Blood of Angels (6/18)

*     *     *

     Lying ramrod-straight on his living room couch, staring up at the
darkness, Mulder tried to sleep. Couldn't. His eyes were dry, mind buzzing
like a nest of wasps.

     His ears perked up. A sound came from outside his apartment door,
from the hallway--a footstep, a leather heel scratching against tile.
Distinct, unmistakable. He sat up jerkily, going for his gun, toppling
from the sofa. Rushed to the doorway. Peered through the eyehole, saw no
one, then flung the door open without hesitation. Jutted his pistol into
the corridor, arm rigid.

     Nothing. An empty hall.

     But there was a package at his feet. Wrapped in brown paper, tied
with twine, too small--thank God--to contain a kangaroo, it was the size
of a cake box, unmarked. For now, he stepped over it, ran to the
stairwell. Peered down, nosing his gun around the corner first. Again:
nothing. Not even an echo of retreat.

     Heart thudding rapidly, Mulder lowered the pistol and turned back to
his apartment. To the box. He knelt to examine it. There were no airholes
or apertures of any kind. No address. No writing or marks. He picked it up
thoughtfully, hefting its weight: heavy enough to be a bomb, he
supposed--but explosions weren't X's style, or Palimpsest's, not when they
could shoot you cleanly or inject you with oxyphenylcyrine. He ran his
hands over the paper, sniffed it, tilted it so the surface caught the
light. If there was invisible ink--copper sulfate or otherwise--then it
was well-concealed. Carefully, he flipped the package over. The underside
was as blank and featureless as the rest.

     "Brown paper packages tied up with string," he said. "Jeez."

     He brought it inside, set it on his coffee table and tore away the
wrapping. Inside was a thin white cardboard box, the kind that contains
department store clothing. Edges were taped shut. He worked a finger
between lid and bottom, broke the cellophane and lifted the top away. More
layers: several wads of tissue paper. Pulling them aside, letting them
drift to the rug like half-formed wishes, Mulder saw what lay beneath.

     First: a blue ballpoint pen. He took it out gently. The cap was glued
on. He found the clip, pressed down on it with his thumbnail--and a
hypodermic needle shot out of the pen like a proboscis, two inches long,
sharp and gleaming in the darkness. Mulder flinched, nearly dropped it;
then, gingerly, he pressed the clip again, triggering some hidden spring
mechanism. The needle slid back inside. Frowning, he unscrewed the base of
the pen, separating it completely. A small ampoule of straw-colored liquid
fell into the palm of his hand. Adrenaline. The second half of the
oxyphenylcyrine ritual.

     Next: two pink barrettes. They puzzled him at first. He took them
out, examining the clasps, the fine comblike teeth. Then he pulled out the
next item--and the next--and the next--and when the box was empty and its
contents were scattered at his feet, Mulder didn't know whether to laugh
or succumb to hysteria.

     He held the black vinyl miniskirt in his hands for a long time. A
shiver of fetishistic horror ran down his spine as he felt the
stretchiness of the fabric. Smooth and slippery. Designed to ride high on
the hips. Slits ran partway up the thighs, dividing the dress into two
tonguelike flaps. Like skin. Warm, almost feverish, it frightened him in a
dark, inexplicable way, a standard of sadomasochism, unhealthy sex, dark
street corners: red neon light.

     Then there were the fishnet stockings. Dangling garter straps, shiny
buckles, limp silk tentacles. Crisscrossing threads. He set them aside
quickly.

     Slightly frayed pink tank top. Red spike-heeled pumps. Junk jewelry
in a Ziploc bag, dangly tortoiseshell earrings, bracelets. Finally, a pair
of oddly childlike cotton panties that Mulder didn't want to handle. God.
He wished he hadn't touched any of it. The tank top was faded, had been
recently washed--but it still had light mottled stains running across the
front, almost imperceptible amber blotches, gray blotches, lighter than
watercolors.

     Dead woman's clothes. What Abby Janneson had been wearing when Josef
Kaun died.

     He knew what those stains were. Oh yes.

     Mulder stood, walked unsteadily to the kitchen. He stuck his arms
into the sink and turned on the cold water, letting it run across his
hands, chilling the skin into unfeeling numbness, turning it pink,
trembly. He shivered. Thought of Scully in those clothes. Simple enough
procedure. Dress her like a whore, lead her to the street corner, light
the cigarette, watch as she spasmed, fell to the concrete, letters
unfolding on her belly, turn her over, find the pen, jam the needle into
her spine...

     "Holy shit," Mulder said, retching. His esophagus convulsed, stomach
turning in on itself, and he threw up in the kitchen sink. "Fuck," he
muttered through wet lips. The vein in his forehead pounded. He washed the
vomit down the drain, grabbed unseeingly for a glass, filled it, swirled
the water around in his mouth. Spat. The back of his throat felt like
sandpaper.

     He couldn't do it. Sweet relief washed over him as he made the
choice, saw the obvious, realized that there was no way he would ever kill
Scully. No way he could expose her to such risk. Not just death, but
something even more obscene...

     What had X said? _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_.

     He couldn't poison Scully's brain--not with Kaun's personality,
anyway. Screw X. Screw Palimpsest. He would create his own solution.
Mulder grinned, still tasting bile in his throat, gripping the edge of the
kitchen counter with moist hands.

     But, he reflected, staring down at the black unblinking pupil of the
drain, his problems were the same as before. X expected him to kill his
partner, then bring her back to life; Palimpsest would simply kill her,
without any added courtesies; and he didn't prefer either alternative. He
turned on cold water again, splashed his forehead, face, the back of his
neck, flesh stinging from the chill, the drops lingering and running down
his collar. Keeping the tap on, looking at the water's glasslike
thickness, watching as it was sucked down clockwise into the depths of
that unseeing eye, he asked himself: What, really, is at stake here? He
remembered something else X had said in the cathedral: _If you knew what
Kaun was working on, you would not hesitate_.

     All right. Think. What was Kaun working on?

     The Lone Gunmen had voiced their own suspicions, told him the rumors,
the conjectures, but he knew things they didn't, could assemble incoherent
details into something resembling fact, could piece things together, get a
working knowledge of the situation. Now, though, his brain boggled. He
thought of something Langly had said in passing, a stupid joke: "Bet you
always thought MJ stood for Majestic, huh? Nope. Masters and Johnson."

     Because Kaun had been working with xenoeroticism. Sex and aliens.

     Returning to the living room, lying wearily on the couch, Mulder
tried to put everything together. Pieces of a puzzle. Jigsaws. Assembled,
the picture was something dark, something hooded: insect eyes, bulbous
foreheads, thin gray skin, scrabbling hands--all confined in darkness.

     He began with what he already knew.

     Following the 1947 Roswell crash, a group of Nazi
scientists--geneticists, specialists in eugenics, selective breeding,
mutational studies, biological temurah--had been secretly brought to the
United States. Working from genetic information obtained from smallpox
vaccinations, men and women and children had been abducted, their DNA
unzipped, blood extracted, cells ruptured, sperm and eggs mutated, samples
of tissue and flesh cultured, homunculi grown, genotype violated: their
genes had been merged with alien chromosomes, and these Paper Clip Nazis
had succeeded in creating a hybrid. A chimera. Strong, nearly superhuman,
but green-blooded and hexanucleotidal--and half-alien.

     Mulder had been directly told some of this, inferring the rest. He
knew that Scully's abduction--and his sister's--had been part of some such
experiment. He knew that his father had been involved. As had others.
Dark, veiled figures, supremely dedicated to the hybrid concept but
content to linger in the periphery, the shadows, giving orders from
smoke-filled rooms and Pentagon desks weighted down with gold.

     Had Kaun been one of these men?

     Flashback. The Lone Gunman headquarters, carbon-arc lamps beating
down from above. Langly with his gleaming forehead, Byers in his
sunglasses, grinning like a pair of fraternity brothers. Mulder,
sputtering: "Majestic...? Kaun worked with _aliens_?"

     Byers: "In a way. He had sex with them."

     Langly: "Well, not exactly. Listen, these are murky waters, and I
don't want to engage in idle speculation--"

     "God forbid."

     "--but look. Examine Kaun's career from the beginning. His PhD thesis
was entitled 'Orgone Metaphysics Reinterpreted in a Quantum Context...'"

     Mulder interrupted. "Orgone? As in Wilhelm Reich?"

     "Exactly. You know Reich. German scientist, crony of Sigmund Freud,
made great advances in psychoanalysis and the study of neuroses, fled his
homeland when Hitler came to power, went from Denmark to Sweden to Norway
to Maine. Became controversial for his studies of sex and the orgasm.
Later fell from grace with the US government, was hounded by the FDA on
trumped-up charges. In 1957 his books--years of research, an entire
lifetime of work--were burnt in a public incinerator. You understand? Book
burning. In America. He died in prison that same year."

     "Of course," said Byers, "Reich's most enduring legacy is the
supposed discovery of orgone energy. It was part of his orgasm research.
He found that sexual pleasure produces a small electric charge at skin
surface, a release of energy measurable on conventional instruments. This
is established stuff. Orthodox studies confirm it. However, Reich dug
deeper. Wondered where that energy came from. He eventually concluded that
a bioplasmic energy--orgone--exists everywhere in the universe, the
archetypal 'life force.' He supposedly isolated this energy in the form of
bluish-green particles, similar to organic plasmids, which he called
'bions.' Although these experiments were ostensibly done under sterile and
tightly-controlled conditions, the traditional medical establishment
dismisses Reich as a quack..."

     "As he probably was," said Mulder.

     "Perhaps," Langly said. "But Kaun found him interesting enough to
base his doctorate upon his research. He argued that many of Reich's
conclusions could be supported, with modification, by current
astrophysical concepts--current, that is, back in 1973."

     "Unfortunately," said Byers, "he was wrong. One of his central
arguments was based upon a model of black hole behavior that Stephen
Hawking independently disproved three months later. So it all came to
nothing."

     "What's the point?" Mulder said.

     "The point is that Kaun never gave up. He continued to pursue his
research of Reich's ideas. This may have been why the Pentagon hired him
so quickly."

     "Explain."

     "Listen," Langly said. "Reliable accounts maintain that Wilhelm Reich
had numerous encounters with UFO's while researching orgone energy in
Maine. This began in 1951, when visitors noticed strange dark shapes in
the sky above Reich's 260-acre estate; a year later, Reich noticed an
alien black substance growing on boulders."

     "Black substance?"

     "Right. Scraping it away only excited it. The stuff destroyed rocks,
caused nausea, pain, dizziness, cyanosis, thirst in whoever came in
contact with it. Trees on his property withered and died. Reich eventually
concluded that he was at bioplasmic war with some unknown alien force."

     Mulder shook his head. "This is a tad extreme."

     "There's more," Byers said. "The UFO's were apparently attracted by
Reich's experiments with orgone. They were drawn to it. Aroused. Lured.
They were, perhaps, powered by a similar energy--the light surrounding the
objects was bluish-green in color, exactly like the bions, and the UFOs
moved in a spinning wave pattern identical to that of orgone oscillation.
In short, it seemed that Reich's work acted as _bait_ to the hostile alien
craft."

     "Eventually, the Pentagon realized the possible merit of his
research," Langly said. "They put a team of specialists to work on the
problem: could Reich's techniques be used to communicate with alien life?
Kaun was one of these men. And the answer was yes."

     "So where does sex come into it?"

     "Everywhere." Byers folded his hands behind his head. "You need to
look at it from the Pentagon's point of view. Officially, orgone energy
doesn't exist; Reich is still considered a crackpot in reputable circles,
and any admission of merit in his work would absolutely destroy science as
we know it. His results contradict everything from cell theory to the
Second Law of Thermodynamics."

     "But there was no denying that _something_ in Reich's work was
attracting those alien spacecraft," said Langly. "Something he was doing
in Maine, part of his research, part of his studies. So if the Pentagon
couldn't accept orgone, then they needed to find something else."

     "That 'something else' was sex," Byers said. "Part of Reich's work
involved actual couples engaging in intercourse. He would attach
galvanometers to skin and genitals, measure electrical potential, chart
fluctuations, find patterns. Very controversial stuff. The Pentagon
concluded that this was what attracted the extraterrestrials."

     "Wait. Wait. Wait," said Mulder. He gave an incredulous laugh.
"What're we talking about here? Alien voyeurs?"

     "Exactly," said Langly. "Hell, after a thirty billion light-year
voyage, you'd be looking for a little action, too."

     "It actually makes sense when you think about it," Byers said.

     "Help me out," said Mulder.

     "Think about horror movies--when do the gruesome eye creatures from
outer space attack? While the teenagers are necking in the car. Always.
And reality supports the cliche: abductions do tend to occur in a sexual
context, or a context that can be interpreted as such."

