Blood of Angels (11/18)

*     *     *

     Climbing back into his building from the fire escape, Mulder slid
through the hallway window, turned, and closed it securely behind him. As
he thumbed the latch shut, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the
glass. Smiled. Covered with soot, his face gray and caked with ash, he
looked like Wile E. Coyote after an Acme explosion, nose and cheeks the
color of burnt toast. He spat into his hand, tried to rub away the worst
of it. Didn't succeed.

     As soon as he reached his apartment, Mulder headed straight for the
bathroom. Ran hot water in the sink, fogging the mirror, scrubbing his
hands and face and arms and neck with soap. In a few minutes, his skin was
rosy-pink and tingling, the porcelain dirty beyond belief. He left black
handprints on the towels.

     Back to the living room. Gather the necessary items. He spent a few
moments debating whether to take the oxyphenylcyrine cigarettes or the
adrenaline syringe. Leaving them behind would cement his resolve to not
harm Scully--indeed, would make it a moot point--but they might prove
useful in other situations. Besides, if he saw X again, he would have to
produce them...so, not without some misgivings, Mulder pocketed the Fidels
and stuck the pen into his shirt pocket.

     Moved on to other things. The Janneson/Kaun casefile. The
still-mysterious copy of Clinical Abstracts.

     Finally, the cardboard box containing Abby Janneson's clothing. The
black vinyl dress. The stockings. The jewelry. Circling the room, Mulder
tried to remember where he'd put it. Last night, he'd unwrapped the carton
on the coffee table, letting the brown paper and twine fall to the floor,
before staggering to the kitchen, becoming violently ill, collapsing on
the couch and falling asleep. He hadn't touched the box since, hadn't even
looked at it.

     But it was gone. The coffee table was bare. The crumpled paper and
string still lay beside the sofa--but the carton with Janneson's clothes
was missing.

     "Jesus," Mulder said. He checked beneath the table, behind the couch.
Searched his desk. The kitchen. The bathroom. The bedroom, his
apprehension growing. He rechecked the living room with fresh eyes, hoping
that he'd somehow overlooked the box before, that it was hidden in plain
view.

     No good. The clothes had vanished.

     Mulder tried to think. Had he seen the box this morning? He lay back
onto the sofa, straining to mentally retrace his steps. He'd been awakened
by X's knocks, had stood up unsteadily to answer the door--and had lost
his balance, slipping and falling across the coffee table, banging his
hip. The memory was clear: his thigh was still tender from the impact.

     The table had been empty. He remembered it distinctly. The table had
been empty. Which meant that someone had been here during the night. Hours
ago. Someone had broken in while Mulder slept, coming within inches of the
couch, stealing the clothes--and disappearing without a trace.

     Why? he wondered. Why?

     "To get your fingerprints," X said.

     Mulder whirled. X stood in the doorway, black overcoat buttoned to
the chin, hands in his pockets. He stepped into the apartment, leather
shoes clinking softly on the parquet. "I didn't deliver that box here," he
said, entering the living room. "Palimpsest controlled Janneson's body and
all her belongings; obtaining her clothing would have required influence
beyond what even I possess."

     "So who gave me the clothes?" Mulder asked, bewildered. "Palimpsest?"

     "That is correct. The syringe in your front shirt pocket was also
provided by them."

     Mulder glanced down, saw the ballpoint pen. Jerked his gaze back up,
eyes projecting a mixture of confusion and mistrust: "Tell me what's going
on," he said. "Why would Palimpsest give me Janneson's clothing? Why the
syringe?"

     "Because Palimpsest wants to frame you for Agent Scully's death." X
shook his head, corrected himself. "Perhaps 'frame' isn't the right word.
Palimpsest wants to make certain that, when you administer the
oxyphenylcyrine to Scully, she will stay dead--and you will be arrested
and convicted of her murder." He gestured towards the pen. "That
hypodermic doesn't contain any adrenaline; it's morphine, a lethal
dose--the coup de grace, if you will. Using it to resuscitate your partner
would be like fighting a fire with gasoline. If the oxyphenylcyrine
doesn't kill her, the morphine will."

     "I...I don't understand."

     "If Palimpsest kills Scully in the usual manner--an injection to the
spine by an anonymous man in black--it stands a very good chance of being
exposed. Scully has connections. She's extremely well-known in certain
conspiracy circles--almost as well-known as you are--and if she dies
mysteriously, people are going to wonder why."

     "So they want me to do their work for them," Mulder said, horrified.

     "Exactly. They know everything. They're aware that I've ordered you
to kill and resuscitate Scully. They know where the meeting will take
place. You'll give Scully the OPC, attempt to 'revive' her with the
morphine--and then Palimpsest will spring the police on your ass. They get
the message from Kaun, Scully gets an early grave, you get the electric
chair."

     "And the clothes..."

     "They're making sure that your fingerprints are on everything, even
the panties. The New York DA will slap you with first-degree murder and
sexual assault--possibly rape, if Palimpsest gets its hands on a sperm
sample."

     "So I'm the fall guy."

     "Correct. They're using our own plot against us--"

     "--because they can't kill Scully," Mulder raged. "But _I_ sure as
hell can." He felt monumental anger building up inside him, making his
head pulse even more painfully--before an objection suddenly occurred to
him. "But why don't they simply kill and resuscitate Scully themselves?"
he wondered. "Let her live? That way, there'd be no suspicious death, no
questions, no damaging exposure; they could hypnotize her, make her forget
the entire incident..."

     "That's impossible," X said sharply. "The risk would be even greater.
Even if Scully was somehow brainwashed into docility, the psychosomatic
stigmata from the OPC would linger on the skin for weeks afterward; Kaun's
secrets would be visible on her flesh to anyone who cared to look."

     "That makes sense," Mulder conceded. At the same time, however, he
had a sudden flash of insight: X was lying. Even if it was impossible for
Palimpsest to revive Scully, X wasn't giving the real reasons. He was
hiding something. Something important.

     Mulder quickly concealed his suspicions: X was holding out something,
a small, gleaming cylinder of plastic. He took it automatically, weighed
it in the palm of his hand. It was an ampoule filled with straw-colored
liquid.

     "Adrenaline," X said. "_Real_ adrenaline."

     "Are you kidding?" Mulder asked. "I can't go through with this now!
You just told me that Palimpsest knows everything, that they're just
waiting to set me up..."

     "How many times do I need to tell you, Agent Mulder?" X said
impatiently. "You haven't got a choice. If you don't play along with
Palimpsest, they'll just find another way of killing Scully and leaving
you with the bag. They've got your fingerprints on Janneson's clothes, and
they'll make sure that Scully is wearing them when she dies." X turned.
Headed for the door. Paused at the threshold and delivered a final appeal.
"Agent Mulder, if you're the one giving Scully the cigarette and
administering the adrenaline, there's a good chance that she'll survive.
If it's Palimpsest, she'll die. Plain and simple. Those are your options."

     X began to walk down the hall, toward the fire escape.

     "One last question," Mulder called after him. "What was going on at
XenoTech Labs? What was Kaun working on there? Why did the K Street
building burn to the ground?"

     Opening the window, X climbed outside. He turned back to Mulder.
Smiled.

     "Think of it as interplanetary warfare," he said blithely.

     And he was gone.

*     *     *

     There was a mirror set into the ceiling of the ambulance, a
shatter-proof rectangle of polished steel, and as Charles Scully lay
strapped into the gurney, staring up at his reflection, he marveled at how
old he seemed. His face was crossed with lines and weary marks that hadn't
been there a day ago. Skin was sagging, ashen-colored, pale, weak. He
studied himself detachedly, mind withdrawn and oddly abstracted, like a
man analyzing a dream within a dream, marking each unfamiliar detail and
marveling at the feeble ruination of his body: arms bound to his side by
snug leather straps, hands loosely clutching the brown paper bag filled
with Neumann's things, torso and legs wrapped in white sheets, a fresh IV
tube trailing from one wrist.

     He blinked. The image in the mirror remained the same.

     This was no dream. He was lying helpless in an ambulance bound for an
unknown place with a stranger at the wheel, impersonating a sixty-year-old
man of whom he knew nothing. Things had gone smoothly thus far--incredibly
so, as if some guardian angel had been leading him by the hand--but the
ruse could only continue for so long. Sooner or later, the ambulance would
coast to a stop, he would be removed, identified as an impostor--and
probably shot where he lay. He could see it. A premonition, perhaps. Those
mean-looking Sig Sauer pistols. Up against his forehead. No chance for
begging: just quick click of trigger and anticlimactic annihilation. He
wouldn't even hear the bang.

     And the procession was inexorable. Rapid. Rushing down the highway at
seventy miles per hour, casting silently-spinning streamers of red across
its own rear windows, the ambulance flew over a bump. The gurney bounced;
Charles bumped his head on the mattress. Almost dropped the bag. He
clenched it closer to his chest, feeling its contents through the brown
paper: pen-syringe, code book, wallet, notepaper, keys. His only
resources.

     He needed to buy some time--or, at least, find out how much time
remained. Raising his head from the gurney, Charles-as-Neumann called
weakly: "How much longer?"

     From the front of the ambulance, the man who had identified himself
as Alex Krycek responded. "We should be there by midafternoon, Mr.
Neumann."

     Charles ventured his ignorance: "'There?'"

     "The Virginia bunker," Krycek shouted over the din of the freeway. "I
don't know much else, only the destination. They didn't tell me very
much."

     "What else do you know?"

     "Just bits and pieces. I heard them say that Scully--Dana Scully, I
suppose--will arrive in Manhattan by sundown; they expect that she'll walk
right into the XenoTech labs, where they can apprehend her easily."

     Trying to downplay his own ignorance--XenoTech? Virginia bunker?--and
his odd sense of apprehension, Charles asked, "You know Dana Scully?" He
tried to keep his voice casual, only vaguely interested, as if he were
just making conversation.

     "We've met." Krycek paused; Charles thought he might be smiling. "I
also made the acquaintance of her sister."

     Melissa? Charles fought the temptation to ask further questions.
"You've discovered a lot," he said.

