NAVAJO RESERVATION
TWO GREY HILLS, NM : APRIL 9

The earth rumbled and moaned, soil and scrub rippling like the twitching skin of an awakening giant, the air around them filling with angry tortured groans. For a moment, as the ground beneath their feet sent tremors through their bodies and a muted roar thundered through the disturbed plain, the two younger men exchanged glances of almost mindless terror.  They winced as crockery tumbled from shelves and furniture shuffled across the floor of their home in a crazed, shuddering dance. An ancient nameless fear clenched their hearts as the very walls of the house trembled like the hide of a barely tamed mustang that threatened to explode free of the shackles that tethered it to the ground.

And then there was silence. Shocking in its suddenness. Silence so complete that they could hear nothing except the frantic beating of their hearts and the slow buzzing drone of a lone insect that flew through the house unaware of the danger nature had threatened to the two-footed beings beneath it.

Only the older man seemed unaffected by the quake.

Eyes as dark as his sun-leathered face, long hair as silver-white as a full moon, Albert Hosteen's outward demeanor showed no echo of his sons' fear.  His stoic solid appearance was untouched by the rumbling groan of the earth and the gentle smile that crept onto his face in the wake of the earthquake was enough to make his two sons feel foolish in their own momentary terror.

Eric, his youngest son,  a child graced him by the spirits long years after his wife had consigned herself to the barrenness of middle-age, shuffled with obvious embarrassment at his display of fear and visibly shook himself before reaching for his jacket with obvious purpose. 

"Where are you going?" Daniel demanded, grasping desperately for the role of older, protective brother to dispel his own embarrassment.

"Riding," Eric replied with a careless shrug, though it was obvious to Albert that the boy just needed to escape and regain the composure he had lost. "I'll be back in a few hours."

Albert momentarily considered forbidding Eric to leave. Though the boy was as willful as any teenager, Albert knew he wouldn't openly defy an order to stay home.  It was on the tip of his tongue to do so. Despite his outward calm, fear had gripped his heart like a knife and he could feel the blade twisting inside his chest, burrowing the nameless dread so deeply within him that it took all of his strength to appear unaffected by the message of the spirits. The fear was undeniable, no less potent for its ambiguous nature. The spirits were angry, they had made their displeasure known by the rocking of the very earth itself. 

Yet the anger was the stirring of an old injury, the reopening of a wound that had never truly healed.

Na' ta 'hey. Let it be so.

The wound was reopened as Albert had always known it would be.  A wound like that needed to be cauterized, burned, seared shut with fire if it was ever to truly heal.

Na' ta 'hey.

So he turned to his youngest son and his eyes were as soft as his tone as he simply said, "Eric. Leave the snakes alone today. They'll be angry and afraid."

"What is it?" Daniel demanded, his eyes flaring with both worry and awe as he recognized the voice of the Spirits as they spoke through his father.

"The Earth has a secret it needs to tell," Albert replied simply.

SCULLY'S APARTMENT : APRIL 9

Scully wasn't exactly sure what woke her up. It wasn't a noise or a touch. It wasn't even the sense of movement inside her bedroom although, in retrospect, she told herself that the shadows in the bedroom must have shifted with his presence and that the change of light had registered behind her closed eyelids. 

Perhaps it was just that he touched her dream.

One moment she was running through a desert, chased by a nameless, faceless predator whose angry breath on her heels made the earth shudder beneath her feet.  The next moment she was jerking upright in bed, dripping with perspiration, her eyes flying open in disorientated panic, her voice almost a scream as she cried out "He said it should be returned. They will be coming"

"Who did?" 

Scully's first reaction to the unexpected visitor was to scream in earnest. Her second was to dive sideward for her purse.

"Looking for this?" 

Her finger's paused in their frantic scramble through her purse and, taking a deep breath, she turned with an appearance of calmness to face the man who was sitting cross-legged at the foot of her mattress, carelessly dangling her weapon from his fingers like it was an amusing toy.  Both he and the gun were little more than gray shadows but his eyes shone with an intense inner light so that their emerald brilliance was unmistakable.

Scully dove for the sheet, pulling it up around her neck, flushing deeply at the realization that her nipples were all too evident through her sweat-drenched t-shirt. Then, despite her panic, her analytical mind kicked into gear with a fair share of the understated humor she'd acquired through her experiences with Mulder, and she realized that there was damned little point in being embarrassed about her tight wet tee when her visitor was stark naked.

"Hello, Mr. Krycek," she said, and was proud of the way the words came out as a casual drawl instead of the panicked squeak that had initially threatened to emerge.

"Call me Alex," he purred, his teeth an alarming  flash of white in the dim grays of the room.

She supposed it was meant to be a smile so she bravely suppressed her desire to shiver in fear as the street  lights reflected on his overlong canines.

"My what sharp teeth you have, Grandma," she quipped.

She was rewarded by a bark of laughter from her nocturnal visitor. The noise was feral and wild, more animal than human, yet was unmistakably a sound of genuine amusement.

"I see it now," Alex murmured.

"What?" she asked carefully.

"What my Fox sees in you. You're smart. And you're brave...for a woman," he added dismissively.

Scully stiffened.

"What the hell do you want, Krycek? Is there a reason for this unexpected visit or are you one of those perverts who makes a habit of creeping into women's bedrooms in the middle of the night?"

He moved so quickly that he blurred in front of her eyes. One moment he was at the foot of her bed with a mocking, indolent smile on his face; the next he was sprawled on top of her, his hands pinning her wrists to the bed either side of her face, his heavy body crushing her to the mattress, his teeth snarling over her face.

"Is this what you want?" he growled, grinding his hips down so that she could feel his unmistakable maleness pressing down between her thighs with nothing but thin cotton protecting her from his animalistic heat.

She struggled desperately, twisting her body from side to side in a fruitless attempt to break free of his inhuman grip. She gasped as she felt the first warning sting of claws pressing against her wrists and snapped her teeth at him as he dropped his head to lave a hot, wet tongue up the side of her face.  Her right knee pistoned up, furiously aimed at his crotch, only to be effortlessly knocked down and aside by his hips as he burrowed his legs down between hers, forcing her knees apart and open until she was sprawled in helpless sacrifice to his lust.

"Is this the real you then?" she yelled defiantly. "A rapist? Is this what you do to Mulder too?"