     Langly: "Moreover, when you examine the abduction literature, you
find that there are dozens of reported instances of xenoeroticism."

     "Xenoeroticism."

     "Close encounters of the sexual kind. For example, in 1957, a
Brazilian farmer named Antonio Villas Boas was abducted by a group of
small large-headed aliens--apparently Type C Grays--and brought aboard a
spaceship, where he was then stripped, coated with liquid, and forced to
have sex with a beautiful nude woman with blue eyes..."

     "Forced. I'll bet."

     "She probably wasn't human," said Byers. "Instead of kissing, she bit
him repeatedly on the chin. No kidding."

     "Jokes aside, there are numerous similar cases," Langly said. "It
makes perfect sense from a colonization perspective: procurement of sperm,
eggs, exchange of genetic information..."

     "...and it appears," Byers continued, "that aliens are sensitive
enough to be attracted to the similar activities occurring at Dr. Reich's
ranch. We conclude, therefore, that Kaun's mission was to determine how
this sensitivity could be used in our government's favor--in service of
interplanetary diplomacy. Sex as a liaison between species."

     Mulder remained incredulous. "Do you have any evidence of this? Do
you know the specifics of what Kaun was doing?"

     Langly shook his head. "Nope. Even our influence only extends so
far." He hazarded a sardonic grin. "I'd guess that Kaun enjoyed his work,
though."

     "Perhaps a little too much."

     But now, lying broodingly on his living room couch, Mulder reflected
that the nature of Kaun's work could have been quite different than the
Lone Gunmen suspected. Their information had limits. They didn't know
about the hybridization. The experiments. The clones. The genetic freaks,
the hexanucleotidal half-aliens. The Lone Gunmen postulated a kind of
sexual communication, a way of summoning or speaking to aliens through a
language that was literally universal: copulation, reproduction,
procreation. But if aliens and government were as closely intertwined as
Mulder suspected they were--as the Gunmen couldn't possibly know--then
such efforts would be superfluous. Useless. The communication would
already be there.

     Attempts at cloning, on the other hand...at hybrids...

     Kaun's research might have found application there. Perhaps after his
sexual liaison work no longer became necessary, they'd transferred him to
the genetic labs. To xenobiology. DNA. Orgone. Whatever strange orgasms
aliens had. These were momentous secrets. Secrets that Kaun--and Kaun
alone--knew. Secrets that, perhaps, could only be obtained by murdering
Scully with oxyphenylcyrine and reading her stigmata.

     And what if it was true? What if it was possible to hear the voice of
the dead?

     Familiar names, familiar faces, washed over him again: people whom he
and Scully had lost. Spirits who might be summoned through Palimpsest's
murderous techniques. Mulder understood the tempation. He asked himself:
if it weren't Kaun--if it were Deep Throat or Melissa Scully or Bill
Mulder--would his hesitation be any less?

     No, he answered firmly. Never. He would never kill Scully. Not for
anything; not for anyone; and not for any secret.

     So thinking, Mulder drifted off to uneasy sleep.

*     *     *

     Dawn. Sunlight bled across the sky, oyster-pink. Scully's eyes were
puffy, rimmed with red; she had been driving for nearly four hours. After
abandoning her shattered hulk of an automobile--muffler hanging, windows
and headlights smashed to pieces--two miles from the Craneo hospital,
she'd found a Hertz agency, rented the first car she saw, and driven back
to where she'd left the wreck, luggage and kangaroo still lying within.
She'd transferred her belongings, strapped the joey in securely, repaired
the carrier door with a bit of wire--and begun the drive to New York.

     At this hour, traffic on the interstate was smooth. She made good
time. The kangaroo remained silent, occasionally sniffing the inside of
the cage or thumping feet against plastic walls--an odd rat-a-tat of
percussion, a marsupial invocation against danger ahead. She felt its
uncertainty. Sympathized. Decided--more out of psychological necessity
than anything else--to render her mind a complete blank, no thought, no
contemplation of what lay ahead: she kept her eye on the road, on the
progression of stripes down the pavement, the hypnotic thrum of wheels
against rough asphalt, moonlight, darkness. Anxiety departed. She no
longer feared her destination; she no longer worried for Charles' safety;
she no longer wondered how X could have been among the men in black when
he had been in Washington minutes before. She simply drove.

     For several hours, it worked. But then dawn came, along with the
necessity to pull over soon, let the kangaroo out, smear it with
sunscreen, perhaps feed it and let it take care of business. Scully began
looking for an offramp. She wasn't sure where she was--somewhere in
Virginia, past Richmond--and the landscape seemed oddly unfamiliar. She'd
driven this route before, many times, but the curve of hillside and grass
beyond the freeway seemed almost lunar in the light of sunrise--gray,
cold, alien. Even the clouds seemed strange. Sparse but foreboding. The
sky became more blue, more retreating. Brighter.

     Best, then, to move quickly. She left the freeway at the next exit,
found herself on a broad country road slicing through the fields. Grass
grew tall on either side, waist-height, the blades long and curved like
scimitars from the wind. Wind: it whistled across her open windows, borne
down low against the grass, humming through the grass, pressing the grass
flat. In the distance, a finger-width of dirt led away from the roadway.
It widened as she drew near. Barely wide enough to accommodate the car--as
she turned, the thick blades of grass rubbed against the doors like
brittle anemones--so she drove slowly, crawling forward at fifteen miles
per hour until she lost sight of the main highway. Scully carefully eased
the car onto the shoulder, crushing a rectangle of grass beneath her
wheels.

     She was swallowed by the field. It stretched in blank monotony to all
sides, an ocean of unceasing tussock, wild grass, lawn, esplanade.
Absolutely featureless. The weaving, uncut rows were gray in the dawn.

     Opening her door, Scully literally waded out into the field's
embrace, the stalks reaching past her thighs and waist, soaking her legs
with dew. The wind blew in a ceaseless murmur. She shivered, looked up. In
a few moments, the sun would be high enough to pose a danger to the
kangaroo's fragile albino skin. She needed to slather the joey's
vulnerable areas, let it run around for a few minutes, defecate,
whatever--always on the leash, of course. After that, she could drive
until ten o' clock, then find a telephone, call Mulder at the number he'd
provided, and let him know she was all right.

     By early afternoon she would be in New York. By evening she would
meet Mulder on the street corner that X had specified. And then,
perhaps...

     Scully shook her head. That was all in the future. Until then, she
would handle matters one thing at a time. First. She walked unsteadily
around the back of the car, denim slacks sticking wetly to her calves and
hips, and opened the trunk, rummaging through packages and suitcases until
she found the bread and SPF 50 lotion. Then she moved to the passenger's
door and flung it open. The kangaroo heard her, became excited; it drummed
its paws against the door of the cage, punctuating each impact with a
catlike mewing. "Shhh," Scully said, halfway soothingly. She briefly
pondered what to do next, decided for blind aggression; she unwired the
carrier door, let it swing loosely open, waited just long enough for the
joey to poke its white head out from the confines--and collared it,
holding the leash firmly near the neck. The most vulnerable areas to
sunburn, she saw, were the ears, nose and eyelids, as well as the toes and
parts of the underbelly. Gripping the cap of the tube in her teeth, she
unscrewed it, squeezed too hard, and ejaculated creamy sunscreen across
the interior of the car.

     Most of it hit the dashboard. Scully kept a tight grip on the leash,
reached across the kangaroo's head to slather her fingers in the spilled
lotion. She coated her fingertips, brought them to the joey's ears, tried
to spread the sunscreen on the tender pink flesh--but it bucked, twisting
its head in her grasp, resisting, smearing useless blobs across its wiry
fur. Scully swore. Tried again. Scooped up more lotion, managed to coat
half an ear, got more on herself and the nape of the kangaroo's neck.
Repeated. Again. And again.

     This went on for several minutes. By the time Scully finally managed
to coat the joey to her satisfaction, she'd been slimed to the
elbows--both arms--and her grip on the leash was slippery, lubricated. The
joey sensed this. It tugged, fur bristling. The thin leather strap slid
through Scully's fingers like a siphon through a greased bunghole--whizzed
through--and before she could react, the kangaroo sprang loose, leaping
over her startled shoulders out into the field. It landed in the grass
with a rustling thump. Hopped uncertainly away from the road and vanished
into the tall growth.

     "Oh God, not again..." Scully spun from the car and plunged into the
field, wading through the grass as quickly as she could. The stalks were
coarse, rough, with serrated edges; a blade scratched the inside of her
wrist, a thin line of pain rising livid from the skin. An unseen stone
caught her foot--she tripped, fell heavily. Pressed on. She couldn't see
the kangaroo, but she could see the vortex it made, an inverted V of
trampled grass, like a dinghy pressing through rough waters. As she
followed, she saw white smears of sunscreen spattered on the blades: the
lawn acted as an enormous scouring pad, rubbing away the lotion from the
joey's ears and face, leaving a snail's trail of SPF 50 in the kangaroo's
wake. Wiping it clean. The stench of bananas was thick. Scully followed it
like a bloodhound.

     Light suddenly broke through the clouds--and hot rays touched the
back of Scully's neck. Dawn had passed. The sun was high above the
horizon. "Darn it!" Albino animals fried fast; although the grass would
provide some protection, Scully knew that if she didn't corral the
kangaroo within two or three minutes, enough sunscreen would rub off to
allow serious burns. "Stupid thing deserves it," she muttered.

     But she kept moving. Already she could feel the kangaroo beginning to
slow, sensing that something was wrong: the vortex held still, uncertain,
hesitant. Scully heard a whimper. She drew close, feinted to the left--but
the joey bounded off too quickly for her to get her arms around it.
Breathing hard now. She was tired, deathly tired. It seemed too surreal,
too strange to care: chasing an albino kangaroo through a gray Virginia
field, following shreds of spattered sunscreen like an olfactory
fetishist. The pursuit continued for another minute, another, the sun
rising with every passing second. Now the kangaroo mewed pathetically with
each leap: it was burnt, no doubt about it, but it kept moving, driven by
some stupid protomammalian fleeing instinct. Dumb thing.

     Breeze gusted into her face. She was downwind from the kangaroo, her
sounds and odors wafted away. Now was the time to move. She saw the
vortex. Crept toward it. Approached close enough to look down, see the
kangaroo huddled among the grasses, ears and nose stained a fierce tomato
red. Jeez--in a few minutes, they would blister. Moving silently, holding
her breath, she came within inches of the joey, arms outstretched--and
flung her arms around its thin furry torso. It yelped, tried to buck free,
but she held it firm. Lifted. Pressed it to her chest like a papoose.
Staggered backward, kangaroo in arms, toward the car, by now a hundred
yards away. The joey had been shitting madly in the grass; she could smell
the dry thick stench of droppings.

     Scully was only a few yards from the car when she happened to glance
down at the kangaroo's ears. Gasped. Almost dropped the joey. "Holy...what
in the name of..." The kangaroo's head was just beneath her chin, its
snout pressed hotly against the curve of her throat. Its ears were
upright, trembling. Burnt.

     And on the inflamed flesh, words had appeared.

     Words. White letters, standing out clearly against the red hairless
ears. Perhaps they were carefully patterned injections of calcium, or
opaque melanin, or near-colorless synthetic tattoos--anything--it didn't
matter: they were invisible when the kangaroo's ears were their normal
whitish-pink shade--but strikingly apparent when the albino skin was
burned darker. Like invisible ink. Copper sulfate in reverse: white on
red.

     The words on the joey's ears read 1527 K STREET. An address.

     Scully wondered what might be there.

*     *     *

     Two dozen yards away, crouching behind row after row of knife-bladed
grass, It spied on Scully with Its clear hazel eyes. Motionless.
Invisible. Breathing softly and regularly, It watched as Scully stuffed
the joey back into the carrier, slammed the door, walked around to the
other side of the car, slid into the driver's seat, roared the engine,
steered back onto the road--and disappeared in a puff of dust.

     After her departure, silence hung over the field like a shroud. Even
the birds were still; the only sound was the the rustling of wind over
grassy tussock. Whispers. Like the tumultuous voices of the dead.

     It listened to these voices.

     And resumed Its pursuit.

*     *     *

End of (6/18)



Blood of Angels (7/18)

*     *     *

     Bam. Bam. Pounding on Mulder's door. Heavy knocks rattling the wood.
His dream--a vague, tangled web of images, associations, dark forces,
scrabbling fingers, concrete, nightmarish cigarettes--vanished from his
brain like dew dissipating from Virginia grass; he rose from his couch,
muscles creaking, mind a headachy blur of thirst and fear. Stood too
quickly, the blood rushing to his head. Slipped on something, half-fell,
banging his hip against the coffee table.

     Slinking to the door, pistol clasped loosely in hand, he checked the
peephole, saw who it was, set his gun on the coffee table--within easy
reach--and swung the door open.