     "Only what they told me. If you don't mind me saying so, security
seems rather lax; a few of your men were almost talkative."

     Charles was about to respond...when the shrill electronic whine of a
cellular phone sliced through the air. Tilting his head as far back as it
would go, he caught a quick glimpse of Krycek taking a phone from the
dashboard, pressing a button with his thumb--cutting off the ring in
midwarble--and bringing it to his ear. "Yes?" he answered. A pause. "Yes,
this is the ambulance." Pause. "No, I think the number stays the same.
This is the only one you knew? Yes, it doesn't change like the others.
It--" He broke off. "Hold it, slow down, slow down. You're who?" A longer
pause. Krycek said something else, in a lower voice, muffling it at the
last second--but Charles heard it. Heard it clearly:

     "Neumann?"

     And suddenly Charles was filled with dread, complete and utter
terror. Because the game was up. He knew it. Tasted it. Felt the change in
Krycek's demeanor.

     Even if it wasn't Pio Neumann at the other end of the line, then it
was someone else, someone who had discovered the ruse and was telling
Krycek what he needed to know.

     Charles had been exposed.

     The hushed conversation continued for several moments more. Krycek's
replies were low, inaudible; Charles strained to listen, to hear what was
being said, but he only heard isolated syllables, soft and meaningless and
terrifyingly calm. Indeed, the pounding of his own heart seemed louder
than anything else: any second now, he expected Krycek to hang up, remove
a gun from some hidden compartment in the front of the ambulance, step
into the back and splatter Charles's brains all over the inside of the
sickbay.

     But when the conversation ceased, no such thing happened. Krycek
thumbed the button again. Replaced the phone on the dash. Continued to
drive. He did not say anything, did not offer any comment as to who had
called or why....

     But then Charles heard a dry, periodic click resounding with
clockwork precision from the front of the ambulance: the turn signal. The
ambulance descended as Krycek exited, took the next offramp. They slowed.
Steadied. The view through the rear windows abruptly changed from concrete
to lush forest scenery--and Charles immediately understood what was
happening. Krycek was taking him to place of greater seclusion, of
privacy.

     Someplace where the sound of a gunshot would be muffled.

     Charles needed to act quickly. He worked rapidly, frantically trying
to free his arms from the gurney. He managed to get one hand free. Reached
over, unbuckled the strap, slid it away from his chest. Sat up. Quickly
freed his legs, fingers numb and stiff. Still sitting on the mattress,
Charles briefly thought about flinging open the rear ambulance doors and
jumping out--but that wasn't an option. Even if he survived the fall to
the pavement--and given his current physical condition, he wasn't sure he
would--Krycek probably had a gun. He couldn't outrun a bullet.

     The only option was to fight back. Strike first. He desperately
searched the interior of the ambulance for weapons, sharp edges, anything,
but the bandages and scalpels and equipment were stored in clear plastic
cabinets which he couldn't smash, locked securely shut, row after row of
tongue depressors, bone saws, Sam splints, pressure pants, oxygen
canisters, hypodermics...

     Hypodermics. Christ. Neumann's pen-syringe. It contained a poison,
Charles was sure of that, marked with a skull-and-crossbones and the label
OXYPHENYLCYRINE--but what kind of poison was that? How quickly would it
work? Could it be used in the heat of an emergency?

     No matter: it was his only chance. He opened the paper bag with
trembling fingers, accidentally tore it, spilling the pen and wallet and
keys and code book across the floor of the ambulance. In the front, Krycek
heard. "Shit," Charles hissed, stooping, picking up the pen. He climbed
back onto the gurney, lying flat on his stomach. Found the clip, pressed
it, triggered the hidden spring. The needle shot out. Charles stared at
the proboscis, saw a single drop of clear green fluid glistening at the
very tip, then lowered it, holding the syringe ready by his side.

     The ambulance moved over rough terrain. Taking a quick glance over
his shoulder, Charles saw the tips of pine trees through the rear window,
snatches of blue sky, of sunlight. They were somewhere in the woods,
tumbling along a dirt trail, needles scratching along the side of the
vehicle and rubbing intimately against the doors. He could hear nothing
except the grating of wheels against soil. Engine. In the front seat,
Krycek was absolutely silent.

     Slowing...crawling...coasting to the side of the road. The ambulance
jerked to a stop. The rustling of needles ceased. Charles heard Krycek set
the emergency brake. Shut off the engine. Unbuckle his seatbelt. Take
something from the glove compartment--

     --and then Krycek stood before him, sneering, an ugly-looking black
pistol in hand. His face was flushed, but he grinned. Said: "Sorry, Mr.
Scully, but playtime is over."

     And Charles buried the syringe into the soft flesh of Krycek's thigh.

     It penetrated the cloth of the trousers easily. The needle broke off.
Krycek grunted in shock, raised the gun, pulled the trigger. Charles
ducked, burying his face in the padding of the gurney, flailing out with
his hands, trying to deflect the path of the gun--BAM!--single shot,
unbearably loud and resounding in the close confines of the ambulance,
deafening him--and then, hot, agonizing pain. The bullet had missed his
head, but only barely: it nicked the upper lobe of Charles's right ear,
nipping off a crescent-shaped bit of flesh as neatly as if it had been
severed by a pair of nail-clippers--before ricocheting off the ambulance
wall just beyond him, zinging off at an angle, striking the ceiling like a
pinball, then the opposite wall, before finally burying itself in the
floor less than two inches from Krycek's left foot. The agony in Charles's
ear was hot and concentrated, as if he had been lazed by a
blowtorch--blood began to trickle slowly down--but he was oblivious,
terrified, waiting for the next shot to come.

     It didn't.

     He didn't know how much time passed--probably no more than a few
seconds, but it felt longer--before he glanced up from the bloodsoaked
sheets of the gurney, wondering why Death was being so unhurried about
things. The first thing he saw was Krycek's belt buckle--still at eye
level--and, yelping, he hid his face again. Flinched. Waited for a final
blow--or something--or anything. But nothing happened. Blood continued to
flow warmly down the side of his face; he could hear his own breathing;
his heart thudded rapidly against the gurney; but nothing happened.

     He hazarded a second look, peering up from the mattress. Krycek's
belt buckle still hovered motionlessly at bedside, right where it had been
before. Less jumpy now, but still cautious, Charles saw a small spot of
scarlet blood, no larger than the head of a pin, welling up from the place
on Krycek's thigh where he had plunged the hypodermic. As he watched, the
blood continued to spread--it eventually grew to the size of a dime--but
Krycek remained stock-still. Motionless.

     But still standing.

     Bracing himself for the worst, Charles looked up--and his fear was
quietly sublimated by a kind of bemused wonder. Mouth open, he gazed
upward in awe. Amazement. Because although Krycek still gripped the pistol
tightly in one hand, arm dangling uselessly by his side, and although he
was still standing, he was dead. His head drooped, eyes half-open, gazing
down listlessly. His face was pale.

     Charles was astonished: Krycek had literally died on his feet. His
body did not seem to be leaning on anything, but his shoes were planted
fairly far apart on the ambulance floor, lending him stability. He swayed
lightly, standing like a cleverly balanced action figure. A statue. By
now, his head and neck were very pale--almost the color of his white
starched shirt--as the blood began to drain from his upper extremities
down into his feet and legs. The expression on his face was one of dull
surprise.

     "Jeez," Charles said softly. "Jesus almighty Christ."

     Just to be sure, he prodded Krycek lightly in the chest--and the dead
man's trigger finger tightened convulsively, discharging the gun, firing a
bullet straight down into the floor. It hit, bounced, ricocheted upward
with a sharp metallic whine, retracing its path almost exactly, blowing
away Krycek's thumb in a spray of red droplets and smashing into the
ceiling, where it remained.

     After a few moments, Charles managed to reswallow his heart--only to
notice that the blast had upset Krycek's precious balance. That, in fact,
the dead man was tipping precariously forward. In his direction.

     "Oh God," he muttered. Scrambled to catch the corpse before it hit
the gurney. He raised his hands, managed to get one on Krycek's face,
tried to push upward--but the body folded like an accordion, the spine
flexing into parenthesis-shape, and Charles soon found himself with a very
dead body lying clumsily in his arms.

     Now the reality of the murder finally hit home. Charles was violently
and noisily sick, only barely managing to avert his head and avoid
insulting Krycek's body even more. He felt slimy all over. Weak. The
effort of such sudden reverse peristalsis had reopened the wound in his
stomach. His ear was still bleeding. Fuck. What a situation.

     He didn't even notice the markings on Krycek's chest until later.

*     *     *

End of (11/18)

Blood of Angels (12/18)

*     *     *

     In all of Washington D.C.--in all of America, perhaps--there was only
one telephone that X truly trusted, one telephone which he knew would
never be corrupted by  traces, taps, eavesdroppers or IPSD mainframes: a
silver telephone that sat bolted into an iron box inside a fireproof safe
in a concrete bunker on the banks of the Potomac. To casual passers-by,
the facility looked like a boating house, lying as it did above a wooden
pier where boats lay trussed and the river lapped languorously against the
massive docks; but on the inside was an array of sophisticated computer
equipment, shortwave scanners, radios, NSA code-blockers, scramblers,
microwave transmitters, silicon sculpture and fiber-optic macrame, all
centered around that silver telephone: the Only Safe Line in the United
States.

     Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the Booth--as it was
called by its patrons--was manned by a single operator, usually a CIA or
FBI trainee with little curiosity and a spotless disciplinary record. For
security reasons, a single individual rarely manned the Booth more than
three or four times in a lifetime--a new face could be seen there nearly
every day. Because of this broad but shallow pool of recruits, half the
graduates of Quantico or the Farm could attest to having spent a weekend
working there, but none of them could safely say what they'd done or what
purpose it had served.

     The Booth functioned in a simple manner. Any telephone--secure or
otherwise--could be used to place a call to the bunker. This initial call
was always brief--only a ten-digit passkey, a number and a few names were
uttered--and it set a rapid series of events into motion: the operator on
duty would verify the passkey (which was changed daily) and page the
intended recipient of the message. The recipient was given an hour's time
to arrive at the Booth; after that, the authorization was automatically
nullified, and a second call would need to be made. For this reason, the
Booth was only useful for contacting individuals within or close to the
District of Columbia--and even then, using the Booth was such a pain that
it was employed only rarely. On special occasions.