He just laughed, his breath a hot heavy fog on her neck, his sweat dripping down from his forehead to splash her face, his dark musky scent filling her nostrils with the smell of damp forests and secret glades.  His eyes glowed in the darkness, emerald green fire that burned her to the core.

"Oh, god," she whispered, and it was a prayer rather than a curse. A prayer for deliverance, for mercy, for strength, as her own body began to betray her. 

He was heat and sex and need. Alien. Unnatural. Preternaturally beautiful. So inhumanly strong that her body couldn't even find the will to resist him. His smell, his touch, his look, his mesmerizing irresistible eyes. She was drowning beneath him. Her angry scream of defiance dissolving in her throat.

"You want me," he purred into her ear.

"NO!" she lied.

And he let her go. Before she could even blink, he flowed back off her body and resumed his earlier position at the foot of her bed, leaving her gasping and confused.

"Bastard," she snapped, half relieved, half-disappointed.

"Yes, I am," he agreed quietly. "But I'm not a rapist *or* a pervert." 

"No," she agreed reluctantly. "What is it? Pheromones?"

Alex shrugged carelessly. "I don't know. I just...just wanted you to understand who I am. *What* I am."

Irresistible, Scully agreed silently, though the acknowledgement was less sexual interest than scientific curiosity. Although her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment at her own reaction to Krycek's 'demonstration' the scientist in her was more fascinated by the data he'd given her than offended by his chosen method of sharing that information.  Krycek had silently and effortlessly entered her locked apartment. He was strong enough to take what he wanted without asking and had some way of turning his would-be victim into a willing accomplice.

Something to do with his smell, she decided. It definitely had to be pheromones. 

"I don't know what chemical you secrete," Scully drawled, "but if I could bottle it I'd make a fortune."

"You understand?" Alex demanded, though his words rippled with humorous acknowledgement of her comment.

"Your method sucked," Scully snapped, "but I got the point. You aren't here to threaten me. You don't need to 'threaten'. If you wanted to harm me, you would have and I wouldn't have been able to stop you. You've made that crystal clear."

Alex shrugged.

"I'm not a people person," he admitted wryly. "I apologize for frightening you but I don't have the time to play games. I need you to trust me."

"What's wrong? It's Mulder, isn't it?" Scully demanded.

"He's wrong," Alex replied.

"Wrong about what?"

"No. He's *wrong*."

"I don't understand what you mean," Scully admitted.

Alex shook his head helplessly.  "He's just *wrong*," he repeated, his voice little more than a whisper. "I don't know why. He just is."

"You're saying there's something wrong with him? That he's ill?"

"I don't know."

"He's acting strangely? Is that what you're saying?" Scully demanded.

"He's *thinking* strangely," Alex replied, his eyes miserable.

"Thinking?" Scully asked, raising her eyebrow slightly. "You know what Mulder *thinks*?"

"Yes...no...I don't know. I don't...don't hear him think exactly but I touch his dreams. I touch him in the nothing. He's always there. My Fox. He's clear. Like light in a dark place. Only he's not anymore. He's wrong. He's not clear."

"Neither are you," Scully muttered irritably. 

"I can't explain," Alex snapped. "I just know he's *wrong*."

"I agree he's been acting a little strangely recently," Scully admitted. "A little preoccupied and unusually introspective, but I admit I thought that was because of *you*. Mulder's not used to the idea of being in a relationship at all, let alone the idea of being in love."

"In love?" Alex whispered.

Despite the terror he'd subjected her to and the problem she had in even reconciling the existence of a creature like Krycek into her own beliefs, Scully found herself affected by the hopeful wistfulness of his question. Whatever Krycek was, and Scully had no doubt that Krycek was dangerous and unpredictable, she was sure of one thing. Mulder wasn't only fascinated and obsessed by him. Mulder loved him. If there had been any doubt in her mind about that fact, it had been settled the first time she'd visited his apartment after leaving the hospital and had witnessed first hand Mulder's new-found religion of cleanliness.

In the subsequent months, although she hadn't seen Krycek since he'd so brutally hauled her back to life, his presence in Mulder's life hadn't gone unnoticed.  It wasn't only that Mulder had become softer, less driven, less obsessed, less likely to risk his life at a whim. It was the *other* evidence that had alerted Scully to Krycek's ongoing presence.  She'd been convinced by the mysterious leads, the anonymous tips, the sudden appearance of evidence when their cases ground to a standstill  A thousand evidences of some secretive guardian angel watching Mulder's back and supporting his quest.

"He loves you," she confirmed gently, "and, in your own way, I think you love him too."

Alex shrugged and grunted, suddenly finding the wall over her head strangely interesting.

She smothered an amused smile at his obvious embarrassment at her comment.

"Why did you come to me, Alex?" she asked, and he dropped his gaze to meet hers, his intense eyes softening at her use of his first name.

"You love him," Alex replied matter-of-factly.  "You understand him. I...I don't. Not really. I can't. Not like you can. I can't help him. Not in this. I know he's *wrong* but I don't know what *right* is."

Scully's heart ached suddenly for the dangerous, damaged man.

"You're  human, Alex," she murmured. "Whatever they did to you, they didn't change that. You *are* human too."

Alex shook his head and grinned wryly, his teeth flashing like daggers.

"No I'm not," he replied. "Even Fox knows better than to believe *that*. I'm nothing that you can even imagine, Dr. Scully. Don't make the mistake of trying to understand me. I'm not what you believe I am."

"I know that you love Mulder," Scully replied staunchly. "You love him enough to worry about him being 'wrong'."

"Today."

"What?"

"I worry today. Tomorrow, who knows? I don't like him like this. I don't like *this* Fox. I don't *want* this Fox. He's *wrong*. If he stays wrong..."

"You'll leave him," Scully accused. "You're telling me there's something wrong with him and that if I don't fix it you'll leave him?"

Alex rose and padded to the window. He stared out silently for a long time, his nostrils flaring at the faint scents that permeated the glass.

"You're a doctor. Fix him."

"Or you leave."

"Yes."

"You'll break his heart," Scully snarled.

Alex shrugged.

"I am what I am, Scully.  This," and he gestured between them, "is as far as I can go. I don't want to leave him but I'm starting to forget that I want to stay." 

DOVER DE  :  APRIL 10

Kenneth  Suna flicked idly through his battered and much read copy of "The 50 Greatest Conspiracies Of All Time" and vaguely considered the merits of a super-deluxe  versus a Mediterranean medley. He couldn't remember, off the top of his head, whether both toppings had anchovies.

