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Heritage of Fools
Valoise Armstrong
vjarmstrong@aristotle.net

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Part 9

As he slid to the floor, as the room fuzzed out around him, Mulder felt a
jolt of heart-pounding panic, a pure and instinctive urge for
self-preservation. But not quick enough.

He started to reach for his gun, but felt a weight pressing him down, as if
someone had thrown a lead blanket over him. From where he lay, he saw
McIntyre come through the door.

The historian crossed the room, his forehead barely creased, under no
apparent strain, as if subduing a federal agent without laying a hand on
him was no big deal. Mulder strained helplessly against the invisible
barrier as McIntyre knelt down beside him  and slipped his gun out of the
holster. McInyyre started to get up, but sank back down and fumbled around
Mulder's belt until he found the handcuffs.

Mulder's hands were tugged behind his back, bending the broken finger in
the process. He moaned as the handcuffs were snapped into place.

"Sorry about that." He was ridiculously polite for a man about to commit
murder. McIntyre stood and backed off, never turning his back to the fallen
man.

Mulder felt the weight lift, flexed his limbs to reassure himself that he
could move. Eyeing his assailant, he waited, searching for some weakness he
could use.

McIntyre weighed Mulder's gun uncertainly in his hand.

Mulder struggled into a seated position. "If you don't know how to use
that, I'd be glad to take it off your hands."

 McIntyre grinned as he found the safety, flicking it off. "No, why don't
you let me hang on to it for awhile." Keeping the gun trained on Mulder, he
sat down at the table. "If you hadn't found out, I might have let you go.
I've had a change in priorities lately. This isn't for my grandfather any
more. After tonight, I've got my own agenda."

"Hey, why wait? You don't want to add assault on a federal officer to your
charges. This can end here. Now."

McIntyre frowned. "No, it is too late for that." He stared straight at his
captive. "I'm doing this for me now and I don't want to stop. You can't
stop me."

Time to change the mood. He wanted to humor McIntyre but he didn't want to
piss him off. He had to keep the guy talking  so he could think. He had to
find a way of the situation. His life depended on it. "What made you change
your mind?"

McIntyre shrugged. "Like I said, a shift in priorities. When I started all
this, the study, the meditation, it was all for him, my grandfather. I felt
I owed it to him to carry on with his work." He paused, scanning the room
as if he'd lost something. Some part of himself, some connection to the
past. "At first I wanted to punish the men who had tempted him and drawn
him away from the heritage of Dietrich Eckart."

"That was fifty years ago," Mulder tried to reason with him. "I'm not one
of them. You can let me go."

"No," McIntyre shook his head. "No. At first I felt cheated by those who'd
already died before I could make them pay. Then I decided you could take
your father's place. It was my burden to seek retribution, your burden to
bear your father's guilt."

 "You can still step away from it. You've made a life for yourself that has
nothing to do with your grandfather."

"You don't understand. All this. . ." McIntyre waved his hands wildly in
the air, but stopped suddenly, staring off into the distance.

Mulder braced himself, looking for a chance to make his move.

But McIntyre turned back to his captive, his attention now fully fixed on
Mulder. "The more I found out about the power, the more adept I became at
using it, only drove home how enormous Grandfather's betrayal really was.
He was a traitor. To the family. To the Fatherland. It was all a sham, just
a way for him to ingratiate himself with whoever held the upper hand at the
moment. If he had ever really tasted even the slightest wisp of the things
Uncle Dietrich knew, my grandfather could never have abandoned it."

A beep signaled the end of a download and he turned his back on Mulder,
drawn to the information on the computer. Without looking up he said,
"Everything withers in the face of that power. Grandfather was a fraud. He
never believed it." He looked up at Mulder once again. "What I'm doing, I'm
doing for me. For Dietrich Eckart. For my true heritage. That's all we
really have. I can't let you go, can't let you stop me. In the end, Agent
Mulder, maybe your own demise is result of your father's heritage, after
all."

No, you're wrong, Mulder thought to himself. Bill Mulder had never been a
kind man, but Mulder knew that his father would never have wanted this, for
his son to pay the ultimate price his mistakes.

