Besides, since he’d given her the news about the Van De Kamps, William had become a particularly touchy subject between them and, in the wake of Frohike’s visitation, he was feeling too emotionally fragile for a full-scale argument.

“The Consortium never managed to create a viable hybrid,” she continued, her own voice softening as though she too had decided it wisest to keep emotion out of their conversation. “The records we’ve recovered say all the children infected with Purity were still-born.”

“Or at least that’s what we’re meant to believe,” Mulder argued. “It’s more likely that someone sanitized the records before we turned up. Maybe the same person who sent us the disc in the first place. We’re being played, Scully.”

“There’s no evidence to support that theory. Their failure to create a living hybrid does explain why the labs were closed down,” Scully pointed out. 

“If it’s impossible to create an alien-human hybrid, what the hell am I, Scully?” Mulder demanded impatiently. “What is Gibson?”

“I don’t know why you and Gibson appear to have hybrid DNA. But there’s no evidence to support your theory that the Consortium were responsible for the anomalies in your genetic make-up and neither is there any evidence that they achieved it with any other subjects.”

“Which just goes to prove that the so-called evidence we’ve found in those laboratories is a crock of shit,” Mulder snarled, forgetting his determination to stay professionally detached. “God, Scully, it’s hard enough hitting my head against a brick wall at work every day, without doing the same every time we have a conversation.”

“I know,” she said, her voice softening again. “And I’m not necessarily saying you’re wrong. But my purpose on the X-files has always been to find scientific evidence to support or disprove your theories. I’m no use to you if I don’t do my job and the bottom line is the facts don’t support you. All the evidence we’ve uncovered confirms that the labs were exactly what the source said they were – a failed attempt to create hybrids for the sole purpose of developing a vaccine. There’s nothing to support your theory they were trying to create Supersoldiers.”

“So it’s just co-incidence that I put forward that theory today and Kersh took exactly that moment to pull me off the investigation and lend me out to the BSU?” Mulder drawled.

Scully was silent for a moment, then carefully asked, “What did Skinner say about it? I assume you did tell him.”

Mulder gave a huff of disgust. “He said that if I wanted the FBI’s support, I had to occasionally give something back. He didn’t see how profiling a serial killer could be considered a waste of my time, particularly since you’d told Kersh you couldn’t handle the workload you already had, let alone any more evidence I uncovered.”

“I’m sorry, Mulder. But, since I’m based at Quantico I couldn’t approach Skinner. My request for addition staffing had to go through Kersh’s office. To be blunt, if the cost of getting Johannsen is you doing a couple of days work for the BSU, it’s still a good trade. Even with Johannsen’s assistance, I’ve barely started processing the evidence we’ve already uncovered. I can’t see myself getting out of the lab this side of Christmas.”

“How’s Johannsen working out?”

“He’s green, but he’s good. He’s going to be a real help.” She paused, then added sadly. “He reminds me of Pendrell.”

Mulder couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he changed the subject. “The worst of it is that Kersh is effectively closing down the department for at least two days. Monica’s on leave, you’re stuck at the lab and, despite the fact he knows jack-shit about profiling, I’ve been ordered to take Doggett with me to New Orleans.”

“He told me.”

Mulder’s face twisted in a grimace, but he forced his tone to remain casual.

“Yeah, of course he did.”

***

Entering without knocking, Skinner took advantage of the Deputy Director’s averted face and allowed an expression of distaste to dance momentarily over his tired features before he cleared his throat noisily to announce his presence.

For an interminable moment Kersh continued to ignore him, his attention seemingly riveted on the window through which the horizon was beginning to lighten with the first faint hint of dawn. 

Without turning, Kersh began to speak in a wry voice. “Almost five years ago, I stood in this exact same place and told Agent Doggett I’d never seen a sunrise from this office. I think some particularly vengeful gods were listening to me, because I’ve sure as hell seen a lot of them since.”

Skinner gave an unsympathetic shrug. “I think we both know who was listening, Sir.”

Kersh swung away from the window and offered him a baleful glare. “You’re hardly in a position to criticize. You were just as compromised as I was.”

“Perhaps,” Skinner allowed. “The difference is, I’m not compromised now. The question is whether you can say the same.”

Kersh managed an impressive impersonation of offended pride. “Do you have any idea of how many strings I pulled to get Mulder’s sentence rescinded?” he snarled. “I’ve kissed so much military ass it’s surprising my mouth isn’t set in a permanent pucker. And, let’s not forget, if I hadn’t helped you back then, Mulder would be six-feet under and you and Doggett would be kicking your heels in a military prison for the rest of your days.”

Unimpressed, Skinner shrugged again. “This conversation was old four years ago. If you hadn’t sat back and allowed that kangaroo court to convict him in the first place, we wouldn’t have had to break him out of there.”

Kersh glowered. “Like you said, it’s old news. Mulder’s alive and back running the X-files. What the hell else do you want from me?”

“I want to know whose tune you’re dancing to now.”

Kersh stiffened visibly. “How dare you suggest…”

Skinner’s mouth curled into a derisive smile. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m stating a fact. Someone helped you get Mulder pardoned. My question is whether that person is the same ‘anonymous’ source who gave Mulder the disc? And, if so, why the hell is that person now telling you to pull Mulder back off the case? Or are you still working both sides of the fence?” 

He was sure the other man’s heart must have kicked into a rapid, panicked tattoo, but Kersh’s face remained deceptively calm and Skinner was reluctantly impressed by his air of cool poise as he replied. 

“Don’t be so damned paranoid, Skinner. This new assignment has nothing to do with Mulder, per se. It’s simply about the best utilization of resources. The investigation into the Consortium’s operations has been on ice for four years already. A couple of days is hardly going to make a difference. But two days could mean another dead body down in New Orleans.”

Skinner’s head nodded in acknowledgement. It was a reasonable explanation. Reasonable - but bullshit nonetheless. “And it’s just coincidence that this emergency call from the New Orleans office landed on your desk within half-an-hour of my receiving Mulder’s latest 302’s?” he mocked.

“I don’t like your implication,” Kersh snapped. “Besides, what the hell have poltergeists got to do with his current investigation anyway?”

Blind-sided, Skinner could only blink helplessly for a moment. What the hell was Kersh playing at? Why confirm so blatantly that he’d somehow read the details of files he shouldn’t have had access to? Was he supposed to react with indignation to the fact Kersh had violated the files or simply accept the information as a gift? He chose the latter, though not without reminding himself of the danger of Trojan horses. 

“Funnily enough, I was wondering exactly the same thing until I had your call, Sir,” Skinner snorted. “Now I’m wondering how many of those cases will still be worth investigating 48 hours from now.”

Kersh held his gaze for a long moment then gave a half-shrug, turned to face the window once more, and spoke towards the reflection in the glass. “Last Christmas, someone gave my son a Joke Book. He drove me crazy for about three weeks, telling me one juvenile joke after another. One of them stuck in my head. How do porcupines make love?” He turned and smiled wryly at Skinner’s blank expression. “Carefully, Skinner. Very carefully.” He walked over to his desk and sat down with a tired sigh. “Like it or not, Skinner, you and I are alike. We’re cut from the same cloth. We both understand strategy. Sometimes you have to lose a battle or two, if you want to win a war. Men like Mulder don’t understand that. They charge into every battle without any consideration of the consequences of their actions. They consistently fail to understand that the cost of some truths is too high a price to pay.”

“You’re saying Mulder’s life’s being threatened?” Skinner growled.

“I’m saying that there’s a serial killer in New Orleans who will undoubtedly claim another victim, whether or not little green men are planning to invade the planet, unless Mulder gets his ass on that plane this morning.”

The tone of dismissal in his voice was unmistakable and Skinner had played irresistible force to Kersh’s immovable object enough times to know when a conversation was over. “What should I do with his 302’s? Approve them for when he returns?”

Kersh met his glare without flinching. “I think we both know that would be a waste of bureau resources,” he replied.

Skinner swallowed, then nodded. Kersh’s message had been received and understood. Within 48 hours, the 302’s would be worthless. Proof, in itself, that Mulder was on the trail of something significant. 

He checked his watch. It was 6am. If he hurried, he should manage to get to the airport in time to talk to Mulder before his flight.

***

It was early enough that they managed to find a reasonably private booth in the airport café. It was just as well, considering the way Mulder kept raising his voice. It struck Skinner that if the Consortium had hoped to break Mulder’s spirit, they’d chosen the wrong way to go about it. If anything, it seemed four years on the run had only increased Mulder’s volatile temper. Looking at his pouting lip and furious expression, Skinner wouldn’t have been surprised if Mulder had started kicking the base of his chair in a childish temper tantrum. 

Except for a thinning of his lips and the pulse of a prominent vein in his forehead, Skinner’s own face remained expressionless in the face of Mulder’s aggression. He took a deep breath and silently counted to ten before speaking in a calm and measured tone. “I understand your reservations about this assignment for the BSU. I have a number of doubts over Kersh’s loyalties myself. It took a lot of courage for you and Scully to come in from the cold, a lot of faith in the promises of a man whom we all have good reason to doubt. Nevertheless, I’ve called the New Orleans office to verify the assignment and they have requested the assistance of a profiler.” 

Having finished his speech he sat back, swallowed a mouthful of coffee, and waited for the inevitable argument.

“So what?” Mulder demanded mulishly, waving his right hand in a gesture of dismissal. “What difference does it make? I’m supposed to be the Head of the X-files. The FBI has enough profilers to hold an annual convention and yet I’m supposed to believe not one of them is available for this assignment? The whole thing stinks like week-old kippers. We both know this is just some bullshit game Kersh is playing.”