     X stood there, holding a red balloon in his fist. It was really quite
comical. The balloon had a cheerful yellow star set against the red latex:
a sixth point, and it might have reminded Mulder of the Warsaw ghetto. The
string was a length of silvery ribbon, tied loosely at the balloon's
mouth. It bobbed and fluttered like a ripe persimmon.

     Mulder asked, "Been to the playground today?"

     His contact was not amused. "Shut the fuck up and listen," X said,
stepping into the apartment. "There's been a major catastrophe. No phone
lines are safe. Palimpsest has uploaded your voiceprints to the IPSD." X
glowered as if he expected Mulder to recognize the reference.

     He disappointed him: "The what?"

     "The international phone system database." X shut the still-open
front door behind him, lowering his voice. "NSA set it up in '91. Very
sophisticated. All telephone calls made within the contiguous United
States are monitored by computer, and, if necessary, recorded."

     "Recorded--?" It was too early for Mulder to handle new paranoia.
"You mean they've been wiretapping _every single telephone conversation_
for the past five years?"

     "No, of course not--not entirely. Listen. You know that your
voiceprint is unique, as unique as a fingerprint--"

     "Yes, yes," said Mulder impatiently, running a hand through his
sleep-stiffened hair.

     "Five years ago, the NSA equipped the entire microwave phone system
with software that recognizes individual voiceprints. You understand? If
your voiceprint is stored in the database, when you make a call--no matter
what phone you use, so long as it goes through the normal lines of
communication--they know where you are. Like that. It only takes a word or
two for the system to recognize your voice. Once it does, they've begun
recording and pinpointed your location within seconds. NSA knows exactly
where you are--and Palimpsest has instant access to that information.
You're screwed every which way."

     "You mean--"

     "Right. No phone line is safe, not even land lines."

     "Holy God." Mulder sank down on his sofa, mind reeling. No phone was
safe--any contact could be used against them--but was Scully already
doomed? Where was she? Was she all right? He asked none of this, but only
the question that bore heaviest upon them all: "When was my voiceprint
placed in the IPSD?"

     "According to my sources, your voice--and Agent Scully's voice--was
uploaded to the database at approximately 3:00 am. Five hours ago."

     His heart slowed. "Thank God." The surveillance hadn't been put into
place until after he'd last spoken to Scully. They were still
safe...unless, of course, Palimpsest had been listening while he called
her from his cell phone. And even if this were a groundless worry,
problems still loomed: "But how can I contact her now? How can I bypass
the database? Make sure she's all right?"

     Instead of answering, X gave an odd, reptilian grin--a smile that
barely cracked his dark stony features--and placed the red balloon into
Mulder's hands.

     He understood. "You gotta be kidding me."

     "I wish I were," X said.

*     *     *

     Hurtling down the freeway, hands moist on the wheel, Scully's head
throbbed in a ceaseless staccato mantra: 1527 K STREET. 1527 K STREET. A
Washington address, no doubt--but to what? And from whom? Strapped into
the carrier alongside her, the kangaroo whimpered, nursing its burnt ears,
newly-slathered with sunscreen; Scully didn't know whether it would soothe
the inflammation or not. In any case, if she wished, she could peer
through the slats of the carrier door at any time, looking carefully at
the joey's reddened ears, reexamining the message for the thousandth time,
barely visible beneath the new layer of lotion. 1527 K STREET. Not so much
a message...as a summons.

     Too many unknowns. Balancing mysteries against fact, Scully knew that
the scales were tipped on an unfair fulcrum: countless unanswered
questions choked rational thought. The dwarf's identity. Who the dwarf had
been working for. Whether her brother was safe. Palimpsest. How X had been
with Mulder in Washington--only to be in South Carolina less than twenty
minutes later. Why the kangaroo had been sent, when the message could have
been conveyed in a dozen other ways.

     Finally, there was the message itself. The address.

     It was nine-thirty. She was past Virginia, past Washington, somewhere
in Pennsylvania, beyond Harrisburg. Two hours ago, she had been
tempted--Christ, how she had been tempted--to take a secret detour to
Washington, go to K Street, perhaps find Mulder. Forget X's orders. Forget
Manhattan. Forget Kaun's ghost and Abby Janneson's ghost and everything
else Mulder had told her: just try to make an end of it.

     But that would be suicide. Palimpsest would watch Mulder's office and
apartment like vultures; they'd cordon him off. Going to him would be like
walking into a duck blind.

     All she could do, really, was pull over at the next pay phone, wait
until ten o' clock, telephone the indicated number and hope Mulder
answered. Hope that he had somehow managed to elude the Palimpsest agents
who--she knew--would be watching him night and day.

     Exited the interstate. After a few minutes, she found herself in
midst of a Pennsylvania suburb, hot, muggy, air radiating from the
pavement, everything red brick or orange sandstone. Scully drove down the
sparsely-populated boulevard, asphalt and lawn all filmed with a thin
sheen of sweat. Noontime would be murder. She blasted the air conditioner,
the sudden rush of fans startling the joey. It coughed once, sneezed,
fearful--even in the relative darkness of the carrier, a few rectangles of
yellowish sunlight shone through the bars, making it wary. The glass of
the windshield blocked most burning UV rays, but it didn't know that; it
only coughed and sneezed and flitted nervously, cramped, in the confines
of the cage.

     Scully wanted someplace quiet, private. Turning off the main street,
she wandered aimlessly down side roads. Residential districts. After ten
minutes, she saw a promising place: a pay phone sprouting from the
sidewalk like a toadstool, a vacant lot on one side, a quiet Episcopalian
church on the other. Deserted. Perfect. She pulled over and got out,
leaving the kangaroo inside the car. It was precisely 9:45.

     She would contact Mulder soon--but needed to call elsewhere first.
Information had the number. A long distance call. After a moment's
hesitation, she punched in Charles's phone card number--use of her own
code might be under observation, but she doubted that anyone would think
to monitor her brother's. Dialed the number. The phone rang once, twice.

     A pleasant female voice answered. "Good morning, Craneo Community
Hospital."

     "Hello, I'd like to check in on the condition of one of your
patients, Charles Scully--he was admitted late last night because of a
bullet injury..."

     "May I ask who is calling?"

     "His sister. I--" Scully hesitated. She didn't know what Charles
might have told the hospital, what explanation he might have given for the
shooting; she didn't want to give any information that would conflict with
his version of events. Best to keep quiet. Play dumb.

     "Well, let's see..." Rustling of papers, insurance forms, patient
records. "Here we are. Charles Scully went into surgery around
midnight--said he'd shot himself while cleaning his own handgun, and was
dropped off at the emergency room by a friend of his..."

     "A friend? Did he say who?"

     "There's no name here; I'm not sure."

     "How's he doing? What's his status?" Unconsciously nervous, Scully
wrapped the silvery metal cord of the phone around her thumb, twisting it
convulsively tight.

     "Signs are stable. He came out of the OR nine hours ago. I think he's
still sleeping. With luck, he could be released as soon as tomorrow
morning."

     "Was there any permanent damage?"

     "The doctors removed his spleen--he didn't need it anyway. They
repaired the damage to his stomach during surgery. The bullet chipped one
of his ribs. That's all. He's lucky; the slug lodged three inches from his
backbone."

     "So he should be all right."

     "Barring any unforeseen complications, yes. At the moment, it looks
like he'll be just fine."

     Relief. Her brother was out of danger. "Thank you," she said. "Thank
you very much." She hung up, cutting off the hospital receptionist before
she could ask any questions.

     She did not hear the soft digital murmur at the other end of the
line.

*     *     *

     Charles Scully no longer had a spleen, and most of his other organs
seemed to have vacated the premises as well: heart, lungs, liver,
intestines, diaphragm, pancreas and all the rest had been replaced by
numbness and dull pain. Slippery aching. His chest was a hollow cavity,
weighted down with bricks. Breathing took an effort. Instead of sleeping,
he stared up at the ceiling and tried to count the pinholes in an acoustic
tile. The first time, he managed to get to twenty-nine before a gut spasm
forced him to close his eyes and start over; after that, he never got past
twelve.

     He lay in bed like a survivor on a desert island, isolated,
sleepless,  bordered on all sides by draperies the color of ocean waves.

     Several minutes passed before he noticed the mumbling. Slurred words
from an anesthetized throat, soft, insinuating: "Gaaaa...Doanwait
fomee...Go wai....Doanwait fomee...Getter...."

     Curious, Charles turned his head slightly in the direction of the
noise, to the left. Another sterile green sheet stood between him and the
neighboring bed, blocking his view, but there was a foot-high gap between
it and the floor, and he could hear just fine: whoever lay next to him was
talking in his sleep, words snaking up from delirium. Thick-lipped.
Probably on the opiates--morphine--that Charles had refused. Sighing, he
turned away, looking back up at the ceiling. His head sunk down low into
the hot puffiness of his pillow--too hot, soaked with sweat--hair damp
with perspiration. Began counting holes in the tile again.

     More sounds. They became clearer, less fuzzy, although still strained
through cheesecloth: "Goer way...Doant weight fermee...Getter...Get
her..."

     Was anyone with the man in the other bed? Any visitors? Charles
listened carefully, closing his eyes. No sound except his own haggard
breathing, the beep of a distant electroencephalograph, a rustling of
sheets, more rough gasping from beside him--and the mumbles. Nothing else.
Both he and the man beside him were alone. He guessed that there were
probably other beds stretching to either side, a long row lining the
hallway, but most of them felt vacant, silent: Craneo was a fairly quiet
suburb, after all, and its inpatient ward was unlikely to be crowded in
early morning.

     Of course, Charles reflected, he didn't know what time it really
was--it _felt_ like morning, but he couldn't be sure. No clock. He
hazarded a movement, bringing a hand to his face, feeling his cheeks and
chin and upper lip. Some stubble, not more than a day's worth. Close to
what he sometimes felt at ten or eleven o' clock.

     "Go away...Don't wait for me...Get her...Get her..."

     Charles's eyes opened wide. The mumbles had cleared, as if the
speaker had broken through a mental haze, cleared his throat, drawn his
lips back from his tongue. Go away. Don't wait for me. Get her. The voice
of an old man. The words were still slurred, although less than
before--like a senior citizen speaking through a clotted throat. Senile?
Christ: the last thing Charles wanted was to lie here listening to the
mutterings of some old alter kocker--

     "Fuggin kannawo."

     "What?" The word was ripped from Charles throat before he could stop
it. He didn't like the way he sounded. His voice was sandpaper. "What did
you say?"

     "Fuggin kannawo. Fukin kanaroo. Fuckin' kangaroo." This was not a
response: the man was still asleep, in drug-induced mistiness. Charles, on
the other hand, became suddenly and painfully lucid, the world's clashing
colors taking him by force. He stared at the gray ceiling. Listened. The
man continued to yammer: "Kangaroo. Whatsername? Shkully. Shkully. Get
Shkully, forget me..."

     "Oh God," Charles whispered to himself. "Oh God, oh Christ, oh
mercy."

     It was the man in black. Lying less than five feet away in a narcotic
stupor, in a bed just like this one, wired to IV's, tubes up his nose:
Charles saw the scene as if he were hovering by the man's bedside. Right
there. They had spent the night together.

     Last night. Charles squeezed his eyes shut, tried to think. He dimly
recalled Scully shooting through the rear window of the car--squeezing off
two bullets at the cyclopean Impala--perhaps hitting someone, the driver,
slowing the pursuit.... But why in God's name would the men in black take
this risk? Why would they bring one of their own to a public hospital?
Questions would be asked. Names taken. They would be exposed, perhaps
damagingly.

     He opened his eyes. Turned his head until he saw the celery-colored
plastic of the dividing curtain. Fixing his gaze upon it--as if he could
see through the laminated material, see the man in black, look upon his
face--Charles wondered what to do next. With shocked bemusement, he
realized that he could feel his heart again. It thudded like a grandfather
clock. His chest was intact again. Lungs. Belly. Gut. A flood of hot
anxiety filled all his organs.

     "Goddamn kangaroo...Don't wait for me...Kaystreet...It...It..."

     First: he needed to make sure he was right. Wondered if he could
stand. His legs felt like rubbery sticks, brittle and trembling at the
same time. He shifted them beneath the bedclothes. Pain in his intestines.
He could feel the gauze and plaster and plastic staples wrapped around his
abdomen, keeping everything securely in place. Try harder. Bring legs to
edge of mattress. Thin cot, covered with polyethylene. His foot hovered at
the edge; with fixed concentration, he began to bring it down in slow
gradients, inch by inch, until his bare sole touched the floor. Icy. Then
the next foot...

     Bit by bit. Minute by minute. Charles Scully was on his feet before
he knew it.