Mulder shifted on the floor. How much time had passed? Ten minutes since he
had talked to Scully? More like fifteen. He just needed to keep him
talking. Maybe this could work. Maybe he could get out of this alive.

"Quite an interesting family history you have." Mulder nodded his head in
the direction of the computer.

McIntyre smiled at laptop and kept reading. "Ah, Great-Uncle Dietrich." He
read in silence for a few minutes, then added. "I inherited his diaries."

"From your grandfather?" Mulder didn't have feign interest in that subject.
Under different circumstances, he would have loved to sit back and discuss
those journals.

"Yes. Not that they did the old man any good." McIntyre leaned back in the
the chair and turned towards his victim. "Strange. I never really knew what
kind of work he did after he came to America. Not his folklore research. He
gave that up."

"You didn't know about his ties to the State Department?"

McIntyre shrugged. "Oh, that. Sure. And I knew that many of the scientists
worked for NASA. But exactly what Grandfather's duties were - I have no
idea."

"Then how did you choose your victims?" Mulder found himself trying to
profile the man in front of him, looking for some kind of insight.

"Easy." McIntyre turned back to the computer. "He kept photo albums. All
those pictures of smiling men in dark suits. Labeled every one of them with
names, dates, locations. Real photography buff." McIntyre's end of the
conversation trailed off as he focused once more on the screen in front of
him.

Mulder watched him. This guy was a one-man X-Files division, conspiracy and
the paranormal rolled into one. From his great-uncle's journals to the
photo albums of Operation Paperclip, McIntyre's heritage linked him to the
same warped reality Mulder inherited and inhabited. An unbelievable wealth
of resources right here outside of Poison Springs, Colorado. All he had to
do was stay alive.

The computer illuminated his captor's face, the faint light painting the
man's face with shadows. Mulder studied him, watching as the data on the
screen mesmerized the man. Gradually, McIntyre's eyes lost their focus, his
hand quit moving over the keyboard. Mulder was suddenly very afraid.

McIntyre had never struck until well past midnight. But he'd also never
held his victim hostage before. He had thrown McIntyre way off schedule.
Every assumption that he'd made about the routine of the killings was now
invalid. He couldn't wait for Scully to bail him out. Now was the time to
act, while McIntyre's attention was elsewhere. Before he got around to the
main event. He couldn't take the chance that help would arrive in time.

Using his legs to push himself, Mulder scooted back against the wall,
grateful that the deep pile of the carpet muffled the sound of his
movements. He sat up carefully and pulled his feet underneath his body.
With his back braced against the wall, he levered himself into an upright
position and stood.

But he hadn't counted on the way his hands cuffed behind him would throw
off his balance. Hadn't counted on the residual dizziness left over from
his injuries and the medication. He staggered against the sliding doors,
rattling the glass.

McIntyre's head jerked up and he glared at Mulder with eyes not entirely
rooted in the here-and-now.

Mulder shivered. The man who rose now, who walked across the room and
loomed over him, moved like someone caught up in a dream. Or a delusion,
listening to something no one else could hear.

"No. Not yet." Mulder shouted and tried to make a run for the door.

McIntyre's lips moved soundlessly. Light flooded the room from every
window, as if the sun had been rekindled just out his his room, bringing an
untimely return to midday.

Mulder threw himself at the door, unable to open it with his hands behind
his back, hoping desperately that someone would hear. "Help! Somebody open
this door." He flung a glimpse over his shoulder and flinched as he saw
McIntyre's hand grip the empty air, closing around some unseen tool.

McIntyre smiled, an expression of unbounded ecstasy, and slashed his hand
through the air in front of him.

Pain bloomed in Mulder's stomach, a soul-deep, white-hot burn that blotted
out the sound of his own scream. Blotted out the sound of a door thrown
open.

He heard the shouts. He heard the gun shots. But those sounds paled in
significance, dwarfed by the pain that swamped his senses.

Dimly aware of Scully's voice beside him, he opened his eyes to see her
kneeling beside him. He tried to talk, but the supernova in his gut robbed
him of all ability to communicate. Pain drew down the world and shoved him
into a black hole of oblivion.

********

The television blared an early-season ski report, but Mulder didn't
recognize the sound of the reporter's voice. And for some reason, the
report rattled off conditions on different mountains than last year. He
tried to think; there was something he needed to remember.

