The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

http://www.geocities.com/annaotto.geo
http://www.geocities.com/morleyphile

Rating: R 
Classification: XA - there is even an R if you want to call it 
that.
Spoilers/Timeline: This happens in its own little universe 
some time after 2F/1S, and definitely before Biogenesis.
Disclaimer: We don't own them. Darn.
Archive: By our permission - we don't bite.
Feedback always welcome.
Author's Notes at the end. 

Warning: Sometimes, the level of violence in this story is hard 
to live with. We urge you to heed this warning, because we 
will only give it once. Enter at your own risk.

Summary: ...and there will come a ghost whose broken heart 
will infect the hearts of others, whose madness will consume 
the lives of all around him, and no one will be safe from him... 
then, the inseparable partners will be cut apart, the traitor will 
betray once more, the long-lost woman with the mind of a 
child will be a prize in the tug of war, and the old man who 
thought his soul was gone will be proven wrong... but the 
rivers of blood will never be deep enough for the fire eaters.


++++++

"Hey! Dancer, juggler, fire-eater, clown!
The crippled mirror stops you where you stand
The mirror has just stolen your left hand
And the whole glass house comes tumbling down." 
-- Gwendolyn MacEwen, _The Carnival_

"MORMON MOTHER: I smell a salt wind
HARPER: From the ocean.
MORMON MOTHER: Means he's coming back. Then you'll 
know. Then you'll eat fire." 
-- Tony Kushner, _Angels in America: Perestroika_

Part 1/15

0. PROLOGUE

Central Park
New York City

The fountain is silent, turned off for the winter, and a light 
dusting of snow outlines the head and wings of the stone angel 
against the foggy darkness of the sky. At her feet, in fleshy 
mimicry of the solid, cold form, a woman shivers, bent over, 
clutching her knees to preserve what remains of her body heat. 
She has been there long enough for the snow to have gathered 
in her hair, for the wind to trace patterns of red into her pale 
cheeks.

Uncurling, she stands, taller than she first appeared, and turns 
to face the statue. She raises her hands like wings and turns 
her face to the sky. The back of her neck throbs, a painful 
sting.

They will not want her back. Not now, not ever.

If she had a name, she does not remember it. They should 
have given her one, as a parting gift.

Instead they left her here, alone, in the cold. A whimper, a 
mewl escapes her lips, and she frowns, unwilling to show 
weakness, even now.

She is grateful for winter. Were there water, her own 
reflection would be too much to bear. She can imagine, for the 
moment, that her face is as calm and unaffected as that of the 
angel's, and she will go on believing this, until someone finds 
her.

Madness is not a disease; it is salvation.

Her wings are crucified arms. She brings them to her head, 
runs thin fingers through her long, wavy hair, draws them over 
the sharp angles of her face and covers her eyes.

Home.

She lets her hands fall, slack at her sides. Not home. Never 
home.

But, perhaps, as close as she will ever come.

She turns again, and she starts to walk. She will find a new 
home. Someone will find her; someone will take pity. 
Someone must.

The world has grown cold over twenty-five years.

As has she; a voice whispers to her, warns her to keep moving, 
to keep going. Not even an angel will protect a woman, alone 
and lost in New York City.

She casts a glance backwards at the Angel Bethesda, who once 
made a fountain flow with a single touch. Who descended to 
earth to heal it of its misery.

The woman touches her face again. There is no fountain as she 
descends, only a single tear.

She wipes it away, and she keeps walking.


I. CHALK

"One TWO, skip a FEW, ninety-nine a HUNDRED!"

She belts out the words with the precision of a military officer, 
the beat echoed by the sharp slap of her skipping rope against 
the wet pavement. Two other girls play hopscotch on the 
sidewalk, running shoes padding in a counter-rhythm over the 
fading chalk lines. The rain has washed some of the numbers 
away, but the game goes on.

The girl with the plastic skipping rope has long dark braids, 
and for a fleeting instant Mulder imagines that it is Samantha, 
playing in front of a suburban house, eight years old and 
happy and alive.

For an instant. The sky hangs, dark and overcast, and the rain 
is coming again.

"You wanted to talk to me."

Hands thrust into the pockets of his trenchcoat, still damp 
from the last rain, he can't meet her eyes. Her hair is the 
brightest gleam of color in the post-storm street; if he looked 
in her direction, it would burn his eyes.

"Mulder, I know what you're going to say."

He doesn't think she means it. She says it out of habit, with 
only the slightest hint of condescension. She doesn't mean to 
be condescending. She wants to be sympathetic. Her voice is 
hoarse, as if she is the one who has been crying.

Who knows - maybe she has been crying. He wouldn't be 
surprised. Six years, and her quest is his quest - perhaps it 
always has been. Maybe she has that same raw, stripped-bare 
feeling inside, as if in one night someone has peeled away 
with great care the outermost layer of her skin, leaving her 
exposed and bleeding in the rain.

That's how it feels.

Their footsteps are a dreary echo of the fading sound of the 
skipping girl's chants. "Skinner tried to reach you all of 
yesterday. Your phone was turned off."

"I was chasing a suspect."

Does his voice sound too abrupt?  He was in Baltimore, doing 
a favor for some old sort-of friends in VCS, and it wasn't until 
the killer was behind bars for nearly an hour that Scully had 
finally been able to reach him.

Not her fault, he tells himself. And it's not Skinner's either. 
That doesn't alleviate any of the resentment. He should have 
been the first to know, and he's the third, and it doesn't change 
anything...

But still.

"Have you-" His voice isn't working properly. It comes out 
mangled the first time, a breathless whisper as he finishes, "-
seen her?"

"No." She swallows, looks down, looks up. Goes for his eyes 
but he's still refusing. "Mulder-"

She tries for his hand next, but he pulls away. She can't touch 
him - he can't let her. His hands are too cold. "Where is she?"

"I don't think it's the best thing if you-"

"No. Scully." At last he meets her eyes, and yes, they brim 
with tears. How can she cry when his own eyes are still 
horribly dry?

He is so tired.

"Where is she?"

"Mulder, it's not going to be like how you expected. What you 
wanted." She winces - it's all coming out wrong for her as 
well.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

"But she's alive."

He keeps telling himself this. He has been doing so, ever since 
the phone call. If she's alive, there's still hope.

She is still alive.

And this will not be a fairy tale. This will not have a happy 
ending.

But his quest - their quest, will at least have an ending.

The chalk lines on the pavement reluctantly yield to rain.

Samantha Mulder has come home.


II. TRAP

The trap is supposed to kill the mouse instantly, but the rodent 
is evidently a tragic victim of false advertising, because half 
an hour has passed and its shrill death throes still rise over the 
sound of Squadron B going over the top on the television 
screen.

He must have seen this movie a dozen times, and it wasn't 
particularly good when he first saw it. But it takes his mind off 
the other three tasks that await him, so he tries to put the 
mouse's squeals out of his mind.

He turns up the volume. Reaches for a cigarette.

He is good at what he does. That is why he is still alive. For 
fifty years, he has carried out orders, sometimes with an 
ulterior motive, less frequently with the most honest of 
intentions. Somewhere along the line he has started giving the 
orders, but that hasn't changed very much.

He has three things to do within the next hour. The first 
involves a petty dictator in a Third World country, and a sharp 
command to cease and desist or risk American involvement. It 
does not particularly concern him, and six months ago there 
would have been someone else to carry out the orders, but 
circumstances being what they were, complications have 
arisen.

The second is to call Teena Mulder, a number he has dialed 
once in the past twenty-five years, and tell her that her 
daughter has been found wandering naked in Central Park, and 
is at the moment in restraints at the New York State 
Psychiatric Institute. He has to do it soon, because otherwise 
Mulder himself will make the call. And then there will be 
further complications.

The third, and the most immediate, is to walk to the other side 
of the room and end the agony of the mouse that is, at the 
moment, scratching desperately at the cheap wood of the trap. 
Recent developments have made him once again the most 
powerful man in America, but the tiny creature's noises 
remind him that, titles aside, that doesn't mean much in the 
greater scheme of things.

He finishes the cigarette. The ashtray is overflowing, but it can 
wait. His steps are heavy as he crosses the floor.

One hand pinches the mouse's tail as the other springs the trap. 
There is another squeak. Its small leg is crushed, blood 
staining the gray fur, but it still struggles pitifully, tries to bite 
him. His own scars ache in sympathy.

He wonders if it will live if he releases it. Probably not. He 
imagines, for a moment, approaching one of the Visitors with 
the bizarre request to heal it.

The realization that this is actually an option makes him smile. 
He glances at the telephone.

The mice have been active for days, driven to madness inside 
his apartment by the first snow. On some nights, they have 
kept him awake.

With careful precision, he snaps its neck. Tosses the limp 
body into the garbage.

He resets the trap.

And then he picks up the phone.


III. SPY

It is too late to visit Samantha by the time they reach New 
York, so he walks instead, leaving Scully behind at the motel. 
She hadn't wanted him to leave. She had wanted to talk to him, 
or at the very least, sit there while he cried.

But he is past tears.

Central Park by moonlight - it sounds like the title of a 
romance film, and not a good one at that. Besides, there isn't 
any moon tonight - just diffused halos around lamps, glimmers 
of stars through fog. The angel looms silent, and he wonders if 
he could trace Samantha's bare footsteps through the frosted 
grass, the frozen earth. He stands at the edge of the fountain 
and looks up into the stone eyes.

Someone laughs behind him, but he doesn't turn, not even 
when a familiar voice says his name.

He doesn't respond, pretending he doesn't hear it. If they're 
going to shoot him, they can shoot him in the back.

"What are you doing here, Krycek?" he asks finally, wearily.

"If I'd been sent to kill you, you'd be buried by now. I've been 
standing behind you for ten minutes."

Mulder turns, slowly. "I know."

Krycek's face, half-hidden in the shadows, is a mask of angles 
and harsh planes of light. "You are a good soldier, Mulder," 
he says, "A good soldier, and a lousy spy."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think you know."

Mulder does know; he knows all too well. The steps to this 
dance are familiar. He will ask, and Krycek will avoid, and the 
game will go on, as it must.

Krycek turns his attention to the statue of the angel. 

"It's a war memorial, isn't it?" Mulder says.

Krycek shrugs - he doesn't care. Mulder does not particularly 
care either. He's never been one for statues.

"Bethesda..." Krycek says, sounding thoughtful. "You know 
the story, Mulder?"

"What story?"

"The angel Bethesda...came down from Heaven in the middle 
of Jerusalem in the Temple Square. Where her foot touched 
the ground, a fountain sprang up. They said that anyone who 
walked through the waters of the fountain would be healed of 
suffering."

Mulder laughs, a nervous laugh. "Interesting story, Krycek."

Krycek's voice is a whisper in the gathering darkness. "I heard 
they found your sister. I heard that she's insane."

Civility shudders and dies. "Go to hell," Mulder snarls.

"It must be hard." Krycek is calm, calm and mocking. He can 
afford to be. "Twenty-five years of searching, and all for 
nothing."

"Tell me why you're here, or leave. Or I'll make you leave."

A dark chuckle. "Will you?" Mulder sees a flash in the dark, 
part of a gun, perhaps. "It's all right. It's getting late, and I 
have...other obligations." He leans over, and for an instant 
Mulder expects to feel the hot breath and scrape of stubble, a 
repeat of their last meeting that left him sitting on the floor of 
his apartment with the world spinning wildly out of kilter.

But Krycek only pats his shoulder in what might have been a 
gesture of camaraderie, had it not come from the man who had 
killed his father. 

"I just came to see how you were doing." A pause, and then, 
in an oddly gentle voice, he says, "Goodnight."

Mulder glances at the statue, and when he looks back, Krycek 
is gone.


IV. MEAT

Mulder's eyes miss Samantha's as he enters the hospital room, 
instead focusing on an older woman whose hair had gone 
white too early, too swiftly. 

"Mom." 

The word is a sigh of resignation, and Scully can almost hear 
the cracks in the walls that Mulder constructed around 
himself. Teena Mulder's lips become thinner as she looks at 
her son, and Scully tries to blend into the walls, wishing for no 
spectator's role in this production.

"You didn't call me, Fox."

The first accusation sets the wheels in motion, and Scully tries 
to tune their words out but they're too sharp and too bitter, and 
she doesn't succeed.

"I wanted..." Mulder's voice grates like sandpaper. "I wanted 
to see how bad..." he doesn't finish the thought. "I would have 
called you later."

His mother bows her head. "My life had always felt like 
before and after, Fox. Before my child disappeared. And after, 
when every day lasted a year. I couldn't be forced to live 
another year or two without her. Not when I've survived 
centuries."

Scully forces her gaze away from her partner's sheet-white 
face. There would be time for comfort later, if he accepted it. 

"Mom, I've missed her too," he answers, sad but defiant. 
"Nine thousand, one hundred, and sixty-seven days of my 
life."

An image of Mulder as a prisoner in a dark cell, slicing the 
walls with a piece of chalk, is too vivid to be erased, and 
Scully shudders. Her hands wrap around her torso, and she 
fights the impulse to wrap them around him and make 
everything better, for she knows she can't.

Being powerless is equivalent to incapacitation in her mind.

Her shifting eyes focus on the thin shadow of the rightful 
occupant of this room. She sits cross-legged on the bed with a 
lunch plate in her lap, and the fork makes periodic, infrequent 
trips to her mouth. Chicken salad, Scully notes automatically.

"I know you mean well, Fox," Mrs. Mulder's hand reaches out 
to her son, and he steps back, too wound up to acknowledge 
the gesture. "But you can't protect me from everything. 
Especially not from my own daughter."

Scully watches as Samantha pushes the little pieces of meat 
onto the border of her plate, carefully and methodically. They 
remain untouched, while the rest of food disappears, slowly 
but surely.

"I never wanted it to be like this," Mulder's whisper is 
monotone, as if he doesn't have any emotion left to spare for 
it. "This is a nightmare."

Wide eyes, the color of which escapes Scully, meet her own 
blue orbs and hold. And then the gaunt woman on the bed 
smiles tentatively, and the pale face changes, lighting up for a 
perfect instant. Thin fingers keep pushing the meat away 
automatically.

And Scully thinks that the other two people in the room treat 
this woman just like a piece of meat, pushing her out of their 
minds. 

"Mulder," she speaks quickly, before compassion for him can 
take over again. "You forgot to meet your sister." With that, 
she leaves the room, no longer able to watch the drama.

His face is a picture of remorse as he finally turns to the 
subject of the dispute. Samantha's fork falls on the floor with a 
perfectly cut cube of chicken meat caught in its teeth.

End Part 1/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 2/15

V. ICE

The glass reflects scattered shards of light, bouncing off the 
translucent liquid and misshapen ice cubes.
Mulder stirs the drink more than he sips it, stares into it as 
though it could solve his problems.

Or, failing that, as if it could show the reflection of a man who 
did not just flee the hospital room where his long-lost sister, 
his only little sister, is sitting with eyes glazed over, gaunt and 
wasted away and all alone. Does this make him a coward, he 
wonders? How could he have run? He could barely stand.

And he came here, to drink it all away, just like dear old 
Daddy.

Smoke wafts through a smoky room, gray washing over a 
background of gray. "Is this seat taken?"

Mulder's lips move in permutations of expletives, but all that 
comes out is the predictable growl of, "What are you doing 
here?"

The older man ignores him. "Scotch, on the rocks," he says to 
the bartender in a sharp mockery of cordiality. In almost the 
same breath, he announces, "You didn't used to drink, did you, 
Mr. Mulder?"

"Circumstances change." His voice falls flat. This is a public 
place. None of his threats will carry weight, and without 
threats he has no idea how to proceed in a conversation with 
this man.

The second drink arrives. Mulder is still staring dully into his 
own. "You're looking more and more like your father every 
day, Fox."

Rage is enough to melt the ice. How dare he invoke the name 
of the man he killed?

Still, the voice goes on, as if they were two ordinary men, 
conversing, in a bar. "It's a pity he didn't live long enough to 
see his daughter return. Then again, perhaps it's for the best."

Can't react. Can't give in to anger. Can't jump up from his seat 
and pound the son-of-a-bitch's face in.

Mulder can't do anything but sit there, watch and try to match 
the man's calmness as he takes another drag of his cigarette, 
then stubs it into the overflowing ashtray. He notices that the 
smoker has yet to touch his drink.

"How is Samantha?"

Mulder shakes his head slowly. "Why do you want to know?"

The smoking man reaches into his jacket for a new cigarette. 
"I'm sure you can guess the answer to that by now."

Mulder is suddenly cold. There's something wrong. The devil 
is sitting less than a foot away from him, haloed by a cloud of 
smoke, and in a universe that made sense, the room would 
have been in flames. But instead, he is shivering, and the 
devil's face is the same transparent non-color as the ice cubes 
in his drink.

He looks away. He doesn't have the strength to stare the 
smoker down. And something tells him that the older man 
doesn't have the strength, either.

Not today.

Mulder looks at his watch. He has been gone for almost two 
hours. He knows he should return to the hospital.

Samantha is important. More important than this, than his 
vendetta, than all the injustice in the world.

"Excuse me," he says.

"Certainly." The smoking man sounds almost friendly.

Mulder drains the rest of his drink in one swig. It burns on the 
way down, a cold burn, but one that reminds him that he still 
lives, that there is a world outside of the hazy, smoky 
dreamworld of the bar. He slams the glass down on the 
counter.

The smoker's eyes tilt lazily towards him, regarding him with 
a predator's cool disinterest. He extinguishes his cigarette, 
barely touched, into the younger man's abandoned glass. 
Mulder's last impression of the bar is not the saddened slump 
of a man too weary to fight anymore, but of the small circle of 
ash spreading deeper into a frozen surface, gnawing a dark 
tunnel through the shards of ice.


VI. ACRE

Samantha climbs out of bed and sits by the window that leads 
to a bustling street. The hectic rhythm of life outside fascinates 
her, but she doesn't long to become its active participant. The 
human world has become a place as unfamiliar as it is 
frightening. She thinks that perhaps she was never meant to 
belong here, and panic laces through her, leaving doubts in its 
wake.

She looks around the room, small and colorless, almost stark 
in its simplicity. She measures it by paces - only four in width 
and six in length. And suddenly, she remembers the smooth 
walls of her other room with no windows. She could never 
find its invisible door, as many hours as she spent crawling on 
her knees and probing the flexible but tight material the name 
of which she'd never learned. 

It could have been a cage, but she preferred to think of it as 
home.

Claustrophobia is an old friend, and before it has a chance to 
take hold and make her scream in terror, Samantha pulls a 
tight shield of control over her emotions and lets her 
surroundings blur. It's an old trick that she learned many years 
ago. Before too long, the walls of the room disintegrate, the 
metal chair beside her bed sprouts roots and turns into a tree, 
and the glass of water on the end table pours blue freshness 
into a gentle stream.

This is her secret room, her true asylum, where she knows she 
will always find refuge and peace, no matter what happens in 
the real world. In fact, she is certain at times that the garden, 
stretching out for an acre inside her imagination, is the only 
corporal reality she knows.

Here, Samantha feels protected, warm, and always safe. Here, 
summer never comes to an end, and flowers never shed their 
petals. No one can ever infringe on this territory, and no one 
can change it but herself. 

Only once did she walk the full length of the green acre, 
wondering what she would find at its end. She now knows that 
there stands a long gray wall, a silent giant zealously guarding 
this safe haven. Samantha remembers stopping short, confused 
and certain that she'd never envisioned a wall as part of her 
secret garden.

One day, she promises herself. One day she will go back to 
find the wall and try to look over to the other side. 

But for now, she is content with the way things are.


VII. MISER
 
In the beginning it was easier not to think about it.
 
Teena Mulder searches through her purse, fingers brushing old 
candy wrappers, the smooth surface of a leather wallet, the 
keys to several houses, the oldest of which is beginning to 
rust. Her hand closes around a plastic cylinder - she pulls it 
out, stares at it as if it is a stranger rather than the old friend it 
is. She can see her own faint reflection above the prescription 
that bears her name.
 
Before the abduction - before the screaming, before the 
Valium - she had been beautiful. She still is, in a way, her face 
youthful, eerily unlined beneath its frame of pearl-white hair. 
Her aloof, coolly defiant brand of beauty stares back at her 
from the orange plastic, twists at her heart as it echoes her 
daughter's features.
 
Samantha, she thinks, Samantha - why now?
 
And she cannot put it out of her mind. She cannot allow 
herself to escape, as she has done so many times, hoarding 
pills like a miser, hoarding memories and stashing them away 
in a place where not even she could reach them. No longer, 
she decides - she will face this particular demon awake, 
without the soft haze of oblivion keeping her safe.
 
She is no longer safe. None of them are.
 
In the beginning, it was easier not to think about it. Now she 
can't stop. Even as she walks alone, pulling her dark coat 
around her like a shield, the image is seared into her skull, a 
cruel tattoo across her line of vision. Every tall, wavy-haired 
stranger watches her with the same blank stare, following her 
across the reflections of windows, over the pavement in the 
slender, lengthening shadows.
 
She turns the corner and steps into a blast of heat. Her cheeks 
instantly flush with a glow that would have been dazzling in 
the face of a younger woman, but that makes her look only 
feverish. Inside, she can smell coffee and freshly baked bread, 
melting snow, a wholesome, homey sort of scent mixed with 
the odor of cigarettes that drifts from the table of a young 
couple. She associates it instinctively with menace, and it 
seems out of place here.
 
Neutral ground. That was what he said, over the phone. A 
small cafe just south of the hospital, a location in which 
neither of them would feel entirely comfortable.
 
He is late, and Teena waits half an hour before deciding to 
leave. Just as she stands, the door opens with a harsh cry of 
chimes, and he is brushing snow out of his thinning hair.
 
"I was delayed," he says, his tone terse but polite, and he 
explains no further. He sits down, nods to the waiter to bring a 
coffee. Two coffees, he amends, glancing at her. The same 
offhand dismissal he uses to run the fate of nations applies to 
her as well.
 
But she does not return the sentiment. She has a harsher spirit 
than the men who rule the world. And though he can decide 
the future with a single word, she can make him tremble 
without even opening her mouth.
 
"What did you do to her?"
 
His lips move in mockery of words, and he lights a cigarette 
instead. "What makes you think I did anything to her?" he 
asks finally.
 
She says nothing. He takes a drag of his cigarette. He does not 
break her stare.
 
So, he does not know either.
 
There are other questions to ask. Whether or not Samantha 
will live. What they plan to do to her next. These are questions 
to which he will know the answers.
 
But it is better not to ask. Better not to know, not to dwell on 
it. This is a dark parody of her dreams: Samantha is back, but 
she is not Samantha. *He* is back, but only to assess the 
situation, to take appropriate action. She almost laughs, a 
bitter knife turned inward against her own time-hardened 
heart.
 
She can breathe again, but it will never be the same.
 
Abruptly, she stands, leaving him to pay for the coffee. She 
has to leave. The room is closing in on her.
 
"Teena," he says, and his voice sounds like a shout to her, 
though not one stranger's head turns to stare.
 
Against all logic, she stops, though she does not turn back.
 
"Give Samantha my regards," he says, and then the door 
crashes shut behind her.


VIII. FLOWER

His job is routine. Every day, he assumes the same spot on the 
park bench and unfurls the daily issue of New York Times. 
He's not a reader - never has been, and he quietly longs for 
some other fun, mindless way to pass the time.

With disinterest, he watches the windows of the hospital, 
waiting for something new to transpire, knowing resignedly 
that nothing will. The people he's watching are stuck in the 
same holding pattern day after day, their lives seemingly more 
routine than his own.

In the morning, an old woman comes into the room and sits 
beside the younger one. She rarely speaks and never smiles. 
She leaves always at the same time, avoiding the moment 
when the door opens again and a tall man comes inside, his 
demeanor always troubled, his shoulders hunched. He often 
frowns and stares at the wall. Sometimes, he reaches for a 
hand of the young woman and kisses her fingers with 
tenderness and care. He never leaves calmly - rather runs away 
and slams the door behind him in haste.

A small redheaded woman comes to visit on random days, at 
odd times, and she always brings a book to read aloud. He 
can't tell if her audience is responsive, but she reads with 
enthusiasm and obvious emotion, always smiling at the patient 
when she finishes a chapter for the day. 

Today, the old dignified woman has already come and gone. 
He waits for the tall man to come but he never appears - and 
he is somewhat intrigued as to the reason why. His workday 
will soon draw to its close, and he doesn't intend to stay here 
longer than he's been paid for.

He sighs and puts away the newspaper. It only serves to attract 
attention. He is very good at what he does: blending into the 
surroundings, becoming one with the street. He once followed 
a man for a week, remaining in plain view all the time, and 
was never noticed. Proudly, he tells his employers that he just 
has 'one of those faces.'

These people are too absorbed in their own pain to pay 
attention to the outside world, and that always helps him.

He watches as the redheaded woman enters the room. She 
doesn't have a book under her arm this time. She carries a 
bouquet of flowers - some small bluish things the name of 
which he doesn't know - and places them in the hands of a thin 
woman sitting by the window. She accepts the gift - and he 
sees a rare smile blossoming on her face. 

After the patient is left alone, she opens the window slightly 
and observes the street outside. Suddenly, her eyes focus on 
him, and he is certain that she knows him - knows what he is 
doing here and why - and forgives him. Paralyzed, he watches 
as one of the flowers peels away from the bouquet and 
levitates in the cold air, slowly falling onto the ground close to 
his feet.

Reflexively, he reaches for it, but doesn't have a chance to 
pick it up before someone's elegant black boot smashes it into 
the melting snow.

He shakes his head, as if in a dream, seeing nothing but torn 
blue petals. The woman in the window above clutches the 
remaining flowers close to her chest, obviously afraid to let 
another one go.

He stands up and walks slowly away, ten minutes before his 
eight-hour day is completed. As he meets with his employer 
and accepts the daily offering of folded green bills, he 
nervously resigns, saying that he got another lucrative job and 
wouldn't be able to help here anymore.

The green-eyed young man doesn't have a chance to make a 
better offer before the watcher disappears.


IX. BRIDE

Mulder looks like the Bride of Frankenstein.

The analogy almost makes Krycek laugh, but instinct keeps 
him silent as he creeps around the corner. His footsteps make 
no sound on the floor, but Mulder is awake, half-rising on the 
couch with his overgrown hair sticking up all around his pasty 
face. His eyes are sunken, shot with blood, sockets blackened 
from lack of sleep. All that's missing, Krycek thinks, is an 
application of black lipstick and a tattered lace gown.

Now he does laugh, a muted hiss that alerts Mulder to his 
presence. Before the older man can scramble for his gun on 
the coffee table, Krycek says, "I've got it."

"What do you want, Krycek?"

Krycek absentmindedly twirls the weapon in question. "I think 
I want to talk to you without having your gun shoved in my 
face."

"Talk."

Krycek feels his lips stretch into the imitation of a smile he 
uses so often when he is around the Consortium. "I might have 
information. Or I might not. It would depend on the price you 
are willing to pay."

I want you to try kill me, Krycek thinks, I want you to get off 
the goddamn couch and wrestle the gun out of my hand. Just 
like old times, Mulder, what do you say? A few bruises but it'd 
be worth it, if only to know that it was you sitting there and 
not some failed cloning experiment.

