by Patti Murphy
75271.3116@compuserve.com


Date: 5 Sep 1995 03:03:15 GMT

In the chronology of events in the X-Files Universe, this
story takes place after "Our Town" but before "Anasazi" and is
intended as a "fix" for those of us struggling through this long,
cruel summer.

DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully are lovingly borrowed from
Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions and no copyright
infringement is intended. So there.

THANKS to: Gerri, who was kind enough to post this for me;
Tricia, Celtic goddess and editor extraordinaire; Amy, who
cheered me on; and John, story consultant and provider of
mocaccinos.

Please direct all comments (and I *do* want to hear them!)
to me, the author, at 75271.3116@compuserve.com

A Little Knowledge
****************************
by
Patti Murphy

Had she known what it contained and where it would lead,
Scully would have been even more annoyed with Mulder when he
dropped the computer disk on her desk at quarter to five that
Friday afternoon.
"What's this?" she asked, picking up the little blue
diskette.
"Some light reading for the weekend," Mulder said.
She frowned at him. "Mulder," she said.
"Gotta run, Scully. There's a guy at the Smithsonian giving
a talk on repressed memory syndrome and alien abductees," he
said, as he threw on his suit jacket.
"But we have to finish the field report on the Chaco murders
in Arkansas," she protested. "Skinner is asking for it."
"Can't it wait until Monday?" Mulder asked. He had turned
off his desk lamp and was edging towards the door.
"Mulder," she said, with increasing menace in her voice.
"We can whip them off first thing Monday morning, O.K.?" He
had his trenchcoat in his hands now and she knew she wasn't going
to be able to stop him. "Have a good weekend, Scully, and take a
look at what's on that disk."
"Mulder!"
The door slammed and he was gone.
She tossed her pen down on the pile of paperwork in front of
her and sighed in frustration. The disk sat on the edge of her
desk blotter, taunting her. She looked at her watch and sighed
again. She needed a weekend off or she was going to lose it
completely. She fumed silently for a few minutes, then decided
that she was going home. To hell with it.
She got up abruptly, stuffed several files into her
briefcase, got her coat and was at the door when she remembered
the disk. She went back to her desk, grabbed it and dropped it
in the outside pocket of her briefcase. She would look at it
later. Much later.


Scully tilted her face to the sun and took a deep breath,
soaking up the musky smell of damp earth. She closed her eyes
and pushed all thoughts of Mulder and work from her mind.
Nothing but this park and this bench and this intoxicating
sunshine. It was a spring sort of sunshine, warm and bright, but
still a little tentative, almost as if the sun knew that it might
have to depart suddenly, should the lurking shadows of winter
decide to return.
Her mountain bike leaned against the bench where she sat.
It was the dark green of an MG, the closest she'd ever get to
owning a British sports car on a Department of Justice salary.
So far, it had been the perfect weekend. She'd slept late
and then read the paper on the couch with a second cup of coffee.
She'd met a friend for lunch, then had browsed through
bookstores, returning home in time for a bike ride. Another day
of this and she might start to feel like herself again.
Her legs felt heavy and tired from the cycling. She hadn't
been exercising very much lately and she could feel the lack of
it. Working out was always the first thing to go when things got
busy, and she knew she couldn't afford to let that happen. She
had to stay in shape, if for no other reason than to keep up with
Mulder. He was a foot taller than she was, and there were days
when Scully was certain that every inch of that foot was in his
legs, because she constantly caught herself running to keep up
with his long stride. That had happened a lot this week. They
had been so snowed under with work, and Mulder had been restless
and more disorganized than usual, flitting from one case to
another, throwing out ridiculous and far-fetched theories,
expecting her to race along behind him, holding everything
together, keeping Skinner at bay with her field reports.
She realized she was clenching her jaw. She took a deep
breath, let it out slowly. She wasn't going to think about work.
A man in spandex bicycle shorts lurched by on roller blades.
He started to teeter dangerously right in front of the bench
where she sat, and Scully reflexively stuck out an arm to catch
him. At the last moment, in defiance of several laws of physics,
he regained his balance and righted himself. Their eyes met and
the man blushed a deep crimson. He was tall and lanky, but not
in a gangly sort of way, and Scully guessed that he was about her
age. His eyes were the gentle blue of the ocean on a calm day.
He was smiling at her now, with that look that people get when
they see something that they like. Scully couldn't remember the
last time she'd seen that look in someone's eyes.
"Good thing I bought the helmet, too," he said, still
blushing. "I think I'm going to need it."
Scully smiled at him, wondering if the dark tint of her
sunglasses would disguise the movement of her eyes enough for her
to check out his legs. Probably not. "That was a nice
recovery," she said aloud.
He laughed a bit, looked down at his roller blades. When he
looked up, his eyes moved up her body in a shy little glance.
When they reached her face, his smile was even wider, the
admiration evident now. "You ever try these?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I don't like stitches much," she said.
His laugh was genuine and lit up his face. For a few
moments, he stood there, smiling and looking at her. Finally, he
whipped off a glove and stuck out his hand. "I'm Peter," he
said.
Scully took his hand. Firm grip, not too firm, warm soft
skin. He had a lot of freckles. "Dana," she said.
"Dana," he repeated, and he looked at her as if he was
memorizing her face. He released her hand, straightened up, and
looked around the park, searching for the next right thing to
say. His eyes stopped on her bicycle. "Your bike looks new.
Are you just breaking it in?"
"I've had it for a while, actually," she heard herself say.
"I don't ride it very often." Ask him something, she thought,
anything. Just keep him talking.
He looked toward the playground, and she could see that he
was scrambling to think of something to say, too. A little
pause, his gaze lingering on the parents pushing children on the
swings and then he was putting his glove back on.
"Well, it was nice meeting you, Dana," he said. "Maybe
we'll run into each other again."
She nodded. "Yeah, maybe we will."
He gave her a last smile then turned and rolled off down the
asphalt bike path. Scully watched him skate away, until he was
out of sight, then sighed and shook her head.
"I've got to get a life," she said out loud as she wearily
got to her feet.


The lunch hour racket in the deli was louder than usual. Or
maybe it was just her damn headache. It was the third headache
of the week -- actually it was the third day of the headache that
had started on Monday morning -- and she didn't need to be a
doctor to figure out what the cause was. The cause was standing
at the counter ordering their sandwiches, his usual mild
expression in place.
Scully massaged her temples, trying to loosen the half-
nelson of pain around her head. Mulder must have sensed how
close she was to throttling him this morning because he had
stopped in the middle of a very technical explanation of genital
excision in cattle mutilations and had said: "Hey, Scully, how
about lunch? My treat." This was remarkable because when he was
on a case, Mulder often lost sight of such trivial matters as
meals. But it was all the more remarkable because as far as
Scully knew, Mulder never had any money with him. There was only
one explanation for such unusual behaviour -- she must look as
lousy as she felt, bad enough for him to notice and be worried.
Great. Now he'd start to hover.
She reached for her briefcase, started fishing through it
for the bottle of Advil that she always kept there. She groped
around, headache thudding against her forehead with each
heartbeat, and tried to calculate how many of those little brown
pills she'd taken since Monday. She was up to fourteen before
she located the bottle. Her medical training kicked in and she
remembered all the harmful effects of such a high dose of
ibuprofen. She quickly concluded that none of the side effects
could be as bad as this headache, and besides, she had too much
work to do. She popped two pills into her mouth and swallowed.
As usual, they had ended up at Mulder's favourite lunch
place, a cramped, noisy little deli with rickety tables and faded
photos of D.C.'s various sports teams in frames that were bolted
to the walls. Scully always felt like she should wipe off the
chair before she sat down, but Mulder had strong-armed her into
going there, and she had capitulated without much of a fight. Her
head hurt too much to argue and after all, he was paying.
She checked to see where Mulder was in line -- maybe food
would help. He was at the counter now, standing there with his
hands in his pockets, staring off into space, no doubt thinking
up some outrageous theory to torment her with. Deep down, she
knew that he didn't do it on purpose. It was just the way he
was. But it got so frustrating sometimes, chasing after him,
reigning him in, trying to reason with him while he made
ridiculous leaps of logic, like an acrobat taking a sharp turn
off the high wire. She smiled a bit at the image of Mulder in
free fall. That's what she was...Mulder's net. And lately,
something about that rankled.
She rubbed her forehead wearily. Better not to think about
it right now. It was going to be a long enough day without
adding psychoanalysis to the agenda. She pulled a file from her
briefcase, flipped it open and tried to concentrate around her
headache. She had struggled through the same paragraph twice
when suddenly Mulder was at the table, hands full of paper-
wrapped sandwiches and drinks.
"Turkey on whole wheat, mayo on the side, and grapefruit
juice," he said, putting the appropriate items in front of her.
"You didn't specify so I had them toss on some sprouty things,
too." He ripped open a bag of potato chips with his teeth as he
seated himself at the tiny table.
Scully slid the papers back into the folder and returned
them to her briefcase. By the time she had unwrapped her
sandwich, Mulder had cracked open his soda and was washing down a
mouthful of pastrami on rye. She glanced at his lunch and fought
the urge to roll her eyes.
"Didn't they ever teach you about the food groups, Mulder?"
she asked.
"I must have been sick that day." He popped another chip in
his mouth, watched her fuss with her sandwich. "Do you want your
pickle?"
Scully shook her head as she chewed and motioned for him to
take it. They ate in silence for a few moments.
"Did you have a chance to look at the files on that disk I
gave you Friday?" he asked. Scully noticed how much attention he
was paying to rebuilding his sandwich which had collapsed in his
hands after the last bite. She also heard the studied casualness
in his voice and wondered what exactly she was being set up for.
"There were over five hundred," she replied. "I read about
fifty of them."
"And?" he asked.
"And..." She dragged the syllable out. "I don't know what I
was supposed to be looking for. They looked like a random sample
of medical files of people who had died around 1970."
"You didn't find anything suspicious?"
She shook her head, sipped her juice. "Was I supposed to?"
Mulder chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "I couldn't find
anything unusual, either," he said, after he'd swallowed.
"Wait a minute. I don't get it," Scully said. "If there's
nothing unusual in these files, why do we have them?"
"That's what we need to find out." He was concentrating too
hard on his sandwich. Scully suddenly saw the missing piece. An
eyebrow lifted.
"Mulder, where did you get those files?"
Mulder took a swig of soda, then methodically wiped his
hands with a paper napkin. "My anonymous contact gave them to
me."
She put her sandwich down and sat back in her chair, arms
crossed. "Your new Deep Throat contact?" she asked. Mulder
nodded, nibbling tentatively at his sandwich, watching the storm
clouds gather in his partner's face. "The same man who knew what
kind of danger you were in, but refused to help me find you when
you were alone and injured on a polar ice cap?" Mulder noticed
again how her eyes cooled to a pale grey when she was angry. He
considered mentioning it, then decided it was probably not the
best time. He gulped down some more soda and continued eating.
When he didn't respond, she said, "You could have died, Mulder
and he was going to let you." There were sharp edges to every
word.
"He wouldn't have given me these files if they weren't
important," Mulder said.
She leaned forward, pale eyes ablaze. "Do you remember the
last time a contact of yours handed you a tip like this, with
nothing to go on? Do you remember Purity Control, Mulder?"
He met her gaze, then lowered his eyes, nodding
imperceptibly. When he looked up again, his expression was
stony, unreadable. "My contact died for giving us Purity
Control," he said.
"And nearly took you with him," she said, "and lied to you
at least once before, that we know of."
"He was in a very delicate position, Scully."
"Delicate position? The man admits that he manipulated you,
nearly gets you killed and you're worried about his delicate
position?" Mulder started to speak, then quickly shut his mouth.
They sat in charged silence for a few moments. "O.K., O.K.," she
said tersely, raising a hand to signal a truce. She sighed
heavily and ran her hand across her forehead and through her
hair. If only her head would explode and get it over with. She
regarded Mulder for a few seconds. "Did it ever occur to you,"
she said, "that this Mr. X, whoever he is, might really be
playing for the other side?"
A suggestion of a smile rested on Mulder's lips. "And you
call me paranoid?"
"Dammit Mulder, I'm serious," she said, slamming her hand on
the table. Her bottle of juice jumped.
"He's an anonymous informant, Scully. He risks exposing
himself every time he passes something on to me. It's not like I
can ask him for letters of reference."
She closed her eyes and leaned forward, letting her head
rest on the palms of her hands. The noise in the deli closed in
around her, made her feel dizzy.
"I can't just walk away every time things might get
dangerous," he said.
"You know that's not what I'm saying," she said.
"Then what are you saying, Scully? What do you want me to
do?" Impatience and anger mingled in his voice.
She lifted her head, slowly, opened her eyes and gave him an
icy look. "I want you to be careful, Mulder, because one of
these days, I'm not going to be there to catch you," she said.
She reached for her briefcase and got to her feet. "I have
things to do. I'll see you later." She strode off before he
could reply, making her way through the crowded tables, toward
the door. She knew that by the time she reached the sidewalk,
she would feel like an idiot for behaving this way, but she
didn't care. At that precise moment, all that mattered was a
deep breath of fresh air and getting away from Mulder.
She had a hand on the door and was pushing it open when she
heard her name being called over the noise. A strange voice, not
Mulder. She turned instinctively and looked up into a hopeful
smile.
"I'm not sure if you remember me..." Soft blue eyes. The
park. Roller blade guy. She remembered. "We met at the park
the other day," he continued, "uh,...on the weekend? I'm..."
"Peter." She spoke it before she could stop herself.
He exhaled audibly, looking relieved as he nodded. She
shifted her briefcase to shake hands with him.
"I didn't know if you'd recognize me without the helmet," he
said.
Scully felt herself smile, despite the flush of anger that
still coloured her cheeks. She took a deep breath to steady
herself.
"Is everything all right?" he asked. "You look a little
upset."
"Oh, I'm fine, really," she said. There was something about
his eyes, a gentleness that drew her in, made her want to stand
there and just look at him. She took in his dark suit, tasteful
tie, mentally trying to change gears. "Do you work around here?"
she asked.
"I'm a reporter, for the Post," he replied. "I'm on the
hill today, doing some research for a story. How about you?"
"I'm with the Bureau," she said, waving her hand in the
general direction of Pennsylvania and Ninth.
"Wow. I'll bet that's a lot more interesting than reading
bills about lobster quotas, which is what I spent the morning
doing," he said.
"Oh, it's interesting," she said. She thought about Mulder
sitting back at the table. "Some days it's a little too
interesting, actually."
"I suppose you're on your way back to work," he said. "Lots
of bad guys to catch?"
She smiled. "And never enough time. You know how it is."
He stood there, smiling down at her, clearly enjoying what
he was seeing. Scully suddenly wondered what it would feel like
to have his arms around her. She drifted on that thought for a
moment, until she realized that he was saying something.
"I guess I should be getting back, too. You never know when
there might be important lobster news breaking, and if I wasn't
there to cover it, I could miss out on my shot at the Pulitzer."
"It was nice running into you again," Scully said.
"Look, if you're not able to, I understand," he said, "but,...I'm
going to kick myself later if I don't ask....Do you think we
could have lunch together sometime?" He looked more than a
little nervous.
"I'd like that," she said.
He brightened. "How about tomorrow?"
"Sounds good."
They made arrangements to meet and exchanged cards out on
the sidewalk. His card declared him to be Peter O'Hara, reporter
for the Washington Post.
"Well, you'd better get back to those bad guys," he said,
with a grin.
"And you'd better get back to those lobsters."
His grin blossomed into a smile. "I'm glad we bumped into
each other again."
"Me, too. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Bye."
Scully had walked two blocks before she realized that her
headache was beginning to feel better.