Skinner blinked for a moment, as his mind fruitlessly attempted to process some particular significance to the image of week-old kippers, then he grinned wryly. “I agree,” he said, and enjoyed Mulder’s gape of confusion for a moment before continuing. “It’s obvious someone wants you out of the way for a couple of days.”

“Who?” Mulder demanded suspiciously. “Who the hell’s pulling Kersh’s strings *this* time?”

Skinner shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think I know why. I have reason to believe it’s something to do with the 302’s you sent me.”

To his surprise, Mulder’s reaction was a wide, self-satisfied grin. “I knew I was on to something,” he crowed.

Skinner’s own temper spiked. “Well perhaps you’d like to enlighten me, Agent Mulder,” he growled. “Because I certainly don’t see any connection between poltergeists and Consortium experiments.”

Mulder leaned forward in his chair, his expression earnest and his eyes flashing with barely contained excitement. “It’s quite simple, Sir,” he started, which was enough to warn Skinner it wouldn’t be. “Despite the seeming disparity of the Consortium’s operations and the different agendas of the different factions, the constant theme was the experimental use of alien DNA in human subjects. Some of the Elders were dedicated to producing a vaccine, some were creating clones and others were trying to create alien-human hybrids. I always assumed the different factions were working alone, looking for separate solutions to the same problem, but now I suspect there was only ever one ultimate solution. An attempt to create ‘Supersoldiers’ who were automatically immune to both the black oil and the alien virus that creates the Replicants and also physically and mentally enhanced so they could counter the threat of the shapeshifters. A kind of three-in-one solution to the threat of colonization. “

Skinner removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Do you have any evidence to support this theory, or is this just one of your famous hunches?”

“No Scully-proof evidence,” Mulder admitted wryly, “But I believe Gibson Praise is living proof of that experimentation. So is William. And, somewhere out there, there are other kids like them. They’re the answer, Sir. The truth is literally in them.”

“What do these hypothetical children have to do with poltergeists?” Skinner demanded.

“I’m getting to that. The records we’ve recovered from the laboratories say that all the hybrids were stillborn. But the existence of Gibson Praise is proof that the records have been falsified.”

Skinner frowned and shook his head. “You have proof the Consortium had a hand in the creation of Gibson Praise?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter. Just the fact that Gibson exists is proof that human-alien hybrids are viable. The Consortium would’ve had to employ a whole bunch of peculiarly inept scientists to have failed to come up with even one successful subject from their own experiments. So it makes plain common sense that the laboratory records have been tampered with.”

After a moment’s consideration, Skinner nodded his head in reluctant acknowledgement. “I agree. But that still leaves the question of how or why Gibson Praise ended up with alien DNA.”

“I have a theory about that,” Mulder said.

“I had a feeling you would,” Skinner retorted dryly.

Mulder’s mouth twitched into a near-grin. “The Consortium were the only people with access to the alien fetus, so Gibson’s DNA had to come from the Purity project. Somehow, either deliberately or by accident, the alien DNA was introduced into at least one subject outside of the laboratory experiments without the knowledge of the Elders. But maybe that’s beside the point. The important thing is one hybrid child is sufficient justification to assume the existence of others. So the problem is how do I find them? Which brings me back to poltergeists. Children like Gibson might look normal, but they’re not. They have abnormal abilities. And no matter how carefully they’re trying to hide those abilities from normal people they’re inevitably going to do things that give themselves away. No child has much emotional self-control.”

“It doesn’t seem to be a particular quality in certain FBI Agents either,” Skinner muttered.

Mulder gave him the obligatory offended glare but his lips twitched with a repressed snicker. “Anyway, that’s why the most logical place to start looking for children like Gibson is checking out reports of poltergeist phenomena.”

“Speaking of looking for children, have you had any luck?” Skinner interrupted gruffly.

Mulder stared at him, gauging the depth of sincerity in Skinner’s sympathetic expression before giving a slight shrug and dropping his eyes. “I found someone who could break into the sealed adoption files,” he admitted, a little sheepishly.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Skinner grumbled. “What did you find out?”

“What I expected; the name and address of the couple who adopted him.”

“And what do you intend to do about it?” Skinner pressed gently. “I know you’re the father, and you didn’t give consent, but it’s still not going to be easy to contest the adoption. There aren’t many judges who’d consider removing a child from a safe family environment and handing him over to a single father, particularly one with your…um…history.”

“Oh, if only it were that simple,” Mulder laughed bitterly.

Although Skinner’s expression didn’t change, a little color rose in his cheeks and, when he spoke, his tone was uncharacteristically hesitant. “If…um…if it’s…well, if it’s a matter of money…um…well, I have some savings and well…” his voice trailed off into awkward silence.

Mulder closed his eyes for a brief moment, overwhelmed by Skinner’s offer. He took several deep breaths as he realized, for the first time, that the news he was about to impart was actually going to hurt this man he was finally learning to consider a true friend. And so, peculiarly, it felt harder to tell Skinner the truth than it had been to tell Scully.

“Thanks for the offer,” he said, “but that’s not the problem.”

“So what is?”

“The people who adopted him, the Van De Kamps, apparently never existed,” Mulder replied, with a wry shrug.

“What do you mean ‘they never existed’?” Skinner demanded. “Do you have any idea what kind of stringent background checks are made on prospective adoptive parents? Believe me, no-one can fake an identity that good.”

The bitterness in Skinner’s voice confirmed something that Mulder had often suspected, that Walter and Sharon had tried and somehow failed to adopt a child of their own. It explained Skinner’s somewhat ambivalent attitude to Scully ever since her decision to give up William for adoption. Mulder understood that. He felt pretty ambivalent towards Scully himself over her decision.

“I don’t necessarily mean the Van De Kamps were anything other than what they purported to be at the time of the adoption,” Mulder corrected, choosing his words carefully. “I mean that they don’t exist now. They’ve not only dropped off the radar. They’ve disappeared so thoroughly that there’s no record they ever existed. No birth records, no social security, no mention of them on the deeds of the house they used to live in, nothing, nada.”

His implication wasn’t lost on Skinner. “It would take black ops to make someone disappear as efficiently as that. Which admittedly suggests Consortium involvement. But that doesn’t make sense. The Consortium would have had the resources to erase the sealed adoption records too. It would have made more sense to leave no trail, than a broken one.”

Mulder hunched over his coffee and stared miserably into the dark liquid as though the answer was lurking within. When he finally spoke, his voice was bitter with old hurt. “There’s only two possibilities that I can see. Either the Consortium left the adoption record to deliberately bait me. They could have left it so I’d be in no doubt, when I hit the dead end, that they had taken William. Maybe they miss being able to dangle Samantha under my nose to distract me, every time I get too close. Maybe they’re planning to start the whole damn thing all over again with my son.” Mulder’s voice trailed off and his eyes darkened with pain.

“Or?” Skinner prompted gently, his expression oddly sympathetic.

Mulder took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead so fretfully before answering that it was clear the alternative was even more difficult for him to vocalize. “Or someone else took William to hide him from the Consortium. Someone who either didn’t have the resources to wipe the adoption file or thought it would be a waste of time since they assumed I wouldn’t go looking for him.”

Skinner shook his head in disbelief. “Why on Earth would anyone assume that?” 

“Why wouldn’t they?” Mulder spat. “Even Scully thought I’d be okay with the idea. Giving up your child is a Mulder family trait, remember?”

Skinner cleared his throat, looked intensely uncomfortable for a moment, and then his eyes brightened with sudden suspicion. “So that’s the real reason you’re looking for other hybrid children. You want to use one of them as bait to draw out whoever has William, don’t you?” he asked quietly. “What’s your plan? To do a deal to exchange one of these children for your son?” 

Despite the lack of accusation in Skinner’s tone, Mulder bristled furiously. “What kind of bastard do you think I am?” he demanded. “Do you honestly think I’d be capable of doing a thing like that?”

Skinner blushed slightly and dipped his eyes away from Mulder’s in obvious embarrassment. “William’s your son,” he said gruffly. “If he was my son, I’d…well, maybe I’d do whatever it took.”

Mulder’s eyes widened in disbelief. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing should be more important to a man than his family,” Skinner growled, raising his eyes back to Mulder’s and fixing him with a stony glare. “Nothing,” he repeated, fiercely. 

Mulder blinked rapidly, his gut clenching at the depth of emotion he’d heard in Skinner’s voice. Suddenly a few throwaway comments of Scully’s regarding the period of his abduction and burial made a bleak, disturbing sense and his mind took an unwelcome leap into unfriendly territory. It was times like these that made him curse his ability to make clear pictures out of a disjointed jigsaw of facts.

He winced visibly and closed his eyes. “If I…if I hadn’t been… if you hadn’t had me exhumed…” he paused and took a deep steadying breath. “You would have…would have married her, wouldn’t you?”

Skinner jerked as though slapped and his face darkened into an expression that was more hurt than anger. He toyed briefly with the idea of a vehement denial, dismissed it as both cowardly and pointless, swallowed once or twice and then spoke with quiet dignity. “I’m not sure that would ever have been an option. But, to answer you with complete honesty, I wouldn’t have been averse to that outcome,” he admitted.

It was Mulder’s turn to reel with shock as though, despite his accusation, he couldn’t believe the verbal confirmation of his suspicion. “She said…she said you were always there for her during her pregnancy. She said you were her ‘rock’ She said…. Oh fuck. You… you wanted to be William’s father, didn’t you?”

“Obviously not as much as I wanted you alive,” Skinner countered bluntly.

Mulder nodded, unable to deny that truth, unable to deny a lot of unpleasant truths in the face of Skinner’s dignified honesty. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Skinner startled. “What the hell for? For coming back to life? How the hell can you be sorry about that?”