"I don't have much of my soul left to sell," Mulder says.

"Maybe it's not your soul I'm interested in."

They stare at each other for a moment. Krycek blinks first, for 
a change.

"Get out of town, Mulder," he says abruptly, "Your life is in 
danger."

"No doubt by the same man who is pointing my own gun at 
me?"

A dark chuckle. "I didn't come here to kill you."

"Then why did you come here?"

Krycek's smile fades. He would like to know the answer to 
that himself.

"There's a man," Krycek begins, his voice oddly halting. "He 
used to work for me. He wasn't a good man, Mulder...none of 
them are. He's seen things...not as much as I've seen...done 
things..." His tone flattens as Mulder shoots him another glare. 
"Yesterday, he saw something that frightened him so much 
that he resigned immediately." A pause, then, "People don't 
resign from our business. You should know that by now."

Krycek waits for the inevitable question, but it never comes. It 
doesn't matter. He knows that Mulder does not expect the truth 
from him.

"I didn't kill him," Krycek says, "He disappeared."

Mulder rubs at his darkened eyes. "And... what was this 
*something* that he saw?"

"I don't know." Krycek's response is too unplanned to be a lie. 
"But I do know where he was when he saw it."

And though he already must know the answer, Mulder asks, 
"Where was that?"

The bargain is sealed. But Krycek will collect later.

"Below the window of your sister's hospital room," Krycek 
says.

With that, he places the gun on the coffee table, within 
Mulder's reach, confident that the other man will not shoot as 
he turns his back.

As he closes the door, he hears Mulder lift the gun. He is 
relieved. Even if he must stand on the wrong side, he is glad 
that at least the battle is not over.

End Part 2/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 3/15

X. CAR

A woman's hand touches the branches of a tree tenderly, 
admiring the bright new leaves, only now making their 
appearance. Spring is late this year, and the city struggles in 
the clutches of winter unsuccessfully, unable to proceed with 
the normal rhythm of its life.

A small smile appears on Scully's lips, and dies just as quickly -
like a lantern left without oil. The frost of winter may be 
unseen, but she finds its damaging evidence everywhere she 
goes - in the distant face of Samantha, in the wrinkles 
appearing around her partner's eyes, in the silences that reign 
between them.

She knows that he hadn't visited the hospital in several days. 
She knows his reasons, and she wishes that he didn't feel the 
need to lie to her. Every day he still puts on his coat and goes 
out the door, ostensibly to see his sister. She wonders where 
he spends his time instead. Does he wander the city streets? 
Does he sit in a small diner down the block, drinking one 
coffee cup after another?

"Hello, stranger."

Scully starts at the familiar voice, at once dangerous and 
welcome at the moment. "Mulder. Were you following me?"

"Not really," he shrugs guiltily, then admits: "Only for the last 
few minutes."

She takes pity on him. "Want to walk home with me?"

Wordlessly, he falls into step beside her, taming his long 
strides to accommodate her small feet. Twilight covers the city 
with a smoky blanket of flickering streetlights and pale stars.

"Were you visiting Sam?"

Scully nods, surprised at his straightforwardness. 

"How is she?"

He can't face her while asking the question, as if afraid of 
betraying what his voice so carefully conceals.

Samantha looks healthier - the angles of her shoulder blades 
are no longer so protuberant, and her eyes are no longer the 
most prominent feature of her pale face. She listens attentively 
to the books that Scully brings. She still spends most of her 
time looking out the window, but Scully isn't entirely certain 
that the outside world is what she sees. Whatever distance had 
been conquered by Samantha's return to the everyday world, 
and then by her transfer from State Psychiatric Institute of 
New York to Fairfax hospital in D.C., it couldn't bring her 
closer to her own family.

"I think she misses you."

His throat moves convulsively, and she regrets the somewhat 
accusatory tone of her answer. "I'm sorry, Mulder, I didn't..."

The sound of the screeching tires and the protesting moan of 
the asphalt are unnaturally loud in the quiet suburban street. 
The red sports car is careening dangerously out of control, 
finally ending its spin in the opposite lane of traffic, where 
another car plunges into it headfirst. White bulbs of airbags 
pop out of all windows, and Scully watches for a moment in 
stupefied fascination, surveying the magnitude of the damage. 

Then, she runs toward the ruined vehicles, forgetting the 
conversation that seemed of utmost importance just seconds 
ago. A passenger stumbles out of the undamaged doors, 
trembling visibly, and she leaves him to his own devices, more 
concerned with the lack of movement on the driver side of the 
red car. As the door clicks open easily, Scully finds herself 
supporting the bloodied head of a young woman, her pupils 
dilated in shock and pain. Right temple is shattered, and the 
trained eye of a forensic pathologist recognizes the entrance of 
the bullet released by a .45 - the real culprit of the accident. 

She glances back, expecting to find Mulder right behind her, 
or tending to the second driver - or dialing nine one one on his 
cell.

Instead, all that she sees are the faces of spectators, some 
greedy, some concerned. The city is empty without him. 

Twilight hides the rapidly receding shadows across the street.


XI. JEWEL

It is in the box where she left it, glittering faintly amid the 
shadows of the basement. Teena lifts the thin, golden chain 
with utmost delicacy, turning the jewel that dangles from it 
over in her hand. Samantha's birthstone glitters from the 
unicorn's eye, from the tip of its horn.

The necklace would have been Samantha's ninth birthday 
present - a child's thing - but what is Samantha now besides a 
child trapped in a woman's body? Samantha's thirty-fourth 
birthday is not until November, but what better time to give it 
to her? Teena closes the tiny velvet box and slowly stands.

Samantha will be asleep when she arrives, alone in that cold, 
sterile room. It will be past visiting hours, but no one will stop 
Teena on her way inside. She is a woman on a mission, and no 
one will stand in her way.

She will lift up her daughter's head with the same tenderness 
as she had shown when she lifted the necklace out of its box, 
squeeze the clasp shut, and take Samantha's hands in her own. 
The jewel on the unicorn's horn will lie against the hollow of 
her child's throat, casting patterns of light against the bland, 
lifeless walls of the room.

And then Samantha's eyes will open, focus, remember. She 
will sit up, and at last, Teena can welcome her home.

She is at the hospital before she realizes that she has left, 
walking the familiar corridor to her daughter's room. And 
though the staff of the institution stare, they do not prevent her 
from slipping inside the door, the necklace draped around her 
hand like a talisman.

Within an instant, Teena realizes why.

The bed is empty, the sheets immaculate. Samantha has not 
slept on them since the night before. The bed is empty, and so 
is the room.

Teena sways on her feet, leaning against the wall for support. 
Her daughter is gone. Again.

She wonders if the pain will be greater this time, once the 
shock has worn off. The time before she had been prepared. 
She had believed in the possibility of Samantha's return. This 
time, she has no such assurances.

She acts quickly, without consideration. There is no time to 
weigh the consequences, to question her options. She knows 
what she must do.

The gray voice answers, muted by the static of an old 
payphone. He does not sound surprised to hear from her.

"She's gone," Teena says, the panic in her voice moderated by 
the chill that has rapidly overtaken her.
"I need you to find her."

"I see."

She does not plead any further. There is a silence. There is an 
understanding.

After she hangs up, Teena drops to her knees. The talisman 
falls from her hand, and when it hits the floor, it makes almost 
no sound at all.


XII. SURF

The grocery bags land on the kitchen table with an ungraceful 
thud, and Mulder flinches. The house in which he spent his 
childhood seems to resent its human residents. For years, only 
dust and moths occupied it, and Mulder thinks that he has no 
right to be here - no right to disturb the fragile peace that it 
acquired. He should have sold this place a long time ago. 

He knows that it's not the best hiding spot. His family history 
holds more secrets for him than for the outsiders; sooner or 
later, it will be found. Time is all he can hope for, all he can 
buy in this unfriendly retreat.

Today or tomorrow, his sister will remember that this is home, 
the place in which they staged childhood pranks, where they 
argued and unwrapped their birthday presents, where he 
missed her so after she went away.

"Are you back, Sam?" Mulder asks aloud, though she is not 
there to hear him. "How was your life? Who have you 
become?"

He chokes on his words as the house recedes into silence 
again. It would be easier if Scully was there - she would bring 
life even to this stale house by the sea. For a moment, he 
contemplates the turned-off cellular phone. He has become too 
dependent on her. Resolutely, he turns to the bags of groceries 
and starts to load the refrigerator and cupboards. 

The items he selected so carefully at the store seem poor 
choices to Mulder right now. He doesn't know Samantha's 
taste, and he can't even recall what she liked to eat when she 
was little. A more important question begs to be asked but he 
ignores it stubbornly. 

She can be happy here with him. They can find each other 
again.

He shoves the empty bags away and walks down the hall, to 
invite his sister to lunch. The door is open, revealing an empty 
room, and he is newly terrified of losing her again, for the 
second and last time. He leans against the wall, trying to slow 
down his pulse, waiting until his vision clears again. 

Mulder circles around the house once, twice, until he finds the 
fresh footsteps. He retraces the delicate path she's left behind, 
all the way down to the ocean. The sound of surf is stronger 
now, and he runs towards the haunted figure sitting on the 
beach, relief engulfing him like a safety net, sure that she will 
reach her hands out towards him, will smile at him with 
recognition.

Samantha turns around, the warmth of her expression 
astounding him, until he realizes that she meant it for someone 
else. The corners of her mouth fall slowly, and she resumes 
her contemplation of the ocean. The waves are docile as they 
lap her toes, the wind that they bring caresses her long hair 
gently. 

Mulder drapes his jacket over her shoulders, knowing only too 
well that the gesture will remain unnoticed. He is an outsider - 
an intruder upon this idyllic scene. Abruptly, he starts to walk 
away. The miracles are hard to come by, but he still hopes that 
she will call out his name, will run to catch up with him. 

It doesn't happen, and he glances over his shoulder one last 
time. 

Her hands glide over the water that the tide brings, and he 
thinks that the ocean gives her something she could never 
receive from him.

The sensation of coming home.


XIII. NOON

"Is this a secure line?"

"Of course."

"Do you have assurances?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"The news, then?"

"Mulder is gone."
 
"Is he?"

"Mulder, and his sister. She was reported missing from the 
hospital last night."

"Have our mutual friends been informed?"

"I was waiting for your word to make the report."

"Don't. Location?"

"We don't know, sir."

"Is that so?"

"There was no sign that either was...taken."
 
"They left willingly?"

"It's a possibility."

"Scully?"

"Under surveillance, as you requested."

"Keep it subtle. He may try to contact her."

"If he's alive."

"He's alive."

"Rumor has it that there was an attempt on his life. A young 
woman was murdered."

"He's alive."
 
"We need to talk."

"Are you hiding something?"

"We need to talk."

"What do you know?"

"How does it feel to be left in the dark?"

"Familiar."

"Tomorrow. Lincoln Memorial. I'll decide whether I can trust 
you on this."
 
"Trust is not a luxury you can afford. You need me."

"Perhaps."

"Tomorrow. What time?"

"Noon."

Click.

Click.

"Noon."


XIV. CELL

His eyes adjust to the darkness slowly, and Jason Hart waits 
patiently until the moment when he can distinguish the 
huddled figure on the bed. A mirthless smile that momentarily 
crosses his face is the only sign of the relief he feels at seeing 
her. He hates this room, its hastily painted gray walls and 
absent windows. It would serve well as a cell in a dungeon, 
and the comparison gnaws at him. The woman who lives here 
is not a prisoner, not anymore, and he is careful in giving her 
as much freedom as she requires.

"Is she dead?" 

Her voice is damaged, mutated just as everything else in his 
world. Hart doesn't want to give her the bad news but the 
reddish eyes ask for the truth, and the answer is a punishment 
he must endure for his negligence. 

"Another woman died instead." He walks over to her and 
takes her hand, trying to share his body warmth with the icy 
fingers in his palm. "The man who was shooting... I won't let 
him make mistakes anymore." He bites his tongue before her 
name can roll off it. She doesn't want to remember who she 
was before. Marita Covarrubias is gone. 

Marita had blonde hair, gray eyes, and smooth skin. She lived 
in a luxurious urban apartment and she could have had any 
man that she wanted. She had power and money, and any 
fairy-tale princess would have envied her.

The woman who never leaves this dark room has shaking 
hands, and he helps her dye her limp locks black. Her skin is 
gray, and it matches the color of her unkempt clothes. The 
faintest ray of light pains her red eyes. She is going blind. And 
the only man she has is Jason Hart, an aging doctor without a 
license to practice, who is suffering from a weak heart and 
pangs of conscience. 

His love is a flimsy substitute for the body that betrayed her, 
for the way of life that she lost. He is among those responsible 
for her transformation, but she doesn't know that, and he will 
never tell her. They're the victims and survivors of the same 
storm, and they must cling to each other.

"I remember her...from before," she hugs her bony shoulders, 
rocks back and forth. "I've been remembering more lately. 
There are things... things that I know..."

Hart drapes her in a blanket, nodding encouragingly. Her 
memory is failing, and she struggles to keep the remaining 
fragments desperately, but he knows that this battle is fatal. 
"She was close to Samantha Mulder," he confirms. "That's all 
we need to know. You needn't try to remember so hard."

"Scully," her lips curl grotesquely. "You will make sure that 
she dies, won't you? We must get rid of everyone connected. 
Everyone responsible."

Hart shivers. Still, there are depths to fall, crimes to be 
committed, men who are paid to murder. There are others who 
share this deadly secret, but it is he who feels the brunt of the 
burden most strongly. No human who knows about the 
colonization, no human who bears any connection to the 
visitors, must remain alive. It is the only way to avoid the 
plague. 

Until then, he will not allow his heart to stop beating. Until 
then, he will hope that she never escapes this cell. 

The careful kiss he places on her cold cheek is a fervent 
promise.


XV. PAINT

Skinner's office smells like fresh paint, reminding Scully that 
it is springtime, renovation season. She barely remembers the 
transition between seasons, having spent it almost entirely 
driving between work and Samantha's room at the Fairfax 
hospital. The overpowering aroma reminds her of the 
specificity of time and space, reminds her that she has a career 
that does not revolve entirely around Mulder and his long-lost 
sister.

While the world is busy turning upside down, the basement 
office is filling with paperwork and case files. Meetings are 
called, deadlines pass, but the monotonous train of daily life at 
the FBI has chugged along its course without her.

Until now.

Two weeks have passed since Mulder disappeared. She has 
every reason to believe that he left willingly, but not that he is 
still alive. She has even fewer assurances when it comes to 
Samantha.

It surprises her to think of how much she misses the presence 
of the young woman in her life. It has been such a short time, 
compared to Mulder's twenty-five year quest, but already this 
second loss stings at her, a gnawing irritation within the larger 
void left by her partner's absence.

The scent of paint and Skinner's voice brings her back to the 
present.

"The Bloomfield case, Agent Scully?"

She realizes that she has been drifting off. "I've assembled 
enough evidence to determine that she was simply in the 
wrong place at the wrong time. She had no criminal record, no 
history of incident at all. It may have been a random 
shooting...regardless, our jurisdiction over the case is tenuous 
at best. And it hardly qualifies as an X-File."

For a moment, he seems to accept this explanation without 
question, glancing briefly at the wall to her left. He knits his 
fingers together, clears his throat, adjusts his glasses. 
Anything, Scully thinks, to avoid giving voice to his 
suspicions.

"Are those the findings you intend to submit?" he asks.

"With one addendum." All day, she has been debating whether 
or not to offer this one last theory. Skinner's unease confirms 
her decision. She is alone on this case, and it is already too 
personal. "There is a possibility the murder may be connected 
with the disappearances of Mulder and his sister."

As soon as she says the words, she knows that they are exactly 
what Skinner expects to hear. He can play neutral, innocent, if 
he likes. But they share a silent understanding. No amount of 
professional demeanor can hide this.

"Because of our proximity to the crime scene..." she begins.

"You think whoever killed this woman is responsible for 
Agent Mulder's disappearance?"

"I think that Agent Mulder was the intended target," Scully 
says, "I believe that he realized his life was in danger, and that 
was why he left."

"I see." Another glance at the wall - Scully wonders what it is 
that Skinner finds so interesting there. Maybe he likes 
watching paint dry.

"Sir?"

"I suggest that you do not put that in your report, Agent 
Scully."

She nods, and slips out of the door without another word.

End Part 3/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 4/15

XVI. DRUM

He peels away the yellow tape that the police left behind. The 
door opens easily, and the smoker accepts its silent invitation, 
stopping where the midnight sun casts shadows in the form of 
the two chalky outlines.

The man who died was a generation younger. His wife, a 
fragile brunette beauty, was a pianist. He vaguely recalls that 
the couple was afraid to have children, terrified of the 
inevitable future that would paint their fate in dark colors. 
How ironic that the young man continued to work for the new 
world order, ensuring the future he so feared.

There are scarlet spots on the creamy white keyboard. A sheet 
of music is still spread open, its sounds cut forever. A 
metronome still beats a steady drum. Its monotony is ominous, 
its motor more permanent than that of the living body.  

Ash falls on the floor as he takes another drag on the cigarette. 
Nicotine is healthier than the smell of death. 

Methodically, he opens drawers and looks over the 
bookshelves, searching for any sensitive documents. When he 
finds a safe, nit-picked and swept clean, the wrinkled fingers 
unconsciously start to beat the same drum as the metronome, 
one, and two, one, and two, as his apprehension grows. 

The rules of the game have changed, but he was not informed. 

"So what did he do?" 

Krycek's voice is nonchalant. Today, the older man envies 
such carelessness. This blood was shed too close to home. "I 
valued this man."

Krycek circles him slowly. He wears the same expression as 
the man the smoker met on the steps of Lincoln Memorial - 
mistrust born from loss of control, anger born from inability to 
prevent the unseen hand from taking more lives. 

"People have been dropping like flies lately," Krycek muses 
cynically. "Just tell me, am I next?"

He points to the ransacked safe in lieu of an answer. "How 
much does the information cost these days?"

Krycek's snarl obliterates his human features, transforming 
him into a creature of the jungle, fear and defiance in his every 
move. The smoker waits for the claws to come out, but the 
young man regains control before new blood is drawn.

"I know you have warned Mulder to leave the city."

"I only hope he took my advice to heart." 

"The question is," the smoker asks ominously, "how did you 
know to give it to him?"

There is a pause, and in the ensuing silence, the drum of the 
metronome has a resonance of the upcoming disaster. 

"Is he alive?" Krycek asks coldly.

"He is alive."

The young man backs out of the room, carefully sidestepping 
the bloody footprints. Abruptly, the smoker reaches out a hand 
to turn off the metronome and silence the dried-out heart of 
this home.

For the sake of their mother, he hopes that Mulder and 
Samantha are not the next targets. Rarely does he feel so 
helpless or paranoid. 

The echo of the drum follows him to the street.


XVII. WATER

He doesn't expect her to be on time. In his experience, 
information costs time as well as money, sleepless nights 
spent waiting in the shadows for men who as often as not, 
considered themselves above promptness. Two hours ago, he 
put on a warm jacket in preparation, but she arrives before he 
does, pacing among the stone blocks by the waterfall.

He offers her a small smile. Perhaps he has been working for 
the wrong side all along.

"Agent Scully," he says.

"Who are you?"
 
He considers answering, but before he can speak, she is right 
in front of him, staring up into his face but still so strangely 
fierce, a whirlwind of red hair and angry eyes. "You said you 
had information. Who are you?"

"That's not important." He has to raise his voice to be heard 
above the rushing water. He wants to sit at the edge of the 
plaza, stare down into the pool instead of at the woman beside 
him, but he is on edge tonight. This is a last, desperate gamble. 
"I can help you, Agent Scully. But you have to help me."

This is his choice of location, the fourth room of the Roosevelt 
Memorial. A lifetime ago, he came here for the solace of the 
water garden. His eyes travel over the inscription in granite at 
the entrance: "More than an end to war, we want an end to the 
beginnings of all war."

There was peace here, once, but not tonight.

Slowly, he unfurls the fingers of one hand, revealing a 
crushed, wilted blue flower. He watches her face for the split 
second change from confusion to realization.

"What sort of help do you require?" she asks. Her voice is 
calm, even, cold, a sharp contrast to the tide of panic that 
threatens to engulf him at any moment.

"I think you know," he says. "I need protection. And in 
exchange..." He takes her hand, presses the dead petals into 
her palm. "Please."

"Protection from whom?" It is the wrong question to ask, and 
they both know it. She wants only one answer. He is only a 
stepping stone for the assortment of players in this game.

"I...don't know." His voice falters for the first time. "They're 
after me...maybe both of them. Maybe they're all after me."

"Both of them?"

"One wants to stop it. One wants to aid it along. I've worked 
for them both. Agent Scully, I don't know who I've 
betrayed..."

"Slow down. I don't understand you."
 
He grips the edge of a stone block for support. "I saw it in her 
eyes. She knows. Somehow she knows what's coming. And 
they're all being killed one by one. I need to know if I'm next. 
I'm sure I'm next."

Scully is frustrated, he can tell. He is not explaining this 
clearly. It is all a tangle of fragments, half-remembered 
conversations, names and faces and unclear allegiances. He 
knows parts of the whole - or he thought he did - now he is not 
sure if there is a whole at all.

"Something is happening," he whispers. "Something that will 
change everything. That's why...why she came back."
 
"Samantha?"

He nods eagerly, glad to have made at least one connection. "I 
don't know whose side I'm on. I don't know who the good 
guys are anymore. I just want out."

"Do you know where she is?" And the unspoken question, 
does he know where Mulder is?

He shakes his head. "Please...help me...and we'll find her...find 
him..."

"I can arrange to have you put in the Witness Protection 
Program--"
 
"Don't you think we don't have infiltrators there?" He lunges 
out at her, clutches fistfuls of her coat as he sinks to his knees. 
"I need you to protect me from them...all of them..."

Scully tries to pull him to his feet, and he staggers, suddenly 
broken, suddenly dependent upon her support. His nondescript 
face twists in an expression beyond his control, hot and 
flushed and feverish and mad. He is aware of how he must 
seem to her, beyond use, a  hindrance, a liability.

He plays his last card. "I *can* help you find them, Agent 
Scully," he says, "We can stop this."

She stares at him for a moment, then lets out the deep breath 
he didn't know she was holding in. "What do I need to do?"

He feels his lips stretch into a parody of a smile. "I'm not sure 
yet. Go on up ahead. I'll follow. I don't want them to see us 
together."

She hesitates. She turns, slowly, and he watches her leave the 
monument.

Before he can take the first step to follow her, he feels the 
hand on his shoulder.
 
"No." He closes his eyes. "Not this...not now..." It is a 
moment before he realizes he has spoken out loud.

"On your knees."

Idly, he wonders how far Scully has walked. If he were to 
scream now, would she hear him? Would she have time to run 
back and save him before the first crack of the gunshot?

And if she tried, would Alex Krycek kill her as well?
 
He kneels, facing the waterfall. He could scream, out of 
principle, but he won't. It is the first noble thing he has done in 
his life, the last, but perhaps it will be enough.

There is no gunshot. Instead, he feels his head slammed 
forward into the pool, a rush of water seeping into his eyes, his 
nose, his mouth. Coughing, gagging, he tries to struggle but 
the force is too great, the water too powerful. What once 
brought him life is turned against him, transformed into an 
instrument of death and he can't breathe, can't fight anymore. 
Cold wings wrap around his face and he draws them in, a 
subtle poison flooding into his lungs.
 
Krycek lets go. He wipes his hands, and turns away as the 
limp body slides into the dark shimmer of the pool. Sightless 
eyes watch him from beneath the surface, but he does not look 
back.

In a few moments, the memorial is once again deserted. 
Moonlight trickles over the water, unmoved by another death 
in the night.


XVIII. ALARM

Mulder twists on his old bed, too small now for his long 
frame, and tries to sink deeper into nothingness. The sleep, 
when it comes, is akin to a thin blanket over his 
consciousness; the door back to reality is nearly transparent. 
The tension that charges him during the day doesn't depart 
during the night, and he jerks awake at odd intervals.

He is convinced that time is running out - that they've already 
overstayed their welcome. Spending days passively in this 
hideout goes against everything he believes in, enrages him on 
some primal level, but he pushes these impulses down. He 
can't act recklessly right now, not when Samantha sleeps in 
the same house, not when her safety is the most important 
factor in this equation.

Heavy eyelids slide shut over his feverishly bright eyes, just as 
a soft sound carries into his open bedroom. Mulder listens for 
a few seconds, until it becomes a keening wail, pitiful and 
desperate. He runs towards it, to the bolted and locked front 
door, where his sister kneels on the cold floor. Her crying is an 
alarm that claws at the remnants of his sleep, leaving shredded 
scars in its wake.

"I can't cross over," Samantha whispers, and he doesn't know 
whether to rejoice or weep. Did he expect her first words to be 
addressed to him? Did he hope that they would be 
accompanied by her smile? Did he, finally, believe that they 
would make sense? 

The bitterness rises inside Mulder, and he turns his head away, 
for just a moment, just until he can face her again without 
shame. If patience is a virtue, then he is a sinner. 

"Sam," he speaks, proud of the control in his voice. "Come 
back upstairs with me, please. We both need sleep."

Her hazel eyes pass over him as if he doesn't exist, increasing 
his anxiety, and his pulse sends a series of shocks through his 
system, each one a buzzing alarm of fear. It is only another 
indication that his sister lives in a different world, and he 
wonders if he will ever find a door that will lead him inside.

Mulder sits down on the floor next to her and squeezes her 
hand gently. There is nothing more he can do. 

"I prefer sleeping in beds, myself," a mocking voice startles 
him, but when his eyes settle on the intruder, initial alarm 
turns to indifference.

"How the fuck did you sneak in, Krycek?" Mulder addresses 
him, too tired to care, accepting too easily that he is about to 
pay consequences for his miscalculations.

"I picked the kitchen door lock," the visitor explains 
nonchalantly. "Too easy."

Mulder shakes his head, glancing at the woman beside him. 
"This is not a good time, Alex." Krycek flinches and appears 
to assess the scene in front of him for the first time. Mulder 
turns away from the probing gaze, equally wary of contempt 
and compassion. "Why are you here?"

"I have too many questions, and very few answers," Krycek 
says thoughtfully.

"Then you know how I feel."

"Why did she come back?" Krycek asks. "Why are the 
Consortium members buying large life insurance policies? 
Why did you leave Scully behind?" Feral green eyes blister 
Mulder's face, then retreat just as abruptly. "Finally, ponder 
this: how long will it take for them to find you?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Mulder replies hollowly. "And I 
would appreciate it if you exited the same way you came."

"Mulder." Krycek sounds profoundly tired, and strangely 
afraid. "I'd hate to see my previous warning going to waste."

Mulder unlocks the front door, opening it with flair. 
"Goodbye," he speaks without affect. "You're not welcome 
back."

The dismissal is unequivocal, but instead of leaving, the 
intruder recedes deeper into the house. The night is suddenly 
bright as day as what seems like dozens of powerful 
flashlights illuminate the front yard, and Mulder shields his 
eyes from the glare. 

"Fox, Samantha," the somber voice is filled with satisfaction. 
"Please come with us."