==========================================

She avoided their office for the balance of the day.
Instead, she staked out a table in a remote corner of the library
and turned her attention to a list of jobs she'd been putting
off, including a consultation on the autopsy of the remains of a
seven year old girl. She had been sexually assaulted and then
murdered, no doubt to silence her, and her body dumped in a lake.
Scully thought of her niece, just turned seven last month, in her
First Communion dress, and hoped that there was a special place
in hell for people who did such things to children. As a
teenager, rebelling against her Catholic upbringing, she had been
quite certain that there was no such thing as hell. Since she'd
come to work for the Bureau though, she had started to hope that
she had been wrong.
By five o'clock, she had cleared up her overdue paperwork,
completed expense accounts from last month and read two articles
in the most recent issue of the Journal of Forensic Medicine. I
should ditch Mulder more often, she thought as she stuffed file
folders and paper back into her briefcase, I'd get a lot more
work done. Feeling only slightly guilty at slipping out at such
a sinfully early hour, she closed her briefcase, grabbed her suit
jacket from the back of her chair and headed for home.
When she arrived at her apartment, shortly after six, she
was just beginning to feel sheepish for having walked out on
Mulder at lunch. Her cooling off period was usually shorter than
this, but she suspected that there was more at work here than her
fiery Irish genes. Except she didn't know what. And wasn't sure
if she wanted to think about it.
She kicked off her pumps and threw herself down into an easy
chair. She looked at the phone on the table beside her. She
should call him and apologize. Not for what she'd said -- she
was still annoyed with him -- but for leaving in a huff. He
would probably be sarcastic, she would have to bite her tongue to
keep from snapping at him and then, in that disarming way he had,
he would say something sensitive and ask if she was all right.
And then what would she say?
She felt the tiniest flutter in her stomach -- or was it her
heart? -- and she tensed slightly. She was not all right and her
body had been trying to tell her that for the past two weeks.
Something had been hovering in the back of her mind, something
too intangible to confront, yet solid enough to cast a constant
shadow over her thoughts. She wondered if it wasn't time to
figure out what it was.
She really should call him. Her gaze fell on the stack of
mail beside the phone. She'd just read her mail first.
Amidst bills and flyers she found a large pink parchment
envelope. Please, not another wedding, she thought. She
reluctantly tore it open. "Bill and Julia invite you to share in
the celebration of their love..." She sighed and tossed it onto
the stack of unopened bills. The next piece of mail was a card
with a pastel stork saying: "Guess who's having a baby shower..."
Scully opened the card instead of guessing, then tossed it on the
pile, too. She shook her head. "All that's missing for a
perfect day is something from the IRS," she said out loud. She
sighed and looked at the phone again. Maybe she'd go for a run
first.


She stood on the front steps of her apartment building, one
leg propped on the wrought iron railing, coaxing her calf
muscles, which were as taut as bowstrings, to stretch. She
really didn't like running, but she liked the way she felt after
she'd run, so she forced herself to do it every so often. She
wasn't fast, even when she really pushed herself, but she was
stubborn and steady and she could keep putting one foot in front
of the other until she reached her destination. Or, as was the
case tonight, until she figured out the solution to whatever
problem was on her mind. She had a feeling that she would make
it to Baltimore before she came up with any brilliant insights on
this one.
She finished her stretches, trotted down the steps and hit
the asphalt. She was so focused on finding her stride that she
didn't notice the navy blue Taurus quietly leaving its parking
space across the street, making a lazy U-turn and head off in the
same direction.
When she reached the running path at the park, fifteen
minutes later, the complaints from her legs had subsided enough
for her to be able to concentrate on something besides her aching
muscles. She jogged along, arms and shoulders loose, her
sneakers lightly crunching on the cinders.
It had always been her experience that the best way to solve
a problem was to approach it as if it were a scientific puzzle.
This method, and in fact her very nature, required her to gather
all available information about the problem, formulate a
reasonable hypothesis based on the data at hand, and then test
possible solutions against it. Failing that, however, she could
always eat a bag of chocolate chip cookies, go to bed early and
hope that things looked different in the morning. Somehow, she
didn't think that approach would help this time.
All right, she told herself, be clinical. What are the
symptoms? Irritability, impatience, general lack of enthusiasm
for things she usually enjoyed, feelings of ...what? Anger?
Frustration? No, actually, they were closer to sadness. Loss.
Emptiness.
She frowned. That last word had hit a nerve. She pushed it
aside and trudged on. It might just be burn out. She'd been
working pretty hard lately. She loved her job, but she was aware
that there was a high cost that went along with it. Long hours,
dangerous situations, cases that taxed you emotionally and
physically. All of this took its toll every day.
Except this didn't feel like burn out. She'd seen plenty of
burn out during her medical training and in her time with the
Bureau and this wasn't it. She was doing the job that she wanted
to be doing, the assignments were challenging, and despite the
occasional urge to choke him, she liked and trusted her partner.
The feeling washed over her like crashing surf, made her
stagger slightly and lose her breath. She slowed to a walk.
Something was missing. She felt it like a physical ache in
her chest all of a sudden. Something was missing, something that
she wanted but didn't have. Something she needed.
She stopped walking and bent over, hands on her knees to
catch her breath. She cursed at herself. This was ridiculous.
She was tired and stressed and she was overreacting because of
it. A good sleep, maybe some time to herself on the weekend and
she would be fine.
She straightened up and stood there, hands on her hips.
Then why did she still feel like she wanted to cry? And why
hadn't the knot in her chest loosened? She took a deep breath
and blew it out, sharply. What was it that she felt the lack of
so sharply?
She flashed back to the deli and Peter's gentle eyes,
remembering the feeling of him holding her with such clarity that
she wondered for a second if it had actually happened outside of
her imagination.
That's what was missing. Comfort. Tenderness.
There certainly hadn't been an abundance of those things in
her life lately. She tucked some loose hair back into her
ponytail, walked a few steps and kicked at the cinders with the
toe of her running shoe. She wrestled with the feeling for a
moment and then sighed.
The sun was getting low in the sky, and it cast a warm
golden light across the park as it sank to the horizon. She
turned and headed for home.
At the edge of the park, the driver of the Taurus started
the car's engine.


She had known, somehow, that he would be there waiting for
her, and so she was not surprised to find Mulder sitting on the
steps, as she trotted up the sidewalk to her building. He still
wore his suit, but he had taken the jacket off and slung it over
the railing. His tie was loosened and his shirt sleeves were
rolled up. He looked rumpled and tired.
Scully stopped at the bottom of the stairs. "Hi," she said,
and looked at her feet.
"So you are talking to me," Mulder said. "I wasn't sure."
She suddenly didn't know where to put her hands. "Actually,
I was just going to call you," she said.
Mulder looked up and down the street slowly and then his
eyes finally settled back on her. "Have a good run?" he asked.
"Yeah. Yeah, I did." She stood there, wondering where to
begin.
"Look, before you say anything, Scully, I just want to tell
you that I've thought it over and I think you're right."
She blinked. "I'm right?"
He nodded. "We each have to draw the line for ourselves.
If you want to walk away from this, I understand. I can't expect
you to chase after me every time I go off...." He searched for
the right words.
"Every time you go off fighting windmills?" she offered with
a hint of a smirk.
Mulder's expression softened. "Fox Quixote...that has a
nice ring to it." They both smiled sheepishly, feeling at once
self-conscious and relieved.
Scully came and sat beside him on the step, and wrapped her
arms around her knees. They sat quietly for a few moments,
listening to the songs of birds and the hum of distant traffic.
"Mulder, what I said about being there to catch you,...I..."
She hesitated and looked away. When she looked back Mulder
noticed that her eyes were their usual warm blue again. He
suddenly wanted to smile. "It was unfair of me to say that," she
continued. "You've saved my skin at least as many times."
"I didn't realize you were keeping count," he said.
She didn't smile at his teasing, instead fixed a steady gaze
on his face. "I trust your instincts, Mulder, as much as I trust
my own. If you think there's something here, then we'll look.
Let's just be careful, O.K.?"
A flicker of a smile lighted on his face. "Always," he
said, and he touched her arm. Then he was on his feet, grabbing
his jacket.
"Wait, where are you going?" she asked.
"Back to the office. Danny's got some more information on
the people in those files for me. Social security numbers,
service records, stuff like that. There's a connection here
somewhere and we need to find it."
"You know, there was something odd about the files I read,"
she said suddenly. "I looked at about fifty of them last night
and in each case, the person was diabetic."
Mulder looked down at the pavement and thought for a minute.
"What are the odds of that happening in the general population,
Dr. Scully?"
She shook her head. "It's possible, but...it's unlikely."
"Unlikely?" he asked. "As in `It's unlikely Elvis is still
alive' or as in `It's unlikely the Cubs will win the Pennant this
year'?
"My father always cheered for the Cubbies," she said.
"Every year he used to think that this would be the year that
they went all the way."
"Did he have any opinions about Elvis?"
"Let's just say that finding a high number of diabetics in
such a small sample would be unusual but not statistically
impossible."
"Maybe not, but it is damn curious." He started down the
steps.
"Couldn't it wait until morning?" Scully called after him.
"Why don't you stay and have dinner?"
He was already walking down the sidewalk towards his car.
"Thanks, but I'm not hungry. I had two sandwiches for lunch."
Scully watched him unlock the car and toss his jacket inside.
"Besides, there's way too much I want to do."
She shook her head and chuckled. "Anybody ever tell you
that you should get a life, Mulder?"
"This is all the life I can handle." He flashed her a quick
grin. "See you in the morning." He got in the car, slammed the
door and drove away. Scully watched until the car turned the
corner at the end of the street and was gone. She debated whether
or not she should join him, then decided she needed the downtime.
She got up slowly, stretching her stiffening muscles, and went
inside.
Down the street, the man in the Taurus picked up his
cellular phone and punched in a number. "He just left. She's
home again," he said, then hung up. He put the phone in the
pocket of his coat and settled back in the seat.

==========================================


The alarm crashed into her dreams at five o'clock the next
morning. She jerked awake, turned off the droning alarm and then
lay back, cocooned under the warm blankets. In a few seconds,
she could feel her resolve to be at her desk by six starting to
slip away and then she was letting herself slide back into sleep.
She forced her eyes open again. She had to get moving. There
was a lot to do today.
She was in the shower, massaging shampoo into her hair, when
she remembered that she was meeting Peter for lunch today. Her
stomach did a little flip. It's just lunch, she reminded
herself. Probably an hour of small talk, "Can I call you
sometime?", and then she'd be back in the bowels of the J. Edgar
Hoover Building, with paperwork to do and an in-basket full of
problems to solve. She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair then
leaned against the tiled wall for a moment and let the hot spray
run down her back. She thought about how he'd looked at her the
other day in the park. Another little flip.
She got out of the shower, towelled herself off and combed
out her tangled, wet hair. She did the usual morning rituals of
moisturizer, styling lotion, blow dryer and toothpaste. As she
put her toothbrush back in its holder, she realized that she was
humming. A tuneless, happy kind of hum. She stood there,
looking at her reflection in the mirror and chuckled. "It's
only lunch," she said to the woman in the mirror.
She chose the light green suit from her closet and dressed,
then returned to the bathroom mirror and put on her make up,
taking a little longer than usual. When she finished, she
stepped back a bit and checked her reflection again.
She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. There really
hadn't been much gentleness in her life lately. She'd gotten
this far though, hadn't she? She had proven, without a doubt,
that she didn't need to have someone in her life. But that
didn't mean that it wouldn't be nice.
She turned off the bathroom light, found her gun and
holster, and left for work.