An abrasive voice cut through the haze, heralding the great deals available
at the nearest Colorado Ford dealer.

That's right. Colorado.

He pried his eyes open a crack. White walls bordered by chrome bed rails.
Turning his head to the other side, the metal rails framed a portrait.
Ivory chin tipped back, head resting against the back of the chair, red
hair spilled out across her shoulders.

Scully's gentle snores provided an organic counter rhythm to the electronic
beeps of the monitors, audible proof that they had both made it through to
the end of another case. But once more the end came bittersweet,
unsatisfying and unsettling. Once more haunted by the unanswered questions
and demons of the past.

His father's life remained an unmovable burden, dragging him down.
Demanding a price from the son that the father had been unwilling or unable
to pay. Maybe he'd been a fool to ever think he could escape that heritage.

A nurse entered the room, whistling tunelessly, carrying a small plastic
bag of IV medication. A smile tugged at her mouth as she glanced at Scully
sleeping in the chair. The smile broadened when she looked at her patient.

"Hey there, look who's awake," she whispered. "Let's see how you're doing."

She went through the routine of checking his vital signs. Since his active
participation didn't seem to be required, Mulder simply watched as she took
his blood pressure, checked his temperature, hung the new bag of meds. When
she drew back the covers, he saw the thick bandages around his abdomen.

"What?" His voice was scratchy, but she understood what he meant.

She flipped the sheets back into place with a practiced efficiency. "Just
checking the dressings on your incision."

Scully, who'd slept through the nurse's entrance, popped awake at the sound
of Mulder's voice.

"You had surgery to stop the bleeding." She answered his unspoken question.
She got up to stand beside the bed, waiting for the nurse to finish.
Reaching out, she ruffled his hair.

He lifted up the sheet to get another look. "Swastika repair?" He asked.

The nurse looked puzzled but Scully laughed. "Only a zigzag, this time.
Guess he didn't have time to finish."

He coughed, grimacing from the shot up from his stomach. "What stopped
him?" He was trying to piece together the last few minutes at the lodge.

Scully handed him a cup of ice. "A bullet through the brain."

He tipped some of soft ice into his mouth and sucked on it, relieving his
irritated throat. "The bullet. Yours?"

She nodded, her expression feral, protective. "Yes."

Closing his eyes, he drifted back to the fear of the night before. "I tried
to delay him. Kept him talking until you could get there. I got impatient
and tried to do something myself."

She patted his arm, letting her hand linger. "You did fine."

Pain washed over him, dull aches from his ear and hand outdone by the sharp
fire in his belly. "Not quite good enough." He looked up at her, waving his
bandaged hand over his bandaged head.

The nurse finished hanging the bag of antibiotics and emptied a syringe
into his IV port. "That should take the edge off the pain, Mr. Mulder."

After the nurse left, Scully pulled her chair closer to the bed. They sat
in silence for few minutes before she spoke again. "There was a glow in the
rock formations behind the lodge last night."

He grinned at her concession, that the glow was connected to the attack by
McIntyre. That McIntyre could be responsible for the in explicable deaths.
"Got you looking for lights in the sky, Scully."

She turned her head, but he caught a glimpse of her smile. "Purely a
scientific phenomena. There is a great deal of quartz in the local
mountains. When stressed, the quartz discharges electrical energy creating
a piezoelectric effect."

"Stress caused by the energy McIntyre employed. Like I said, lights in the sky."

She laughed, but he just smiled, suddenly too weary to keep up his side of
the conversation. He closed his eyes and sighed, glad just to have it over.
To be free of McIntyre and his warped relatives.

At that thought, he sapped his eyes open and tried to sit up. "Scully."

"Lie back down, Mulder." Hands on his shoulders, she pushed him back down
in the bed.

"Okay, okay." He complied, but grabbed her wrist as she moved to sit back
down. "I need you to do something for me. There's something you need to get
from McIntyre's house."

She let him hold on to her. "Sheriff Johnson and his men have already
searched the house. They found his journal, detailing the names of all the
men he thought needed to be killed."

He nodded. "Great. But there's two more things. A journal written in German
and a photograph album." He nestled back down into the pillows, exhausted.