He glanced at the paperwork on his desk, flipped through it in the hope of finding an errant menu lurking within the sprawling pile, and then chewed his lower lip as he considered whether the aching growl in his stomach warranted him pausing the program on his computer long enough to check out "Perfect Pizza's" Website.

Or, of course, he could pick up the phone. Just call them. Talk to a person. A real person.

He shuddered at the thought.

Bad enough he'd have to greet the spotty-faced delivery boy at the door, when the Pizza arrived, without compounding the problem by speaking to *two* people in one day.

He wasn't a talker. He was a thinker. 'The Thinker".  With capital 'T's.

Ken smiled, so satisfied by his mental image of himself that he forgot his rumbling stomach for a little while and simply enjoyed the way his computer screen was flashing as passcode after passcode was rejected.

It was just a matter of time.  All things come to he who waits and Kenneth had been waiting a hell of a damn long time. Thirty-nine hours and counting. He could practically see the steam coiling off his frantically spinning hard-drives. Hell, he'd crashed two of them in the last nine hours. Thank the lord for Raid 5. Hallelujah for hot-swop discs. Amen.

Maybe just one little phonecall wouldn't hurt him.

He salivated at the mental image of hot pizza, then shivered at the thought of picking up the telephone.  A dilemma. Something to think about a little more. But that was okay, since he was The Thinker. 

He smirked with self-satisfaction and settled down to wait a little more.

And then it happened.

God rewarded the faithful. The fucking heavens opened and rained down manna. YES!

Kenneth leapt to his feet as his computer began to beep frantically, as a spew of data spilled over the screen that had been flashing "password incorrect" for thirty-nine fucking hours.

"You bitch!," he gasped, "Beautiful!"

Then, as the data continued to spill onto his screen, as he had the first true inkling of what he truly had achieved, his initial glee turned into gut-wrenching fear.  His hand trembled as he fumbled for an empty DAT tape and slipped it into his back-up tape drive.

MULDER'S APARTMENT  : APRIL 10

"Mulder," Fox grunted irritably.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" Scully's inordinately cheerful voice replied.

"Since it's..." he paused and checked his watch with bleary eyes "... five-thirty-seven, I think it's fair to say you woke me up," he grumbled, then shook himself slightly, hoping to send enough blood to his head to think more clearly. "What's up?" he asked, in a slightly less irritable tone.

"Is Alex with you?"

He blinked in surprise at the question but couldn't prevent a wide smile of satisfaction as he turned and peered possessively back through the bedroom door at the dark-haired form sprawled on his bed. "Yeah," he purred, then blushed at the unmistakable satisfaction in his voice.

"Was he with you all night?" Scully asked cautiously.

"What are you? The morals police?" Fox quipped, though there was a dark edge to his voice that she picked  up on immediately.

"I'm sorry, Mulder. I know it's a strange question but would you answer it anyway?"

"Yeah. Yes, he was...at least I think he was. I slept. He doesn't. Who knows what he does while I'm sleeping. Why do you want to know?"

"I just had a weird dream," she replied vaguely. "Ever since...well, you know...I just associate Alex with my dreams."

"What kind of dream?"

"Something about a desert. Something that was buried but got exposed. Something dangerous. Then I was being chased by something. Something terrifying. And someone was saying "It should be returned. They'll be coming."

"A lot of somethings in that statement, Scully," Mulder replied good-naturedly. "Who's the 'they'?"

"I don't know. It was just a dream."

"Okay, what did you *really* call me for?"

"I wanted to invite you to breakfast. I'm due at Quantico for an autopsy at 10.30 so I'm not going to be in today."

"And you're missing me already? How sweet," Fox drawled.

He heard her long-suffering sigh and felt guilty.

"Sorry, Scully. Of course I'm meet you.  Give me half an hour?" Then he squealed with shock as a hand grabbed and squeezed his left buttock. "Uh...uh...better make that an hour," he gasped, and disconnected.

"Scully?" Alex purred in his ear,

"Yeah," Fox replied distractedly as Alex's other hand crept over his stomach and began to slide southward. "How do you do that?"

"This?" Alex smirked, grasping Fox's cock and feeling it immediately turn rigid in his hands.

"No...," Fox groaned. "Move so damned quietly."

"Oh...*that*," Alex chuckled, removing the cellphone from his lover's limp fingers, tossing it onto the couch and then effortlessly twisting Fox's body in the same direction until he was bent over, his chest resting on the back of the leather. He kicked Fox's legs apart and pushed up against him, his cock sliding hungrily up and down Fox's ass.

Fox shivered and groaned, his hands grasping the couch for balance as the touch of Alex's flesh on his ass made his knees weaken. 

"You want this?" Alex teased, pressing his cock-head against Fox's pucker but pulling back every time Fox bucked his hips back in encouragement.

"Yeah," Fox groaned. "Do me, Alex. Hard."

Alex growled and bit the nape of his neck, sharp teeth piercing through soft flesh and sending a hot blaze of painful desire down to Fox's cock.

"Fuck," Fox gasped, as the sharp pain in his neck paled against the agony of his hard, currently neglected cock.

"Come for me," Alex snarled, the words muffled because his teeth were still lodged in Fox's skin. "Come for me. Show me how much you want me. *Then* I'll fuck you. Then I'll give you what you want." He bucked against Fox's buttocks, slapping his heavy cock against his crack and thrusting it down between Fox's open legs to press against the back of his balls.

"Oh, god," Fox choked, as he felt the sticky heat of Alex's pre-cum trickling over his ball-sac. "Please."

"Come for me," Alex repeated.

Fox gave a small sob of combined misery and arousal.  For a moment he struggled between pride and need.  Pride lost. He unclenched the fingers of his right hand from the couch and moved them to his aching cock.

"NO," Alex snarled, grabbing his hand and replacing it on the couch with bruising force. "I didn't tell you to jerk yourself off. I told you to come for me."

Fox shook his head in confusion. His cock, already hard, was now dripping with excitement from the brief friction of his fingers against the sensitive flesh. Now it slapped against his belly, as swollen and eager as his heavy balls. He pressed his body forward, arching towards the back of the couch and the caress of the leather. Wriggling like a dog on heat, desperate to rub his flesh against something, anything, that would ease the growing pressure in his groin.

With a dangerous snarl, Alex kicked his feet out from under him. Fox crashed to the carpet, crying out as his knees impacted against the thin carpet, his hands instinctively reaching out to break his fall so that he found himself on his hands and knees,  his head spinning with confusion.