She had filled the better part of a yellow legal pad with
notes when Mulder stumbled through the door of their subterranean
office at eight thirty.
"Coffee's on," she said and then glanced up from the
computer screen. "Mulder, you look like hell."
"Thanks," he mumbled. He searched around on his desk for his
mug.
"It's over in the lab, by the coffeemaker," Scully said.
"Did you get any sleep at all?"
"A little bit, I think. I was going through the information
Danny got me until around four thirty, then I went home and
crashed," he said, as he wandered past her desk toward the lab.
"Crashed is a good word, by the look of you," she said. She
got up, grabbed her own mug and followed him. "Did you come up
with anything?"
"A stiff neck, sore eyes and an unexplainable craving for
Vietnamese food around three." He poured coffee into his mug,
spilled an equal amount on the counter, then turned toward Scully
to pour hers.
"Uh, thanks, but I just had this suit cleaned," she said as
she took the pot from him. "So you didn't find anything to
explain why Mr X. gave you these files?"
"Nothing. Nada. Maybe he is just jerking me around this
time. There's nothing there, that I can see. All these people
living boring lives, in boring cities, driving boring station
wagons," he said. He took a long drink from his mug. "Who was
it that said most men lead lives of quiet desperation?"
"Thoreau, I think."
"Well, he was talking about these people. The only bright
spot that I can see in all of this is that they all died before
disco made it big." He leaned against the cupboard, rubbed his
eyes. "How about you? Find anything?"
"So far there's no discernible pattern in terms of age,
location or occupation, but... I've looked at over 300 cases now
Mulder, and every single one of them was diabetic. That and they
died within ten months of each other, from November 1969 to
August 1970. Now, I'm no actuary, but it seems to me that the
odds of that happening are even more remote than the Cubs winning
a Pennant."
"I'd say they're about as remote as Elvis winning a
Pennant." He started to look a little more awake. "We need to
track down these people's doctors, see if they can give us some
information."
She shook her head as he spoke. "Patient confidentiality.
No one is going to tell us anything unless we have all the
paperwork. You know that."
He frowned, ran a hand through his hair. "O.K., how about
if we start contacting their families, try to get someone to
authorize the release of information?"
"And tell them what? That the FBI is investigating the
unremarkable death of their loved one? We have no suspects, no
motives and no idea what we're even looking for yet, Mulder."
Mulder shrugged. "It's worth a shot. At this point, it's
all we've got."
"Actually, we've got one other angle to think about," she
said.
Mulder raised an eyebrow. "Are you holding out on me,
Scully?"
"I've got somebody in research compiling a list of all the
major pharmaceutical companies in the continental U.S. that were
producing and selling insulin in the late 60's. The majority of
the people in these files appear to have been Type I diabetics,
and those kinds of diabetics just about always require insulin."
"There are different kinds of diabetes?"
She nodded. "Juvenile, or Type I diabetes is generally a
little more severe and requires insulin, and it usually shows up
before age thirty. People with Type II or mature-onset diabetes
can sometimes get by without insulin by watching their diets
carefully."
Mulder pondered this a moment. "Can insulin be taken
orally?"
"No, it's a protein. It would be digested."
"So it has to be injected directly into the bloodstream?"
"Not exactly. It's injected interstitially, into the thigh
or abdomen or arm, but it's not supposed to go directly into the
bloodstream. It's supposed to be absorbed slowly."
"You think there might have been something wrong with the
insulin these people took?" Mulder asked.
Scully shrugged. "I don't know. But it's a place to start.
Maybe we'll know more when we find out who was producing insulin
then." She glanced at her watch. "I'll go see if they've got a
list yet."
Mulder watched her head for the door, her fiery hair bobbing
with each stride. "Hey, Scully," he said. She turned, a
questioning look on her face. "You're awfully bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed this morning. What's your secret?"
She allowed a slight smile. "Clean living," she said, and
then was gone.
Mulder smiled. Her eyes were blue again this morning.


Scully put the phone back down in its cradle and stroked
another name off the list. She looked across at Mulder who held
the receiver to his ear with his shoulder. He was flipping
through pages of computer printouts with one hand and scribbling
down notes with the other. He was getting that look that he got
whenever a case was taking hold of him. Describing it to others
she would have said that he was focussed, but she knew that his
behaviour really landed somewhere between manic and obsessed.
She took out a morning copy of the Post that she had
carefully tucked into her briefcase and snapped it open. She
scanned the pages, stopping only to read headlines and bylines.
She found what she was looking for on page four. Tucked in
amidst the recent breakdown of peace talks in Bosnia and an
apocalyptic story on the state of Chesapeake Bay, was a short
piece entitled: "Congress Set to Drown Lobster Bill". The byline
attributed the article to Peter J. O'Hara, Staff. She was two
paragraphs into it when she heard Mulder hang up his phone.
"Any luck?" she asked. She folded the paper and stuffed it
back into her briefcase.
Mulder was on his feet, jamming his arms into his jacket.
"I followed up thirty six deaths within a three hour radius of
Washington. Of those thirty six, fifteen of the surviving
relatives are still at the same address. Nine are willing to
talk to us."
"What exactly did you tell them we were investigating?"
"I said that it wasn't an official investigation yet, that
we were really just making some enquiries."
"Concerning...?"
"I was a little vague," he said. She arched an eyebrow
slightly at him. He missed it, in his zeal to cram all the
papers on his desk back into their file folders. "The first stop
is Baltimore. If we leave now, we can be there by two. I know
this place near Camden Yards that makes a chili dog you won't
believe." He was almost at the door when he realized she wasn't
with him. He turned and looked at her. She had an expression
on her face that he couldn't read. "Are you coming?" he asked.
"Yeah, it's just that..."
"What?"
"Well, I'm meeting someone for lunch." She wondered why she
sounded so apologetic all of a sudden.
"Can you cancel?"
Scully studied her desktop. Haven't we already had this
conversation once before, she thought. In Atlantic City?
"Mulder, this case has waited for twenty five years," she said
out loud. "I don't think another hour will make that much
difference."
He glanced down at the file folders under his arm and tried
not to look crestfallen.
"Sure," he said. "No problem. It can wait an hour." He
went back to his desk and put the folders down. He watched
Scully take her purse from her desk drawer and get to her feet.
She felt his gaze. "What?" she said.
"Nothing," he replied. He took off his jacket and hung it on
the back of his chair then looked at her again. "I was just
wondering if you were going someplace with fast service. Or a
drive through window."
She summoned up the last of her patience. "No Mulder, I'm
going someplace nice, with tablecloths and cutlery and
everything."
He nodded, mentally retreating. "Take your time," he said.
"Really. Enjoy yourself."
"Thank you," she said, forcing a softer tone into her voice.
"Why don't you see about getting a car? We can leave as soon as
I get back."
He nodded and reached for the phone. She left, shutting the
door behind her. After he'd arranged for the car and hung up, he
sat looking at the door for a long time.


The restaurant that Peter had suggested was a converted
house in Georgetown, trendy enough to attract tables of power-
suited lawyers and lobbyists, but with food good enough to keep
them coming back. The walls were stark white with splashes of
art, and there were tall windows that overlooked a tiny courtyard
with a fountain. Peter was already there, seated at a table in a
secluded corner. When he spotted the Maitre d' escorting Scully
towards him, he got to his feet, looking very much like a man who
could not believe his good fortune. The Maitre d' held Scully's
chair while she seated herself.
"I hope you haven't been waiting long," she said.
"No, no, I just got here a few minutes ago," Peter replied,
as he sat down. His gaze lingered on her face. "You look
great," he said.
She couldn't stop the smile. "Thanks," she managed to say,
but she felt slightly flustered, certain that there was a hint of
blush rising to her cheeks. Damn. It had been a while since
she'd done this; she was out of practice. She reached for a menu
and Peter followed suit. "So, what's good here?" she asked.
"They have the most amazing salads," he said. "There's one
with pine nuts and chevre that's really good."
Suddenly, everything came together like a snapshot in
Scully's mind: the brilliant spring sunshine pouring in the
windows, the muted tinkle of ice cubes ringing against crystal
goblets, this handsome man who was clearly attracted to her and
who was somehow starting to make her feel like she was just
waking up from a long hibernation. She looked over the top of
her menu at Peter, who was scanning the list of entrees.
She smiled. This was nice. This was definitely nice.


By the time coffee arrived, they had explored all the safe
subjects from movies to food, discovering a common love of
Katherine Hepburn films, and had begun to cover the required
topics of education and work.
"Physics? And medicine?" Peter asked. "Then how did you
ever end up with the FBI?"
A flicker of a memory touched the edge of her mind. Old
tapes started to play: trying to explain her decision to her
parents, arguing with her father, finally even questioning her
own instincts. She shrugged. "It was what I wanted. I had
already done my residency in forensics and the Bureau offered a
lot of challenges. A chance to prove myself, I guess."
Peter watched her intently, listening closely. "Has it been
what you hoped it would be?"
"Yes." Why had she hesitated before she answered?
"I sense a `but' there," he said.
She smiled a bit, and averted her eyes. "I haven't talked
about this for a while. I was just remembering my parents'
reaction to my decision to join the Bureau."
Peter nodded in understanding. "I take it they were less
than thrilled."
"You could say that. Especially my Dad."
"Have the two of you worked it out?" he asked.
She looked down at her coffee cup and fiddled with her
spoon. "He died about a year and a half ago," she said.
Peter reached over and covered her hand with his. "Dana,
I'm sorry," he said. "That's really tough."
His hand was soft and warm. She lifted her eyes to his face
and was surprised by the gentleness she saw there. Gentleness
and something else. Sorrow. She tried to find her voice. "I'm
thankful for the time we did have," she said.
Peter withdrew his hand and sat back in his chair. "My Dad
died when I was a kid. It really tore the family apart," he
said. "All of a sudden, there was never enough money for
anything and at eleven years old, I was expected to be the man of
the house." He shook his head. "It makes you grow up pretty
quickly."
"I'll bet."
"But then, so does having three sisters," he said, a smile
returning to his face.
"Three sisters?" Scully repeated. "And I thought having two
brothers was rough."
"Were you a tomboy?"
"Does it show?" she asked.
His eyes twinkled. "I just get the feeling that you could
probably still climb a tree if you had to."
"I suppose I could, if I had to," she said. They both sat
there basking in the glow of shared attraction for a few moments.
Scully realized that she didn't want this lunch to end yet.
"What about you? Did you grow up always wanting to be a
journalist?" she asked.
"No, actually I went to law school first. My Dad was a
house painter all his life and he always thought that being a
lawyer was the most respectable thing that someone could be. So,
after he died, I guess I sort of adopted his dream out of some
kind of loyalty or something. Trying to live up to his
expectations. I was pretty driven." He took a sip of coffee,
then shook his head at the memory. "I worked like a mad man,
trying to get scholarships and holding down three part time jobs
to pay my tuition. I finished my first year of law school and
that summer I got a job working for the Trib in Chicago, as a
sort of gopher for this big shot investigative reporter. That's
when I figured out why I hated law school."
"Why?"
"Because the law isn't interested in finding out the truth.
The law is all technicalities and plea bargaining and precedents.
It's not about finding out what really happened and that's what I
wanted to do. I wanted to wake people up and make them see what
was going on all around them. So, I quit law school, went to
work for the Trib full time and got a degree in journalism at
night." He smiled suddenly. "And now I spend my time
researching bills about off-shore fishing rights and lobster
quotas. Talk about the American dream."
Scully laughed.
Peter studied her for a moment, trying to decide whether or
not to say something. She urged him on with a tilt of her head.
"I don't know what your experience has been, but in general,
I've always found first dates to be...well, a lot of work." He
fingered his napkin and grinned. "This one has been different.
I've really enjoyed myself."
She nodded her agreement. "Me, too. You're.... very easy
to talk to."
"I'm thinking that if the first date went so well, maybe we
should risk a second one." His smile was at once teasing and
slightly nervous.
Scully felt herself smile, something that she seemed to be
doing a lot today. "I think I'm willing to take that risk," she
said.

===========================================


They were halfway to Baltimore, on the I-95, when Mulder
finally asked. He passed a transport and settled back into the
right lane before he spoke.
"So... did your lunch date go well?" he asked.
Scully didn't look up from the file she was reading. "Yes.
Very well."
Mulder glanced over at her. "Where did you go?"
"A bistro in Georgetown," she said, continuing to skim the
file in her lap. "Not your kind of place, Mulder. I didn't see
chili dogs on the menu."
Mulder tried hard not to smile. He fished a sunflower seed
out of his pocket, cracked the shell and nibbled at the seed. He
kept his eyes on the road.
"Anybody I know?"
"No."
He glanced over at her again, trying to determine if she
really was reading. He looked back at the road, let a few
seconds pass.
"Is it the same guy you were talking to in the deli
yesterday?" he asked.
Her head snapped up. Three pointer, nothing but net.
He watched her wrestle with her better judgement, saw her
shoulders sag a bit as she let out her held breath.
"You know, there's a reason why they call it a `personal'
life," she said. The expression on his face was maddeningly
neutral. She said, "I'm a big girl, Mulder. I think I can screen
my own dates," and immediately wished she hadn't sounded so
sharp. She studied his profile, waiting for some response.
Instead, he concentrated on the road ahead as if it held vital
answers. He was silent for so long that Scully turned her
attention to the files again.
When he spoke, his voice was subdued. "I just wouldn't want
to see you get hurt."
The words startled her. It took a little effort to keep the
casual tone in her voice. "For heaven's sake Mulder, it was only
lunch."
He said nothing, only stared straight ahead and drove. She
wondered if he'd even heard her. She watched him for a long
time, wishing that he would look at her so that she could try to
read what was in his eyes. After a while, she gave up and looked
out the window at the passing landscape, a strange tightness in
her throat.


