Invisible
By Medusa

Written for the Church of X Fanfic Challenge
September / October 2000
-Winner of the Silver Grail (2nd place)

Note from the Author: I tried, I mean *really* tried to make this a light-hearted story. I usually write only angst or MT, so I hope there is a little humor to be found here. All errors are my own, this is not beta read.

Spoilers: None
Keywords: Angst, minor MT
Rating: PG13 for occasional bad language.
Archive - Church of X only please. I'll distribute anywhere else.

Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I don't own any of the XF characters. All rights belong to 1013 and FOX, and I do not intend to infringe on those rights. This is written for fun, not profit.

Warning: I don't know science from shit - so remember this is a work of *fiction* and I claim creative license, or insanity - whichever works!

Dedication: To David, who really *is* going to be invisible for most of season 8. Enjoy your time off and go make a great movie.

Feedback: Always welcome, even if you hate it. Send to medusafox@bigpond.com

******************

"Mulder!" Scully yelled above the growl of thunder.

She'd lost sight of him, his longer legs and greater speed leaving her behind in their pursuit of one Roger Hackett, suspect du jour. The last she'd seen of Mulder was as he'd disappeared into the abandoned factory while she was still trying to work out how to scale the 8-foot high chain link fence. She silently cursed her height disadvantage, and if she hadn't been so worried about Mulder going in after Hackett alone, she would have admired the pure grace with which Mulder had flown over the fence without seeming to even break stride.

She was making her way around to the gate when Agents Royce and Ryan came up behind her.

"Mulder's gone in after Hackett, they're inside the warehouse."

Royce, Ryan and Scully squeezed themselves through the forced gate and ran in the direction of the building. Thunder and lightening crashed around them as the storm gathered force, the rain pelting down relentlessly. They were all soaked to the bone and Scully was unsure if the chattering of her teeth was purely from being cold and wet or in genuine terror for her partner's safety.

***

Mulder skidded to a halt just outside the door that he'd seen Hackett disappear into. Rain trickled off his rain-slicked hair, down inside his collar and made him shiver. He glanced back and could barely make out Scully's outline when the lightening illuminated the area. She was almost at the fence with Royce and Ryan not far behind. He knew he should wait, but then Hackett might find a back way out and they'd lose him.

Without another thought Mulder pulled the door open and slipped through, automatically flattening himself against the wall and waiting until his eyes adjusted to the dim interior. He listened until he could tune out the pounding of his own heart and make out the direction of the footfalls echoing in the cavernous building.

As silently as possible, Mulder made his way from across the open space - crouched low and weapon at the ready. Finally he came upon a stairway that led up to what looked like an electrical plant-room on a mezzanine level. He glanced back toward the doorway he'd come in through, willing Scully and the other agents to make their appearance and back him up.

He heard the scuffle of footsteps above him and it sounded like Hackett had found an exit and was trying to prise it open. Crap. That meant he had no choice but to go up after Hackett alone. Mulder drew a deep breath and crept up the metal stairway. He used the cover of the abandoned machinery plant to cover his approach, and when he judged he was close enough, he stepped out and…

"Federal Agent! I'm armed. Turn around with your hands in the air!"

Hackett obeyed slowly. Too slowly.

Then Mulder saw the crowbar in Hackett's hands. "Drop your weapon."

Hackett looked down at the crowbar as if unsure where it had come from.

Time seemed to slow to freeze-frame speed.

Mulder blinked…

Hackett launched himself at Mulder…

Mulder fired his weapon point blank hitting Hackett in the chest, but the momentum of Hackett's body didn't stop.

***

Scully and the other agents were just inside the warehouse door when they heard the rapport of gunfire from the open upper level. They watched in horrified fascination as Hackett's body crashed into Mulder, knocking him backwards into the framework of the old electrical plant at the precise moment that a bolt of lightening struck the warehouse.

The super-charge lit everything up momentarily, sending an impressive display of sparks in all directions over and through the equipment - and the agent caught within its confines. Seconds felt like minutes while the flash continued.

Mulder's scream shocked Scully into action and she took off in the direction of the stairway, yelling at Ryan to call paramedics. Scully ran, stumbling in the aftermath of the brightness that left her almost blind. Royce grabbed her and pulled her backward just as she was about to reach out for the stairs.