"Come for me," Alex growled again.

Fox shook his head and whimpered. He understood what Alex wanted, what Alex was *insisting* upon, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't. He didn't *want* to do it. How the hell could he do that? How could he give Alex *that* much power over him. How could he possibly accept that his own body was nothing more than Alex's toy? That he could achieve orgasm simply because Alex *ordered* him to do so? That without a touch, with nothing more than his voice and the *promise* of a subsequent fucking, Alex could steal away his entire self-control in that fashion?

"Do it," Alex whispered. "Show me, Fox. Submit to me."

"I can't," Fox gasped, more plea than defiance. 

Alex writhed against him, his heavy body pinning Fox down, his cock thrusting maddeningly up and down Fox's buttocks in silent promise.

"No," Fox begged.

And the teasing cock thickened and grew, its slide against his sweat-drenched buttocks now rough and painful.

"Oh, shit," Fox choked, as he felt the ridged promise of alien barbs scraping across his flesh, as the image of those harsh protrusions rippling inside him made his blood surge and his cock leak and his neglected pucker wink and spasm in expectation.  His balls were tight with need, his cock was screaming or maybe *he* was screaming and he tried to rear up, to release his hands from the floor enough to touch the raging heat in his groin, to release the terrible agonizing pressure that was building with every slow, deliberate slide of Alex's inhuman cock across his achingly empty ass.

He screamed in true pain as sharp knives pierced his wrists, like tiny flaming arrows. No, not knives. Claws. Sharp, white-hot claws that pinned his hands to the floor. He shook his head stupidly, blinking with disbelief at the fine streams of blood that were trickling down his wrists, over his hands and dripping slowly to the carpet. Then the claws retracted a little, somehow more painful as they released his flesh than when they pierced it, but still they rested on his wrists in silent threat.

"SUBMIT," Alex roared and bit down on his right shoulder, fangs ripping into the soft flesh.

"NO," Fox screamed back, then writhed helplessly as he felt Alex's body change, as the hard satin skin that draped his back rippled and transformed, as he felt the familiar softness of fur and the iron-hard slap of lean muscle, as the clawed hands that held his wrists shimmered and darkened and changed into something monstrous and inhuman and....and *his*.

And he came with a scream of pure ecstasy. An explosion that centered in his cock but rocked his whole body with its aftershocks. His body thrashed beneath Alex's, his limbs flailing, his heart hammering, his cock expelling the offering of his pride to the dark god who was already thrusting inside him with a triumphant scream.

Beyond thought or reason, Fox surrendered to the cock that was hammering into his ass with the blind, savage brutality of sheer animal passion. Claws raking his arms, fangs burrowing into his shoulders and neck, but those pains were secondary, barely noticeable, mere scratches to be daubed with iodine or sealed with plasters. All his awareness was centered in his ass, in the waves of agonizing pleasure as Alex thrust again and again, heedless of both Fox's screams of pain and wails of abandoned ecstasy. 

Like a fever, the heat and the pain and the delirium grew until, as Alex roared and released an endless stream of burning semen inside him, Fox's own scream of pure satisfaction drowned even Alex's howl of completion.

As he gasped for breath, as his own heart gradually slowed from its crazy stampeding gallop, as the burning ache in his ass began to overshadow the happy stupor of his now depleted cock, Fox shook his head at his own feeling of disappointment as he felt Alex shift and change before withdrawing and collapsing in sated satisfaction at his side. He was completely fucked, he decided, and not in a good way because he was already going to struggle to walk all day, let alone sit down, but he still wanted to sob in frustration at Alex's self-control. As always, Alex had managed to maintain enough awareness to transform back to a human form before pulling out of him. Yet again, the cock that had locked inside him at the moment of Alex's orgasm, the cock that had driven a hundred tiny barbs into the walls of his ass, had softened, transformed and slipped out without fulfilling its promise to rip his ass apart.

And for some crazy, fucked-up reason, that made him want to cry.

Still, as he shook his head and moved, aware that he now had barely enough time to shower and meet Scully, the jolt of pain inside his bowels was fierce enough to make him damned glad Alex hadn't *really* hurt him, after all.

He shook his head at himself and chuckled.

"What?" Alex asked, his face emotionless but his eyes dark with undecipherable emotions.

"Me," Fox admitted. "I always want *more* and then my head clears and I can't understand why the hell I'd be so damned stupid."

"More?" Alex queried.

"You take me to the edge, Alex. Then you pull back. You always pull back before I fall over, before I get hurt. Only, when I'm there. When I'm facing it...sometimes I *want* to go over. I want to fall."

"Is that why you're playing games with me, Fox?"

"What?" Fox asked, a cold chill rippling through him as he heard the unmistakable anger beneath Alex's outwardly calm question.

"Fighting me, like you did this morning. Refusing to come for me, as if you hadn't done it countless times before. Deliberately making me lose control. Making me hurt you."

Fox shook his head slowly, running the last half hour over in his head, examining it, taking every moment of their love-making into consideration, then looked at Alex in genuine confusion.

"It wasn't a game," he admitted, his eyes wide with confusion. "I...I really *was* fighting you at first. I really *didn't* want to submit to you. I...I just don't know *why* I did it. I don't know why it suddenly was an issue. Please, Alex. Believe me. I don't know why I behaved like that."

"Because you're wrong," Alex announced, his eyes glittering dangerously.

"Wrong?" Fox repeated fearfully, as Alex flowed to his feet and stared down at him with a terrifying look of coldness in his eyes. "What do you mean 'I'm wrong'?"

"I don't know," Alex admitted, his eyes flickering with confusion. "But I don't like it, Fox. I don't like it at all."

"Alex, I...." Fox began.

Alex shook his head, his eyes reverting to their normal alien coldness, and he turned and prowled towards the front door, his body already shimmering as it prepared to change.

"ALEX," Fox screamed in panic.

But Alex simply slipped through the door and was gone.

~#~#~#~

UNITED NATIONS BUILDING
NEW YORK CITY, NY :  APRIL 10

Antonio took a deep breath to steady his nerves, raised a still slightly shaking hand and rapped his knuckles against the heavy oak door of his boss's office.  He waited a few seconds, as though waiting for an acknowledgement although he knew he wouldn't receive one, then he pushed against the door and stepped inside.

Varinelli ignored him for a precisely correct two minutes, then slowly closed the file on his desk and looked up.