Mulder’s mouth twisted into a wry grimace. “I’m sorry for being too fucking selfish to do the right thing before it was too late.”

Skinner shook his head firmly. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said gently. “You never misled Dana. You were always honest with her about your feelings. You wanted to be her baby’s father, but you made it clear you didn’t want to be her husband. It’s not your fault she chose to believe you’d eventually change your mind.”

“But with me out of the picture you could have looked after them both, kept them both safe,” Mulder argued, his eyes suspiciously bright. “If I’d walked away when Scully was pregnant, maybe no-one would have figured out I was William’s father. The three of you would be living together in suburbia, with a puppy and a station-wagon.”

“Maybe,” Skinner shrugged sadly. “But it was never your choice to make. It was Dana’s, and she chose you.”

“Yeah, and we both know how that turned out,” Mulder said, with another wince. 

Skinner shuffled uncomfortably. He still had no idea why Mulder and Scully had returned from their exile most decidedly ‘not’ a couple, but he’d never found an appropriate reason to ask the question, neither of them had volunteered the information, and within a week of their return the grapevine had informed him that Scully was romantically involved with someone new. He’d suspected she’d jumped into the relationship on the rebound but, since it seemed to be working out and Mulder and Scully’s friendship seemed intact, his only surprise had been his own lack of interest in her decision.

“I wasn’t ever in love with her,” he admitted, with characteristic bluntness. “I think I was just in love with the idea of being a husband and father.”

“I was blown off my feet myself at the idea of being a Dad,” Mulder replied, with a sad, understanding smile. Then he shrugged awkwardly. “But in my case the husband-thing was too extreme a possibility.”

Skinner frowned at him curiously, but decided pursuing the comment would be an unwelcome and inappropriate intrusion into Mulder’s personal life. So he swiftly brought the conversation back to William. “I’ll understand, under the circumstances, if you feel that any emotional attachment I claim towards William is inappropriate, but nevertheless I’d be less than honest if I denied those feelings. I’ll do anything within my power to help you find your son. That being said, there’s a limit to my support of your use of bureau resources to pursue a private investigation into his disappearance.”

“Naturally,” Mulder agreed, without rancor. “But since I’m positive I can link his disappearance to the Consortium experiments, I don’t foresee a conflict of interests here. I’m not sure whether William was taken by the Consortium or by someone who’s trying to protect children from the Consortium. Either way, my attempt to flush them out of hiding by finding another hybrid can only help to answer the legitimate questions raised by my official investigation of the abandoned laboratories.”

Skinner nodded his agreement. “Which brings us back to the current problem. By the time you get a chance to follow up the 302’s you sent me, any evidence will have disappeared. If the Consortium were already aware of these children, they’ll already have acted to move them. If they weren’t already aware of them, you’ve given their locations away.”

Mulder chewed his lower lip and hunched guiltily in his seat. His pose was less that of a man who’d made a crucial tactical error than that of a little boy caught with his hand in a cookie jar. 

Skinner cleared his throat and glared suspiciously at his agent. “Okay, Mulder,” he growled. “I take it the 302’s were an example of your usual subterfuge?”

“I’m sorry,” Mulder said, not sounding particularly apologetic. “But given the way information wanders from your office, I was hardly going to take the chance of writing down the identity of the kid I’m really interested in. I’m pretty sure the other cases are just straightforward poltergeists but I’ve got a hunch about this girl.” He reached inside his jacket, retrieved a folded piece of paper and handed it over.

Skinner opened the paper and read it quickly before returning his attention to Mulder. “So what makes you think she’s any more of a hybrid than the other children? You said you think the others are normal cases of poltergeist phenomena, so what makes this girl different?”

Mulder snickered loudly. At Skinner’s affronted expression he gave a sheepish shrug. “Sorry, Sir. It just sounds weird to hear you call poltergeists ‘normal’. What I wouldn’t have given a few years ago for you to accept that kind of phenomenon without question.”

Skinner didn’t smile, but his lips twitched a silent touché. 

“Anyway,” Mulder continued. “She’s fifteen. A little too old for a natural manifestation of latent psychic abilities brought on by pubescence.”

“If she’s fifteen, I can’t see how she’s relevant at all. Aren’t you looking for children born around the same time as William?”

“That was my first intention,” Mulder agreed, “but then I realized I’d be better off looking for another Gibson Praise. I already know the answer’s 42.”

“What?” Skinner frowned.

“Life, the universe and everything.”

Mulder chuckled at Skinner’s look of annoyed confusion. “I’ll buy you the book, Sir. My point is if William’s the answer, what’s the question? What William is, is less important than why William is. Why was Samantha taken instead of me? Why am I a hybrid? Am I a failed experiment or a successful one? What if I’m a necessary stepping stone to success? Is William the culmination, or just another evolutionary link? And if I was only ever intended to be the means of producing a child like William, then it stands to reason that I wouldn’t be the only person out there with that ability. So, maybe, I should be looking for links in other genetic chains.”

“You’re suggesting there are countless people out there who have been genetically modified to produce hybrid babies?” Skinner asked, his expression incredulous.

“Perhaps not countless but it makes more sense than the Consortium putting all its eggs in one basket, forgive the pun. I mean, why do so many women on IVF treatment have multiple births?” Mulder asked rhetorically. “Because more than one egg is planted to increase the chances of success. It’s just common sense to stack the odds in your favor. We know every member of the consortium gave up one child as hostage. For every one of those hostages, there’s probably a sibling like me who was left behind. Even Scully now accepts that, genetically, I am no longer fully human. The only explanation for those modifications to my DNA is if I was experimented on, without my knowledge, despite the decision not to remove me from my family completely. 

“So, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the genetic modifications I have were duplicated in the other surviving children of the consortium members? And at least some of those children must have grown up and had children of their own. Children who’d most likely be teenagers now like this girl, Storm Redlum.” 

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Skinner pointed out. “What if the explanation is far more simple than that? Samantha’s file had your name on originally. Isn’t it possible that the experiments you’re talking about took place before the decision to abduct Samantha in your place? In which case your theory collapses, doesn’t it?”

Mulder sighed and rubbed his face. “I know,” he admitted. “The whole thing’s a long shot but I need to check it out. I have a ‘feeling’ that this girl is going to prove me right.”

Skinner suppressed a groan. “Why?” he demanded, his expression reluctantly interested rather than skeptical. Experience had taught him a certain amount of respect for Mulder’s ‘feelings’.

“She’s supposedly an orphan, so who’s paying the fees to keep her at an exclusive boarding school? It’s not an inheritance. I’ve checked. The mother’s name on her birth certificate is false. The father isn’t named at all. She arrived at the school two years ago with a full set of records, but it turns out that none of her previous schools have ever heard of her. As far as I can see, the girl’s whole identity is false. Another thing, the school fees are paid by some nameless benefactor. Pays for everything through a Swiss bank account. Receives reports on her progress through the same bank. Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to keep their interest in Storm anonymous.”

“Storm. What the hell kind of name is that anyway?” Skinner grumbled. “Chances are she’s just the illegitimate child of some rich guy. He’s probably funding her schooling out of guilt.”

“Maybe,” Mulder agreed. “And maybe it’s just co-incidence that ‘things’ seem to happen around her whenever she gets upset.”

“Exactly what kind of things?”

“The usual poltergeist phenomena,” Mulder admitted. “Flying objects. Unexplained fires. Minor accidents to people who’ve upset her.”

“She’s dangerous?” Skinner demanded.

“I’m talking really *minor* accidents, like prat-falls.”

Skinner sighed heavily. “In other words, people are scared of her so-called abilities and blame her every time they stub their toe or cut themselves shaving? Sounds like a whole load of hysterical nonsense to me.”

“Panic and mob mentality,” Mulder agreed. “I imagine most of it’s nonsense, but there’s still possible evidence of her having genuine psychokinetic ability. I’ll know better tomorrow when I’ve met her.”

“Tomorrow? You’re flying to New Orleans in two hours,” Skinner reminded him dourly. 

“Where I’m expected to remain for at least 48 hours,” Mulder agreed cheerfully. “Have you read the case file? It’s no wonder they haven’t caught the perp. The answer’s staring them right in the face and they can’t see it. Hell, I could have done the profile over the phone. That’s why I knew it was a bullshit assignment.”

Skinner’s face clouded. “Why didn’t you say that earlier instead of bitching about being sent out of town? If you could have done the profile over the phone why the hell didn’t you say so?”

Mulder blushed and dropped his eyes to the table. “Because…well…I figured if Kersh knew where I was, he wouldn’t be keeping tabs on me. I needed time to check out the Redlum girl and I figured I could wrap the case up today, then check her out on my way back to DC without anyone knowing.”

Skinner contemplated pointing out chapter and verse of exactly how many regulations Mulder had just admitted breaking, then sighed and let it go. Considering Kersh’s dubious loyalties, they both knew that following the rulebook would be the quickest way to get Mulder kicked out of play.

“Obviously, I can’t approve a 302 on it until you get back,” he said. 

Mulder shrugged. “That’s fine. If it doesn’t pan out, I won’t submit one anyway.” He checked his watch. “I’d better get going. I told dog-breath I’d meet him in the departure lounge.”


***

Regardless of how many times it had happened before, Kersh’s heart still leapt in his chest and thundered a panicked tattoo against his breastbone when he turned away from the window he’d been staring blindly out of and saw the man seated casually behind his desk.

As always, he wanted to demand an explanation of how his visitor had, silently and unannounced, entered a locked office in one of the most security-conscious buildings in Washington DC. As always, he bit back his words – knowing they would only confirm how much he was rattled by the other man’s presence and would elicit no more than an enigmatic, mocking grin in return.

