, somehow kept going, taunted by gravity--the tires skidded, car
beginning to turn sideways--and now they fell almost laterally down the
hillside, great ropy clouds of dust raised by their descent.

     Dana's airbag inflated like a marshmallow. She beat it down,
straining to see. Lost hold of the wheel for a second, the car spinning
crazily. They began to go even faster, the bounces growing more and more
violent, wheels thudding earthshakingly, only the seat belt holding her
onto her seat, and Charles--what about Charles? Her brother clung,
knuckles white, to the back of the seat. His wound had reopened, his face
pale with agony. "Maybe..." he managed. "Maybe...this wasn't such a good
idea." A shrub struck the window above his head, cracking the glass. He
winced, coughing hard.

     The car began to spin more wildly--and suddenly Dana found herself
facing the top of the hill, the men in black silhouetted against the
lights above. They were sliding backwards down the slope.

     "C'mon...c'mon." She closed her eyes tightly, hands still gripping
the wheel. The rear tires of the car struck an outcropping of limestone,
jackknifing the trunk, wheels parting company with the ground, soaring for
an eternity, finally burying itself in soft soil and continuing to tumble.
The jolt of the landing jounced the pet carrier in the front seat,
breaking the plastic hinges of the door with a snap--and the albino
kangaroo poked its head outside, mewing like a cat, ears plastered flat in
fear. Bounce. Another. Dana cut her forehead on something, didn't know
what, and the blood ran into her eyes, stinging. The milk on her skin had
all but boiled away with sweat. They had been falling forever.

     And then, abruptly, the descent slowed. The ground leveled out, brush
gripping the walls of their tires. The bouncing ceased. Dana heard the
engine again. Still moving backwards, the wheels gripping the ground
solidly for the first time, still sliding, covered with dirt and scrub and
dust and milk and blood: the Scullys ground to a stop less than twenty
feet from the edge of the highway.

     Charles immediately vomited out the window. After a moment's
consideration, Dana decided to join him. She opened the car door and
tumbled out, body racked by chills, eyes fixed on the dusty ground at her
feet, oblivious to the stares of passing motorists. Her hand gripped the
doorhandle tightly, convulsively, to keep from trembling.

     Standing there, head down and pounding, Dana suddenly remembered the
moment before they had gone over the edge. One of the men in black had
been illuminated in the glare of her headlights, caught like a deer, face
spotlighted in a flash of visibility. She had seen him clearly then; she
saw him clearly now. She recognized him in a moment of complete
incomprehension, breathing hard, face hot, the milk dried to a membrane on
her forehead.

     It had been X.

*     *     *

End of (4/18)


Blood of Angels (5/18)

*     *     *

     For many minutes after the cars had sped away, the house of Charles
Scully stood silent. The front door swung on loose hinges, still open,
casting a rectangle of cool yellow light onto the Jackson Pollock web of
blood and milk and gore-streaked footprints that oozed across the
driveway, beneath the hedge. The street was dark. Silence reigned,
complete and utter silence, no passing cars, no wind, the pumpkin moon
casting garish black-on-black shadows--

     --as It emerged from Its hiding place behind the hedge.

     It had lain there for nearly an hour, flat on the pavement until Its
legs had gone to pins-and-needles. When Dana Scully had crouched there,
panicking, gun in hand, listening to the men in black approach--well, It
could have reached out through the shrubbery and caressed her trembling
face. Seized her by the throat. Ended it then and there.

     But It hadn't.

     When It wished, It could become near-invisible, fading back into the
shadows until It blended in with the foliage like a jungle tiger. Neither
Scully nor the men in black had seen It pressed flat on the concrete--and
the men in black had looked directly at It, looked _through_ It, their
eyes slipping off Its frictionless shape, not seeing, not knowing. Their
ankles had been only inches from Its hands. It could have seized them,
killed them all--

     But again, It hadn't.

     It had held back--and now, rubbing Its elbows, rising unsteadily to
Its feet, It felt excitement. Grinned in anticipation of the chase ahead.

     As It ascended the steps of Charles Scully's porch, It was
momentarily caught in the glow of the doorway. Although Its face remained
in shadow, everything from the neck down was briefly illuminated,
revealing an unmistakably human form, dressed in black--and forearms
covered with spirling red letters, words, not English, snaking up and down
Its skin, a dense scarlet text that terminated only at wrist level.
Glancing briefly down, It saw Its familiar stigmata. Frowned darkly, hazel
eyes blazing. Pulled Its sleeves down to hide the disfiguring marks.

