// I don’t give a shit about the message itself. The important thing is it at least proves he still thinks I’m dead.//

‘At the moment,’ Mannerly pointed out. ‘How long do you honestly think Skinner’s going to keep your secret?’ 

Alex shrugged coolly. // Not long enough. But longer than you expect. I gave him a damned good reason to keep Mulder out of the loop //  He smirked at the ghost with satisfaction. 

‘What reason?”

“I told him she’s Jeffrey's daughter,” he said.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Jeffrey roared, his face paling in uneven blotches.

Alex swung his attention to the younger man and shrugged. “Skinner’s not stupid. The results are going to prove she’s related to Mulder.”

“You said he was too scared of the Nanos to give you any trouble. He was just supposed to destroy the fucking results.”

“I was wrong. He’s not as easy to manipulate as he used to be. I actually think the stupid bastard would rather sacrifice himself than betray Mulder again. But Skinner knows how Mulder feels about you. He’s not going to commit suicide just to give Mulder the proof that you have a daughter.”

“You’d better be right,” Jeffrey snarled. “Because if Mulder turns up on my doorstep, I’ll put a fucking bullet through him myself.”

Alex’s eyes darkened dangerously. “I told you I’d handle Mulder.”

“You told me you’d handle Skinner,” Jeffrey reminded him with a frown. Then he winced as the expression puckered a sensitive patch of sun-burned flesh. “These fucking grafts are pissing me off,” he snarled.

Alex shrugged. “You’re looking better though,” he pointed out. “I told you that plastic surgeon was the best.”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey agreed, glancing at the now almost unblemished skin above Alex’s nose. Except for a slight discrepancy in skin-tone, it was hardly credible that a round from a ’38 had once lodged between Alex’s eyes. It was a goddamned miracle. But it would take more than a miracle of cosmetic science to make him look ‘normal’ again, so bitterness clouded his voice as he continued. “Who are we trying to kid anyway, huh?” he demanded, gesturing at Alex’s prosthetic hand. “We still look like a pair of fucking freakish monsters from a second-rate Frankenstein movie.”

Alex’s expression was less bitter than sad as he replied. “Not even our bastard fathers could build Rome in a day, Jeffrey.”

‘We deliberately blinkered ourselves to the cost our children would pay for our success,’ Mannerly admitted, his expression tragic. ‘For what little it’s worth, I’m sorry for what we did to you all.’

Alex’s lips curled with disgust. “Fuck your sorry, and fuck you,” he snarled. 

The ghost offered him a flicker of an apologetic smile, then simply faded from the room to avoid Alex’s fury.

“What did he say?” Jeffrey demanded.

Unable to lash out at the ghost, Alex turned a cruel smile on the younger man. “He said he’s been keeping an eye on you, Jeffrey. A very close eye. You might want to think about jerking off under your sheets from now on.”

Jeffrey’s eyes widened with horror. He took a couple of convulsive deep breaths, then threw his hand against his mouth and bolted from the room. A few seconds later, the distant sound of violent retching restored Alex’s sense of humor.

“Asshole,” he grinned.

He was whistling as he left Jeffrey’s house.

***

“I checked the sample against the FBI employee database as you requested.”

“And?”

“Well, I can see why you wanted to keep this quiet, Sir, and, under the circumstances, I even understand why you insisted I brought the results directly to you rather than Agent Mulder, but I still feel obligated to point out that this isn’t really a justified use of FBI resources.”

At Skinner’s furious glower, the lab tech quailed a little and offered a nervous smile. “But I’m sure you have a good reason, and it’s not my place to question an Assistant Director and…” he babbled.

“Just tell me what you found,” Skinner snapped impatiently.

“I managed to cross-reference the subject with three employees in the FBI database,” the tech blurted.

“Three?”

“Um…yes, sir.”

Skinner shook his head in slight bewilderment. He forced a tone of indifference. “Which three?”

The tech twisted uncomfortably on his seat and offered an awkward smile. “Special Agent Fox Mulder and Special Agent Jeffrey Spender.”

// So Krycek *had* been telling the truth when he’d said Storm Redlum was Jeffrey Spender’s daughter //

“You said three?” he prompted.

The tech blushed deeply and cleared his throat. “And, well, and yourself, Sir.”

“WHAT?” Skinner roared.

The tech’s smile warped into a grimace. “Um, I said the subject is a close biological relative of both yourself and Agents Mulder and Spender, Sir.”

Ignoring the wild hammering of his heart, Skinner shuttered his expression and spoke with remarkable calmness. “How close?”

“Well, considering that one half of nuclear DNA is inherited from the mother and the other half is inherited from the father, and the subject has an approximate 25% match with yourself, I’d say he or she is your grandchild. The match with Agents Mulder and Spender are slightly lower, suggesting they’re possibly uncles or cousins of the subject.”

A wave of relief flushed through Skinner. Whatever game Krycek or his employers were playing had just blown up in their faces. He was almost smug as he replied.

“My grandchild? Impossible. I don’t even have children.”

The tech looked mildly surprised, then shrugged. “That you know of,” he pointed out.

Skinner shook his head decisively. “I can’t have children,” he said and, though his face flushed angrily at the admission of his own inability to reproduce, his absolute certainty of that inability was proof, in itself, that the entire DNA test was bogus. Since Storm couldn’t be his granddaughter, it was equally unlikely that she bore any relationship to Mulder. The girl was a consortium set-up.

The lab tech blushed slightly and shrugged. “It’s possible this could be a child of one of your siblings,” he suggested doubtfully.

“I don’t have any,” Skinner retorted.

”That you know of,” the tech countered.

Skinner nodded reluctantly. He had to accept the extremely remote possibility that he might have an illegitimate brother or sister. However, the odds against that theoretical person somehow having a child who then coincidentally impregnated Mulder’s sister were about as likely as a herd of pigs sprouting wings and flying over the White House lawn. It beggared belief that both he and Mulder could have this connection. Even if he did have an illegitimate sibling, what were the chances of that person having a son who had then impregnated Samantha Mulder? The supposedly dead Samantha Mulder. Unless Mulder also had an illegitimate sibling who…. No…. that was taking it too far. While he prided himself on being more open to extreme possibilities than Mulder gave him credit for, he wasn’t the gullible fool Krycek obviously took him for. “You’re positive about these results?”

“DNA doesn’t lie. The subject is related to all three of you.”

“Well, I agree that’s obviously what someone wants us to believe,” Skinner replied dismissively. “The question is why.”

“I would say the question is ‘how?’,” the technician retorted. “The sample shows no sign of contamination.”

“Then it’s fair to assume that it’s the girl’s DNA itself that’s been tampered with to produce these results. We’re dealing with people who have the ability to splice DNA inside a living subject. Run the tests again. Work on the assumption that someone has somehow introduced false DNA into the girl to produce these results. Someone’s playing games with us,” Skinner snapped. 

He was pretty sure he knew who that someone was. 

Krycek.

It had to be Krycek playing some mind-fuck with him. That was why he’d told him to intercept the results. He dismissed, out of hand, the fact that Krycek had told him to destroy the results rather than intercept them. Maybe Krycek hadn’t told him to examine them himself, but that was a typical rat-ploy. By telling him to destroy the DNA results, Krycek had planted the seed of interest in his head.

But why?

Since Krycek couldn’t possibly believe he was stupid enough to believe the girl was related to him, he was obviously intended to dismiss the presence of his own DNA as a trick. And, consequently, he equally had to dismiss the DNA that tied Storm to either Mulder or Spender. 

Or was that what he was supposed to do?