The street looked just like all the others in the
neighbourhood. Small, one-storey houses wrapped in aluminum
siding, with neatly trimmed lawns and trees that had grown there
for at least a generation. The only thing that distinguished one
house from the next was the colour.
Mulder got out of the car and looked up and down the street
at the spectrum of pastel shades. "Somewhere in the world, there
is an aluminum siding salesman who retired a very rich man," he
said.
Mulder followed Scully up the walk to a canary yellow house.
They rang the bell and waited. A few moments later, the door was
opened by a woman in her mid-fifties. She was slightly plump,
with a round face and kind eyes. She pushed open the screen door
and smiled.
"You must be Agent Mulder," she said.
Mulder nodded and gestured to Scully. "This is Agent
Scully." They tried to show her their identification but she
waved her hand at them.
"Don't be silly," she said. "I knew the minute I saw you.
Please, come in." Once inside, she took their coats and ushered
them into the kitchen. The tiny room looked as though she was
expecting a photographer from Good Housekeeping at any minute:
every surface gleamed, the floor was freshly waxed and there were
flowers on the table.
Two minutes later, they were all seated around the table
with cups of coffee and slices of freshly baked cranberry loaf
before them.
"It's good of you to see us on such short notice, Mrs.
Lucas," Scully said.
"It's no trouble at all," she said, "and please, call me
Peggy. Would you prefer milk with your coffee Agent Scully?"
"No, thank you. Cream is fine."
"Peggy, we need to ask you some questions about your late
husband," Mulder said. "He died in February, 1970, is that
right?"
The woman nodded solemnly. "I'm happy to help, of course,
but I'm afraid that I don't really understand why you're
interested in Ed. What exactly is it that you're investigating?
Or can you say?" She looked from Mulder to Scully and back
again.
Mulder hesitated.
"We're interested in knowing if there was anything unusual
about your husband's death," Scully said.
"Well, the whole illness was so unexpected. Ed was never
sick, you know. Until the appendicitis."
"Appendicitis? When was that?" Scully asked.
"Oh, about six months before he died. He came down with it
quite suddenly and they had to rush him to the hospital from
work. He was a chemical engineer and he was working for Procon
Textiles."
"Do you know what he was working on at the time?" Mulder
asked.
"He was designing polyesters and other synthetics." She
smiled. "Ed would always say `Polyesters are the fabric of the
future, Peggy. No more ironing!' But I've always preferred
natural fibres, haven't you?" She looked intently at Mulder.
"Oh, yes," Mulder agreed. "I swear by them." He could see
Scully fighting to suppress a smile.
"Did your husband have an appendectomy, Peggy?" Scully
asked.
She nodded. "The surgeon said that he was very lucky. If
they'd waited another hour to get him to the hospital, they would
have lost him."
"Was there anything unusual about the surgery? Any
complications?"
"No, everything went well. But, you know, looking back, I
realize that he was never quite himself again."
"How do you mean?" Mulder asked.
"Well, Ed was always so very active. He was always doing
something around the house or playing with the kids. But after
the surgery, he was tired all the time, and he'd sleep for hours
and hours. He even stopped running. He played football in
college --that's where we met-- and he always ran to stay in
shape. He said it cleared his mind, helped him to think. He
tried to run, after the stitches had healed, but it was too much
for him. And then of course, at the end, he just got so sick so
fast."
"Were they able to determine exactly what the cause of death
was?" Scully asked.
"They said it was pneumonia."
Scully's eyebrows went up. "They weren't able to treat it
with antibiotics?"
Peggy shook her head. "The doctors tried all sorts of
drugs, but none of them seemed to help. He just kept slipping
and then he was gone."
"Did they happen to mention what kind of pneumonia it was?"
"If they did, I can't remember the name." She thought a
moment. "They did say that it wasn't a common kind. That Ed's
immune system mustn't have been very strong."
"Was your husband taking any medications?" Scully asked.
"No, nothing. Ed didn't even like to take an aspirin. He
said it always threw his blood sugar off, so he didn't take
anything. Except his insulin, of course." She looked over at
Mulder's empty plate. "Agent Mulder, how about another slice of
cranberry loaf?"
Before Mulder could answer, she was up and slicing thick
wedges off the loaf. She placed two more slices on his plate and
refilled all their cups before she sat down again.
"How long had Ed been diabetic?" Scully asked.
"Since he was a little boy -- about ten, I think," Peggy
answered. "That's the same age Jennifer was when she started
with it, too. Jennifer is my oldest. Would you like to see a
picture of her?"
Scully nodded. Peggy scurried off to the living room.
Scully watched Mulder finish off the first slice of loaf and
start on the second. "Hollow leg?" she asked.
Mulder washed down a mouthful with coffee before he
answered. "I missed lunch," he said.
A moment later, Peggy was back with an armload of frames.
"That's Jennifer. She's thirty-one now and she's a lawyer. She
and her husband live in Boston," Peggy said, showing Scully a
photo of a young woman with short dark hair and a self-conscious
smile. Scully passed the picture to Mulder. "And this is
Valerie. She's a lieutenant in the Navy. This is her graduation
picture from Annapolis." Peggy studied the picture of her
daughter in dress uniform and beamed. "She looks so much like
her father. She's got his eyes."
"Did Ed ever have any problems regulating his diabetes?"
Scully asked, once they'd looked at all the photos.
"Not really. He would have the odd reaction, now and then,
but he'd just drink some juice or soda and then he'd be fine
again," Peggy said.
"Do you remember where he got his insulin?" Mulder asked.
"I usually bought it at the pharmacy on Kennedy St. I think
they've built a mall there now." Peggy looked expectantly at
Scully, then Mulder. "Is it all right if I ask a question?" she
asked timidly.
"Of course," Mulder said.
"Are you thinking that there was something unusual about
Ed's illness?" she asked. "Do you suspect something was not
right?" She wrung her hands in her lap. "It's just that, all
these years...thinking that he just got sick..." There was a
pleading look on her face. "It was just pneumonia, wasn't it?"
Mulder met Scully's eyes and read her expression: You field
this one. He pushed his plate away, his second slice of
cranberry loaf partially eaten. "We're not sure, Peggy. Right
now, we don't know what to suspect. It may be nothing."
Peggy nodded numbly. Her gaze fell on the vase of flowers
on the table. "He was a good man, Agent Mulder. A good husband,
and a loving father." She smiled sadly. "He used to bring me
flowers every Friday. Do you know that we were married for nine
years and he never missed a single Friday." She looked over at
Scully, tears beginning to well in her eyes.
Scully smiled sympathetically.



Mulder had steered them towards the booth by the window, and
now he sat waiting for his dinner and watching eighteen wheelers
rumble along the slick asphalt of the interstate. The rain that
had started around eight o'clock continued to fall steadily.
Little rivulets of water ran down the window and every so often
the beams of car headlights washed over his face.
The day had been a complete waste of time and he felt tired
just thinking about it. Three more interviews and eight butt-
numbing hours in the car later, they had nothing to show. They
still didn't even know what questions to ask. He tried to plod
his way through the facts again, tried to shuffle the pieces to
maybe catch a glimpse of a pattern, but instead he kept finding
himself thinking about how nice it would be to be on his couch
with a beer and a Knicks game for company.
Scully returned from the bathroom and slid into the seat
across from him. "You look tired," she said.
He shrugged. "I'm O.K.." He continued to watch the rain
pelt against the glass.
"I can drive the next shift, if you want."
"Sure."
He knew she was trying to measure whether he was just tired
or annoyed with her. When she found no answers on his face, she
leaned back, rested her head against the red-vinyl bench and
closed her eyes.
Mulder glanced at her, then surveyed the restaurant, hoping
to catch a glimpse of the waitress bringing his hamburger. The
place he had chosen had the standard roadside decor, with the
usual late night sprinkling of travellers. How many meals had he
eaten in places like this, he wondered. They all looked the same
after a while. The same fluorescent pink soap in the bathroom
dispensers, the same smells of grease and vinegar and stale
coffee at every one. And always, Scully sitting across from him.
The constant in his life. He looked out at the rain again.
"Mulder, can I ask you something?"
He pulled his attention away from the window. "What?"
"Do you ever wonder what it would be like to have a normal
life?" she asked.
He regarded her for a moment, arms crossed. "Define
normal."
The look on her face told him that she wished she hadn't
brought it up. "You know, normal," she said. "A regular job and
everything."
"We have regular jobs," he said.
She chuckled. "I hate to burst your bubble, Mulder, but
hunting for six foot human fluke worms in the sewers of New
Jersey is not a regular job."
"Well, what do you mean by normal?" he asked. "Because if
you're saying that normal is a mortgage and orthodontist bills,
then...." His voice trailed off when it hit him. "Scully," he
said, a grin creeping across his face, "is that the unmistakable
sound of ticking that I hear?"
"Forget I ever asked," she said. She was braced for the
next jab, but he only smiled a bit more, then looked out the
window again. They sat in silence until their food arrived.
"So what's our next move?" Scully asked, after the waitress
had deposited their plates. "More interviews?"
Mulder slammed his palm against the bottom of the ketchup
bottle. "It's a waste of time until we have more of an idea what
we're looking for," he said. He hit the bottle three more times,
but no ketchup came out. "It's been nearly a week but we still
don't know anything."
Scully took the ketchup bottle out of his hands and gently
tapped the neck. "Well, we know that all of those people were
diabetic and we also know that they're all dead. And I'm willing
to bet that there's a causal relationship there." Two more taps
and ketchup began to flow onto her fries. She put the bottle on
the table and smiled. "Physics," she said.
Mulder swallowed his annoyance and picked up the ketchup.
"Did you find out anything about the companies that manufactured
insulin?" he asked. He hit the bottom of the bottle with his
palm, hard.
"There were four major companies, but they pretty much
carved up the map in terms of distribution," Scully said. She
reached over and pulled a handful of napkins from the dispenser
and handed them to Mulder, who was wiping ketchup off his tie.
"If there had been something wrong with one company's insulin, we
wouldn't be seeing such a random pattern of deaths."
"It occurred to me today that even if we could figure out
where the insulin came from, there's still the matter of tracing
specific lot numbers to drug stores and then to individuals." He
dabbed at the last of the stain on his tie, inspected the dark
spot and tossed the crumpled napkin on the table. "I think it's
a dead end."
"I wonder what Mr. X's interest is in all this," Scully
asked. "I mean, it would be a terrible tragedy if a tainted
batch of insulin got out, but why all this cloak and dagger stuff
twenty-five years later?"
Mulder listened as he lifted his burger to his mouth. A
half a pound of beef, still pink inside, just the way he liked
it. Finally, something was going right.
Scully nibbled absently on a french fry. "You know the
other thing that bothers me? In all the cases we looked into
today, the cause of death was something unusual."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, two instances of rare pneumonias, one case of
septicemia and one extremely rare parasitic infection. This is
not run of the mill stuff." She moved her cole slaw around
pensively. "Oh, my God," she said softly. She put down her
fork. "Mulder, I just thought of something."
"What?" he managed to mumble around his mouthful of food.
"Insulin used to be made exclusively from the pancreases of
slaughtered cows and pigs," she said.
He quickly swallowed, then put his burger down. "Oh, to
have the stomach of a pathologist," he said, as he wiped the
juices off his hands.
Scully was looking distastefully at her own supper. "What
if there was something wrong with the livestock?"
Mulder frowned. "But it still comes down to the same thing,
doesn't it? It's still more a matter for the FDA than for us."
Scully raised her eyes from her plate. "The Church of the
Red Museum, Mulder. Wisconsin."
She saw his expression change as it hit him. "Are you
saying that the animals they used to make insulin, were being
used in a similar experiment?" he asked.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"We've got to figure out how to track down livestock that
was raised twenty-five years ago to make insulin," Mulder said.
"That's not going to be easy."
The waitress whisked past the booth and stopped abruptly
when she saw their plates.
"Is there something wrong with your burgers?" she asked.
Mulder and Scully exchanged looks. "Could you wrap these up
please?" Mulder asked. "I think we're going to take them with
us."

===========================================================================

A Little Knowledge - continued

by Patti Murphy
75271.3116@compuserve.com


Date: 5 Sep 1995 03:09:21 GMT

DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully are lovingly borrowed from Chris
Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions and no copyright infringement
is intended. So there.

Please direct all comments to the author at: 75271.3116@compuserve.com


A Little Knowledge (3a/7)
****************************
by
Patti Murphy

It was after five when Scully glanced at her watch. She was
on hold, again. She'd been on the phone all day with various
branches of the FDA, four different pharmaceutical companies, a
handful of slaughterhouses and more mid-level, faceless
bureaucrats than she cared to count. She realized that she was
hungry, and tried unsuccessfully to remember what she'd had for
lunch.
Mulder's phone was still glued to his ear, too, and she
noticed that the wastebasket by his desk had overflowed in a
cascade of crumpled paper balls.
They were getting nowhere. Fast.
The annoying muzak in her ear stopped and a weary voice told
her that Mr. Greeley had left for the day, but that he would get
her message first thing Monday morning. Scully thanked the woman
and hung up. Even if Mr. Greeley did return her call, she
doubted that he held the key to the puzzle that Mr. X had dropped
on them. Scully was starting to wish that she could meet with
Mr. X one more time -- just long enough to inform him that he was
welcome to take his top-secret, highly-classified, pain-in-the-
ass business somewhere else.
She got up and wandered around the office, massaging her
neck with one hand, while she waited for Mulder to get off the
phone. She was in the lab, staring at some X-rays and thinking
about a hot bath, when she heard Mulder hang up. "Anything?" she
called to him.
He walked into the lab, rubbing his face. "Not a thing. I
wasn't able to trace a single bovine organ back to its home.
You?"
"I spoke to three people at each drug company who told me
that the FDA must keep those records, and five people at the FDA
who told me that it was the responsibility of the drug
companies." She sighed and leaned against the counter. "I can't
help but think that this is turning into a huge waste of tax
payer's dollars, Mulder."
"No bigger waste than say, Newt Gingrich," Mulder said.
She smiled a bit. "Seriously, this trail isn't leading us
anywhere. I think it's time to regroup."
Mulder leaned against the opposite counter. "We know it's
the insulin. We just have to find out what and how."
"Hang on," Scully said, raising a hand. "We think it's the
insulin. It's just a theory. That might not be it at all."
Mulder stared off into space for a moment. "We need more to
go on. I'm going to try to contact my contact."
Scully pursed her lips. "I don't know, Mulder."
"What else can we do?" he asked. "If there's something
here, we're sure not finding it."
She shook her head. "I just have a bad feeling about him."
A grin spread across Mulder's lips. "A bad feeling?
Careful, Scully. You're starting to sound a little spooky."
His teasing didn't elicit a smile from her. "Call it an
educated guess then," she said. "I don't trust him." She walked
back to her desk and started packing her briefcase. "Besides,
why should he help us, anyway?"
Mulder went back to his chair, sat down and propped his feet
on his desk. "He said once that he does it because he feels a
certain loyalty to Deep Throat."
Scully stopped sifting through her papers long enough to
nail him with a look. "The night that I met him, he sure wasn't
feeling much loyalty to you, Mulder."
"I have that effect on people," he said. "Frankly, I'm
surprised that you've stuck around this long."
"Keep it up and I may jump ship, yet," she said. She slid
on her pumps and snapped off her desk light. "Look, let's sleep
on it for the weekend and start again on Monday. Maybe we'll be
able to see some angle that isn't obvious to us, now."
Mulder nodded. "I'll see what I can find out. For all I
know, he may not even work weekends."
She raised an eyebrow in disapproval and stopped herself
from telling him to be careful. Instead, she picked up her
briefcase and headed for the door. "Have a good weekend,
Mulder," she said.
"Yeah, you too, Scully," he replied. "Have you got another
date with the deli guy?"
She stopped at the door and turned, bracing herself before
she answered. "As a matter of fact, I do," she said.
"Well, have a good time."
She studied him for any signs of sarcasm, but found none.
"Thanks," she said. "I will."
"See you Monday."
"Yeah. Bye."
She left, looking a little confused, and Mulder listened to
the click of her heels recede down the hall. He crumpled up some
more paper, threw it at the wastebasket and missed. He leaned
back in his chair and sighed. He wished he had told her to be
careful.