     Standing unsteadily, he looked down. He wore a thin blue hospital
gown, tied loosely at the back, leaving spine and ass exposed. His legs
were pale, fuzzed with red hair. Thin. Covered with Band-Aids, wounds he
hadn't noticed before, probably scratches from the downhill tumble in the
car; he had been tossed around the back seat like a rag doll, cutting
himself on chips of glass from broken windows. He briefly wondered where
they'd put his clothes.

     "Kangaroo...Shkully...K Street..."

     Took a step. Another. Parallel to the curtain. Charles teetered, kept
his balance with an effort of will. Needlepoints of hot pain lazed through
his stomach, one hot ulcer--a wormhole size of a .357--throbbing
maddeningly in his abdominal wall. He could feel his juices sloshing
around inside. Again and again, he told himself: Just get to the edge of
the curtain, draw it aside, take a quick peek--and _then_ decide what to
do next.

     Suddenly, he could go no further. He glanced down, saw the reason:
intravenous tubes trailed from his forearm, taped in place, translucent
ducts transporting fluids to and from his bloodstream. Six feet long, they
leashed him to an IV stand--bedecked with plump bags of clear liquid--that
stood beside his bed. Two choices: either rip the needles from his arm or
take the stand along with him. He chose the latter. The stand had squeaky
wheels, gritting along the smooth tile--

     --and the mumbling from the other bed, which had continued softly
this entire time, abruptly stopped. Midsyllable: "Kanga--" Then nothing.
Silence.

     The man in black was awake. Charles could feel it. He sensed--in some
pain-sharpened extrasensory corner of his brain--the man's eyes opening,
squinting in the cool light, darting back and forth, scanning the curtain,
looking through the gap between plastic and floor, seeing the IV rig and
the bare feet of Charles Scully. He felt the man in black's mind; the man
in black felt his. They stood there, silent on either side of the divider,
running their mental eyeballs over the other's rapt inspection.

     Move. Move. MOVE. But what could he do? Find something he could use.
A tool. A weapon. Charles looked around desperately. He couldn't use the
IV stand as a bludgeon--too obvious--if a nurse saw him clubbing the man
in black, what explanation could he give? Pillow--smother him? Wrap a
bedsheet around his neck? His heart began to beat faster--he heard
rustling from the next bed. The man in black was stirring, trying to rise.
Sensed danger. Oh yes. Like a predator, feral, alert to the barest scent
of fear. The man smelled him.

     Charles saw a small blue wastebasket by his bed, plastic-lined. He
craned his neck, examined the trash within. A few sterile wrappings,
crumpled and airy. Some strands of thread.

     And a strip of brown pasteboard. He hesitated over this last item.
Knew what it might have contained. With a quick sideward glance at the
curtain, he knelt down, quickly stuck his fingers among the garbage,
rummaged through the wrappings and tearstrings. Bits of cellophane, static
clinging lightly to the back of his hand.

     He almost cut himself when he found the razor blade.

     Brushing aside the surrounding deitrus, he saw the silvery gleam,
rectangular and sharp. Just a regular razor, not sterile or surgical. The
kind used to slice open cartons. He pinched it carefully between thumb and
forefinger and took it out, holding the blunt side firmly. Stood. Judged
the edge with his thumbnail--dull, but it could still slash. Charles
regarded the blade thoughtfully for few moments. Deep inside his face, his
teeth were clattering like maracas--he wasn't sure he could do anything
with the razor other than bluster and bluff--and for what?

     Answers. Plain and simple. Someone had been trying to kill him and
kidnap his sister. He wanted to know why.

     Drawing aside the curtain, blade in hand, Charles Scully looked down,
looked deep into the hollow eyes of the man in black--and stepped forward
to face his destiny.

*     *     *

End of (7/18)

Blood of Angels (8/18)

*     *     *

     Mulder stood on the fire escape for a few bare seconds, silhouetted
against the gray sky, wind rustling his hair, and gazed down at the
pavement four stories below. Checked his watch. 9:10. He gripped the
railing and descended, feet rattling the narrow corrugated aluminum of the
steps, holding the red balloon in his other hand. The updrafts made it
dance like a bobbing apple, the only spot of color along the entire
sun-faded side of the building--a ripe bloody pustule on the back of a
giant. He held the balloon carefully, near the neck, the ribbon wrapped
tightly around his fingers.

     Despite his care, the fire escape clanged. Cold sweat on his
forehead. Nervous. The streets were crowded; anyone could look up from the
sidewalk and see him.

     But Palimpsest's agents would not--with luck. X had explained
quickly. Conventional espionage wisdom dictates that three men are
necessary for adequate surveillance--two on the ground, one at an elevated
position. Triangulated sights. An impenetrable arrangement. Not an option
for Palimpsest, however, which was suffering from the Achilles' heel of
all government agencies, covert or otherwise: a lack of warm bodies. Quite
simply, it lacked sufficient manpower to keep Mulder visually pinioned.
The majority of its agents were pursuing their true target, Agent Scully;
Mulder was little more than an afterthought. For this reason, there was no
triangulation. Only two agents watched his apartment. And both of these
men had blind spots--areas through which Mulder could walk without being
seen, hidden from view by the building itself.

     In some places, the blind spots coincided. X had been explicit. One
of Palimpsest's men sat at a park bench across the street. The other stood
at the rear of the apartments. If neither of them moved--and they had been
standing in the same positions for more than two hours--then each had
blind spots on either side of the building. Specifically: there was a
four-foot-wide swath of concrete, angling away from the flank of the
building, that was invisible to both.

     From there, Mulder could come and go as he pleased. Indeed, if he was
careful, he could make it all the way to the sidewalk without being seen.
Trying for his car would be too risky, but he could take a bus to
Washington and be at the designated pay phone before the clock struck ten.

     Which was exactly what happened. Reaching the lowermost balcony of
the fire escape, he swung himself down and dropped heavily to the cement,
careful not to pop the balloon. He landed squarely in the blind spot.
According to X, it ran from one side of the building nearly to the street,
where a row of garbage cans, placed there for the occasion by X himself,
made up the remainder. Mulder crouched low. Shambled to the cans, not
straying an inch from the chosen path. Made it to the sidewalk--and found
himself a free man.

     Moving quickly away, he glanced back over his shoulder, saw that it
would be easy to take the route in reverse: one simply jumped back onto
the fire escape, mounted four stories, and climbed into the window at the
far end of the fourth floor hallway. He assumed that this was how X had
entered and exited without being seen.

     Mulder was momentarily tempted to circle back around the block to
catch a glimpse of the men who were watching him. See the faces of the
agents of Palimpsest. Mark them. Know them. But it was already a quarter
past nine; if he was to make it to the phone in time, he would need to
hurry, leave now. Find a bus. Make it to the cathedral before Scully
called.

     And so he did.

     Forty minutes later, Mulder stood at the corner of Massachusetts and
Wisconsin, balloon in hand, guarding the pay phone and waiting for it to
ring. 9:58. His mind had played tricks on him all the way there; sitting
aimlessly in the bus, staring out the window, he kept seeing Scully in
Abby Janneson's clothes, having a seizure on the dirt-encrusted Manhattan
street, cigarette falling from her lips, poisonous smoke clogging her
lungs into paralysis. A premonition. He saw it clearly. Even if he trusted
his own resolve, knew that he would never hurt his partner in any way, the
vision had an eerie plausibility. Compelling. It brought out the
gooseflesh.

     Worry throttled him. He fought it down, braced himself for the
challenge ahead: no matter what, he couldn't let Scully speak. A one-way
phone call is difficult when the other party isn't in on the joke.
Difficult--but essential. One word from Scully, and Palimpsest would be on
her like lightning. So Mulder psyched himself, let the adrenaline course
freely through his veins, stomped his feet on the ground, worked himself
into a frenzy of anxious anticipation, getting ready for what he had to
do.

     The phone rang. Mulder jumped. It rang again, the shrill whine
stabbing his heart like a needle. No doubt about the timing--ten o' clock
exactly--but still he hesitated, wary, not quite ready to untie the
balloon and have a go at it. Another ring, another. He found his resolve.
He took the ribbon, which was wrapped around the balloon's neck like a
shoelace, and undid it, tightly pinching the neck shut with his fingers to
keep any helium from escaping.

     He put the balloon to his lips and inhaled deeply. Felt the cold gas
enter his lungs. Lightheaded. He saw the receiver through a cool metallic
haze, bronchial tubes chilled, full of alien gas. Helium. He gripped the
phone, yanked it from the cradle and spoke into it as quickly as he could,
the words spilling out one after the other:

     "scully, it's me, mulder--do not talk--trust me--do not talk. keep
silent, please, scully, it's mulder--just stay quiet, this line is bugged,
don't talk, all right? repeat: this line is bugged. i know i sound
strange, but don't talk--just listen--be quiet. all right? don't talk.
don't talk. do not talk." He paused, heard breathing at other end of the
line. Scully's? Irony indeed: he couldn't be sure.

     So. The helium made his voice high, strange, cartoonish. Chipmunk
talk. He sounded like Steamboat Willie. Ridiculous--but such a
modification altered the frequency of his voiceprint, the pitch, the
amplitude of the graph, confusing the NSA computers and allowing him to
talk safely without being recognized. Sounding like a mechanical castrato
was only a slight inconvenience.

     Taking another lungfull of helium, he began again. Speech remained
squeaky, high-strung Mickey Mouse, but there was nothing humorous about
it: tense and harried, his brain felt like a rubber band ready to snap.
"okay, scully," he said, "listen. there have been complications. no land
lines are safe." He explained quickly about the NSA computers and
Palimpsest's access to them; then he took another toke of gas, said, "if
you ever want to talk on the phone, you'll need to use a balloon, like
this." More silence on the other end. Good. Eerie, though. He could still
hear her breathing. More gas. "all right," he squeaked. "the meeting is to
go ahead as scheduled. eight o' clock tonight, in manhattan; i'll be
flying there as soon as i wrap up a few loose ends in washington. are you
all right? do you think you can make it to new york in time? tap once on
the mouthpiece for yes, twice for no."

     A slight pause--then one tap.

     "good." He gassed himself again. His head was beginning to throb from
lack of oxygen. "let's see..." Think: what else did she need to know?
"i've found out some stuff about kaun. i think he was working with
majestic-12. with aliens. either details of cloning or interspecies
communication. this explains why x and palimpsest are so eager to obtain
his information. valuable stuff." Gas break, then the most important part
of his message: "i've done a lot of thinking...and i've decided that i
can't do what x wants. i'm not going to hurt you--it's too dangerous, even
if he says that you'll be all right. forget the palimpsest method. we can
elude them, find another way to get kaun's information. it just isn't a
risk i'm willing to take." He paused, took half-a-dozen heaving breaths,
filling his lungs with pure air, oxygen: the thunder of blood in his brain
eased slightly, clearing his thoughts. Again, helium. "all right...i'm
trying to think of a way we can communicate.... do you know morse code?"

     He strained to hear. Silence at the other end of the line--and then,
faintly, light hissing, puffs of air: Scully was blowing into the
mouthpiece. One long puff...one short puff...two long puffs in succession.
Pause. Long-short-long-long meant Y. Brain scrambling to piece the letters
together, Mulder listened, heard another short puff, pause--the letter
E--then three quick puffs. S.

     Y--E--S. Scully knew Morse code.

     "great," he tweeted. "is there anything you need to tell me?"

     More puffs. A message being spelt out painstakingly, letter by
letter. The first grouping--one short puff followed by four longs--threw
him off until he remembered his numbers. Three more digits. Three letters.
And she was done.

     1--5--2--7--K--S--T.

     Mulder inhaled more helium. The balloon was nearly empty, soft and
collapsing in his hands. "one-five-two-seven-k-s-t." Dizzy and lightheaded
from the gas, he didn't trust his memory, jotting the message down on a
scrap of paper. "k-s-t?" he repeated shrilly. "kist? what is that, some
kind of serial number?"

     Long puff, short puff. N. No.

     "an address?"

     Long-short-long-long. Y. Yes.

     "1527 k...street? k street? here in washington?"

     Y.

     "okay. do you want me to check this place out? go there? is it
important?"

     Y.

     "all right." Mulder tucked the piece of paper in his pocket, glanced
at his watch, took another breath of gas--and suddenly he felt his lungs
freeze up. Christ. He was a heartbeat away from passing out on the
sidewalk. "scully, i have to go." He coughed, felt his brain shudder from
cyanosis. Of all the stupid things to do. "my helium's almost gone. i
can't see straight. i--oh jeez." He fumbled with the handset. Managed to
hang up the phone, his fingers numb. Fell to a half-kneel by the
telephone, scraping his knee on the concrete, the world disappearing
before his eyes in shades of red and brown and maroon--fuck, one fuck of a
headache. God. He'd be paying for this for the rest of the week. Needed
aspirin. Tylenol. At least half the bottle.