Mulder's throat is suddenly tight with anger, and for a long 
moment, he cannot find the words to express his animosity. 
He should have listened to his instincts, they could have left 
yesterday, instead of providing such an easy mark. "We 
decline your offer," he replies with exaggerated calmness.

The smoker gestures expressively at the small cavalry behind 
him. "Don't make it more difficult than it needs to be."

He grasps his sister's hand and calculates his options. If they 
run quickly enough, if they're lucky, the kitchen door is still 
open, and he knows these woods better than any one of these 
goons...

When he turns around, the barrel of a gun is directed squarely 
at Samantha's head. Krycek's face is devoid of emotion as he 
cocks the hammer. "Do as you're told. Now."

The newest betrayal should be easier to accept, but something 
bitter spills inside Mulder, poisoning him as it enters his 
bloodstream. He lets the image burn into his retina, 
memorizing and cataloguing it, to be recalled on demand. 
Then, he sets his shoulders and raises the right hand in a 
gesture of surrender, the other hand still tightly holding his 
sister. She follows him to the waiting black limo, speechless 
and distant as a shadow. 

And somewhere, he still hears the thin alarm of panic, 
growing louder in the stuffy silence of the car.


XIX. GRINDER

It is an unlikely place to meet her informant: a casual, funky 
coffee shop downtown, populated mainly by college kids and 
unemployed artists. A teenaged girl, her hair dyed black, 
lisping from a newly pierced tongue, takes the stage, her 
voice, surprisingly soft, carried by the microphone over the 
noise of the coffee grinder.

Scully turns the note over in her hand, another request for a 
clandestine meeting, another bit of useless information 
dangled in front of her. This is Mulder's job, a nagging voice 
in her head reminds her, but her job has ceased to exist. There 
are no bodies, no traces of pathogens, no theories to debunk 
through science. The case - if it can be called a case, it is far 
too personal to be sanctified by the FBI - is defined only 
through what it lacks, composed of absences, of 
impossibilities.
 
Waiting, she decides that this is a better meeting place than the 
seclusion of the Memorial. Out in the open, no one is 
listening. This time, her mysterious friend has no means of 
slipping away.

She orders another cup of coffee, listening to the thin strains 
of the girl's guitar. Scully closes her eyes for a moment, 
imagining a deeper, richer sound, filling in an orchestra behind 
the quiet, slightly off-key voice. As she does so, the informant 
slips into the chair across from her, the rustle of a trench coat 
only a negligible distraction.

Scully opens her eyes.
 
"Good evening, Agent Scully."

It is a while before Scully finds her voice. "I wasn't expecting 
to see you here."

Teena Mulder waves away the waitress who has come to ask if 
she would like anything. Coffee is irrelevant - there are more 
important matters to be discussed.

"The man you met the other night is dead. His body was found 
the morning after he contacted you."

Somehow Scully cannot find it in her to be shocked, or 
moved. Not anymore. All she can manage is, "I hope you're 
not going to tell me that you're his replacement."
 
Teena ignores the sarcasm. "He couldn't have told you 
anything of importance. He only understood part of the 
picture."

"And you?"

The older woman leans forward, and her voice drops to a low 
whisper. "Once, when everything pointed to the opposite 
conclusion, when I feared the worst, you told me that Fox was 
still alive. Now I've come to you, to offer you the same hope."

"What do you know?" She should have asked where he was. 
Or, perhaps, more importantly, how she knew.
 
"Only that...they're alive, both of them, and safe for the time 
being. Someone...told me that."

"Someone you trust?"

Teena laughs. It is a bitter, hollow sound, echoing in the 
sudden silence as the noise of the coffee grinder stops.

"Someone who knows he can't lie to me."

Scully says nothing for a moment, watching the painful twist 
of her companion's features. She senses an odd kinship with 
Teena Mulder, a woman well versed in the art of deception, an 
expert in the careful construction of emotional walls. It is a 
different sort of intrigue that the two of them practice.
 
"Someone," Scully says, "killed the man who came to me with 
information. And someone killed a young woman with a bullet 
intended for Mulder."

Whatever concern Teena feels for her son, for her daughter, is 
buried deep beneath a sheet of ice. "It wasn't them. It wasn't 
him."

And Scully mentally completes the implication. If the 
Consortium did not make the attempt on Mulder's life, then 
someone else did.

"Things are falling apart," Teena says.
 
"The bullet wasn't meant for Mulder, was it?" The realization 
occurs to her almost instantaneously, and she wonders why 
she didn't see it before.

"Miss Scully, I am just an old woman who has seen too many 
tragedies. I didn't come here to give you answers." She stands, 
frail hands grasping the table for support.

"Mrs. Mulder..." Scully begins, and she does not know how to 
finish.

"But I can tell you this much," Teena says, "the missing ones, 
the ones who were taken...they are coming back. They are all 
coming back."

The sound of chimes as she slips out the door of the cafe is 
barely audible as the music starts up again.

End Part 4/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 5/15

XX. COOK

Jason Hart's heavy-lidded eyes close as if of their own 
volition. It has been a bad night, one of the many he spent 
lately, with Marita's thin body trembling in his hands. The 
fever always subsides by morning, and she can finally rest. He 
has no such luxury. 

A sound slap sends him back to the dizzying reality, and he 
reaches out a hand to steady himself. He'd never fallen asleep 
during an interrogation before, but such business no longer has 
the flavor of terror.

Wordlessly, his colleague hits the other cheek of the man tied 
to a heavy chair. 

"I..." the man shakes his head, futilely. "I haven't..."

"You haven't betrayed us, Roy, after we took you in - in good 
faith?" 

A punch to the stomach doubles Roy over, and his strained 
shoulders quiver in agony. "I'm not a traitor," he begs once he 
recovers his breath. "You must - you must believe me."

Roy is still young enough to assume that his words will 
somehow make the smallest bit of difference, and his plea for 
unconditional trust makes Jason smile. The only one he trusts 
these days is Marita - the captive is as inconsequential as a 
stepping stone. "Perhaps you were spying on us from the 
beginning," he speaks to Roy for the first time. "You worked 
for them for three years, after all."

"I didn't give them any information." Roy pulls on the bonds 
fruitlessly. "I couldn't."

"The only reason why you're still alive is that they believe 
you're dead. No," the interrogator leans closer to the battered 
face. "Not 'them,' Roy. The FBI. The ones who dutifully guard 
the returning abductees day and night. The ones who were 
directed to do so by the woman you watched for several days."

The bound man quivers, finally understanding. "I never talked 
to her, I swear," he speaks in a rush. "I followed her, you gave 
me this assignment, it's not my fault that she figured it out, 
why won't you believe me!"

Calmly, the interrogator opens the first few buttons on Roy's 
shirt and uses the revealed chest as an ashtray. Hart is deaf to 
the screams that follow, but the smell of cooked flesh that fills 
the room is inescapable, an insignificant suffering added to the 
memories of El Rico disaster, a small flame in the firestorm. 
He recalls the devastation brought on by the faceless soldiers, 
the fire that consumed the men who betrayed him. The women 
and children who hadn't been spared the same fate.

The interrogator's voice doesn't alter when he poses the 
question again. "How much have you told Agent Scully? 
What does she know?"

Jason's heart constricts painfully in his chest, shooting streaks 
of agony down his left arm. Has it come to this, then? Have 
they become as desensitized to suffering as the aliens, the very 
force that they're seeking to defeat? When have they started to 
treat the human flesh with as little emotion as the cooks who 
flay the meat of the animals do?

The interrogator lights another cigarette, and Roy's eyes glaze 
over in fear. He is devoid of words or of tears - the only one 
crying is Jason Hart, but both the victim and the executioner 
are too involved in their tasks to notice him. He crosses the 
room and slices the bonds that hold Roy in place. "It doesn't 
matter," he says to both of them. "We won't kill the returned 
ones."

"It's the only way," his colleague hisses unkindly. "And Agent 
Scully had been a problem from the start. Why is she still 
alive?"

"She could have led us to Samantha Mulder," Hart explains. 
"Besides, sometimes, violence is not the immediate answer."

"You've grown soft, Hart. Too much female influence, 
perhaps? Does Marita need to be put down like a rabid dog as 
well?"

The gunfire that erupts is as much a surprise to the man with 
the bullet in his head as to Hart, whose hand pulled the trigger. 
Hart's illusions shatter just as quickly as the interrogator's 
face: he is the one who has become the executioner - the 
butcher.

"Get out," he tells Roy tiredly.

"I haven't," the young man repeats stubbornly. "I told her 
nothing, I swear."

"I believe you, but you will never serve us well after what 
transpired here," Hart responds. "If I see you again, I will not 
spare you."

He waits until the door closes to reach into his pocket for the 
medicine. The drug kicks in slowly, and he knows that the 
dosage will have to be increased, and soon. They have so little 
time. 

Agent Scully hasn't been useful to them alive. After he 
corrects this one mistake that already cost them days, they can 
deal with the problem of abductees. Slowly, he shuffles to the 
window and slides it wide open.

But even then, the smell of cooked meat refuses to depart.


XXI. HORSE

White turns to green, and she is safe again, her hands buried in 
grass and her face tilted to face the sky, flower petals stirring 
above her like butterflies in the wind. Even here, in this safe 
place, she can feel it - the whine of a voice, a shrill song, not 
words, just...a calling.

"I can't," she whispers, for what seems the hundredth time, 
"Not now...not yet..."

Samantha is dimly aware of her brother beside her, watching 
her. He does not sleep. He stays on guard, though no one has 
threatened them since they were deposited here. He is 
frightened. For her, this is simply the replacement of one cell 
by another, and in her garden, nothing has changed.
 
In this place, Fox is not the haunted, broken man she sees in 
the daylight, but as she once remembered him, young and full 
of life. He wears a boy's face here, untouched by the horror of 
the night she was taken, and instead of the weary guard he 
takes in their prison, he smiles at her in encouragement as she 
climbs to her feet and starts towards the wall.

For the first time she can feel its frailty as she runs her hands 
over the stone. She expected it to be cold, but it hums with a 
secret life, intrinsically aware of the vines that creep across its 
length, of the moss that compromises its strong foundation.
 
Samantha kneels, and she rests her head against the wall. She 
does not feel pity. All confines crumble. That is their nature. 
She knows this by now.

But it does not have to be tonight.

"I can't cross," she tells the wall, but it is also the nature of 
stone to be impassive, uncaring. She can feel it tremble 
beneath her fingertips.

She cannot cross. But she will.
 
Samantha hears a distant roar, and at first she mistakes it for 
thunder, but it is not one unified sound, but rather a composite 
of a thousand hooves, echoing in the space beyond the wall. 
Almost before she makes the connection they are upon her, a 
herd of white horses, a tide of ice and manes and flaring red 
nostrils, rising forward at an impossible speed, tearing down 
the wall as they fly over it.

If Samantha screams, the sound is lost amid the storm, the 
crashing of bricks and the approaching, then receding hoof-
beats, and when the animals have passed, there is nothing she 
can say that would be more expressive than silence.
 
The wall is gone, trampled, replaced by muddy prints and 
shattered stone. She traces its length with her own footsteps, 
afraid to pass over it, even now. And were it not for the voice, 
the first voice that calls her name in this empty place, she 
would not even look beyond it.

The voice calls her. Samantha looks up.

It is the woman, the one from the Other Place, with the red 
hair and the soft smile. She is paler than she was in the days 
when she would come to Samantha's cage and read to her. 
Something is wrong.
 
The woman reaches around her, desperate, but beyond the 
wall there is nothing but desolation. The dead tree branches 
snap in her hands, the fragments of stone crumbling to dust. 
She is nearly transparent. Behind her, Samantha can see only 
darkness.

And she runs, forgetting her fear. The mud slides beneath her 
as she crosses the wall and she stumbles, arms outstretched to 
catch the woman before she can fall, both mouths open to 
scream, but it is too late. Her fingers grapple for something 
solid, find instead the cool linoleum of the cell floor.

Samantha opens her eyes.

Only then does she realize that, until now, they were closed.


XXII. BOOTH

Scully's eyes are open, but she doesn't wish to forfeit the 
numbing comfort of sleep, not just yet. For a few short 
moments, she can lie to herself and pretend that she is 
enveloped in her favorite comforter, that when her alarm rings 
she will go through her early-morning routine and drive to 
work, that this is a day like any other. 

She shifts, anxious to get more warmth out of the thin cotton 
blanket, seemingly a standard issue article in any hospital. Her 
shoulder is sore, and she is surprised that she'd been able to 
doze off here, in the hard plastic chair, sitting beside the bed 
of yet another returned abductee. The blond woman, whose 
name they still don't know, sleeps the contaminated sleep of 
the drugged and unaware. Briefly, Scully is unnerved at how 
still the patient is and, frantically, she checks the monitors. 

She no longer knows what she fears the most: the possibility 
of never finding Samantha or of never working again with her 
partner; the possibility of passing away or the frightening 
implications of any or all of the abductees succumbing to 
death.

The door opens, and she reaches for her gun, training it on the 
face of the FBI agent who sat outside, guarding them through 
the night. She is more alarmed by her gesture than he appears 
to be - it is only another proof that she is sliding closer 
towards the edge.

And this time, she isn't entirely certain that she will be able to 
stop the fall.

Embarrassed, she puts away the weapon, and he smiles, 
pretending to ignore her mistake. "Brought you coffee." He 
extends her a cup in a pacifying gesture.

"Good morning, Agent Blair," Scully's hands close over the 
cup, and she inhales the aroma of Starbucks, briefly surprised 
at such luxury. "Where did you get this treasure?"

"Aaron, please," he corrects. "My shift was over, so I made 
the trip downstairs."

"You're a savior." She is suddenly aware of his nervousness, 
his blushing youth, the way he watches her out of the corner of 
his eye. At another time, she would feel flattered, but now she 
only feels annoyed. The bitter taste of coffee on her tongue 
reminds her that she hasn't had any food in over twenty-four 
hours. She cannot recall if it had been longer. Some yogurt 
and orange juice will do her a world of good. "I'm going to get 
some breakfast," she tells him, then adds, as a small 
concession, "Would you like to accompany me?"

Aaron shuffles his feet, and his face reddens. "No, thanks," he 
declines reluctantly. "I probably should head home... my shift 
resumes in a few hours, I have to get some sleep."

Scully nods, and passes another glance at the bed before 
leaving the room. "I'll be back soon," she promises the 
unconscious woman. Today, this gesture doesn't seem 
inappropriate.

A man sitting outside mumbles his greeting and resumes his 
contemplation of the newspaper. Scully makes a few wrong 
turns, and when she finally sees the blue sign pointing to the 
cafeteria, she is a little perplexed. 

She feels out of place in the line of energized hospital 
workers, trays in their hands, brisk morning greetings on their 
tongues. Someone's elbow nudges her painfully, and she 
sways, unaccountably dizzy. Hands braced against the glass, 
she watches the hot food behind it dully, until a stranger's 
hand touches her gently, and she looks up in the concerned 
eyes of a middle-aged nurse.

"Are you all right, dear?" the woman asks, hovering over her 
protectively.

"Fine," Scully smiles thinly. "I think I need to sit down."

The nurse starts to guide her to the nearest chair, but Scully's 
eyes focus on the corner booth of the busy dining room, and 
she recognizes the man who occupies it. Assistant Director 
Skinner's large hands grip the edge of the table, a gesture of 
restraint. Yet another man slips out of the same booth, generic 
trenchcoat concealing his identity. 

"Thank you," she dismisses the woman by her side, suddenly 
clear-headed. She walks across the room quickly, slipping into 
the booth across from Skinner. 

"Agent Scully." His surprise is evident. Somehow, she knows 
that it is not a pleasant one. 

"Who were you talking to?" she demands.

"No one of importance," Skinner replies, shredding the 
packets with Sweet'N'Low. "You're here early," he notices, 
then surveys her more closely. "You never left," he corrects 
his observation.

Scully smoothes her hair, suddenly aware of the teeth that she 
hasn't brushed, of the face that probably still bears the mark of 
sleep, of the suit that she's worn for the past two days. "I was 
waiting," she tries to explain. "I have to talk to her."

"Agent, she won't tell you what you want to know," Skinner's 
gaze is pitying, and she shies away from it. "I'm recalling the 
protection."

Scully is startled. "On this woman?"

"On everyone," he explains slowly, deliberately. "There have 
been no attacks, nothing has happened to justify the resources 
we're pouring into this case. I can no longer explain this to the 
Director, not when what I see is only a tired agent projecting 
her guilt..."

Skinner's face washes out of focus, and then, his arms are 
gripping her shoulders. "Scully!" his voice seems far away. 
"Scully, when was the last time you ate?"

"I was going to have breakfast," she explains fuzzily, 
absolving herself of the blame. "I'm sorry, it's..."

"Wait here," he orders gruffly. "I will get us something, then 
we can talk."

Scully nods obediently, and watches idly as he picks up the 
tray and starts going through the hot food bar, slightly terrified 
of the heaping portions he loads on the plates. It's not a 
pleasant admission, but she knows that he is probably right. 
Lately, she's been seeing faces of foes in everyone, she's been 
on guard twenty-four hours a day, and soon, there will be no 
need for her enemies to dispose of her - she will do their job 
for them, effortlessly.

Skinner comes back, surrounded by the smells of hospital 
coffee and fried bacon and eggs, and she swallows to keep 
down the overwhelming nausea. Tentatively, she takes hold of 
the coffee cup and scoots to the back of the booth, seeking 
protection in its shadows.

"The disappearance of Mulder has been classified as a missing 
persons' case," he informs her. "I fought against it, but I was 
overruled. It means that there will be fewer agents working on 
it, as well."

Scully's fingers travel to her forehead. Something... something 
is wrong, and she doesn't remember how to open her mouth 
and speak the words out loud. 

"On the other hand, Samantha's disappearance is clearly a case 
of kidnapping, so..."

Scully stares at the coffee as it slowly spills from her shaking 
hand. She wants to deny what has just transpired, but the 
world as she knows it no longer exists, and the people she 
used to know are no longer as she remembers them. The 
innocuous shelter of a cafeteria booth cannot protect her 
against betrayal.

Skinner's face, the face of a foe, looms large over her as she 
succumbs to the poison.


XXIII. UMPIRE

No one had been prepared for this.

Krycek lets himself into the hospital room, closing the door 
behind him. His steps are quiet, as if to maintain the stillness 
here, to avoid disturbing the silent woman on the bed.

There is no chance of that. She will not wake.

He pulls up a chair by her bedside, slipping his hand around 
hers. If the guard outside should wake, if anyone else should 
accidentally enter, they will mistake him at first for a friend or 
family member, or perhaps a worried colleague...and give him 
enough time to reach for his gun.
 
Enough time, he thinks, to determine the identity of Scully's 
would-be killer.

He has little hope that she will recover sufficiently to tell him 
herself. He must proceed as she would, from the evidence, 
from the fragments of undeniable truth. It is a strange role to 
take upon himself, but there is no one else he can trust, not on 
such short notice.

Her chart is at the foot of the bed, but there is little question of 
what put her here. Poisoning is not generally the Consortium's 
style, and regardless, they have no need to kill her now.
 
He should feel something for her - sympathy, concern - but the 
closest he can manage is fear. Not for Scully's life - it's all the 
same to him, he's watched enough innocent women die - but 
for his own. He is afraid of that vast, lurking *something* 
which threatens to destroy fifty years of plans, to obliterate the 
men who have put them into place.

Poor Scully, Krycek thinks, you were never more than a pawn. 
Did you understand, at the very last, your place in this? What 
secrets you could tell, if only you could speak.

He releases his grip on her hand, silently marveling at its 
paleness, its lifelessness. She is still alive, despite everything. 
Were he a religious man, he might think it miraculous. But 
then, his own survival seems equally astounding, under the 
circumstances.
 
Krycek alternates his attention between the beep of the life 
support monitor and the closed door behind him. The killer - 
*killers,* a voice in his head assures him - should have known 
better than to poison someone in a hospital. He wouldn't have 
been so careless.

This could, he muses, work out for the best. He can still use 
her. No one - besides Skinner, and Krycek alone knows where 
Skinner's loyalties lie - no one knows yet of Scully's latest 
misfortune. Not Mulder, not the smoker, perhaps not even the 
colonists. She may be a pawn, but she is Krycek's pawn now, 
and she is lucky that he at least understands the rules of the 
game.

He has a sudden, bizarre image of himself as a sort of referee 
between two warring sides. As the players escalate out of 
control, the umpire blows the whistle, and it stops. Right here. 
Krycek grins despite himself. It stops, and he at last 
recognizes the hand of the man who put Scully in this bed, a 
former colleague more than knowledgeable in the use of 
medical narcotics.

How could he not have seen it before?
 
Now the players may fall as they will, but Krycek is prepared. 
This landscape, once radically altered beyond recognition, is 
once again clear to him. He leans over the unconscious 
woman, her lips cold and motionless beneath his, the 
receptacle of a brief, almost astonished kiss.

"We're going to be very good friends, Agent Scully," he 
whispers.

End Part 5/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 6/15

XXIV. CHORUS

He expects the church to be nearly empty on a weekday 
morning, and he is surprised to hear the singing that fills the 
vast space of the Catholic cathedral. Young boys, dressed 
casually, are following the gliding hands of their teacher, their 
unsullied voices gathering into a strong chorus. He permits 
himself a brief pause, allows the sound to obliterate the 
rationalism. The last time he visited church was at Teena and 
Bill's wedding. Lifetimes have passed, but the memories of 
that day can still wound.

It is not the best mindset with which to start the day. Friends 
and foes alike don't forgive being distracted. Straightening, the 
smoker sweeps the rows with his eyes, searching for the man 
who requested this meeting. It hasn't even begun yet, and he is 
already anxious to end it.

Without the shield of eyeglasses, swathed in gray shadows, 
Walter Skinner's face appears tired and vulnerable. His jaw 
sets as the smoker slides in the pew next to him. "You're late," 
he bristles.

"All the more reason for you to state your business quickly." 
The smoker pulls out his cigarettes, then shoves them back in 
his pocket almost savagely. Smoking inside the church is a 
blasphemy even in his admittedly skewed system of values.

"Why attempt to kill Scully?" There is no anger in Skinner's 
voice, only quiet desperation of a man who no longer 
understands the ways of the world. It is a voice of a man who 
no longer acts, but only reacts. 

The new melody that floats to the high ceilings is vaguely 
familiar. "Dies irae, dies illa..." The recognition of Sequentia, 
Requiem, prompts a regretful sigh. His answer surprises him, 
then. "Is she still alive?"

"She's in a coma," Skinner replies. "They resuscitated her in 
the ER, but were too late to fully counteract the poison. 
Doesn't that just make your day?"

"No, it doesn't." Mentally, the smoker adds Dana Scully to the 
list of victims, one that is already too long. "When did this 
happen?"

"Like you don't know. Haven't I already done what you'd 
asked?" His words beg for a reason. "What justification did 
you have?" 

"Mr. Skinner, if you insist on blaming me for your misfortune, 
may I blame you for the numerous deaths of my colleagues in 
the preceding several weeks?" At another time, he would 
smile at his own morbid humor, but today he is only seeking 
the answers. "Could you tell me why I'm seeing my friends 
die, in ways significantly less pleasant than poisoning? Be 
grateful that Agent Scully is, at least, still alive."

"Why here?" Skinner asks after a pause.

"Quantus tremor est futurus, quando judex est venturus, 
cuncta stricte discussurus..." 

Fragments of long-forgotten Bible lessons, of prayers best 
discarded, reassert themselves in his conscience. "What dread 
there will," he translates slowly, "When the Judge shall come, 
to judge all things strictly." He chuckles at Skinner's raised 
eyebrows. "Sometimes, I have to wonder if perhaps I made a 
mistake in professing my atheism. Certainly, in these days of 
the final judgment, I wish I had a deity to pray to, someone 
who would spare me from the angry sword."

His opponent has no ready reply, and the smoker turns his face 
away, disturbed by his own frankness. "It is safe here," he 
explains apathetically. "Even evil has respect for the church."

Skinner stands up as he realizes that, for once, his nemesis is 
as powerless as he himself is. "Please, accept my 
condolences." His words have no feeling behind them. "I must 
return to work now."

"Mr. Skinner." The voice brokers no arguments, and Skinner 
halts. "If I may offer you advice, retrace Agent Scully's steps. 
Miss no detail. Question everyone. Doubt everything. And 
when you find the one who is responsible for her present 
condition, let me know."

The two men face each other, across the gulf of their 
convictions, over the numerous barriers erected between them, 
and for once, they recognize the common, if transient, 
purpose. Skinner nods acknowledgment and walks away 
briskly. 

The smoker contemplates the conversation. He has lied - even 
here, in this sanctuary, he doesn't feel safe. But when the 
mournful words of Lacrimosa filter through the dark church, 
he stays behind, joining the chorus in the prayer for the 
departed, and for those who linger between the two worlds. 

He throws loose change onto the collection plate and picks up 
a candle. He lights it with the same benediction he usually 
affords his cigarettes, infinitely careful in placing the burning 
stick among others. 

The door opens, and the gust of wind dances inside, 
extinguishing the candle's fragile flame.


XXV. ADULT

She is not; she never has been.

The garden lies in ruin at her feet. The flowers should bleed, 
she thinks, they should weep for the devastation, they should 
beg her for revenge, but everything is silent now. Everything 
is white, and still.

Samantha paces the walls of her prison, her hands feeling for 
new boundaries, for understanding. There is no garden. There 
is only this.
 
With this sudden realization, she turns to Fox. An adult now, 
his hair shows the slightest traces of gray at the temples, fine 
lines of worry beginning to crease around his eyes. Were she 
to look in the mirror, would she look similarly aged? As if 
waking from a long sleep, Samantha blinks her eyes rapidly, 
silently introducing herself to the stranger.

"Fox?"

The single word seems to startle him, and then his face lights 
up, and for a moment she thinks that her vision was false, that 
it is really her brother, that nothing has ever changed. "Sam?"
 
"Remember...the swing, out in the backyard?"

"Sure, Sam."

"I used to touch the sky. Fox, is there still a sky?"

"Of course there is still a sky," he frowns. "Why..."

"How old am I?"

She shouldn't have spoken. Every word seems to cause him 
more pain. Instead of answering, he stands up, half-leaning 
against the wall, watching her.

"Fox?" When he doesn't answer, she says, "There was a 
garden, too, wasn't there? That time I flew too high, and 
fell...and all I could see was green. Green and blue, 
everywhere, that's all the world was. We have to get out of 
here."

The last sentence catches his attention. "We can't," he says, 
but it is a challenge.
 
"Who is she?"

He starts to tell her that she doesn't understand, but she is 
faster. "That girl...the one with the red hair. She came to see 
me...before."

"You mean Scully?"

Samantha shrugs. "She's in trouble."

She should have said it before. Those words, while twisting 
his face into a grimace, also bring a flash of life into his dead 
eyes, and for the first time he fully acknowledges her. "What 
did you say?"

"She was in the garden. I think...she tried to call out to me...I 
couldn't reach her...I tried..."

"Sam?"

"Please, Fox..." The walls are closing in on her. He reaches for 
her hands as she sways on her feet.

It was all she ever needed to say.