"What is it Antonio?" he asked, his face a mask of boredom.

Antonio swallowed again, stiffened his spine and spoke to the wall over Varinelli's head.

"Someone has broken into the MJ documents."

"Who would do such a thing?" Varinelli replied so casually that Antonio's own expression flickered in confusion. He dared a quick glance at his boss and relaxed slightly as he saw that, despite Varinelli's placid smile, his eyes were dark with fury and...was that fear he saw? 

"I don't know," he murmured, as Varinelli picked up the phone and began to dial.

WASHINGTON, DC : APRIL 11

Mulder looked at the two offending tablets in his hand, grimaced in distaste, threw them in his mouth before he changed his mind and gulped an entire glass of water down to speed their passage to his stomach.  Maybe they'd work faster if he just stuck them up his ass, he mumbled to himself.  He hated taking drugs, even mild over the counter painkillers like this Tylenol. Not as much as he'd hate it if Alex were to walk back in that door right now and find him in too much pain to accept the inevitable make-up sex.

His ass was raw. So sore he didn't even dare contemplate ingesting food until at least some of the swelling had receded. Certainly too damned sore to accommodate Alex's cock for the next few days.

So maybe it was just as well that Alex had fucked off to somewhere else.  To *someone* else maybe. Someone like Skinner, maybe.  Yeah. Alex was pissed with him for some reason and was probably getting his vengeance by reaming Skinner a new asshole too.

With shaking hands, Mulder reached for the tap and refilled his glass. He gulped the water down like it was pure scotch, shuddering as the cold liquid seemed to burn inside his empty, churning stomach.

"Skinner," he hissed, his lips curling to expose his teeth in a feral snarl.

He knew it in his guts that Skinner had stolen his Alex.  It didn't matter that he hadn't got any proof, that Alex hadn't even mentioned him since Skinner's visit to his apartment.  He knew it was Skinner because he'd seen it in the bastard's eyes. He'd seen the guilt lurking behind the wire rims. He'd seen in the strange way Skinner had looked at him as he'd handed back his 302 and it had been proven, *proven*, by the fact that Skinner had signed the 302 off without question.  Why the fuck would he do that if he *wasn't* feeling guilty about something? And what could possibly make him more guilty than the fact he'd stolen Mulder's boyfriend?

Come to think about it, Skinner had been limping. Yeah, he'd *said* he'd pulled a muscle at the gym and he'd *looked* completely surprised that Mulder had even asked about it, but that was just guilt, wasn't it? Yeah. It hadn't been surprise in his eyes, it had been guilt. Guilt with a capital 'G'.

Maybe he'd take a wander to Skinner's place, he decided, subconsciously slapping his ribs to check his weapon was snuggly holstered under his sweatshirt. Maybe he'd just take a stroll in Skinner's neighborhood.  He rubbed his forehead, as it began to thud slightly despite the Tylenol.  His palm came away wet from his strangely hot flesh. He was coming down with something, maybe. He was definitely hot. Fluish, perhaps, or maybe it was just stress.

Stress. Yeah. That was it. Bound to be a bit stressful if you found out your boyfriend was buggering your boss.

He snarled and crashed his fist into the worktop so savagely that his knuckles tore. It hurt like fuck. Like the pain of hitting a wall. Like the pain of finding out your lover was fucking another guy.

He turned on the tap with his left hand and thrust his torn knuckles under the cold, soothing water until the throbbing pain eased. Then he refilled his glass and drained it again, hoping the chilly water would ease some of the burning heat that was radiating from his forehead.   

Three loud raps on his front door startled him so much that he almost dropped the glass.  For a moment his heart leapt. Alex, he told himself frantically. Alex has come back. Then, immediately, his sudden surge of hope died. Alex never knocked. Alex just flowed through the fucking keyhole or something.  Swallowing the bitter taste of his disappointment, Mulder edged cautiously to the door, keeping his body flush with the wall as he carefully peered through the spy hole, his battered right hand sliding painfully inside his sweatshirt to rest on his weapon. Then, with a sigh that was as much surprise as relief, he dropped his hand and opened the door.

"What are you guys doing here?"

"Can we talk inside?" Byers asked, flicking his eyes nervously up and down the corridor.

"I'm not feeling well. I didn't sleep last night and I've had a shitty day at work. I'm really not in the mood for the three stooges," Mulder replied shortly.

Byers looked at him with obvious concern, his eyes narrowing at Mulder's flushed face. 

"I don't think we've been followed," Frohike insisted, more concerned with getting his ass out of the exposure of the corridor than with Mulder's own state of health.

"Who would follow you?" Mulder demanded rudely.

"Multinational black opps unit. Code name Garnett," Byers replied.

"Trained killers. School of the American Alumni," Langley added.

Mulder couldn't help laughing. "Have you boys been defacing library books again?"

"They don't want us. They want him," Frohike said.

"Who?" Mulder demanded urgently, a frantic picture of Alex flashing into his head.

"Kenneth Suna," Frohike replied.

Mulder breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't Alex who was in danger.

"We think that's his real name," Langley corrected.

"You've heard us refer to him as The Thinker," Byers added.

It was enough to spark some interest in Mulder. Not much, but enough to ask "What did he do?"

"Hacked into the defense department computer system," Byers answered, with a smug grin.

"What?" Mulder demanded, now fully intrigued. Enough to temporarily bank down his overwhelming urge to pay Skinner a visit and concentrate instead on what his friends were telling him.

"The Thinker's an anarchist and a snoop. Whatever he got into has made him a very wanted man. Customs and immigration are on full alert. Every port of ingress is closed," Byers replied.

"What are you coming to me for?" Mulder asked suspiciously.

"In his last communiqué, The Thinker named a meeting place and a three hour time window. He asked specifically for you."

"The only problem is he may already be dead," Langley added dramatically.

Before Mulder could answer, the corridor was filled with the unmistakable sound of a gun shot.  Byers, Langley and Frohike all dived through Mulder's door like a stampede of terrified rabbits. Mulder charged through them and out of the door, reaching for his weapon. The three exchanged worried glances then wordlessly turned and raced after him.

The far end of the corridor was already teeming with frightened onlookers, congregating around the door to another apartment.

"What happened?" Mulder demanded.

"She just shot her husband," a stunned woman replied. "They'd been married for thirty years. It's like she went crazy."

Maybe *he* was fucking Skinner too, a voice whispered at the back of Mulder's head.  He blinked stupidly, shaking his head at the weirdness of his own subconscious, and decided maybe he *was* coming down with some weird flu or something.