     "Coming for you, Dana Scully," It muttered.

     Went inside.

     "I'm coming for you..."

*     *     *

     "If only Agent Scully could see me now," Langly said. He tossed one
of X's cigarettes across a zinc dissection tray. Stretched latex up to his
elbows. Flashed a scalpel. Sliced the cigarette longitudinally open,
letting the contents spill across the dish. "Let's see...Unmarked
cigarettes in red cellophane package, no label, wrapped in standard
tobacco paper. Filled with several grams of fine green powder."

     "Plus some white crystals and charcoal in the filter," said Byers,
using a ballpoint pen to stir the mixture into three separate piles. He
glanced up. "This isn't my area of expertise, but the powder looks like
oxyphenylcyrine."

     Langly nodded. "Harmless when stable. When it burns, though, and
passes through the activation agent,"--he prodded the sugarlike substance
with the tip of the blade--"it transmutes into some very nasty stuff."

     Byers looked sharply at Mulder. "You didn't _smoke_ these, did you?"

     Mulder, peering over their shoulders at the anatomized cigarette,
answered, "No--of course not."

     "Good. Otherwise...you'd be dead."

     The three of them sat on stools in the rigorously cluttered Lone
Gunman headquarters, illuminated brilliantly from above by a pair of
recently-installed carbon-arc klieg lights. ("We had our fluorescent
fixtures removed last week," Langly said. "Tubes emit high levels of UVB
rays. Cause cancer, cataracts. The FCC denies it, but we know better.")
The luminescence was truly blinding; Byers wore sunglasses, and Langly's
forehead shone like a jack-o'-lantern as he explained the nature of X's
cigarette: "This is the Virginia Slims model of a charming assassination
tool we call the 'Fidel.' Company brand. They were originally packaged as
Cuban cigars, destined for the lungs of you-know-who."

     "Back around the time of the Bay of Pigs," Byers said, taking a swig
of coffee, "the CIA made numerous attempts on Castro's life. Some of their
methods were a trifle...unusual. Poisoned cigars were only the beginning."

     "Actually," said Langly, slipping off the gloves, "you should ask
Frohike about this stuff. Black ops are his specialty."

     "Where is he, anyway?" Mulder asked.

     "At home--asleep," said Byers. "Where _I_ should be. We don't all
drag ourselves out of bed at one o'clock in the morning to serve your
whims." He gestured at himself and his colleague. Langly wore an oversized
Metallica T-shirt and purple sweatpants, blonde hair even more tousled
than usual; Byers had pulled his trademark suit jacket over a silk pajama
top, beard uncombed.

     Mulder grinned despite himself. "It's barely past midnight," he said.
"Just tell me more about the Fidels, and you can go back to your wet
dreams of Jean Hill and the Babushka Lady..."

     "You want to know more?" asked Langly. "Okay. Here's what happens.
You light the cigarette. Inhale. The oxyphenylcyrine becomes gaseous,
passes through the activation agent in the filter and is immediately
destabilized. It goes into your lungs, passes to your brain, invades the
rest of your body. The OPC binds to acetylcholine--the neurotransmitter
that sends nerve impulses between the spinal cord and the muscles--and
inhibits it instantly. You're completely paralyzed. You can't breathe.
Your heart can't beat. Within ten seconds, you're deader than Timothy
Leary."

     "In other words," Byers said, "it's only slightly more dangerous than
your average cigarette."

     Langly snorted laughter, added, "The characteristic reflex is a spasm
of muscle around the eye." He put his hands to his head, Junior
Birdman-style. "When you see that, you know that your victim is long
gone."

     "So how do you reverse the process?" Mulder asked, imagining what it
would be like to administer such a cigarette to Scully.

     "It's actually pretty simple," said Byers, sifting the powder into a
plastic bag and sealing it tight. "Which is, I suppose, the reason why the
Fidel was never especially popular as a termination device. You simply
inject a shot of adrenaline into the victim's spine between the sixth and
seventh vertebrae. The shot will trigger an automatic Thornburn reflex--"

     "Also known as the JFK reflex," Langly added, bringing hands to neck
and flinging his elbows wide in the manner of the Zapruder film.

     "--which acts as a kind of kick-start to the nervous system. If
you're lucky, your victim will fully recover."

     "And if you're unlucky?"

     They shrugged simultaneously. "Why?" Langly asked. "You planning on
using these?"