     So when X was summoned by the Booth on his way out of Mulder's
apartment--the digital face of his pager displaying the ten-digit code
known by less than nine dozen operatives in the American intelligence
community--he knew that something was up. Something big. He drove from
Alexandria to the Potomac bunker at breakneck speed; when he slammed the
car door shut and stepped out onto the pier, his eyes were narrow and
sharply focused. He strode quickly down the dock. Saw the familiar bunker,
leaning precipitously over the very edge of the river, wind-whipped,
stained by moisture.

     Or so it seemed from afar. X knew that the Booth was intentionally
disguised as a homely shack, boards nailed up haphazardly, pitted with
carvings and graffiti and water damage--but it was all a facade, an
illusion; on the inside, the Booth was lined with carbon steel, a single
window set into the ceiling, crossed with bars. He knew, even before
inserting a key into a hidden hole and turning it firmly, that the door
would open onto a cramped, drab office, dreary yet somehow high-tech, set
with computer monitors and gadgetry and unimaginably advanced
bug-detecting equipment.

     As usual, the operator was reading a comic book. None of them knew
what they were doing, X reflected; none of them could work the computers
or check the apparatus or do anything more than the most rote bookkeeping
activities. Get password; check it; confirm it; page target. Simple. There
were rarely more than one or two requests per day. One might as well spend
the remaining time reading Carl Barks.

     X gave the day's code without looking at his pager. "5-1-0-5-3-7..."

     The operator--a skinny kid with slicked-back orange hair and
glasses--nodded. Said: "Today's combination is--"

     "--07-36-14. Next time don't put the damn combo in plain sight."

     "Sure," said the kid, noticing the slip of paper that lay uncovered
on his desk. "Sorry, sir."

     "Whatever." Stepping past the poindexter without another word, X
entered the soundproof cubicle that held the Phone. As always, the room
was small and almost ascetic: it contained nothing except a chair, a desk,
and an iron safe, its dimensions less than six feet by eight when the door
was closed. X spun the dial--seven--thirty-six--fourteen--and twisted the
handle, revealing a metal box, cold and smooth and heavy. Opened it.
Lifted out the Phone.

     It was silver inside and out, gleaming and well-polished, although
there were fingerprints on the receiver from its last use. X wore gloves.
There was only one button, yellow. He pressed it. Held the Phone to his
ear. Listened to a series of whirs, clicks, buzzes, as the Booth
automatically scrambled the channels, purged the airwaves, cleared the
wavelengths, making the line free for covert conversation. Sonic
cleansing.

     When it was done, the Phone finally began to ring.

     And when the man at the other end answered, X didn't recognize the
voice, for good reason; the Booth subjected all sounds to compression and
distortion and reassembly, doing mechanically what a little helium would
accomplish just as well: all voices sounded like robots, exactly the same.

     But X knew who it was.

     "I'll be brief," the robot-voice said. "There's big trouble. You have
overstepped your boundaries and jeopardized the entire mission..."

     X listened for several minutes, letting a noncommittal comment fall
every once in a while. The Booth's filter rendered all speech devoid of
emotion, at a fixed volume, so it was impossible to tell if the individual
at the other end of the line was shouting or whispering, sarcastic or
serious, or even male or female, although X knew that the former was true:
the man's voice was computerish and androgynous, artificially smoothed and
completely soulless. X knew that he sounded the same way. So he was able
to distance himself from the complaints and pleadings of the man at the
other end; he heard everything patiently, with no real surprise--except
when he heard that It had been tailing Scully--and offered various
comments, as well as his own share of information.

     When the conversation was over, X hung up slowly and replaced the
Phone in its holy of holies. Although he wouldn't admit it, he was rather
disturbed by the news.

     It. That was something that he hadn't counted on.

     Because It was still a mystery. An undecided factor.

     In the days since Its unwitting creation, X had never heard It
referred to by anything but that ominous pronoun. It. No name. No
identity. No indication of either. X knew only the barest details of Its
nature or origin. All he knew, indeed, was what they had chosen to tell
him.

     First: It could be identified by the red hieroglyphics tattooing Its
forearms and upper torso.

     Second: It could impersonate a human being perfectly when It wished.

     Third: It subscribed to no agenda but Its own.

     This last item, at least, was unquestionable. X had seen the
pictures. Two men had been killed by It after It arose from Its
oxyphenylcyrine trance, a third permanently disabled when It blew a hole
in his chest.

     After which, It had escaped. Its whereabouts had remained
unknown--until now. And, hopefully, now that It had been drawn to Agent
Scully--or perhaps to Agent Scully's companion--It could be killed. The
ideograms on its arms could finally be read and deciphered. And this
entire nasty business could come to an end.

     X slammed the safe door shut. Stood. Left the Booth without a
backward glance at the operator, who had set down his comic book and was
watching him expectantly--X was aware that it was considered good luck to
tip the operator on one's way out of the Booth, but he wasn't about to
give this sorry fuck any cash. He stepped wordlessly out onto the dock,
sliding the camouflaged entrance shut behind him. Glanced briefly over his
shoulder. Once again, the Booth was nothing more than a rotting kiosk on
the banks of the river, anonymous and of zero interest to anyone; one's
eyes slid over it. With luck, he wouldn't have to return there for a
while.

     X was halfway to his car when he noticed the lone figure leaning
against the bumper.

     A stranger. He was dressed in a dark blue overcoat, double-breasted
suit, blood-red tie, flapping tongue-like in the wind. His head was bent,
face hidden; he seemed to be looking down at the river, the throbbing
currents of the Potomac, his hand resting lightly on the hood of the car.
He did not seem to be aware of X's presence.

     Drawing his gun, X slowed his pace, began to approach the car
sideways, glancing in all directions, seeing no one else within one
hundred yards. If this was an ambush, it was either amateurish--or
unspeakably professional. He kept his arms rigid. Put two pounds of
pressure on a nine-pound trigger.

     It wasn't until he got within ten feet of the car that the stranger
turned--and X recognized him. Let the gun fall to his side in hollow
disbelief.

     It was himself.

     His twin--or, if not, someone who had been surgically rebuilt in his
image. It was like looking into a slightly cruel, slightly distorted--but
no doubt accurate--mirror: the scars of recent plastic surgery were still
evident around the eyes, the ears, the base of the chin, the cheeks. The
nose; the throat. Even the teeth had been rebuilt; when the man smiled, it
was X's own smile that peered from between the lips. Exactly the same,
down to length of hair and beard. His Palimpsest clone. His double.

     His doppelganger.

     And X knew that one of them was going to die.

*     *     *

     Noticing that the needle of the gas gauge was tipping precipitously
towards E, Scully exited the freeway and began looking for a service
station. She wasn't sure where they were--probably somewhere in lower New
Jersey--and the landscape was gray, industrial, lined with factories that
seemed hewn from solid granite. Smog lightly glazed the sky. In the back
seat, the kangaroo breathed softly, dreaming, its tail thumping lightly
against the inside of the carrier.

     Sera stretched her numb arms, handcuffs digging into her wrists. Said
conversationally: "You know, that kangaroo is vitally important."

     "Hm?" said Scully, half-listening. She frowned. Whenever she tried to
find a way out of this industrial maze, each road simply led to another,
the coke ovens and pistons hemming them in on either side. "Pardon me?"

     "If you want to locate XenoTech's Manhattan lab, the kangaroo will
lead you there."

     "Elaborate."

     "Have you ever heard of the metatherian instinct? The embryonic
diapause? How much do you know about the marsupial life cycle?"

     Scully sighed. If she didn't find a way out soon, their gas would be
gone and they'd be stranded in the morass; at the moment, discussing the
finer points of kangaroo courting was not a priority. "Not much. Only what
I learned in college-level biology." Her words were brisk, harried.

     Sera either didn't notice or deliberately ignored Scully's tone of
impatience: "Well, you know the basics. All marsupials are born mere weeks
after conception, completely helpless--they're little more than crawling
embryos with strong little arms, but they manage to migrate the few inches
from the birth canal to the pouch."

     "Every schoolchild knows this."

     "But not every schoolchild understands how _alien_ the process is. We
look at marsupials and compare them to rabbits or mice or teddy bears, but
in reality, their bodily structure and life habits are so foreign to
placental mammals as to be almost totally unimaginable."

     "How so?"

     "Listen. After a female kangaroo gives birth, she often mates again,
almost immediately. Understand? While the first unformed young is still
clinging to the pouch, she's already conceiving a second time. Maximizing
her reproductive potential. It makes evolutionary sense: because of the
extreme shortness of the gestation period, a kangaroo can afford to remain
pregnant for virtually every moment of her mature life."

     "Fun."

     "But not feasible. Although the actual gestation period only lasts
for a few weeks, the postpartum pouch development can continue for much
longer. Even if the female bore new young on a monthly basis--as she
probably could--her pouch would soon suffer from overcrowding; it simply
isn't possible to have more than a certain number of young suckling at
once."

     "So why does the female mate again so soon?"

     "Several reasons. First of all, the newborn often doesn't survive
very long. It's nothing more than a little worm, you know: pink, hairless,
weak, no larger than your thumb. Many of them die before reaching the
pouch. So it's practical to have a pregnancy at all times; even if a dozen
of your young can't make it, perhaps the thirteenth will. Law of averages.

     "But sometimes," Sera continued, "a kangaroo will become pregnant
when she already has a viable newborn in the pouch. Which means trouble.
She can't simply give birth again: a uterine traffic jam would occur."

     "So what happens?" Scully asked, not very interested.

     "The newly conceived embryo goes into stasis."

     "What do you mean?"

     "Exactly what I said: stasis. Suspended animation. It's known as
embryonic diapause. The embryo stops dividing, stops developing, simply
sits lifeless in the uterus. Waiting. Eventually, the already-born young
will die or be weaned, and the pouch will be vacant again. At which time,
the fetus reattaches itself to the uterus and continues gestation as if
nothing had happened.