They make the attempt that night, and even though it is only 
an attempt, both realize intuitively the necessity of the gesture. 
It happens when the guard comes to deliver their supper. Fox 
is the one who takes him down, one moment passively sitting 
against the wall, the next moment with the man in a headlock, 
a sudden maelstrom of energy, and Samantha runs, not for her 
life but for the life of the woman in the garden, and Fox is 
behind her, adrenaline overtakes reason, and for the first time 
in so long they are alive.

Lost in the garden, in its ruined, twisting pathways, she opens 
her hand to loose a trail of breadcrumbs over the ground. An 
unearthly light surrounds them, will-o'-the-wisps glittering 
past to lead them astray, and still she runs towards the clearing 
that must await them somewhere. She can hear Fox urging her 
forward, but he doesn't understand, they must be patient or 
they will never find their way.

She hears a roar - not the thunderclap of the horses, but 
something new, something altogether terrifying. She flinches 
as if struck and he pulls her, but she can't move.

Doesn't he see it? Doesn't he know that there are dragons in 
her garden?

He must sense something, because at last he stops, and he 
pulls her closer, so tight she can't breathe. The fire is all 
around them. As the beast approaches, the tops of trees catch 
on fire, the flowers shrink and wilt before the red embers, the 
gusts of smoke.
 
She shuts her eyes.

But this is not a fairy tale. She can close her eyes and make a 
hundred wishes, but they are both adults, too old to believe in 
wishes and gardens.

And the dragon is still there.

"We'll go back." Even in surrender, Fox's voice is defiant. She 
hopes the dragon realizes this. "Just don't hurt her."

Without another word, he turns her around to face back 
towards the pathway, to the trail of breadcrumbs that will lead 
them home.

The dragon does not follow.


XXVI. SUIT

Mulder's absence feels wrong, sour to the taste, as treacherous 
as the poison that claimed the conscience of his partner. 
Valiantly, Skinner hopes that he will see him beside her bed, 
or in this office, demanding the answers or asking for justice. 
Ever since Dana Scully's life fled from beneath his fingers, an 
event he has now lived through twice, he somehow recognizes 
that there is little chance of that happening. 

Still, he waits. 

"Assistant Director Skinner..."

He jerks, only now realizing that a visitor occupies the space 
in front of his desk. "Agent Blair, how can I help you?"

The young agent's eyes watch him earnestly from under the 
long lashes. "I wanted to ask, sir, if there had been any change 
in Agent Scully's condition."

"No change," Skinner replies. His voice is monotone, and his 
face is expressionless, but the weight of the words settles 
between his shoulder blades, heavier than the world itself. "No 
change yet."

Aaron's cheeks go from blushing red to shady white, as if the 
answer was everything that he was unprepared to handle. It is 
not an ordinary concern for a colleague, and Skinner feels 
sorry for him, on more than one count.

"I hope she gets well soon," Aaron offers humbly.

Skinner nods, anxious to end the conversation. "Will that be 
all, Agent?"

"Yes, sir," he stumbles, flustered. "Thank you, sir."

"Friends and family are welcome to visit her," Skinner adds as 
a consolation prize. The young man stiffens imperceptibly, 
and the suggestion spoken in kindness now hangs between 
them like a noose. 

"I'll do that," Aaron replies. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you."

Too young, Skinner thinks. Too young, too inexperienced, but 
eager to please and quick to react. Something about Aaron 
Blair today has set off warning bells in his mind, and he digs 
through his impressions, uncomfortable, searching for a 
nugget that will give him an explanation. The young agent's 
slightly insecure posture grows more assured with every day, 
and the regulation haircut that at first appeared to have been 
done at home in front of the mirror, now looks sharp and 
expensive. Somewhere along the way, Blair has picked up 
good taste and learned to dress: the newest suit looks more 
than elegant, made to fit him, as only ridiculously overpriced 
labels can appear. 

It's the kind of suit that Mulder probably spends half of his 
salary on, the kind that seriously sets off Skinner's own budget 
once in a while, the kind that Blair would never be able to 
afford, not on the money that the Bureau pays him.

On the day when Scully collapsed, Skinner had almost 
forgotten to dismiss the guards. By the time he walked 
upstairs, the shift changed again and Aaron Blair had been on 
duty. Skinner's grief refused to be shared, and even to this day, 
he had told few people about what had happened. Then, he 
couldn't even master a reply to Blair's question, "Is Agent 
Scully all right? She looked a little pale when she left here." 
He had walked away without giving any indication that he had 
heard.

Later, when Skinner followed the smoker's advice and 
reconstructed that morning down to the smallest detail, Aaron 
had given a sincere, puzzled account. "She looked the same to 
me. Said she'd go to the cafeteria and get some breakfast."

Skinner's heart locks in a metal fist and beads of sweat roll 
down his back in the air-conditioned office. And he knows 
that Aaron is the would-be assassin - but he also knows that 
he can never prove it, that the traces are swept away, that the 
admission of guilt will never be gained. And when he picks up 
the phone and dials the familiar number, he is ecstatic to hear 
the smoky voice, for the first time in years. 

During the rest of the day, he waits for the pain to diminish. 
The matter is put to rest, justice is served, and the questions 
are finally answered, yet his anxiety doesn't subside. As he 
measures his room in quick, tormented strides, he finally 
recognizes the darkness that seeps through the walls of the 
office, settling like fog inside him. 

It is not the killer's face that wears the mask of evil today, but 
his own.

Skinner walks downstairs to Aaron Blair's cubicle, only to be 
told that the agent had just left. Unspeakable dread - what if 
he is mistaken? - makes him run, tear through the crowd of 
other agents leaving the building. Outside, he sees a discreet 
van parked across the street. The doors swing open and several 
ubiquitous men in suits leave it simultaneously. 

Surely they would never attempt this pick-up in broad 
daylight, in front of the FBI building. The smoker would never 
dare, not unless he was extremely anxious to chat with the 
duplicitous agent. Not unless an Assistant Director of the FBI 
himself sanctified such actions. Forgetting protocol and 
common etiquette, Skinner shouts Aaron Blair's name. This is 
a matter of life and death.

This is a matter of taking one small, but crucial step in the 
right direction, away from the shadows that hold him fast in 
their grip.

The young man swings around, and his eyes find the Assistant 
Director immediately. The pure malice and fear that Skinner 
sees inside their blue depths staggers him. 

In that moment, they know each other. Skinner's throat is dry 
as he searches for a breath. Blair's face pales and he takes a 
step backward, the first step on the long staircase that winds 
down from the front doors to the Pennsylvania Avenue, from 
life as he knows it to what will have been an interrogation 
room in one of the Consortium hideouts and eventual death. 
Instead, and perhaps it's a better deal, his bones count every 
one of these stairs, as his spine breaks halfway down, as his 
ribs splinter one after another, as his skull cracks on the third 
step from the bottom. 

Skinner doesn't hurry to join the bystanders and fellow agents 
who gather on the street. He knows what he will see.

A broken, ugly body dressed in a beautiful but bloodied suit 
that was bought for thirty pieces of silver.

End Part 6/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 7/15

XXVII. HARP

Fort Marlene is eerily deserted, abandoned by the men who 
once claimed it as a second home. Krycek stalks its halls with 
a dark sense of purpose. There is a piece absent, some clue to 
Jason Hart's whereabouts.

Something led him to this place. Perhaps it was a dream, but 
Krycek does not remember his dreams - a small act of mercy 
by his waking mind. The pinprick of pain in the stump of his 
shoulder is enough to let him know what he is missing.

Something is still leading him, and it is a moment before he 
realizes that this something exists outside of his mind, that this 
something is present at the base itself. It takes him another 
moment to identify this something as music, a high-pitched, 
keening wail that cries out to him as if in desperation.

He lets the music guide him.

It bleeds through a closed door, a discarded operating room. 
He tries the handle. The door opens without resistance.
 
The walls are draped in velvet, in shadows cast by a flickering 
candle near a canopy bed. A woman sits on the high-backed 
chair, her face turned away from him as her long, thin fingers 
pluck at the strings of a harp. The instrument and her hair are 
the same cornsilk color. If the music had a color it too would 
shine this brightly.

No.

The walls are bare except for unidentifiable medical 
equipment, unflatteringly illuminated by a single bare bulb. 
The music comes from an old tape recorder, the sole personal 
belonging of the room's occupant. As the woman turns to face 
him, he sees that her hair is dyed black, and her failing eyes 
are shot through with red.
 
"Hello, Marita," Krycek says.

She does not look surprised to see him, not as she had been the 
last time. And he is moderately pleased to discover that the 
thrill of fear that once greeted him every time he saw her has 
dissipated. Perhaps now they can talk.

"Alex?"

She has converted this sterile room into an even more sterile 
home. Her bed - two stretchers hastily placed side-by-side, is 
draped in gray blankets, unmade, shoved in the corner. The 
absence of windows is probably a blessing, when the light 
bulb is off.
 
He shifts from one foot to the other - Marita seems just as 
uncomfortable as he feels. "I...didn't expect to find you here," 
he says finally.

"Then...why come at all?"

"I was looking for a man, actually. Perhaps you know him. Dr. 
Jason Hart..."

At the shudder that courses through her thin body like a shock 
of electricity, he knows that he has come to the right place.
 
"But since you're here..."

"Go away," Marita whispers. "Please...just...go away."

He doesn't. There is something grotesquely fascinating about 
the woman who stands before him. He wonders how the 
coarse black hair would feel between his fingers, the cracked 
lips against his own. He is still a man, after all.

Like fucking a corpse, a part of his mind decides, the 
comparison crass but obvious. The rest of his mind has more 
important things to consider.

"Where is he, Marita?" His voice is soft, taunting, but he can't 
control himself.

Her hands move in wild gestures, pushing the air in front of 
her away as if it was him, fingers still coiling around the 
invisible strings of her harp. So very broken, he thinks. He 
could almost pity her.

"I'm sorry," the weaker human impulse inside of him offers, 
then, "If it makes it any better, I forgive you."
 
"For what?"

"For betraying me."

She laughs then, harsh, the cry of a vulture. He wonders why 
her red-rimmed eyes are focused away from him, what visions 
they take in - or do they see at all? He pictures the signals they 
could be sending out, twin red sniper beads that target him, 
waiting for the right moment.

"But the past is the past, isn't it? And I'm here to talk about the 
future."

"The future?" Marita backs away, seeking the surface of the 
wall for its spare, cold comfort. "You didn't come here to 
talk."

"I came here to find Hart."

"To kill him?"

"To...talk."

"You were never a good liar, Alex." She smiles grimly. "You 
know...don't you? What's coming...what it all means..."

"I was hoping he could tell me."
 
She shakes her head. He reaches towards the black tangles, 
catches her face in his hand to bring it close to his. He can 
barely stand to look at her but his body remembers the 
motions, and acts without the consent of his eyes.

"Alex...please..." If more words follow, they are lost in his 
own breath.

His hand reaches to press her to the wall, all the time his 
mouth moving to whisper, "Where is he, Marita, where is he," 
until he realizes he has spoken the thought aloud.

And then the music stops abruptly as the tape ends, as if to 
announce the opening of the door. As he pulls away, she sinks 
to the floor, her head in her hands, and he does not see the 
expression of relief on her face as he turns to face this new 
intruder.
 
"I'm right here, Alex," Hart says. "What do you want from 
me?"


XXVIII. DANCER

Hart understands hatred in a way that would be foreign to all 
who never studied anatomy or physiology. He can pinpoint the 
exact moment in time when the adrenaline is released into his 
blood, the moment when the heartbeat picks up speed, sending 
out fireballs of rage and pain. For him, hatred is as detrimental 
to health as smoking or intense sex. 

But hatred is healthier than fear, an emotion he loathes and 
one that invades him now in equal measure. This is his home. 
This is his lover. And he is afraid of the man who intruded on 
them both. The old habits die hard, and in the days before the 
abandonment of Fort Marlene, Krycek had been a superior. 
One of the 'in' crowd. One of the men who betrayed him. 

A long time ago, Krycek's survival would have seemed an 
injustice. In the world that Hart knows today, it's natural. The 
dark glass still bleeds around the edges of new reality, but he's 
learned to accept this abnormality.

"What happened to you... Jason?" Krycek answers a question 
with a question. He doesn't bother feigning concern. Hart 
knows that, to him, it's only a matter of curiosity. He is a man 
who came to watch the show of circus freaks, and he didn't 
even pay his way in. 

The horrific image makes him want to weep in shame, but it 
also melts the fear. "I woke up, Alex. Have you ever heard of 
the Sleeping Beauty?"

Krycek smirks. "Have you looked in the mirror lately?"

Not since the first time Marita had seen her reflection. The day 
when he gave into the demands of her vanity, he expected 
tears, screams, perhaps a healthy amount of kicking and 
breaking. She did neither. She fainted, and once recovered, 
she'd asked for a hair dye. "Black is a lovely color," Marita 
said. He bought the dye and watched as she followed the 
instructions on the package. Then he carried the mirror outside 
and drove a car over it.

"Mirrors lie," Jason replies, taking a step toward the woman 
still cowering on the floor, her eyes tracking the two men in 
front of her. He longs to reassure her, and he needs her to take 
away some of the hatred that threatens to choke him. "Each 
morning, you see a face above your sink, still young and 
handsome enough to be unmarred by corruption and evil. But 
it is a cheap piece of glass, Alex. Your picture is distorted."

"Enough!" the intruder snaps loudly. "I didn't come here to 
talk about your appearance."

"Have you come to ask about the murders, perhaps?" Hart's 
casual manner unnerves Krycek, and for the first time the 
older man sees bewilderment in his cruel green eyes. "I give 
you credit for piecing the puzzle together. You found the 
guilty man." Hands raised, as if in acceptance of an honor, 
Hart gives an admission easily, proudly. 

"Do you really believe that you can stop them?" Krycek asks. 
"Or is this revenge?"

"Neither, Alex. Simply an honest try to stop the colonization." 
Hart replies sincerely.

"Noble, Jason. How very noble of you. You're not 
participating in a little drama called 'One Hundred Ways to 
Mutilate and Poison,' and you're not fucking the woman you 
once operated on, but..."

Krycek's body jerks, and his spine curves in a movement that 
would have been called beautiful, had he been a dancer. The 
expression of pained surprise and the crimson stain spreading 
on his right shoulder ruin the impression. He grapples for his 
gun in a series of grotesque twitches, wounded live hand of 
less use now than the plastic one. 

As Hart watches the man perform this hideous ballet, he 
knows that he couldn't have chosen a better place to put in a 
bullet. He would have felt remorse, before, but now he is 
above it. After all, this victim is far from an innocent fly 
caught in a spider's web. First shot released in due time, Hart 
takes aim at the convulsing body, but thin fingers of his lover, 
surprisingly strong, lunge for his gun.

"Stop!" Marita's eyes are wide open, and the enlarged vessels 
of their whites may bleed the same color as the wound in 
Krycek's shoulder. It is this realization, and not her words, that 
makes him drop the weapon.

Hart follows suit, settling down heavily on the cold ground of 
their cell. Is this the room where he experimented on Marita? 
Is this reminder the reason why his fingers are numb or has the 
hatred finally taken his life? Silently, he begs her to take the 
anger away, to soothe the rumble of his emotions.

She shuffles into the bathroom, and he prays that it's for the 
medicine that he keeps in the case beneath the sink. Instead, 
she brings back the bandages and a basin with clear water. 

The younger man is the first one she attends to.


XXIX. FOOT

The morning after the outburst, the smoker unlocks the door to 
the cell where Mulder and Samantha are held. Mulder barely 
acknowledges him - the older man admires his restraint - but 
the slow-burning rage in Samantha's eyes cuts him to the 
heart. He smiles at her in an attempt to pacify her, but she only 
cowers against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest.

"Fox," he says, his tone as even as he can make it.

"What do you want?"

He lights a cigarette, blowing smoke into the otherwise sterile 
air. "I thought we might talk."

"I have nothing to say to you."

He shrugs. "I'm sure you have a great deal to say to me, but 
that's beside the point." Extinguishing the cigarette against the 
wall, he draws his gun in an exaggerated gesture. "Don't make 
me ask twice."

Mulder stands. "Come on, Sam."
 
"She stays." Without another word, the smoker holds the door 
open for Mulder. The younger man steps out, and the door 
slams shut behind him. He walks down a long corridor with 
the gun trained on his head.

"Where are we going?"

"To discuss the conditions of your release." If Mulder is at all 
surprised, he doesn't show it. "Keep walking. Straight ahead, 
then turn left at the end of the hall."
 
Mulder obeys. They come at last to a darkened room. One 
chair faces another over an antique desk. An old slide 
projector is set up facing a screen. The smoker motions for 
Mulder to sit down, then closes the door behind them. 
Lighting a new cigarette, he turns the projector on to reveal a 
slide of a body on an autopsy table. One foot, facing the 
camera, is slightly blurred by its proximity to the lens, 
showing a toe-tag and bright red painted nails. It is the corpse 
of a woman perhaps only in her early twenties.

"I've seen her before..." Mulder says, his eyes drawn to the 
picture unwillingly. The smoker moves on to the next slide, a 
young man, half of his skull blown away, then another 
woman, who might have been beautiful, had she still had a 
face. And the slides go on, more images of death and horror, 
until Mulder asks, "Why are you showing me this?"

"The first death was possibly a case of mistaken identity, or of 
an incompetent gunman. The others were...employees of mine. 
All killed by an unknown assailant. These were professional 
hits, Agent 
Mulder -"

"On professional hitmen?" Mulder asks wryly.

"Those are just the deaths. There's more. You might be 
interested to know that your sister was the first of several 
abductees to be returned..." Flash of a slide: a woman lying in 
a hospital bed, her face bruised, eyes fixed blindly forward. 
"All were in various states of dementia. One particularly 
observant doctor noticed that within a few days, many of the 
abductees developed small cuts on the backs of their necks."

"Implants?"
 
The smoking man says grimly, "Their implants were 
removed."

Mulder makes the inevitable association immediately, but he 
hides it well. He pales a little, and his hands grip the arms of 
the chair tighter. His lips form a name, but no sound emerges.

"I know what you're thinking," the smoking man says. "It's a 
mystery to us, as well. It's a pity my contact in the FBI met an 
untimely end - certainly, this is a case worth pursuing...don't 
you think?"
 
Mulder's laugh doesn't reach his eyes. It is the maniacal laugh 
of a man who has been held in a cage one day too long, still 
unbroken, but slowly collapsing, slowly crumbling. The other 
man, his own lack of composure concealed by the darkness 
and the steady exhaling of smoke, trembles a little at the 
sound.

"I'm sure you have your own resources," Mulder says.
 
 "Perhaps." The smoker thinks of Skinner, with his uncertain 
allegiances, of the dead bodies that flash one after another on 
the screen. He thinks of Alex Krycek, gone now too, most 
likely the next body to be discovered. "But I need you."

"And you think I'll help?" Mulder shakes his head in disbelief.

"I know you will." The smoker relishes the moment that 
comes as he regains the upper hand, as he takes control with 
the push of a button.

And the final photograph focuses in perfect, crystal detail on 
Scully, frozen in her hospital bed.

Mulder does not scream, as he should, nor does he weep, as 
the smoker had expected. Instead he stands, fists clenched, to 
face his nemesis. 

"Before you accuse me, I'd like you to consider this calmly. 
Would I give you this information if it led back to my 
organization? Would I even allow you to live in that case?" He 
steps forward, reaching out his hand in a conciliatory gesture. 
"Agent Mulder...Fox..." Mulder flinches. "I'm not responsible 
for your partner's condition."
 
"Why do I find that difficult to believe?" Mulder hisses the 
words between his teeth.

"Believe what you like. I want to know who did this to her as 
much as you do. It is not in my interests to watch her die." 
When Mulder doesn't respond, the smoker says, "I trust we 
have a deal?"

"What about Samantha?"

"She stays - as insurance."
 
"No."

"For her own protection, then," the smoker attempts to 
appease him. "You did notice the chip in her neck, didn't 
you?"

"You son-of-a--"

"No harm will come to her here. I can offer no such 
assurances if she is released. Do we have a deal, Mr. Mulder?"
 
Mulder hesitates, staring helplessly at the image of his partner. 
The light from the projector hits him before it reaches the 
screen - her face is superimposed over his, and the smoker is 
unable to tell which one of those faces is suffering more.

"We have a deal," Mulder says.

The smoker hands him a file, then steps out into the hallway, 
leaving Mulder to puzzle over the clues. After a moment of 
silence, he can hear the younger man sobbing softly, no doubt 
cursing Scully's fate and his own betrayal, collapsing the 
moment he thinks the smoker cannot see his fallen face.
 
Or perhaps he knows, but no longer cares - what separates him 
from his enemies is the remnants of humanity, the ability to 
weep for his lost blamelessness, for the woman who awaits, 
helpless and beyond his power to help. What does it matter if 
the Devil himself hears? The battle is already lost.

The smoker leans against the wall and bows his head in 
silence. And what Mulder does not see is the single tear that 
trickles past the creases of the old man's cheek to fall, 
unbidden, to the floor, and wet the ashes of a broken cigarette.


End Part 7/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 8/15

XXX. CARD

Once, there lived a little girl. She was a child like many others, 
who had friends, went to school, and argued with her big 
brother. She was loved and cherished, but this love was not 
enough to protect her from the men who decided her fate, and 
from the visitors who came in the night to take her away.

If years have passed, she doesn't recall how they were spent. If 
she brought back a story to tell, it is in a foreign tongue, one 
she can't translate. If she is an oracle, then she can't ignite their 
hope.

All she had was a garden, but it was trampled, first by hooves 
of horses, then by paws of dragons. Ever since the gray wall 
crumbled down, the real world has been infringing on her 
secret hideout. Even now, men roam over the broken grass and 
ruined flowers, depriving them of the chance for a renewal. 
She would seek the protection of her brother, but he is 
nowhere to be found. 

The psychologists switch from one method to another, 
searching for the key that will make her remember. They may 
hope to find the words of wisdom, but she is only a child 
inside a woman's body. What could she say to please them? 
And so, their anxiety refuses to be put to rest, and each new 
method they resort to is less likely to jostle her memory than 
the one before that.

Today, they play a game of word associations. As if they 
believe that she'd forgotten her English lessons, they paint an 
illustration for each word that they tell her. Card after card, the 
pictures and titles flash before her eyes, and Samantha 
cooperates, reluctantly, by describing the connections 
prompted inside her mind. Their frustration is the only weapon 
she can turn against them, and she knows that sooner or later, 
they will grow tired of the game and retire for the day, only to 
come up with a new pastime for tomorrow.

She is barely aware of her answers as she wanders deeper into 
the damaged garden, away from the intruders, searching for 
the woman who called her name in such desperation before. 
The forest is taller, and the sun barely penetrates through thick 
branches. There must be clues left to trace her, there must be 
some connection between them if she'd seen her here before. 
Scully, she reminds herself of the name that Fox used. 

Scully, she repeats like a mantra.

"Chalk," the man prompts. 

"Hopscotch," Sam replies.

"Trap."

"Mouse."

"Car."

"Accident."

There is a barely perceptible shift in the interviewer's pose. 
"What kind of an accident?"

Samantha's tone doesn't alter. "A fatal one."

The man who sits behind the psychologist records her answer 
and smiles, but meeting Samantha's steady and sober gaze, he 
is no longer certain what prompted his mirth. Meanwhile, the 
exercise continues.

"Grinder." The psychologists' voice is lethargic as he throws a 
new word.

"Coffee."

"Cook."

"Meat."

"Fire."

An orange flame suddenly springs on her palm, and Sam 
almost drops it in pain. Frantically, she looks around, 
anticipating the dragon's hooded eyes blinking at her from 
above, but soon she realizes that this fire is different. While 
the dragon's breath wilted her garden, this small blaze clings 
to her hand as if it needs protection. It's an unexpected source 
of light in the thick forest, and she holds onto it in spite of the 
discomfort it causes. A trail, one she hasn't seen before, leads 
her down the unexplored territory, and she follows obediently. 
There, in the small clearing, the red of her hair tarnished, the 
blue of her eyes hidden, Scully sleeps deeply. Sam sits down 
beside her, fire still alive in her hand. No longer does it cause 
her pain.

She believes that as long as she holds on to this flame, the 
sleeping woman will not drift further away. As long as she 
cherishes this fire, it will be merciful to them both, and it will 
not eat her flesh.

"Life," Samantha speaks out loud, and the psychologist 
reaches out to take hold of her left hand, apprehensive of the 
way she clenches it close to her chest. A fresh burn blossoms 
in the center of her palm, and he drops it, terrified. 

The innocent card with a picture of fire drifts to the floor, 
forgotten.


XXXI. BRAIN

Krycek does not dream.

A thin needle of pain pierces his skull behind one eye, 
reminding him to wake. Still, he wants to remain in this dark, 
dreamless sleep, away from conscience, from responsibilities, 
from the tearing agony in his shoulder.

He can't move. Neither of his hands will co-operate. 
Something diseased and rotten has replaced both appendages, 
pumping sick, blackened blood through his veins. He moans. 
Awake now, he cannot ignore it any longer.

Something cool and wet touches his forehead, and his first 
thought is that it is Mulder. It is a ridiculous assumption, and 
one he instantly regrets as his eyes flutter open and Marita's 
skeletal face stares down at him.

"Alex?"

Her voice drives the nails deeper into his brain, a hoarse, 
cracked whisper, the sound of a straw sucking up the last 
water in a near-empty glass.

He tries to sit up, but a conspiracy of pain and gravity forbid 
him.

"Don't move," she says.

Krycek almost laughs - she is so much more damaged than he 
is. "What's this all about, Marita?"

She says quickly, "Jason's gone out. He was angry with me."

Suddenly childlike again, he thinks, a weak remnant of 
affection gnawing at the edge of his migraine. She brushes her 
fingers against his cheek. The gesture is almost tender, but if 
this is the intention, it falls short.
 
"Jason says you have information."

"Is that what he thinks?"

"I...don't want to hurt you anymore." From the way she says it, 
he nearly believes her.

He forces a smile. "Then don't."

"But Jason will."

"I don't doubt that."
 
"They're all coming back, you know. The abductees...the test 
subjects...they keep showing up in hospital rooms. There must 
be forty of them...fifty...and it isn't stopping. You know what 
that means, Alex?" When he doesn't respond, she says, "It's 
started."

"And there will come four horsemen...War, Famine, 
Pestilence...Samantha Mulder..." The red-rimmed eyes stare at 
him. He laughs, but it sounds like choking, painful spasms that 
seem to tear his injured shoulder apart. "It was a joke."
 
"They're coming."

"And you think this is enough to stop them? That if you spill 
enough blood it will somehow atone for what we did?"

"We?"

"I can't help you, Marita."
 
She leans forward, her face almost touching his, the tips of her 
black hair brushing against his face. "You don't have a 
choice." Her hands fluttering to her face, Marita pulls away. 
"He'll be back, you know. I can't save your life again."

"Marita..."

She nearly chokes on the words. "Tomorrow, he won't give 
you any food. Not until you tell him what he wants to know. 
After three days, if you still won't talk, you won't get any 
water..."
 
"And after that?"

"Jason has ways of persuasion."

"Do you love him, Marita?"