     There was a brief pause. "No," Mulder finally said. "No, I don't
think I am." He repocketed the softpack, checked his watch. Said: "Um,
over the phone, I asked you about a few other things..."

     "Oh, right," Langly said, switching on a computer monitor. The screen
wavered, undulating briefly in purple shades, then coalesced into the
image of a singularly drab web page: "The 'Clinical Abstracts' site," he
said. "Comprehensive and cheerfully dull. Lucky for us, some poor drone
scanned in all the back issues for the past fifteen years."

     "Including April 10, 1983?"

     "Printing as we speak." Langly clicked a keyboard shortcut; the
inkjet murmured in reply, beginning to drum out a dozen sheets of closely
printed text.

     "As for your other question..." Byers began.

     "Right," said Langly. "Dr. Josef Kaun." He bobbed his head at Mulder,
grinning. "You know, for the past few months, we've had a running office
pool on how long it would take you to ask us about this guy. Frohike won,
though he doesn't know it."

     "Let him sleep," said Byers, yawning. "We'll tell him in the morning.
Maybe."

     The printer squealed and ground to a halt. Mulder scooped out the
pages, flipping quickly through the stack, scanning the dense lines of
text. Nothing leapt out. "I already know a few things about Kaun," he
said, slipping the hard copy into a folder. "The usual tabloid junk."

     "Ah," said Langly, hair shining like fire beneath the klieg lights.
"The amazing sexual conquests. The notorious appetites. The seemingly
endless bevy of gorgeous women, one of whom he allegedly seduced atop the
M.I.T. cyclotron..."

     "Really," Mulder said, taking a sip of coffee.

     "The same day, he claimed to have discovered a new particle. Called
it the 'in' quark."

     "Heh-heh," said Byers. "Too bad it turned out to be an experimental
glitch."

     "I'll bet," Langly said. "But that was just about the only mistake he
ever made."

     "Look at his credentials. He studies biophysics at Cornell and
Princeton, is hired by the military-industrial complex the same day he
receives his doctorate, immediately goes into service for the Pentagon.
Doing what? No one knows. Eighteen years later, he's shot to death in New
York City under hazy circumstances. Just two days ago, as a matter of
fact."

     "The other mistake," said Mulder.

     "Like I said, we don't know the exact nature of his work--but we can
make some good guesses," Byers said. "He published exactly one paper per
year. Officially, at least. However, he was never the primary
researcher--his name was always buried halfway down the list of
contributors--and many of the papers were published by a biotechnology lab
called XenoTech, a mundane research company with which Kaun had no known
association. Dull stuff. Logistics of protein synthesis, that kind of
thing. In all probability, it was all a front." Byers tossed the remains
of the oxyphenylcyrine cigarette into a filing cabinet, slammed the drawer
closed. "No, Kaun's real work was highly classified--and important enough
so that, even after three sexual harassment lawsuits and numerous public
peccadilloes, the government kept him within a heartbeat of the Big One.
Majestic-12."

     Mulder choked, spitting coffee. "Majestic...? Kaun worked with
_aliens_?"

     "In a way," said Byers, absolutely deadpan. "He had sex with them."

*     *     *

     The Scullys lurched into the darkened hospital parking lot like
refugees from a holocaust, the car smashed beyond recognition, rear and
side windows shattered, mirror shot away, bulletholes peppering doors and
trunk, hood crumpled, headlights obliterated, air bag hanging in tatters,
tires streaked with mud, suspension creaking, muffler dangling. The engine
roared from a phlegm-choked throat. Dana steered one-handed, keeping the
broken door of the pet carrier closed with the other. The albino kangaroo
scratched at the grille.

     Charles lay in the darkness of the back, pale but still alive,
bleeding not so much as before but wincing with each speed bump. He
muttered through clenched jaw: "Just drop me off near the ER."

     "Are you kidding? I can't just leave you here."

     "Yes you can," Charles said stubbornly. A streetlamp briefly
illuminated his face. In the harsh white light, his mouth made a hard line
of determination, his hair plastered to his forehead with blood. "I'm not
going to die--the bleeding's almost stopped--and I can walk myself
inside."

     "Charles, stop talking like--"

     "Listen. If you take me in, they'll detain you for hours. Paperwork,
insurance, Blue Cross, legalities. They'll want to know what the hell
happened." He managed to sit upright, sweat beading his brow. "I have time
for that. You don't."