“Must be a nice view,” the man drawled. “It’s good to see our tax dollars at work.”

Knowing that any politeness on his part would be perceived as weakness, Kersh just snarled, “There was no need for you to come here. I’ve handled the situation.” 

“You’ve handled shit. None of those files have anything to do with the Project. Sending Mulder out of town was a mistake.”

Kersh frowned with apparent confusion. “I thought…”

“You obviously didn’t think. Slamming a door in Mulder’s face is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.” The man raised suspicious, speculative eyes in Kersh’s direction. “But then you know that, don’t you?”

Kersh shivered internally at the quiet menace in the other man’s voice, but he knew better than to show fear. “You told me to keep Mulder on a short-leash,” he protested. 

“I didn’t tell you to use a fucking choke-chain,” the man countered. “Mulder’s like a dog with a bone. Now he’s caught a sniff of a cover-up, he isn’t going to stop digging until he finds out the truth.”

“I thought that was the goddamned point,” Kersh snapped. “It’s time we brought this situation to a goddamned head. We lay our cards on the table and let the self-righteous little bastard choke on them. I’m sick to the stomach of his ‘wounded martyr’ routine.”

“You’ve put us all at risk, just because Mulder called you dirty names?”

“What risk? Whatever else he is, he isn’t stupid. When he finds out the truth he’ll finally realize what he stands to lose if he doesn’t start keeping his goddamned mouth shut. Why the hell else did you help me get him pardoned and back onto the X-files if you didn’t intend him to find out about the Project?”

“You stupid cunt,” his visitor snarled. “The replicants are watching Mulder and shadowing every step he takes. Mulder’s supposed to investigate the information on that disc that ‘proves’ the Project was a failure. By convincing him, maybe we’d have convinced the aliens. But if he finds even one of the kids and the aliens get wind of it, the whole fucking world is going to go to hell.”

Kersh paled and swallowed convulsively. “They’ll bring the invasion date forward,” he whispered.

“Finally, the penny drops that you’ve fucked up big time,” the man snarled. 

Kersh bristled angrily. ““If I’ve fucked up, it’s because you kept me in the dark. But everything’s solvable. Maybe it’s finally time for a permanent solution to the Mulder problem.” 

“Maybe,” his visitor agreed reluctantly. His air of menace deflated abruptly, replaced by an expression of bone-weary tiredness. 

“You look like you need a vacation,” Kersh said, with mock solicitude. “A couple of weeks in the sun somewhere. Get yourself a nice tan.” His visitor’s eyes flashed an angry warning. “Oh, sorry,” he continued. “I forgot. Skin-grafts don’t tan well, do they? Hard to believe a man could do that to his own child.” 

He’d hoped to see the scarred face contort with pain. Instead, his visitor responded with a cool, feral smile. “Make no mistake, Kersh, this…” he gestured at his face, “is nothing compared to what I’ll do to anyone who threatens the safety of one of my children.”

***

Although his face was set in a careful mask of indifference, Doggett’s fingers skipped with such rapidity through the crime scene photos that it was clear he was attempting to absorb the crucial details without fully absorbing the torturous pain they evidenced.

Mulder couldn’t find it in himself to blame him. Bad enough that one of them would relive the murders in their nightmares. There was little point in both of them suffering sleepless nights over a case that neither of them had any business investigating in the first place.

‘Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who had your balls cut off and stuffed up your ass.’

Mulder flinched guiltily and flicked an apologetic look in the direction of the offended ghost who, fortunately, looked a hell of a lot healthier in spirit-form than he did in the crime-scene photos.

‘You can say that again,’ the ghost agreed, leaning over Doggett’s shoulder and giving a dramatic shudder.

Intriguingly enough, Doggett mirrored the shudder and then turned to face Mulder with a slightly sheepish expression. “Guess somethin’ just walked over my grave,” he muttered.

Mulder was momentarily tempted to point out that the sensation of chill up Doggett’s spine had actually been caused by a ghostly hand goosing his butt.

‘And what a butt,’ the ghost leered. ‘Bet he’s got a nice tight asshole. Think he’ll squeal if I stick my finger in to check?’

Mulder snorted wildly, pretending a sudden coughing fit to cover his snickers, as he wondered how the hell Doggett would come up with a rational explanation for the assault. The asshole would probably claim it was a sudden attack of piles.

It wasn’t that he didn’t respect Doggett’s ability as an Agent. He didn’t even dislike his company that much. He just couldn’t shake the opinion that being partnered with Doggett was like turning the clock back eleven years to when he’d been faced with Scully’s original unfaltering skepticism. Day after day, he was relieving a past that he hadn’t particularly appreciated the first time around and sure as hell felt too old to deal with a second time. John Jay Doggett was like Scully in drag, only twice as big and a hell of a lot less easy to handle.

He sighed under his breath, turning his attention away from Doggett and his ghostly admirer and back to the ASAC of the case, Danton LeCroix.

 “According to the witness statements, the victims were all ‘tops’, weren’t they?”

Despite the almost midnight hue of his skin, LeCroix still managed to blush. “Yeah. They were all…um…dominant. Well, except for Terry Mazon. He was a …um…I believe the term’s a …um…switch. It’s all there in the file.”

‘What an asshole. Switch isn’t a goddamned dirty word. I was an equal opportunity lover, that’s all,’ the ghost interrupted. ‘Two-faced bastard. Bet he’d be less goddamned prejudiced if I was a brother, instead of a faggot, huh?’

“Will you shut up for a minute?” Mulder muttered under his breath.

“Did you say something?” LeCroix asked, with a perplexed frown.

“I said, all of the victims suffered extreme genital mutilation, but no signs of anal trauma except for the insertion of their bodily parts. They weren’t raped,” Mulder said, with a repressive glare at Mazon’s ghost who had loudly started to complain that it sure as hell had felt like rape to him.

“That’s why we’ve been investigating the murders based on the assumption that the victims were killed by a rival, rather than a lover,” LeCroix said.

With no more than a brief flick of his eyes towards the case file, Mulder managed to express his total contempt of its contents. “Who the hell came up with that profile?” Mulder snorted rudely.

‘He did,’ Mazon informed him helpfully, as LeCroix stiffened with obvious offense.

Doggett groaned under his breath.

“Your perp’s a submissive,” Mulder said. “Male, mid to late twenties. He isn’t gay. The only scene he’s interested in is BDSM. This isn’t about sex. At least not in that way. Given the excessive mutilation of the bodies, I’d say his level of violence is directly proportional to the physical strength of his victims.”

‘Hey, you’re good,’ Mazon applauded. ‘Little murderous bastard was a fucking homophobic psycho.’

// How about giving me his name, so I can end this dog and pony show? //

‘If I knew his fucking name, I would,’ the ghost snapped. ‘I never asked, okay.’

// Slut //

'Takes one to know one,’ Mazon sang, and gave him the finger.

“So what you sayin’, Moldhar? He killed them for going too far?” 

Mulder took a deep breath, wondered whether a seeming inability to ever pronounce his godamned name right was sufficient grounds for Partnercide, and settled for offering Doggett a condescending sneer. “I think he killed them for going exactly far enough.” 

At LeCroix and Doggett’s looks of perplexed surprise, he smiled wryly and continued. “We’re looking for someone who plays sexual games but never voluntarily participates in sexual interaction with his chosen partners.”

“You said he ain’t gay. So why’s he playing sexual games with men?” Doggett countered. 

“Because, on the whole, men are physically stronger than women. I think our submissive has a seriously masochistic kink. He pushes his tops to the limit. Maybe the women he played with backed down, probably out of fear of causing him real physical damage. What he needs is an ‘extremity’ of sensation, one that only the victims were prepared to give him. The perp doesn’t go to these men to experience a sexual act. He goes there for pain. That’s the satisfaction he craves. But when he suffers sufficient pain to satisfy him he gets physically aroused as a side-effect. He then kills the victims for arousing him, because he can’t deal with the fact that it’s a man who’s been instrumental in bringing him off. He kills the men because they do satisfy him and that disgusts him, because he’s homophobic.” 

“So you’re sayin’ he killed them because they got him off?”

“Exactly.”

“But you still say he’s not gay?” Doggett scoffed.

“He’s not gay,” Mulder replied firmly.

“Yeah? Well I say if it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck…”

‘Asshole,’ Mason snorted.

“Which is why I’m the profiler and the senior agent on this case,” Mulder snarled.

LeCroix shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, I guess you are the expert in this kind of thing,” he said, with a nod at Mulder. From anyone else, it might have been a compliment. 

Though Mulder’s eyes narrowed with irritation, he refused to rise to the hidden implications of LeCroix’s statement. It never failed to amaze him how his ability to successfully profile deviant personalities automatically made his colleagues look at him like he was little better than the perp he was chasing. Just because he was investigating a sexually motivated serial killer, LeCroix was reacting to his insights as though Mulder was talking about his own sexual fantasies.

Still, it was less likely to get him thrown into five-point restraints than admitting the reason he knew so much about the murderer was because the ghost of one of the victims was standing in the room confirming his profile. 

Mulder shoved the case file in LeCroix’s direction. “Unless you want the body count to keep rising, I suggest you stop looking for a psychotic, homosexual dominant, and start looking for a straight homophobic submissive. Talk to the female dominants. There’s always an escalation in these things. He would have started playing his ‘games’ with Mistresses, then moved on to men when the women failed to satisfy him.”

“So you’re going to start the investigation from scratch?” LeCroix asked.