     The balloon fell from his fingers. The last gust of helium spurted
out through the nozzle, sending it streaking across the street like a red
UFO--brrrrrp--where it fell in the gutter and was taken by the wind. In a
moment it was gone.

*     *     *

     Scully hung up the phone, her mind ablaze with questions and fears
and concerns...but before she could think, before she could absorb the
consequences of her actions--Jesus, she'd called the hospital, talked for
more than a minute, given the omniscient NSA computer more than enough
time to hear and mark her voice--something happened that was so
unexpected, so startling, that she gave a defensive little shriek. Someone
tapped her on the shoulder.

     A voice: "Special Agent Dana Scully?"

     She whirled. Behind her stood a young woman. Dressed in a
long-sleeved floral dress, blonde hair tied back in a pony tail, dark skin
freckled and slightly sunburnt, the stranger smiled, stuck out her hand.
"Hi. I'm Sera. I sent you the joey."

     "The joey." Scully paused.

     "Yes," the stranger said. "A member of my organization delivered the
kangaroo to your door last night." She stood before Scully with her hand
still extended, smiling broadly, eyes shining. "You received it, didn't
you?"

     "Of course," Scully said. "Of course, the joey. I'm very pleased to
meet you." She thought quickly. Made the decision.

     Giving a warm and affectionate smile, Scully took the stranger's
outstretched hand. Shook it once.

     And savagely yanked Sera's arm, bringing her down, jerking her
forward. Shoved a knee into her stomach. The woman crumpled to the
sidewalk, gasping. Scully's gun flew from her shoulder holster, went in
one smooth motion to the side of Sera's head. She pressed her foot down
against the woman's neck, pinning her to the concrete. It all took less
than three seconds. They stood there like a tableau, hand on trigger,
muzzle against temple, cheek on pavement.

     "All right," Scully said evenly. "Who sent you?"

     Quickly, lips almost touching the dirty street: "The group. The
organization. We sent you the kangaroo." The woman--Sera--was breathing
heavily, hands flat against the sidewalk, fingers spread. Her hair had
come undone.

     Adrenaline giving her eyes an elated, angry glow, Scully pressed the
snout of the pistol harder against Sera's skull, sliding it down to her
cheekbone. "Goddammit, tell the fucking truth. Don't lie to me." She
thumbed the safety latch. _Click_. Sera flinched. "You're a Palimpsest
agent--aren't you? Answer me!"

     Trembling, Sera tried to shake her head, moved it imperceptibly side
to side beneath the pressure of Scully's gun. "No--that's what I've been
trying to tell you--listen to me. Please. Listen. I'm not armed. I just
need to tell you something..."

     "What? Talk quickly." Scully glanced rapidly left and right. The
street was still empty--but it was only a matter of time until someone
drove by. She needed to move. Decide. She uncocked the pistol, removed it
from Sera's cheek, but left her foot on the back of the woman's neck,
keeping her sights carefully aimed. "Talk. You've got ten seconds."

     She talked, mouth close to the ground: "Palimpsest doesn't exist."

     Scully kept the gun where it was. "You're lying."

     "No. It's all a trap, a trick. Palimpsest doesn't exist. It's a
lie--a lie." Sera bit her lip painfully; a spot of blood trickled down her
chin. Her eyes flashed fear and anxiety and honesty. She was truly
terrified.

     After only a moment's hesitation, Scully took her foot away. Didn't
put the pistol down. Said slowly, "Stay on the ground. Put your hands
behind your head. Don't get up or I'll shoot you in the face." Backing up
to the car, she put her hand on the trunk, fumbled out her keys, opened it
and searched quickly through her luggage, not looking away from the
woman's prone form. The sun beat down, hotter than hell. In the inside
pocket of her suitcase, Scully found what she was looking for, a chinking
of metal, a gleam of steel. She slammed the trunk. Quietly: "Put your
hands behind your back. Get up on your knees. Back slowly up--on your
knees--to the car. Feel the door handle. Hold onto it. Good. Stay that
way."

     With quick snap of bracelets, Scully handcuffed Sera to the passenger
door. Now the woman squatted at the curb, dress rumpled and dirty, hands
cuffed behind her. Her mouth was bloody, chin scraped raw. Scully lowered
the gun. She sat on the sidewalk across from Sera, pistol dangling loosely
between her legs, eye to eye with the stranger. "Okay. Now tell me what
you wanted to say."

     Leaning uncomfortably against the car, Sera said for the third time,
"Palimpsest doesn't exist."

     "Bullshit."

     "X is lying to you."

     Scully tightened her grip on the gun. "How do you know about X?"

     "We were monitoring Mulder's phone when he called you last night.
We've known X for a long time. By a different name." Sera licked her lips
nervously. "We knew he was dangerous. He has his own agenda..."

     "But why would he lie?"

     "To kill you. To get rid of Mulder. X isn't on your side. Never was.
When you die, it'll be right on schedule. He'll make sure that you drop
dead exactly when and where he wants you to--without any blood being left
on his hands."

     Giving no sign of belief or denial, Scully said, "Go on."

     "X is afraid of being exposed. You and Mulder are far too close to
the largest secrets--the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies, deals in
which X has his career and reputation at stake. Your interference could
cost him everything--which means that he needs you dead, or out of
commission." Resting her head against the flank of the car, Sera said,
"The problem is to avoid ending up with a pair of martyrs. Mulder has
connections. If the two of you were to die under mysterious circumstances,
anyone with half a brain would stamp _conspiracy_ all over it,
investigate, and X would be left with an even bigger mess than before. No:
he needs to eliminate you in a manner that precludes martyrdom."

     Crossing her legs, Sera continued. "Consider the scenario. Manhattan.
Dark alley. You're dressed as a hooker; Mulder kills you, Palimpsest
style, is just about to bring you back--and then, bam! X springs a dozen
cops on the scene. You're dead and gone. Mulder's caught red-handed. First
degree homicide. He goes to jail for life, to Death Row, or--most
likely--to a sanitarium, spouting insane ideas of conspiracies and ghosts
and secret societies and psychosomatic stigmata. Problem solved. X goes
home and toasts a job well done."

     Scully stayed silent. It was credible, just barely credible--but she
wasn't willing to trust this woman yet. "If Palimpsest doesn't exist, then
what organization are you from? Why should I believe you?"

     "Perhaps I've misled you," Sera lisped, her lip visibly swollen.
"Palimpsest did exist at one time. It was a real government consortium,
formed and funded by the intelligence community to investigate the JFK
assassination. It always produced credible results. After a while, it
became an independent agency. Offered its services to the highest bidder.
So dummy organizations--including my own--were set up to duplicate its
work. Spent millions of dollars on neurological studies, near-death
experiences, psychosomatics--the whole bit. All for nothing...because we
found that Palimpsest's work was completely faked."

     "What do you mean--faked?"

     "Faked. Fraudulent. Palimpsest was a confidence game from the very
beginning. For years, gullible officials in extremely high levels of
government were convinced that they could communicate with the dead--but
it was all invention, a charade: Palimpsest agents were no better than the
spiritualist charlatans of the nineteenth century, con men, bamboozlers.
They wrote their own 'messages' from the netherworld, submitted them to
eager clients, told them that they were bulls from Abraham Lincoln or FDR,
and thus managed to exert a mindboggling influence on all United States
policy of the past thirty years. But it's all just a game."

     "It's no game."

     "It is."

     "Convince me."

     "Listen. Palimpsest uses oxyphenylcyrine to kill their subjects. What
do you know about this drug?"

     "It's an extremely deadly synthetic poison, first manufactured in
1964. Causes complete nervous system shutdown within fifteen seconds."

     "Do you know what the breakdown products are?"

     Scully shrugged. "Organic substances, small molecules. Easily
absorbed by the bloodstream--which is why oxyphenylcyrine poisoning is so
difficult to trace."

     "Organic substances, right. One of them is ammonia." Sera tilted her
head back, stared up at the sky. "There are only two symptoms of OPC
poisoning. The first is a spasm of facial muscle, usually around the eyes.
The second is profuse perspiration in the moments before death. The sweat
contains dissolved ammonia gas." She smiled haughtily, with bloody teeth.
"You're a smart girl. Figure the rest out for yourself."

     "Oh God," Scully said. The implication was obvious. "They use copper
sulfate, don't they?"

     "Exactly. Using copper sulfate, Palimpsest spells out the
message--whatever they want to say--beforehand on the victim's body. After
the OPC is administered, ammonia in the death-sweat turns the invisible
'ink' bright red. It fades in slowly, on the hands or feet or belly or
whatever skin surface is chosen--and to the untrained eye, it looks just
like autoerythrocyte stigmata. Good enough to fool any 'official'
observers who might be watching. Brilliant illusion, really."

     "But...but why would Palimpsest do this?"

     "I've already told you. Power. They were able to determine virtually
all important American policy of the past three decades. Reagan and Ford,
especially, ate out of their hands. When the fakery was exposed, we're
talking monster backlash in Washington--put Watergate and Whitewater
together with Iran-Contra and Teapot Dome, and you _might_ get some idea
of the depth and breadth of the scandal. Things fell apart. Most of
Palimpsest's illustrious operatives were privately executed. As of 1991,
the organization no longer existed."

     "So where does X come into all this?" Scully asked.

     "Use your brain. He wants you and Mulder dead or out of the way.
Eventually, he comes up with the perfect solution: have Mulder convicted
of the murder of his partner and best friend--namely, you--and sent to an
asylum for the rest of his life. The problem is achieving the killing. A
simple frame-job doesn't suffice; Mulder needs to be the one to pull the
trigger or administer the injection or give you the poisoned cigarette.
Which means X needs to supply a motive. Something convincing, something
that Mulder would take as the gospel truth. A vast conspiracy, for
example. An imagined threat to your life. A threat that could only be
vanquished if he were to kill you first." Sera coughed, spat a wad of
bloody saliva. She glanced at Scully. "Could I get a tissue or something?"

     "No."

     "Okey-dokey. Now, listen carefully: there were some facts stirred
into X's nefarious stew, simply to improve the taste. Dr. Josef Kaun,
well-known Pentagon aide, was indeed shot down in Manhattan several days
ago, and the primary suspect was indeed a prostitute named Abby Janneson,
who was later strangled in prison--my guess is that X did it himself.
Janneson probably bears no real resemblance to you; the autopsy report and
photographs given to Mulder are clever fakes, your face superimposed on an
anonymous cadaver's body. Think about it. If Palimpsest really existed--if
they were truly clever and powerful--do you think that an autopsy would
have been allowed at all?"

     "I suppose not," Scully said. "They would have poured acid on the
message, as they usually did..."

     "Right, to obliterate signs of copper sulfate. The whole idea of an
independent autopsy is ridiculous. Everything in that report is an
ingenious forgery, meant to convince Mulder of the reality of the
Palimpsest threat, spur him to do something foolish, something
dangerous--and it may have already succeeded."

     "But if Palimpsest was dissolved in 1991, and no longer exists, then
who chased me from my brother's house? Who shot my brother in the stomach?
Who were those men?"

     "Part of the illusion. Those men aren't with Palimpsest. If they'd
truly wanted to kill your brother, they'd have shot him in the head; if
they'd really wanted to capture you, they would have. Your escape was part
of the plan. It was all theater. Don't you understand? They work for X."

     Scully's eye twitched involuntarily at this statement--and Sera saw
it. Understood what it meant. "You saw him there, didn't you?" Sera asked,
grinning. "You saw X among the men who pursued you."

     Nodding, Scully said, "Explain this to me. How could X be in South
Carolina and in Washington D.C. within a matter of minutes?"

     "Obviously, there are two X's--and one is an impostor."

     "Which one?" Scully demanded.

     Sera's smile became even wider. "That's a good question, isn't it?"
Then she closed her eyes and leaned against the car and refused to talk
anymore, even when Scully threatened her and drew her gun and put it
against her head until she got nervous and bit her lip a second time.

*     *     *

End of (8/18)

Blood of Angels (9/18)

*     *     *

     Charles looked down at the man in black--except he wasn't in black
anymore, he was draped in a blue diaphanous hospital gown, thin and
scrawny and old, his face pale, chest bandaged tightly, breathing harsh
and dazed, eyes clouded from painkillers. A pathetic figure. But he was
awake. He stared back at Charles, his pupils spiked with chips of gold,
sclera spotted with silver--and there was murder in those eyes, and animal
cunning, and Charles knew that he was looking at a man who would fight
savagely until his final agonized gasp.

     "How you doing?" Charles asked, razor blade in hand.

     "Can't complain," the man in black wheezed. His voice was thin and
reedy, channeled through tubes. He coughed.