Her hand touches his shoulder, barely light enough to be felt, 
then squeezes painfully. He wants to scream, but instead he 
only bites down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, shutting 
his eyes until the barbed wire around his skull is a welcome 
distraction from the throbbing hell of his wound.
 
"I have my ways of persuasion, too."

Krycek groans as she steps away, gone to cower by the wall 
again, a thin shadow among the many ghosts who haunt this 
room. And the absence of pain - the absence of her touch - is 
somehow worse than its ubiquitous presence.

He tires of watching her, after awhile, and he waits for Hart to 
return.


XXXII. BRASS

He is an isle of stillness in the stormy ocean of visitors and 
patients. He stands out of the way, so as not to interfere with 
the flow of the normal hospital business. But inevitably, all 
gazes turn to him: perhaps it is his impeccable suit, the way he 
holds himself, or maybe it is the visible tension charging his 
entire body. His is a stance of the man whose life depends on 
taking the next step, but he is caught on the hook and can't 
move.

"Agent Mulder," Skinner is astonished. The wave of relief is 
so unexpected that it hits him below the knees, and he 
grapples for words and means of support simultaneously. "It is 
good to see you."

It seems that lifetimes pass before Mulder acknowledges him. 
"Well, I suppose it saves me a trip." He leans against the wall 
and exhales, watching the ceiling. "I need to speak with you."

Skinner studies his agent more closely. "Have you seen Scully 
already?"

There is a barest flatter of eyelashes before the grim answer, 
"No."

"In that case, I'll show you to her room."

Mulder's reply is impossibly soft, but its meaning carries the 
resonance of thunder. "No. When did this happen?"

Shell-shocked, Skinner searches for understanding. "A few 
days ago. Last Wednesday morning, to be precise."

"What is the estimated time of poison intake?" he fires the 
next question. "How much was ingested? Was there any 
investigation into any narcotics missing from hospitals or 
pharmacies?"

"6:45 AM, I can't remember the amount. The investigation 
turned up nothing." Alarmed, Skinner reaches out a hand 
toward him. "Agent, the man who did this had already been 
punished. There is no mystery to solve any longer."

"Do you really think it that simple? Agent Blair was only the 
point man. The men who ordered him, the ones who paid for 
his trouble, are still unpunished."

"Where have you been till now, Mulder?" It should be a 
reprimand, but Skinner does not have enough anger for that, 
not so soon after his anger killed another man, whether 
innocent or guilty. "Do you know how frantic she was, with 
you and your sister both gone? Do you know how many man-
hours the Bureau wasted on searching for you?"

Mulder's face twists into a bitter grimace, and for a moment, it 
seems he has a biting remark ready. Instead, his answer is 
sympathetic, unaccountably gentle. "I apologize, sir. I wish I 
had time to explain..."

"Mulder," Skinner interrupts him. "There is only one other 
man who knows about Agent Blair. So there is no need for 
explanations."

The betrayal, if it is mutual, allows the understanding to take 
the place of wrath. Thus, there is no condemnation in 
Skinner's lined face. Thus, the screams of rage that Mulder 
may have cried yesterday are replaced by a sad smile that 
threatens to degenerate into tears.

"See Scully," Skinner offers again. "This is why you came to 
this hospital."

"I can't," he whispers. "Not until I find the men responsible."

"Mulder," Skinner begs him to reconsider. "Whatever choice 
brought you here, she still needs you." Yet the epiphany they 
shared a moment before is not enough to persuade the 
tormented man before him, and he watches as the 
conventional shutters slide back into place.

"I'll speak to her doctor," Mulder dismisses his superior 
briskly. "Please take care of her."

With a graceful movement of his wrist, his agent summons the 
two men who, until now, have been waiting nearby. Skinner 
doesn't know their names, but he recognizes their ilk - the 
military bearing is hard to disguise by civilian clothing. 
Mulder's gesture speaks of control, as if he is brass who is 
used to ordering lower-ranking officers around.

And though Skinner knows that he has no facts upon which to 
judge him, though he himself is held captive by the same 
force, he cannot prevent the bitterness from flooding his 
mouth, cannot keep the bile down. Abruptly, he turns away 
and walks down the hall towards the room where Scully waits 
in limbo and where her mother keeps watch over her. Neither 
she nor Skinner himself can bring her back.

Once again, he is struck by the vulnerability of Scully's face, 
by its sheer translucence. She is so unlike the steel-willed 
woman that he normally sees at work. She seems much 
younger, more like a small child who needs protection rather 
than a capable FBI agent who can fight and shoot better than 
most men. And he senses that though she is barely alive, she is 
still in danger, left to the whims of her assailants. 

The intuition blossoms into a certainty, but it is only after 
Skinner speaks aloud that he realizes what his next actions 
will be. "Mrs. Scully." He waits until an older woman meets 
his eyes steadily. "What would you do to make sure that your 
daughter doesn't die?"

Her answer is as simple as it is fervent. "Anything."

"In that case, I need your cooperation." Skinner picks up the 
phone and starts dialing Washington Post, unwilling to delay 
another second. The notice in the newspapers will be 
sufficient to attract attention, and his stature at the FBI will be 
enough to make all the arrangements.

"I would like to place an obituary, please. Dr. Dana Scully, a 
loving daughter, sister, and a friend, died this afternoon..."


XXXIII. MOSS

Rumors travel fast, and by the next afternoon, Teena Mulder 
stands with her head bowed by a fresh grave. The cemetery 
itself is old, the gates rusted and headstones covered with 
moss, but this monument is new, and it gleams beneath the 
failing sun.

Several years ago, the family had requested a stone with the 
same name and a similar sentiment, and it would have been 
economical to use it now, but the dates are wrong. Teena is 
unaware of the irony, of course, and her most predominant 
thought is that Dana Katherine Scully is approximately the 
same age as her own daughter.

"Did you know her?" The smoker leans over her shoulder, his 
eyes scanning the words with what she might have mistaken 
for detached disinterest, had he been a stranger to her.

"We met a few times." She faces him, grateful for an excuse 
to turn from the grave. "She and my son were close...closer 
than most partners."

"So I've heard." He tilts his head slightly upwards, so that the 
stream of smoke is directed away from her face. She 
remembers someone telling her once to hold her breath when 
walking through a graveyard, not for the sake of superstition, 
but out of respect for the dead. "I assume that your son is the 
reason you called this meeting?"

"Cut the bullshit," she responds and breathes - the dead will 
forgive her. "Did you kill her?"

"Really, Teena. I thought you knew me better than that by 
now." Her glare narrows, and he says, "No. The man 
responsible has been brought to justice."

"Somehow, I doubt that."

"Regardless, the matter is under investigation."

Her heart speeds up just slightly, and she asks, "Investigation 
by whom?"

"I thought you would have guessed by now."

"You let him out?"

Another puff of smoke. "I had no choice."

"What about Samantha?"

"She's safer on the inside. Think of it this way: at least one of 
them will live."

Was that what he had said the last time? She can't remember.

Movement catches her eye, and she glances away from him to 
see a man standing a yard away, on the hill that overlooks the 
grass where they stand. He is dressed in black, and in the dull 
fog of dead places, she thinks she catches a flash of metal by 
his hand. Wordlessly, she touches the smoker's arm.

At first he seems to misinterpret the gesture, washed-out blue 
eyes widening almost imperceptibly, but then he sees the 
direction of her gaze. If he recognizes the man, if he notices 
the weapon, if he has any fear or emotion at all, he does not 
show it. He moves her behind him, faces the gunman, lifting 
the cigarette to his lips. The face, a blur in the distance, is 
turned towards them, a subtle acknowledgment before the 
figure once again slinks into the distance, a threat made clear 
and a mission complete.

"Which one of us was he aiming for?" Teena asks, when her 
voice has returned.

"Maybe you can tell me."

She catches it then, a faint tremor, and if he had been any 
other man...had he been a stranger...

But he is not, and somehow that makes it all the more 
frightening. If he is not in control, then someone else is. 
Someone who has been watching them all along, waiting in 
the distance with an army of very patient assassins.

If he is no longer in control, then she is running for her life.

They all are.

Teena kneels before Scully's gravestone. She would offer a 
prayer, but she doubts it would carry very far. Besides, it is 
Scully who should pray for Teena, if such things amount to 
anything. Scully was lucky.
The fate that awaits the rest of them could very well be worse.

A long time after the smoker calls a premature ending to their 
meeting, Teena stands up, and leaves through the moss-
covered gates.

End Part 8/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 9/15

XXXIV. CUP

Mulder watches as the man sitting in front of him pours water 
into the paper cup, spilling some of it on the pristine table in 
the process. Undoubtedly, he wishes that it were whiskey or 
scotch, because either would provide a respite from the 
questions that are about to come. The chair in which he sits is 
deep and comfortable, but he perches close to the edge of it, as 
if preparing to flee the room at the first opportunity.

Dr. Phillips whips out a pack of Morley Lights and ignites 
one, then offers it to the interviewer belatedly.

"I'm trying to quit," Mulder declines.

"They don't bother you, do they?" Dr. Phillips inquires 
between quick inhalations. "I haven't had one since morning."

"Feel free," Mulder shrugs. "So what are the duties that kept 
you so busy today, Doctor?"

"I'm an anesthesiologist. I provide the oblivion during the 
surgeries." It would sound lighthearted if not for the anxiety 
that permeates his every word.

"I wasn't aware..."

"That specialists of my kind were employed here?" Phillips 
interrupts. "Surprise."

Mulder grits his teeth, returning the interview on its track. 
"What kind of surgeries do you assist in?"

"Doing a little research on the side, Agent Mulder?" Phillips' 
eyes narrow minutely. "I could tell you, but it would take 
time, of which both you and I have precious little."

Mulder concurs inwardly: every minute that he spends 
questioning the employees in this facility is a minute that he 
could spend by Scully's bedside. And he can't afford to lose 
his focus on the investigation, something he believes to be 
inevitable from the first moment that he will walk inside her 
hospital room and take hold of her inanimate hand. He needs 
to distract himself, needs to forget himself inside this case. 
The sooner that he finds the culprits, the sooner that he can 
have the best assurance of her safety, of Samantha's safety.

Then, he can shake off this nightmare of a temporary 
reassignment. But now, he leans forward, closer to the 
impotent fumes of smoke from a Morley Light and an 
unshaved face of Phillips. "Please elaborate, Doctor."

"I keep the subjects drugged out of their minds while the 
surgeons poke around their reproductive organs. And before 
you ask, no, that's not what I hoped to end up doing when I 
applied to medical school."

Mulder shuts his eyes, willing the image away. "You seem 
unhappy," he comments unsteadily.

"You're very observant." Phillips pours another cup of water 
and gulps it down immediately. "I see now why we have to 
resort to your help. Any idea yet of who is behind the 
murders?"

All evidence points to an inside job, and that is the reason why 
Mulder is willing to endure this interrogation and many others 
to follow. "If you could work up the nerve to pull a trigger, 
Dr. Phillips, you would fit my profile wonderfully," he smiles 
serenely.

The doctor stares at him, the cigarette forgotten on the way to 
his mouth. "For a moment there, I thought you actually meant 
it." There is a touch of hysteria in his laugh. "But you're right, 
I wouldn't have the guts even if I had the will. Besides," he 
adds after a pause, "with the hours I work, I wouldn't have the 
time, either."

"Did you know Dr. Palmett?" Mulder asks of the latest victim. 
"Have you ever worked with him?"

"Yes, I have," Phillips nods. "We were close... as close as 
people become in this line of work, anyway. He was also 
unhappy, you might say - and afraid. Seems that he was afraid 
for a good reason." His hands shake slightly as he pours 
another portion of water, filling the cup to the brim. "You 
want to know my theory on what's wrong with our 
organization, Agent Mulder?"

Mulder, though he has quite a few theories of his own, 
gestures for the doctor to continue. 

"We became too bold. Too secure in our purpose, in our own 
righteousness, in our wealth. But when the cup runneth 
over...this is why our lives overflow with grief now." Phillips' 
shoulders sag in resignation. "We're all sitting ducks. As long 
as we work here, we are targets. And if we quit, we only invite 
the wrath of the remaining ducks. Ducks, Agent, can be very 
cruel when they're scared and are out for revenge."

This litany of apprehension and cockiness is becoming tiring, 
and Mulder shifts impatiently in his seat, despairing of 
extracting any useful information out of this man. "Did Dr. 
Palmett have any enemies that you know of?"

"No," Phillips says helplessly and gets up. "May I go now?"

"No, you may not," Mulder snaps. "How accessible is codeine 
in this facility? Does anyone keep track of the supplies?"

The doctor sits back down carefully. "Normally, we answer 
for every narcotic, including codeine, down to the last 
milligram. Though what with shortage of staff lately, it's been 
fairly easy to get hold of. I also can't think of any reason why 
anyone here would want to be responsible for your partner's 
death."

Mulder appears unperturbed. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't 
write her off yet. She is still alive. She will stay that way."

Phillips chokes on his water, and the sound is akin to a prelude 
of terror. "My god," he hisses once he regains his breath. "I 
cannot *believe* they kept it a secret from you. Sometimes 
they're nothing more than a bunch of selfish cowards. Nothing 
more than that." He slumps in his chair, hands covering his 
face. "Unbelievable," he repeats.

With calmness he doesn't possess, Mulder waits until Phillips 
recovers sufficiently to keep talking. "Would you please 
elaborate, Doctor."

"I wondered why you were so... functional before. Oh hell. 
Agent Scully died - I read the obituary in the newspaper, 
about two days ago. Due to the latest developments, that page 
of Washington Post has become part of my daily reading 
material," Phillips explains nervously. "I can't recommend it 
highly enough."

Mulder is not aware of the sound that erupts from his chest, 
nor does he register the replying shudder of the man sitting 
across the table. The scalpel goes in deep enough to achieve, if 
not complete unconsciousness, then at least a temporary 
oblivion from the pain. Slowly, as if he is waking up from a 
long nightmare into an even more abhorrent reality, he 
becomes cognizant of Phillips' hands on his shoulders, of the 
doctor's distressed face too close to his own. 

"Agent Mulder, is there anything I can do to help?" he asks, 
and Mulder guesses it's not for the first time. "God, I didn't 
want to be the one to tell you, it's just my luck...I have Valium 
with me." He pats his pockets anxiously.

"No," Mulder refuses the offered bottle of pills. Nothing short 
of morphine would provide the relief. "Sit down, Doctor. 
Please, just... stop."

Phillips lets go, still shaking his head and muttering to 
himself. "Unbelievable. Simply unthinkable."

"I should have visited her," he whispers. "I am just as much a 
selfish coward as anyone else in this place."

"Don't waste time on self-recrimination. You must keep your 
focus, Agent Mulder." The doctor moves the cigarettes and 
lighter within the younger man's reach and watches as he 
lights one up, seemingly without any conscious thought. "I 
know why they wanted you to be unaware, of course. Without 
your help, we're all going to die here."

"So, it's that simple." The smoke is strangely soothing, even if 
the flavor is detestable. He wonders if there will be more 
cigarettes after this one. 

"Finding the men responsible should be in your interests, as 
well," Phillips continues. "You've become a target the minute 
you started working for us."

"In that case, Doctor," Mulder comments distractedly, "I've 
chosen my company wisely."

He pockets the cigarettes and walks out of the room.


XXXV. LAMB

They are all gone now.

The garden is silent, the grass burned and trampled, the dragon 
nowhere to be found. Samantha sits and waits for the horses, 
but they too have left. She would be grateful for any company, 
anything but her devastated garden and the still, wan face of 
the red-haired woman who lies as if dead in the clearing.

Samantha and Scully in the garden; it feels as if nothing has 
changed in this place for all of eternity.

Soon, Samantha thinks, there will be other flowers. All of the 
missing ones will come back to the secret garden, and 
everyone will be together. She wonders if they will be 
motionless like Scully, or alive and awake in this dream state, 
in this lull before the storm.

She wishes fervently for someone to talk to her.

Samantha misses the Awake Scully, the sound of her voice 
reading aloud in the hospital room, she misses the 
companionship of someone who understands. Scully walked 
in this garden once - Samantha is certain of it.

She's sleeping now, and she will never wake, she will be here 
until she dies and they've all left her, forgotten her, lying here 
as the world goes up in flames around her. Samantha does not 
pity Scully - pity is a foreign emotion - but even so, she longs 
to trade places with the other woman. She aches for a sleep 
that is not this dream of a garden, for a sleep that is simply 
oblivion.

Samantha remembers, a long time ago, waking from a 
nightmare in her mother's arms, staring up into eyes dilated 
from Valium, the soft voice that murmured, "Awake, 
Samantha, awake..." and she wonders if her mother, too, knew 
of this place. She cradles Scully's head in her pale, trembling 
hands, the flame-red hair as soft as silk against her palms.

She whispers, "Awake, Scully, awake..."

There is a stirring in this place, where nothing was ever 
supposed to change. There is fire at her fingertips - she can 
hold it, command it. And her wish now is to correct the 
wrongs that have been done, some of them committed in her 
own name. She is painfully aware of the sacrificial lamb, the 
victim of someone else's plans, and she wills the red-haired 
woman back to the world of the living as subtly as she weaves 
the fire from her hands.

Scully opens her eyes.

Samantha swallows hard, and she looks up towards the 
bruised, darkening sky. Thunder lurks somewhere on the 
horizon - the beating of hooves, a distant omen. Scully will 
live, but the rest remains. The lamb will still be sacrificed, and 
the garden is crumbling all around them.

Samantha's hands burn from the remnants of a fire, now 
extinguished.


XXXVI. JACKET

Awareness is not a gift, it is a curse.

Scully wakes up confined within the pristine walls of the 
sterile hospital room. Her throat is parched, her fingers are 
numb from inaction, and her mind reels from the 
overwhelming stimuli. The man who served her poison 
disguised by strong smell of coffee and a kind smile stands by 
the window, and she cannot even scream in terror.

Skinner turns around, and though he looks at her, he doesn't 
see the change that occurred a few short moments ago. Scully 
hopes that he leaves, believing her still asleep, but instead he 
pulls up a chair closer to her bed and reaches for her hand. 
She'd like to snatch it away, but she is still too weak, and her 
fingers only twitch in response to her desperate command. 

"Agent Scully?" he whispers, at first uncertain, then more 
insistent. "You're awake?"

"Ummm," she croaks in response. 

As if understanding how difficult it is for her to speak, Skinner 
reaches for a glass of water and brings it to her mouth. Yet, 
her lips remain stubbornly closed, and she doesn't bother to 
disguise the fear in her eyes. His hand shakes, and water spills 
on the sheets. 

"Codeine, Scully," he says tiredly. "It was codeine. I'm sure 
you remember what the lethal dose is and how long it takes for 
it to be absorbed. You hardly drank any coffee that I brought 
you, and you collapsed right after."

"Twenty minutes," Scully calculates, and now her fingers 
obey her enough to travel the short distance to her throat. She 
pauses, and her whisper is colored by disbelief. "Agent Blair?"

"Good guess." Skinner offers her water again. "Now, drink 
this, because we have a lot of ground to cover before the 
doctors and nurses get here."

When she accepts, they both recognize the significance of the 
gesture. It is at once an apology and forgiveness, reaffirmation 
of trust that had been doubted too many times.

"Scully, there are some things you should know," he begins 
reluctantly.

"What is it?"

"This is a hospital in Baltimore, close to your mother's house. 
You're here under a false name, Jane Green. Dana Scully is 
officially deceased, and only your mother and I know 
otherwise."

"You faked my death?" she shakes her head, more alert now. 
"Why?"

"There are many ways to kill someone who is alive, Agent," 
Skinner explains bluntly. "There is no way to kill someone 
who is already dead."

She swallows a lump in her throat and nods in understanding. 
"How long have I been here?"

"Two weeks. You were in a coma, we didn't even 
hope...well," Skinner stands up abruptly and wonders back to 
the window. "It was a close call, Agent Scully. I didn't intend 
to be responsible for another."

Scully allows him a moment of privacy, waits until he is ready 
to speak again. His next words jolt her, at once rejuvenating 
and unsettling.

"Mulder has been in to see you."

"Where has he been? Where's Samantha?" She frowns, 
remembering what Skinner had told her before. "You didn't 
say that Mulder knew of this -" she searches for a word, 
"plan." When he keeps silent for too long a moment, she shifts 
on the bed, trying to sit up. "Please, tell me."

"Scully, you need rest - you're not well enough yet..."

Recognizing the maneuver, she doesn't back down. "Please," 
she asks again.

"I just don't know," he admits helplessly. "I haven't been able 
to reach him - otherwise I would have explained... I certainly 
didn't wish to keep this a secret from him."

"He's back, but you haven't been able to reach him?" Scully 
repeats, incredulous.

"Mulder... is not exactly within my jurisdiction anymore," 
Skinner explains reluctantly. 

The encroaching nausea has nothing to do with her poor 
health, and water will not quench her suddenly dry throat. 
"What do you mean?"

The noise that assaults her ears is dark red, and the pain that 
streams from a blade driven into her temple makes her scream. 
Scully is certain that she will not be able to stand this for much 
longer, but it is over just before she formulates the thought. 
One second, she sees Skinner's panicked face - and then, she 
is plunged into another room and the pain dissipates.

Samantha lies on a bed, shivering under a thick blanket, too 
tired to ask for another. Her energy drained, given away to 
another, she can only wait until it comes back. Scully reaches 
out, wishing to help, but she is merely an invisible spectator - 
impotent to influence any events that transpire within these 
walls. To her immense relief, someone enters a room and 
takes off a jacket, wrapping it around the lying woman, then 
sits down on the floor beside her. Soon, another dark head 
joins Samantha's on the pillow, and Scully finally recognizes 
her partner. Brother and sister, alone against the world.

Somehow, Mulder's appearance frightens her more than that of 
Sam. Dark shadows under his eyes are a deep contrast to the 
skin that's too pale, and she wonders if the wrinkles etched on 
his forehead had been there the last time she saw him. 

"Mulder," Scully calls softly - but he doesn't hear, and her cry 
upsets the fragile connection, awakening the wind that returns 
her to another room, another reality. Not even pain is present, 
and she almost wishes for it to return.

"There, you're back with us." A figure in white smiles down at 
her. "You really scared your friend here," the doctor nods at 
Skinner. "Now, do you remember what your name is?"

"Da..." Scully catches herself. "Jane. My name is Jane Green. 
I have to go, please excuse me."

"Wow, hold on a second," the doctor laughs, inviting the 
patient and the visitor to share his amusement. "You're not 
going anywhere. Not for another week, at least."

"But..." she shakes off his hand. "Mulder and Samantha - I 
know they're in danger -"

"Whoever these people are, they will take care of themselves. 
And you, Jane, are staying right here."

Scully casts a begging look at Skinner, but he remains deaf to 
her mute plea. Desperate, she rubs her eyes, willing the vision 
to come back, but all she has left is this room, this well-
meaning doctor who calls her by a fake name, a body that still 
needs to recover - and inescapable knowledge of an upcoming 
catastrophe.

End Part 9/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 10/15

XXXVII. TOOL

The water from the tap drips in an irregular rhythm as the 
metal sink slowly fills, the echo drowning out the ragged 
sound of one man's breathing, and the pained almost-silence of 
another.

It has been days - Hart has not counted. He sits in the chair, 
his back stiff, eyes searching out a place just slightly above the 
dark shape of Krycek's head, above the bloodstains on the 
dirty white wall. He does not want to see. He can't force 
himself to look.

"You don't expect pity, do you?" Hart's voice is exhausted. 
"How long do you think you can hold out?"
 
Krycek doesn't respond. He is conscious, more or less, and his 
stare is as vacant as that of his tormentor's. Hart wonders, idly, 
what kinds of hallucinations pass before those sunken eyes. 
He wonders if Krycek's world is more or less painful than his 
own.

The smell is terrible, compounded by the pervasive ammonia 
of the laboratory. Hart can block out the sight, the slumped, 
broken body, a crimson stain on a white shirt, turning brown 
as it dries. But the scent creeps into the pores of his skin - if he 
were to leave this place, to scrub himself with soap and water, 
he imagines it would still cling to him, the odor of infection 
and death trailing him like a shadow.
 
"What makes you think I remember anything...after this...?" 
The young man's hand, carved out with red tracks of blood, 
gestures feebly, almost of its own bidding.

"Oh, I know you do. You're not that far gone."

Krycek laughs - it turns quickly into a cough. "Fuck you."

"It can all end now, Alex." He wants to believe it. Perhaps it 
comes out in his voice.

"I tell you where Samantha Mulder is, and I go free? I get to 
walk out of here, alive, and all is forgiven?" Hart can feel 
Krycek's stare burning in his direction, evaluating him, 
judging him. "I'm not that far gone."

"We'll find her eventually, you know."

"I know. So why hasten her death?"

Hart leans forward. "Does he mean that much to you, Alex?"
 
Krycek summons up the last of his strength to spit a gob of 
bloody saliva in Hart's direction. It misses, but the sentiment is 
there. Resistance is a matter of principle with the younger man 
- perhaps his only principle. Under other circumstances, Hart 
would have respected that, but he is tired now, tired and 
impatient and old.

He reaches for the power drill beneath the chair. It comes to 
life with something between a buzz and a roar.

"Creative," Krycek mutters, even as the tool approaches his 
eye. "You plan these things out, Jason?"

"Where is she?"
 
"In a safe place."

The sound of flesh on flesh, as Hart slaps out a final warning. 
He is almost shocked by the sensation of something human 
beneath his palm - he had imagined Krycek's skin as 
something dead and rotten, the details of beard stubble, fever, 
these are unexpected reminders that his victim is something 
alive. Someone. Hart shudders.

"Do you remember the first person you killed?" Krycek asks 
quietly.
 
Hart does not answer, and so Krycek goes on, "How old were 
you? Was it hard to pull the trigger? Did you get him right 
away, or did it take a few tries...did he have to beg for his 
life?"

It is only a brief tap, the slightest pressure on the drill, and the 
young man's cheekbone snaps - shatters - blood and bone 
splattering Hart's own face. He drops the tool abruptly, cursing 
his weakness. Krycek tries to clutch his ruined cheek with his 
useless hand, and Hart tells himself that it's only another job. 
That anything can be justified, if one tries hard enough.

"If you cut out my tongue, I won't be able to give you any 
information." It takes Hart a few moments to process the 
words, garbled through a mouthful of blood.

"Where is she?"

"...Can't stop it Jason and I don't give you any points for 
trying..." He coughs again, splinters of bone visible through a 
wash of red. Abruptly, inconveniently, his eyes roll up in their 
sockets and he collapses against the wall.
 
Hart stands, shaky, supporting himself with chair as he rises. 
He is intensely aware of the throb of his pulse, blood pushing 
through every vein, congealing behind his eyes and his 
quivering, weakening heart.

Marita is asleep when he finds her, but she stirs as he enters 
the room. "Did you get anything out of him?" she asks, half-
interested.

"He passed out."

"Oh." She accepts his kiss, but it is a confirmation, rather than 
an absolution. He is covered in Krycek's blood. "Will these 
little hands never be clean?" she whispers.

"He'll wake up, soon enough." Hart stumbles towards the 
bathroom, towards the pills that will sedate his demons - at 
least for now. "When he does, see what you can find out."

Marita slips out of the room. Perhaps her tactics will be more 
effective than Hart's. He can only hope so.