"What the hell are you doing?" She yelled at the young agent. "Mulder's hurt, I have to get to him."

"First rule of electric shock, Agent Scully, check to see if there is still a current." Royce picked up a chunk of rotted wood from the floor and poked it at the stairway. Getting no reaction he gingerly touched the back of his hand to the railing. "Okay, it's safe."

Scully glared at him for wasting precious seconds and ran up to where Mulder lay sprawled, half in and half out of the machinery with Hackett on top of him. Scully quickly checked for a pulse on Hackett.

"He's dead. Help me get him off Mulder."

They dragged the body out of the way and Scully carefully climbed as far in to the narrow space as she could and felt for signs of life in her partner. She felt a weak, fluttering, erratic pulse, but…

"Oh God, he's not breathing. Let's get him out of there."

Royce hesitated. "You're not supposed to move…"

"Goddammit Royce, stop quoting me the fucking first aid manual. I'm a doctor and Mulder is not breathing. If we don't move him NOW he's going to die."

Scully put her full weight into trying to drag Mulder out into the clear. After a second Royce helped and Mulder was quickly laid out flat on the floor. Scully quickly checked his airway and felt the carotid pulse again. It was weaker now, faltering.

"I hope to God your first aid experience extends to more than reading the manual, Royce. I need your help with CPR." Scully tipped Mulder's head back and started mouth to mouth, leaving Royce to begin the chest compressions.

A few minutes later, Royce stopped. "It's no good."

Scully snarled at him. "Keep going. We don't stop until *I* say it's no good." So they kept going, with Scully saying a silent prayer of thanks to God when the sound of sirens drew close.

*******************

Scully sat beside Mulder's bed in the dimly lit ICU cubicle. The heart monitor beeped in steady rhythm and was music to Scully's ears.

The paramedics had had to shock Mulder four times to get his heart beating in anything like a normal rhythm and he'd arrested again in the ER. But now, seven hours later, he was breathing on his own and in a stable sinus rhythm. He'd escaped with minor burns and the doctor was confident there would be no lingering physical or mental impairment, thanks to the continuous CPR that Scully and Royce had administered, but they wouldn't know for sure until Mulder regained consciousness.

The heart monitor picked up in tempo - the first sign that he was waking up and starting to fight the tube still in his throat. It brought the ICU resident running. Scully gripped Mulder's hand and tried to calm as he struggled up into wakefulness.

"It's all right, Mulder. You're going to be fine. I'm right here. There's a tube in your throat that's been helping you breathe, just relax… relax and don't fight it. Breathe in… and out… in… and out…"

The doctor checked the monitors as Scully kept up the mantra and lightly stroked his face. He smiled confirming that Mulder was indeed waking up and not going into arrest again.

Mulder's eyes slowly opened and Scully put herself into his line of sight. "Hi there."

She saw the panic in the hazy depths of Mulder's beautiful hazel eyes. She could see he was willing himself not to gag on the tube, was forcing himself to relax. She held tightly on to his hand as it reflexively reached up toward his throat.

"It's okay. You're breathing on your own with just a little extra oxygen. The doctor here says the tube can come out in a little while, as soon as he's sure you won't stop breathing again."

Mulder's eyes tracked to the other side of the bed, seeing the doctor for the first time.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr Mulder. Your partner is correct, you keep on improving at the rate you have been and in just a few more hours we'll get rid of that tube. I just want to run a few neuro checks and then I'll let you rest."

The doctor checked Mulder's eyes, reflexes and responses as far as he was able, explaining that he'd do the verbal orientation tests when Mulder was free of the respirator. Then he injected a sedative into Mulder's IV, over Mulder's weak protest, then left. As he felt himself being tugged back into sleep, Mulder's eyes asked Scully a hundred questions.

"Sleep, Mulder. We'll talk about it when you're a little stronger."

*******************

Twenty-four hours after Mulder had been admitted to the ICU, he was not only in a normal room but champing at the bit to go home.

"I feel fine," he lied, rasping with a throat still raw, chest aching and head pounding.

"Mulder, you nearly died yesterday. Dammit, you *did* die. Several times. You need to rest and let your body recover. Don't you realize just how lucky you are to come out of this without any serious or permanent injury?" The anger and frustration that Scully had felt at nearly losing him bubbled freely to the surface now that he was on the road to recovery.