The living room was bathed in flickering blue light from the
television set and the Knicks were behind by six points. Mulder
got up and wandered into the kitchen in search of another cold
beer. He popped it open while he stood at the fridge, took a
long drink, and then returned to the living room and his losing
team. He glanced at the masking tape X on the window pane as he
passed by.
The bastard had better contact him this time.
He took another slice of pizza from the open box on the
coffee table and folded it in half with one hand. He was in the
process of jamming most of it into his mouth when the phone rang.
It took three rings for him to swallow and answer.
"Mulder," he said.
"Tomorrow night, nine p.m., in the parking garage of the
Watergate Hotel. I'll find you. And don't be late, Mr. Mulder,
because I have better things to do with my time."
The line went dead.
Mulder put the receiver back in its cradle.
The crowd on t.v. roared and Mulder looked towards the
noise. The tide had turned. His team was winning.


Scully spent most of Saturday doing laundry, cleaning her
apartment and trying to convince herself that an attractive,
intelligent and sensitive man really was going to take her to
dinner that night. She had a date, the first one in a long time.
Lunch had been nice, but somehow having lunch with someone, even
someone as charming as Peter, didn't count as a date. It was
more like an interview. A chance to get together on neutral
ground and check each other out, with the comfortable knowledge
that if this midday meeting turned out to be a disaster, you
could always plead a hectic day and escape back to work. Except
she hadn't wanted to escape back to work. In fact, she could
have sat in that sunny restaurant all afternoon and into the
evening, talking and listening, getting to know each other.
It wasn't until she was folding the last load of laundry,
still warm from the dryer, that she realized she was nervous.
Nothing like dating to make you feel like a gawky fifteen year
old again, she thought. Fortunately there were a few important
differences between her teenage dating experiences and her
current situation. For one thing, she wouldn't need her mother
to rescue her poor suitor from her father's inevitable
interrogation at the front door when he called for her. She
smiled recalling how her mom would literally push her and her
date out the door, ending her husband's "Stern Sea Captain
Routine", with a cheerful "Really, Bill!" And of course, there
would be no one to flick the porch light off and on when a
midnight goodbye on the front steps threatened to stretch past
what her father considered an acceptable time limit.
Not that there had been teenage boys lining up to ask her
out. Her sister, yes, but not the youngest of the Scully women.
She remembered lamenting this fact once to her mother, while they
did the dishes.
"Boys don't ask me out because I'm not pretty," she had
said, not daring to look away from the plate she was drying. She
had been afraid to say the words out loud before now, afraid that
somehow speaking them would make them true.
Her mother had been startled. "Sweetheart, you don't really
believe that, do you?"
She shrugged. "It's all right, I guess. I don't mind that
much."
Margaret Scully shook the dishwater off her hands then
quickly dried them on her apron. She took her daughter's face in
her hands and looked into her eyes. "You listen to me, Dana.
You have a very special kind of beauty."
She had fidgeted and rolled her eyes. "I know, I know, I
have inner beauty. But nobody asks you on a date because your
insides are beautiful, Mom."
"It's not just your insides that are beautiful, darling." A
fierce love shone in her mother's face. "If I could have one
wish for you, it's that you could see yourself the way I see you.
Beautiful and intelligent, strong and compassionate." She saw
tears welling in her mother's blazing eyes and suddenly felt
embarrassed. Her mother smiled through her tears, then quickly
kissed her on the forehead. "Come on," she said, turning back to
the sink. "We have dishes to finish."
Scully smiled at the memory, recognizing how long ago that
had been but how little things had changed. She still felt gawky
and uncertain at times, only now she was better at masking it
with a practised clinical detachment and a cool exterior. And
usually, it worked.
So why was she so nervous? She wasn't a fifteen year old
girl anymore, shocked to suddenly find herself inhabiting the
body of a woman and not at all sure how to act. She was an
intelligent, accomplished professional, respected by her
colleagues, if not for her assignment, then at least for her
talent and her abilities. She had proven that she could hold her
own in the boys' club on any case.
But this wasn't a case, this was a date. A date with a man
she found very attractive. A man who made her feel beautiful
when he looked at her. Not for the first time this week, she
started to imagine the feel of his hands on her body, then caught
herself and felt a sharp rush of embarrassment. This had to
stop. Next, she was going to be listening to her old Air Supply
albums.
She had finished folding the towels and was putting them
away in the bathroom when it came to her. She was nervous
because it had been a long time since she'd slept with a man.
She sat down on the edge of the big, claw-footed bathtub and
tried to remember precisely how long. At least a year and a
half, she decided. Not since Mulder and her assignment to the
X-files.
Mulder, again. How had he managed to invade her life so
effectively that he popped into her head even as she was
contemplating sleeping with another man? She got up brusquely
and strode back to the living room to finish folding the laundry.
By the time she was dressing for her date, she had managed to
convince herself that she was worrying for nothing. It was just
dinner and a movie -- nothing to be apprehensive about there. As
for what might come afterwards, she would play it by ear. Surely
she was too pragmatic to let herself be swept off her feet by her
hormones.
At two minutes to five, the door bell rang. She opened the
door to find Peter standing there with a dozen white roses.
"Hi," he said. Then, with a shy smile, "These are for you."
He held out the flowers. The intoxicating scent of roses washed
over her. They locked eyes and Scully felt every ounce of her
pragmatic resolve draining away.
She couldn't help but smile.
Peter waited in the living room while she put the flowers in
water, then went to locate her jacket and purse. She slipped her
cell phone and her gun into her bag and for just a moment, she
let herself wonder what Mulder was doing tonight.



The car radio muttered softly. Mulder had searched for
something to listen to while he waited, but had only been able to
find an AM phone-in talk show. The current caller was drawing a
parallel between replacement players in major league baseball and
welfare recipients, the precise logic of which escaped Mulder.
He was reaching to turn it off when the passenger door flew open.
He jumped involuntarily and grabbed for his weapon. The man was
in the car before Mulder could lay his hand on his gun.
"Feeling a little nervous this evening, Mr. Mulder?" the
black man asked.
Mulder let out his held breath and sank back into the seat.
"You shouldn't sneak up on people like that," he said.
The man's face showed no emotion. "And you should try not
to be such an easy target. This is a dangerous business we're
in, you know."
Mulder returned his steely gaze and realized again how much
he disliked this man. The man drew a manila envelope from
inside his overcoat and tossed it into Mulder's lap.
"Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, Mr. Mulder. This is
the biggest gift you'll get all year. I'm sorry I didn't have
time to have it wrapped."
Mulder picked up the envelope. "What is it?"
"All the scientific data of a top-secret government project,
the point of which seems to be evading you and your partner, as
well as the obituaries of three scientists, all of whom have
coincidentally died within the last six weeks." He scanned the
parking garage as he talked, and Mulder realized he was
experiencing a growing urge to do the same. "One of the
scientists who worked on this project is still alive. I suggest
you find her, as quickly as possible, before she decides to take
up bungee jumping or some equally dangerous hobby."
"Do you have any idea where she is?" Mulder asked.
The man stopped sweeping the area with his eyes long enough
to glare at Mulder. "Shall I write the report for you as well?"
The feeling of knuckles hitting bone with a satisfying thud
flashed through Mulder's mind. Except he knew that this man
would shoot him through the heart before he could land the punch.
The man's hand was already on the door handle. "One last
thing, Mr. Mulder. I would advise you and your partner to move
very quickly on this one. There is a clean up operation of the
highest efficiency in motion and in a few days, there won't be
anything left to investigate." He started to get out of the car.
"Wait a minute!" Mulder said, and grabbed the man's arm.
He stopped and looked at Mulder's hand, then turned his
blistering gaze on Mulder. Mulder waited the length of two
heartbeats before he let go of his arm. "What's your interest in
this? Why are you helping us on this one?"
The slightest trace of a smile crossed the man's lips, but
never made it to his eyes. "Sometimes, when you want things done
right, you have to do them yourself." He slipped out of the car
and strode quickly towards the shadows.


The evening air was cool with the memory of winter but
Scully was still warm from the glow of the wine they'd shared at
dinner. The meal had been long and candlelit and they had
decided to skip the movie, in the end, in favour of a walk around
the Tidal Basin. The cherry trees were in blossom and the air
was thick and syrupy with their fragrance. They held hands and
walked the slow walk of two people who were enjoying the night
and each other.
She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so relaxed.
And she knew it wasn't just the wine, even though she had
surpassed her usual one glass limit. It was everything: the
breeze that caressed her face and stirred the petals in the
trees, the lights reflecting and dancing on the water, and this
man, whose fingers were gently intertwined with her own. She
searched for the familiar hollow spot, listened for the echo of
her own shouts, but heard only contented silence.
Peter squeezed her hand and peered down at her in the half
light. "You're awfully quiet," he said. "Are you O.K.?"
She smiled, her self-consciousness dissipating like mist.
"I'm fine," she replied.
He turned to face her, then stood there, looking at her.
"Let's go back to your place," he ventured.
Scully studied his eyes, saw the promise of comfort and
healing there. She nodded.

==========================================


She had just slipped the cork out of the bottle when he came
up behind her, in the kitchen. He kissed her neck tentatively
and she felt a sigh escape her. She leaned back against him and
he kissed her again, more insistently, his arms encircling her
and pulling her to him. She closed her eyes and let the dizzy
feeling wash over her. His lips brushed across her ear and sent
a shiver through her. She felt her heart quicken and she turned
in his arms, to face him.
The phone rang. She stiffened.
"Have you got an answering machine?" he murmured, but her
mind was already racing through the possibilities. It was too
late for her mother, unless something was wrong. Mulder? What
the hell couldhe want on a Saturday night? Peter's kisses drew
her thoughts back from the telephone and a few moments later, the
ringing stopped. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her
mouth, gently at first, then more urgently. She felt her body
responding, felt the heat building.
A muffled chirping came from the living room.
Scully stopped and listened. The sound was repeated.
"It's my cellular," she said, pulling away from Peter.
He let out a frustrated sigh. "How many phones do you
have?" he asked.
Cursing silently, she followed the sound to the couch, where
she had left her purse when they'd returned. It was either a
family emergency or it was Mulder, and for his sake, she hoped it
was really important because if it wasn't, there was a good
chance that she would kill him.
"Scully," she snapped into the phone.
"Scully, it's me," Mulder said. "Listen, I think I've got
something big here, and I need you to look at it. Where are
you?"
"I'm at home," she said.
"O.K., stay there. I'm on my way over."
"Now?" she asked. She could hear the trace of hysteria that
had crept into her voice and she fought to control it.
"Is that a problem?" Mulder asked.
Peter emerged from the kitchen and leaned in the doorway.
She looked at him standing there, and felt a sharp ache.
"Scully? Are you still there?"
"Yeah, I'm here," she said. She pushed her bangs off her
face and sighed. "How long will it take you to get here?"
"I'm not far. Maybe twenty minutes."
"All right. I'll see you then."
"Scully, is everything O.K.? You sound kind of funny."
She glanced over at Peter and thought about what she was
giving up. She sighed again. "Everything's fine, Mulder. I'll
see you shortly." She turned off the phone and tossed it onto
the couch.
Peter watched her with an amused look. "Something's come
up," he said.
She nodded. "It's this case we've been working on...." She
let her arms fall to her sides. "I'm sorry," she said.
He smiled and straightened up. "Don't worry about it," he
said. "I know what it's like. I don't have a nine to five job,
either." She walked him to the door and waited while he put his
jacket on. He caught her eye and smiled as if he had read her
thoughts. "Really, I understand. I'll take a raincheck, O.K.?"
She nodded. "O.K."
"I had a good time," he said. He reached out and touched
her cheek.
"Me, too."
"I'll call you," he said. He kissed her just long enough to
remind her of what she was missing, and then was gone. She shut
the door and locked it, then leaned against it and sighed. Right
now, there was work to be done and she had to clear her head, but
she promised herself that later, she was going to take the time
to feel very, very disappointed. She headed to the kitchen, to
put away the wine.