     "You know who I am." Not a question; a statement.

     "Yes."

     "The other men--they're gone?"

     "Yes."

     "Tell me what I want to know."

     The man in black laughed. "Go fuck yourself," he said--and, with
surprising suddenness, fell back asleep. His eyes closed. Muscles relaxed.
Breathing became more regular, the color in his face improving--and the
man in black slipped into unconsciousness. One second, awake; the next,
snoring. Charles was startled by the change. An internal switch had been
flicked, a neural circuit interrupted, and the man dozed in an instant. It
was the narcotics. They had jumbled his rhythms, keeping him on the
boundary between slumber and awareness; the slightest nudge could push him
to either side. He muttered something in his sleep.

     Frowning, Charles bent down. Extended a cautious hand to nudge the
man awake.

     Eyes opened again. "You still here?" the man in black asked. "I
thought I told you to go fuck yourself. Step to it, boy."

     Charles flashed the razor like a stiletto. The man saw it. Snorted
laughter. "Don't be stupid, son. We both know that you won't do anything
except bluff and bluster--so save yourself the embarrassment and put that
toy away."

     Charles kept the blade where it was. It felt greasy in his hand, his
thumb sliding over the metal. Sweat. He asked quietly, "Who are you?"

     "Who _am_ I?" The man in black laughed again. "Son, if you can't
figure that out for yourself, you're even stupider than you look."

     Then Charles remembered: the bedside chart. It was looped over a hook
at the end of the sickbed, several sheets bound loosely together, surgical
data and carbons of patient admittance forms, but mostly a list of hourly
checkups by the nurse, fluid intake, things like that, all initialed and
duly noted. He took the chart, flipped to the first page. Searched for a
name. "Pio Neumann?" he said disbelievingly. "What kind of a name is
that?"

     "What the fuck kind of name is Charles Scully?" Neumann shot back.
"Don't piss me off, son. I may be leaking like a ruptured gasket, but not
all my strength is gone."

     "What are you going to do, old man--bleed on me?" Good comeback--but
his voice quavered. He kept reading the chart. Neumann had been wheeled
into the OR last night, a bullet plucked from his chest, a sucking wound
covered and sewn shut, a bit of the anterior lobe of his left lung
removed. The nurse's notes indicated that Neumann's recovery had been
uneventful so far. There were nine initialed reports on the sheet, one for
each hour that Neumann had been out of surgery. Except for the very first
entry, which was initialed "P.W.," each had been signed with the letters
N.L.--the name of the current nurse, Charles presumed. The last one had
been at 9:48.

     Neumann called from his bed, "Interesting reading?"

     "Yep," said Charles. "You've been peeing regularly. Good for you." He
put the chart down. "So you were abandoned here?"

     Shrugging, Neumann said, "I asked my colleagues to leave. They had
more important things to do."

     "Like what?"

     "Like killing your sister. Which I expect they've already done."
Neumann let his head fall back into the plump softness of his pillow,
dozing again. A second later, he shook himself awake. "Yes, Charlie boy, I
expect that any minute now, word will come that your sister has been
executed as planned. An ambulance will arrive to take me to where I can
observe the aftermath." He inhaled deeply through his nose, nostrils
flaring. "And rest assured, young man, that you shall not outlive your
sister long."

     Son of a bitch. His blood running hot but mercury-sluggish, Charles
said, "What are you after?" Voice was strange, forced.

     "The prize, of course."

     "And...what is the prize?" He spoke in a studiously low voice, teeth
clenched, enunciating each syllable.

     "At the moment, it appears to be your sister's death." Neumann
blinked his golden eyes, forehead crinkling condescendingly, almost
sympathetically. "Do you know anything about the nature of her work?"

     Letting the razor fall to his side, Charles said wearily, "She works
for the government, the FBI. Her work's mostly classified."

     "No shit, sonny. Fact is, her death will achieve far more for the
United States of America than anything she might have accomplished while
alive. It's in the national interest, son; I wouldn't be talking to you if
it wasn't." Neumann nodded slowly--then glanced away, as if bored. Looked
at his hands, liver-spotted and white. "It doesn't matter," he said
offhandedly. "I'm going to die anyway. I can feel it...."

     "Then hurry up and die."

     "Fuck you, son. I plan to stick around until my ride comes. I know
the routine--this isn't the first time I've been shot in the line of
duty--and I know that my men may dump me at this goddamned shithole of a
hospital for a few hours because they're too busy chasing your sister to
do anything more, but eventually they'll send an unmarked ambulance to
bring me to a safer place. The ambulance will be driven by a low-level FBI
asshole who's never seen my face and will never see it again...but he'll
do what I say. He's obliged to follow orders. And I'll be sure to tell
him--with my dying breath, if need be--who you are and why you should be
killed. I'll see you in hell, Charles Scully."

     Ignoring the rest, Charles focused in on one statement: "So you work
for the FBI?"

     "Hell no. The FBI works for _me_." Neumann smiled lecherously. "Along
with the CIA, the NSA, the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs,
the...um...the NSA...the CIA..." The recitation of names became a hypnotic
litany. "Department...of Agriculture...Christian
Coalition...Palim...Palim..." Neumann's voice became slurred--and then he
dozed yet again: the drugs came and went in eddies, swirls of narcotic
slumber, darkness creeping over him like a rhythmic tide. Now, though, he
retreated into a deeper sleep, eyes fluttering back and forth beneath
closed lids, dreaming uneasily: "F...B...I... Secret...Service..." His
mouth closed with an audible _smack_. His face was pale.

     Staring down, Charles wondered what to do. He held the razor loosely
in his hand, fingers numb and slick with perspiration. Let the blade drop
to the floor, falling to the tile with a barely audible clink. The man was
right. He wouldn't be able to use it. All he could do was bluster and
bluff.

     So now what? Go back to bed, lie down, and wait for Neumann's CIA
lackey to suffocate him with a pillow? Hardly. Kill Neumann? No. Not only
did he doubt his resolve, he knew that there would be zero evidence to
justify his actions when the crime was discovered--and besides, the man in
black's death would solve nothing. Would, in fact, probably complicate
matters. Neumann had information. If he died, that knowledge would die
with him.

     If only he could get some hard evidence! Some documentation, some
proof that Neumann was part of this conspiracy, whatever it might...

     Wait.

     Wait just a goddamned minute. Charles held his breath. An idea
blossomed in the back of his head, unfolding, beguiling. A plan. Clenching
his fists, standing barefoot and bare-legged in his thin blue gown,
Charles chased down the idea. Caught it. Held it tight--and felt it bloom
into full fruition.

     Standing alongside the bed of Pio Neumann, his belly bandaged and
aching terribly, Charles Scully grinned like a jackal, eyes gleaming with
the sheer insanity of what he might try to do. Jesus. Even if he
succeeded, it would be near-impossible to talk his way out of...but at the
moment, it was the only course of action he could envision. The only way.

     Because if he pulled it off perfectly, he would be able to get his
hands on Neumann's papers, wallet, identification, badge: everything.

     If he pulled it off.

     No time to think. If he was going to succeed in this subterfuge, he
needed to act now: a minute too late, and all would be for nothing.
Bracing himself, Charles tore his own IV tube from his arm. Knelt and
picked the razor blade up from the floor. Set it on Neumann's bedside
table. Paused for a moment, weighing his options--then stepped briefly
back to his own bed, fishing a pillow out from the tangled bedclothes, and
turned back to Neumann. Hesitated, holding the pillow in both hands.
Looked down at that whisper-thin figure, a pale old man, less menacing
than pathetic while he slept, hands weak, chest held together with
staples...but Charles knew what Neumann really was. Knew what was at
stake. And did what he had to do.

     He gritted his teeth and placed the pillow over Neumann's face,
suffocating him. Sweat ran into his eyes. He felt Neumann awaken. Scrawny
body writhing in panic, legs kicking--voice muffled--shouting obscenities
that were softer than whispers beneath the cushion. A cold hand closed
lightly around Charles's wrist, encircled it in a grip of iron, trying to
pull the pillow away--but as the seconds passed, Charles pressing down
even harder on Neumann's mouth and nose, the hand grew weaker, began to
slip from his wrist, fishy fingers trembling. Neumann was dying.

     Panicking, Charles tried to judge the time. Ninety seconds, no more.
He waited, shivering uncontrollably, his arms aching from the downward
pressure. His hands were slippery--he almost lost hold of the
pillowcase--and the blue gown stuck wetly to his back. Christ. Christ. He
felt the man in black slip away, hand falling to mattress, clawing briefly
at the bedspread--no, don't take the pillow away yet, wait, wait--skin
beginning to lose color, fingernails turning bluish...

     Now. He removed the pillow, looked at Neumann's face. Lips streaked
with spittle, eyes closed and streaming tears--but the man was breathing,
very softly, and the color was returning to his face, a ruddy dusk
creeping across cerulean skies. Still alive--but in deep unconsciousness.
Good. Perfect. He tossed the damp pillow away. Drew aside Neumann's
sheets, took a quick look at the ravaged body, wrinkled gown, bandages
visible beneath the thin fabric. Judged his own strength. His stomach and
sides ached deeply from the exertion, his arms were weak, weary, bleeding
from the IV needle--but he thought he could pull off the rest.

     Charles thought rapidly, weighing the situation. Tubes ran from
various parts of Neumann's exposed body, conjoining him to hospital
paraphernalia like a marionette: a nasal tube, an IV needle, a catheter.
Without faltering, Charles yanked them out. An unpleasant business. When
time came for the catheter to be removed, he closed his eyes and groped
blindly, finding the siphon between Neumann's legs, withdrawing it in a
long smooth motion, wiping his hands on the sheets. "Fuck," he muttered.
"No way I'm putting that motherfucker back in." Now Neumann lay on the
mattress, connections severed, mortality exposed, just a bit of flesh in a
hospital robe.

     But now...the most difficult part. Charles prepared himself for the
exertion. Felt the fire in his belly. The gauze that encircled his abdomen
was soaked with sweat, was coming loose, but the pain was somehow less
than before, duller, throbbing. "All right," he said softly, wiping his
brow with a sleeve. "Do it and get it over with."

     He stooped down, slipped one arm beneath Neumann's lolling neck, the
other beneath his knees--and lifted the man in black. He was light,
desiccate, but an inferno of pain tore through Charles's belly
nonetheless, bringing tears to his eyes. His back ached. He pirouetted
with Neumann in his arms, turned to his own bed. Staggered forward and
laid Neumann heavily down on the mattress. Thank God. Almost done.

     Charles grabbed his own IV stand, wheeled it silently to Neumann's
side. Found the needle. Inserted it roughly into Neumann's old puncture
wound. The man winced in his sleep, but did not regain consciousness;
Charles taped the needle down. Noticed that a dime-sized bruise had spread
out from the wound. Pulled the sheet up to Neumann's chin, tucking it in
firmly.

     Good. He stepped back, admiring his handiwork.

     Now came the final step. Charles went back to Neumann's old bed. Lay
down on the mattress. Drew the blankets over him. Winced at the
sweat-soaked sheets. He closed his eyes. Bit his tongue to keep from
crying out. Took Neumann's IV needle, was about to stab it into his own
arm--

     --when his eyes opened wide, a terrible thought occurring to him.
"Holy shit..." he said. "What if this asshole has AIDS?" Trembling from
the realization of his near-mistake, he carefully broke off the IV needle
and threw it in the garbage. Thinking briefly, he taped the tube to his
inner wrist as if it were connected to a vein, letting the clear fluid
dribble down his arm. An acceptable substitute. If all went as planned, no
one would get close enough to see through the illusion.

     The nasal tube was more difficult to manage. Coughing, choking,
unable to insert it more than an inch into his right nostril, Charles took
the razor blade, cut away the first few inches, and stuck the remainder up
his nose. Another acceptable compromise. All right.

     He wasn't even going to _try_ the catheter.

     Now all he had to do was wait. Lying back in Neumann's bed, tubes
itching crazily, Charles reviewed his logic, turning the plan over and
over in his head, looking for flaws.

     Here was his reasoning. During the years his sister had attended
medical school, Charles had spent countless hours listening to her
complain about her internship schedule. Specifically, he knew that all
large hospitals operate on a three shift system. Dana had always bitched
over the fact that she was assigned night duties more often than any other
student in her class--and Charles remembered that the graveyard shift
usually ended at either nine, ten or eleven o' clock in the morning, at
which time the daytime staff took over. A completely different set of
physicians and nurses was rotated three times a day.

     Looking at the notations on Neumann's bedside chart, Charles was able
to obtain an approximate idea of the hospital schedule. The first entry
had been made at 1:41 by "P.W." From 2:05 to 9:48, however, a different
nurse--with the initials N.L.--had been signing in. This implied that the
graveyard shift lasted from 2:00 to 10:00, assuming that it was exactly
eight hours in duration.