He did realize how lucky he was, really. After the dreaded tubes and monitors had been taken away and he'd been moved into a regular room, Scully had told him everything that had happened. He could remember Hackett coming at him and his weapon going off, and then… nothing until waking up in the ICU. Truth to tell, he was a little disappointed that he hadn't had one of those "near-death" experiences that so many others told of - the white light at the end of the tunnel, loved ones there to tell him to go back or move on, the out-of-body experience.

When he told Scully how let down he felt and she almost went ballistic and screamed at him not to try to turn this into an X-File.

He apologized sheepishly, blaming his mood on being confined to bed. Scully told him that she'd had enough of his "mood" for now and would be back in the morning. She was bidding him good night as the nurse came in with a sleeping pill. Mulder didn't want it but agreed to take it when Scully bullied him into it, reminding him that adequate rest (meaning sleep) was the only thing that was going to get him released anytime soon.

The room was dark and quiet, and Mulder felt himself drifting into sleep when a strange sensation hit him. His skin felt all tingly, he felt disoriented, his vision began to swim and the room wavered like heat haze. Mulder panicked momentarily and reached for the call button, stopping himself only when the thought that it would delay his release from the hospital if he complained of feeling - odd. And that's what it was. He didn't feel sick, just "off". The sensation dissipated in the time it took him to argue with himself over whether to call a nurse or not, so he settled down again and let the sleeping pill do its work. His last thought of the night was that it was probably the damn pill that had caused the weird feeling anyway.

**********************

Scully arrived the next morning as he was picking at the slop that passed as breakfast. She had taken pity on him and brought Starbucks coffee and a bagel. It was a sign that she'd forgiven him for his mood the night before, although Mulder would have been hard pressed to believe that he needed forgiving.

After finishing the coffee and bagel Mulder excused himself to use the bathroom. Scully started talking to him through the closed door, telling him that she had a meeting with Skinner in an hour and couldn't stay long. Mulder was stripping to get into the shower when he got that tingly feeling again. It kept on until it felt like his skin was crawling. He scratched, looking down at his stomach and shrieked.

"Mulder?! Mulder are you all right?" Scully demanded from the other side of the door, rattling the handle.

"I... I'm fine, Scully." His voice shook, giving away the lie.

"Mulder, open this door."

Mulder was now standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at his face - as it faded out in front of his eyes. He gasped loudly.

"Goddammit, Mulder. If you don't open this door now, I'm calling the nurse to open it for me."

A click signaled the disengagement of the lock and Scully threw the door open, half expecting to find Mulder passed out on the floor or in some other state of distress. Instead she found… nothing. The windowless room was empty except for Mulder's hospital gown on the floor. Where the hell had Mulder gone?

"Mulder?"

"Right here." His voice was small, scared.

Scully jumped at the voice and whirled around to look for its owner.

"Mulder, where are you?"

"Here, on the floor behind you."

Scully looked. And looked. She couldn't see him anywhere. She took a step in the direction of where the voice had come from.

"Ow!"

Scully jumped back in amazement.

"Mulder? If this is a joke, it's not funny."

"I'm not laughing, Scully. I'm scared. What the hell has happened to me? I'm… I'm… invisible!"

Scully carefully felt her way forward until she touched goose-fleshed skin - Mulder's arm by the feel of it. She drew back sharply. "Oh God!" Gingerly she probed the air again until she made contact with skin again. She felt up the arm until she found his shoulder, neck and then face. "Mulder?"

"Scully… help me!"

"I… I don't know what to do, Mulder."

A voice floated in from the other room, "Is everything all right in there?" The nurse!

"Ummm… Wait here, Mulder. We can't let her see you like this." Scully got up and went to the door.

"Very funny, Scully." Mulder deadpanned.

She winced. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that how it sounded." She slipped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Mulder could hear them talking and Scully reassuring the nurse that all was well, he was just taking a shower. He heard the nurse leave, saying she'd be back a little later to check on him. The door opened again and Scully came back.

"Oh!"

"What?" Mulder demanded.

"You're, um, coming back."

Mulder looked down at himself and saw that he was indeed 'coming back', and that he was naked. He scrunched down and huddled into the corner as far as he could get, blushing furiously. Scully handed him a towel and averted her gaze while he stood up and covered himself.