Was it as simple as that? What if the girl was Samantha’s daughter, and rather than trying to hide that biological connection, the Consortium had added a little junk DNA from a totally improbable source – himself – as a red herring to cast doubt on any tests run on the girl?

It was entirely possible. Although Samantha Mulder had been supposedly dead and buried years before Storm was conceived, someone ‘claiming’ to be Samantha had grown up as Spender’s daughter, then gotten married and had two children. She’d met Mulder and told him about the kids, explained that they were the reason she couldn’t come home.

Perhaps, when it became obvious that even Samantha herself couldn’t talk him out of his obsession to find her, a different ‘truth’ was offered. That Samantha had been dead for years. And, oddly enough, Mulder had liked that so-called truth better.

The most probable scenario was that the woman who had met Mulder in that diner had been the real Samantha Mulder, and Storm was one of her two children, and the presence of his own DNA in Storm’s results was just the latest in a long line of mind-fucks to protect the secret that Samantha was alive.

If so, the only question left unanswered was who was Storm’s father, because it sure as hell wasn’t any relative of his.

And that inevitably led him back to Krycek’s explanation. 

Jeffrey Spender.

Mulder’s half-brother.

A man Mulder loathed.

Yes, he could see why Jeffrey would be desperate to conceal the fact that all the time Mulder had been searching for his sister, Jeffrey had been happily fucking her.

***

When she walked into the basement and saw the unmistakable paperwork on his desk, Scully almost dropped the cups she was carrying. 

“Tell me that isn’t what I think it is?”

Standing to retrieve one of the coffees from her shaking fingers, Mulder just offered her a sheepish smile.

“Mulder, think about what you’re doing. This is crazy. It’s probably exactly what they want you to do.”

He shrugged, sank back into his chair and took a drink before replying. “I don’t care who her goddamned father is, Scully. The important thing is she’s Samantha’s daughter. The DNA results proved it.”

“They proved a relationship with you, not necessarily Samantha,” she reminded him. “And since Jeffrey’s your half-brother, any child of his would duplicate the results. The same DNA results incidentally that ‘prove’ she’s Skinner’s grand-daughter,” she scoffed gently.

Mulder grinned. “Yeah, who’d have thought old Wally had it in him, huh?”

“It’s not funny, Mulder. He absolutely, categorically, denies any possibility of that being the truth.”

“I know,” he laughed. “As much as I hate accepting the idea of Jeffrey fucking my sister, I do agree with Skinner he’s the most likely candidate for father. The two of them apparently grew up together. It might make my stomach churn to think of the two of them together, but it kind of makes sense she might have fallen for the insipid little bastard. Why the hell else did Spender bring her up as his own daughter? Maybe getting Samantha and Jeffrey to have children together was the whole point of Samantha’s abduction. Skinner’s DNA is just there as a smokescreen to make me doubt the entire results so I won’t accept she’s Samantha’s daughter,” Mulder pointed out. 

“It doesn’t work that way, Mulder. No one has the ability to falsify half a DNA test. The bottom line is that either she is related to both you and Skinner, or she isn’t related to either of you.”

Mulder shook his head mulishly, “She is Samantha’s daughter.  And I think the woman I met in that diner was Samantha and that means she’s possibly still alive, Scully. My sister might be alive.” 

“You don’t have any evidence for that belief, Mulder. You just want to believe it. Even if Storm is Samantha's daughter, it doesn't necessarily follow that Samantha is still alive today. It's far more probable that she died in that fire with the other Consortium family members, isn't it?"

"Storm didn't die," Mulder pointed out mullishly.

"Can’t you see that this is exactly the reaction they want from you? You’d accepted your sister was dead, that the woman in the Diner was a clone. Now you’re back where you started, on a pointless quest to find Samantha when what you should be doing is concentrating on finding William and preventing the invasion. How many times are you going to let them do this to you?”

She expected him to lose his temper, to yell back at her or even storm out of the room in a typical Mulder tantrum. What she was completely unprepared for was a gentle, happy smile.

“Even if you’re right, you know what this means, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes shimmering suspiciously.

“What?” she asked, equally softly.

“They don’t have William.”

“Huh?”

“If they could dangle William as bait, why would they go to the effort of trying to make me believe Samantha is alive? It’s a win, win situation, Scully. Either this is real and Storm is my niece, or else proving it to be a lie will at least prove that William is somewhere safe. I don’t have anything to lose.”

“Except your already questionable sanity,” she snapped without heat. “What on earth are you going to do with her, Mulder? Do you really think you’re in a position to adopt a teenager? Hell, Mulder, you can’t even manage to keep your fish alive.”

“I’m counting on that,” he laughed. “I’m assuming Samantha is equally certain of my inability to look after Storm. The minute I file the papers for custody, Samantha is going to have to come out of the woodwork and claim her.”

***

The moment he stepped into his apartment, he froze in place, his eyes widening with shock and his heart thudding into a rampaging rhythm that drowned the husky voice of the dark-haired assassin sitting casually on his sofa, tapping a small black computer on one of his denim-clad thighs.

He almost laughed at the smug look on Krycek’s face. Would have, if he could have released the sound without hysteria. Because it wasn’t Krycek’s presence that had sent his veins into hyperdrive, but that of the old hag who was grinning a gap-toothed smile at him as her ghostly fingers carded through the lush strands of the oblivious assassin’s hair.

“What do you want?” he choked, not certain which of his two nemesii he was addressing.

“I warned you, but you didn’t listen,” Krycek snarled. “I told you to bury those results, and what do you do? You gift wrap them and hand them to Mulder. Anyone would think you wanted me to kill you.”

“You fed me a bunch of lies, Krycek. But then, you wouldn’t know the truth if it reared up and bit your ass.”

“The only reason you’re still alive is you didn’t make the mistake of telling Mulder about our little chat. So, contrary to appearances, I’m assuming you’re not feeling completely suicidal. I’m going to give you a chance to redeem yourself.”

Opening his mouth to reply, Skinner blinked in disbelief as the old woman smiled benignly down at Krycek and patted his head approvingly. Then she raised her gaze to Skinner’s face, her eyes frighteningly sharp, and shook her head decisively.

‘Don’t even think of saying that to him,’ she warned.

He slammed his mouth shut abruptly. She was right. He’d been about to say he'd decided that finding the girl was already enough of a distraction, without Mulder wasting his energy trying to send Krycek back to the grave he’d somehow crawled out of. But whatever satisfaction he’d derive from saying that to Krycek wasn’t worth suffering the pain of the nanos.

‘I just didn’t want you to hurt his feelings,’ she corrected, with a motherly tap on Krycek’s cheek. Who shivered slightly, as though he’d felt the ghostly touch.

// That *thing* doesn’t have feelings // 

‘Everything that has a heart has feelings, Walter,’ the old crone cackled. ‘Even you.’

He was still trying to absorb the impact of her words when she winked at him and disappeared, leaving him alone with Krycek. He swallowed dryly, then turned a furious glare on the younger man.

“I asked you what you wanted,” he snapped.

Krycek relaxed back on the sofa, spreading his legs casually, his expression mocking but his eyes so devoid of emotion that they clearly put the lie to the idea of a heart residing beneath the dark leather jacket. 

“The people I work for are not happy. I’m warning you, Walt, you’re currently the most expendable player in this particular game. Mulder’s filed for custody of Storm Redlum. You’ve got 24 hours to stop him.”

“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” Skinner growled. 

Krycek shrugged, the gesture made awkward, even poignant, by his prosthesis. Not that Skinner felt even a twinge of sympathy under the circumstances.