US BOTANIC GARDEN
WASHINGTON, DC : APRIL 11

Sitting on a bench that was far too hard for his still swollen ass, Mulder checked his wristwatch again and irritably decided that  he'd give 'The Thinker' exactly five more minutes and then he'd get the hell out of there and get on with something *important* like finding Alex. Maybe via a chemists to get something for this damned flu bug or whatever it was that was making his mind feel so fuzzy at the edges.

Yeah, he decided, shuffling on his seat as he decided that the five minutes was up.

So he was almost disappointed when the young man with wild eyes and wilder hair sidled up to him just as he was about to leave.

"I... I don't want you to know my real name. I... I just don't think it's that important that you know," Kenneth whispered.

Mulder rolled his eyes dramatically, considered pointing out that he knew *exactly* who he was talking to right down to his shoe size and the name of his primary school teacher, then sighed and settled for sarcasm instead. "Sounds like a line I used in a bar once."

Kenneth blinked, saw the irritation in Mulder's face and flushed. "Look, I'm sorry about the wait but I kinda got this ninja party shaking my butt," he whined defensively.

"Why? What've you got?" Mulder demanded impatiently.

"Well if I'm correct I got the original defense departments UFO intelligence files. Everything from the 1940's and up."

"Everything?" Mulder gasped, all irritation forgotten as this weird stranger told him he'd found Mulder's holy grail.

"Everything. Roswell, MJ12 and beyond."

"You've read them?"

"Not entirely. I downloaded all I could and then I split. I mean, I knew that these guys would be after me."

"What makes you think they know who you are?" Mulder asked, not so much querying the obvious truth that there were people who would kill to keep their secrets buried but wondering exactly how careless Suna had been and who long it would take for those people to find *him*.

"I didn't take any precautions," Suna admitted, then colored with embarrassment and shrugged helplessly.. "I mean I... I didn't even expect to get inside."

He reached into his windcheater and withdrew a small package. He stared at it with a combination of reverence and dread, then pressed it into Mulder's hand as though he were transferring ownership of an ancient curse. Mulder felt the weight of that curse, the crippling heaviness of decades of secrets, the terrible burden of the long buried truth and he shuddered slightly.

"You know they always denied that these files even existed," he murmured, staring at the package with an almost sorrowful expression. Then he looked up and stared at Suna suspiciously. "What do you want from me?"

Suna just smiled at him with the bitter resigned grimace of a man who'd already accepted the news of his own terminal cancer. "I want the truth," he whispered, though both men knew he was unlikely to survive long enough to enjoy it.."And I want you to promise that those rat bastards answer to the people."

Mulder wanted to offer him protection, assure him sanctuary, stop the men who were undoubtedly already preparing to send Suna to his early grave. But he couldn't. He didn't have the power. He couldn't even offer Suna the protection of his badge since half the rat bastards Suna referred to worked for their own damned government. The government that had buried the truth. The government that had made Alex what he had become. 

So he just nodded, accepting Suna's challenge and his own inability to offer the man anything more, and as much as the package was burning him with its promise of secrets to be uncovered and lies to be refuted, its presence in his pocket felt as much like an acceptance of his own impotence as a chance to finally make a difference.

Or maybe it was just the damned flu that was making him feel so down.

That and the fact that Alex was probably fucking Skinner.

FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, DC : APRIL 12

Mulder sat at his desk, turning the DAT tape over and over in his hands and vaguely contemplating the nature of curses. At least his ass had recovered enough for him to sit down in comfort as he deliberated, but the lack of pain didn't give him as much relief as he'd expected. He still felt hot, tired and fluish. He seemed incapable of keeping track of any but the most simple thoughts and, since the fading of the ache in his butt was a testament to the fact that Alex *still* hadn't come home, he was struggling to see his ability to sit down comfortably as a 'good thing'.

He was so distracted by his self-pity that he barely had time to slip the tape back into his pocket unseen as Scully burst through the basement door with an irritatingly cheerful look on her face.

"Mulder, Skinner's looking for you," she announced.

Yeah, I bet he fucking is, Mulder snarled to himself, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of furious jealousy, but he forced himself not to react. Skinner could wait.

"Come in and lock the door," he urged.

"Why, what's going on?"

"Are you familiar with the ten commandments Scully?"

"You want me to recite them?"

"No. Just number 4, the one about obeying the Sabbath, the part about where God made Heaven and Earth but didn't bother to tell anybody about his side projects."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded, torn between irritation and concern. 

"The biggest lie of all," he announced, swinging his monitor around so she could see the words emblazoned across the screen: Department Of Defense. Top Secret.

"What is this?"

"The Holy Grail. The original defense department files. Hard evidence that the government has known about the existence of extraterrestrials for over fifty years."

"Where did you get this?" Scully asked cautiously, not liking the feverish brightness of Mulder's eyes or the clammy paleness of his skin. He looked....not 'ill' exactly but....but *wrong*. As Alex had warned her.  While she didn't dispute the possible importance of the files Mulder was saying he'd found and understood that their presence might make him over-excited and a little manic, Mulder's reactions still seemed *wrong*.

"Your friendly neighborhood anarchist," Mulder grinned, then his smile slipped as the screen reflected a strange code. "I don't believe this," he yelled. "This is just gibberish."

He exploded out of his seat and punched a pencil holder so hard that it span off his desk. "Damn it. I'm so sick of this crap, BS and double talk. I can't believe this."

Scully flinched a little at the look of pure rage on Mulder's face. She'd never seen him so totally out of control before, at least not in anger. Maybe he *was* ill. She wondered what he'd say if she suggested a blood test. She was still casting around for some subtle way to suggest it when her eyes caught and held on the computer screen.

"Mulder, this may not be gibberish," she said slowly, as understanding dawned.

"It's a joke Scully, it's a bad joke," he growled.

"I think it's just encrypted and I think I recognize it. It looks like Navajo. It was used in world war two. My father told me it was the only code the Japanese couldn't break. I... I remember the long strings of consonants.

"Well can you find out?" he snapped.

"Well only a handful of people can decipher it," she replied carefully.

"Then find one of  'em," he barked. "Put Doggett onto it. It's about time he pulled his weight around here."

Scully watched him stalk towards the door, his spine stiff , and called out "Mulder. Are you okay?"