Mulder threw the hospital gown back on and stalked back to his bed. He climbed in and pulled the blankets up to his chin, shivering violently.

"Are you all right, Mulder?" Scully felt his forehead for signs of fever, found him a little warm and concluded that he was probably in shock.

"D-did I look all-all right to you? I was…"

"Invisible. Yeah, I noticed."

*******************

Scully decided that they had to find out why Mulder had turned invisible. When he'd calmed down enough to talk about it rationally, she discovered that he'd had the 'tingly' feeling just before it happened, and that he'd felt tingly last night not long after she'd left. Mulder wasn't sure if he'd turned invisible then, since he hadn't been able to see in the dark and hadn't really thought to look. That meant that it was possible that he *had* become invisible, if only for a short period, and of course, that he could become invisible again.

One thing was for sure, it wouldn't be in Mulder's best interest to stay in the hospital if did happen again, and they certainly couldn't look for the cause here either. Scully put in a call to Mulder's doctor and insisted that he be discharged, which the doctor did but noted the discharge as AMA.

Scully took Mulder and fled to the Lone Gunmen's hidey hole.

******************

As they pulled up and parked the car, Scully's cellphone rang.

"Scully." Mulder saw her face scrunch up and she mouthed 'Shit'. "Ahh, yes Sir… I know we had a meeting, Sir… Um, no, Sir… Agent Mulder? He's fine, Sir… He's not? I mean, he's not, he's with me… Well, it's kind of hard to explain… I'm sorry about our meeting, Sir, I'm afraid I'll have to reschedule… I know that puts others at an inconvenience and I apologize, but it's really unavoidable… Yes, Sir, I'll call you as soon as I can… Thank you, Sir."

Scully hit the off button and blew out a breath.

"Skinner?" Mulder asked unnecessarily.

"Yeah. Fuck, with all this I forgot about our meeting."

"He'll get over it. Let's go see the guys, maybe they can help get a handle on this."

They went through the usual rigmarole to get into the Gunmen's den and Frohike made a fuss over Mulder, asking him if he was okay after being hit by lightening. Langly quoted the statistics of lightening strikes, including the mortality rate. Byers offered coffee.

"Thanks, Byers, coffee would be great. Frohike I'm fine… well, almost fine. And Langly, what are the statistics for people turning invisible after being hit by lightening?"

The guys looked at Mulder in shock for a moment and then burst out laughing.

"Man, you had us there for a moment, Mulder." Langly chortled. Frohike was laughing so hard, he nearly choked and Byers was trying hard to avoid spilling the hot coffee as he tried to pour it.

Only Mulder and Scully remained straight-faced, although Scully was finding it an effort not to smile. Mulder, however, was nearly beside himself.

"Guys, I'm not joking."

Frohike saw the distress on Mulder's face and pulled himself together. "You're serious?"

Mulder dropped his head and slowly nodded. "I think it's only happened once, maybe twice. I gotta find out why it's happening and how to stop it." He explained what had happened in the bathroom.

"What did the hospital say?" Byers asked.

"It's not something that we thought they'd be able to help with." Scully answered.

Mulder sipped the coffee that Byers had handed him and sank into one of the nearby chairs.

"No, guess not."

"How long did it last?" Langly asked. "Being invisible, I mean."

"I don't know, a few minutes maybe."

"And you said you felt 'tingly' just beforehand?" from Frohike.

"Yeah, it felt like my skin was crawling." Mulder shivered at the memory of the sensation.

The guys said they'd find out what they could. Langly went to one of the computer terminals and started a search for any related material in their database, while Frohike went on-line.

Half an hour later, all five of them were crowded around the monitor, reading through all the search results.

"Oh fuck." Mulder staggered back and sat down.

"Mulder? What's wrong?"

Mulder's face was panic-stricken. "It's happening again."

Langly grabbed the video camera and pointed it at Mulder.

"Turn it off, Langly." Mulder snarled as he hugged his arms tightly around himself.

"I'm recording the process for research purposes, Mulder. You can have the tape afterwards. No copies, I swear."

"Mulder, are you in any pain?" Trust Scully to worry about the medical side of things.

He shook his head, "It just feels… weird."

Scully reached for his wrist to take his pulse, but dropped it as if she'd been stung. "Ow."

"What?"