     "Now, consider it," Sera said. "Consider it very carefully. This
period when the embryo hovers between life and death. Completely isolated
from its mother, from the womb, from the rest of the universe. Alone. A
clump of cells in an endless sea."

     "So what?" Scully was getting vaguely pissed; the road seemed to be
taking her in circles.

     "Compare it to what happens when you inject someone with
oxyphenylcyrine. Their nerve endings short-circuit. Spinal cord shuts off.
Muscles relax. Weaken. They feel nothing--can't breathe--can't
think--can't even perceive their own predicament. In moments, they're
dead--but not before having experienced another moment of complete
isolation. They're alone, completely alone, for perhaps the first time in
their lives. To them, the world has ceased to exist. Nothing can be felt;
there is no pain, no emotion, no perception; everything is suffocated and
purified through an OPC haze."

     "Oxyphenylcyrine?" Scully asked. "But you said that the OPC method
was falsified.

     "It was. But although Palimpsest's work was flawed and faked, a grain
of truth remained: when you isolate an organism from all physical stimuli,
you increase its sensitivity to the supernatural, to the afterlife. The
unknown. A bit of jelly in a marsupial womb, or a bit of humanity on a
concrete sidewalk: it's all the same. Seclusion. Loneliness. A vacuum that
can only be filled by a higher state of awareness. You can interpret it
any way you wish: either the organism is invaded by some higher power, a
spirit from the netherworld, a ghost, a dybbuk--or it somehow manages to
tap into its own genetic memory. It reads the tapes. Grasps, in its
unimaginable solitude, the secrets of its own DNA."

     "And you believe that this happens to marsupials in embryonic
diapause?"

     "I know it. When that embryo is severed from its mother's embrace, it
becomes a literal palimpsest: a manuscript that has been written upon
countless times, erased, redrawn, reinscribed--but incompletely so; the
old words can still be read. Theoretically, accessing the genetic memory
of such an embryo would be child's play. What my group was trying to do,
in cooperation with XenoTech, was to extend that period of diapause. To
lengthen it--if possible--to the complete lifetime of the organism. To
help the organism retain that peculiar sensitivity, be able to detect
those unknown forces--whether from genome or Gehenna--that contain the
secrets of the world. That kangaroo," Sera finished, "may have such a
sensitivity. It may have powers."

     "_Psychic_ powers?" Scully asked, incredulous.

     "Not exactly. But it may possess a sensitivity to the womb, to the
pouch, to its place of origin: if my guess is correct, that kangaroo
should be able to lead you and Mulder directly to--"

     Scully slammed on the brakes, jerking the car to a halt. Sera flew
forward, her seatbelt locking, banging her head against the roof. "Ouch!"
she said in a little girl's voice. "What happened?"

     "I don't know," Scully said. Her eyes were narrow, suspicious. "I saw
something in the road. Something strange. Wait here." Flinging open the
car door, Scully stepped outside, taking her pistol from the dashboard and
holding it ready by her side. Sera watched from the front seat, an
expression of concern unfolding across her face. There was a spot of
reddened skin on her forehead.

     Alone, Scully knelt by the front tires. Examined what had made her
brake so abruptly. Wondered why it had inspired such sudden dread on her
part.

     Because it was just a box. A cardboard box, tied with heavy string,
wrapped in plain brown paper, lying in the midst of the asphalt, in the
very center of the right lane, edges aligned neatly with the sides of the
road. Placed there deliberately. Meant for her. She knew it...because a
single tube of sunscreen lay atop the carton.

     Hands shaking, careful not to upset the box more than necessary,
Scully took the tube. Unscrewed it. Sniffed the cap--and felt an eerie
sense of deja vu as the stinging scent of ammonia flooded her senses.

     "What is it?" Sera called from inside the car.

     "You mean you don't know?" Scully shot back. "It looks like your
handiwork."

     "Trust me," Sera said quaveringly. "I have no idea what this is."

     "Trust," Scully muttered, kneeling in the road. "Right-o." She
squeezed the familiar ammonia liniment onto her hands; it melted slightly,
softening, when it came into contact with her warm fingers. She rubbed it
over the brown paper wrapping. The top. The sides. She avoided the bottom,
fearful that tipping the box would trigger some sort of bomb.

     The message took only a few seconds to appear. When it did--only a
single sentence, running across the right-hand side of the carton--she
couldn't suppress a smile, remembering what the dwarf had said the night
before:

     IT ISN'T A BOMB! TRUST ME!

     "Trust," she said again. Rolled the word around in her mouth.
Pondered what it meant. Decided to go for broke--and ripped away the
wrapping, tore the string with her fingernails, pulled aside the paper and
let it fall by the roadside. She opened the box, looked within. Her smile
disappeared. Heart began to thud.

     Vinyl miniskirt. Fishnet stockings. Pink tank top. Red spike-heeled
pumps. Junk jewelry. Cotton panties. Scully knew. She had no idea that
Mulder had already seen and touched and handled these few scraps of
clothing--but she knew nonetheless.

     But how in God's name had they managed to bring Janneson's garments
here, of all places? Why had they left them in the middle of the road,
leaving their discovery to fate?

     It was then that Scully realized: they _wouldn't_ leave anything to
fate.

     Which meant that she was being watched.

     Someone had seen her leave the freeway and enter the industrial area.
Seen that she was lost, that she was going in circles. Had looked down the
way, calculated her direction of travel--and placed the box where she was
sure to find it. In the middle of the road. Which implied at least two
people: one vulture-like, observing from a high point, peering down with
binoculars and following her with his eyes; and an accomplice by the
roadside, someone with access to a car of his own, who could speed down
the path, leave the package and disappear soundlessly.

     Great. Just fucking great. Scully stood, turned slowly around and
around, taking in the desolation. These surrounding plants and factories
appeared to be long-dead, rusting, primeval: only a few trails of green
vapor ascending from smokestacks gave any sign of activity. The sky arched
above, breathtakingly blue but clouded with pollution. The road stretched
to a vanishing point on either side. In between, anyone could be hiding,
anywhere, above or behind these metal-gray walls: these were not
factories, Scully understood, but caverns, cathedrals, monuments to death.

     And she had driven right into their midst.

     "What's in the box?" Sera ventured timidly from the front seat.
"What's going on?"

     Casting another wary glance over her shoulder, Scully said, "I think
we've got company." She pulled a random piece of clothing--the vinyl
dress--from the box. Showed it to Sera. "Recognize this?" she asked.

     Sera craned forward, striving to see. Her eyes widened. "Jeez," she
said, awed. "Janneson's dress."

     And then she smiled. Genuinely, radiantly. The grin cut to the bone,
disturbing Scully more than anything else--more than the package, more
than the suggestion that she was being watched--this odd smile, strangely
beautiful: Sera grinned so widely that her lip threatened to split open
again. A single droplet of blood squeezed its way out, round and
glistening, like a scarlet pearl.

     Shifting, Sera strained further in her seat--but because she was
cuffed to the headrest, the only way she could inch forward was to bring
her elbows together, straightening her arms, sticking out her neck. The
long sleeves of her blouse wrinkled slightly, traveling up to her elbows.

     And Scully saw them. Saw the words.

     Hidden until now by the sleeves, red letters--hieroglyphics,
ideograms--ran up and down Sera's forearms. Bleeding up from the skin.
Some unknown language, psychosomatically writ upon the flesh--or was it
copper sulfate?--that Scully could not take her eyes from, looking at that
scarlet text, terminating just above the wrists.

     Sera noticed that Scully had seen. Smiled even more, looking at the
black vinyl skirt that Scully held in her hands.

*     *     *

     Deep inside Sera, It awoke.

*     *     *

End of (12/18)

Blood of Angels (13/18)

*     *     *

     "I'd like a one-way ticket to Manhattan, please," Mulder said
absently, going through the familiar ritual: No, he didn't have a
reservation. No, he'd be paying cash. How soon would it be leaving? Aisle
seat, please. Non-smoking. The cigarettes in his shirt pocket? He didn't
plan to smoke them. Honestly.

     He carefully counted out the bills, pushed them across the counter.
"Thanks," he said, absently taking the ticket.

     "You're welcome, sir," the woman said. "And...sir?"

     "Yes?"

     "If you want to wash your face, there's a restroom just around the
corner."

     "Oh," Mulder said, puzzled. "Thanks."

     Turning away from the TWA counter, Mulder checked his watch. His
flight would be leaving Dulles in fifteen minutes, but he was in no hurry,
had no baggage to check; his only luggage was a slim manila folder,
carried beneath his arm, and a few subsidiary items, all easily concealed.
The oxyphenylcyrine cigarettes rode heavily in his shirt pocket, along
with both pen-syringes; he'd kept the morphine, intuiting that it might be
useful, distinguishing it from its adrenaline-filled cousin with a sliver
of masking tape. (God knew that he didn't want any confusion as to which
was which.)

     Speaking of confusion...

     Taking into account what the woman had said, Mulder rubbed his nose,
glanced at his fingertips--and felt a moment of odd surprise. The pads of
his fingers were blackened with soot. "That's strange," he said aloud; he
thought he'd cleaned his face pretty thoroughly back in the apartment.
Walking quickly to the men's restroom, he pushed the door open, stepped
inside. Saw his reflection in the mirror. Couldn't believe his eyes.

     His face was covered with ash again. Not so thickly as before, but
there were dark, unmistakable smudges across his cheekbones, nose, chin,
forehead.... Frowning, he tossed his envelope onto the counter. Ran hot
water, scrubbing with the pink powdered hand soap. In a moment, all of the
smut had been washed down the drain, black swirls trailing across the
porcelain of the sink.

     A glance in the mirror was sufficient to convince him that he was
spotless again. He dried his face with a handful of paper towels, pondered
the strangeness. But it was no big mystery. Some residual grime had
probably rubbed off when he'd changed clothes prior to coming to the
airport; his shirt had been caked with dust from the K Street fire. He
smiled. Of course. If the woman hadn't said something, he might have gone
all the way to New York looking like a chimney sweep.