“Oppose the custody. His case is based purely on the DNA evidence that you were supposed to destroy, Walter. So my employer is holding you personally responsible. Based on those same false DNA results, you are Storm’s closest relative. I suggest you simply claim custody yourself and tell the court you prefer that Storm remains with her current guardian.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You don’t have a choice, Walter. And why the hell do you care what happens to the kid anyway? She’s nothing to do with you. The DNA results were faked. But then you already know that, don’t you?”

“So the only reason she was given my DNA was so you could use me to block any attempt by Mulder to claim her?”

“Not just Mulder. Like any consortium brat, she’s a prime candidate for abduction. The only way to keep her safe from the aliens is to keep her identity concealed.”

“Is she Samantha’s daughter?”

“You’re pissing me off now, Skinner. I already told you, she’s Jeffrey Spender’s daughter. There’s no X-file here. The only connection between Storm and Mulder is a certain late and extremely unlamented smoking bastard. The Consortium doctors altered Storm to conceal her from the aliens. They couldn’t completely disguise the fact Storm was related to Jeffrey, but they managed to muddy the water with some random strands of DNA. Obviously it’s more than an unfortunate co-incidence that you were chosen as the source. In the remote event of Mulder ever discovering her existence, my ability to control you was seen as the best way to control Mulder.”

“I see,” Skinner grunted. It made a horrible amount of sense, to the extent that any of the current situation could make sense. “So you are really working for Jeffrey Spender.”

“The penny finally drops,” Krycek laughed. “Jeffrey is somewhat of a … shall we say ‘recluse’ these days. He’s in hiding, like a modern day Phantom of the Opera, but he still wants his daughter to have as close to ‘normal’ a childhood as possible.”

“By sending her to a boarding school and pretending she’s an orphan? Does she even know her father’s alive?”

“No. You’ve seen him for yourself, Skinner. Are you honestly surprised he’d rather have Storm believe she’s an orphan than let her see the way he looks now?”

“No,” Skinner agreed, shaking his head in confusion. It made sense. It was the only thing that made sense. It was merely the fact that Krycek was saying it, which made the scenario suspect.

“The whole thing would have been so much simpler if you’d simply ‘lost’ the DNA results in the first place, of course, but it’s not too late for you to put things right. Block Mulder’s attempt to gain custody, leave Storm alone, and I don’t see why both you and Mulder can’t get out of this situation alive.”

“More threats, Krycek?”

“Promises, Skinner. Let me make this plain. If Mulder claims her, he might as well put a neon arrow over her head directing the next passing UFO to pick her up. Spender would rather see his daughter dead than abducted. Maybe you don’t think your own life is particularly valuable and god knows I can see plenty of reasons why you might finally decide you’re tired of putting yourself on the line to save Mulder’s hide, but I don’t think you want that girl’s death on your conscience.”

“You bastard…”

“She rides, you know. Such a dangerous pastime, horse-riding. Unpredictable things, horses. They get spooked so easily. Did you know that 5 deaths per 100,000 population per year occur due to horse riders falling from horses?” 

Skinner’s eyes widened with horror. “I always knew you were a lying, murdering bastard, but I never realized you were evil enough to murder an innocent child.”

Krycek smirked widely, his eyes sparkling with obvious amusement. 

“Skinner, you can’t even begin to imagine how evil I can be,” he laughed. “But feel free to test me on this matter. As far as I’m concerned, the world can only be improved by the removal of Spender’s whelp. So, to tell the truth, I don’t really care which way you jump on this one. Make the wrong choice and I get the chance to take out two of the Cancerman’s spawns in one go - Mulder and Storm. Then, who knows, maybe I’ll do the world a favor and put Jeffrey out of his misery too. Call this a win, win situation for me.”

***

Eyes still glazed with shock, Mulder clenched his pencil so tightly in his hand that it snapped with a loud crack. Both Skinner and Scully startled at the sound, and then exchanged a worried glace.

“Krycek’s alive,” Mulder muttered. “The bastard’s been alive all along.”

Scully rolled her eyes tiredly. “We’ve covered that, Mulder. Krycek’s alive. Big deal. Can we get back to discussing the important issue?”

Mulder jerked to his feet, his hand sweeping across his desk to send the entire contents flying. “Alex Krycek is alive, and that’s not ‘important’?” he roared. Then he turned his wild, wounded eyes in Skinner’s direction. “And you didn’t even think it was ‘important’ to tell me he was alive?”

“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you before,” Skinner barked. “You’ve got enough problems to deal with without haring off in pointless pursuit of a man who hid himself well enough to convince us he was dead for over four years.”

“I was convinced he was dead because I witnessed you murdering him,” Mulder yelled.

“Murdering him?” Scully repeated quietly.

“He was unarmed, on his knees, and Skinner shot him in the head,” Mulder spat.

“While he was begging me to shoot you,” Skinner reminded him.

“Bastard,” Mulder growled.

Skinner opened his mouth to reply.

“Not you,” Mulder continued, before Skinner spoke. “Him. Krycek. The bastard let me think he was dead.”

Scully and Skinner exchanged another worried look.

“You hate Alex Krycek,” Scully reminded him carefully.

“Yeah,” Mulder agreed, his voice harsh. “I hate him. I fucking HATE him.”

“I’m not that fond of him myself,” Skinner interrupted dryly, and a little of the brittle tension in the room escaped as Mulder exhaled a gasping laugh.

“You okay?” Scully asked.

“It’s just a shock,” he said. “Just a hell of a shock, that’s all.”

He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and dropped gracelessly back into his chair. “So what the fuck’s his game this time?” 

“I know he’s playing us. What I don’t know, for sure, is exactly how or why,” Skinner admitted.

“His story does make sense,” Scully pointed out. “It is far more likely that Storm is Jeffrey’s daughter than any other scenario.” She flinched slightly at the look of betrayal in Mulder’s eyes but continued. “It’s the only scenario that makes sense and explains the fact she’s related to you, Mulder. In which case, do you even want to pursue this?”

“That’s exactly the point. I don’t give a damn whether or not Jeffrey has a daughter. As far as I’m concerned my relationship with him is just an accident of birth. I sure as hell don’t feel any brotherly connection to him. That’s why the whole thing makes no sense at all. Why all the cloak and dagger stuff with Skinner’s DNA just to cover up the existence of a child I probably would have had no interest in anyway?”

“Krycek explained that. He said Jeffrey wasn’t willing to take the chance of anyone discovering her identity. It wasn’t really you he was worried about. Any child related to the Elders was at risk of abduction. Her DNA was altered to conceal her from the aliens. The particular problem with you finding her, is the high probability you’ll alert the aliens to her existence.”

“Krycek’s lying through his teeth.”

“You’re saying you don’t believe she’s Jeffrey’s daughter?” Skinner demanded.

“Absolutely not,” Mulder agreed. “This is just another red herring. Which makes me wonder…” His face went curiously blank for a moment, and then his eyes abruptly widened.

“What?” Scully demanded, recognizing Mulder’s expression as one of sudden enlightenment.

“Krycek’s given you a damn good, almost impossible to disprove, explanation of why the DNA test showed a relationship with me. But he also said the results were faked in regard to your DNA, Sir.”

Skinner nodded. “He explained that. I’m the one with the nanos in my blood. He knew he could force me to oppose you if you attempted to gain custody of the girl.”

Mulder gave a wry smile. “What a nicely tied-up case, except for an obvious problem. That’s the funny thing about Krycek,” he said lightly. “He’s so good at wrapping you up inside his little fantasy worlds that sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees. Neither of you can see it, can you?”

“See what?” Scully demanded, with a frown of irritation.

“A hole in his story big enough to drive a truck through,” Mulder scoffed. He shook his head at their blank expressions. “Tell him what you said to me, Scully.”