He swallows the pills with stale water, turned salty with the 
remnants of blood.


XXXVIII. INSECT

Even in sleep, Sam continues to shiver. Mulder asks the guard 
for yet another blanket and covers her up, smoothes the lock 
of wavy hair away from her face. Extreme exhaustion, as one 
of the doctors classified it. Nothing to do but give it some 
time. The only thing missing is the reason for her to be so 
tired, so drained of energy. 

He settles on the linoleum floor beside her, finding comfort in 
her presence. He is free to use a nice office down the hall, 
equipped with every necessity, but his concentration wanes 
there, rendering him useless.

He faces a similar problem everywhere he goes. His mind 
wanders, replaying the scenes from the past that has been lost 
too quickly. His feet, if given free rein, end up in those places 
least related to the investigation. Not once has he noticed the 
raised eyebrows of his watchdogs and surrogate bodyguards as 
he stood at the Potomac, watching the water for an hour, or as 
he walked across the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, again and 
again, measuring the ground in chaotic circles. 

In this room, however, he is reminded of the reason to 
continue. The only reason that still remains.

Not for the first time, Mulder questions his initial assumptions, 
reassesses the puzzle. Though he has been certain that the 
epicenter of the quake destroying the Consortium stemmed 
from within, evidence proves him wrong at every turn. 
Perhaps more telling than any evidence is the veil of terror that 
hangs over every man and woman with whom he comes into 
contact. 

The irony is not lost on him. Yesterday, he would have 
applauded anyone who was responsible for this situation, and 
even today, he might be tempted to simply sit back and watch 
the bloody spectacle unfurl before his appreciative gaze. But 
the disappearing chips of abductees upset the picture enough 
for him to question the motives of the people involved. 

Scully's death does not fit in the pattern altogether. She was 
an innocent, someone who never should have become a target, 
someone who perhaps would have fit into the category of 
abductees rather than those chosen to be destroyed. 

Even the method by which she was disposed of seems 
peculiar. Poison should be less appealing to the killers who are 
as quick and as ruthless. Medical narcotics, especially, provide 
what is almost a merciful sleep in comparison to violent 
deaths that some others have suffered. 

Almost as if the leader, the man ultimately responsible for her 
death, had been reluctant to go through with it and taken pity 
on her. Someone who is equally cruel and compassionate, who 
has the opportunity and momentum to dispose of the unwanted 
people, yet chooses to take what are almost certainly risks 
while removing chips from abductees. Someone who knows 
the names of the men involved in the carefully hidden 
conspiracy, who has access to drugs and weapons, who easily 
avoids the radar of hundreds of people hunting for him. 

Mulder's eyes are unfocused as he creeps through the 
labyrinths of the mind that he seeks. The old exercise is a 
familiar routine, but today is perhaps the first time when he's 
been able to achieve this level of fusion with the killer, still 
not enough to work out a profile, but close. So close that he 
can feel the frustration of the man who believes that he's 
already lost his essence, who's betrayed himself. There is no 
room for loyalty in his aching heart, no room to have faith in 
anyone but one person who...

...who is dying?

Mulder lays a hand on his chest, trying to slow down the 
madly beating instrument, which pushes blood through his 
arteries at an excessive rate. Surely, he projects his own grief 
onto the man he seeks. Again and again, he is presented with 
proof that he is in no condition to continue with this charade, 
that mistakes he makes even now will cost more lives of both 
innocent and guilty. 

Still, work is a reason to fight the encroaching depression, an 
outlet to lose himself in. One more time, he tries to relax and 
opens the door leading back to the labyrinth.

He's always known that he was profiling an insect.

A gray spider weaves a tangled web that spreads in ever-
increasing radii from under its hairy legs. Its abdomen is 
bulbous, grotesquely distended with blood that it drank from 
the victims caught in its lacework. And though they fight, 
hundreds of men and women ensnared within its bonds, they 
can never free themselves. Mulder wonders why the flies 
should struggle so, for how can they prefer life if their 
consciences are so heavy with guilt? How can they choose to 
continue on when everything they used to be has been 
trampled and thrown aside, like so much waste?

When spider's beady eyes turn toward him and a pair of 
appendages extends in his direction, Mulder doesn't resist.

When the guard brings Samantha's dinner an hour later, he 
finds her still asleep, and her brother investigating the corners 
and shadowy places under her bed.

"Are you looking for something?" he asks tentatively. "Did 
you lose a ring?"

Mulder waves him away absently. 

"Just checking for spiders."


XXXIX. SILK

He wakes up beside her.

Krycek feels nothing but a wash of silk against his skin, the 
fever of the last few days dissolved into muted colors, faded 
music, the faint scent of a woman's perfume. He opens his 
eyes to look into the eyes that face him, no longer red, no 
longer blind. She smiles, strokes the ruined cheek that has 
somehow, as if overnight, become whole again.

"Dance with me, Alex?" Marita asks.

He rises to fold her in his arms, the slender body swaying in 
perfect rhythm against his. She is dressed for the evening, her 
gown slipping off one shoulder, moon-pale in the darkness of 
the laboratory. There were nights in Russia when he saw her 
like this, beautiful, perfect. It is only illusion, but it is an 
illusion from which one might never wake.

And so they dance, her breath a whisper against him, corn-silk 
hair fluttering in its wind.

"Where is Hart?" he asks, as if to test the veracity of the 
dream. She will not confirm it. She does not answer.

"Close your eyes," Marita says instead. "Tell me what you 
see."

"A white room."

"Who is there?"

"A man." Krycek thinks for a moment, then adds, "And his 
sister."

"Why are they in the room?"

"Someone has been trying to protect them. Someone else has 
been trying to kill them."

Marita nods against him, and he holds her tighter. "It's all 
right," he says reassuringly, "they are safe."

The walls around them seem less solid, and Krycek decides 
that he and Marita are not confined here any longer. He whirls 
her outside to dance beneath a net of twinkling stars. There is 
a garden here, where the daylight will never come, where he 
can dream, in peace, forever.

He kisses her then, beneath the moonlight. Perhaps it will end 
this way, a love story, a fairy tale, happily ever after. They 
will stay in the garden, dancing. After everything, he would be 
content with nothing more than this.

"Where is this place?" Marita asks.

He responds, "Fort Wiekamp."

When she returns the kiss, it drains his breath away, her lips 
like ice and he collapses, frozen, on a concrete floor. All he 
can smell is the sick sweetness of rotting flesh, all he can taste 
is the salt of blood in his mouth.

A smile splits Marita's face beneath the tangles of black hair, 
and the dream bursts into splinters of glass, a thousand 
reminders of his unwitting treachery. The pain, upon 
awakening, is infinitely worse.

"Thank you, Alex," Marita says. "Jason will be most 
interested to hear about it."

Without another word, she slips away, silk between his 
fingers. His only purpose now is to stay here, alone in the 
cold, waiting to die.


End Part 10/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 11/15

XL. TENT

It is against every precaution to smoke in close proximity to an 
oxygen tent, but he is past regulations - and the man encased 
in protective cover of plastic will not mind. After all, what is a 
harmless cigarette flame to a survivor of the car explosion?

The smoker cannot recall how this face looked before the skin 
that covered it was charred, before the hair was singed off the 
skull. He already knows that this patient refused plastic 
surgery and would have refused treatment at all if he could 
make himself heard. The victim was not in the car when the 
bomb exploded. His wife and two children were.

What would he have done in this situation? It is an idle 
question that the smoker struggles to ignore, but it crawls back 
into his consciousness, refusing to be silenced. Would he have 
run back to the burning vehicle, plunging into the fire to help 
those he loved the most? Would he have stood back and called 
the firefighters and the ambulance - men equipped to deal with 
such a disaster?

Being a hero is easy. 

Being able to sacrifice, to drop the cards held most dearly is so 
much more difficult. Surely, in this case, there was nothing 
that a husband, a father could do. 

The blue color of the opening eyes is startling, somehow 
incongruous in the midst of destroyed flesh. The smoker 
comes closer to the tent, waits until these eyes focus upon him, 
waits for the recognition and memory to trickle back - a tactic 
he judges poor the same instant as impotent tears spill down 
the white bandages. 

"James," the smoker welcomes the crying man back to the 
world of living. "The doctors said you may be able to talk for 
a few minutes today... I wanted to express my condolences."

James doesn't answer, doesn't give any indication that the 
words were heard and understood. 

"This may be difficult to remember now, but do you have any 
suspicions as to how and where the bomb may have been 
placed in your car?" The desperation comes through in his 
voice, and he is ashamed of the weakness. The next questions 
are almost harsh. "Have you given it to any repair shops 
lately? Have you seen any questionable activity around your 
house?"

The burnt lips move, and the Smoking Man struggles to 
understand the words they try to speak. "One," he hears after a 
while. "Only one..."

"One what?" 

"It only took one minute," James whispers. "My kids left their 
lunches on the kitchen table... I should have sent them instead 
of going myself. I should have sent them..."

The smoker inhales deeply, tries to collect himself. "You 
couldn't have known. Please, think of what I asked you 
instead."

But the burnt man seems no longer present in this reality, as 
his eyes go out of focus, as his lips chant words the smoker 
does not recognize - does not want to. His impotence, his 
powerlessness make him tremble suddenly, as the sheer terror 
of the situation finally sinks in. He has never been afraid of 
dying until now, but he is losing the bravado with every 
passing day. He is not as infallible as he had once thought.

His fingers curled into fists, his face tight with anger and fear, 
he steps closer to the oxygen tent. Before he is able to control 
himself again, he feels another presence in the room and turns 
to meet the impenetrable eyes of Fox Mulder.

There is neither judgment nor contempt in the younger man's 
voice as he picks up a phone and calls for a nurse to check on 
the patient. The smoker doesn't make excuses, nor does he try 
to explain away the appearances. He prefers to avoid this 
conversation if possible. The first words out of Mulder's 
mouth convince him that it will not be possible.

"Ever wonder why there is such a high turnover rate on this 
job?"

He remembers to pull out a cigarette, drawing comfort from its 
familiarity. "Because employees aren't able to handle the 
workload?"

"No," Mulder replies somberly, as if he's communicating a 
revelation of utmost importance. "Because their employers do 
not fulfill their obligations towards them. Because they 
interrogate them only a few days after their wife and children 
die."

The smoker's eyebrows draw upward, wordlessly asking for 
an explanation.

"And of course, there is that nasty clause in the contract," 
Mulder continues thoughtfully. "The 'We-will-kill-you-if-you-
dare-leave' part that's written in small type at the bottom of the 
page. That really can ruin family life, destroy every notion of 
normality, and really spoil someone's appetite."

The insolence that permeates the list of complaints, the sheer 
arrogance of the speech should not surprise the Smoking Man. 
However, there is something imperceptibly wrong here, and 
he can't quite pinpoint the source of trouble that makes his hair 
stand up on its end.

"When the only way to quit the unpleasant job is to die, might 
not one consider such a possibility?" Mulder asks earnestly, 
troubled dark eyes leaning in closer to his opponent. "And 
after death, might not one be angry enough to want revenge on 
the men who had made his life so miserable? I can," he pulls 
out a pack of cigarettes and lights one up with the air of 
calculated disconsolateness. "I can imagine that all too easily."

He'd dealt with men distraught and men suicidal, but this 
picture of self-destructive depression is entirely new, and all 
too frightening. "Fox, I know you've lost someone who was 
important to you, but..."

The grief that washes over the face of Mulder is gray - if 
mourning had color, it would be this, the smoker thinks in 
horror. But it is gone quickly, replaced by resignation. "Add 
that to the list of duties: inform employees when their partners 
meet an untimely demise."

This is one of the swiftest decisions that the smoker ever 
made. "You will not investigate these crimes any further." He 
starts to walk away - and is stopped by the suddenly very sane, 
very cold voice behind him.

"You would fire a man who just gave you the best - the *only* 
- profile of the killer you're looking for?"

The Smoking Man turns around on his heel and watches 
Mulder silently.

"How inconvenient that it fits so many men who work with 
you every day. Who used to work with you every day, I 
should say," Mulder laments, a cigarette now limp in his hand. 
"Had I been dead, I would have added myself to the list."

"Are you implying that we're dealing with a particularly 
vengeful ghost?" the smoker inquires sarcastically.

Mulder appears to consider it for a moment. "I see no 
evidence of the paranormal here." He explains, as if taking 
pity: "We're looking for someone who is only presumed dead. 
It is the only reason why he is still walking free instead of 
rotting in the grave with all the other infidel employees. It is 
someone who has reason to believe he was slighted by the 
Consortium, someone who has motives for vengeance."

He rubs his forehead tiredly. Does the young man realize what 
task they're about to undertake? "The list will be long. Too 
long, I should say."

"I wish it weren't so."

If the smoker forgets about their old dispute, about their 
disparity, he can almost hear the note of sympathy and regret 
in that voice. The illusion dissipates when Mulder's features 
grow into an impassive mask, as the gates of emotion close 
down for all intents and purposes.

"And in the future," Mulder throws over the shoulder while 
leaving, "I will be the one interrogating all suspects and 
witnesses - alone."


XLI. STAIR

Her sleep comes sporadically these days, sometimes a few 
hours at a time, flutters of dreams taunting her as she lies in 
her bed, her knuckles white as she clutches the sheets. It is a 
fear she has not known in years, not the constant worry that 
has kept her numb for twenty-five years, but a sharp, acute 
terror that comes with certainty, with the knowledge of what 
will unfold in the days to come.

It was easier not to know, Teena Mulder decides.

At first she thinks the knocking is the rain against the trees 
outside, branches lashing against the windows of her house, 
but it is too regular, too persistent. She throws on a bathrobe, 
catching a glimpse of her drawn, haggard face in the mirror as 
she reaches into the nightstand for Bill's revolver. Buried 
beneath a shroud of satin, it bears the faint scent of her old 
woman's perfume, irreconcilable with its metal coldness. She 
slips it under the folds of her robe, and goes to answer the 
front door.

Every stair creaks on the way down. She and the house have 
grown old together.

Teena is not particularly startled to see the face of a ghost 
through the peephole. She draws the gun, though its weight 
does little to reassure her against the vengeance of the dead. 
Still, her finger is on the trigger as she unlocks the door.

"That won't be necessary," Dana Scully waves her hand 
towards the weapon. "You have nothing to fear from me 
tonight."

Teena loosens her grip on the revolver, but she does not put it 
down, instead moving aside to allow the ghost to enter. Scully 
has been walking in the rain. Her hair clings in wet tangles 
against her face, drops of water on her eyelashes and cheeks 
like tears. She shivers, clad in a T-shirt and jeans, thinner, 
Teena thinks, than she had been in life.

"I can think of better people to haunt," Teena says.

Scully offers her a tired smile. "I didn't come to haunt you 
either."

Teena closes the door against the wind and rain, then leads 
Scully into the kitchen. They sit down at opposite ends of the 
table. Teena does not offer her visitor coffee.

"I need his real name," Scully says. It is not a question - it is a 
demand.

"Whose?"

"You know whose. C.G.B. Spender...the smoking man..."

Teena leans back in her chair. "I can't give it to you," she 
replies.

"Your children's lives are in danger, Mrs. Mulder. He knows 
where they are. He's been keeping them prisoner--"

"Fox is there by his own free will," Teena interrupts, "And 
Samantha is there for her own safety."

"-- and you have done nothing..."

"I've given you all the information that I have."

"And now the same people responsible for my...death...are 
coming for them." Scully half-stands, bracing her weight 
against the table. "Tell me his name."

"It won't do you any good." Teena keeps her voice even, cold. 
"I'm not entirely sure of the name he uses these days. And 
even if I knew, it wouldn't help you track him down...or to 
find them." She folds her hands together, lowers her eyes. 
"He's done everything in his power to protect them. And if he 
can't...what can you do?"

"How do you live with yourself?" Scully whispers.

"I ask myself that question every day." Teena glares back 
now, defiant. "Do you think you're the only ghost who haunts 
me?" She shakes her head. "I'm very sorry, but there is 
nothing more I can tell you. It would only further endanger 
them."

"Or save them."

"Do you expect me to take that risk?"

"Mrs. Mulder...if you do not help me." The ghost trembles. 
Teena looks away. "If you refuse to help me, they are already 
dead."

Teena opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. She 
clenches her fists together, bites back tears. Scully had better 
be certain - the web is closing in around them from all sides.

"He left two hours ago," Teena says in a low voice, "He was 
headed for a place...Wee-something. An air force base."

"Wiekamp," Scully blurts out.

"That's it."

The ghost stands. "Thank you, Mrs. Mulder."

Teena reaches out, abruptly, to grab Scully's arm. She is 
almost surprised to feel warm, solid skin beneath her hand. 
"Wait."

"I can't."

"Just tell me..." A pained swallow. "I need to know that I've 
done the right thing."

Scully pauses for a moment, then says, "I suppose we'll see." 
She starts to pull away, then reconsiders. "Give me your gun."

"Agent Scully?"

"Agent Scully is dead," the younger woman replies. "My 
name is Jane Green. And I need your gun."

Teena hands it to her wordlessly. She follows Scully out to the 
hallway, stands on the lowest stair as the ghost turns the 
handle of the door.

"Is there anything else I can do for you...Jane?"

Scully looks down at the weapon in her hand. "Lock the door 
when I'm gone," she says, "Don't mention to anyone that I was 
here. And," her voice is oddly gentle, "Take care of yourself, 
Mrs. Mulder."

The sound of the door as it slams shut is barely distinguishable 
from the pounding rain outside.


XLII. WALLET

Hart waits in the line of cars at the entrance to Fort Wiekamp. 
He has picked the busiest time of the day, risking a chance of 
someone recognizing him. Unlikely, considering how much 
he's changed. Reluctantly, he turns the rearview mirror to look 
at his own face. The mirror laughs at him, throwing back the 
reflection of a ghost. Gray eyes are sinking into skin of the 
same color, and his dark, unkempt hair is turning white at the 
temples. If there is a phase between life and death, a time 
when a man's body disintegrates while still allowing him to 
live, surely he has entered it.

The driver behind him honks, and Jason realizes that he is 
supposed to move forward, to the guard's booth. 

"Your ID, please," a supremely bored voice sounds to his left.

Hart hands over an old piece of paper that he carries as a 
reminder of his past sins, and valiantly tries to keep his 
heartbeat steady.

"I'm sorry, sir, this is expired," the guard announces the 
verdict after investigating the document. "Do you have a new 
one?"

Gloved hands tighten on the wheel of the car. Hart doesn't 
want to do this, and yet he knows that he has little choice. 
Reaching into his pocket, he deftly opens a cellophane bag, 
removes a wallet and flips it open to the driver's license. 
"Here," he extends the hand out the window.

"You look exhausted," the guard says sympathetically as he 
accepts the proffered wallet. "Are you sure it's your shift 
now?"

Hart chokes back the tears that spring to his eyes at the 
consideration in the voice of a man he has just killed. The only 
excuse he has is that the poisonous substance that is being 
absorbed in the guard's skin right now has been invented here, 
on these very grounds. Compound number 478 takes only 
ninety-eight seconds to work, give or take. 

He begins to count. 

"This is only your driver's license," the corpse dressed in the 
military uniform tells Jason. "I need your current ID, 
otherwise I can't let you in."

"I'm afraid I forgot it at home," Jason forces himself to meet 
his eyes. "I'm expected, could you let me through, please?"

The guard returns the wallet and opens the barrier. "I can let 
you turn around, and go back home to find your renewed 
identification card."

The count is getting closer to ninety-eight, and Hart stalls a 
few more moments, waiting until the man loses the ability to 
talk and stand straight. At the ninety-seventh second, he drives 
through the opened gate, but doesn't turn around as per orders 
of the guard. There are no screams behind him, and no one 
chases after the vehicle that has just entered the base illegally. 

Compound number 478 is singularly effective.

It's a large base, but realistically there are only four 
possibilities for where Samantha Mulder may be kept. He 
parks the car beside the most likely location and checks his 
weapon, the .45 caliber, loaded with bullets that will rip 
through her forehead and her heart, accomplishing the most 
important part of his mission. 

The guard at the entrance touches the wallet briefly and waves 
Jason through, too busy smiling into the phone to bother 
checking the documents in more detail. Another death left 
behind, Hart walks down the halls, casually scanning the 
narrow windows on the locked doors. When he sees a thin 
woman huddled inside a gray blanket, her long curly hair 
spilling over her shoulders, he collapses against the cold 
metal, unsure if he should believe his luck. He chooses to 
interpret it as an omen.

This is meant to happen. 

After all the blood that he spilt, the days spent in the company 
of corpses, the self-destruction he engaged in, he is finally 
close to his goal.

But when Hart picks the lock and enters the cage, he never has 
a chance to draw the gun. His first thought is that he wasn't 
careful enough with the deadly compound, but soon he 
understands that it's only his body betraying him. After living 
with this disease for years, its culmination is still unexpected. 
The agony erupts within his chest, travels down his 
extremities, and sends him crashing down to the linoleum 
floor. He lies there, gasping for air, as the woman who he 
wanted to kill hovers over him with a worried expression on 
her face.

"Pi..." Hart manages, just as conscious thought is about to 
leave him. "Pills," he gestures somehow to his breast pocket.

He is barely aware of Samantha kneeling beside him, of her 
delicate hands patting down his pockets, searching for the box 
of magic drugs that keep him alive, even if not for much 
longer. Finally, the pill in her fingers, she dangles it in front of 
his face while keeping another hand on his chest, a light touch 
that is surprisingly comforting.

Hart opens his mouth, and the pill drops inside. The 
realization that he could have done without  the medication 
comes a few seconds later. He sits up slowly and searches 
Samantha's face for any indication, any knowledge of the 
miracle that has just transpired in this joyless room.

His heart is still old and tired, but he has been granted more 
time. And his hand falls short while reaching for a gun. 

There is always another day to fire a bullet.

There is, however, never a better day to seize the chance to 
prolong another life, that of a woman who deserves to outlive 
him. 

"Samantha," he whispers almost reverently. "Would you like 
to come for a walk?"

Her eyes, until then wary and pale, suddenly glow brighter 
than stars from which she descended. "To see the sky?" she 
asks. 

She hands him the keys to her heart on a golden plate, and 
Jason gladly takes them. She's only a child, easy to 
manipulate, easy to swoop away.

"Yes," he smiles, the first genuine smile on his lips in months. 
"Outside, to see the sky."


End Part 11/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 12/15

XLIII. TULIP

The smoker does not need to show identification. Even if the 
guard did not know him, the older man possesses a sense of 
purpose that not even a higher-ranking officer would dare 
deny, an aura of authority that only a few hours ago, he had 
considered lost forever.

Another officer leads him into the room where the body lies. 
The dead man is young, in perfect health until ten minutes 
ago, when his heart stopped beating. The flesh is still warm, 
according to the officer, but the smoker, not wishing to 
confirm it himself, keeps his distance.

"How did he die?"

No one responds. He lights a cigarette, strangely unsettled.

"Has anyone recovered the surveillance tape yet?" Again, he 
is greeted with silence, and his hands itch from the sudden 
wish to pull out his gun and threaten them as he would 
suspects. Anything to get a response. "I want the base sealed 
off. The killer might still be on the premises." Someone slips 
out the door, gone to carry out his orders. He takes another 
drag, wondering why his hand is trembling so much. "Where's 
Mulder?"

"He's with James Erickson."

"Get him back here. I want to talk to him." He takes one last 
look at the body, then says, "I'll be down the hall."

And he realizes at that moment the source of his anxiety. 
Samantha...something has happened to Samantha. He slams 
the door closed behind him, his steps echoing down the long 
hallway. Catching a glimpse of the guard seated at the door, he 
relaxes for a moment - no one has gotten through, the fear was 
misplaced. The man leans against the wall with his ear on 
phone receiver. As the smoker approaches, he makes no move 
to end his conversation.

He makes no move at all.

His face is slack but his eyes are open, staring fixedly ahead, 
unseeing. Dead. The smoker touches the man's throat and feels 
no sign of a pulse. He jerks his hand back as if burned, and the 
guard collapses sideways out of the chair to slump against the 
wall. The smoking man kicks his body aside and opens the 
door. He already knows what he will see, but his heart 
constricts painfully in anticipation of the empty room, the 
abandoned blanket.

"Samantha," he whispers, realizing that he should not speak at 
all, that he should do nothing to give away his presence. The 
stretch of corridor from Samantha's cell to the entrance is 
deserted. He is alone with a dead man and a killer.

Careful to make as little noise as possible, he reaches for his 
gun and makes his way down the hallway. This man has 
outwitted the organization - outwitted him - at every turn, but 
at least he is not entirely defenseless. The weight of the 
weapon is reassuring, but with every step comes the growing 
sense that he is walking towards his own demise.

He sees her first, then the man behind her, dressed in a black 
coat, one hand on Samantha's arm. It is the eyes that are 
unmistakable, staring out from a pallid face, the eyes of yet 
another dead man. The smoker's first thought is that he should 
have listened to Mulder, should have figured it out himself 
before now...

"Jason," he addresses the man. "This is a surprise."

Hart blinks. "You would have found out eventually."

"I'm sure." His eyes flicker towards Samantha. "Let her go, 
Jason."

Hart looks around, anxious, then seeing no one approaching, 
leans back against the wall. "Perhaps she does not wish to be 
let go." He stares at the smoker's gun. "Besides, you'll kill me 
either way."

"That's true," the smoking man admits. "But I don't want to hit 
her."

Hart laughs. "You were always so damned short-sighted, 
weren't you? Always concerned with the immediate, with your 
own narrow little goals, your own goddamned plans. The sky 
is falling, everything is coming apart at the seams and all you 
can be concerned with is petty vengeance, is--"

The smoker fires, once, and he hears the other shot, masked by 
a silencer, a split second too late. His bullet is merely an echo 
of the first. He is aware of several things at once - the glimmer 
of Hart's gun, concealed under the coat, the way Samantha's 
eyes widen as she screams - lightning before thunder, he 
thinks, as the world explodes around him.

It does not occur to him that he is dying, not even as he begins 
to fall, blood staining the front of his shirt and the wall behind 
him. Even the pain is delayed by a few moments, allowing 
him the satisfaction of seeing his bullet shred through Hart's 
left hand, severing the last two fingers in a surge of blood. He 
almost fires again and that is when it hits, a burning, tearing 
paroxysm that threatens to rip him in half. He does not cry out 
- neither of them does - as he crumples to the floor in a 
crimson pool.

Hart runs. He grabs Samantha with his good hand and he takes 
off down the corridor, his path marked with smears of red. The 
smoker watches, unable to stop them.

His eyes wander to the splattered blood on the wall. It rises up 
like a flame from behind him, a scarlet flower, a tulip rising to 
greet the sun. The image makes him laugh, sends further 
shudders of agony through his failing body. He glances at it 
for a moment longer, and then closes his eyes.

After all, he thinks, it isn't as though he has never died before.


XLIV. GEM

The old man's blood is frothing between Mulder's fingers, 
resisting the pressure he is applying to the wound. Each drop 
that escapes is another drop in favor of the one who released 
the bullet. Each inhalation that gets lost inside the ripped lung 
is another breath of air for the insect that made the lives of so 
many a living hell. 