She heard the coffeemaker wheezing and rattling, announcing
that the coffee was ready. She left her computer long enough to
pour herself a cup, then returned to the terminal. She had
started to read through the medical files again, while she waited
for Mulder, going over what she had read already, looking through
some new ones for something that might explain why Mr. X had
given them this disk, when she spotted a diagnosis that made her
stop. The deceased was Elizabeth MacIntyre, a thirty two year
old woman who had died as a result of a rare infection, called
cryptococcosis.
Scully's forehead wrinkled as she put down her mug. That
was odd. Few people had ever heard of cryptococcosis before the
eighties, when it started showing up in people dying of AIDS.
She went to her bookcase and scanned her medical references,
pulled out a volume on infections and returned to her seat at the
computer. She thumbed through the book until she found what she
was looking for.
"CRYPTOCOCCOSIS: a rare infection caused by inhaling the
fungus CRYPTOCOCCOSIS NEOFORMANS, which is particularly
found in soil that has been contaminated by pigeon
droppings."
She scrolled through the information on the screen. A very eager
medical resident must have been the one to catch the infection,
but no course of treatment had been successful. The patient had
died as a result of an inflammation of the meninges which covered
the brain and spinal cord. She had left a husband and a six
month old baby.
Scully sat back and thought for a moment. All of these
people had died from the same sorts of opportunistic infections
that killed people whose immune systems were destroyed by HIV.
Something had been decimating the immune systems of the people in
these files, something that acted much more quickly than HIV.
She leaned closer to the screen, skimmed through the information
again. She reached the end of the file and started the next one.
Her concentration was suddenly shattered by angry shouts
right outside her window. She drew back a bit, startled, then
scrambled to find her gun. She returned to the window and pressed
herself against the wall, listening, every muscle tensed. There
was a second of hesitation where she willed herself to open the
blind and look out, but couldn't move. Then, Mulder's voice
reached her ears. Reflexively, she flipped up a wooden slat and
peered outside. She glimpsed Mulder, wrestling with another man
on the front steps, only a few feet away. An instant later, she
was flying out the door of her apartment.
She could see them through the front door as she stormed
down the hall. Mulder's back was to her, and he was fighting to
pin the man's arms behind him. She threw open the heavy door,
weapon levelled and shouted, "Federal Agent! I'm armed!"
The man suddenly stopped struggling. Mulder seized him by
the jacket and pushed him roughly up against the iron railing at
the edge of the steps. He shoved the man's upper body forward,
bending him over the railing then finished snapping on the
handcuffs.
"All right, what the hell were you doing in the bushes?"
Mulder yelled. He grabbed a fistful of the man's jacket and
forced him into the railing.
Scully suddenly felt the bottom fall out of her stomach when
she recognized the jacket. Numb arms lowered the gun. "Mulder,"
she said.
Mulder was still breathing hard. He kept one hand firmly on
the man's back while he quickly frisked him for weapons. "What
were you doing? Huh? Looking for a way in? Or just keeping
tabs on her?"
"Mulder, stop it!" Scully said, more loudly.
"Dana, what the hell is this? Who is this guy?" Peter
demanded.
Mulder looked back and forth at Scully and the man in
handcuffs, trying to piece it together.
"Dana!" Peter's voice was ragged with exertion and anger.
"Do you know this guy?" Mulder asked.
Scully had to force herself look him in the eye. She
nodded. "His name is Peter O'Hara." Mulder stared at her,
incredulous. God, did she have to spell it out? "He was my date
tonight, Mulder," she said, finally.
Mulder didn't move for a moment. He turned his gaze back on
Peter and his eyes narrowed. "That still doesn't explain what
the hell he was doing under your window." Peter made a move to
straighten up, but Mulder held him there.
"I am asking you to take your hands off me," Peter said, in
a measured tone. He tried to stand up again, and Mulder resisted
him once more.
"Mulder!" Scully glared at him. "Let him go."
Mulder hesitated, then reluctantly stepped back. Peter
straightened up. The two men stood a few feet apart, eyeing each
other. Peter shot a glance at Scully. "Who is this guy?" he
asked.
Scully was flushed with equal parts of embarrassment and
anger. "Peter, this is my partner, Fox Mulder."
They continued to stare each other down, the animosity
growing until it was almost palpable.
"You still haven't explained what you were doing sneaking
around under her window," Mulder said.
Peter spoke to Scully, as if she had asked the question. "I
was getting into my car and I thought I saw someone trying to
look into your front window. I came around the building from the
other side, to try to catch him in the act. The next thing I
know, your partner here, jumped me."
Mulder bristled. "Why didn't you call the police? Or just
go back inside and tell Scully?"
Peter's expression hardened. "Why am I the one being
interrogated here? I was just looking out for Dana."
"Very noble of you," Mulder spat back.
"Who the hell are you to jump all over me like that? I was
just trying to help."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have missed your white hat."
"Stop! Just stop it! Both of you!" Scully's voice was
sharp and her words echoed in the cool night air. The two men
stood before her, like chastised children, refusing to meet each
other's eyes. Scully took a slow breath and tried to infuse her
voice with something that sounded like calm. "All right.
Whoever was skulking in my bushes appears to be gone, probably
scared off by all the noise you two were making." She levelled
her gaze at Peter, her eyes pale. "Peter, I appreciate your
concern, but I think I can take care of myself." Peter looked as
if he was about to say something, then thought better of it.
"Mulder, would you please take those cuffs off him?"
Neither man spoke, just resumed glaring at each other.
Finally, when he could find no reason not to comply with her
directive, Mulder pulled out his keys and unlocked the handcuffs.
"Are you all right?" Scully asked Peter.
He nodded tersely and rubbed his wrists. "I'm fine." Then
in a softer tone, he added, "Look, Dana, I'm really sorry. I was
just worried for you." Scully nodded, but said nothing. Peter
shifted from foot to foot, suddenly very conscious of the gun she
held at her side. "Well, I'll go then, if you're O.K.." He
tried to smile. "I'll call you tomorrow," he said. He cast one
more icy glance at Mulder, then left.
Mulder kept his eyes on Peter's back until he got in his car
and drove off, then he turned and looked at his partner, as if
he'd never seen her before. "You believe him, don't you?" he
said.
Scully's eyes were still a cool grey and Mulder got the
impression that she was looking through him. "Whether I believe
him or not is irrelevant, Mulder. It's over and we have work to
do. Come on."
Mulder stopped himself from shaking his head in disbelief,
knowing it would only fan the flames of her fury. He settled for
rolling his eyes as he followed her inside and wondering what the
hell she was thinking.


Scully had to tell him twice to stop pacing before he went
and sat on the sofa, leaving her to read in peace. He'd read the
obituaries over another dozen times, but they only talked about
loved ones and memorial services. Eventually, he had felt
himself drifting into sleep and had decided to give in. When his
cellular rang, he found himself sprawled on the sofa, his head at
an uncomfortable angle against the arm. He glanced at his watch.
It was after three.
"Mulder," he said.
"Don't you ever sleep?" a woman's voice asked.
"Not if I can help it," he replied. "What have you got,
Claire? Any luck tracking down those dead guys?" She spoke for
several minutes while Mulder scribbled down notes. When she had
finished, he said, "Thanks. I owe you one."
"You mean you owe me another one, Mulder," she said. "And
I'm keeping track." She hung up.
Scully was at the kitchen table, head bent over the document
that she was reading, occasionally writing something down. She
glanced up as Mulder approached, and he noticed how tired and
pale she looked.
She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "Did you find
out anything about those obituaries?" she asked.
"Plenty." He looked at his notes. "Three weeks ago, Dr.
Richard Steele, 77, died after falling down a flight of stairs in
his home in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was a specialist in
genetic engineering, a graduate of Harvard and apparently a
brilliant researcher, given that he was shortlisted twice for the
Nobel prize. Next was Dr. Joseph Costanza, 73, of Phoenix,
Arizona, who allegedly lost control of his car and hit a rock
face."
"Allegedly?"
"No one saw the accident, and the car exploded and caught
fire, so there wasn't a whole lot of Dr. Costanza left to
autopsy. It's still being investigated by local authorities.
That was almost two weeks ago. He was a molecular biologist and
had recently retired from teaching at Arizona State University."
Mulder flipped a page. "Last, and most recently, there's Dr.
William Inglis, aged 70, of Roanoke, Virginia. A pioneer in
virology. He attended Yale and was a prominent cancer researcher
for most of his career."
"How did he die?" Scully asked.
"Of an apparent allergic reaction to a bee sting. His wife
found him in their garden." Mulder lifted his eyes from his
notes. "You know those needles that people with severe allergies
carry?"
Scully nodded. "Yeah, they're loaded with epinephrine."
"His was still in his pocket."
Scully raised an eyebrow.
"All in all, a rather sudden attack of careless behaviour,
don't you think?" Mulder said.
"What about the other doctor?" Scully asked.
"This is the best part." Mulder consulted his notes. "Dr.
Leslie Hamilton, aged 70, a specialist in immunology, and a Yale
graduate, she taught and did research at Rice University until
1990, when she and her husband, Vince retired to Corpus Christi,
Texas. Her husband died a few months ago. Then six weeks ago,
without saying a word to any of her friends, Dr. Hamilton sold
her house and car and left Corpus Christi. No one has heard from
her since, and a missing persons report has been filed."
"That was before any of those scientists died," Scully said.
"She must have known something."
"We've got an immunologist, a molecular biologist, a genetic
engineer, and a specialist in viruses," Mulder said, counting
them off on his fingers. "What were they doing?"
She bit her lip and cast a glance across the papers spread
over the table top. "It's hard to say," she replied.
Mulder sat down in the chair opposite her. "Come on,
Scully. Just give me your best guess."
"It's not that simple, Mulder." She sighed and leaned back
in her chair. "There is some very complex biochemistry and
virology here, stuff that I've never even heard of before. Now,
I'm guessing, but given the line-up of scientists and what I can
understand of this data, I think they were designing a
retrovirus."
"What is that, exactly?"
"It's a special kind of virus that carries RNA instead of
DNA. They tend to be associated with tumours, at least in
humans," she said, "but Mulder, HIV is only the third retrovirus
that has been positively identified in humans."
"What are you saying?"
"If the dates on these documents are correct and this
research was carried out in the sixties..." She took a deep
breath and then plunged on. "Mulder, in 1970, there were only a
handful of scientists in the world who even believed that human
retroviruses existed. The first one wasn't discovered until
about 1980."
"And yet, these scientists were designing one," Mulder said.
She held up a hand. "We don't know that for sure."
Mulder was already on his feet, pacing around the kitchen.
"They were experimenting on all those people, using them as
guinea pigs."
"Hold it," Scully said, and crossed her arms. "Even if
these people had designed a human retrovirus, and I'm not saying
that they did, but if they had and they were using insulin to
deliver it, how on earth would they collect the data? You said
yourself that it was impossible to trace bottles of insulin
bought at pharmacies to the individuals who bought them. What
good is it to infect people with the virus, but never know who
you infected? It doesn't make sense."
Mulder acted as if he hadn't heard her. "It's perfect,
Scully. Insulin would be the ideal way to unknowingly infect a
population. They take the same does every day. And insulin
probably has to be protected from extreme temperatures, and that
would ensure that the retrovirus wasn't destroyed, right?" He
looked to Scully for agreement.
She nodded reluctantly.
Mulder stopped pacing and faced her. "That's what was in
the insulin Scully. Some kind of prototype of a biological
weapon that the military was testing."
Scully hung her head and groaned. "Mulder, don't you think
that it's a little premature to be jumping to such drastic
conclusions? I mean, there's still so much that we don't know."
"Like what?"
"Like how they traced the insulin. And exactly what this
is," she said, waving her hand over the paper that was strewn
across the table.
"O.K.. So, how do we find that out?"
Scully saw the familiar intensity in Mulder's eyes, knew
that he was already leaping off the high wire. She sighed. There
was nothing to do but follow along, and prepare to catch him.
"I have a friend who works in virology over at Georgetown
University," she said. "Maybe she can tell us more."
A grin flashed across his face, then was gone. "The next
thing is to find Dr. Hamilton," he said. "She's the only one
left who can piece this all together for us."
"It sounds to me like she doesn't want to be found," Scully
said. "She may not even be in the country any more."
Mulder resumed his silent walk back and forth across the
kitchen. Scully was just about to tell him again to quit pacing
and sit down when he suddenly stopped. "Wait a minute," he
mumbled, as he grabbed his notes and rifled through them. "Here.
Look. Both Dr. Hamilton and Dr. Inglis went to Yale and they're
about the same age. They might have been classmates."
"Yeah. So?"
"If she knew that they were all in danger, maybe she tried
to contact him."
Scully considered this. "It's possible," she admitted.
"He lived in Roanoke. That's just a few hours from here. I
think we should go and talk to his wife. She may know if he had
heard from Dr. Hamilton."
"It's as good a place as any to start, I suppose," Scully
said.
"We can drop all this off to your friend on the way," Mulder
said, "and be in Roanoke in about three hours." He looked all
around for his jacket but was stopped cold by Scully's
expression. "What?"
"Mulder, it's three o'clock in the morning. In three hours,
the sun will just be coming up," she said. "Go home. Get some
sleep. Let me get some sleep."
"O.K," he said, and glanced at his watch. "I'll pick you up
at six."
She glared at him. "Seven."
He hesitated. "Six thirty?"
She sighed. "Fine. Six thirty." She wearily got to her
feet, and rubbed her eyes. "Just go home and let me go to bed.
Unlike you, Mulder, I need to sleep."
He smiled at her and nodded, then made his way to the door,
jacket in hand. He paused, one hand on the door knob and turned
to face her again, searched for the right words. "Scully, I just
wanted to say that I'm sorry about your date. I mean, about how
things turned out," he said.
Her expression was unreadable. "Yeah. So am I."
He scrambled to think of what else he could say that might
melt the chill he still heard in her voice, but decided to leave
it alone for tonight. "All right. I guess I'll see you in the
morning," he said.
She opened the door for him. "It already is morning,
Mulder."
He studied her face for some hint of what she was feeling,
but found none. He smiled, in what he hoped was an apologetic
way, then left.
Scully locked the door, turned out all the lights and then
let herself collapse onto her bed, not bothering to take off her
clothes. She awoke with a start a little while later, her heart
pounding. She had been dreaming about someone watching her,
through her bedroom window. Light from the street seeped through
the cracks in the blind and cast sharp shadows across the bed.
She took a deep breath to calm herself, then rolled over and
pulled the quilt up to her chin.