“About what?” she asked.

“I’ll quote you, shall I? ‘No one has the science to falsify half a DNA test. Either she's related to you both, or she most probably isn’t related to either of you.’ That is what you said, isn’t it?”

Skinner shook his head in bewilderment. “What is your point, Mulder?”

“That Krycek’s been leading all of us by the nose, Sir. We’ve been wading blindly through a web of lies, unable to see the truth, because we’ve been looking for the wrong truth. It’s my fault. You’ve always accused me of being self-centered in my obsessions. In this case, I think I have been. You see it doesn’t really matter whether Storm is Samantha’s daughter or Jeffrey’s. Either way, she is your granddaughter.”

“Impossible,” Skinner snapped.

“Yes,” Mulder agreed. “That’s what we were all supposed to believe. We accepted the impossibility of you having a relationship to Storm as an obvious smokescreen to throw doubt upon her relationship to me. Too obvious. Krycek’s always been good at sleight of hand. He knows me far too well. He’s also a hell of a lot smarter than I ever gave him credit for. He’s been using my own paranoia against me.” He gave them both a wry, embarrassed smile. “Krycek used you, Sir, to show that Storm’s DNA had been tampered with in order to fool me into believing she was Samantha’s daughter. With the revelation of that tampering, I was supposed to see her as a typical Consortium trap and walk away. God knows, I’ve been fooled by enough fake Samanthas in the past that I should have learned my lesson by now.

“But Krycek overplayed his hand. By introducing the idea of Jeffrey as Storm’s father, he’s inadvertently confirmed that I wasn’t supposed to find her. He’s admitted she doesn’t exist simply as a trap for me. I was never supposed to know she even existed. And if that’s true, if I found her by complete coincidence, then there never would have been a reason to tamper with her DNA in the first place.”

Scully sucked in a breath. “You’re saying that you found Storm by accident, and the only deceit here has been a deliberate attempt by Krycek to conceal the fact that Storm is exactly what her DNA says she is?”

“Yes,” Mulder agreed, with a smile of satisfaction.

“My grandchild,” Skinner scoffed. “I hate to rain on your parade, Mulder. But like I said before, it’s impossible.”

“No,” Mulder corrected. “It’s simply highly improbable. I think it’s time we investigated it as an extreme possibility. Particularly since you’re going to the judge in two hours and claiming custody of Storm Redlum.”

“I am?”

“Let’s keep Krycek happy for now. Let’s not give him any reason to believe we doubt his story about Jeffrey being Storm’s father.”

Skinner stared at the veins on the back of his hands and shivered involuntarily. “I don’t have any issue with keeping Krycek off my back for the moment,” he agreed dryly. “But the fact remains that there’s no way Storm is related to me. I don’t have any siblings and I’m medically incapable of having children.”

“So is Scully,” Mulder pointed out, with an apologetic glance in her direction.

Skinner gave a bitter laugh. “It’s not quite the same situation, Mulder. My ‘problem’ relates to the injuries I received in Vietnam.”

“In which case, you could have fathered a child,” Mulder pointed out reasonably. “I assume you did have relationships as a teenager.”

Skinner looked momentarily startled, then blushed deeply. “Not that it’s any of your business, Agent Mulder,” he snapped, “but in those days ‘nice’ girls weren’t quite as … liberal minded as they are these days. I…um… well, let’s say none of the girls I dated were the kind who ended up ‘having’ to get married.”

Mulder quickly hid a grin at the AD’s obvious embarrassment. He tried to catch Scully’s eyes but she was busy looking at an invisible scuff mark on her shoes. “Well...um…” he said, “were you… um… sexually active in Vietnam before your injury?”

A vein began to throb prominently on Skinner’s forehead, and his face stilled into a repressive mask of quiet fury, but when he spoke his voice was quiet and sad.

“I have absolutely no intention of answering that question, Agent Mulder. What I will say is this. If there had been any feasible chance that I had fathered a child, I would surely have known about it. I would have accepted my responsibility towards that child. If I… if I had had a child, that child would have been part of my life. I would have… I would have welcomed a child, under any circumstances. I don’t… I can’t imagine that I… Oh god. What if I did? What if I never knew? ”

“So it is possible that you…” Mulder began.

“Sir,” Scully interrupted quickly. “It may be relevant to point out that Storm’s DNA is 100% Caucasian.”

Skinner’s blush deepened but he closed his eyes and sighed with obvious relief. “Then no. Even in the highly improbable event that I fathered a child, that child could be no relation of this girl.”

“Then the answer has to be closer to home,” Mulder stated firmly. “Is it possible that the doctors who operated on you after Vietnam took sperm samples from you?”

“Without my consent or knowledge?” Skinner demanded incredulously.

“Well, if they knew you’d be left infertile by your injuries, they might have…well… I mean they do that for cancer patients, don’t they?” Mulder demanded, then winced awkwardly at the pinched expression on Scully’s face.

“The phrase ‘grasping at straws’ comes to mind,” Skinner growled. 

“I just think…” Mulder started.

“The problem with you, Mulder, is you frequently don’t think at all,” Skinner interrupted. “I’ll request a copy of my medical records. I’ll do that much.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Don’t thank me, Mulder. I’m not doing it for you.”

***

The old man’s eyes were rheumy and opaque, yet they still sparked with intelligence within his wizened face, and his voice was a little breathless as he motioned to the chair beside his bed with a shaking hand.

“Don’t get many visitors,” he said. “Sit down, Walter. Tell me your news.”

Skinner sat down, his substantial frame casting a dark shadow over the frail old man. “It’s a nice place,” he said awkwardly.

Rushton snorted rudely. “It’s death’s waiting room, Walter. The pretty furnishings and pretty nurses are window dressing. It’s still just a place for old farts like me to wheeze their last breath.”

Skinner winced a little although, since Dr Rushton was on the wrong side of ninety, it was pointless to argue the point. He was relieved, at least, that Rushton was evidently still firing on all cylinders mentally.

“Okay, just spit it out, Walter,” Rushton snapped into the awkward silence. “I haven’t seen you in twenty years, so I know you didn’t come here to chew the fat. Out with it, boy. At my age, I don’t have time for people to beat around the bush.”

Skinner nodded. “Why can’t I have children?” 

He saw a flash of something like guilt in the old man’s eyes before Rushton smiled at him awkwardly. “We’ve been through this before, Walter. Your sperm count is too low.”

Again Skinner nodded. “But why? You never specifically explained to me why it’s so damned low.”

Rushton sighed and picked at his bedcovers, averting his eyes as he replied. “Well your injuries in Vietnam were extensive, Walter. Your intestines were virtually shredded and your groin suffered significant trauma. Whoever performed the surgery in the Military hospital that put you back together performed nothing less than a miracle.”

Skinner shook his head impatiently. “I know that,” he snarled. “I’ve spent the best part of thirty years being grateful that I’m not limping around with a colostomy bag strapped to my thigh, let alone the fact that I’m sexually active. So damned grateful that it never occurred to me to question why my sperm count is so low. Specifically, I mean.”

“Specifically, I can’t answer you,” Rushton admitted. 

“I didn’t think you would,” Skinner replied angrily. He slapped a file down on the old man’s lap. “I finally requested a copy of my medical records. They make interesting reading, even for a lay person like me. I showed them to a colleague of mine, a doctor. She says that it’s a miracle I’m not impotent, but that in and of themselves the injuries wouldn’t have affected my sperm count.”