She sat back down, her eyes never leaving his face. "Mulder, I'm sure he
would have told us if they'd found anything significant."

"He might not recognize how important this is," he protested.

"Look, I'll see what I can do." Her tone was even, conciliatory but not
patronizing. "I wanted to make sure you came through surgery all right.
Now--"

"I'm sorry." He raised his eyes to meet hers. "Thanks for looking out for me."

She smiled, but before she could say anything a wiry man in scrubs and a
lab coat swept into the room.

"Ah, Mr. Mulder. The nurse said you'd roused yourself. I'm Dr. Baker.
Stitched up that perforation in your liver." The surgeon took charge of the
moment. "Agent Scully, if you don't mind?"

Scully excused herself and left.

* * * * *

Distant pain from his abdomen worked its way up through his body, pushing
sleep out of its way. Mulder lay for a moment, trying to strike a balance
between the pain and awareness. A woman's voice, unmistakably Scully's,
chipped away at his self-absorbtion, giving him a focal point outside his
own misery.

He listened to her go over the details of the past couple of days, probably
giving her report to Skinner. Strange couple of days. She'd done all the
leg work, covered their ass with the local law enforcement, while he played
human lightning rod to the forces of evil.

Well, that was a little melodramatic, maybe he had done a little
crime-solving. He had made the connection between the lights and the
killings. And he had been the one to light on McIntyre as the culprit. But
that didn't negate the feeling of being a pawn in a game without rules.

"Yes, sir," he heard her say. "We had no proof of that. . . He did call as
soon as he had identified a suspect." She nodded her head crisply twice.
Mulder watched as the crease between her eyebrows deepened.

"I'm sure he would have withdrawn from the case if that were true." Her
lips pursed. "Yes, sir. I'll have him call you as soon as he's up to it."

She hung up the phone and reached for the magazine she'd abandoned. Page
after page, she flipped through the journal with such intensity, Mulder
almost expected the pages to rip off in her fingers.

He felt his own anger boil up. Skinner had no right to castigate either one
of them for the way this case had turned out.The AD had insisted they come
to the conference in the first place. Did he really think Mulder wanted to
end as someone's psychic punching bag?

The whole thing was out of his control. Cancerman pushed Skinner. Skinner
pushed Mulder. And Bill Mulder's past sealed his son's fate. When had he
ever had any choice in the matter? He groaned in frustration. Scully looked
up from the page she pretended to read.

"When, exactly, did I relinquish control of my life?" His question must
have caught her off guard. She stared, quietly, as he continued to rant.
"Every one jerks me around.  Cancerman, Skinner, the ghost of my father.
You ought to know. You're an expert at pulling my strings. Or maybe they
push you around just as much as they do me. Hell, I don't know."

He made a pretense of trying to shift into a more comfortable position,
embarassed over the ourburst. He looked up at Scully, expecting her to be
angry, but all he saw in her face was concern. He didn't know what to
expect anymore. All he knew was that he was tired of the fight and tired of
the lack on control. It wasn't too much to ask that he have some control
over his own life.

"When my father lay bleeding to death in my arms, do you know what he asked
me? His last words were, 'Forgive me.' He wanted forgiveness, but he wanted
something more. He wanted me to right his wrongs, to unearth the secrets he
was too cowardly to face.

"He wanted me to be his tool for justice." Scully leaned over and placed
her hand on his arm, but he jerked it away. "Would my death serve to atone
for his sins? Is that what it will take? If McIntyre had killed me for the
things my father did, what would it have changed?"

His eyes burned and he wiped a hand across them, smearing the salty tears
across his face. "I loved my father, Scully, but I can't live for him.
Maybe none of us can shake off our heritage. Are we so indelibly stained by
the past that we have no hope for self-identity, no hope for our own
present?"

She leaned forward, hands gripping the rails of his bed. "I don't know,
Mulder. What I do know is that we're all haunted by the ghosts of those we
loved. Somehow we find a way to live with them, not for them. We honor the
dead, not by giving our lives over to them, or devoting ourselves to
avenging them. We honor the dead by remembering them and going on."

He rested his good hand on hers and closed his eyes. Maybe some day he
could let go. Maybe some day he could let the dead bury the dead.


* * The End * *




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