Mulder shook his head decisively. “I was sent here to do a profile. I’ve done it. What you do with it is up to you.”

“You’re leaving already?” LeCroix demanded.

‘You’re leaving,’ Mazon echoed dolefully. ‘But you’re the only person who can see me.’

“I’m a profiler. I’ve profiled. My work here is done,” Mulder replied, with an apologetic look in Mazon’s direction followed by a deliberately smug grin towards the ASAC. For a moment he actually thought LeCroix would strike him, but with a disgusted glare the ASAC turned on his heel and strode from the room. After a moment’s hesitation, the ghost followed him.

“You have such a winnin’ way with people, Moldhar,” Doggett drawled, his eyes  sharp with anger.

“Considering the way you’re bitching about this case, I thought you’d be glad to see the back of it.”

“I am,” Doggett admitted, “but there was no need to be so damned rude to LeCroix. The way you act reflects on the X-files. I’ve spent four years mendin’ the Department’s reputation and in less than three months you’ve managed to turn it back into a dirty word.”

Mulder chuckled dryly. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you? Mulder’s the dirty word. The minute old Spooky was back in the basement was the minute all your ‘respectability’ went out the window,” he said, with a wry grin. “I never did give a damn about my reputation. The only thing that interests me is the work. And the way I see it, the more I piss off the locals when I get sent on this kind of bullshit case, the less likely Kersh is to lend me out to the BSU. And that means I spend more time doing what I should be doing. I didn’t come back to the Bureau to chase serial killers. I sure as hell didn’t come back so I could fly half-way across the country to do a profile I could have done just as well over the phone.”

“No,” Doggett snorted. “You came back to chase little green men.”

Mulder shook his head in disgust. “You know something, Doggett? The more time I spend with you, the less I understand what the hell you’re doing in the X-files at all. After all you’ve seen, all you’ve witnessed with your own eyes, you still don’t believe, do you?”

“In aliens? No,” Doggett replied bluntly. “I believe there’s been a conspiracy to cover up human experimentation by certain sections of the Government. I believe that both Scully and you were abducted and experimented on. I believe there’s a force of evil working in the shadows of our Government, whose interests are against the American people. I accept the existence of Supersoldiers, but I’m damned if I’ll call them alien replicants. None of the above has anythin’ to do with aliens from another planet.”

“Then you’re going to love our next case,” Mulder said, his expression smug.

“What next case?” Doggett growled suspiciously.

Mulder reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew two plane tickets to Forbes Field, Kansas. “We’re on our way to find living proof of the true purpose of the Consortium laboratories.”

Doggett rolled his eyes. “What true purpose?”

“I’m talking about a project that goes back as far as Roswell and took place with the full knowledge and co-operation of our Government. I’ve always known the military were attempting to incorporate the alien technology discovered at Roswell into new aircraft. But now I’m beginning to believe the conspiracy ran a lot deeper and nastier than that. They weren’t satisfied by the idea of just playing with alien technology. They started playing God with alien DNA to create biological weapons. Weapons of a two-legged variety.”

Doggett huffed in disgust. “So now you’re sayin’ Knowle wasn’t an alien replicant but a human/alien hybrid? Make your damned mind up, Moldhar. How the hell do you expect me to swallow any of your science-fiction bullshit if you keep rewritin’ the plot?”

“I’m not talking about what we call Supersoldiers. I’m talking about real Supersoldiers. Hybrid humans designed to fight the alien replicants.”

“Tell me somethin’, Moldhar. Did your mother ever admit dropping you on your head when you were a kid? Cos that sure as hell makes a whole lot more sense than any of the garbage that spouts out when you open your mouth.” 

It was on the tip of Mulder’s tongue to tell Doggett to go fuck himself. But the problem with following the impulse to ditch his doubting Thomas of a partner was that Doggett returning alone to DC would inevitably trip Kersh’s radar. So he reined his temper back to a manageable level and settled for pulling rank.

“You know something? I don’t give a damn whether you believe me or not as long as you do your job. This isn’t open for debate. I’ve got a lead and we’re going to go check it out before we return to DC, so you might as well shut up and put up.”

“You sayin’ this is an officially sanctioned investigation?” Doggett retorted, with a snort of disbelief.

“Tell you what,” Mulder snapped. “Call Skinner and ask him. Then, when you’re done, ask him to refresh your memory of who’s in charge of the X-files now.” He felt a coil of tension snaking through his guts as he waited to see whether Doggett would call his bluff. He didn’t doubt that Skinner would support him, but he was damned sure that Kersh had an illegal phone tap into Skinner’s office.

For a moment Doggett continued to glare at him, his blue eyes sharp with angry suspicion, but then, with a heavy put-upon sigh, Doggett shrugged his reluctant compliance. “So you gonna tell me what the hell you think we’re gonna find in Kansas?” 

***

The man paused by the gate, his heart clenching tightly at the sight of the sun playing over the boy’s auburn hair. The boy was too immersed in his task to have noticed his presense yet. The still pudgy arms of the four-year old were occupied with the momentous task of building a castle out of the sandpit in their back yard.

The lopsided edifice was crumbling faster than the boy could build it, its sides collapsing every time the boy added another bucket of sand, but the boy’s face was a mask of grim determination and it was clear he had no intention of being defeated by anything as minor as mere gravity.

A fond smile spread over the man’s face. Persistence was obviously a genetic trait, he snickered to himself. Simply the sight of the boy made both his weariness and the myriad of aching pains in his body disperse under a wave of contented happiness.

He walked through the gate, carefully latching it behind him, and crossed the grass until the boy saw him and gave a squeal of excitement.

“Daddy! You’re home!”

“Hiya, slugger. Where’s your mom?”

“She took Nana to town to get her hair done,” the boy relayed carefully, though his eyes portrayed some doubt over what that procedure entailed.

“Where’s Nicki?”

“Doin’ homework,” the boy said, with a sulky frown. 

“Ah,” the man said, with a wink and a sympathetic smile. “He thinks he’s too grown up to play sandcastles, huh?”

The boy nodded dolefully.

The man hesitated for a moment, knowing the possible danger of exposing his grafted skin to the deceptive strength of the late afternoon sun, but then he shrugged, squatted down next to the sandbox and reached for a shovel. “Guess we’ll have to play without him then.”

A wide smile burst over the boy’s face, his eyes sparkled with joy and, in response, a slow, silent tear slipped down the man’s face. He stared for a moment into the boy’s hazel eyes and swallowed heavily against the emotion choking his throat. “I always wondered,” he whispered, “what these eyes would look like if they’d never known unhappiness.”

“Huh?” the boy asked, cocking his head uncertainly, his innocent face confused.

The man shook his head, as though angry at himself for saying the words out loud, but his fingers were gentle as they lifted the boy’s face to meet his. “You are happy here, aren’t you?” he demanded urgently, his eyes shadowed with an old fear. 

The boy frowned in thought, as though he truly understood the importance of the man’s question. “I love you, daddy,” he announced solemnly.

“I love you too, William,” the man replied, lifting his right hand and carefully stroking the boy’s soft cheek.


***

Doggett was quiet as he drove the rental car from Forbes Field. Mulder was appreciative of the silence but not the reason for it. The silent disapproval that had radiated off Doggett since he’d learned the reason they were returning to DC via Kansas was so palpable it had almost a visible aura and whenever he glanced at the other man’s profile his own teeth ached in sympathy at Doggett’s clenched jaw.

Doggett was pissed with him.

No surprises there. These days, Doggett was permanently pissed with him.

And while Mulder remembered how it felt to be pussy-whipped, he had little feelings of empathy. He at least had the excuse that he’d still been in college at the time. 

“I don’t understand you,” he muttered petulantly. “You of all people ought to understand how I feel about this.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Doggett snarled.

Mulder jerked as though slapped, and stared at Doggett with widening eyes. “What the…”

“Don’t even think of comparin’ us, Moldhar.”

Mulder shook his head in denial. “You lost Luke…”

Doggett’s fingers whitened on the steering wheel. “Luke was my son,” he said, his voice clipped and cold. “And I looked for him as his father. What’s William to you, Muldhar? At worst you see him as a pawn, at best you see him as another Samantha. You think I’m impressed by all of this?” he asked, gesturing vaguely at the road ahead. “You think Dana is gonna be impressed by this?”

// Dana! So there you have it in a nutshell, boys and girls. Out of the mouth of the man who’s currently fucking the mother of my child //

“William is Dana’s son,” Doggett continued. “It’s my understandin’ that your only contribution to the process was to jerk off into a paper cup. Which, I guess, kinda made it okay that you fucked off and left her alone to handle her pregnancy.”

“I spent three months of it as an abductee and the subsequent three months buried alive,” Mulder snarled. “Where, I hasten to add, I’d still be if it had been up to you.”

Doggett had the grace to look slightly embarrassed for a moment, but rallied quickly.

“You sure got your ass the hell out of Dodge fast enough afterwards,” he pointed out.

Mulder didn’t even flinch. “If I’d stayed, both Scully and the baby would have been at risk.”

Doggett snorted rudely. “They were at risk anyway. All you did, by runnin’, was leave her alone to handle the shitstorm you’d started. And now you have the fuckin’ cheek to blame her for making the same decision that you did. You say you left for William’s sake but you can’t accept that she gave him up for exactly the same reason.”

“I don’t blame her for anything,” Mulder protested. “Scully knows I love her.”

“Dana worships the ground you walk on, you bastard, but that doesn’t make you any less of a selfish, self-absorbed shit,” Doggett retorted. “You say you love her but you don’t understand what love is. If you *loved* her, you’d’ve let this drop. You sure as hell wouldn’t have told her the bad news. You think she’s better off knowing that the Van De Kamps have disappeared? You think telling her that William’s missin’, maybe even dead, is an act of love? Do you have even the slightest damned conception of how it feels to really love a child, and know that child is missin’, and not be able to do fuck-all about it?”