“If you’re finally asking me to be completely honest with you, I will be. Your sperm count isn’t low. It’s non-existent. You don’t appear to have any gonocytes. They’re the germ stem cells that produce sperm. Without them you can’t reproduce. So, to be frank, I had always sincerely doubted whether you could have had children anyway,” Rushton admitted heavily. “There just seemed little point investigating that suspicion. By the time the subject came up, you’d been injured in Vietnam. You were always satisfied that it was the shrapnel that rendered you infertile, so it seemed pointless for me to suggest that the problem pre-dated that injury.”

“You’re telling me you suspected I’d be infertile even before I went to ‘nam?” Skinner demanded.

“I tried to raise the subject with your parents,” Rushton replied, with an awkward shrug. “They refused to discuss it. I had every intention of telling you the truth when you were an adult but, like I said, your injury made the subject moot.”

“The truth about what?”

Rushton looked intensely uncomfortable. “Sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie, Walter.”

“Just tell me.”

Rushton sighed and closed his eyes momentarily, as though gathering strength.

“Something happened when you were twelve, Walter. You never remembered the incident. You didn’t even have nightmares about it. I was always worried the amnesia wouldn’t be permanent and that it would do more harm than good to brush the whole thing under the carpet, but your parents insisted and…well, they seem to have been right because you never did remember what happened to you.”

“What did happen to me?” Skinner growled.

“You were abducted.”

“WHAT?”

“Someone took you from your house in the middle of the night. No one ever found out who took you or why. You were missing for a week. The sheriff found you wandering naked in the woods near Bear Lake. You’d been…assaulted. You had extensive bruising, lacerations and… well, a lot of internal damage.”

“You’re saying I’d been raped?” Skinner demanded.

Dr Rushton shook his head, his expression both haunted and perplexed. “The injuries weren’t anal, Walter. The damage was centered on your groin. You had incision marks and stitches. As far as I could tell, someone had performed a form of bizarre vasectomy on you.”

“I don’t…I don’t remember.”

“You never did,” Rushton agreed, with a sigh. “You were pretty spaced out for a few weeks, and then you just ‘snapped out of it’ and acted like nothing had ever happened. I kept an eye on you for a while. Like I said, I was sure you were just suppressing the memories. Besides, I was concerned the ‘operation’ might have other side-effects. Tell the truth, you were so messed up internally that I wasn’t sure whether you’d been effectively castrated but your parents refused to send you for more extensive tests. They just wanted to pretend the whole thing had never happened. Naturally, I was worried about you, but then you entered puberty normally. From your growth, it was clear that you were producing more than enough testosterone. So…well, I decided to leave well alone unless you came to me as an adult and queried your inability to have a child.”

“But then I went to ‘nam and got half my insides blown up, so you never bothered to tell me the truth,” Skinner growled.

“You never asked, so I didn’t see the point,” Rushton admitted. “Why risk opening up that kind of wound? The way I figured it, if you had been capable of handling the memory of your abduction, you would have remembered it by then. So I thought it best to…”

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Skinner interrupted bitterly.

Rushton flushed and nodded. “I’m sorry, Walter. Perhaps I should have…”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Skinner admitted, with a ragged sigh. “It was already too late.”


***


“Just let me talk this through with you, Dana. What’s the difference between my gonocytes being removed and your eggs being stolen?”

“Essentially, only that my eggs were, and possibly are, still viable. Someone could fertilize my eggs, but no one can use your gonocytes to create sperm. Well, not unless they found a way to somehow integrate them into another man’s testes which I’m pretty sure is scientifically impossible. So, even if the same people were responsible, the only common factor between us is that we’re now both incapable of conceiving a child naturally. The fact that they may be using my eggs for their own purposes is a different thing altogether.”

“So it seems the important thing was to ensure that neither of us could have a child.”

“Except that, somehow, I had William,” she reminded him. “And as much as I hate to admit it, and I’ll deny this conversation if you repeat it to Mulder, I suspect that the only way that could have happened was because they somehow impregnated me.”

“Because the IVF didn’t work and you never actually slept with Mulder.”

Scully flushed but nodded.

“I believe, somehow, that *I* have a son too,” Skinner said, his voice little more than a whisper.

“I think it’s far too early to conclude that…”

Skinner interrupted her impatiently. “Storm Redlum is apparently my grand-daughter and I’m certainly not related to Mulder. So somehow I have to be the father of Storm’s father.”

“Only if you’re assuming that Storm is Samantha’s daughter rather than Jeffrey’s.”

“Just because I’m currently open to a particularly bizarre, extreme possibility, doesn’t mean I’ll buy every damned bridge I’m being offered. There’s one constant in my life that never changes. Krycek may not be the devil, but he’s certainly the father of all lies. So we can safely assume Jeffrey’s involvement in this situation was never anything more than a red herring. That leaves us with Samantha as Storm’s mother and my hypothetical son as her father.”

“I don’t want to be indelicate, Sir, but are you absolutely certain you didn’t…um… simply impregnate some girl before your gonocytes were removed?”

Skinner shook his head. “I was twelve. I don’t think I was even physically capable, let alone that promiscuous. Besides, I don’t believe in co-incidences. It’s a big world, Scully. If my son knocked Samantha Mulder up I think we can be damned certain that he was ‘meant’ to do it. Which means that my DNA is somehow important. Important enough for someone to steal it then ensure I never had any other children.”

“You think someone took your sperm, to artificially create a child, then rendered you infertile?”

“Why not? That’s what they did to you, Scully.”

“But you were twelve years old. That’s forty years ago. The technology to create test tube babies didn’t exist back then.”

“The *human* technology didn’t,” Skinner replied darkly. “But, Mulder was born in 1961. If we take a leap of faith and accept Mulder’s assertion that he’s a hybrid, then that would mean the Consortium had the ability to perform genetic slicing several years before I was abducted.”

“Possibly,” she allowed, her expression troubled. “But even if you’re right about having had a son, there’s a high probability he’s dead,” she pointed out softly. “Most of the consortium family members were killed by the Rebels.”

Skinner rubbed his face tiredly. “I don’t know what’s worse; refusing to believe he ever existed at all, or accepting I had a child who died without ever knowing I was his father. If Mulder’s right about a breeding project to create a supersoldier and my son was just part of that program, what kind of life do you think he led, Dana? Did they even treat him like a human being, or was he just ‘merchandise’ to them? Maybe his body is lying in one of those buried box cars, with the other refuse of their experiments. Maybe he lived and died as no more than a lab rat to those bastards.”

“Don’t, Walter,” she pleaded, tears slipping down her face, discarding any semblance of professional distance in the face of his palpable grief. “Don’t do this to yourself. You’re grieving for a child that may never have even existed.”

“I know,” he admitted stiffly, stepping away from her, deliberately refusing the offer of her open arms, unable to accept her comfort for fear her soft touch would shatter him. “But I feel him, Dana. I feel him in here.” He tapped his chest for emphasis. “And I have to know the truth.”

She wiped her eyes and straightened herself, smoothing her suit, accepting his need for distance. “How are you going to find it?”

“I'm not sure, but I know where to start. I’m going to see the girl. See her with my own eyes.”

***

She was beautiful. There was no denying that much. A fine-boned face, with wide-set emerald eyes. She had Mulder’s mouth, full-lipped and generous, but she’d mercifully been spared his nose. Lustrous chestnut hair flowed down to brush the top of her slender, seemingly endless legs. She rode the dappled gray like a centaur, her body moving so effortlessly with each fluid pace of the horse that it seemed the two flowed into each other, muscles and sinews blending into one creature of grace. 

He found himself blinking furiously, sneaking a finger under the rim of his spectacles to remove the moisture pooling in his eyes. And he blamed the wind and the bright sunlight for the embarrassing leakage, but could find no equally comforting excuse for the aching sensation inside his chest.