     Leaving the restroom, he walked several hundred yards along the
airport concourse, finally arriving at his gate. Collapsing wearily into
one of the plastic chairs that lined the terminal, he opened the manila
envelope and pulled out the sheaf of printed pages that comprised the
April 10, 1983 issue of Clinical Abstracts. Flipped to the front. Began to
read. And read. And read.

     It wasn't until the plane arrived that he found the item which (he
thought) X had meant for him to see. Rising, he gave the attendant his
ticket and boarded the plane, continuing to read as he made his way to his
seat. He reached the end of the article, saw the list of contributors.
Nodded with satisfaction. One of the authors was a researcher at XenoTech.
When the stewardess began the safety lecture, he only half-listened,
concentrating on the subject before him.

     He read the article a second time. A third. In dry, scientific
language, it detailed the manufacture of a kind of artificial skin,
intended for burn victims and other patients whose injuries required major
physical reconstruction.

     What had X said? _Skin. It's an obsession_.

     But the article noted that XenoTech's synthetic skin was virtually
useless, due to one glaring flaw: prolonged exposure to UV radiation would
collapse the plasma membranes of the cells, wrinkling the flesh, turning
it gray and hard and inflexible. It reminded Mulder, obviously enough, of
the albino kangaroo--except that, instead of mere sunburn, the UV rays
caused much more dramatic deterioration of the tissue. Skin became scaly,
almost reptilian. Fishlike. Clearly worthless for any clinical use.

     If it were kept in the dark, though...

     The plane taxied to the runway, accelerated, took off. Mulder's
eardrums popped, but he hardly noticed; as the airplane climbed, his
thoughts climbed with it, straining for handholds, for a means of
assembling everything he had discovered thus far. Kaun. Palimpsest.
Wilhelm Reich. XenoTech. The kangaroo. The dwarf. The artificial skin. The
smoldering ruins at 1527 K Street.

     After a while, the plane leveled off, and the seatbelt light was
dimmed. Unbuckling, Mulder glanced briefly to either side. On his left,
the aisle. On his right, a blue-suited businessman, pecking at a laptop
spreadsheet. Beyond was the small window, and the soupy clouds, and the
threads of blue sky crisscrossing the haze. Looking outside, Mulder
saw--far beneath them--the shadow of the airplane itself, cast onto a
layer of stratus below, a dark gray blob that skated along the clouds like
an amorphous ghost.

     Oddly, Mulder was suddenly reminded of the phantoms of the Brocken.
For centuries, large, shadowy spirits had been seen at the summit of the
Harz mountains in Germany, towering hundreds of feet high, dark, gray,
ominous; the populace believed them to be spirits of the dead that
congregated annually on the steepest peaks. But less than a century ago,
the apparitions had been satisfactorily explained: climbers who ascended
Mount Brocken would cast shadows onto the clouds, silhouetted by the
setting sun. Just before dusk, these shadows would grow to Brobdingnagian
proportions. Nothing supernatural. Only a minor quirk of natural
phenomena, quickly elevated to the status of folklore by superstition and
ignorance.

     Sitting there, gazing out the window, Mulder reflected that perhaps
he had been making a similar mistake. Mistaking shadows for reality. He'd
been living in Plato's cave, he realized: Kaun, Janneson, the kangaroo,
XenoTech, Wilhelm Reich--they were only mirages, symptoms of a deeper
truth, something that he was overlooking, something as obvious as climbers
on a mountainside. He'd been prowling in the shade this entire time.
Ignoring the big picture.

     Because something was casting these shadows, dammit. There was an
explanation for it all. A neat, tidy explanation that would tie everything
together--

     "Excuse me, sir." The voice jerked Mulder from his reverie: a
stewardess, bending down and smiling. "Would you like a towelette?"

     "A...towelette?" Mulder asked. "Why?"

     "You have a little dirt on your face, that's all," she said brightly.
"I can get you a towelette, if you like."

     Mulder paused. Indeed: he froze, trying not to let his imagination
run away with him, trying to take this calmly. With studied casualness, he
said, "No thanks. I'll just tidy up in the restroom."

     "Very well, sir." The stewardess smiled again, straightened up, and
walked away towards the cockpit. Nice derriere, but Mulder was in no
position to notice. Leaving his papers where they were, he stood quickly,
excused himself, strode quickly towards the bathrooms at the rear of the
plane. Found one that was unoccupied. Slid the door open. Stepped within.
He did not look into the mirror until the door was shut; even then, he was
almost afraid to open his eyes.

     When he did, a long, stifled moan escaped his lips.

     The soot had returned. It wasn't as widespread or noticeable as it
had been in the airport restroom, but there were still traces on the
bridge of his nose, his chin, beneath his eyes: dark, smutty ash that came
away when he rubbed it with his fingers. As he stared into the mirror, he
imagined that he could almost see the smudges spreading. Growing, ever so
slowly.

     He looked at his hands. Clean. His neck. Clean. He quickly removed
his jacket, undid his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, examined his chest.
Clean. Only his face, it seemed, was affected by the strange black stain.

     Because it wasn't ash. He was damned sure about that now.

     More water, more soap. As always, it vanished down the drain almost
as soon as it became moist: he was in no danger of being permanently
overgrown--but he had no idea how long it would be before the smudges
reappeared. _If_ they reappeared.

     He could afford to wait. Mulder put his shirt and tie back on,
splashed more water onto his face, then stood gazing intently into the
mirror. He would bide his time for a few minutes, watch his reflection.
See if the soot came back.

     So: Mulder stood like that for nearly six minutes, breathing slowly
and steadily, eye to eye with his own haggard face. He waited...and
waited. The stains did not return. He remained perfectly still, not moving
a muscle, concentrating intently on his own visage--but his thoughts were
free to go wherever they wished, roaming idly over the lies, suggestions
and troubling conjectures that he had encountered in the last fourteen
hours--and the more he thought, the more disturbing his conclusions
became.

     Voices. From the past.

     Byers: _The UFO's were apparently attracted by Reich's experiments
with orgone. They were drawn to it. Aroused. Lured_.

     Langly: _Reich noticed an alien black substance growing on boulders.
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_.

     X: _Think of it as interplanetary warfare_.

     Was he thirsty? Nauseous? Dizzy? No. Not physically, anyway, not
because of anything he had come in contact with...but the implications of
these ideas made his head spin.

     Kaun had been working on something at XenoTech. Something big.
Something involving the Majestic-12, something involving orgone energy,
biophysics, skin transplants, protein synthesis. Aliens. Cloning.

     What if 1527 K Street had been destroyed--burnt completely to the
ground--in some kind of cosmic alien retribution, similar to what had
occurred at Wilhelm Reich's ranch in 1951, except more drastic? What if
the "alien black substance" which Reich and others had described had been
in the ashes of the K Street building?

     And what if it was growing on him at that very moment?

     Mulder lowered his eyes from his reflection and turned on the water
again, immersing his hands in the hotness until they were red and
stinging. Added cold water, soap. Tried to remain calm. Think clearly.
Shutting off the taps, drying his hands, he glanced back at the
mirror--and felt his heart leap convulsively into his throat.

     It was there again. A bit of blackness--no larger than a dime--in the
very center of his forehead. It hadn't been there a second ago. And a
shuddering tidal wave of horror washed over him, making his knees wobble,
as he understood the truth: the substance only grew when he wasn't
looking.

     Jesus Christ. It was sentient.

     Someone knocked impatiently on the bathroom door. Mulder jumped,
startled. Hands shaking, he washed his face for the last time, dried it,
took a dozen paper towels from the dispenser and folded them into a small
bundle. Stuffed them into his pocket. He exited the restroom, moving
quickly past the man who stood outside, almost tripping in the aisle as he
hurried back to his seat.

     For the remainder of the flight, Mulder cleaned his face with the
towels every other minute, scrubbing until the skin was raw. The
businessman sitting in the next seat looked at him curiously, as well he
might: it was, he reckoned, the first time he'd ever been near an actual
obsessive-compulsive.

     Poor sick devil.

*     *     *

     For several seconds, X stared at his double...and his double stared
back. A grin split the doppelganger's features. X saw that every facial
muscle had been painstakingly laid into place, every wrinkle, every scar,
every fold of skin. Even the hands looked the same as the doppelganger
reached into his coat pocket and produced two cigarettes, lighting one
with a wooden match, offering the other to X, who declined. Despite his
apprehension and growing rage, however, he could not suppress a kernel of
admiration at the job Palimpsest had done. He was impressed. Marvelous
piece of work.

     Too bad he'd need to put a bullethole in it.

     When doppelganger finally spoke, even their voices were alike--X
guessed that some reconstructive surgery had been performed on the man's
sinuses and vocal cords, perfecting the timbre and locution to an uncanny
extent: "So you're the man whose face I'll be wearing," he said, and his
voice was X's own.

     "That's right," X said levelly. After a moment's consideration, he
decided against shooting the man. Reholstered his gun. Rebuttoned his
overcoat. "What can I do for you?" he said with mock-civility.

     "You can listen. I have an offer to make."

     "Go ahead."

     As the doppelganger began to speak, X's eyes moved busily over the
double's body, spot-checking the correspondences and finding that they
coincided to a remarkable extent: width of shoulders, legs, thickness of
forearms, thickness of torso--although he guessed that the added bulk was
less likely muscle than collagen or silicon gel. X thought he saw traces
of the same in the doppelganger's nose and earlobes. Injection marks. A
few stray lines of scalpel, places where cartilage or slivers of bone had
been removed. Like the marks of a paintbrush: contours, slight grooves,
almost imperceptible. At the moment, the man's new face was still tender,
with signs of chiseling; a week from now, however, the remnant scars would
be completely healed--and the deception would be undetectable. Again:
impressive.

     "I'm not going idly to my death," the doppelganger said.

     "I understand."

     "No you _don't_." Clenching his fists, the doppelganger craned his
neck to the sky. "They took everything from me. They took my life, my
identity, my face. They made me a monster."