He paused in the doorway, ran a hand through his hair and sighed deeply before turning back to look at her with a sheepish expression. "Yeah. I just haven't been sleeping," he said, his eyes flashing an unspoken apology for his temper.

"I'm worried about you, Mulder. *Alex* is worried about you."

"Alex?" he demanded, his features contorting back into fury. "You've been talking to Alex about me?"

"He's worried about you, Mulder. That's all. He came to see me to..."

"When?" Mulder growled. "When, Scully?"

"A couple of nights ago. He came to my apartment and..."

"You too? How could you, Scully? I understand *him*. Fuck, I even understand Skinner maybe. But YOU?"

"Mulder, please. I don't know what...."

But with a loud slam of the basement door, he stormed out of the room before he said something he'd *really* regret. He felt sick, literally sick, as though his intestines were turning somersaults around his stomach. Not Scully. Not her. He must have misunderstood. That's it. He'd over-reacted because Alex had gone to her apartment. At night. No. She wasn't like that. Wasn't like.....

And wouldn't you know it? Speak of the devil...the moment he approached Skinner's office the outer door swung open and the bastard in question walked out. 

"Sir," Mulder growled, somehow turning one syllable into a curse of such magnitude that it stopped Skinner in his tracks.

Stone-faced and calm, Skinner's only response to his challenge was, "Agent Mulder. I need to speak with you."

"About?" Mulder asked cockily, tipping his head back and meeting Skinner's brown gaze with venom.

"In my office," Skinner replied shortly, jerking his head towards the door in invitation.

"Why?" Mulder demanded, /because you don't want the whole fucking FBI to find out you're taking it up the ass from MY Alex?/ "Is this another jerk off assignment where I end up doing the government's dirty work?"

/Jerk off....yeah....that's what you want isn't it? Me jerking off alone while you fuck my boyfriend/ 

"It's about a rumor that you may be in receipt of some sensitive files," Skinner replied coldly.

Mulder swayed uncertainly. The tape. The fucking DAT tape. Was *that* why Skinner had stolen Alex? To distract him? To make him so fucked up that he kept forgetting what he had in his pocket in favor of what he *should* have in his ass? No...It couldn't be. Alex had left him before the tape came. Hadn't he? Suddenly he wasn't so sure. His mind felt fuzzy, disjointed. All he knew for certain, all he knew beyond doubt, was that Skinner was *not* to be trusted either way. 

"I don't know anything about that," he mumbled, turning around and starting to walk away before he simply hit that smug bastard smirk that he just *knew* was gloating at him behind that stony exterior.

"Agent Mulder listen... I'm talking to you..." Skinner said, reaching out and catching hold of Mulder's shoulder.  His grip was a light, polite restraint but his fingers inadvertently dug into the place where Alex's fangs had opened a deep, still sensitive rip in Mulder's shoulder.

The combination of his fury, fear, pain and the unforgivable fact that Skinner had touched him in a place that only Alex had the right to touch sent Mulder spinning right off the edge. Uncaring of their audience, not even thinking about what he was doing, Mulder let fly a furious punch at Skinner.

Instead of retaliating Skinner simply wrapped his bear-like arms around the younger man, pulling him so close against his body that Mulder's frantic struggles were easily subdued. One arm around Mulder's neck in a tight choke-hold, Skinner just waited until the fight drained out of Mulder's body.

"Are we done?" He growled in Mulder's ear, shaking him a little to check. When Mulder just sagged against him, boneless and stunned, Skinner finally released him. "We're done," he announced, and glared around the corridor until all the fascinated on-lookers departed.

"Care to tell me what all that was about?" he asked, when they were alone, his voice now surprisingly gentle.

He watched as Mulder rubbed his bruised throat, his eyes bright with either anger or unshed tears, feeling sickened and ashamed of himself for letting this happen. Not that he could have expected Mulder to hit him but still, he *had* known Mulder would react badly if he really *was* hiding files so sensitive that the higher echelons seemed to be in a complete panic.

"You've just given them the ammunition they needed, Mulder. By hitting me in public you've lost what little credibility you still had here," he announced, but his words were sad rather than accusing.  "It might not be too late. I can still help you if you trust me, if you bring me in on this now while there's still time."

"Trust you?" Mulder laughed. "Trust YOU?"

"Why not me?" Skinner asked. "What *is* your problem with me, Mulder?"

Mulder gaped at him in obvious disbelief, uttered a high-pitched almost hysterical laugh, and stumbled towards the lift.

"MULDER!" Skinner roared.

"Why don't you ask ALEX?" Mulder screamed back, as the lift door closed.

Skinner stared at the closed lift, contemplated racing to the staircase or phoning security to stop the lift, then sighed in defeat and turned back to his office muttering "Who the hell is Alex?" to himself.

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MA : APRIL 12

Although he'd never believed in the idea of a sixth-sense, having discovered enough horror in the world with five senses alone, as soon as the door bell rang Bill Mulder knew who'd come calling.

There was an inevitability about it like seeing an open door long overdue for closing.

"Hello Bill."

He just stared unspeaking at the unwelcome caller, wondering if the savage chill in his spine was the same sensation Scrooge had felt as the first ghoulish reminder of his past sins arrived. Except that Marley's ghost had been swathed in chains, while Spender arrived draped only in the thick fog of cigarette smoke.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, and although he intended the words to emerge strong and unwelcoming they instead fell out of his mouth like the pre-rehearsed lines of some play. First line: pretend innocence.

"I've come on some pressing business," Spender replied, with a cool smirk on his face like some bad pantomime villain.

"We had agreed that you would never..." Second line: pretend aggrieved surprise.

"That was a long time ago Bill. There have been some unforeseen events."

Not long enough, Bill thought. Never long enough.

Somehow they ended up in the kitchen, drinking coffee like real people did. People who lived normal lives, with normal families and who slept at night with normal nightmares and faced impending death with normal regrets. Not people who shared knowledge that no man should ever know and guilt that no man could ever bear.

"No one was supposed to know," Bill muttered, then was ashamed of himself for the thought. Was a secret like theirs bearable simply because it was a secret? Yes, it seemed so. For all the justifications he'd given himself over the years, despite all the times he'd convinced himself that what he'd done *had* been worth the cost, he no more believed his own excuses than the shades who haunted his dreams found satisfaction in his platitudes and lies.

"Who could have predicted the future Bill? That the computers that you and I only dreamed of would someday be home appliances capable of the most technical espionage?"

"The files should have been destroyed," Bill argued weakly, his hand trembling around his coffee cup.