==========================================

Scully struggled to keep her eyes open for most of the
drive, despite the fact that Mulder had brought her a large
steaming cup of coffee when he arrived to pick her up at six
twenty-five. She dozed fitfully, jerking awake occasionally with
the motion of the car. Mulder watched her for a while, then
reached into the back seat for his trenchcoat.
"Here," he said, as he handed it to her, "use this, so you
won't get a sore neck."
She mumbled her thanks, stuck the coat between her head and
the door, and promptly went back to sleep. He kept an eye on her
as he drove, wondered if she was still angry with him. She had
been quiet since he'd picked her up, but then, she was pretty
tired. She still looked pale and Mulder noticed that she was
frowning slightly in her sleep. He smiled to himself. She must
be dreaming about him.
Later, when he pulled up in front of the Inglis residence, a
big, tudor style home with manicured hedges, he had to gently
shake her shoulder to rouse her. She yawned and sat up, then ran
her hand through her hair, trying to repair the damage.
Mulder got out, stretched and surveyed the house while he
waited for her. A moment later, she joined him on the sidewalk
and handed him his trenchcoat.
"It's a little wrinkled," she said. "Sorry."
Mulder examined the coat. It was deeply creased, like a
piece of paper that had been crumpled and then unfolded.
"It's too warm for it, anyway," he said and tossed it in the
back seat.


"I knew he was dead the moment I saw him," the tiny woman
said. She sat opposite Mulder and Scully, in a wingback chair,
which threatened to swallow up her frail form. Her hands lay
lifelessly in her lap and her shoulders slumped slightly, as if
some great weight was pushing down on them. Nearby, a
grandfather clock kept vigil, steadily counting off the passing
seconds. "When the paramedics arrived, they said there was
nothing they could do, but I'd known that from the moment I
stepped into the garden and saw him lying on the grass."
Her eyes drifted away from Mulder and Scully to gaze
sightlessly into space, but her expression told them that she was
reliving the scene. Scully waited for a few seconds and when she
spoke, her voice was soft and soothing. "Mrs. Inglis, what sort
of reaction did your husband usually have to bee stings?"
"He would have difficulty breathing and then his throat
would become swollen, but once he took his needle, he'd be fine
in a few minutes."
"So he'd been stung before?" Mulder asked.
"Oh, heavens, yes!" the woman said. "Bill loved to garden
and he was particularly fond of roses, so the back garden is full
of them. Most days if you stood still out there, you could hear
the buzz from the back door." She smiled wistfully and one hand
fluttered up from her lap to touch the lace doily on the arm of
her chair. "He was always getting stung, but he didn't seem to
mind. He'd just take his needle and rest for a little while,
then he'd be right back at it." The smile on her face slowly
faded and tears began to seep into her pale eyes. She fought to
compose herself. Mulder noticed that this woman bore a passing
resemblance to his own mother and silently wished himself out of
this living room.
No one spoke for a few moments while she drew herself back
together and blinked the bothersome tears away. "I'm sorry," she
said. "It's still difficult." She smoothed her skirt, then
folded her hands on her lap again. "Now, you said something on
the phone about Leslie."
"Yes," Mulder said. "I don't know if you are aware that a
missing person report has been filed on Dr. Hamilton."
The woman looked stricken. "Leslie? Dear God, what happened
to her?"
"There's no reason to believe that anything has happened to
Dr. Hamilton," Scully cut in, with a cursory glance at Mulder.
"Some friends of hers in Texas are concerned because she hasn't
been in contact with them. At the moment, no one seems to know
where she is, and so it's routine to file a report."
"I see," Mrs. Inglis said. She pondered this information
and the colour slowly returned to her face. "Well, I'm afraid we
haven't heard from her since, oh, it must be last summer."
"Your husband and Dr. Hamilton have known each other since
medical school, is that right, Mrs. Inglis?" Mulder asked.
She nodded. "Yes, they were classmates at Yale. In fact,
she and her husband Vince were married two weeks after Bill and
I, right after graduation. It was a lovely wedding." She
paused, the wistful smile returning briefly.
"Did they ever work on any projects together?" Mulder asked.
"Oh yes. When we were in New Mexico. But that was a long
time ago."
Mulder sat up a little straighter. "Do you remember exactly
when that was?"
She sighed. "Let's see...Bob, my youngest, was in junior
high then, I remember because we had an awful time finding a
school that would take him mid-semester. So, it must have been
the winter of '67 that we moved there."
"What sort of project were they working on?"
"Oh, heavens. I'm afraid I don't really know. It had to do
with viruses, of course, since that's Bill's field, you know, and
it was a government grant of some sort, but beyond that I can't
help you. I was busy raising the boys and Bill didn't like to
discuss his work much."
"And Dr. Hamilton was working on the same project?" Mulder
asked.
"Yes, but as I say, they never really talked much about it."
"You said you'd heard from Dr. Hamilton last summer," Scully
said. "I assume you've kept in touch over the years."
"Mostly Christmas cards and the occasional letter. She and
Bill conferred with each other for work I know, because he would
mention from time to time that he'd gotten a call from her." She
shook her head. "Poor Leslie. I hope nothing has happened to
her."
Mulder leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Mrs. Inglis,
do you have any idea where Dr. Hamilton might go if she wanted to
get away for a while? Does she have relatives that you know of?
Anybody she spoke about?"
The tiny woman frowned. "I don't think I ever heard her
speak of relatives, and of course, she and Vince never had
children." She thought for a moment. "I do remember them
stopping by once, oh, it must be twenty years ago, while they
were on vacation. It sticks in my mind because we so rarely saw
them. As I recall, they were going to spend a month at this
little cabin that Vince had inherited somewhere in the Allegheny
mountains. It was quite remote and they were beginning to make
enquiries about the possibility of getting electricity."
"Do you have any idea where it might be?" Mulder asked. He
was leaned so far forward that Scully thought he might tumble out
of his chair at any moment.
"I'm just trying to remember," the woman said. "There was
an animal in it somewhere..." She tapped a dainty finger on her
lips and frowned as she thought. "It wasn't bears....what was
it? It was something Crossing. No, something Junction. That's
it. Some animal Junction." She pursed her lips and frowned.
"It was so long ago, you know. I'm not sure that I..." She
stopped speaking suddenly and her face brightened. "Wolf
Junction," she said. "The closest little village was Wolf
Junction, West Virginia. I think it's just across the state
line, actually."
Scully saw Mulder's body relax, as if he'd just started
breathing again.
The woman beamed a little at her accomplishment, then
smoothed a few more invisible wrinkles out of her skirt. "That's
the only time she ever mentioned it. She may not even own it
anymore. As I say, it was a long time ago."
"Well, it's worth looking into," Scully said.
"Mrs. Inglis, is there any way we could look through some of
your husband's correspondence?" Mulder asked. "There's a
possibility that Dr. Hamilton may have mentioned something that
could help us to locate her."
She hesitated and cast a furtive glance towards the
staircase in the hall. "I suppose that would be all right," she
said. "The last couple of years, he worked mostly at home, in
his study. I ..." She choked on her words, one slender, pale
hand flying to her mouth, in an effort to hold back a sob.
Mulder and Scully waited, eyes downcast, while she struggled to
find her voice.
"I wonder if you would mind if I didn't help you?" she said,
at last. Her hands darted about in tiny birdlike movements,
fingering the buttons on her sweater, touching the fabric of the
chair. "I haven't been able to bring myself to go in that room,
yet. It's silly, I know, but..." She let the sentence trail off
unfinished and regarded Mulder and Scully with a beseeching look.
Scully glanced over at Mulder in time to see his expression
soften into a tender smile. "It's not silly at all, Mrs. Inglis.
I understand perfectly," he said. He got to his feet. "Why
don't you just tell us which room it is and we'll look on our
own."


They found William Inglis's study on the second floor. It
was a small room, made all the more cramped by the number of
books, journals and files that were piled on every flat surface.
A sturdy desk and chair were pushed up against the wall by the
window. Two wooden filing cabinets stood beside it, and there
was a worn, sagging arm chair in the corner.
"I'll start with the filing cabinets," Mulder said.
Scully looked around the room, took in the clutter on the
desk and decided to begin there. She sat down in the desk chair
and surveyed the files, scraps of paper and stacks of bills and
correspondence. She methodically worked her way from one side of
the desk to the other, discovering along the way scribbled
references to scientific articles, phone numbers, a few issues of
the journal of virology, a grocery list and a heap of seed
catalogues. The slightest sense of guilt dogged her as she
sorted through the paper and books. There was something
disturbingly intimate about sitting at someone else's desk, going
through their things, as if their entire life and all its secrets
were tucked away in the drawers. She wondered, as she sifted
through a handful of receipts, who had cleaned out her desk in
their basement office when she had been missing last year.
Probably Mulder. Had he felt guilty, intrusive, as she did now?
Or was he grateful for the chance to sit in her chair and maybe
somehow be near her in the process? She honestly didn't know,
and she certainly wasn't going to ask him.
Her gaze fell on the Macintosh computer that occupied a
quadrant of the desk. She studied it, thinking for a few
seconds, then reached around the back of the computer and ran her
hand across the ports, switches and cables. At the far right
edge, her fingers touched a phone line.
Mulder looked up from the filing cabinet when he heard the
computer hum to life with a perky chirp. Scully was tapping keys
and peering at the screen.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Following a hunch," she said.
Mulder entertained several witty replies, then remembered
the look on her face when he had left her apartment early this
morning. He decided to keep them to himself, and returned to the
filing cabinet.
Scully scrolled through directories looking for something
that wasn't password protected. She was about to give up and
start searching the desk for anything that looked like a
password, when she came across the directories for an internet
service provider. There was no security software on them. A few
keystrokes and she found herself with a list of e-mails that
William Inglis had sent, which had been automatically filed in
the computer's memory. She started reading.
A few minutes later, she said, "Mulder, I think I've got
something."
Mulder came to the desk and looked at the screen. "What?"
Scully clicked the mouse a few times, and the text of a
letter appeared on the screen. He leaned closer to read it.

Leslie,
I heard about Richard today, but I think you're over-
reacting. The stupid old fool fell down the stairs is all.
I never liked him, as you know, but I can't help but feel
sorry.
Listen -- about your recent e-mail. I don't know what
to tell you. I have no idea if you've done the right thing
or not, but what's done is done. It will probably all blow
over in a few days. You're getting paranoid in your old
age, Leslie. It was 25 years ago. No one cares anymore.
Regards,
Bill.

Mulder looked at Scully. "She blew the whistle on the
project," he said, "and when they started coming after them, she
tried to warn Inglis."
Scully leaned back in the chair and it squeaked loudly.
"O.K., but why now? And what proof does she have?"
"If we can find her, we can ask her ourselves," Mulder said.
"Is there an address?"
"Yeah, but it's just an e-mail address through a commercial
service provider. It's going to take a lot of paperwork and a
couple of days to get a proper address," Scully said. "But we
do know that wherever she is, she has access to a computer."
"And a phone line."
They regarded each other for a moment.
"Hey, Scully, how many new phone lines do you think have
been installed around Wolf's Butt, West Virginia in the last
month?"
Scully allowed a hint of a smile. "Hopefully not too many."


Mulder looked into his rear view mirror and watched Scully's
reflection stride across the rental car lot. He knew it made
sense for her to head back to Washington to meet her virologist
friend at Georgetown while he continued westward to Wolf
Junction, but for some reason he couldn't fully articulate, even
to himself, it made him uneasy. He'd held back while they'd
discussed the plan of action, not able to come up with a good
reason why they should stick together, and in the end, he'd
driven her to the nearest AVIS office to rent a car for the
return trip to D.C., with a promise to call one another as soon
as anything turned up. But he didn't like it.
He signalled, then eased the car onto the highway, glancing
back over his shoulder at the lot before he accelerated. She was
nowhere to be seen. He pulled his cellular out of his pocket
then punched in the familiar number.
"Danny?" he said. "I've got an urgent one for you, and I
don't care who you have to pull off the golf course for it. I
need information about new phone lines installed in a place in
West Virginia in the last five or six weeks."


Scully consulted the directory in the lobby of the deserted
biological sciences building, running a finger down the list of
names of professors and researchers until she found Dr. E.
Przednowek, Rm. 612. She went off in search of the elevators,
her heels clicking loudly against the floor tiles and echoing in
the empty halls.
The door of room 612 was decorated with stickers from
Greenpeace and a half-dozen other whale and tree saving
organizations. Scully smiled as she knocked. Beth would never
change.
The door was opened by a tall, lithe woman in a t-shirt,
jeans and Birkenstocks. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back in
a ponytail and she had wide, chestnut coloured eyes. She didn't
return Scully's smile.
"Jesus Christ, Dana! Where did you get this?" the woman
said, when she spotted Scully.
Scully, who had been about to step through the door, stopped
dead. "Why?"
"Do you realize what you have here?" she asked, waving a
handful of pages in the air.
Scully looked quickly up and down the hall. "Can we discuss
this in there?" she asked, pointing into the office.
Beth's expression softened and she nodded. "Sure, sure.
I'm sorry! Come on in." She stepped aside and let Scully enter
the tiny, windowless room. She pushed some text books and
computer printouts off the only chair and motioned for Scully to
sit down. She sat on the edge of her desk. "I'm sorry, it's
just that I've been reading this stuff you dropped off for the
past two hours and it's really freaking me out."
"What did you find?" Scully asked.
"Well, you were right, it's a retrovirus, but this data...."
She shook her head. "This is bioengineering on a level I've
never seen before."
"Really?"
Beth nodded and her pony tail bobbed in rhythm. "And that's
not the best part. This data records elaborate manipulations of
a retrovirus that, as far as I know, doesn't exist."
"Do you mean that it's one that hasn't been identified?"
"Well, it's either that or somebody created this thing to
play around with."
"How, exactly?"
Beth flipped through the pages. "It's not entirely clear
and there's a lot here that's over my head. But from some of
these experiments, I'd say they were trying to make it more
virulent. They were damn successful, too. They managed to speed
up the cell death on some of these trials by 40%." She lowered
the pages and stared at Scully. "And you're not answering my
question, Dana. Where did you get this?"
"We're not entirely sure yet," Scully replied.
Beth cocked her head and studied Scully's expression.
"Agent Scully, are you being straight with me? Or is that Bureau
talk for `keep 'em in the dark'?"
Scully sighed. "Look, Beth, there's a lot we don't know
about this yet."
"All right, all right," Beth said, "it's not that I don't
believe you. It's just that there is some pretty revolutionary
stuff in here. Not to mention a Nobel prize or two."
"Can you tell me how it works?" Scully asked.
"It's hard to say, but there are some structural
similarities to HIV, so I'd guess that it targets the immune
system."
"Which means that the host would die from opportunistic
infections like pneumonias, and fungal infections, right?"
Scully said.
Beth nodded. "It's possible."
"How infectious is it?"
"From what I read, not very. You'd need fairly direct
contact with body fluids."
Scully sank back in the chair, her mind racing. Beth
watched her for a few seconds, then said, "Is this some new sort
of Ebola thing that lives in African bat shit or something? I
mean, should I unpack my biocontainment suit?"
Scully met her gaze and chuckled. "Washington isn't about
to become the next Zaire, if that's what you're asking," she
said.
"Maybe not," Beth said. "But you've just shown me research
that is so far beyond cutting edge that I can't make heads or
tails out of some of it." She looked directly at Scully, her
dark eyes intense. "Somebody, somewhere has this technology and
they're not sharing. Doesn't that scare you?"
Scully looked at her friend for a long time, then nodded.