     And this meant that, when Neumann was next observed, it would
probably be by someone new. The day nurse. Someone who hadn't seen Neumann
before...and who didn't know what he looked like.

     Which meant that Charles could impersonate the man in black. Pretend
to be Pio Neumann. Get his wallet, his papers, hard evidence--and then
decide what to do next. Beautiful. He marveled at his own sagacity.

     He didn't have time to think any further, though--because at that
moment, the curtains surrounding his bed were flung open. The light
blinded him--and when the world cleared, a male nurse in a green smock was
smiling down.

     Charles's confidence disappeared. His heart began to thud
convulsively, a clammy fist squeezing his aorta. Stared blankly into the
nurse's eyes. Prayed silently. Prayed over and over that he not be
discovered, that he pull this off, somehow, please, somehow...

     "Hello Mr. Neumann..." the nurse said, glancing down at the bedside
chart. "How are you feeling today?"

     Thank God. Charles exhaled deeply--then gathered his blankets
defensively around his chest. Affected an uncooperative pout. "I'm not
going to take any tests or give any blood or be observed at all until I
get my things," he said rapidly. Too rapidly: his nervousness made him
incoherent.

     "Huh?" the nurse asked. "Could you say that more slowly?"

     Groping blindly for possibilities, Charles said, "Get my things. I
want my wallet. My clothing. My papers. Everything I had when they brought
me in."

     The nurse smiled broadly. Ingratiatingly. "All right, Mr. Neumann,
I'll see what I can do. Just let me check your IV first."

     "No," Charles said stubbornly, retreating as the nurse approached the
bedside, bringing the sheets protectively up to his chin. "You go and get
my stuff and bring it here. Bring me everything. I need it now. Then,
maybe, we'll talk."

     Nodding sympathetically, the nurse said, "I understand, Mr. Neumann.
I'll see what I can do. No promises, though." Turning on his heels, the
nurse strode away from the bed, closing the curtain behind him, plunging
the sickbed back into translucent dimness--and was gone.

     Jesus. He'd done it. He'd actually done it. Charles grinned goofily
in the darkness, his makeshift nasal tube nearly dropping out, his
bandaged sides smarting from tremors of silent laughter. For the first
time in nearly twelve agonized hours, he actually felt good. Self-assured.
He was well on his way to finding some answers.

     A few minutes later, the nurse reappeared. Charles quickly regained
his composure, frowning as the nurse handed him a white paper bag with a
wallet, keys, a small memo pad and some stray papers inside. He was
thrilled at the success of his ruse, but instead demanded, "Where are my
clothes?"

     "I'm sorry, Mr. Neumann, but I've been told that your shirt and coat
were cut away during surgery, and everything else is too bloodsoaked to be
worn again. And I'm afraid we can't give the handgun back yet. Hospital
policy." The nurse cocked an eyebrow in sympathy. "I hear you got involved
in some kind of drive-by drug shootout. Crack dealers, was it?"

     "Um, yeah," Charles said after a moment, trying to maintain the
bluff. "Yeah, crack dealers. Hell of a thing." Said loudly, "Now, please,
go away for a few minutes. Please. I want to look over my things in
private. You can come back when...what time is it, anyway?"

     "Quarter to eleven."

     "Come back in fifteen minutes. Please. Do me this one favor."

     After a moment's hesitation, the nurse said, "All right." He grinned
goodnaturedly. "Just don't tell anyone, okay?"

     "Got it." Charles blessed the nonconfrontational emergency room ethic
of the nineties. Afraid of being sued or even killed by unruly
patients--an occurrence which was becoming all too common in the nation's
larger hospitals--doctors and nurses acquiesced to all but the most
unreasonable patient requests. Thank God for that. As soon as the nurse
was gone, Charles dumped the bag's contents onto the bedspread, sifting
through the objects with his fingers. A wallet. A keychain with four keys.
A folded sheet of notebook paper. A slim black memo pad. A ballpoint pen.

     First, the wallet. Charles saw the FBI identification first, a
temporary card with no picture, name simply given as Pio Neumann, no title
or middle initial. He removed the card, ran his fingers over the
lamination, held it up to the light. Seemed real. If it was a forgery, it
was damned good. Ditto with the credit cards, all in Neumann's name. Visa.
AmEx. MasterCard. Five one hundred dollar bills were tucked into the
billfold.

     The keys were unmarked. Two of them appeared to be for the Impala,
one for doors, one for ignition. The others were small, silver, anonymous.

     Notebook paper. Charles unfolded the sheet. Saw what it said--and
shuddered. Fingers numb, he turned it over, looked for anything else, but
it was completely blank except for three lines of penciled text in the
middle of the page: CHARLES SCULLY--21062 GARY DRIVE--CRANEO, SOUTH
CAROLINA. His own name and address.

     "Christ," he said. "God almighty Christ."

     Next: the black book--not really a memo pad--bound in leather,
unmarked, sealed with a golden clasp. Opening it, Charles saw that the
pages were thin and perforated, the first twenty or so torn away, eleven
remaining. Each page was numbered consecutively--the first intact page
bore yesterday's date--and each contained a list with perhaps six dozen
items, a succession of brief words or phrases, each followed by a number:
AbortMission--55894; AlternatePlan--00083; ApprehendSuspect--99867; and so
on, all the way down to Evacuate--54547 and ZeroSumGame--59031. The same
list was repeated on each page, with only the numbers varying. Charles had
read enough spy novels to understand that he was looking at a one-use
cipher pad.

     Ballpoint pen, the cap glued in place. Charles fiddled with it idly,
noticed that the clip was oddly hinged, slid it this way, that way--and
was utterly unprepared when the needle shot out.

     "Jesus!" He dropped the pen, syringe glistening, staring up from the
bedspread like a poisonous mosquito. "Jesus," he said again. A hypodermic.
God knew what drug it contained. Gingerly, he picked it up again, slid the
clip back in place. The needle retracted. Trembling, Charles unscrewed the
pen's lower half, let the hidden ampoule fall into his hand. Green liquid.
Labeled in tiny letters: OXYPHENYLCYRINE.

     And a skull and crossbones.

     He popped the ampoule back into the disguised syringe, then returned
everything--wallet, papers, book, keys, pen--to the paper bag. Sat
silently, pondering what to do next. Point for point. The notebook page
alone constituted good evidence against the men in black, and might be
convincing enough for the hospital to detain Neumann for questioning. On
the other hand, he'd already lied about shooting himself while cleaning a
handgun, and any drastic change in his story would seem implausible,
especially considering his current predicament. In any case, of course, he
couldn't keep the deception up much longer; when the nurse noticed that
the IV was broken and neither the nasal tube nor catheter seemed to go
anywhere, playtime would be over.

     Best to confess now. Show the nurse what he'd discovered--the
incriminating notepaper, the cipher pad, the ballpoint hypodermic--and
hope for the best. Charles began to rehearse what he would say--

     --and was suddenly robbed of his solitude. Light filled Charles's
vision as the curtains parted. The nurse entered, smiling apologetically,
clipboard in hand.

     Protesting, Charles said, "Oh come on, it isn't even eleven o' clock
yet..."

     The nurse nodded briskly. "I know. I'm sorry to bother you again, Mr.
Neumann--but there's an ambulance here. For you. They say it's extremely
urgent that you be transferred to another hospital. Immediately."

     "I--" Charles shut his mouth. Oh shit. Neumann's ambulance. Oh shit
oh shit oh shit. "Listen, I need to tell you something..."

     "Wait a moment," the nurse said. "There's someone here to see you."

     A man whom Charles had never seen before stepped through the curtain,
moving past the nurse, who exited wordlessly. He was thin and pale,
dressed all in white, a lock of brown hair falling across his forehead.
Nervous eyes. He smiled edgily. "Hello, Mr. Neumann," the man said,
approaching the bedside. "I'm here to take you to the rendezvous point."

     Staring dumbly, Charles realized that his deception had been much too
effective: the stranger didn't seem to realize that anything was amiss. He
searched the man's face for some indication otherwise. Found nothing. No
trace of irony or amusement or recognition: only vague boredom,
fidgetiness, the face of a man given an unpleasant assignment.

     In short, the courier was a nobody. A bottom-feeder whose only
instructions were to pick up a package named Pio Neumann at the Craneo
Community Hospital, no description, just the name: information on a
need-to-know basis. Charles remembered what Neumann had said earlier: _The
ambulance will be driven by a low-level FBI asshole who's never seen my
face and will never see it again...but he'll do what I say_.

     And Charles realized--with a sick feeling in his stomach--that his
only option was to play along, to continue the charade, hoping that no one
realized that the real Pio Neumann was lying in bed only five feet away.

     "Are you from the FBI?" he asked, scrambling for a foothold on this
new development.

     The courier ran a hand through his hair. "I used to be an agent. Now,
however, I'm no longer affiliated with any intelligence agency."

     "What's your name?"

     Stealing a glance at his watch, the young man offered a tight,
hermetic smile. "My name is Alex Krycek," he said. "And I think we'd
better be going."

*     *     *

End of (9/18)

Blood of Angels (10/18)

*     *     *

     When Mulder finally found 1527 K Street--stepping down from bus to
sidewalk, head still pounding from too much helium--he felt confusion and
mistrust and sheer disbelief flood his senses, staring up at the
devastation, inhaling the embers of old smoke. The address was here,
painted onto the curb. There was no mistake.

     He stood before a vacant lot covered with thick flaking ash, the
cloying scent of burnt pine tar heavy in his nostrils. Fire's ghost
lingered, haunting these newly-desiccated, smoldering ruins.

     "Goddamn," he said under his breath. "Goddamn."

     From the look of things, the building that stood at 1527 K Street had
burned down less than a week before. Nothing remained except cinders and a
skeletal framework, metal rafters. A chain-link fence, hastily erected,
separated the wreckage from the sidewalk.

     Hands in his pockets, Mulder walked from one side of the lot to the
other. Two hundred paces. At one time, it had been an enormous building.
Mulder saw splinters of melted glass that had run along the ground and
refrozen in convoluted shapes, the remains of windows, sliding glass
doors. Everything else had been reduced to homogenous black dust. It made
his eyes burn.

     He hooked his fingers through the links of the fence. Glanced quickly
left, right. Traffic was sparse; the street was nearly empty. Taking a
deep breath, Mulder reached high, clung to handholds, hoisted his feet,
rattling the fence, and was up and over in a second. Leaping down, he
landed heavily in ankle-deep ash. Fell to his knees, blackening them with
soot.

     The lot stank like the inside of a crematorium. Standing, Mulder
wiped his hands on his already dirty trousers and looked up at the
scorched scaffolding. He stood beneath a tall metal arch, the remains of a
doorway; scattered outcroppings of brick sat in piles on either side,
burnt the color of charcoal. Mulder walked up to the arch. Extended a
cautious hand. Metal was cool to the touch.

     Stepping through this symbolic portal, feeling like a salamander,
Mulder found himself in the midst of the ruination. Partitions still
stood, smoke-blackened walls, remains of offices or dormitories. A bare
metal desk stood alone in an ocean of grime, burnt clean and white. Mulder
tried the drawers, discovered they had been welded shut by the heat. He
knelt alongside the desk, found a charred remnant of carpet. Peeling it
away exposed the concrete foundations, cracking in places, clean and still
warm. No indication of the building's nature or identity.

     He stood and kept walking, covered head to toe in soot. His
fingernails were grimed and dirty, head throbbing, eyes squinting shut
from the endless trails of dust and old smoke; his throat was sore from
breathing it in.

     A moment later, he stumbled upon a piece of information. Literally.
His foot caught on something--the lip of some rectangular object
projecting an inch above the ground--and he was too late to catch his
balance; pirouetting his arms, he tripped and fell heavily, sending up
another somber puff of powder and staining his knees, chin and forearms a
deep Mammy blackface. The edge of the object chipped his shin as he went
down, just enough to make it bleed. Exquisite pain--"Oh Christ," he swore,
rubbing beneath his knee--but then curiosity, glancing back at the source
of his mishap: his fall had exposed some lettering. Etched in stone. He
had tripped over some sort of tablet.

     Brushing away the ash with both hands, Mulder read the words. It was
a kind of marble plaque, two feet by three, the kind that would hang in
the lobby of a government building, just above the receptionist's desk.
Fire had discolored the stone, turning it from caramel-tan to sickly
yellowish-gray and filling the engraved letters with grime; it was split
in several places by ugly cracks, fragments broken from the lower edge; it
had evidentially fallen from a wall and been buried under debris, only to
be uncovered again as the fire calcined and burnt and incinerated
everything else in sight, leaving it intact.