Could it be his ancient enemy's body struggling with death 
under his hands? The satisfaction he might have felt before is 
missing, and so is every other emotion. Even the rage that has 
been churning inside him, the need for revenge, is gone.

There is nothing.

The voices of medics fill the emptiness, and their hands push 
him to the side. Mulder straightens up and walks wearily to 
Samantha's room. No need to hurry. She doesn't wait for him 
any longer. 

She never has.

If the room is this immaculate, if there are no signs of 
struggle, if her body is not prostrate on the cold floor of the 
cell, then she has gone away willingly, leaving him behind.

Mulder reaches for a tall crystal pitcher, brimming full of 
water, fumbles with a glass. He can't position it correctly, his 
hands shake, and the pitcher is suddenly too heavy to hold. It 
erupts on the floor into drops of water and pieces of crystal, 
the two matters almost indistinguishable from each other. The 
fluorescent light plays with the gems splattered with red, and 
he looks at his hands, still stained with the smoker's blood.

A memory comes unbidden of his mother tugging at the string 
of pearls around her throat, of his father trying to restrain her. 
The ivory beads spill from her fingers and roll as they fall to 
the floor. Three months after Samantha's disappearance, the 
panic attacks are only increasing in frequency. Fox picks up 
the beads so as not to see the sheer terror on his mother's face, 
the grim resignation on his father's.

Today, his knees crush the pieces of crystal as his hands pick 
them up.

At least, his surroundings are now more suitable to the 
occasion.

"Mulder!" 

The exclamation shakes him out of the void, and he drops the 
gems, leaving them to play under the light. 

Phillips picks him up by the shoulders, leads him to sit on the 
bed. "My god," he groans. "Sit still while I get some 
instruments in here."

"It's not my blood," Mulder mutters.

Phillips doesn't listen and disappears into the open doorway. 
Mulder looks at his palms, noticing the fragments of crystal 
embedded inside the soft flesh, the small wounds from which 
his own blood streams. Funny, he feels no pain, not until the 
doctor returns armed with bandages and tweezers, not until the 
offending objects are extracted from his skin. 

And then the wave of grief crushes him, twists his every bone, 
until he finds himself crying, the tears staining his bandaged 
hands. A grown man, once again he is reduced to a twelve-
year-old boy who lost the sister he was responsible for. 

"The security has recovered the videotape," Phillips informs 
him matter-of-factly, as if Mulder hadn't just fallen to pieces 
in front of his eyes. "You need to watch it."

Mulder nods. "If I don't find her this time..." He doesn't finish 
the sentence. 

He cannot bear to finish it.

"It's only a man," Phillips replies reassuringly. "She hasn't 
been abducted by aliens, she isn't irretrievable, and you're not 
searching for her alone anymore."

"Yes, today I have behind me an army of men who helped 
abduct my sister the first time."

The doctor flinches and silently follows Mulder into a 
darkened room where a video machine rolls through a short, 
poor quality film, over and over again, while several pairs of 
eyes scrutinize it to the smallest detail. 

Phillips gasps, his startled whisper resonating against 
Mulder's shoulder. "Jason Hart!"

The profiler whirls around. "You know him? When was the 
last time you saw him?"

"Before the El Rico disaster," the doctor replies hoarsely. "I 
thought he was dead - I was certain he was dead - he had 
always had a weak heart. One day, we were at work for thirty 
hours straight, and the strain was too much for him - he had a 
heart attack. As simple as that, and... for heaven's sake, I 
attended his funeral!"

Phillips stares at the screen in mute disbelief as the colleague 
he believed lost walks among the living. He doesn't know 
whether it's a ghost who came back for revenge or a breathing 
human being just like him, but now it no longer matters.

Either option makes him shiver in fear, fear that turns to full-
fledged horror when he turns around and sees no sign of 
Mulder.


XLV. FOLDER

All she can see is blood.

It paints the once sterile white walls in wide red slashes, pools 
on the floor, rivers flowing into oceans, and she sways on her 
feet, clutching the doorway for support. Scully does not need 
visions to tell her that she has arrived here too late.

"Mulder," the name escapes her lips, burning as it is released.
 
"He's not here."

The voice comes from behind her. Scully spins, her high heels 
squeaking on the polished floor.

The man, his unshaven face and bloodshot eyes contrasting 
with the crisp professional white of his lab coat, looks as 
startled to see Scully as she is to see him. Lines of worry 
crease his face, he does not possess her breathless panic - all 
she can sense is a sort of heavy resignation.
 
"Agent Scully?"

She blinks. "Do I know you?"

"I was told...never mind." He almost laughs. "I should know 
better by now than to listen to what I'm told." His hand, 
fingers yellow with nicotine stains, stretches out towards her. 
"Phillips," he introduces himself.

"Scully...but you knew that already. What happened here? 
Mulder...is he...?"
 
"It isn't his blood," Phillips says, following the direction of her 
gaze. "Please, we don't have much time." He motions for her 
to follow him, through another doorway and into a small 
room. A television plays what looks to be a security video. An 
overhead shot shows Samantha and two men - a confrontation. 
One of the men is a stranger to her, but a familiar revulsion 
coils inside of her as she recognizes the second to be the 
smoker.

A split second later she sees him fall, the question of the blood 
in the hallway immediately resolved. "Is he dead?" she hears 
herself ask.
 
Phillips shakes his head. "He was listed as critical the last time 
I checked."

Scully is almost relieved. There have already been too many 
deaths. "And the other man?"

"His name is Jason Hart. Up until an hour ago I thought he 
was dead...but...I've been seeing more than my share of ghosts 
these days." She can feel his eyes on her, but she refuses to 
meet his gaze. "Mulder has been profiling him for weeks."
 
Her voice is shaky when she speaks again. "Where did he 
go?"

Phillips looks at the frozen image on the screen - the smoking 
man, a bloody heap on the floor, Samantha, her eyes filled 
with terror, and Hart, his face devoid of emotion as he turns 
from the view of the camera. "He went after Jason."

She asks once more. "Where?"
 
Phillips switches off the screen. She wishes he had done it 
sooner, this final image is too much to bear. "I'm not sure. It 
could be any number of places...wherever Jason has been 
hiding all these years. Or wherever he feels he must take 
Samantha."

He must take her, Scully muses. As if he has no choice in the 
matter. Perhaps he doesn't... perhaps there has never been a 
choice. Even now she feels herself guided by invisible hands, 
pushed unwillingly towards the future.
 
"Mulder thinks you're dead," Phillips adds.

"I know." Scully is distracted. "Do you have any idea where 
they might have gone? Did Mulder say anything... give any 
indication...?"

Phillips pauses for a moment, then reaches for a folder that 
rests on top of the television screen. "As I said, Mulder has 
been assembling a profile of the killer." He shudders visibly. 
"Your killer, Agent Scully. This is what he left behind."

Scully opens the folder, eyes scanning the pages of laborious 
notes, Polaroids in lurid hues of red. Her own picture is there, 
and she shivers at the sight, her body as helpless and immobile 
as the twisted, sprawling corpses in the previous image.

"It's a moot point now," Phillips says, "although Mulder's 
profile was surprisingly accurate."

Scully turns a page. Scrawled across it is her name, again and 
again, intermingled with Samantha's - she turns to Phillips 
with a frown.

"You have to understand the amount of pressure he was 
under..."

"I need to know where they went," Scully says, quickly 
turning the paper over.

"I can't help you," Phillips replies. "Hart was stationed at a 
number of bases during the time I knew him. And there's no 
way to tell where he's been hiding all this time."

"Are all of the bases still active?"

Phillips is silent for a long time, thinking. "Not Fort Marlene. 
It was abandoned after the El Rico incident." He stares at 
Scully. "You don't think he'd choose a place so obvious to the 
organization, do you?"

"It could have simply been a matter of convenience. He-" she 
breaks off. Phillips is no longer in front of her. Instead she 
sees Mulder, on his knees in a darkened room, his face grief-
stricken as he holds up bloodstained hands.

"Agent Scully?"

She blinks up into Phillips' face, realizing that his arms, 
supporting her, are all that keeps her from falling. 
Embarrassed, he helps her stand.

"What happened?" he asks.

"I just..." The glimmer of vision gone, she reaches for the gun 
at her belt. "Mulder followed Hart to Fort Marlene. I'm 
positive of it."

He does not ask permission before he follows her.


XLVI. BLADE

The lamp flickers a few times and dims a notch. The resulting 
light is uneven and ghostly; it creates gray shadows that waver 
along the walls of the cell. Though Krycek's eyelids stay 
closed, he senses the change in surroundings, and his 
breathing quickens minutely until he understands that the 
room is still empty. Before, he was afraid of Jason or Marita 
coming back for another friendly chat. Now, he is only afraid 
of them not returning.

If they don't need him any longer, if they don't come back to 
extract more answers from him, then they have already 
succeeded, and he is the one that ensured their victory. If they 
don't come back, he cannot ask them for water. He doesn't 
blame them - forgetting about prisoners is easy when the fate 
of the world is at stake.

Krycek chokes on the acrid taste inside his mouth and tries to 
stifle the ensuing coughs. Their sharp blade seems to cut his 
chest apart. He is grateful now that his legs are bound, for 
immobility is almost a mercy. It is not the bonds that 
incarcerate him, but the weakness of his upper body, the 
hastily treated shoulder that, he now realizes, was only 
bandaged to prevent the loss of blood and keep him alive.

Before slipping back inside the protected shelter of his 
dreams, he marvels briefly at the perseverance of the human 
body. It endures more than it should, more than he has ever 
imagined possible. Death is never easy, and today she forgets 
about him just as everyone else has. She leaves him alone with 
the apparitions that dwell within these walls.

"What has he done to you?"

Krycek isn't surprised that one of them should have a voice of 
the man he betrayed. He is only bewildered at the absence of 
anger in the words that it speaks. He keeps his eyes closed for 
fear that this dream should end too quickly. Ghosts, after all, 
have a tendency to melt away. 

The response comes almost against his will. "You shouldn't 
be here."

"Oh, Alex." 

Mulder's regretful whisper disrupts the stale atmosphere. 
Then, his voice moves away, and Krycek feels the bonds fall 
away from his feet as the penknife severs them. This presence 
is too palpable, too human to be a spirit. The fingers of his 
right hand are enclosed in the warm flesh of another, and he 
wonders why this vision should be so real. Or why the fingers 
that hold him are dressed in bandages.

"How..." Each sound awakens the hurt in his ruined cheek. He 
ignores it. "How did you find this place?"

"I was looking for my sister," Mulder answers softly, the 
urgency of the statement buried deep beneath the layers of 
concern that could almost be called friendly. "I guess my 
intuition still works."

Krycek moans at the confirmation of his worst suspicions. 
"You were supposed to be kept safe... together..." he whispers. 
"Shouldn't have... let you go."

After several beats of silence, his fingers are released from 
Mulder's grip, and he is certain that the dream has finished. 
There comes an end to any torment, physical or emotional. His 
eyes open wide when he finally hears an answer.

"I worked with them for the last few weeks, looking for the 
men behind the murders."

The prisoner searches Mulder's face and swallows dry air. 
"The old man got you, didn't he?"

His visitor turns away from the penetrating gaze, full of 
lamentation if not judgment. "No," he denies firmly. "The 
spider did."

Krycek trembles slightly, decides that he must have misheard 
the words. "I'm sorry," he says instead. "I was..." The pain is 
suddenly unbearable, and he throws his head to the side, 
grinds his teeth to withstand it.

"Don't talk," Mulder tells him, urgently. 

But he needs to speak now, before he loses his courage, before 
he cannot speak any longer. "I was the one who told Hart 
where he could find Samantha. I...didn't..." he searches for a 
way to explain, but it dies on his tongue. "Please forgive me."

It is almost an eternity before Krycek feels the touch of lips 
placing a careful kiss on his forehead. His eyes pose a numb 
question.

"It doesn't matter," Mulder injects a smile into his answer, 
then repeats it, with more belief, "it doesn't matter."

"Don't underestimate Hart," Krycek hurries to warn him. His 
voice is growing weaker, and now he struggles to stay awake, 
at least long enough to explain the dangers of the trap that he 
was caught in.

"I'll be careful," Mulder promises noncommittally. "Hang on 
until I come back."

"Don't underestimate Marita, either," Krycek adds, but the 
reply never comes. With an effort, he opens his eyes and sees 
the unlocked door through which his visitor has walked away. 
If not for the freed legs, he would almost believe that it was 
only a dream.

He slips back into unconsciousness, but even in sleep the 
dreadful feeling of foreboding envelops him. 

Mulder won't fulfill his last promise.

End Part 12/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 13/15

XLVII. CLAM

Marita wakes to the sound of voices. Trembling, she pulls the 
blanket around her shoulders and stumbles to the door. 
Locked. The voices are faint, and they come from somewhere 
far beyond the other side of the door - she dimly recognizes 
them, but the memory is transient, ephemeral.

"Alex?" She does not realize that she spoke the name aloud 
until she hears the pleading in her own voice.
 
She pulls back as a beep indicates the slide of Hart's 
identification card releasing the lock. The blanket trailing 
behind her, she sits back down on the bed.

"Jason." Marita is relieved. There is still a chance that Krycek 
is already dead. She hopes so. But if this is the case, Hart does 
not mention it.

"I brought someone," he says as he enters.
 
She closes her eyes, opens them again, and then he is in the 
room. Beside him is a woman, as thin and frightened as Marita 
herself, a shadow beneath long, curling hair.

Samantha looks better than Marita expected. She had for 
whatever reason imagined Mulder's features on the frame of a 
female face, and somehow the image was less than appealing. 
Then again, perhaps her standards have changed, perhaps 
anything is more beautiful than what she sees now - the lines 
that force Hart's mouth into a perpetual frown, the memory of 
her own gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes, the broken body of an 
old lover in a room down the hall. To see a human being, alive 
and whole, is a novelty.
 
She does not know what to say, and so she does not speak at 
all, acknowledging Samantha only with a slight nod. The other 
woman smiles. There is something child-like about her, open, 
and Marita wants to clam up, to bury herself beneath the 
blankets and hide from this creature, this thing tainted by 
inhuman hands. Samantha has no right to smile.

"She saved my life," Hart says. "I tried to kill her but..."

Marita rises, unsure of what her next action will be.

"She can save you, too..."

She wonders if he is aware of how ridiculous he sounds, like 
some cheap televangelist, like a hypnosis subject. She watches 
his hastily bandaged hand that now has only three fingers, and 
knows that he doesn't even notice the pain when he 
gesticulates with it widely. She searches his face for any trace 
of irony, and finding none, stands trembling before him.
 
How can he suggest that everything against which they have 
fought, symbolized in this woman, everything for which they 
have bled, have killed, how can he begin to believe that it 
could somehow be their salvation? How is it that this man, 
who has shared so much of her pain, can crumble to pieces 
before her very eyes? How could he be such a fool?

"She says that it won't happen," he continues. "Colonization. 
It was a plan by the aliens from the beginning...nothing more 
than a test, a fire drill..."
 
Marita laughs. Hart looks injured. But he cannot possibly 
believe... Samantha is no more than a conduit, a voice for the 
colonists. Her lies are their lies. And Marita will not accept 
that a fifty-year struggle has overnight become meaningless, a 
joke at the expense of all of humanity. But he is still talking, 
telling her that the game is finished, that the battle has been 
won before it has even begun, that the missing ones have been 
returned as a gesture of goodwill and peace.

And he does not see her reach for the gun beneath the pillow.
 
"It's over, Marita," he says, and his eyes glimmer with the 
light of bliss.

She exchanges a subtle glance with Samantha, then looks 
down at the weapon in her hand.

"Yes," Marita says. "Of course it is."


XLVIII. INK

Phillips wishes that he had spent last night at home instead of 
staying at work and catching a couple of hours of intermittent 
sleep on the couch in his office. He hasn't spoken to his family 
in days, always coming home too late and leaving too early. 
His wife no longer waits up for him and doesn't awaken when 
he kisses her sleeping form. His boy and girl, seven-year-old 
twins, no longer quarrel over whose bed he gets to sit on while 
telling a bedtime story. He is becoming a shadow even before 
his death.

It is rather fitting, considering that he is about to confront a 
ghost. He is not a soldier, he hardly knows what to do with the 
weapon which Scully pulls out of the glove compartment and 
thrusts at him. He doubts that he will be much help to her. But 
he needs to understand what pushes a man, a man just like 
him, to turn into a killer. And only Jason Hart can answer this 
question.

Perhaps, he has a lesson to learn from him. Perhaps, he can 
crush the seeds of hatred that are already blossoming in his 
own heart, if he can only see the living embodiment of their 
growth.

The woman beside him pushes on the gas, again, and glides 
the car like an arrow between other vehicles on the highway. 
Except for a laconic phone call to Skinner, "Fort Marlene, 
now," she hasn't uttered a word, and Phillips is thankful for 
her silence. He concentrates on finding the strength to witness 
more pain, more deaths.

The day is still young.

Scully pulls to a harsh stop beside two lonely cars in front of 
the abandoned building. He runs after her towards the 
entrance, through the badly lit halls, while awkwardly trying 
to fit the gun into his back pocket. By the time he catches up 
to her, he is already out of breath, and at first he doesn't hear 
the low moan that comes from an open doorway to their right. 
Scully wavers, as if terrified of what she will find behind door 
number one, then readies her gun and enters.

Phillips looks over her shoulder into the room and knows that 
Dr. Jason Hart has no lessons left to teach him. That the man 
they're hunting has no heart left to spare, that the disease 
which should have killed him a long time ago has eaten 
through his core, transforming him into a monster, a carcass 
made of bones and flesh that only appears human on the 
outside.

Bloodstains, black like ink, seem to cover the floor and walls 
of the gray room. At first, Phillips would almost like to believe 
that the man who lies on the bed in the corner is dead; it would 
be easier to bear. But the bloody figure moans again, and 
Phillips recognizes Alex Krycek, a man he never particularly 
liked or respected. And he also remembers the reason why he 
wanted to become a medic - to alleviate the suffering of 
anyone in need, to stop the pain in its tracks by any available 
means, be it surgery or morphine.

Scully staggers backward. "This is...this is the room I've seen 
before."

He pushes her into the hall, gently. "I'll try to help him. You 
need to find the others."

She closes her eyes, as if trying to forget what they've found, 
and visibly collects herself. "Thank you," she whispers 
gratefully and walks away, never turning around. 

Phillips returns to the bloodstained room and kneels beside 
Krycek. As his fingers wander over the broken body, assessing 
the injuries, he wishes he had brought his medical bag with 
him. The ever-present package of Valium in his breast pocket 
will not help today.

"Water," Krycek whispers hoarsely. 

Two green eyes, wide open and burning with pain, look across 
the room at the sink. The doctor is dismayed to find him 
awake, but obeys and brings back a paper cup with water that 
smells weakly of rust and decay. Krycek seems to faint right 
after he stops drinking, and Phillips is startled when fingers 
covered in black tracks of blood clutch his hand.

"Help me stand."

"You're delirious," the doctor shakes his head. "You should 
remain immobile until we're able to get a medical unit in 
here."

Krycek grimaces. "It's hard...to talk...just help me," he 
emphasizes. "Please."

"What's so important?" Phillips tries to subdue his patient. 
"What is it you need to do?"

The undamaged part of the young man's face smiles. "I need 
to see Hart die."

Phillips searches for arguments to rebuff the statement and 
comes up short. He grasps the injured man around the waist 
and pulls him to the sitting position, then practically holds him 
upright. Krycek sways but somehow holds steady. 

"Ready?" the doctor asks, and sees a nod in return. "Let's go."

Phillips isn't sure when the moment comes in which the ache 
of the man in his arms seeps into him. He only wishes that he 
had spent last night at home.


IL. GRAPE

He always recognizes the men he profiles. He can pick them 
out of a line-up relying on nothing more than intuition, a 
weapon even more formidable than his sharp intellect. And 
yet, Mulder doesn't recognize Dr. Jason Hart, at first. Not until 
the black eyes shift predatorily, not until the drawn face tenses 
in anticipation of attack, does he identify the spider in the 
center of his formidable web, its tangles and knots 
commanded by these wiry gray hands. 

Then, it is easier to aim the gun, to ignore the snarl of a black-
haired woman he vaguely recognizes, and even to tune out the 
terrified whimper of his sister.

"Agent Mulder." The beseeching words are a rush of water 
over the stone, too insignificant to be taken into consideration. 
"I wish her no harm."

Ever so slowly and deliberately, Mulder tightens his finger on 
the trigger and watches Hart grip Samantha more desperately, 
more tightly. 

"I brought her here because she could cure the woman I love," 
Hart pleads. "Just a few minutes is all I need. I'll let her go 
then."

Mulder doesn't care to process the meaning of what he hears. 
"Just let her go," he demands. "You have no right to ask for 
mercy."

"I only ask for understanding. All that I've done, I've done to 
prevent colonization." Hart extends a bandaged hand in a 
gesture of entreaty. "We're alike."

The sharp tug on the heart is sickeningly familiar, but he 
ignores it forcefully. Days ago, months ago, he might have 
believed the similarity. The only difference between them 
would have been the number of lives taken in order to achieve 
the same goal. Today, he remains deaf to the plea of the 
spider.

Surprisingly, Hart releases Samantha, as if to show his good 
will. She stands in the middle of the room, wary of walking in 
either direction, and Mulder reaches out to pull her closer, 
assuring himself of her reality, even if the delay makes him 
more vulnerable. 

"Agent Mulder, I beg you," Hart points in the direction of the 
woman in the corner who stands unmoving, watching the 
proceedings with bloodshot eyes. "I want...I need her to be 
well again."

Mulder's aim doesn't waver, nor does his determination, but 
just before the bullet is about to be released, Samantha's voice 
stops him. 

"Fox, don't," she pleads. "Don't kill this man." Gently, she 
takes his right hand and pushes it down, subverting him both 
physically and emotionally. "I will come with you."

"Why did you leave me, Sam?" Mulder whispers. 

Confused, his sister shakes her head. "I didn't," she denies. "I 
only wanted to see the sky."

He accepts it as the truth, allows his gun to tumble out of his 
hands, and forgives himself for losing her, even if he still can't 
forgive Hart. Awakening from the nightmare, hazel eyes blink 
and change shade, and see, for the first time, the glistening 
metal in the corner where the black-haired woman stands, 
prepared to fire. This war, as any other, will be lost with a 
single bullet.

It takes so little time.

One, and he shifts positions with Samantha.

Two, and he notes nonsensically that Hart's hand starts to 
bleed profusely.

Three, and he falls on the floor, suddenly unable to stand.

If death brings with it the images of those he loves, Mulder 
doesn't mind dying. Scully's face is contorted in agony, and he 
tries to tell her that she needn't grieve, but instead of 
reassuring words, only a trickle of blood is released from the 
corner of his mouth. He notices the broken figure of Krycek, 
leaning bonelessly against Phillips, his face streaked with 
blood and tears. He has the time to sympathize with Skinner's 
aghast paralysis. He even hears dimly the betrayed moan of 
Jason Hart, directed at the woman who fired the gun.

Curious still as to her identity, Mulder concentrates on her 
features and tries to remember. She shakes her head, 
disoriented, and he knows that she can't see. Blindly, she 
touches her eyes and pushes them inward in a desperate 
attempt to make them work. One of them doesn't take the 
pressure and, like a ripe grape, it tears apart, giving way to a 
stream of dark blood pouring down her cheek. Strange that 
only then does he recognize Marita Covarrubias.

With Samantha's arms wrapped around him, Mulder feels safe 
enough to close his eyes for good.


L. LAP

The crack of a gunshot startles her, and for an instant she is 
not in the garden. She is in a cold, gray room, and people are 
bleeding all around her.

Samantha gasps, sways where she stands. She does not 
recognize the faces around her. She sees a woman with blood 
instead of eyes, and she sees her brother lying on the floor, his 
chest torn by the impact of the bullet.
 
She reaches him before Scully does, drawing his broken body 
into her lap, leans in close in enough time to feel the last 
whisper of breath leave his lips. There is no goodbye, no final 
word, only the roll of his head to one side, as if to 
acknowledge defeat. The gray world, of which she is now 
painfully aware, has become unfrozen around her.

It takes only a moment for Scully to wrench her partner's body 
away from Samantha, to attempt to force the breath back into 
lungs that no longer breathe, to try to summon back by science 
what the bullet has taken. It takes only a moment for Skinner 
to twist Marita's arms behind her back, in a futile gesture 
towards order and justice, when the flowers in the garden are 
dying, and the world has gone mad.
 
She hears Scully cry out - only once - and she reaches out to 
grasp the other woman's hand.

"Let go," Samantha whispers.

"I...I..." Scully is drenched in Mulder's blood. "I can't." 
Helplessly, she meets Samantha's eyes. "I can't."

Samantha smiles sadly. "Neither could he."

It takes almost no effort on her part to brush Scully away, to 
brush them all away. The gray walls fold in on each other and 
they are alone, brother and sister, and the flowers have all shed 
their petals.
 
Every garden has its season.

"Thank you," Samantha murmurs, "Thank you for never 
letting go."

She covers his face with her hands, then draws them away. His 
eyes are open, looking up into her face. He does not speak. 
They do not need words, not here, not anymore. Somewhere 
between sleeping and waking, between death and life, they 
understand each other perfectly.

He sits up to take her hands in both of his, then nods, slowly. 
This is the last time they will ever see each other face to face. 
This is the goodbye they never had.
 
She wants to tell him not to be afraid. Scully is waiting for 
him, and the others too. And Samantha will be here in the 
springtime, to watch the flowers bloom again.

But he is not afraid. He pulls her into his arms and holds her 
so tightly she is afraid he will crush her. His lips brush the top 
of her hair and she melts into this last embrace. He does not 
cry. He knows as well as she does that this is her place, that it 
always has been.
 
And so he stands, still holding her hands, his eyes surveying 
the devastation around him, muddied, trampled ground, dead 
branches and wilted leaves. They have eaten fire, and now the 
rain is beginning to fall, a soft mist that will wash the blood 
and ashes away.

"Goodbye, Samantha," he says at last.

"Goodbye, Fox."
 
She watches him leave, turning slowly back towards the cold, 
gray world that she is grateful to have left behind. But he 
belongs there, and she is happy for him.

He turns back to his place, and then Samantha turns back to 
hers, retracing her muddy steps back to where, if she looks 
very hard, she can almost see the traces of green.

End Part 13/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 14/15

LI. PAGE

Scully could have called him a few minutes earlier, he could 
have broken a few more speed laws, and he could have run 
down the barely lit corridors a little faster. Still, he will have 
been late, a thousand times too late, always fated to witness 
this scene post-fact. On the stage, a hero will fall down, a 
villain will be stricken with remorse, and witnesses to this 
bloody act will weep. 

Skinner is the only one left to pass the judgment, the only 
player who isn't otherwise occupied. It is punishment enough 
for his lack of action, the ultimate penalty for losing the game. 
And now, the drama must play out its wrenching coda, the last 
page must be read before the book is closed.

He disturbs no one. He interrupts no concluding speeches. 

Skinner simply walks towards the woman who fired the gun 
and wrenches her hands away from her bleeding eyes, then 
locks handcuffs around her wrists. Accidentally, he brushes 
his fingers against her skin and flinches, repulsed. "You have 
the right to remain silent," he reads from the script. "Anything 
you say may be used against you..."