If she was aware of his silent scrutiny, she didn’t acknowledge it. Lost in a world in which only she and her horse existed, she continued to ride in endless, complicated patterns over the dusty covered arena, executing dressage maneuvers so effortlessly that an ignorant onlooker would have mistaken skill for ease. But though it had been years since he’d ridden, and the mounts of his youth had been rough beasts in comparison with the expensive gray, Skinner was knowledgeable enough to be both awed and saddened by her ability.

Saddened because it made him abruptly aware that Krycek was right, damn him. Mulder had been wrong to seek custody of her. Even putting aside the possible threat from the aliens, to steal this child away from her life of obvious privilege and luxury would be almost a criminal act in itself.

Neither Mulder nor himself had anything to offer this girl, except the loss of the life she knew and the gaining of knowledge she’d be better off without. What excuse did either of them have to shatter her complacent world with their tales of conspiracies and invasions? What justification was there for proving this innocent child no more than the product of a machiavellian breeding program?

Yet, selfishly, he couldn’t bear to simply walk away.

Already, just the fact of her existence was filling a hole inside him that had been empty for so long that it ached with her sudden presence. She stripped his pretense of indifference, peeling away the layers of self-protection that had been laid bare and vulnerable by his aborted role as Scully’s protector. His long abandoned yearnings of fatherhood, reawakened by Scully’s pregnancy then cruelly dashed by Mulder’s return, were consuming him once more and this time he didn’t know whether he could survive the pain of another disappointment.

And so it barely surprised him, when Storm finally dismounted and led her horse back towards the shelter of the barn, that he turned to follow and saw the old crone standing within the eaves of the doorway, her eyes sharp and knowing within a face too wrinkled for expression.

::Is she the secret I have to protect?::

But she remained silent and inscrutable, not even moving when Storm hesitated at the doorway and did a slight double-take, her eyes flicking towards the apparition, her face paling slightly. Skinner followed her gaze and almost stopped breathing.

“You can see her, can’t you?” he demanded urgently.

His voice made the girl whip around in fright, the shocked expression on her face confirming she’d been completely oblivious to his presence. “Who are you?” she demanded, her voice warbling with panic.

Abruptly realizing the presence of an unidentified middle-aged man might naturally startle a teenaged girl, Skinner produced his ID in a smooth gesture, “Walter Skinner, FBI,” and Storm relaxed a little, though her eyes deepened with a different type of wariness.

“That Mulder guy send you?” she asked.

Her directness stunned him for a moment, then he shook himself angrily and met her cool gaze with a deliberately friendly smile. “I know Mulder,” he agreed. “But he doesn’t know I’ve come here to meet you. Why do you ask?”

“The school had a letter from the Court. He’s apparently applied for custody of me.”

“And how do you feel about that?” he asked carefully, deciding it best not to mention the change of plan that had now put his name on the custody papers.

She pointedly tapped a forefinger on her temple. “The guy’s obviously off his nut,” she announced, her face twisting into an incredulous pout. “He thinks I’m his long-lost sister or something.”

“He has reason to believe you’re the daughter of his sister,” Skinner corrected gently.

“Because I look like her, right?” the girl scoffed. “Does he make a habit of this kind of thing, or am I the only lucky victim?”

Skinner cleared his throat, to buy time, as unwelcome countless memories of similarly bizarre Mulder theories jumped to mind. “You do look like her. But, more to the point, the blood test proved a relationship with you.”

“Big deal,” she spat. “By the rules of ‘Seven Degrees Of Separation’ I’m probably related to enough people to populate a small country.”

A laugh barked out of Skinner’s throat. “You definitely remind me of Mulder,” he snorted. “That’s exactly the kind of wise-ass comment he’d make.”

She shrugged and shouldered past him, leading her horse towards its stall and muttering under her breath, “So I remind you of a nut-case. Thanks for nothing.”

Skinner waited silently until she untacked and turned to him, hands on hips, face set into a scowl.

“So what do you want?” she demanded.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her.

“What question?”

“You can see her, can’t you?” 

She met his gaze with wide, guileless eyes. “See who?”

“The old woman standing by the door. You can see her, can’t you?” he insisted.

She half-turned, so that she was staring directly at the apparition, then gave a shrug and turned back to face him. “There’s no one here but us,” she replied, and there was something hauntingly familiar about the way she blinked her huge green eyes at him with deceiving innocence as she spoke what he was sure was a blatant lie. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright, Mr. Skinner?” Her lips twitched, as though she was trying not to laugh, but the expression seemed more nervous than humorous, and there was something uncomfortably familiar about that mannerism too.

“You remind me of someone,” he blurted.

“Yeah, this Mulder guy. You told me,” she drawled with a classic Mulder pout. 

Skinner shook his head. “No. Someone else but I can’t think who.” He rubbed his face fretfully, sure he was on the brink of understanding something important, but too distracted by the old woman’s mocking gaze to follow the rapidly disappearing thought to its conclusion.

Storm rolled her eyes in a typically teenage expression of exasperation. “Are you sure you’re okay? You really do look pale, Mr. Skinner.”

“I don’t know what she wants,” he whispered.

Storm shrugged and looked suddenly bored of the conversation. “Why don’t you ask her?” she asked petulantly. “She’s your ghost.”

The girl’s words cut through Skinner’s haze of confusion like a sharp knife. He swung around to face her, his expression triumphant.

“So you can see her!” he exclaimed.

She blushed, then sighed heavily. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I see your ghost, so what?”

“You aren’t frightened of her?”

“Should I be?” 

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“Well you should know,” she retorted. “She’s your ghost, isn’t she?”

“What do you mean? How is she mine?” he demanded.

“Of course she’s yours. You must have brought her back with you. That’s usually how it happens. Some kind of connection gets made on the other side and when you come back you open a doorway that allows your beloved dead to come visit with you.”

“Come back from where?”

“From being dead, of course,” she said impatiently. “You really don’t know anything, do you?” 

“About the afterlife?”

“About us,” she snapped, with another roll of her eyes.

“What about ‘us’?”

Storm paled, then flushed, her eyes flaring with alarm. “I just meant, well people in general, you know? That’s all,” she blurted hurriedly.

Skinner shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t’ think that’s what you meant at all,” he said, and though he couldn’t put his finger on what she’d said that was so significant, he recognized the body language of someone trying desperately to conceal a secret.

“Okay,” Storm huffed. “I meant people who see ghosts, all right?”

“Fox Mulder sees ghosts,” he pointed out, sure that obvious similarity would crack her cool façade.

But she didn’t even blink. 

“So?” she countered. “You do too.”

And that was the point at which his previously vague attempt to make sense of the situation began to take form and substance. Mulder saw ghosts. He saw ghosts, well one ghost anyway. And Storm saw ghosts. It was the one point of commonality between them, the one thing that set them apart from other people, the one thing that gave credence to the idea that he was as much a part of the Consortium’s genetic manipulations as the Mulders were. 

It explained nothing. What possible use could the ability to see the dead be to a ‘Supersoldier’? Yet, strangely, he was sure that if he asked that question of Storm, she’d know the answer. 

But he was equally sure she wouldn’t tell him.

He felt like he was walking on eggshells. Whoever or whatever Storm was, it was clear she wasn’t naturally deceitful. Her lies were clumsy and unpracticed and she blushed far too easily. But she was still smart enough to back away from a trap and clearly determined to protect her secrets.

He glanced over at the apparition of the old woman. Was he supposed to help Storm protect them or was Storm the secret he was supposed to protect? Or had the old woman materialized simply to make him aware of Storm’s ability to see ghosts too?