     "I'm sure you don't mean to be insulting..."

     "Listen to me, for Christ's sake. I had a family. A home. These
men--Palimpsest--they took me away in the dead of night, took me from my
wife and daughter, tore my face apart and put it back together so I looked
like _you_..."

     "But you resembled me already, didn't you?"

     The doppelganger laughed humorlessly. "All niggers look alike to
those WASP sons of bitches. They ripped out my teeth. Gave me new ones. I
can't feel half my body anymore. My legs are jelly, my arms...Jesus. Not
even my voice is the same. You can't even begin to imagine what I've
lost."

     "I can sympathize, but--"

     "Listen!" the doppelganger shouted, slamming his fist against the
roof of the car. "I'm not a fool. I know that there are others like
me--others who were abducted and given new faces. Ordinary men and women.
American citizens, for Christ's sake. And I know that Palimpsest kills
them all--and they end up with these red markings on their skin. Messages
from the dead."

     X raised an eyebrow. "You discovered all this?"

     "I told you: I'm not a fool. Others may accept their fates without
any protest--wait for them to stick needles in their necks--but I'm not
going to give up so easily. I want my life back."

     "Think it can be returned to you?" X asked mildly.

     "I don't think," the doppelganger said. "I know." He slipped a hand
into his pocket. X tensed momentarily, then relaxed: the man removed a
black ballpoint pen of familiar design, his finger positioned clumsily on
the clip. Holding it all wrong. Awkwardly. If the man tried to inject him,
X could easily deflect it. "Palimpsest took my face away," the
doppelganger continued. "With their technology, I know they can give it
back. They took my life; well, they can give that back too." He smiled
with an odd radiance. "I only need something to bargain with."

     "_My_ life?" X asked without concern.

     "I know why they want you dead, you see," the man murmured, fondling
the pen. "Vietnam. 1971. You were there, weren't you? You killed one of
them."

     That got X's attention: his doppelganger was more well-informed than
he'd realized. "How did you become aware of these things?" he asked--but
his mind was suddenly elsewhere. Specifically: the right sleeve of his
bulky overcoat. He drew his hand into the opening, slowly, subtly, working
upward with his fingers. Paused only when he felt the leather knife-case
strapped to the inside of his forearm.

     He unsnapped the sheath with his thumb. Waited.

     "I kept my eyes and ears open," the doppelganger was saying. "I
wasn't stupid. When the first chance came, I bolted."

     "Palimpsest's security was that lax?" He let the knife slide into the
palm of his hand. Placed his finger lightly on the button. Remembered that
he had an oxyphenylcyrine syringe in his left coat pocket.

     "They've been around too long. They've grown weak, undisciplined, too
confident. They weren't expecting their victims to protest, much less
escape."

     "And you did."

     "And took a hypodermic along," the doppelganger said. "I knew that if
I gave them the information they wanted, they'd spare me...so I went
looking for the man whose identity I had been given. You. Because if
killing me would get the necessary information, killing you would be even
better."

     X smiled. "Aren't you worried that I'll kill you first? You should
have shot me from afar, then injected me with the poison before I died."

     "You and I both know better," the doppelganger shot back. "I can't
shoot you--too much tissue damage. The message would be partial,
incomplete, even nonexistent. This is the only way."

     "I could kill you," X said simply.

     "With your gun in its holster and your overcoat buttoned?" Grinning,
the doppelganger said, "I'd like to see you try."

     There was a moment of utter silence. The two regarded each other
calmly--eye to identical eye--unmoving, oddly relaxed, listening to the
mad rush of the Potomac beneath them. Those metallic gray currents,
licking at the rough-hewn roots of the docks. Far-away sounds of traffic,
pedestrians. Birds. The doppelganger fingered the clip of the syringe. X
fingered the knife's chrome button.

     One heartbeat--

     --and the doppelganger ejected the needle, went for the back of X's
neck--and it wasn't even dramatic, not really, because X chopped the man's
forearm savagely enough to snap the bone, forcing him to drop the syringe
to the pier, where it rolled a few feet and disappeared through a crack in
the boards--and the six-inch blade flew from X's sleeve, shining brightly
in the noontime light, as he gripped the mother-of-pearl handle tightly
and drove the knife into the doppelganger's throat. Blood gouted. It
flowed warmly over X's hand, forearm, coat; the doppelganger fell to his
knees; X placed a foot on the man's chest, kicked, toppling him back.
Withdrew the switchblade. Tossed it aside, the boards slick and slippery
beneath his feet, groped for his own syringe, found it, ejected the
needle, drove it home. Injected the OPC. Muttered: "My deepest
consolations to your wife and child."

     The doppelganger only looked up at the sun and did not respond.

     X tore away the man's clothing. Overcoat. Jacket. Tie. Shirt.
Undershirt. As the doppelganger squirmed on the pier like a dying fish, X
sat back on the hood of his car, wiping his hands on his trousers, looking
down. Waited for words to appear.

     He didn't have to wait long.

*     *     *

End of (13/18)

Blood of Angels (14/18)

*     *     *

     Smog and dust hung heavily in the air. Sunshine blazed. Scully
continued to kneel alongside the cardboard carton, wondering frantically
what to do, the sweat streaming down her face: her mind whirled,
scrambling to understand the implications of the words on Sera's arms. The
only possible explanation, she thought grimly, was that Sera had been
lying. Utterly, absolutely lying. The words--psychosomatic or
otherwise--meant that she was in league with Palimpsest, or with an
organization very much like it; in complete collaboration, she'd brought
the agents directly to Scully.

     There were other possibilities, but Scully forgot to consider them.

     Trying to maintain an attitude of calmness, she replaced the vinyl
skirt into the box, refolding the lid. Gathered the scraps of brown paper,
folded them neatly. Listened for any movement. Nothing.

     Head bent, she could not see inside the car. Even though she knew
that Sera was cuffed to the back of the seat, she remained nervous.
Apprehensive. Palimpsest could be anywhere. She felt eyes sliding over
her. Watchers. Peering down from abandoned factory walls, snipers,
crosshairs lingering for a prolonged fraction of a second at the base of
her neck...

     Her pistol. She had set it down by the front left tire. She reached
for the gun, for where she had left it in the dust--

     --but it was gone.

     "Oh," Scully said softly, staring at the impression in the dust where
the gun had lain. A soft breeze blew across the asphalt. Murmuring. She
forgot to panic, immersed in the unreality of the situation.

     A pair of extremely sensible patent leather shoes stepped into
Scully's vision. When she raised her head, she raised it very slowly.

     Sera stood above her, wrists bleeding heavily, gun in hand.

     Silently, they regarded one another. For a single pregnant moment,
they stood stock-still, Scully kneeling on the ground, Sera with the
pistol aimed at her face, the sun beating down, the dust rising in waves
from the blistering concrete. Brief, unspoken communication parried
between them. Their eyes met. Locked.

     And Sera's eyes changed.

     There was no doubt about it: they _changed_. The hazel coloration
disappeared, like sunshine suddenly clouded by nightfall. Became cold and
hard and alien. No pupils, no irises: only black circles of India ink.
They looked like holes that had been drilled into her skull, utterly
nonreflective, portals gazing onto a region of soul-curdling blackness, an
unimaginably distant region where God was crucified a thousand times over,
where the infinity of space made demons of men and drove all intelligence
to insanity...

     Then Sera blinked, her eyes going back to normal--and she lunged
smoothly forward, jamming the snout of the pistol into Scully's temple,
hard enough to leave an ugly bruise that would linger for days.

     Bringing back her foot, Sera kicked her in the stomach. Scully
doubled over, toppling heavily to the street, scraping her chin on the
pavement. Bit her lip, the pain bringing tears to her eyes.

     "Now we're even," Sera said lightly, cocking the trigger. "Pick up
that box, and get moving."

     Bleeding from the mouth, lying in the street, Scully asked thickly,
"What are you? Where are you taking me?"

     "Someplace," Sera said--but her voice was no longer hers--it
roughened, thickened, grew throbbing undercurrents of metal and steel and
burnt engine oil: "Anyplace. Pick up the fucking box." Stentorian,
unimaginably loud. It erupted from Sera's throat, threatening to tear the
vocal cords apart with its violence.

     Hands and face scraped raw, Scully placed her hands on the cardboard
carton. Encircled it with her arms, clutching it tightly to her chest.
"Now what?" she whispered.

     Sera--or the thing that had once been Sera--said, "Stand. Very
slowly."

     Scully heard the kangaroo yelping from inside the car, pounding on
the carrier door with its feet. Rattling the cage. She stood, clinging to
the box, shifting her arms so she carried it from beneath. Her lip was
still bleeding heavily; the redness trickled down her chin, its coppery
taste making her numb and dizzy. Individual sensations became monumental.
Kangaroo yelping. Taste of blood. Faraway sound of clanking pistons.

     Pain. Sera thrust the gun into the hollow of her throat. Said more
softly: "Now. Turn around and walk twenty yards to the nearest building.
When you get there, drop the box and fall to your knees. Got it?"

     Scully nodded mutely. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the front
seat of the car. The handcuffs still dangled from the headrest, the
bracelets slimed with red. Sera's blood. She'd managed to pull her hands
out.

     Turning, Scully began to walk, holding the carton before her. Sera
followed close behind, pistol pressed firmly against the back of Scully's
head, trigger still cocked. No chance for escape or heroics. Just follow
orders, hope for a miracle. Her jaw ached as if it had been flayed. She
saw that they were heading directly towards an age-old building with walls
of sheet metal, an iron overhang plunging the threshold into dark
obscurity, beetle-browed glass windows gazing down. Her feet moved of
their own accord. Right foot. Left foot.

     Before she knew it, they were in the shadows.

     It swallowed them. She knelt. The ground was bare soil. It was
appreciably cooler here, dim; the line between this darkness and the
sunlight two feet away was extremely well-defined, as if it had been laid
down by a ruler. Sera lowered the gun, leaned against the side of the
building. Smiled. Her teeth gleamed. "Listen carefully," she said. Her
voice was retreating from its inhuman extreme, becoming more human, less
overtly alien: "I want you to remove all of your clothing--and put on
everything that is in that box."