=============================================


By 4:30, Mulder had driven down so many gravel roads that he
thought his teeth were going to shake right out of his head. The
addresses that Danny had been able to find for the three new
phone lines installed that month in Wolf County were deep in what
a real estate agent might have called a charming wooded setting.
His patience failing with the afternoon light, Mulder was more
inclined to think of it as the middle of nowhere. He'd stopped
at a small general store hours ago, in search of sunflower seeds
and directions, but had gotten neither, and now he was hungry as
well as lost.
He tapped the steering wheel impatiently and scanned the
road ahead for any sign of civilization, but the forest met the
gravel in an unbroken line. The trees, still translucent green
with their spring leaves, managed nevertheless to block out the
late day sun, imposing a tinted twilight on the road. Mulder
realized that when the sun finally did set, it was going to be
very dark. If he didn't find this last place before then, he was
going to have one hell of a time finding his way out of here.
The driveway was so narrow and overgrown that he nearly
passed it. At the last second, it registered. He slammed on the
brakes, then threw the car in reverse and backed up, the tires
spitting gravel all around. There was no mailbox or sign, just a
path that led off into the thick woods. Mulder pulled the car
off the main road, easing the wheels into the ruts in the path,
and hoped that whatever mud he encountered wasn't deep.
A few hundred yards later, the car emerged into a rough
clearing. There was a small cabin, built mostly of logs, with a
clapboard covered addition on the back. A Nissan Pathfinder was
parked a short distance from the cabin and Mulder pulled up
behind it. The clearing was bathed in shadows and when Mulder
got out of the car, he spotted a light on in the cabin. The
smell of wood smoke hung in the air.
Good, he thought, as he made his way across to the cabin,
somebody's home.
He was still several yards from the cabin when the door
opened and a woman looked out. He saw the colour drain from her
face.
"Dr. Hamilton?" he said, as he reached into his pocket for
his i.d.. "Dr. Leslie Hamilton?"
The woman, who looked like she might cry, nodded.
Mulder stopped a safe distance away and held out his
credentials for her to inspect. "I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder,
with the F.B.I.. I'm here to help you."
She looked at him for a long moment, cast a glance at his
identification, and then her shoulders sagged. "It doesn't
matter anyway," she said. "I'm tired of hiding. If you're here
to kill me, you might as well come in and get it over with." As
Mulder watched, she turned and walked wearily back into the
cabin.


Scully checked her answering machine as soon as she got back
to her apartment. There were two messages, one from her mother,
just to say hi, and one from Peter, saying he was sorry that he'd
missed her and that he would try to reach her again later. She
stepped out of her pumps and stripped off her suit jacket as she
listened to his voice, made tinny by the machine. She debated
whether or not she wanted to be home for his next call as she
padded down the hall to her bedroom. By the time she'd unclipped
her holster and exchanged her skirt and blouse for black leggings
and a t-shirt, she was still undecided and beginning to wish it
would all just go away.
She sighed as she sat on the edge of the bed to lace up her
sneakers. There just wasn't time to think about Peter right now.
Her mind was racing, trying to sort through all the pieces that
had been dropped in her lap these past few days. She needed to
put them in some sort of order so that she could find the holes
and figure out what pieces were still missing. The apprehension
that had been with her since Mulder had given her the disk still
gnawed at her insides, had in fact grown noticeably since her
conversation with Beth this afternoon. They had something big
here and it was important to do it right.
She pulled on a grey sweatshirt and grabbed her keys,
carefully locking the door behind her. She stretched quickly on
the front steps, anxious to start running, to hopefully clear her
mind. Once she had her thoughts in order, she would call Mulder
and tell him what she knew about the retrovirus that Dr. Hamilton
and the others had engineered. She trotted off down the
sidewalk, heading towards the running paths at the park.
A few moments later, a silver Oldsmobile Ciera pulled out of
its parking spot and drove down the street. It reached the end
of the block, signalled and turned in the direction of the park.
The driver didn't notice the grey Taurus that fell in behind it
in the next block.


The interior of the cabin was lit by two tired lamps and was
sparsely furnished. A couple of armchairs that had seen better
days were pulled up by the fieldstone fireplace and an upended
orange crate with a lantern and a stack of books on it stood
between them. The kitchen consisted of a hotplate with two
burners, some whitewashed cupboards, a tiny table with two chairs
and a sink. At the far end of the room, there was a wooden
partition that blocked off what Mulder supposed was a bedroom.
The woman was pouring water from a plastic jug into a
kettle. "Well, since you've come all this way to protect me,
Mr... uh..." She turned and looked at him. "What did you say
your name was again?"
"Mulder," he replied. "Fox Mulder."
She snorted and turned back to the kettle. "Well, Mr. Fox
Mulder, since you've driven all this way to save my antique ass,
the least I can do is offer you a cup of tea." She put the
kettle on the burner and turned a dial. "You might as well sit
down. You look like you've got a lot of questions to ask."
Mulder tossed his trenchcoat over the back of an armchair
and sat down at the kitchen table.
"How did you find me?" she asked, as she rummaged through
the cupboards.
"The e-mail that you sent Dr. Inglis," Mulder said. "We
realized that you had a phone line and Mrs. Inglis remembered you
mentioning this cabin."
She brought a plate of cookies to the table, shaking her
head. "I knew I was leaving myself wide open on that one, but, I
felt I owed Bill at least a warning about what I had unleashed."
She put the cookies down in front of Mulder. "Here, you look
like you haven't eaten in days." She went back to the cupboards,
started rooting for tea bags and cups. He ate a cookie and
watched her preparing the tea. She moved slowly, and Mulder
detected a hint of stiffness in her walk, but she looked much
younger than her seventy years. She wore faded jeans and a man's
red flannel shirt with a turtleneck underneath. Her hair was
silver and very neatly pulled up into a bun. When she finished
at the cupboards, she came and sat opposite him at the table,
leaning forward on her elbows. "So, how much do you know, Mr.
Mulder?"
"I know that twenty five years ago you were involved in some
sort of top-secret government project to design a virus and that
you probably tested that virus on an unsuspecting population," he
said. "I know that this information isn't quite as secret as it
used to be, due to some action on your part. I also know that of
the four scientists who worked on the project, you're the only
one who hasn't met a sudden and suspicious death."
Her eyes were a frosty blue and there was no emotion in them
as she studied Mulder. "You're not here to kill me, are you?"
she said.
Mulder shook his head. "How could I after you've gone to
all the trouble of making me tea?"
A trace of amusement in the icy eyes, as if he was a child
who had just recited his lesson well. Mulder helped himself to
another cookie.
"What do you want to know?" she asked.
"Who were you working for? Who authorized the development
of the virus?"
"Ultimately some covert group in the government that
everyone would swear doesn't exist, but most of our contact was
with military types. They probably took their orders from
somebody higher up."
"Was it a biological weapon you were developing?" Mulder
asked.
She smiled grimly. "We preferred not to call it that,
particularly after Nixon signed that treaty in '68 which outlawed
biological agents."
"But that's what it was, wasn't it?"
The emotion was gone again and her eyes were the colour of
frozen smoke. "It was the atomic bomb of biological agents, Mr.
Mulder," she said. "This wasn't some rinky-dink little bug that
the army would set loose on a battlefield to take down a few
thousand troops. This was an agent that was designed to
neutralize the entire population of the Soviet Union."
Mulder stared at her. She nodded. "Yes," she said, "it was
that big."
The kettle whistled and she got up slowly and went to turn
off the burner. "Many of my colleagues believed that it was much
safer than nuclear warheads. None of that annoying radiation to
worry about afterwards." She poured the boiling water into the
teapot, and clouds of steam rose from it. "You must remember
that this was the 1960's, and we believed that not only were the
Russians developing even more deadly strains of viruses, they
were months, if not years ahead of us."
She turned to look at Mulder, to read his expression, then
turned her attention to the teapot again. "How old were you
during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Mr. Mulder? Two, maybe three
years old?"
"About that," Mulder said.
"Well then let me tell you that while you were still in
diapers, this whole country experienced fear on a scale it had
never known before. The enemy was in our very back yards,
pounding on the door," she said. She brought the teapot over to
the table, set it down then returned for the cups. "Everything
we had held sacred suddenly crumbled before our eyes. For
months, people walked around expecting it to rain missiles on
them. We were all terrified."
She put a china cup down in front of Mulder and one at her
place and then sat again. "We thought what we were doing was the
right thing. We thought that by having something equally lethal
to wave under their noses, we could force the Russians to
behave."
"So you went ahead and tested a deadly virus on five hundred
innocent people?" Mulder asked.
"Acceptable losses, Mr. Mulder, or at least that's what the
military called them," she said, her eyes on her cup. "Every
good general knows that in any battle, men will die. And make no
mistake, we were at war. The loss of life seemed minuscule
compared to the greater risk of leaving ourselves open to foreign
attack. We even managed to convince ourselves that those five
hundred or so people who died were martyrs to a great cause."
Mulder shifted in his seat. Her eyes flicked up as he
moved.
"I'm not asking for your pardon, Mr. Mulder. In fact, I
don't expect you to understand. I'm just telling you what it was
like." She ran her finger along the rim of her cup, and Mulder
noticed that it trembled slightly. "It all seemed so very black
and white then," she said.
"How did you collect the data?" Mulder asked.
"Operatives in hospitals, in major cities, posing as nurses,
mostly. They had access to all the patient's records, and of
course to their insulin. The operative would identify suitable
candidates who were admitted to the hospital for some reason.
They would incorporate the virus into their insulin and then they
would wait. Within three to eight months, once their immune
systems had failed, the subjects would usually be readmitted to
the hospital, suffering from some illness which eventually killed
them."
She leaned forward, lifted the lid on the teapot and peered
inside. Satisfied that it was properly steeped, she poured
steaming tea into their cups, then looked at Mulder again.
"When did it end?" he asked.
"In a sense, it didn't," she said. She wrapped her hands
around her cup, to warm them. "The research was going incredibly
well, we had a 98% fatality rate and what we'd learned in a few
short months about RNA viruses, as we called them then, it took
the rest of the world a decade to figure out."
"So what happened?"
"I'm not sure," she said. "The project was very suddenly
shut down. Maybe they lost interest or maybe there was a shift
in the power structure. I don't know. For whatever reason, our
services were no longer required and we were dismissed, with the
reminder that our lives and the lives of our families depended on
our continued silence." She sipped her tea, and stared at the
tabletop. "Bill Inglis told me that every so often, they would
follow his kids home from school." She shook her head.
"Subtlety was never their strong suit."
"So once your husband died, you realized that you had
nothing to lose and decided to blow the whistle," Mulder said.
She smiled, but there was a sudden weariness in her features
that hadn't been there before. "It's much more ironic than that,
Mr. Mulder. You see, my husband died of AIDS, probably
contracted through a blood transfusion he received while
undergoing routine surgery. He unknowingly infected me and
eventually, this horrid little virus will kill me too, and so
twenty five years later, justice will be wrought."
She waited for Mulder's reaction, but he said nothing.
"It's really rather poetic, don't you think? Watching
someone you love die slowly and painfully from a terrible illness
and living every day with the knowledge that you doomed hundreds
of innocent people to that same fate." She took another sip of
tea, then carefully set her cup down. "I am not afraid to die,
Mr. Mulder, because I am no longer afraid of hell. It can't be
much worse than what I've endured these past few years."
Their eyes met and she held his gaze for a long time,
challenging him to say something. Mulder kept his expression
neutral and waited for her to go on.
"And so, suitably chastised, I decided to do my part to
bring this dirty little secret to light," she said, picking up
her cup again. "The first step was to get my hands on the
information, the data, the medical records. My late husband, who
designed security systems for computer networks was a brilliant
man, and although it took about a year and a half, he hacked his
way into the necessary places and got me what I needed. Then, of
course, the question was how to make this information public."
The fire had died down to glowing coals and she got to her
feet and moved stiffly to the fireplace. She poked at the ash
with a long stick, then tossed on another chunk of wood.
"At first I considered contacting all the families of the
subjects," she said, "but in the midst of researching the
whereabouts of the surviving relatives, I came across that young
reporter and decided that he was the most logical choice." She
pushed at the log with the stick, trying to position it on the
hottest embers. "His father had been a victim of our little
creation and so I thought he would be highly motivated to get to
the bottom of this."
"Wait a minute," Mulder said. "You gave this information to
a reporter?"
She straightened up and nodded. "Yes. The young man at the
Washington Post." She looked at Mulder quizzically. "That's why
you're here, aren't you? Because he contacted you?"
A knot began to form in Mulder's gut.
"I was tipped off by an anonymous source," he said. "What
is the reporter's name?"
"Peter O'Hara," she replied.
The knot tightened. "Oh, shit," he said.

John,
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