     "I'm not going to abandon you." She turned into the ambulance bay and
coasted to a stop, the car wheezing with a relieved sigh of pistons. They
idled near the glass doors of the emergency ward, gurneys and mint-green
floors visible beyond. The gas gauge was an eyelash away from E.

     "I'm going in alone," Charles said flatly. "Bye." He tried to open
his door. Couldn't--the interior latch was jammed. He rolled the window
down, reached outside, tugged on the exterior handle. It came off in his
grip. He tossed it away and slid over to the other door, trying to open it
from the inside. No dice. Reached gingerly through the broken glass, found
the handle--and it clicked open. Grinning weakly, he repeated: "Bye."

     He flung the door open and immediately fell out onto the pavement.

     Dana stepped outside, concerned. "I'm all right," he yelled,
staggering away from her. "I'm all right." He stood shakily, bloodsoaked
hand pressing hard against the wound at his belly. "Listen, Dana, just
leave me alone. I have the feeling that I'm one hell of a lot safer when
you're not around."

     She stopped. Her brother looked like a savage, outlined redly against
the parking lot lights, warpainted, standing semi-akimbo on the concrete
island--but there was logic to what he said. "You're...you're probably
right." Dana laid her hands heavily across her face. "None of this would
have happened if I hadn't been here."

     Charles nodded, splattered with his own fluids, pressing his left
hand further up into his wound, almost to the knuckles. He grimaced with
pain. "Dana, just remember that these men are after _you_, not me. They
don't care who I am. They're just treating me as an obstacle, something in
their path, something...something to be shot away." He shook his head.
Droplets flew. "Just let me go."

     They couldn't argue any longer. Defeated, Dana heard herself say,
"All right. Go in alone." Her voice trembled. "Stay as far away from me as
possible."

     Running a gore-streaked hand through his hair, her brother coughed
and turned away. Staggered to the glass doors. They slid smoothly open; he
entered, leaving bloody footprints across the asphalt-tile threshold,
weaving unsteadily, every detail of his haggard form etched mercilessly in
her memory by the soft light. He did not turn back.

     The distance between them was unimaginable. She stood in the penumbra
beyond the border of the lights, taking refuge in darkness, arms folded,
watching as a passing intern dropped his clipboard and rushed to her
brother's side, supporting him, shouting questions. She saw Charles shake
his head wearily, make a bored gesture. His lips moved. Silent. Slurred.
He and the intern drifted down the corridor, arms around each other in a
slow-motion waltz, the doctor's green scrub suit runny with scarlet. They
turned a corner--and were gone. A brown stenciled sign on the wall--barely
legible from this angle--read TRAUMA ROOM.

     Trauma. She knew about trauma.

     Wiping her eyes, she turned back to the car--and saw the joey's head
silhouetted in a rear window. It had escaped from the carrier. The
kangaroo stood erect in the back seat, slipping and sliding on Charles
Scully's blood, nose high, ears twitching. "Stupid thing," Dana muttered,
walking quickly to the rear of the car. She flung the door open and seized
the joey without ceremony, wrapping her arms around its fragile white
ribcage, holding it tightly. It kicked, mewed, legs thumping wildly in
midair as she dragged it out from the car, carrying it like a cat, opening
the front passenger door and shoving it back into the cage. She unbuckled
the carrier and turned it so the grille lay flush with the back of the
seat, trapping the kangaroo inside. A temporary solution.

     Dana slammed the front door and went to the driver's side. Got in.
Revved the engine and tore out of the ambulance bay, angry at her brother,
angry at Mulder, angry at X, angry at the kangaroo, angry at the men in
black, angry at herself. The night was cold. Grim. Unforgiving.

     Good.

*     *     *

     Eight minutes later, the night silence was shattered as a one-eyed
Chevy Impala roared through the hospital parking lot. Rearing like a
pitch-black stallion, it took a turn too fast, skidded, screeched to a
stop less than ten feet from the bulletproof glass of the ambulance
entrance. Doors flew open. The car unfolded like a crustacean.
Black-suited men poured out, four in all, one sporting a spigot in his
chest that trickled blood.

     The three unwounded men strode into the ER, the fourth slumped
gasping against their shoulders. One flashed a badge. "Federal Bureau of
Investigation," he said to the nearest orderly. "We've got a man down."

     Goggling, the orderly  shouted for help. Within seconds, three green
scrubs rushed into the corridor, the doctors in their starched white coats
surrounding the men in black in an oddly monochromatic ballet: they herded
the wounded man into the trauma ward, found an empty waiting bed, laid him
down, cut away the heavy cloth to reveal the fragility beneath. Stainless
steel scissors flew from hand to hand. So did comments.