Mulder’s face twisted in fury. “What was I supposed to do? Lie to her? William’s her son. She needed to know the truth.”

Doggett snorted rudely and his eyes were ice-cold as he shot Mulder a venomous glance. “The only person around here who needed to know that truth was you, Moldhar. But then that’s the story of your life isn’t it? Everyone who touches you gets burned on the pyre of your goddamned truth.”

“This is bullshit,” Mulder snarled. “My son is missing, and you think I can just shrug and say ‘never mind, these things happen’?”

Doggett shook his head in disgust. “He’s been missin' for four years. Four fucking years. Only you were too damned busy lookin’ after your own hide to even remember you had a son until now, weren’t you? So, yeah! I think it’s too damned late for this grieving ‘father’ act to be convincin’.”

“I couldn’t look for him before. Scully and I were on the run. We couldn’t have subjected a child to the kind of life we were living before Kersh sorted everything out with the military. I thought he was safer where he was.”

“Yeah, well so did Dana until you gave her the good news,” Doggett drawled.

“Don’t you see that’s exactly why it’s even more important to find him now?” Mulder demanded. “Scully needs to know what’s happened to him.”

“It won’t help. Don’t you understand that? She’d come to terms with her decision. Now it’s an open wound again. A wound that you can’t stitch up by finding William. Nothing’s changed, has it? He’ll still be at risk even if you find him alive and well and take him back to her. So what you gonna do, huh? Track him down, hand him over to someone else and tell her that this time he’s gonna be okay with this stranger? You think she’s gonna accept that? You think she’s ever gonna have any peace again?”

Mulder shook his head stubbornly. It wasn’t that he disagreed with Doggett’s assessment of how badly Scully had taken the news of the disappearance of William and his new family. It was that he couldn’t honestly understand how Doggett could believe that it was better to believe a lie than the truth. No matter how unpalatable that truth might be.

“William may be dead,” he admitted. “Or someone might just have helped the Van De Kamps disappear to ensure his safety. But what if the Consortium have him? What if he’s one of their experiments now? Do you think I will ever have any peace if I don’t find out the truth?”

Doggett just grunted, and they returned to a strained silence.

***

As they drove through the arid landscape the heat inside the car was almost unbearable. She could feel perspiration gathering at her collar and trickling down the back of her neck. She pursed her lips with displeasure, biting down the words crowding in her throat. She’d learned the futility of criticizing him to her daughter, but it was hard to stay silent when her blouse was clinging to her breasts and her skirt was creased and damp under her uncomfortably hot thighs. 

No, not hard…impossible.

“I told him the air-conditioning wasn’t working in your car. He ‘said’ he’d get it fixed before he left.”

“He’s had other things on his mind, Mom. Anyway, it’s my car. I’m just as capable of calling a mechanic as he is. I’ll call the garage when we get home.”

She rolled her eyes in disgust. “He’s your husband. This kind of thing is his responsibility. Your father would never have let me drive around in an unsafe vehicle while he was off gallivanting around the country doing who knows what...”

“Don’t start, Mom. Don’t tempt me to answer that.”

Despite the heat, her daughter’s chilly tone sent a shiver through her and she pursed her lips into silence. Pointless, anyway. Pointless and tiring to have the same conversation over and over when nothing could ever be resolved between them.

“He’s a good husband, Mom,” her daughter said quietly.

But he wasn’t, and they both knew it, so the lie hung in the hot air around them, choking and constricting them both.

“He’s a good father,” her daughter continued.

And the truth of that was like a slap in the face.

“I don’t understand,” she admitted bitterly. How could she have been so wrong, so blind? How could she have been such a fool? How could a man like him be such a good father when her own…. Oh god, no. Even now she couldn’t admit it, couldn’t really ‘believe’ it. Didn’t want to believe it.

“I know, Mom. It’s okay. I understand.”

The reluctant sympathy in her daughter’s voice was as painful as a whiplash and suddenly she felt old and bewildered, cast adrift in a bizarre reality where black and white merged into a confusing multitude of grays.

“He’s home,” her daughter announced, as she swung the car onto their driveway.

She swallowed heavily at the sight of the black SUV, its hulking presense casting a dark shadow across the front yard just as its owner cast a shadow in her own heart.

“He hates me,” she blurted, then flinched at her momentary loss of composure.

“He blames you,” her daughter corrected, her eyes darkening with emotion and unspoken words bounced between them in silent condemnation. 

// So do I, Mom. So do I. //

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The inside of the car was as hot and unforgiving as hell fire. She grasped for the handle and swung the door open.

A tiny tornado charged through the swirling dust of the front yard and grabbed her arm with grubby, excited fingers.

“Nana! Nana! Come see my castle!”

***

Skinner entered the empty apartment on auto-pilot. His right hand reaching for the light switch, his left dropping the keys onto the small telephone table, his right hand loosening his tie and unfastening the top button of his shirt as he strode across the living area, his left hand reaching for the bottle of whiskey, his right hand reaching for a cut crystal glass, his left hand adjusting the cushions as he sat, his right hand exchanging the whiskey glass for the remote control, his left hand stretching out for the telephone and pressing the speed-dial number for his local Thai take-out.

It wasn’t until he’d replaced the phone on the arm-rest and taken a deep, satisfying gulp of smooth Glenfiddich that he allowed his eyes to rest on the empty place to the left of the television. A place marked only by four deep indentations in the plush carpet and a feeling of absence, a feeling of something crucial missing from his life.

Which was patently absurd, under the circumstances.

He’d remembered feeling relieved, perhaps even grateful, when his long-standing, unwanted guests had departed. Not that, truly, they had been as long-standing as one might have otherwise imagined. Over four years their numbers had swelled and depleted with alarming regularity, as his own ignorance combined with the long hours of his job had conspired to make their tenure in his apartment no less precarious than their previous abode.

Over the years he suspected he had replaced so many individual fish that the occupants who had finally returned to Mulder’s care had borne only a remote resemblance to the motley collection that had first graced him with their presense.

They had been an unwanted burden, a half-hearted attempt to show some belief that their owner would one day be in a position to return and claim them. His guardianship of Mulder’s fish had been as erratic, and yet as sincere, as his support of their owner.

He’d been pleased, even proud, to return them to Mulder, their gifting the closest acknowledgement of his own silent vigil of belief that Mulder *would* return to his previous life.

He’d been relieved to be freed of the burden of their care.

And now, sitting alone in his apartment, he missed their bright accusing presense.

Or, maybe, he just missed having a reason to speak out loud, an excuse to talk into the empty barren space of his home as though someone or something even cared that he existed. He missed the hated obligation of their feeding, their cleaning, even missed the all too frequent somber guilt of fishing a pale body out of the water and consigning it into the toilet bowl in a secret ritual ceremony.

He missed not being totally alone.

He stared into the amber fire of his whiskey glass and contemplated, not for the first time, the possibility of buying a kitten. A cute bundle of claws and fur that would transform into a sleek, adoring companion.

And then he laughed bitterly at his own fancy, a sound of loneliness and regret and despair, and he wondered, not for the first time, what point there was to a life of solitude. A life wherein no one would mourn his passing. A life extinguished with no evidence left that he had ever even existed. 

He wondered, not for the first time, what it might feel like to know his name, his life, would live on in the existence of a child and, in that moment, he understood more than Mulder might ever imagine him capable why finding William was so important and he wondered, not for the first time, how Scully had ever made the choice to give William up.

***

In deliberate contrast to Doggett’s surly professionalism, Mulder produced such a high-wattage smile that the Principal barely glanced at his ID. Blushing furiously, she offered him a girlish grin that sat uncomfortably on her homely middle-aged features. 

“The FBI. How exciting,” she simpered. “Though what on Earth you think I can help you with…”

“We’d like to speak to one of your students, Storm Redlum,” Mulder interrupted smoothly.

Her smile slipped a notch. “Oh dear. I do hope she isn’t in any trouble.” 

Mulder narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. Although her expression was an appropriate mix of concern and confusion, there had been a definite note of insincerity in her voice.

“Not at all, Ma’am,” Doggett said. “We just want to talk to her, if that’s not too much trouble.”

Her eyes flickered with something suspiciously like disappointment, but she fixed them both with a gracious smile. “No trouble at all, except I’m not exactly sure where she is. You might find her in the stables, but it’s more likely that she’s out riding.”

“Riding?” Doggett repeated, with a disbelieving frown. “I thought this was a school.”

“Blakemore is an exclusive educational Academy,” the Principal corrected, a little haughtily. “Our girls come from advantaged backgrounds, Agent Doggett, and we endeavor to make this a home away from home for them. Classes finish at 2pm daily, after which the students are free to pursue their own appropriate interests until supper-time. Miss Redlum’s primary interest is in her horse.”

“Her horse?” Mulder repeated, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

“Naturally the Academy provides riding lessons as part of an all-round education,” the Principal replied, “but most students have their own horses and board them here during term-time.”

“I thought she was supposed to be an orphan,” Doggett growled quietly to Mulder. “So where the hell did she get the money for a horse?”

“From the same place she gets the money for the fees here, I expect. What does it cost to keep a student here, Miss Baxter?”

The Principal shrugged slightly, as though uncomfortable with discussing as crass a subject as money. “A full boarding package, with all leisure facilities included, is approximately $25,000 a term.” She smiled at Mulder and Doggett’s incredulous expressions. “As I said, we’re exclusive.”