“I don’t mean you any harm, Storm,” he said, and suddenly it felt like the most important thing in the world that she should believe him.

Her answering smile was surprisingly warm, if a little sad. “I know,” she said softly. “But you know what they say about good intentions, don’t you?”

Storm’s comment clarified his belief that she knew far more about the ‘truth’ than either he or Mulder did. While nothing shook his conviction that she was an innocent in the situation, he could no longer fool himself that she was ignorant of her origins. She knew exactly who and what she was. And she was far too smart to willingly give up those secrets to a stranger, no matter how trustworthy they proved themselves to be.

“I think…I think there’s a possibility I might be your Grandfather,” he blurted.

He didn’t know what reaction he expected. Shock, startlement, denial, even a panicked run to the schoolhouse as she decided he was an escapee from a lunatic asylum. Instead she stared at him with an unnatural calmness, the same cool poise with which she’d reacted to his comment that Fox Mulder saw ghosts.

And all she said was, “Do you smoke?”

Unbidden, the image of Spender popped into his head and he shuddered at the thought that she was comparing him to that cancer-lunged bastard. Her other grandfather. So his voice was a little sharp as he snapped, “No.”

“Bummer,” she said, kicking the ground in irritation. “I’m gagging for one.”

His mouth dropped open in surprise, and when he spoke his voice was gruff. 
“It’s not a good habit to start. It stunts your growth.”

“Good. If I get any taller, I’ll never get a date,” she laughed.

Skinner frowned repressively. “I’m serious. Smoking is an unattractive and unhealthy habit, particularly in a young lady,” he stated, then colored a little at how old-fashioned that had sounded even to his own ears.

She gave a most unladylike snort. “God, you actually might be my Grandfather. You sure as hell sound enough like my dad.”

A wild hope spiked in Skinner’s chest, as stabbing and sharp as any assault of the nanos in his bloodstream, because her words, her tone, had unthinkingly been present tense. She spoke of her father as though he was still alive.

“Storm, who is your dad?” he asked, over the thudding of his own heart.

She collapsed with laughter. “Don’t you know? How many women did you knock up, Gramps?”

Skinner had an insane urge to grab the girl and shake her until she understood just how serious the situation was. Then he shuddered, a wave of shame filling him, at the idea of attempting to bully his grandchild into betraying her father. His son. 

// My god. I have a son //

And the old hag raised her eyes to him, the wrinkles on her face smoothing and fading, the deeply lined skin unfurling and tightening to reveal the high, Slavic cheekbones of a remarkably beautiful woman. A woman he’d only ever seen in long-faded sepia photos.

‘I wasn’t always old, Walter,' she laughed, her voice no longer husked with age but soft with the brightness of youth.

“I know you,” he gasped, his eyes wide with shock. “I *know* you.”

‘Of course you do,’ she agreed gently. ‘How could you have ever imagined you didn’t?’

// So Mulder was right about you. You only ever wanted to protect me //

‘A grandchild is a blessing to be cherished.’ 

// Yes //  he agreed, glancing at Storm then returning his gaze to the ghost of his own Grandmother. // But my son. Who is he? Where is he? You must know //

She smiled gently but shook her head. ‘The truth is a delicate thing, Walter. It has its right time and place. For now, your granddaughter needs to hold fast to her secrets.’

His hands clenched into fists, his nails biting into his palms, as he struggled to control the frustration that coursed through him. Both women, one barely more than a girl, the other a long-dead ghost, knew the answer to the question that was shredding his heart, and both were taunting him with the refusal of that knowledge.

So his voice was slightly bitter as he turned his attention back to his granddaughter.

“Will you at least tell me your real name? I mean your real first name.”

“Don’t you like Storm?” she teased.

“It’s a great name. I can see why you chose it,” he replied dryly.

She frowned at him, her eyes flashing with Mulderesque-defiance for a moment, then a smile quirked her lips. “No you can’t,” she argued. “Come with me.” She strode back to the stable door and whistled the gray gelding. “Meet Dancer, short for Storm Dancer.”

Skinner blinked with open astonishment. “You named yourself after your horse?”

“Why not?” she challenged. “It’s a cool name.”

“And your real name?”

“Isn’t cool at all.” 

She grinned at him with unrepentant defiance, but Skinner just waited patiently until she sighed with irritation and gave up.

“It’s Lisita,” she pouted.

“That’s a pretty name.”

“But not a cool one,” she pointed out.

“Do you know what it means?” he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s just a name.”

“It’s Russian for a female Fox.”

***

“She reminds me a lot of you,” Skinner began. “She’s definitely a Mulder. It’s not just her looks, but her mannerisms. She’s beautiful, charming, intelligent, and unbelievably irritating.”

Scully laughed out loud, her eyes sparkling with appreciation.

“All right,” Mulder agreed, ignoring Scully’s outburst and nodding in Skinner’s direction. “But do you think she’s related to you?”

“Yes,” Skinner admitted simply. He didn’t attempt to explain why he was certain. In Scully’s presence, he was hardly going to mention that his grandmother’s ghost had appeared in Lisita’s presence to confirm the relationship.

“So if your son is Storm’s...”

“Her name’s Lisita,” Skinner interrupted quietly. “It means vixen.”

Mulder looked momentarily stunned as the significance sank in, but he recovered his composure quickly. “Okay, as I was saying, if your son is Lisita’s father, that explains her DNA results.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Scully muttered rebelliously. “Try to remember that this is all hypothetical.”

“Sure,” he agreed, with a casual shake of his head. He turned his gaze back on Skinner. “Let’s take it one step at a time. The existence of your hypothetical son depends on the theory that he was created by the Consortium. That makes sense considering Lisita’s father must have ended up working for the Consortium in some way. How else would he have met Samantha? She grew up as Spender’s daughter. There’s no way Spender would have allowed her to get involved with anyone who wasn’t under his thumb,” Mulder said.

Skinner and Scully both nodded.

“So we’re agreeing that the Consortium were involved in his conception,” Skinner said. “And he was probably brought up by one of the Elders, like we believe Samantha was. But for what possible reason?”

“It’s possible he was always intended to father Samantha’s children,” Scully suggested carefully. “It seems too much of a co-incidence, otherwise, that you should end up here, as Mulder’s supervisor on the X-files.”

“I find that co-incidence far more comfortable than the idea that the Consortium abducted me at 12 years old and conceived a child from my body in the full knowledge that over thirty years later I’d be supervising the brother of my son’s wife. That suggests an amount of predestined fate that no-one would feel comfortable with.”

“I think it’s a combination of both,” Mulder interrupted. “The bottom line, the thing that both of you are avoiding, is that there has to be something particularly important about your genes, Sir. For some, as yet unknown, reason, the Consortium decided that your child was critically important to them. Just as they later decided that the conception of William was equally important. To that extent, I don’t think there’s any co-incidence at all in the idea of your son and my sister having children together. Neither was it left to chance that Scully and I met. And, the more I think about it, I believe the fact that I failed to make…um… romantic moves towards Scully when she was first partnered with me is the true reason for her abduction.”

“What?” Scully demanded.

“Think about it, Scully. If I’d knocked you up the natural way, there never would have been a reason to abduct you at all.”

“You’re suggesting that everything has always been about some kind of consortium breeding program?” Skinner asked.

“It’s certainly beginning to be the most likely hypothesis, Sir. A very ‘specific’ kind of breeding program, though, where the chosen ‘breeders’ were rendered physically incapable of accidentally having unplanned pregnancies. You were only ever supposed to have one particular child, who was intended to only impregnate my sister. Scully was only supposed to have one child, fathered by me.”

“And what about you, Mulder?” Scully sniffed. “Presumably you’re allowed to have as many children as you want?”