     "Christ, big sucking chest wound here..."

     "Get an endotracheal..."

     "Type and cross four units STAT!"

     "Cover that wound up--suction him out!"

     "Two units of uncrossed heme..."

     "Prep for a pericardiocentesis..."

     One of the doctors glanced up. "What happened here?" he asked,
glasses fogged with sweat, glancing back and forth between the men in
black. They stood a few feet away, impassive, their arms crossed, only an
occasional twitch of facial muscle betraying any concern. Two of them wore
sunglasses.

     The nearest one spoke. His words were clipped, brisk, but he kept his
eyes on the man in the bed. "We were engaging a suspect in a high speed
chase. Gunshots were exchanged. Our man was wounded through the
windshield."

     "Your man. What's his name?"

     The man in black hesitated. "Neumann," he finally said. "Pio
Neumann."

     "When was he shot?" The doctor took Neumann's pulse. Barely
palpable--he'd lost at least four pints of blood. The wounded man opened
his mouth, swayed his head from side to side. He was perhaps sixty years
old, a hale and robust sixty, hair gone silver-gray, face tanned and
deeply lined, lips nearly white with agony.

     "It's been about fifteen minutes. We couldn't get here any faster."

     "Is the shooter still at large?"

     Again, the man hesitated. "No. He was apprehended. A drug-runner who
was shipping crack in from Maryland."

     A nurse swabbed Neumann's arm and inserted an IV, taping it firmly to
the skin. She noticed that he began to bruise almost immediately, a
purplish discoloration spreading out from the puncture, expanding to the
size of a dime. Touching the doctor's arm, she said, "We'd better get him
into surgery right away. He may have autoerythrocyte sensitization."

     "Great. On top of everything else." Autoerythrocyte sensitization
meant that the man might be allergic to his own red blood cells; small
injuries could lead to widespread bruising and inflammation. Large
injuries, on the other hand.... The doctor cursed silently. That hole in
Neumann's chest whispered like a leaky gasket; the lung was ready to
collapse. He gave the order: "Tell OR to prep for a gunshot wound. Get
Dorfmann."

     The nurse, glancing nervously at the men in black, whispered,
"Dorfmann's busy, remember?"

     "Shit, that's right." The doctor tugged at his blood-splattered
sleeve, checking his watch. The balding redhead with the bullet in his gut
had staggered in less than ten minutes ago. Chief Surgeon Dorfmann was
probably up to his elbows in him by now. Jesus. "Who else is here? What's
the name of that new cardiovascular guy?"

     "Johnson? I'll get him over the intercom."

     The nurse scurried away. Following her lead, orderlies seized the
sides of Neumann's bed and wheeled him out of the trauma ward, tubes
trailing behind like tentacles. Two of the men in black left as well; the
third, the one without sunglasses, turned to the doctor. His face was red
with exertion, but his eyes were oddly expressionless, gaze calm. He
seemed at least sixty years old, his teeth too white to be anything but
false. Blocking the doctor's way, he asked, "How soon will Agent Neumann
be ready to leave?"

     "At the soonest? Not for several days. We still don't know the extent
of the damage to his left lung. He may not fully recover."

     "Damn." The man spun on his heels, great black overcoat swirling like
the wings of a bat, and stormed down the corridor. The doctor could feel
his rage, impatience. No real concern, though. Typical government asshole.

     He shook his head, reaching for a clipboard. Mother of God. Two
bullet wounds in the same night. That chubby redheaded idiot, shooting
himself in the belly while cleaning his own pistol, only to be dropped off
at the hospital by some other brain-dead who hadn't even bothered to stick
around; and this FBI agent, this Neumann, whose colleagues were pissed
because a sucking chest wound wouldn't heal itself on schedule. Made him
nostalgic for the days before cheap drugs and handguns had invaded Craneo.

     The doctor scratched his head. Coughed. Looked down at his scrubs,
streaked with red Rorschach fingerpainting, runnels of blood--and strode
into the staff room for a change of clothes.

*     *     *

     Several hours later, both Charles Scully and the man identified as
Pio Neumann were wheeled, minus bullets, out of the OR and into the
inpatient ward. Sliced open and stitched up, bloodflow staunched, sutures
itching, hazy from anesthesia, the two men were placed into adjacent beds,
separated only by a curtain of green plastic. Neither knew that the other
was there.

     Not yet, anyway.

*     *     *

End of (5/18)