“Well, I think this blows your Consortium theory out of the water,” Doggett grunted, as the two men made their way towards the stable block. “There ain’t no way old Smokey and his friends would pay this kind of money just to put a kid through school.”

“I think this is exactly the kind of place one of the Consortium elite would send a ‘special’ child,” Mulder argued. “Money isn’t an issue with them and I doubt the school asks too many questions about who the kids are as long as the fees get paid.” 

“I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve here, Moldhar. As far as I can see, all you’ve got here is some spoiled adolescent girl who’s been getting her kicks out of foolin’ a bunch of other spoiled girls into thinking she’s got some kind of supernatural powers. It’s just a load of teenage BS. I’ll lay you odds it’s just a trick to get attention.”

Mulder waved blithely at the idyllic surroundings. “Why the hell would a kid with all this feel the need for extra attention, Doggett?”

“Jesus, this place is cleaner than my apartment,” Doggett grumbled, as they walked into the stable block.

Mulder gave a low whistle, as he stared around the pristine stalls. “Hell, it’s cleaner than Skinner’s apartment. When I die, I wanna come back as a horse. Well, not just any horse, of course…”

“Spare me your fantasies about being ridden by nubile teenage girls,” Doggett growled. “I’ve heard all about your Porn collection.”

“Really? Do let me know if you want to borrow a tape or two. You never know, you might learn something,” Mulder replied airily, confident that Doggett obviously knew nothing about his Porn collection.

“You’re a sad, sick bastard, Moldhar,” Doggett pronounced, with more than a little satisfaction.

They walked up the aisle between the stalls, Doggett stroking the soft inquisitive muzzles of the horses they passed, Mulder giving them all wide berth.

“You obviously don’t like horses,” Doggett commented sagely, as though that explained everything he’d always wondered about the other man.

“You obviously do,” Mulder retorted, with equal disgust.

“I like animals. Dana and I are thinking of getting a puppy.”

“Oh?” Mulder replied, with feigned indifference although the announcement felt like a kick in his guts. Puppies were permanent. Puppies were commitment. “So it’s serious, huh?”

“As serious as it gets,” Doggett said. “That gonna be a problem?”

“Why should it be? You’re both beyond the age of consent.”

“I got the impression you…”

“You were wrong,” Mulder snarled. 

Doggett opened his mouth, then closed it again and shrugged. “Okay.”

The clatter of hooves made them both turn in time to see the elegant silhouette of a girl on a sleek, dappled horse entering the far end of the barn. As they watched, she swung off its back and dropped the reins, allowing the horse to make his own way to his stall as she followed behind, unfastening the strap of her crash hat. 

“Storm Redlum?” Doggett asked, his eyes unconsciously admiring the girl’s long, jodhpur clad legs.

“That’s me,” she agreed, with an easy grin, removing her hat and allowing her hair to fall in two swinging braids.

Mulder blinked at her in disbelief. “Samantha?” he gasped.

The girl shook her head in negation, so that her long braids danced around her shoulders.

“Sorry, Mister. My name’s Storm. I don’t know any Samantha.”

***

“…can’t emphasize strongly enough the importance of departments working inside their assigned budgets…” “…the necessity for full and complete disclosure of all monetary anomalies…” “…fail to understand the justification of the expenses detailed within this report…”

Years of experience had taught Skinner how to appear fully riveted to the droning minutiae he was subjected to in meetings even as he let the voices of the speakers fade in and out of his attention. He had an almost unfailing instinct for knowing when it was safe to let his concentration wander and, more importantly, a talent for filling a sudden awkward silence with a neutral question that quickly deflected attention away from his inattention. Maintaining a professional front in the face of meaningless trivia had become such second-nature that it took surprisingly little effort for him to maintain an illusion of self-control, despite the very real terror icing through his veins. 

In consequence, as the meeting rumbled on towards lunchtime, the auditor was satisfied sufficiently by Skinner’s outward demeanor that he believed every word of his pontificating speech had been heard and inwardly digested.

If the three department heads present noticed anything anomalous in Skinner’s behavior, it was only that the AD was possibly a little quieter than normal and a little more tolerant than usual of the officious accountant’s tendency to launch into self-important diatribes. None of them noticed the slight pallor of Skinner’s face. None of them noticed the pulse beating furiously in his neck or the fine sheen of sweat beading on his forehead or even the fact that, hidden behind the lenses of his wire-rims, his eyes were looking over their heads towards the far corner of the room.

So if, when the four men filed quietly out of his office, any of them glanced at the space in the corner where Skinner’s attention had been riveted for two hours they did so subconsciously and, seeing nothing of interest, thought no more of it.

And, Skinner decided, their failure to see the ghostly figure standing in the corner of his office was perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.

“What do you want?” he choked. “Why are you haunting me? Speak to me, dammit. Tell me why you’re here.”

The apparition’s ravaged features twisted and strained until, at last, a single word emerged in a reed-thin whisper.

'Protect.'

“Protect?” Skinner repeated helplessly. “Are you warning me I’m in danger? Are you saying I need protection? Or am I supposed to protect someone else?”

'Secret,' she hissed.

Skinner shook his head in confusion. “I don’t understand. How can I protect someone if their identity is a secret? Or are you saying it’s a secret that I’m supposed to protect?”

But the old woman just gave him an enigmatic smile, and then vanished.

***

The girl’s fingers trembled as they dialed the cell phone number she’d memorized only for an emergency and she almost sobbed with relief as the call was answered within three rings. 

“Daddy?” she wailed, her voice sounding far younger than her fifteen years.

The voice that replied // What is it, baby?// was gentle and calming enough to soothe the top edges of her panic, and she took a deep breath to steady herself before continuing.

“Some men were here. They said they were FBI. One of them kept calling me Samantha.”

She heard a sharp intake of breath, and her father’s voice took on a note of urgency.

// Was it …//

“It was Mulder,” she confirmed.

Her comment was greeted by a long silence, but she had the distinct feeling that was only because he’d muffled the handset with his palm before cursing a blue stream in several languages. She almost smiled at the realization he was doing this as much to spare her sensibilities as to conceal his reaction to her bombshell. One of these days she was going to have to let him wise up to the fact that she probably knew more swear words than he did. One of these days she was going to make him admit she was a young woman now, rather than a little girl. But that day wasn’t today. Today, her most prevalent regret was that he’d *ever* listened to her pleas that he should let her ‘grow up’.

// It’s okay. Don’t panic, honey. I’ll take care of it. //

She wanted to believe him, wanted to believe everything would turn out okay, but it was hard. Because if she’d still been the little girl who thought her father walked on water and could never be wrong, she’d never have gotten them into this mess in the first place. She desperately wished she could turn back the clock two years, skip back in time to the moment of her thirteenth birthday when she’d been so hateful to him, and undo the selfish, thoughtless demand she had made of him.

“I just wanted to live a ‘normal’ life, Daddy,” she whimpered. “I just wanted to go to school and have friends and… and…and I didn’t listen to you, didn’t want to listen to you, when you said I was putting us all in danger. But you were right and I’m so sorry and…and I’m so scared.”

// I wanted you to have a normal life too, sweetheart // he replied, his voice low and husky with regret. 

“They…they made me take a blood test. I couldn’t think of a way to refuse without it seeming suspicious. I’m sorry. I know I messed up. I’m really sorry. I just didn’t know what to do.”

There was another long silence.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she whispered. 

// It’s okay. I’ll take care of it, honey. //

His voice held no censure, only a deep, solid certainty that he could make everything all right again. Just as he had *always* somehow made everything all right.

“I know you will,” she sighed, allowing belief to flood through her. “I love you, Daddy.”

// I love you too, sweetheart .//

She smiled, closed her eyes with relief, and replaced the receiver. 


***

As he shifted for the umpteenth time in a pointless attempt to get comfortable in the cramped confines of an economy seat that would have cramped even Dana’s legs, Doggett marveled at Mulder’s ability to appear perfectly at ease. For a man who usually needed to be perpetually in motion, Mulder had a disgusting habit of switching off and sprawling like a lazy contented cat whenever he was on an airplane.

A Cheshire cat, no less, since the grin on his face was so wide that the drinks trolley had made several unscheduled returns to their aisle as the otherwise indifferent stewardess had crumbled under the dubious charm of a happy Mulder.

Which pissed Doggett off even more than the lack of leg room.

‘He’s not that damned good-looking,’ he wanted to shout at the vapid blonde. ‘He’s got a big nose and a weak chin and a mouth that would look cute on a girl, but looks damned stupid on a forty-something man.’

But he repressed the childish urge, knowing the person he really wanted to say that to was Dana, understanding that saying it to either woman would just reveal a deep insecurity born of the knowledge that everyone compared him to Mulder and found him wanting. And, ultimately, he was a pragmatic man. He knew it didn’t really matter that Dana would never love him the way she loved Mulder, because Mulder didn’t want her. Not in that way.

Which begged a question or two. 

For a moment, back in New Orleans, he thought he’d finally put a finger on the answer. A sudden clarity, at the moment when Mulder had stated so surely that the perp wasn’t gay, when a light bulb had flashed inside his head saying ‘That’s it. That’s the answer to the mystery of the Mulder/Scully conundrum. He’s a faggot.’ A thought seemingly confirmed by Mulder’s muted reaction to his puppy comment. But then blown back out of the water by Mulder’s effortless flirting with the stewardess. 

So now he’d abandoned the ‘gay’ explanation in favor of his original assumption, one that fitted far more comfortably over Mulder’s behavior. It didn’t matter whether Mulder was turned on by women, men, or even, more likely, the idea of an alien probe up his ass, the bottom line was the self-centered bastard simply couldn’t see far enough past the end of his overlong nose to truly give a shit about another person. 