"They should have, but they weren't. Regret is an inevitable consequence of life," Spender replied coldly, his eyes flickering with distaste at Mulder's obvious fear.  How the hell had *this* man raised someone like Fox, he wondered.

"How do you know my son has them?" Bill challenged.

"The man who stole them has come forward," Spender replied, with a chilling sneer.

"Oh God," Bill moaned.

"As always we maintain plausible denial. The files are only as real as their possible authentication," Spender assured him.

Bill flashed him a glare of pure malice. "My *name* is in those files," he growled.

"The files have been encrypted of course. We have a certain luxury of time. We endeavored to prevent that fact from ever coming to light," Spender reassured him.

"You wouldn't... harm him?" Bill asked weakly.

"I've protected him this long, haven't I.? Your son has been provident in the alliances that he's created. The last thing we need is a martyr in a crusade."

"But if he should, learn of my involvement..." Bill's voice petered off as he answered his own question. Fox would hate him, despise him, expose him, destroy him. Fox was incapable of acting any other way. He'd expose the truth, no matter what it cost him, no matter what it cost his father. Not for the first time, Bill regretted the choice he'd made so many years previously. Samantha had always been the most biddable child. The one whose need for approval was greater than the need to 'do the right thing'. From early childhood, Samantha was the one who stared at her father with worshipful eyes. Fox had just stared and then questioned. 'Why are you doing that? When are we going? How does that work? Where did that come from? What is that for?' Questions...always and incessantly, Fox had questioned his world. Never willing to simply trust that his father knew best.

He looked up and saw Spender's eyes narrow in contemplation as though he could see all of Bill's thoughts and doubts written across his face.

"You're your own man, Bill. You always have been. But I strongly encourage you in that event, to deny everything. It's good to see you again Bill. You look well."

But deny what and to whom? Bill wondered, as Spender left. Deny the contents of the files to Fox and pray for a miracle, that Fox would simply believe him when in thirty-six years Fox had *never* believed in anything that couldn't be quantified, weighed and examined for truth?  Or deal with the problem himself. Bury the secret forever and then deny his own actions to the others.

Yes. Why else would Spender have come? Not to warn him, never that. What would have been the point?  Fox had the files, he *would* unencrypted them, he *would* find out the truth. Fox knew what he had. He'd already be running scared, well-aware the Consortium were after him. He wouldn't trust anyone at this point in time. He wouldn't let anyone near enough to harm him.

Not anyone, but maybe he would trust his father as long as Bill called him before he read the file.

Bill loved his son.

He make sure that Fox didn't suffer.

Hell, it was a kindness really. At least this way Fox would never have to live with the knowledge of what Bill had done. Fox was far too sensitive to live with the kind of nightmares that Bill had lived with for thirty years.

Yeah, all things considered, this was probably all for the best.

MULDER'S APARTMENT : APRIL 12

Mulder was asleep on the couch when Scully let herself into apartment. He looked absurdly young when he was sleeping, she decided, although his hair was badly tousled and both his face and tee-shirt were damp with perspiration.  She glanced sadly at the closed bedroom door and took it, from Mulder's position on the couch, that Alex wasn't around. She'd never gotten to the bottom of why Mulder never used the bed unless he had company or at least was *expecting* company, but she suspected it had something to do with Mulder's deep down fear of loneliness.  He never cared about being alone, just about *feeling* that way. Presumably he just felt better napping alone on a couch than in a bed built for two.

"Alex?" Mulder called out, still half-asleep but obviously coming too and registering that he wasn't alone.  Before she could answer, Mulder twisted for his weapon and was pointing it in her direction before he'd fully finished opening his eyes.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "When I realized it wasn't Alex, I panicked."

She just shrugged. Neither of them lived the kind of lives where it was unusual to greet unexpected visitors with a loaded gun.

"You didn't answer your door," she said quietly, sitting down on an arm of the couch and reaching forward to push a couple of wet bangs out of Mulder's eyes.

"Oh," Mulder mumbled, shame-faced. "I took a pill."

She cocked an eyebrow at him questioningly but just said, "I couldn't find you at work. I was worried about you."

"I came home. I must be running a fever. Maybe it's the threat of being burnt at the stake," he quipped weakly.

"They called me in today."

"What did you tell them?"

"That nothing was wrong."

"Well you told them the truth then."

"Mulder, you opened the door for them, they're just looking for a good reason now."

"Yeah," Mulder laughed. "That's what Skinner said too."

"About what you said earlier, about me and Skinner and Alex. What did you mean?"

Mulder shook his head.

"Nothing. I told you. I've been feeling feverish. The flu or something. That's all."

"And Alex still hasn't come home?"

"No."

"I'm sorry, Mulder. I *do* know he loves you though. He really was worried about you the other night. I'm worried too. Why on earth did you attack Skinner?"

Mulder rubbed his face and looked at her helplessly.

"You'll laugh at me."

"Believe me, Mulder. The last thing I'm going to do is laugh. Talk to me."

"I keep thinking that's where Alex is. With *him*."

"What?"

"I knew you'd laugh."

"I'm not laughing. Why Skinner?"

"Because Alex is *somewhere* and I know he likes Skinner and Skinner likes Alex and..."

"What do you mean he likes Alex? He's met him?" she demanded.

"Yeah....well, not really. Alex was a cat at the time."

Scully didn't even blink. "That explains it then."

"Explains what?"

"Why the AD came to see me and asked 'Who the hell is Alex?' since apparently the last thing you screamed at him was that he should talk to him."

"Okay, I'll say I'm sorry to him," Mulder mumbled, though a voice niggled at the back of his head saying that Skinner was only *pretending* not to know Alex..

"Mulder, these files. Is this cassette worth risking everything?"

"I'll tell you when I find out what's on it. Now just tell me who I can talk to about breaking that code."

"I'm meeting with someone in an hour. I might know something later tonight, I just need some kind of assurance that they're not going to let us hang ourselves with this. That I'm doing the right thing."

"I'll try to find out," Mulder assured her, crossing over to the window and taping an X across it. "Think it'll work if I stick a picture of a cat on the window too?" he asked, with a wistful grin.

"He'll be back, Mulder. You know he will. He always turns up when you're in trouble and between punching out Skinner and that DAT tape you've got more than enough to go around."

"Yeah," Mulder laughed. "Thanks, Scully."

"No problem. Try and get some more sleep."

Go to PART SIX