"It's all right, I just got a shock off you, like static." She bravely grasped his wrist again and took his pulse, this time no static.

Scully shook her left wrist as she watched the seconds hand on her watch stop its sweep and flicker back and forth. When she let go of Mulder it continued its usual path.

"That's weird…" She looked up at Mulder's face, or rather where his face had previously been visible and where it now slowly became more transparent until it vanished.

"Oh man, that is awesome." Langly breathed. Frohike was speechless, and Byers managed an "Oh, my."

A frustrated growl issued from Mulder and they all watched as his apparently empty clothing got up off the chair and began pacing. As Mulder got close to the computer the screen went haywire.

"Whoa, dude. I think you'd better stay away from the electronics." Frohike pulled Mulder away from the terminal and the read out settled back down again.

Byers rummaged through a shelf full of 'gizmos' and came up with a device that looked like a radiation detector. He pointed it directly at Mulder and took various readings, scribbling down the results in between flipping settings.

"How are you feeling, Mulder?" Scully pushed him back into the chair again so she could continue taking his pulse and try to gauge if his temperature or other vitals had changed.

"Strange. Kinda light-headed. A little queasy. And hyper. I can't sit still." His clothing leapt up again and resumed pacing.

Scully and the guys felt helpless as Mulder paced. They watched the sleeves of Mulder's sweater move up towards his face should be and then heard a growl of frustration,

"Mulder, are you all right?" Scully was getting really worried.

"WHY ME???" Mulder yelled. "Why is this happening to me?"

Byers cleared his throat. "I'd say, from the amount of electromagnetic energy you're giving off, that the neurons and electrons in your body were somehow supercharged by the lightening. This is somehow making you turn invisible. I've never heard of it happening before, and I know it sounds fantastic, but the theory fits."

For the next hour and a half the guys continued to debate theories and Scully interjected with medical explanations, they talked among themselves often referring to Mulder as if he were somewhere else, which added to Mulder's frustration.

"Goddammit - I may be invisible, but I'm still fucking here!" he growled. "Don't talk about me, talk *to* me."

Muttered apologies were given.

Mulder sighed, "I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have blown up. I'm just… I dunno…"

"I know this is hard on you, Mulder," Scully tried to soothe him. "We'll figure it out… somehow."

"Hey, he's re-appearing," Frohike happily announced.

As soon as Mulder became completely visible again, Scully noticed how pale he looked. He was shaking and sweating, and grabbed hold of her to keep from falling. Byers and Frohike quickly moved in and propelled Mulder in the direction of the cot in the corner.

"You'd better lie down, Mulder," Scully ordered, and the fact that he didn't complain told her just how bad he was feeling. She quickly checked him over and, apart from showing symptoms of traumatic shock, he seemed unhurt. Still, "I don't know that you shouldn't be back in the hospital, Mulder."

"And what are they going to do for me there?" Mulder asked tersely. "I'm all right, Scully. I'm just really tired. Let me just rest a minute." He was already drifting.

"I'll be right here keeping an eye on you, partner. You sleep."

The rhythmic deep breathing told her that he was sound asleep. She turned to the Gunmen. "Okay, guys, let's get to work on this."

*****************

Five hours later, numerous phone calls having been made and favors collected, Scully and the guys sat talking in hushed voices, comparing notes and theories.

The sounds of stirring on the cot told them that Mulder was waking. He sat up shakily and scrubbed his face with his hands.

"Oh man. I'm thirsty."

Frohike jumped to get him some water.

"How are you feeling?" Scully asked.

Mulder gratefully accepted the water, drained the glass and gestured for more before answering. "I've got the mother of all headaches and feel like I've been hit by a truck. Other than that, I'm fine. How long did I sleep?" He asked, looking at his watch and realized that it had stopped.

Frohike returned with more water and a pack of Tylenol. Mulder popped three of the tablets into his mouth and chugged down the water.

"So," he continued, "what have you come up with so far?"

"You've been asleep for a little over five hours and in that time we've actually come up with quite a lot." Byers answered.

"I timed that 'episode' and it lasted nearly two hours." Frohike supplied.

"It seems to take a lot out of you physically, are you sure you're all right?" Scully was worried, he still looked too pale.

"I'm okay. What else you got?"