Mulder grinned self-consciously. “Believe me, Scully. The idea of me having any unplanned progeny would ‘definitely’ be an X-file.”

Skinner frowned at him in bemusement, but one of Scully’s eyebrows arched in a definite expression of understanding. “Of course. How stupid of me,” she muttered, in a less than friendly tone.

Mulder couldn’t find it in himself to blame her, considering he’d just admitted his suspicion that she’d only been abducted because of the extreme improbability of them ever conceiving a child naturally. And, of course, he’d chosen exactly the wrong person to prove that particular quirk of his personality to. Damn Krycek, anyway.

“Let’s stick with specifics,” Skinner suggested. “Our current hypothesis is that my son was brought up inside the consortium and deliberately introduced to your sister for the purpose of this ‘breeding program’.”

“My sister knocked up by your son, the Consortium lackey,” Mulder agreed, with a derisive sneer. “Still so pleased with the idea of being a ‘dad’?”

“Whatever happened wasn’t his fault,” Skinner retorted angrily. “Brought up in that nest of vipers, he wouldn’t have known any better.”

“You should have gone into law after all, Skinner. He’s probably going to need a good defense attorney once I’ve gotten my hands on him,” Mulder spat.

Skinner bridled. “From what you’ve told me, when you met her Samantha was perfectly happy to stay with Spender. She didn’t exactly jump at the chance of going back to her old life and she was eight when she was taken. My son was in a fucking test tube. You tell me which one of them is more culpable of the choices they made.”

“Stop it, both of you,” Scully snapped, jumping between the two men. “While it does you credit, Sir, to display some paternal feelings towards this man who may or may not be your son, I think it’s far too early to be jumping to any conclusions about his motivations. And as for you, Mulder, the fact that Samantha seemed content with her life when she met you suggests that the father of her children meets with her approval. Why don’t the pair of you shelve your testosterone until we at least have some facts?”

“How do we begin to look for him?” Skinner demanded. “We have no idea what he looks like. We don’t even know how old he is. They could have frozen my sperm for years.”

“I don’t think so,” Scully replied thoughtfully. “There would have been inherent risks to that. It’s more likely that they’d use it quickly to reduce the chances of something going wrong. After all, they couldn’t come back to you for another sample. It’s also reasonable to assume that he’s close to Samantha in age.”

“So if he’s still alive he’s what? About thirty-eight to forty? And chances are he’s going to be tall, probably dark-haired…if he’s not already going bald,” Mulder added, with a snicker.

“The genes for male pattern baldness come from the mother,” Scully corrected. “It’s far more likely he has a full head of hair.”

“Thank god for small mercies,” Skinner muttered, rubbing his scalp self-consciously.

“And his coloring could have come from his mother too,” she pointed out. “He could be a blue-eyed blond for all we know.”

“No,” Mulder said, his brow creasing in thought. “He’s dark-haired. My mom was blonde so if he was blond then it would probably have come out in Lisita. And I think his eyes are green. In fact…oh my god…he’s about thirteen years younger than you, dark-haired, green-eyed and works for the Consortium. You don’t think…” he looked at Skinner with mixed horror and sympathy. 

Skinner had collapsed into his chair, the color bleeding from his face. He shook his head desperately. “It can’t be,” he whispered.

“Maybe I’m wrong… I mean shouldn’t the DNA test have brought up Krycek’s FBI file if it was true?”

“What file?” Skinner replied. “I doubt even his real fingerprints are still in the computer, let alone his DNA.”

Scully looked awkwardly between the two men. Mulder looked, if possible, even sicker than Skinner. 

“What was it I said about co-incidences,” Skinner mumbled. “Do you think that was Spender’s idea of humor? Setting me up to hate and kill my own son?”

“You didn’t…” Mulder began.

“I called him that the other day, you know? Son. And he looked like I’d slapped him. I didn’t understand his reaction, at the time, but I guess it really hurt him to hear it from my mouth. Considering we’d both already killed each other at that point.”

“You’re saying Krycek knows you’re his father?” Scully asked.

“This isn’t possible,” Mulder suddenly blurted. “Krycek can’t be Lisita’s father. He’s…he’s…look, he’s gay, okay?”

“So?” Scully snapped. “You’re William’s father, aren’t you?”

Skinner reeled in his chair and his eyes bugged wide at the sudden flush on Mulder’s face. “You’re gay?” he demanded.

Mulder just swallowed heavily.

“And you know Krycek is gay too because?” Skinner continued, his voice a quiet dangerous rumble.

Mulder’s blush deepened and he dropped his eyes from Skinner’s gaze.

“So my son is not only a murderous, treacherous, amoral, lying rat-bastard but he’s also gay?” Skinner asked, stressing the last word as though it was the most damning statement of all.

Mulder shook himself angrily and forced himself to meet Skinner’s horrified expression. “It’s not a dirty word, Sir,” he hissed.

“And you two were playing hide the baloney for how long?” 

Mulder drew himself up to his full height and met Skinner’s eyes proudly. “Alex and I had a… a relationship when we were partners. It ended abruptly the night I discovered he was a rogue agent.”

“You decided the rules about fraternization didn’t apply to you?” Skinner snarled. “Of course you did. You never believed any other rules applied to you.”

“I didn’t see you having a problem when you thought I was sleeping with Scully,” Mulder countered hotly. “Or is it just the idea of me fucking your son that bothers you?”

Skinner surged to his feet, a vein throbbing prominently in his forehead. “What bothers me, Agent Mulder, is the idea that between the two of you, you still somehow managed to knock up both Scully and your sister.”

Mulder turned green and sat down abruptly, as though his legs couldn’t hold him. “Fucking ratbastard scumsucking shit fucked my sister?”

“I’m glad the reality of the situation has finally sunk in,” Skinner growled.

“Even if he did, given Lisita’s age, it happened a few years before he met you,” Scully pointed out dryly.

“He came here, joined the X-files, and screwed me knowing I was Samantha’s brother?” 

“I thought you said it was you doing the screwing,” Scully pointed out, with a wicked smirk.

Both men stared at her as though she’d grown horns. She shrugged. “I think you’re both missing the whole picture here.”

“Enlighten us,” Skinner growled.

“If Alex Krycek is your son, and the father of Samantha’s children, I think we have to re-evaluate everything we’ve ever assumed about his motivations. For one thing, we always assumed the only person he cared about was himself. That he did everything out of some selfish desire for power. What if his real motivation was simply to protect his children?”

“From what?” Mulder demanded.

Scully smiled at him apologetically to soften her words. “From you, Mulder. Everything you did was based on your need to find Samantha. But perhaps Samantha never wanted to be found. She told you she had two children, didn’t she? So it's probable that Lisita has a brother or sister. Where’s that child? Hidden in a boarding-school like Lisita or given over to the Consortium?”

“Krycek wouldn’t…” Mulder blurted, then stopped as though shocked by his own thought.

“Krycek wouldn’t let one of his children be taken,” Scully said. “That is what you were about to say, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mulder admitted weakly. “I hate the bastard, but he’s…shit he’s nothing like Dad. I didn’t know he was a father, but I know him. He’d rip someone apart before they made him give in over something like that.”

“He was always changing allegiances within the Consortium, playing one against the other,” Skinner interrupted. “Working with us sometimes, working against us other times. I thought he was just playing the field, looking for the angle, trying to be a player instead of a lackey. I thought it proved he was an immoral little shit. But maybe he needs to be a player. Maybe that’s the only way to keep his family safe.”

“My dad was a ‘player’,” Mulder reminded him acerbically. “It didn’t help Samantha.”

***

Go to Part Three