Marita doesn't resist. "Jason," she calls pitifully in the general 
direction of the stick-thin man who surveys the devastation 
around him as if caught in a trance. "Did I kill her, Jason?"

Hart retreats from her, betrayal in his eyes, even though he 
still extends one shaking hand towards his lover, an invocation 
- a goodbye. His other hand reaches inside his pocket and 
searches for something nervously. Skinner doubts that this 
man presents any danger now, somehow comprehends that if 
the villain could, he would do anything to correct his crimes, 
anything to reverse the flow of time. But the goddess of justice 
has always been blind, and as her servant, he foregoes 
compassion and, for the lack of another pair of handcuffs, 
starts to bind Hart's wrists.

"Fifty-one," the criminal says calmly. 

Skinner doesn't know why these two innocent words unlock 
such terror within him. "You have the right to remain silent," 
he replies unsteadily. 

"Seventy-six."

Skinner misses a beat, then continues. "Anything you say may 
be used against you in a court of law..."

Hart glances at the group of players on the ground and smiles 
in sudden wonder. "Ninety-eight," he garbles.

It takes a few moments for Skinner to realize that he is holding 
a corpse. The frozen eyes are still open, the paralyzed legs are 
still standing firm, and the lips still maintain that incongruous 
smile of relief. But the ears no longer hear the anguished cry 
of the woman who begs for his attention.

"Jason? Jason!" Marita cries, and the first tear shed for the 
dead man is colored in red.

Skinner doesn't listen. Sensing that the scenario was altered 
somehow and actors weren't alerted to the last-minute 
changes, he turns his eyes toward the fallen agent and his 
partner. Perhaps, somewhere before the preordained end of the 
tragedy, the last page has been rewritten by merciful fates. 

The once-dead body is released from Samantha's hands, and 
the gaping chest wound is now closed, the blood that poured 
from it the only proof of its previous existence. The eyes that 
were never supposed to see again are wide open, the hands 
that were never supposed to move reach out for the small 
woman kneeling beside him. And she returns the embrace, 
never questioning the miracle granted to her.

"You're alive," comes a whisper from the lips that were never 
supposed to speak.

"You're alive," Scully echoes, her face tranquil.

Things have been set right, and Skinner doesn't ask for the 
reasons, he only rejoices in the results.

"Compound four hundred seventy-eight," Alex Krycek rasps 
out of sync, unmistakably satisfied. Throwing one last 
reassured glance at Mulder, he promptly passes out. 

Skinner doesn't want to divine the meaning of his words, nor 
does he pay attention to Phillips' incredulous exclamation. He 
releases the dead man from his hands, lets him fall to the floor 
like a poorly sewn bag of bones, and sits down, thankful to 
have a respite from the crushing pain in his chest.

So relieved he is to see Scully's crying come to a stop and 
Mulder breathing again that he never even notices the 
motionless chest of the agent's sister.


LII. BILL

They have cleaned up the premises, washed the blood from the 
floor, and condemned the building to demolition. They have 
sanitized, sterilized, pried bullets from the walls and run test 
after test, transforming the scene of the murder into cold, flat 
numbers on a piece of paper.

All that remains is a mother's grief.

She hides it well, as she has always done, folding it and 
placing it in a box she can access at a later time. She has one 
last duty to perform before she can let go, before she can 
weep.

Teena Mulder crosses the hallway with purposeful strides, 
stopping dead as she reaches the private hospital room. She 
touches her face, as if to adjust the mask that has placed itself 
there.

And then she opens the door.

She has never seen a fallen empire before, and she is not 
certain of what to expect. Rubble, smoking ashes perhaps? 
Certainly not this - the steady beep of a heart monitor, the 
sterile white of sheets and walls, the ammonia scent of 
polished floors.

Haltingly, she walks towards the man on the bed, pulling up a 
chair to sit beside him. He sleeps, unaware of her presence. 
Unconscious, without his ever-present cigarette, without his 
aura of control, he seems brittle, fragile. Teena reaches for his 
hand, threading her fingers through his.

"Samantha is dead," she whispers.

His eyes flutter open, then widen in surprise when he sees her. 
Before he can open his mouth, she shakes her head.

"Don't talk." She runs her hand along the side of his face, and 
he leans his head into her palm, closing his eyes again. 
"Hurts?"

He nods.

"Then perhaps you can understand. What it's like...to lose 
her." Teena pauses, and as if for emphasis adds, "Again."

She feels him shudder. "I know I shouldn't blame you," she 
says quickly. "I know...you did all you could. But..." The tears 
come unbidden, an onslaught against her cheeks, and she 
buries her face on the edge of the bed to hide them. She weeps 
for all of them, for her daughter, lost and found and lost again, 
for her son and his sad, futile quest, for the man who lies silent 
on the bed, now painfully aware that all of his plans, all of his 
sacrifices, were for nothing.

A part of her has always known it would end like this. She 
cannot remember a time before either of them was broken.

"I talked to Fox last night," she says when the tears subside. 
"We...haven't talked for a long time. Not like that...not since 
the first time Samantha...was gone." She wonders if he is 
listening. She wonders if it matters. "We were never really as 
close as we should have been."
 
He is listening. She can tell. Vaguely encouraged, she keeps 
talking. "We spoke a lot about Sam, of course...about what 
happened...and the past...about Bill..." He blinks up at her. 
"About you."

There is a peace in defeat, Teena thinks. The smoker must 
realize this as well, that he is now a man without 
responsibilities, without burdens. They have each given a 
lifetime, but there is a certainty that comes with the knowledge 
that, though the battle is lost, at least it is over.
 
"But I didn't come here to talk to you about Sam," she says. 
"You know that, don't you? I only came to ask you...no." She 
meets his eyes. "To *tell* you to let Fox go."

He makes no response, and she continues, "I know it's in your 
power. The game is over...and they've all suffered enough. I 
can't lose another child. I won't." Almost absentmindedly, she 
brushes her hand over the quietly beeping monitor. "Do you 
understand?"

It is a long time before he speaks, and his voice is raw, 
strained. "I can let him go," he says, "but he won't give up."

Teena folds her hands together and looks away. Her son will 
never be safe, and all the power in the world will not protect 
him. His struggle will continue, without Samantha, without the 
smoker, maybe even without the aliens, and there is nothing 
she could ever have done.

A mother's grief. She has always had her own struggles.

"Good enough," she says.

"Teena...I..."

She reaches over and pats his hand. "You shouldn't try to 
talk," she says, then, "There is all the time in the world." 
Moving to get up, she says, "I should be going."

"You can stay."

Teena freezes for a moment, then sinks back into the chair. 
She has nowhere to be tonight, nowhere to go. And they are 
already in fragments - neither of them can be broken any 
further.

She is almost unaware of leaning over him, brushing her lips 
against his forehead - the gesture comes instinctively, 
involuntarily. "I'll stay," she agrees.

Perhaps some battles are not lost forever.


LIII. BREAD

The hospital room is unlike many others: it has no bright 
bouquets of flowers, no cheerful balloons with various wishes 
for swift recuperation. Its inhabitant has no friends or relatives 
who would visit him at this time. Most of his colleagues are 
dead. And, after all, the absence of adornments doesn't matter 
so much - survival has always been prize enough.

Mulder tries to understand how he wound up being the only 
person to visit Krycek. He sits on the bedside chair and waits 
for the heavily bandaged man to awaken. Mentally, he adds 
each new scar on this too-thin body to the list of injuries and 
deaths he should have been able to prevent. His hindsight, 
especially ruthless upon completing each hunt, reminds him 
sharply of his mistakes, of every minute he spent wallowing in 
self-pity that should have been spent instead on constructing a 
better profile.

The profile that Krycek didn't even need to recognize the 
killer.

"Alex," he forces a smile when the green eyes open. 
Receiving no acknowledgment and no greeting in return, he 
procures something brown and small from his pocket, lets it 
fall on the white sheets. "I...brought you a gift."

"It's a rat." The voice is unrecognizable, transformed by the 
rewired jaw and layers of gauze that cover part of the pale 
face. Fingers move weakly and stop, unable to reach it.

"Actually, it's Tiptoe the Mouse," Mulder corrects the mistake 
and places the toy directly in Krycek's right hand that still 
hasn't regained its range of motion. "A beanie baby."

Perhaps it is the image of the federal agent, most recently a 
Consortium consultant, buying a beanie baby that finally 
places a smile on Krycek's damaged face. Perhaps, it is that 
smile that ultimately reminds Mulder of where he is and 
whom he is visiting, and makes him question his actions.

He paces the room, too anxious to stay, too ashamed to leave, 
while Krycek's eyes patiently track his movements.

"Mulder, you're making me dizzy."

Guiltily, he stops and comes back to sit by the bed, reminds 
himself that he has come here to visit an ailing colleague, 
someone who sacrificed flesh and blood to see Samantha and 
him survive. All in vain. 

"How is Scully?" Krycek asks, displaying no interest in the 
subject.

"I haven't seen her since the funeral," Mulder replies and 
ignores the fleeting look of compassion he gets in return. He 
has spent the last few days in a peculiar state of denial and 
awareness, knowing with certainty that Samantha is gone, yet 
more than ever convinced of her presence. If he closes his 
eyes and extends his hand, he will feel her. He only needs to 
concentrate hard enough.

"I'm glad...it wasn't yours," Krycek whispers wistfully. "How 
lucky you are."

"To have survived?"

"To have had such a sister."

Mulder reaches out to touch the other man's hand and stops 
himself halfway. "I've heard a fairy tale," he starts softly. 
"Once upon a time, there lived a man who met someone he 
thought was a friend. A partner, even." He leans back in the 
chair and closes his eyes, remembering. "Days later, he was 
beginning to trust this partner. Weeks later, he hoped that he 
might give a rest to his justifiable paranoia. But then 
something happened, this friend turned into an enemy...and 
the man realized that he should have never entertained such 
silly notions as friendship and trust. So, even though the 
enemy later had almost sacrificed his life for this man, it 
wasn't enough. And it could never be enough."

Krycek receives the blow with eyes open wide and doesn't 
respond for a long time. His fingers rake through the brown 
fur of the toy. "I used to have a white pet rat when I was 
little," he recounts absently. "This one is different."

"How?" Mulder asks.

"The real one had sharp teeth. It would sink them into each 
little piece of bread I fed it. This one can't bite," Krycek 
explains. "Like me."

"Well," Mulder stands up abruptly. The sudden weariness that 
pulls him downward is hard to fight, and he leans against the 
door with all his weight. "I've always been lousy with finding 
the right gifts."

He meets Dr. Phillips a few feet away from Krycek's door and 
loses his fingers in the tight handshake. "How are you?" he 
asks perfunctorily.

"Have you ever woken up," Phillips asks excitedly, "and 
thought that this day would change your life?"

Mulder finds himself smiling, so infectious is this enthusiasm. 
"I certainly hoped for it every morning."

"I'm being let go," the doctor shares. He looks around the 
sanitized hospital hall with the eyes of a reborn man, one who 
suddenly sees all that life has to offer him. "I might even apply 
for a job here."

"Congratulations, then."

The response is measured and dispassionate, but Phillips 
doesn't take notice of it. "Today is the last day of my work at 
Wiekamp, just settling a few formalities here and there," he 
continues before he realizes that Mulder is gone. Briefly 
unsettled, he walks several steps to the room of the man he 
came to visit, glad to have a potentially receptive audience to 
hear of his happy news.

The words freeze on his lips when he sees tears tracing uneven 
tracks down the patient's face, and the small toy mouse who 
watches them with inanimate interest.


LIV. RAKE

Angela McCarthy watches the woman out of the corner of her 
vision. She has other inmates to supervise, and this is the one 
least likely to escape. Blood still seeps through the gauze 
covering her eyes, drying in dark patches before Angela can 
call the warden, or the doctor, to come and replace the 
bandages. She knows the stitches would not keep breaking if 
the prisoner left them alone, but it does no good to remind the 
woman of this - she seems as deaf as she is blind.

She knows the woman's name, but seldom uses it. The sound 
of it drives the prisoner into a fit of rage. She throws herself 
against the walls of her cell and her fingers rake the thin layer 
of paint, she howls in misery and pulls at her black hair, now 
beginning to show blond at the roots. Angela pitied her, at the 
beginning. Now she can only feel fear.

The guard has heard only fragments of the story that has 
brought the woman to this place. She knows that
Marita Covarrubias, once Special Representative to the 
Secretary General of the United Nations, is facing a charge of 
first-degree murder in the death of another woman. She knows 
that the victim was the younger sister of a federal agent. She 
knows that after firing the fatal shot, the woman plucked out 
her own eyes, then allowed herself to be quietly led away.

She glances through the tiny window, the only source of light 
in the maximum-security cell. Marita is unusually quiet, 
awake, tracing her hands over the walls. Still unaccustomed to 
life without vision, she stumbles as she walks, a frail, thin 
shadow in a darkened room. Satisfied, Angela moves on to the 
next cell, trying to forget the image that has burned itself into 
her mind.

It is a Greek tragedy, only she cannot remember which one. 
The woman is Oedipus, blindness penance for her crimes, 
stumbling off into the mountains to wander for all eternity - or 
is she Antigone, burning and resilient until the end? 
Regardless of the name, Angela has already released her to 
fate. Aware of her own place at the margins of this story, she 
knows that there is nothing she can do to change the way the 
drama will play itself out.

She is surprised to hear the woman speak. In the days that she 
has been here, Marita has not uttered a single coherent word. 
Now she is whispering as she clutches the wall, murmuring 
names in her reed-thin voice.

"Jason..."

"Alex..."

"Samantha..."

Intrigued, Angela draws closer, her eye to the window. Marita 
continues her intonations, oblivious to her silent observer. 
Tears of red drip across her cheeks below the white bandages. 
She drapes herself over the single bed in the corner of the 
room, streaks of blood across the pillowcase.

The guard shakes her head. Prison is the wrong place for such 
a wretched creature. She should relinquish
Marita to a mental institution, or, as she decides is more 
appropriate, the mountains of Thebes. But she has no say in 
the matter, and she continues her walk down the long corridor.

Her steps are punctuated by each whisper. The litany of names 
continues, until the last plea, "Forgive me..."

Angela hears the snap before the meaning sinks in - she spins 
on her heels and runs to the door, the keys twisting in the lock 
a moment too late as she enters to see the thin body dangling 
from the ceiling, the bloodstained sheets knotted around her 
neck. Standing on the bed, Angela can barely reach to untie 
her, but perseverance rewards, and she feels the limp form 
collapse against her.

Before the prison guard can look into the woman's pale face, 
she already knows that she has acted too late. Marita's 
breathing is shallow, each inhale seemingly half of the last. 
Angela yells out for help, then leans close as she sees the 
bloodless lips form a semblance of words.

"We...are all...happy now..." Marita Covarrubias says.

"Yes," Angela replies, "I suppose we are."

When, moments later, Marita takes her final breath, there is no 
need to even close her eyes.

End Part 14/15


The Fire Eaters
By Anna Otto and Ashlea Ensro
Email: annaotto1@aol.com and morleyphile@yahoo.com

Part 15/15

LV. LEAF

The smoker spends much of his time looking out the window 
of his room. Outside, summer dresses the hospital grounds 
into a bright outfit, full of reds and yellows of well-groomed 
flowers, punctuated by juicy greens of leaves. Soon, when he 
can walk without help, he will take a trip downstairs, to be 
closer to this splendor. If this is what retirement is like, he 
might grow to like it.

He tears his eyes away from the glass for long enough to 
glance at his visitor. "What did you say?"

"I said," Mulder repeats with barely restrained impatience, 
"that I quit."

"Such poor manners," the smoker admonishes. "Perhaps you 
should first ask after my health?"

Mulder searches his face inquisitively and chuckles. "You 
don't think we've become friends now, do you?"

He feels a pang of regret. Like a resourceful hunter, he put 
many a trap in the way of this exotic bird, and now he has to 
see it fly away again. Perhaps, this is the only way it can be: 
Mulder will never break, will always find a way out of any 
cage in which he might find himself. And now... now that the 
smoker discovers his life's purpose taken away, he will bear 
this burden alone.

"You fulfilled the terms of our contract, and I'm grateful," he 
says, cautiously indifferent. "I'm sure Assistant Director 
Skinner will be delighted to restore your status at the FBI."

His visitor grants him a surprised look, not having expected 
this to be easy, and the smoker suppresses a smile. "We're 
enemies again, you needn't fulfill any obligations here."

Mulder leans against the wall. "Thank you." His voice is low. 
"For trying to save Samantha...and for giving me a chance to 
fight instead of hiding."

The smoker nods and wonders if the younger man realizes 
how they both have changed. They may be mortal enemies 
again, but instead of trading gunshots, they are now 
exchanging gratitude. "You're welcome," he says simply.

There is a determined knock on the door, and he calls out, 
"Come in." Somehow, he is not surprised to see Dana Scully, 
whose calm blue eyes settle warily first on his face, then on 
Mulder's. 

"I came to ask you to let him go," she says softly. "But 
something tells me I'm not the first one."

"No," the smoker closes his eyes for a moment, immeasurably 
tired. "You're third. Agent Mulder is blessed with people 
looking out for his best interest."

They take each other's hands, and he can see the remnants of 
desperation in the gesture. In the wake of their respective 
resurrections, he isn't surprised at the over-protectiveness and 
need. Silently, he wishes them many years of successful 
partnership, and doubts right away that his wish will come 
true. Neither of them is made for a quiet life. Neither of them 
is destined to die of old age. 

And Samantha is no longer alive to fix the fatal accidents.

In a way, the smoker supposes, she was never meant to come 
back, never meant to exist in this world. Though he couldn't 
find the connection with the young woman, didn't know 
where to even begin, he'd always felt that she was not one of 
them. Judging by the resignation he notices in both Mulder 
and Scully, they realize it as well. Then why can't he force 
himself to say goodbye?

"Thank you," Scully reiterates and shares a glance with 
Mulder. Together, they walk out the door, without backward 
glances, without extra words. 

The smoker watches them stroll through the yard, two figures 
clad in gray among the bright green leaves. Tomorrow, he 
thinks before drifting off to sleep. Tomorrow he will tread the 
same path.


LVI. WEED

Scully accepts the manila folder from Skinner and skims 
quickly over the facts of the new case, then passes it to 
Mulder. There is a comfort in this ritual, in its ageless 
familiarity. The storm swept through their lives, but the X-
Files department is still open, they still work together, and 
their old boss still lectures them on proper conduct in the same 
fifth-floor office. The only reminders of recent upheaval are in 
their memories, in the occasional phone call tinged in 
unfounded anxiety. 

She watches Skinner stand up and walk a few feet toward a 
wall cabinet. Opening it abruptly, he plucks the miniature 
digital camera out of its bowels, like a weed from a well-
tended greenhouse, drops it on the floor and smashes it with a 
shoe for good measure. Satisfied, he listens to the glass and 
metal moan in mortal agony. And then, as if it's a most normal 
occurrence, he returns to the table and postulates, "That will 
be all, Agents."

The customary surly frown on his face is replaced by a faint 
smile, and Scully returns it involuntarily, the old trust 
reaffirmed.

Perhaps, some things do change.

Back in the basement, Mulder opens up the blinds on the high-
placed windows and lets in a bit of sunlight. Its rays explore 
the small room tentatively, and Scully closes her eyes in 
remembrance of another place, another time, that seems so 
close and yet can only be reached in her dreams. The garden, 
once destroyed, is now blossoming anew under the nurturing 
rays of sun and the occasional dash of rain. The woman, once 
dead, is alive and well in this sanctuary.

"I dreamed of Samantha again."

Scully starts at Mulder's words. "What did you see?"

"A beautiful place," he answers. "A garden full of colors, 
alight under the warm sun. She waited for me at the shore of 
the creek..." he smiles wistfully at the recollection. "Human 
imagination is boundless, Scully."

She listens transfixed, previously forgotten details suddenly 
alive in her mind. "Maybe it's not your imagination."

Mulder turns around, curious. "What do you mean?"

"The water in the creek was crystal clear," Scully recounts, 
"and there was a crooked pine tree right next to its origin. It 
was burnt by fire, but it survived somehow. Survived to 
blossom again."

"It's a nice dream," Mulder answers after a pause, and his 
voice cracks. 

"Yes," she agrees softly. "I wish I had had more time to get to 
know your sister."

Her partner turns back to the sun, his features composed in 
calm acceptance. For the first time, he feels no guilt when he 
recalls Samantha. "It seems like a good ending to the story," 
he whispers.

"Mulder," Scully asks tentatively, unwilling to bring up any 
unpleasantness, "do you really believe that the Consortium is 
no longer a threat? Are you certain of your safety?"

"After all I've seen? As certain as I can be," he replies 
assuredly. "Most of them are dead, the rest know that 
colonization will not happen. There are no causes for 
concern."

"I met Dr. Phillips the other day."

"And?" Mulder prods her.

"I went up to him, to ask how he was doing in the wake of his 
new life," she says emotionlessly. "And he didn't recognize 
me."

They exchange an unsettled glance and fall silent, each 
unwilling to articulate the only explanation to this occurrence. 

"It will end one day," Mulder vows. "We will put a stop to 
them one way or another."

Despite Skinner's bravado, despite any recent victories, 
despite the smoker's complacency, Scully knows that they still 
face the old enemies, that the battle will be repeated again and 
again, until one side finally gives. And she is aware that with 
her answer, she promises nothing less than her very life. "We 
will."


LVII. QUILT

In memory there is peace, fulfillment.

Samantha Mulder moves through the ghost-memory of the 
house where she grew up, reacquainting herself with the walls, 
with the doors. She can remember another past for this place, 
one of screaming, of broken glass, of fear, but it seems like a 
separate reality, a nightmare from which she has now 
awakened.

This is her room, with the quilt her mother made for her when 
she was born and her collection of teddy bears aligned on the 
dresser. This is the vase full of blue flowers that she picked 
yesterday.
 
Down the stairs, to the kitchen where her mother smiles at her, 
where Fox looks up from the book he is reading at the table to 
ask her if she would like to go outside. Eagerly, Samantha 
looks to her mother for permission, then follows her brother 
out into the bright afternoon sun.

Here is the garden they planted last year. Her old pair of jeans 
still has grass stains, but the result was well worth it, a 
multitude of flowers against the green. They seem to shimmer 
for miles in her eight-year-old eyes. Here is the tire swing that 
her father made for Fox. She has inherited it - he is getting too 
old for swings, though he offers to push her.
 
One day, she will count the number of colors in the garden, 
give names to each flower. One day she will go down to the 
creek with Fox, climb the oak tree and gaze into the water and 
the infinite worlds reflected in its ripples. But today the sun is 
still high, and the day lasts an eternity.

So she climbs on the swing, the rubber squeaking as she sits. 
She feels her brother pull her back, then push her forward and 
she pumps her legs to go higher.

Higher.

He seems very tiny, standing on the surface of the earth amid 
its quilt of colors, as she soars above him. He waves at her, his 
face lights up as she comes near, falls a little as she rises. She 
wonders if he understands. She hopes that some day, he will.

Higher.
 
She cannot decide which of the two existences she prefers - 
the spectrum of the garden, or the endless blue of the sky. 
Even when she closes her eyes to feel the wind against her 
face, they alternate before her, blue and green, falling and 
rising. She wants to stay here forever, in between the two. 

And even now, closing her eyes seems a waste, though she has 
all the time in the world. In the clouds are all the faces of those 
she has left behind, a blissful gallery of remembrance. 
Samantha smiles back at them.

She has the sense that they are all expecting her. She pumps 
harder, higher, then releases her grip on the swing's chains. A 
child's laughter rings in her ears and she echoes it. And then 
she is falling toward the sky, to its edge where it meets with 
the ocean, stretching out her arms to embrace all the beauty 
that waits for her.

Weightless, she feels herself melt inside the rich palette of 
colors.

This is only the first flight.


"And when the day arrives
I'll become the sky
And I'll become the sea

And the sea will come to kiss me
For I'm going 
Home

Nothing can stop me now"

	~Nine Inch Nails, "La Mer"~

The End


Authors' Notes

From both of us: many thanks to DJ for editing and going 
alone with the unusual format, Leigh and Rachel for beta-
reading and more encouragement than we probably deserved, 
Miss Elise for information on poisons, Mary Ruth Keller for 
information on the D.C. geography which we blissfully 
ignored, LuvMulder for medical information (all mistakes are 
ours), many others for information on the Bible. This is one 
story that took work of many people, and we're grateful to 
everyone who contributed.

A long time ago, somewhere around chapter 40, to counteract 
the effects of angst and summer heat, we wrote something 
rather sick but funny which we titled "Revenge of the Muse." 
Yes, the fine tradition of parodies on our own stories still 
holds true and it will be posted soon.

From Anna: I owe all the pleasure of having completed this 
adventure, as usual, to my co-author. Every little chapter was a 
welcome challenge, and every plot twist was a surprise. My 
apologies for leaving Krycek with nothing more than a silly 
beanie baby, but believe me when I say that I regret it more 
than anyone else might. 

To paraphrase Mulder, this seems like a good ending to the 
story and to our partnership in XF fandom, and I am looking 
forward to its continuation outside of it. Yes, not counting the 
parody, this is indeed the last story. This has been a blast. I'm 
sure that, down the road, I will want to pick up the pen and 
write about my beloved XF characters once again, just 
because old habits die hard. But I hope I will learn to love my 
original creations just as much, and possibly I might overcome 
those impulses.

I thank everyone who ever wrote me and kindly let me know 
that they enjoyed my writing. I thank and revere every author 
whose stories I loved. To all of my other co-writers - you 
know how I feel, ladies, and we're not finished yet <g>. I will 
keep reading long past the show winds up to a finish. 

Love always,
Anna.

From Ashlea: You know, all the cool kids are doing it, so I 
guess I better join them. <G> It's been going on two years 
since my first foray into the wild and wonderful world of 
fanfic, and what an adventure it's been. And so now I bid 
adieu with a little tear in my eye - I can only hope that the 
world of original fiction will treat me so well.

But back to the story. Awhile ago I came across a wonderful 
book called "In The Language of Love", by Diane 
Schoemperlen. It was a novel based on the 100 stimulus words 
used in the 1910 Standard Word Association Test. Each 
chapter was centered around one of the words, and it somehow 
all came together to form the story of the main character's life. 
So, of course, Anna and I decided to try it too.
 
So, with the exception of the prologue, all of the chapter titles 
are from a word association test found on the Althabasca 
University website, in order. All of the chapters are inspired 
by the words. I would strongly encourage anyone who likes 
this sort of thing to read Schoemperlen's novel, which is 
absolutely incredible.

Those who despise sappiness would be well advised to skip 
this next part.

First and foremost my thanks go out to Anna, who is the best 
co-writer a lazy slob like me could hope for. Not only has she 
put up with my madness and held the whip while I 
procrastinated on a number of occasions, but she somehow 
always manages to come up with brilliant and inspired words 
that never fail to amaze me. Although the beanie baby thing 
was just cruel and heartless. :) 

Hugs and fishes to the fanfic community. Keep telling great 
stories. You have been truly wonderful.

Goodbye, and thank you,

Ashlea.