"I contacted an electro-physicist that we know and emailed him the readouts from the spectrometer. He said that the amount of energy you were burning was enough to run a small generator. Probably explains why you got so tired."

"Great, so why is it happening? And how do we stop it?" Mulder stood shakily and shrugged Scully off when she moved to help him.

"The why is easy," Langly said, "you were inside a magnetron when the lightening hit. It has somehow supercharged your body. When the charge is activated, it accelerates the molecules to the point where they move so fast they can't be seen with the naked eye. Sounds science fiction I know, but it's theoretically possible."

"So what activates it? Why aren't I invisible all the time? And is it going to happen again?"

Frohike answered, "We don't exactly know what the catalyst is yet. I'm thinking that the reason you're not invisible all the time is that your body gets tired and the charge dissipates. When you've rebuilt your energy level it happens again. And I honestly don't know how long it will keep happening. It might wear off eventually, or we may need to find a way to discharge the energy."

Mulder didn't like the sound of that.

"What I'm worried about, Mulder, is whether your body can withstand many more of these... attacks. I'm scared that..." Scully couldn't finish the thought.

Mulder pulled her close and hugged her tight. "Hey, I'll be okay."

The sound of the doorbell broke the tension that had suddenly built in the room.

"That'll be dinner." Langly announced.

Mulder hadn't realized how hungry he was until they sat down to eat the pizza and pasta that had been delivered. As he practically inhaled half a giant family sized pizza and a full serving of fettuccine alfredo, they discussed all the information that Scully Byers, Langly and Frohike had accumulated during the day - while Mulder had slept. He was beginning to feel like he was just the entertainment.

When they'd finished eating, the guys explained an array of equipment that they'd set up in preparation for the next time it happened, convinced and maybe hopeful that there would be a next time. There were all sorts of monitors and sensors for measuring electromagnetic energy, and Scully had even been out at some point and brought in enough portable medical monitoring equipment to set up a small clinic in a third world. It was an impressive display.

Some of the items she put to immediate use, wanting to get a baseline reading, which Mulder endured. He didn't like it, and complaining didn't make any headway with Scully, so he accepted it with resigned detachment.

*************

It was close to 4am, well over 14 hours since the last invisibility experience. Mulder paced like a caged tiger. Scully was asleep on the cot, finally, after he'd insisted that she get some rest herself. The guys had taken a few hours break and were snoring in the other room. He felt wired, he needed to be doing something not just waiting around for the next tingle to announce that he was about to fade out again.

Mulder glanced at the bolted door, then back at his sleeping partner. He hesitated for a few minutes before muttering a "Sorry, Scully" under his breath and slipped the locks as silently as possible. The guys were going to kill him, but he couldn't relock the door from the outside. He crept out of the loft and into the night.

Mulder wasn't sure where he was going to go. He could go home and just try to put this whole business out of his head, carry on as if nothing had happened and hope to hell it didn't happen again. Instead, he found himself walking aimlessly through the streets of D.C. A light drizzle started but Mulder hardly seemed to notice.

By the time the sun came up he was soaked to the bone and suddenly realized he was in front of Skinner's apartment building. He debated about whether he should disturb his boss this early in the day, let alone what excuse he would give for being here in the first place. Then he felt it. The damned tingling. Shit.

Mulder looked around for a place to hide. Although it was too early for the street to be busy, there were a few people out walking or running and he didn't want to attract attention. He wasn't sure how people would react to seeing an empty set of clothes walking around. He heard a whirring sound - the apartment's security garage door was opening. Mulder slipped in under it as it closed behind the car that had just exited and hid in the shadows.

The creeping feeling in his skin continued to increase until Mulder found the courage to look down at his hands and confirmed that he was invisible again. He hoped that he could just hide out until the 'episode' passed.

An hour later he was still invisible and Mulder was getting seriously worried. Now what was he supposed to do? He had no idea. He needed someone's help, and that someone lived up on the 17th floor.

Mulder made his way over to the stairwell, which by now was emitting an intermittent but steady stream of residents going to their cars. There was no way he'd be able to walk unnoticed past everyone, unless…

No, he *couldn't*. The very thought horrified him, but it was the only way that he would get upstairs without being "seen". There was the risk that he'd reappear before he got to Skinner's apartment, but he was fresh out of other options. With a sigh he skinned out of his clothes, bundl