     Scully's mouth felt like cotton. "Why?" she asked, wiping her chin
with the back of her hand, studiously avoiding eye contact, keeping her
gaze fixed on that nearby division between light and dark.

     "Because I'm asking you nicely," Sera said, her voice nearly normal.
"Please put on Janneson's clothing." She gestured to the box with the gun.

     Kneeling there in the dirt, Scully obeyed. She shrugged off her
blouse, pulling it over her head and letting it fall beside her. Shoulders
bare, she searched, shivering, through the box, found Janneson's pink tank
top. Was about to put it on--when Sera stopped her.

     "Your bra, too," she said, sounding almost bored, her voice betraying
no trace of emotion. "Take it off."

     Scully complied, face reddening. After she had undressed completely
from the waist up, she put her arms into the sleeveholes of the tank top,
pulled it over her head, tugged it down to her waist.

     It fit perfectly.

     She put the barrettes into her hair, drawing it back from her
forehead. Donned the tortoiseshell earrings, the necklace, the rings, the
bracelets. Kicked off her shoes, wriggled out of her jeans, glanced up at
Sera for further instructions.

     "Forget the panties," Sera said. "Just the hose and miniskirt."

     Her hands were trembling so violently that it took several tries to
buckle the fishnet stockings to the garter belt. Suspender clips gleamed
silver beneath her fingernails. She tugged at the elastic, drawing it
smooth over calf and upper leg. When it came time for the skirt, the vinyl
hugged her hips snugly, like a flat rubbery fist, ending halfway down the
thigh, slit even further up. It was like wearing a layer of tightly-wound
Saran wrap.

     Finally: the red high-heeled shoes. When she stood, she wobbled on
four-inch spikes. Sera regarded her appreciatively, her eyes running over
every inch of Scully's form without apparent bashfulness--as if she were
memorizing it, cataloguing it, comparing her to something in her mind's
eye. Nodded with approval.

     But Scully felt dirty all over, half-naked, like some preschooler's
idea of what a comic book slut would look like: humiliated, she asked,
"Now what?"

     "Now we wait," Sera said, and suddenly, for the first time since her
eyes had changed, there was genuine emotion in her words. Her voice was
sad, almost regretful, looking at Scully in Janneson's clothes, the gun
held loosely in one hand. She uncocked the trigger. Her eyes were moist.
Distant.

     "Wait for what?" Scully asked.

     Sera only answered with silence. The two of them stood there, beneath
the overhang, Scully's clothes scattered at their feet, listening to
far-away noises half-muffled by the breeze, sunlight burning cruelly down.
Neither said anything. Each waited, in her own different way, for
something to take place: an event whose outcome was known from the very
start.

     They both waited for the miracle to come.

     And when it did, it was very sudden.

     One moment, Sera was standing there, calm and clear-eyed, smiling
oddly in Scully's direction--and the next, her chest disappeared in a
spray of blood and bone. Only then was the roar of the gunshot heard,
sound rushing to catch up with the bullet: the silence was split asunder,
the blood pouring out, Scully's eyes bigger than saucers. Sera looked
down, saw the gaping hole right above her left breast. Tried to smile
again, but the grin was forced. She dropped Scully's gun. Remained
standing. Scully could only watch, paralyzed with horror.

     Another hole appeared in Sera's stomach. Again: the belated gunshot.
Rifle blasts. Now blood jetted from two different apertures--then three,
as Sera's shoulder was shot away, the splintered clavicle gleaming whitely
as she fell to the ground, body jerking. This broke Scully's spell: she
flung herself down, covering her face, drawing herself into a tight little
ball. Listened, panicking, for the next shot--heard it--and felt hot
steaming droplets spatter across her hands and forehead. Sera. Sera. Shot
to death by some unseen sniper.

     After a few seconds had gone by without another blast, Scully peered
through her fingers, ears ringing from the rifle cracks. Two feet away,
Sera's torso was a shapeless mass of gore--but incredibly, she was still
alive. Trying to sit up. Looking down as she bled her last few droplets.

     "Damn," Sera said faintly. "This is my roommate's dress."

     And she died.

     Time passed. Scully's face was frozen in a rictus of terror. She
rolled onto her side, vomiting out dry air and nothingness. Checked
herself. She was alive. Unwounded. She trembled like a dry leaf--

     --and, looking up, she saw--wide-eyed--a man standing on the roof of
the building across the street. A sniper in a dark overcoat, rifle slung
over his shoulder. He noticed her. Seemed to hesitate--but turned away.
Disappeared without a trace.

*     *     *

     Two hours later.

     Tucked into one corner of the Manhattan airport, just beyond the gate
where the Dulles flight disembarked, was a small drugstore, stocked with
expensively-priced magazines and toothbrushes and aspirin. Also makeup.
Mulder hastily purchased two bottles of flesh-toned liquid foundation, a
tin of cold cream, some face-powder, a steel mirror and a small cosmetic
sponge, paying cash and heading immediately for the airport men's room.
His face was sore and tingling, but--he saw with satisfaction--still
clean. Mostly, anyway. Looking into his own small mirror, he noticed a
darkish-gray smudge, crescent-shaped, running across his chin like a five
o' clock shadow. He rubbed it with a dry towel, and it disappeared. Must
have missed it on the plane.

     He opened one of the stalls, sat down on the toilet. Brought out the
makeup supplies and mirror. Working deliberately, carefully, he moistened
the sponge in the foundation and applied it to his cheekbones, temples,
forehead, chin, nose, jawline, blending it down past his collar. It was
slow, tedious work. The color of the pancake makeup didn't quite match his
own skin, made him look unnaturally tanned, shellacked. He added powder,
tried to soften the effect. No good. He looked like a goddamned soap opera
star.

     Finally, he finished. Mulder regarded himself in the mirror, checking
for any noticeable smudges. Christ. He didn't know what was worse, being
covered with the black substance or with this sticky cloying shit...but at
least the soot was hidden. For now, anyway.

     But he didn't like to think about what was spreading beneath.

*     *     *

     The taxi driver had trouble finding the office of the Chief Medical
Examiner--at First Avenue and 30th, it was a drab and unimposing
building--but Mulder gave a generous tip anyway, hoping to assuage any
suspicions: the cabby had been glancing at him oddly in the rear view
mirror, as well he might--it was a hot, sweaty New York afternoon, clouds
of steam bubbling up from the concrete, and Mulder's makeup had begun to
drip.

     Ascending the steps, Mulder felt his face, judged the runniness.
Glanced at his fingertips, saw they were clean. Good. If he didn't melt
any more, the cosmetic job would probably pass muster; the makeup was
barely noticeable in artificial light, and the blue-tiled lobby of the
ME's office--visible through a large picture window--hopefully had air
conditioning.

     Mulder prayed for such graces, because the black substance was
growing--spreading--beneath the foundation. He could feel it. Christ. It
was a deep-seated itch, a numbness, that frightened him and made him
wonder what might be revealed if the makeup were washed away. He thought
of ergot. Of Dutch elm disease.

     Time to go for broke. He only hoped that the ME would cooperate.

     He stepped through the doors, approached the front desk and flashed
his badge. "Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI. I need to speak with the Chief
Medical Examiner as soon as possible."

     The receptionist was standing with one arm in the sleeve of a light
jacket, obviously about to leave for lunch, and seemed annoyed at this
ill-timed intrusion: "Do you have an appointment?" she asked, shrugging
the jacket around her shoulders, not even bothering to feign interest. She
wore glasses and had honey-blonde hair.

     "No, I'm afraid I don't. If the ME is busy, I could talk to one of
the dieners..."

     Slinging a purse over her shoulder: "May I inquire as to the nature
of your visit?" Rote inquiry.

     "It's part of an ongoing investigation," Mulder said, repocketing his
ID. "Several days ago, this office autopsied a woman named Abby Janneson.
I'd like to speak with the man who performed the postmortem, and, if
possible, view the body."

     With that, the receptionist's face took on a completely different
expression.

     Mulder was surprised by the abrupt change his words wrought. Before,
the woman had regarded him with vague disdain, boredly pegging him as just
another in the long string of dull, low-level official visitors that the
coroner's office encountered each day. Homicide detective, mayoral
representative, plainclothesman, FBI agent: all the same. Best to shut him
up, hand him a proverbial magazine, and leave him for the afternoon shift
to handle.

     But with the mention of Janneson's name, she became courteous and
deferential--almost awed. "I'll see what I can do," the receptionist said.
Her eyes were wide. Picking up the phone, she spoke
softly--inaudibly--into the receiver, stealing curious glances at Mulder
the entire time. He caught only scattered words: Yes. Yes. He wants to see
the body. Janneson. No. Yes. All right.

     Mulder began to feel even more nervous. Heart pounding,
sweating--makeup was probably running in rivers. He thought of the
possibilities. Who was she calling? What if Palimpsest had anticipated his
arrival and planted agents in the ME's office? Jesus. What if they were
here _right now_? It made sense from a tactical point of view: cover all
bases, block all avenues of investigation, place men wherever Mulder might
go, plan the strategy, knit the web. Wrenchingly obvious, now that he
thought about it. Danger. Danger everywhere. Best to escape while he still
had the chance, he thought dazedly, walk out, say he was stepping outside
for some fresh air and run, run from the office of the Chief Medical
Examiner like a cadaver given jerky animation, leave everything behind, go
to Central Park and sit on a bench for six hours until his appointment
with Scully. Even better, just fade away into the woodwork. Forget the
appointment. Forget X. Lie low until it all blows over. Scully would be
all right. She's always all right. She's blessed. But him? No matter how
things went, he'd probably end up facing a murder charge. Show up for his
indictment with a big black fungus growing all over his face. How would
that motherfucker look on Court TV?

     No doubt about it: paranoia made the minutes zoom by.

     Someone tapped Mulder on the shoulder. He turned. Kindly old face, a
good-natured ghoul in a white coat: "Excuse me, Agent Mulder? I'm the ME
who examined Abby Janneson."