     But the plaque was still readable. XENOTECH, it shrieked.
BIOTECHNOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.

     1527 K Street was the headquarters of XenoTech Labs.

     "Oh my God," Mulder said, disbelieving. "Oh my God."

     Byers, on Kaun: _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....In all probability, it was all a front._

     But was it? The coincidence was too extreme. Mulder tried to connect
the dots, reconstruct the events as they occurred. Judging from the nature
of the cremains, the fire which consumed 1527 K Street had taken place
less than a week ago. A few days later, Josef Kaun, whose connection with
the lab was already established, flew to Manhattan and was killed,
supposedly by Abby Janneson.

     Supposedly. That was the key word. It had never been definitively
proven that Janneson had pulled the trigger. Kaun's work was sensitive
enough so that any number of individuals--government and otherwise--would
have reason to kill him...and torch the company that published his papers.

     Perhaps he was being hasty. Perhaps Byers was right. Perhaps the
Kaun/XenoTech connection was nothing more than a front, a blind meant to
disguise the nature of Kaun's true work for the Pentagon. Perhaps XenoTech
was of zero logistical significance. Perhaps it was all just a red
herring, a coincidence.

     But if life had taught Mulder only one thing over the past few years,
it was that there were no coincidences: there was only conspiracy.

     Mulder stood, leaving the plaque where it was. Returned to the fence
and clambered over noisily. He dropped to the concrete. Walked away
unsteadily.

     He did not see the man--dressed all in black--who hid behind one
crumbling section of XenoTech wall, watching Mulder, crouching in the
ashes, taking picture after picture.

*     *     *

     The kangaroo was in the rear; the woman who called herself Sera was
in the front, handcuffed to the back of the seat. Her hands were folded
behind her head, fingers interlocked, hiding the metal bracelets. Her
mouth had stopped bleeding, but she still spoke with a painful lisp as she
glanced nervously between Scully and the interstate, watching as
Pennsylvania fell behind them and they were swallowed by the freeway:
"Aren't you curious about 1527 K Street?" she asked.

     "Actually, I'm more curious about the kangaroo," Scully said,
driving. She kept her pistol on the dashboard, tucked beneath a magazine,
hidden from view but within easy reach. "Tell me why it was sent."

     "If I do, will you uncuff me?" Sera asked.

     "No."

     "All right. But to explain the kangaroo, I'll need to explain a few
other things first."

     "I'm listening."

     "To begin with, 1527 K Street was the headquarters of a company known
as XenoTech Labs. Josef Kaun was listed among its resident researchers,
although his actual function was hazy and extremely obscured; Kaun
ostensibly worked with biophysics, biotechnology, the logistics of protein
synthesis, gene sequencing, that sort of thing. Mundane stuff. In reality,
however, XenoTech was a Pentagon front."

     "'Was?'" Scully asked, questioning the past tense.

     "Seven days ago, XenoTech headquarters burned to the ground, leaving
nothing behind--no trace as to the nature of its work, no evidence of
anything, just ash and smoke and soot. It was wiped off the face of the
earth. Erased. As if it no longer existed."

     "Arson?"

     "It doesn't matter," Sera said. "But to be completely honest, the
entire incident reeks of conspiracy. The sprinkler systems failed. Fire
engines were inexplicably delayed, arriving at the scene only after
four-fifths of the building had been consumed. The fire itself was
incredibly hot, incredibly fast: even if it wasn't arson, the incendiaries
and propellants involved were...unearthly."

     "Unearthly." Scully glanced at Sera, studying her bruised, impassive
face. "What was XenoTech doing?"

     "Attempting to perfect a method of ectogenesis. Organisms grown
outside the womb."

     "Like the kangaroo," Scully said.

     "Exactly. This kangaroo," Sera said, nodding over her shoulder at the
carrier, "was born, grown, and developed in an artificial uterus at 1527 K
Street. It's a test-tube creature. Your joey had no mother, no
father--only anonymous sperm and egg, conjoined and allowed to divide
within an artificial amnion, a mix of chemicals, a synthetic umbilicus,
until the embryo was transplanted into a rubber pouch and further matured.
XenoTech grew thousands of animals in this fashion."

     "Why would they want to do that?"

     "Because ectogenesis is the technology of the future!" Sera said
enthusiastically. "It can assist infertile couples in conceiving, provide
instant livestock for underdeveloped Third World countries, revolutionize
the food industry, the space program..." She paused. Grinned. "You aren't
buying any of this, are you?"

     "Nope," Scully said. "After what I've seen, I seriously doubt that
the Pentagon would perform such covert--and expensive--experiments for
purely altrustic reasons."

     "Good call. What's your own hunch, then?"

     "Well, X told Mulder that those albino marsupials were used in
Palimpsest-type experiments. By groups like yours."

     "X spoke the truth," said Sera, ruefully. "We spent years attempting
to communicate with the dead through albinism, searching for a means to
receive spiritualistic messages via the skin. None of the experiments
worked, of course. However, these failed attempts were the basis for a
professional partnership between XenoTech and ourselves. Which is the
reason we've taken such a vested interest in this case."

     "I'm not sure I understand."

     "Look. X fed Mulder the Kaun story because it was convenient. Timely.
X knew that if Mulder was going to kill you, he would need a good reason,
a monumental reason--or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Something that
would provide sufficient motivation. Got it?"

     "Got it."

     "Well, Kaun and Palimpsest provided that motivation. It's a marvelous
story, isn't it? A hint of JFK paranoia...secret societies...men in
black...communication with the dead...cloning...even UFOs and aliens. But
in reality, the story could have been about anything. X could have
included werewolves, demons, Bigfoot, mutants, precognition, psychic
powers--anything that would give Mulder a hard-on. It's a seduction, plain
and simple: he's seducing Mulder with the sheer implausibility of it all,
wearing him down, making him consider--just consider--the possibility of
killing you to find the truth."

     "I don't think Mulder ever would," Scully said. "He told me that he'd
decided to defy X."

     "But he'll be having second thoughts," Sera said. "Did you tell him
about 1527 K Street?"

     "Yes..." Scully admitted.

     "Then you've only assisted X in the seduction. Mulder will dig
deeper, discover the ectogenetics, the connections between Kaun and
XenoTech and the kangaroo and everything else. If he does his homework,
he'll find that Kaun was linked with Reichian metaphysics, orgone,
xenoeroticism, covert genetics, MJ-12--more than enough to convince him."

     "Convince him of what?"

     "To kill you. X has created his own version of the truth, a fantasy
built upon fact--and is waiting patiently for Mulder to take the bait."

     "Then Kaun and Palimpsest and XenoTech are decoys."

     "To X. He doesn't give a damn about any of it; he only wants you
dead. In his position, any secret will suffice."

     "So none of it really matters."

     "I didn't say that. A lot of it matters. The reason X built his story
around Kaun--as opposed to, say, the Abominable Snowman--was because there
was enough genuine weirdness there to make the story convincing. It was an
excellent lie because much of it was real. Kaun was real. XenoTech was
real. Palimpsest was once real. And the real part is as beguiling as any
invented conspiracy." Sera lowered her voice, continued: "Just because X
falsified the truth doesn't mean there is no truth to be found. There is.
And we want to know more."

     Scully understood. "X is sending us a wild goose chase--but your
organization wants the goose."

     "Exactly. We want Kaun's research, not because of any hidden agenda,
but because it may be useful to us. Genuinely useful."

     "Why do you care?"

     Sera smiled. "Ectogenetic animals are valuable in more ways than one.
Think about it: your kangaroo was built, cell by cell, according to
XenoTech's exact specifications. With the right tools, you can tamper with
the DNA, create biologically perfect specimens, tinker with physiology
from the nucloetides up. You understand? Life becomes a changeable text.
You can edit nature like a word processing document."

     "But why should that interest you?"

     Her smile widening, Sera said, "Agent Scully, even after Palimpsest's
work was exposed as fakery, my organization continued to pursue the
possibility of communication with the afterlife. We never gave up. In the
beginning, it was cynical work, rote research to keep the grants
coming--but we eventually decided that perhaps Palimpsest wasn't so wrong.
That speaking with the dead was indeed possible."

     "How do you figure?" Scully asked.

     "Two words: genetic memory."

     Scully raised her eyebrows. "Go on."

     "You're familiar with the concept: genetic inheritance is not limited
to physical traits alone, but also applies to memories, knowledge,
behavior. Perhaps parents can pass acquired wisdom and life experience
directly to their offspring, via DNA. Their memories might live on in the
chromosomes of the newborn. The knowledge of entire generations might be
propagated in this manner, each gene becoming an intellectual legacy."

     "Pretty far-fetched."

     "Is it? Agent Scully, you know that only ten percent of all DNA is
read during cell synthesis; the rest is shapeless 'junk' DNA with no known
purpose. But what if junk DNA provides a medium for genetic memory? And
what if we found a way to read it?" Sera was becoming excited. "It would
be like speaking to the dead--because we could access the recollections of
ten thousand years of unbroken genetic lineage."

     "With ectogenesis," Sera continued, "you can take the genetic memory
as far back as it can go--it's merely a matter of triggering the right
sequences during development. From the sperm of a California businessman
you can reincarnate an Anglo-Saxon warlord. You can take cells from Lisa
Marie and come up with Elvis. No limits. No fakery. Just the resurrection
of the dead."

     Scully interrupted. "Even if such a thing were possible," she said,
"you still haven't explained why I was given the kangaroo."

     "Don't you understand? The kangaroo is absolutely essential. My
organization had been trying to discover XenoTech's secrets for years;
when the labs were consumed by fire, its research obliterated, we were
forced to start from scratch. The kangaroo--one of the few survivors of
the K Street inferno--is a crucial specimen. It's a vessel: the last
remaining repository of XenoTech's work. "

     "But why give it to _me_?"

     "Figure it out for yourself. X was forcing you and Mulder to
investigate Kaun. My organization decided to take advantage of this
situation. Even if the investigation was a sham, a con game, it was very
possible that you might uncover some valid facts along the way. Do our
work for us. X may not give a damn about XenoTech--but we do. We can tell
you what we know. See what you may turn up on your own. The kangaroo is
intended to assist you in your efforts."

     "But why should I help you?"

     "Because you can benefit. We can offer protection."

     "How?"

     "The name of the game, Ms. Scully, is _evidence_. Think about it.
After your murder, X wants Mulder arrested with nothing but wild tales and
lunatic statements to explain his actions. All physical evidence must
disappear. The fake Janneson autopsy photos will probably disintegrate
after a few days. Information about Kaun's research will be erased. Mulder
must have _nothing_ to support his story.

     "But the more evidence you and Mulder accumulate," Sera continued,
"the harder it will be for X to suppress. His entire plan rests upon the
assumption that, when Mulder is apprehended, he will be considered a
dangerous paranoiac--nothing more. But evidence as damning as the kangaroo
can't be so easily dismissed. Police will start to wonder. Ask questions.
And if X decides that it is impossible to censor all such inquiries, he
will reject the plan entirely--and you will be allowed to live."

     "_If_ we get enough proof. Enough information."

     "Right--which will also benefit my organization. It's a win-win
proposition, Agent Scully. All you have to do is accept."

     Still suspicious, Scully asked, "So where would I begin?"

     "Take my advice: proceed to Manhattan. Play along with X."

     "Why?"

     "Examine Kaun's actions. After the K Street building is destroyed, he
immediately flies to New York City on 'official business.' Why New York?
We aren't told. But the implication is obvious: Kaun flew to Manhattan
because XenoTech kept a second divison there. A building where the
ectogenetics work could be continued. A second laboratory."

     "A second lab? Where?"

     Sera smiled, wrists raw and sore from the handcuffs. "I don't know,"
she said. "But the kangaroo might."

*     *     *

     It was ravenous, but It counseled patience. It desired blood, but It
kept Itself in check. It watched and waited, keeping close to Scully,
closer than she could ever have guessed, accompanying her wherever she
went: Its pursuit was literally effortless, Its hazel eyes unblinking,
watching as Scully drove along the freeway, hands grasping and ungrasping
the wheel, signaling, glancing over her shoulder--looking directly at It
but not seeing, not aware--moving to another lane, continuing to drive. It
noticed everything. The smallest detail. The gun on the dashboard, beneath
the magazine. Seeing the concealed pistol, It felt a momentary flutter of
fear--for as invincible as It was, bullets could still harm It. It would
not allow Itself to be harmed. It must not.

     The fear passed quickly, as it always did.

     It marveled at Its new powers, Its ability to watch Scully without
her knowledge. Close. Terrifyingly close. Nothing else mattered to It; It
hardly glanced at the Other in the car. It only waited for the right time,
the right moment. The time to strike.

*     *     *

     In all Its excitement, It didn't notice that It had been seen.

*     *     *

End of (10/18)