Which brought him back to the current victim of Mulder’s dangerous obsession.

“I can’t believe you did it,” Doggett groaned. “Do you have any idea how much shit’s going to hit the fan if the school nurse reports you?”

If anything, Mulder’s smug grin widened “If she was going to report me, she’d have done so before taking the blood test,” he pointed out. “As far as she’s concerned, the FBI have a lead on a possible relative of the girl and need the blood for DNA comparison before getting Storm’s hopes up. She practically fell over herself trying to help.”

“Only in the hope that the poor non-existent schmuck would take Storm out of the school,” Doggett snapped. “We never even looked into the so-called poltergeist phenomena.”

“Because right now the most important thing is to establish what she is, rather than what she can do,” Mulder replied.

“She’s not a clone,” Doggett said firmly. “If nothing else, the blood test proved you wrong. Her blood’s red.”

Mulder shook his head mulishly. “It surprised me,” he admitted, “But I know my own sister. Red blood or not, she’s the spitting image of Samantha. You’ve seen her picture, Doggett. You can’t honestly say you can’t see the resemblance.”

“There is a close resemblance,” Doggett admitted, “But that’s all. I’ve only seen a picture of Samantha at eight and that girl’s fifteen. Her hair’s several shades darker and…Samantha’s eyes were hazel like yours, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well that girl has green eyes. True green like a cat.”

Mulder chewed his lower lip uncertainly. Intellectually he knew that his red-green color blindness made distinctions like those impossible but he didn’t doubt what Doggett was saying. If Doggett said the girl’s blood was red and her eyes were green he had to accept that it was true. So maybe she wasn’t a clone. Maybe she was a hybrid created from Samantha’s DNA. 

In which case she was not only exactly the proof he’d come to Kansas to find but, in a way, she was far more special than a clone of his sister…

***

“…she’s Samantha’s daughter. My niece.”

For a long moment, Skinner said nothing. His eyes remained dark and unfathomable behind the lenses of his glasses, and not even a twitch of his face betrayed his considerable unease at Mulder’s passionate avowal. He took a deep breath, then another. Inhale; exhale; steadying his heartbeat until he could trust his voice to emerge calmly, and without emotion.

“Daughter?” he questioned.

“Biological, though admittedly unnatural - given her date of birth was several years after Samantha purportedly died,” Mulder clarified, and shrugged as though posthumous motherhood was an everyday occurrence.

In Mulder’s world it possibly was, Skinner considered sourly. It went perfectly hand-in-hand with alien invasions, giant flukeworms and interactive ghosts. He shivered a little, his eyes darting towards the corner of the office where his own interactive ghost had materialized the day before, and it was on the tip of his tongue to confide in Mulder, to tell him of the visitation and ask his opinion. But he swallowed the words unspoken, some unnamed instinct warning him that the last person he should tell of the old woman’s visit was the only man who would believe it had truly taken place. 

“Quite an assumptive leap,” he pointed out mildly. “One based on nothing more than a physical resemblance.”

“The DNA results will prove me right,” Mulder asserted confidently.

“Perhaps,” Skinner allowed. “But doesn’t it strike you as somewhat ‘convenient’ that she looks like your sister?”

Mulder rolled his eyes in rude frustration. “Considering I went there looking for a child created from the Consortium’s breeding experiments, it’s actually pretty reasonable that I found one created from Samantha’s DNA. The Consortium had limited breeding stock to work with.”

“Limited?” Skinner repeated thoughtfully. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Agent Mulder, but your original justification for investigating the girl was based on your assertion there are numerous people capable of conceiving a hybrid child.”

“Numerous people from within a limited gene pool,” Mulder replied easily. “Storm could have turned out to be the daughter of any child of the Elders, but there obviously were a finite number of Consortium members, so the odds of any child being related to Samantha are actually quite high.”

“As usual, you want to have your cake and eat it,” Skinner muttered, with a repressive scowl.

Mulder shuffled uncomfortably in his seat but his sulking pout and over-bright eyes defied Skinner to find fault with his reasoning.

Skinner shook his head sadly, knowing what he was about to say would fall on willfully deaf ears but needing to say the words regardless. “I think they know exactly what buttons to press with you, Mulder. You still haven’t learned, have you? This whole thing smacks of a set-up.”

“How could it be?” Mulder protested. “I never filed the paperwork for the Redlum case. The case file on her was gathering dust in my office for months before I got reinstated. I know paranoia’s my middle name, but even I have to draw a line sometimes. It doesn’t make sense that someone planted it as a trap for me while I was still on the run, with a death sentence over my head. Who the hell would have imagined I’d ever get the chance to return to the X-files?”

Skinner sighed. Mulder’s argument made sense, except… “You’re conveniently forgetting the person who was most instrumental in getting you pardoned is the same man who blocked your 302’s to investigate the other children like her.”

Mulder looked momentarily startled, his eyes flaring with self-doubt, but then he shook his head in negation.

“Kersh didn’t know I was planning to investigate her.”

“No,” Skinner agreed. “Unless…”

Mulder rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Unless what?”

“Unless he already knew you had the Redlum case, because it was planted in your office. Perhaps the reason he made sure I was aware he’d blocked your 302’s on the other children was to deliberately encourage you to investigate the child he wanted you to find instead.”

“No,” Mulder said, shaking his head slowly. “That’s the kind of thing you’d have done to manipulate me. I don’t believe Kersh is as good at thinking outside the box as you were.”

Skinner winced at Mulder’s reminder of his own past betrayals. “Just because he’s heavy-handed to your face, don’t believe he’s incapable of subtlety. I know him a lot better than you do. Believe me, underestimating Kersh’s intelligence is a dangerous mistake,” he warned. “Besides, even if this girl isn’t a plant designed to distract or discredit you, there’s still no reason to believe she’s Samantha’s ‘daughter’. Your sister was used as the blueprint for at least two different sets of clones. Isn’t it most likely that this girl is simply a new form of red-blooded clone?”

“What if she is?” Mulder countered. “She’s still my flesh and blood. Family’s everything, isn’t that what you said?”

Skinner shook his head sadly. “I can’t believe you’re letting them do this to you again. Can’t you see this is probably exactly what they want? She isn’t Samantha. She isn’t your sister. Your sister is never coming home,” he said bluntly.

“I know that,” Mulder spat, his eyes flashing with barely constrained fury.

“I thought you did,” Skinner said, his mouth pursed with disapproval. “And while you’re messing about investigating this girl, who’s going to look for William? What happens to your son while you’re busy playing this new Consortium game? Did you consider that? Because I think you’re reacting exactly how they want you to react. And that in itself is enough to convince me this girl isn’t what you believe her to be.”

“If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…” Mulder muttered.

“What?”

Mulder’s eyes suddenly clouded and he sagged in his chair, the urgent energy of his conviction draining almost visibly from his body. “Something Doggett said. He was wrong. So I have to accept the possibility that maybe I am too.” He smiled wryly at Skinner’s perplexed expression. “Sometimes we see what we want to see, don’t we?”

“That’s the point I’ve been trying to make,” Skinner agreed, uncertain of the reason for Mulder’s abrupt self-doubt but grateful for it regardless. “I just don’t want to see you hurt, Mulder.”

“It’s too late for that,” Mulder pointed out. “Look…whatever happens, I’m not oblivious to the possibility I’m being set up. I’m way past any expectation of a happy ending but I still have to…have to know for sure.”

“Of course you do,” Skinner agreed, his expression softening. “And…well, I hope for your sake that this girl is what you want her to be. Only, try not to get emotionally involved until you know one way or the other.”

“It’s too late for that too,” Mulder admitted, with a wry smile.

***

“I think you’re making a mistake,” she began.

Mulder’s face twisted into a pout. “Don’t bother, Scully. Skinner’s already beaten you to it. I’ve had chapter and verse on why I should walk away and forget Storm even exists. He thinks she’s a Consortium plant, designed to distract me from my search for William.”

Scully pursed her lips and frowned. “He may well be right. At the very least, waiting for the DNA results is going to keep you preoccupied for a couple of weeks.”

“Two weeks?” he demanded furiously.

“If you want a full DNA work-up,” Scully replied calmly, “it’s going to take that long. This is real life, not the movies.”

“But you can at least get me some preliminary results sooner, can’t you?” he wheedled. “Just a basic comparison between her DNA and my own. That’s all I need to convince a judge to give me temporary custody.”

“Why the hell would you want custody of a ‘Supersoldier’?” she asked snidely. “Or have you decided to throw that theory out of the window just because she looks like your sister?”

“The Supersoldier theory explains her existence. But that isn’t relevant right now. Whatever else she is, she’s also Samantha’s daughter - which makes her my niece. That’s why I want custody.”

“Even if the DNA results prove you right, I hardly think ‘niece’ is an appropriate term,” she snapped. “Samantha died years before this girl was born. Even if you’re right about Storm being partially created from Samantha’s DNA, that’s hardly the same thing as her being a child born of Samantha’s body, is it?”

“Really?” Mulder demanded coldly. “I don’t remember you making the same distinction when you claimed Emily as your daughter.”

Scully reeled as though slapped, but the color that immediately flooded her cheeks wasn’t anger at his brutality as much as shame at her own words. “You’re right,” she admitted, in a near whisper. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter how she was conceived. She’s still possibly your flesh and blood.”

“Even if she was just a clone of Samantha, I couldn’t walk away from her, Scully. Except for William, she’s the closest thing to family that I have left.”

“If the DNA results prove you right,” she reminded him.

Mulder sighed and shrugged. “Yeah.”

***

Go to part two