     The world solidified again. Everything was all right. His makeup was
still intact. There was no conspiracy within these walls. Mulder shook the
ME's hand, said, "Thanks for seeing me. Is Janneson's body still on the
premises?"

     "Of course," the ME said, his manner gracious, if not exactly cheery:
"The bodies are kept here for at least fifteen days after arrival. If you
like, we can examine Janneson's remains now."

     "That would be just fine," Mulder said genially--and his suspicions
returned with a vengeance. Dammit, this ME was being too nice, too
accommodating. Any D.C. coroner would have let him cool his heels for at
least a quarter of an hour before even seeing him, and even then, he
probably wouldn't have viewed any corpse until his credentials had been
rechecked twice and a barrage of questions had been asked; here, though,
it was practically walk-in service. Things were moving too quickly. As if
they had been expecting him.

     "We've been expecting you," the ME said.

     "Really?" Mulder said. Alarm-bells buzzed in his brain. "In what
way?"

     A puzzled look came over the ME's face. "Actually, it was rather odd.
A man identifying himself as a high-ranking FBI official phoned here
yesterday evening, notifying us that an agent named Mulder would be
arriving soon to view Janneson's body. That's why we delayed the
cremation."

     Yesterday evening? Mulder frowned; his decision to come here was only
an hour old. "An FBI official?"

     "We assume; he didn't give a name. He seemed knowledgeable regarding
many intimate details of the Janneson case, however, and we decided to
take him at his word." The ME cocked his head. "You wouldn't have any idea
who called us, would you?"

     X. It had to be X. Mulder replied vaguely. "Not really. It could have
been one of any number of Bureau officials."

     The ME nodded. "I see. Publicity-shy, I suppose."

     Mulder gave a noncommittal response, then made a show of checking his
watch and suggesting that they view Janneson's body. The ME agreed,
beckoning him to follow. They turned, exited. As they did, Mulder noticed
the Latin inscription engraved into the far wall of the lobby: TACEANT
COLLOQUIS EFFUGIAT RISUS. HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS CAUDET SUCCURERE
VITAE.
Do not speak. Do not laugh. This is where death delights in helping the
living.

     Smiling grimly to himself, Mulder thought: Palimpsest couldn't have
put it better.

     A succession of doors. A white-tiled hallway. A flight of stairs. A
room lined with fluoroscopes and steel sinks. One more door--and they
entered the autopsy room proper. The smell hit them first; Mulder was awed
in spite of himself. The threshold was crammed with corpses on wheeled
gurneys, lying within partially-unzipped body bags, mostly male, mostly
black, complete with grease pencil markings on their foreheads.
Sidestepping the grim clinical carnage, he managed to enter the
gray-and-white dissection room, which was equally packed. Dead outnumbered
living by a two-to-one ratio. A three-year-old girl lay on one table, blue
and bruised, surrounded by white-robed acolytes with scalpels and bone
saws.

     Wait: the ME was saying something. "Hm?" Mulder asked, not paying
attention.

     "I said we'll have to view Janneson's remains in the locker. There
isn't any room for another body."

     "Jeez. Is it always like this?"

     "Not always. This is a good day." Grinning mirthlessly, his pantomime
of solicitousness largely discarded, the ME made his way to a stunningly
vast grid of stainless-steel doors in the midst of the room--at least one
hundred thirty separate compartments, probably more. He checked the serial
numbers, found the one in question. Unlocked it. Swung it open, puffing
thirty-eight degree air out at Mulder's face. Cold.

     He slid out the slab. It grated. Mulder's heart grated with it.

     Because for that first fraction of a second, the blue-tinged corpse
that lay on the slab was not Abby Janneson: it was Dana Scully. The
resemblance was exact. Heartbreaking.

     In his tour of duty with the X-Files, Mulder had seen hundreds--if
not thousands--of bodies, some decomposing, others decapitated or
mutilated or deformed or not even recognizably human: but of them all,
this was the worst. By far. Because the woman on the slab was Scully.

     The ME continued to roll the body out of the locker, revealing it up
to the waist--and then, seeing, Mulder gripped the man's wrist. Ordered
him wordlessly to stop. Because even if he had been expecting this--even
if he had known from the very beginning that this was what he would
find--just to see it, to touch it, came as an added shock. His eyes
bulged. He felt the anger, old and intoxicating, come bubbling up to the
surface.

     Janneson's belly had been completely obliterated by acid. The skin
was stained a harsh, angry red, burnt and blistered and streaked with
necrotic whiteness. It looked like an uncooked section of beef. Forget
writing, forget psychosomatic stigmata: not even the cadaver's navel could
be seen. "Jesus Christ," he whispered through clenched teeth. "What in
God's name happened here?"

     Pursing his lips, the ME said, "I'm truly sorry--it was a silly
accident on the autopsy table. One of my dieners--my assistants--spilled
an entire jar of sulfuric acid onto the cadaver's stomach. We use the acid
to clean teeth for dental comparisons and molds, to soak the enamel, and
the cap had somehow come loose.... It was a silly, regrettable mistake."

     Eyes blazing, Mulder turned to the Medical Examiner. Seized the man's
shoulder. "Bullshit," he said, in a low, almost conversational voice. "Who
told you to obliterate the markings? Who covered up the stigmata on
Janneson's skin?"

     "Stigmata? I don't know what you're talking about," the ME said
calmly. "What in the world do you mean?"

     Mulder hesitated. He had the Janneson autopsy photos in the manila
envelope. Could use them as evidence. Blackmail. But, no, that would be
tipping his hand too quickly: if this man was part of the conspiracy, then
nothing would be gained by revealing the evidence he held. Indeed, much
might be lost. Those photos were his only ace in the hole. A deep,
stinking, impenetrable hole.

     He let go of the man's shoulder. Turned back towards Scully's corpse.
No: Janneson's corpse. Janneson's corpse. Janneson's corpse. He muttered,
"Sorry. I must have been thinking of something else."

     "Quite all right," the ME said expressionlessly. "Do you have any
further questions?"

     "Not at the moment..." Mulder said vaguely. He paused. Wondered what
to do next. "I was wondering if I might have a few minutes alone with the
body," he finally said.

     "If you like. I'll be next door, if you need me." Turning away, the
ME left the room, leaving Mulder alone with Janneson's body. Alone, that
is, except for a dozen other open-air corpses and a handful of living men
and woman, all still gathered around the little dead girl on the adjacent
autopsy table. Even in this abattoir, Mulder supposed, the death of one so
young was still cause for horrified fascination; in a twisted way, it
worked in his favor, allowing him to examine Janneson unobserved. No one
was looking in his direction.

     But again, it had been too easy. He was being humored. Toyed with.
And not without some good reason: he saw immediately that all evidence on
the body had been well-concealed. The acid had erased anything that might
have been on the stomach. The ligature scar around the neck--made, he
remembered, with three twists of a prison shoelace--was wide and raw;
lifting her head gingerly, he saw that any syringe or needlemark would be
utterly hidden by the abrasions.

     Which left him with nothing. Almost. He noticed that, alongside the
main locker which held Janneson's body, there were several smaller
compartments with stainless-steel doors but no locks. Compartments for
accessory evidence--personal effects, clothing, and the like.

     Glancing quickly over his shoulder, he went to work. Opened the first
door. His prize: a white prison jumpsuit, slightly torn. White? He'd seen
it in the photographs, of course, but it still struck him as incongruous:
he'd been under the impression that the New York penal system stayed away
from fine washables when dressing its inmates. Gray or blue denim, maybe.
White fabric? He doubted it. What did it prove, though?

     Next door. A cardboard shoe box labeled with Janneson's
name--probably the items that she had been carrying upon her admittance
into prison. There was no jewelry, of course--X or Palimpsest or whoever
had given him the box of clothing had taken it--but there was a wristwatch
and wallet. The watch was cheap, with a faux-leather band. The wallet was
eelskin, with a heavy magnetic clip. He opened it. No cash, which would
have been confiscated. Some credit cards. A driver's license, which he
removed and studied, seeing that it was in the name of Abigail Janneson--

     --but wait just a goddamned minute. Mulder caught his breath. Glanced
back and forth between the license and the corpse on the slab and back at
the license. Disbelieving. Shocked.

     Abby Janneson didn't look like Dana Scully.

     Not in the DMV photo, anyway. She might have held a vague
resemblance--akin to a distant relative, a second cousin once removed--but
nothing even close to the woman on the slab, who was Scully's absolute
twin. The license mug shot depicted a woman whose face was too broad to be
Scully's, the nose too long, mouth too narrow, eyes a different width and
shape, skin a different shade, hair a different tint; if he'd seen this
woman on the street, he wouldn't have even thought of Scully.

     How could this photograph and the cadaver before him be of the same
individual?

     He looked at the corpse again. Its skin was lightly filmed with
condensation, droplets produced when the body had been wheeled from the
freezer into the warmer air beyond; he wiped the moisture away, getting a
better look at Janneson's face. And he saw them. Clear, unmistakable, now
that he regarded her with fresh eyes.

     The marks of plastic surgery. Scars. Puckerings.

     Sometime since this DMV photo had been taken, Janneson's face had
been surgically modified to resemble Scully. There was no question about
it.

     But that didn't make sense! According to X, Josef Kaun had been
killed while attempting to proposition this random prostitute, who had
later been slain by Palimpsest in an attempt to contact Kaun. The
communication had been inconclusive, however, and Scully had been selected
to die because of her uncanny resemblance to Janneson. The facial
similarity was crucial. Scully had been in danger because she looked like
this woman.

     Or so they had thought. But Janneson looked nothing like Scully--she
had been surgically altered, changed, resculpted, to give the impression
of being so. Which meant that everything was upside-down; everything had
to be reconsidered. Throughout this entire investigation, Mulder had
assumed that the affinity between Scully's face and Janneson's face had
been mere coincidence. Chance. An incredible fluke.

     But now he realized that Scully hadn't been selected because of her
resemblance to Janneson; Janneson had been selected because of her
resemblance to Scully.

     Christ.

     What was going on?

     What in God's name was happening?

*     *     *

End of (14/18)