Title: Any Means Necessary
Author: Ophelia






By midnight, Fox was wondering if it wasn't a mistake to come home.  He lay 
curled in his old, single bed, more depressed than ever.  Perhaps it was because 
he didn't have happy memories of this house.  He and his mother had come here 
after Samantha's disappearance, after the divorce.  Perhaps it was because he'd 
tried to geographically outrun his current misery, and it hadn't worked.  

Teena had tried to help.  She'd washed his sheets, saying she was sure they were 
too musty to sleep on.  Fox had to admit that the dryer warmth and smell of 
fabric softener was nice.  Still, the familiar surroundings seemed to provide 
more sorrow than comfort:  the heirloom clock ticking in the hall; the rustling 
of trees in the back yard; the sounds of his mother's cats pattering up and down 
the stairs; himself in bed, sleepless, lonely and close to tears. He'd spent so 
many nights like that in high school.  However, back in those days, when Fox got 
too unhappy at Teena's house he could go stay with his father for a few days.   
Now that was no longer an option.  He missed his father and sister terribly.  
However, he suspected that even if they'd been there he wouldn't have felt any 
better.

Finally he gave up on sleeping and pulled the blanket off the bed, then went 
downstairs to curl up on the couch.  About three years ago his mother had 
finally gotten a decent cable system.  Fox punched the channel changer on the 
remote repeatedly, and discovered how many varieties of nothing were on TV. 
Cubic zirconia jewelry on the Home Shopping Network, Sister Mary-Somebody 
teaching painting on the Catholic Education Channel, reruns of Senatorial 
speeches on C-Span.  Oh, joy.

 A light clicked on upstairs.  "Fox?" his mother called out.

 "Yeah," he said.  His voice sounded shaky and wretched, even to himself. Teena 
 came downstairs, belting on her bathrobe.  She sat next to him and rubbed his 
 back with her hand.  The touch was warm and gentle.

 "Please," she said, "please don't shut me out.  The not knowing is worse." Fox 
 knew that his father had kept her perpetually in the dark, and that it had hurt 
 her deeply.

 He turned and hugged her tight.  He told her, haltingly, leaving out the 
 goriest parts, but he told her enough.  They were both crying before he was 
 done.  Fox hadn't cried that hard in years, especially not in front of his 
 mother.  She rocked him, she called him all the stupid pet names she'd used 
 when he was little, and he sobbed until he gave himself hiccups.

 When he started to quiet down a little, Teena got up to get him some tissues 
 and a glass of water.  He blew his nose and curled up against her, resting his 
 cheek against the terrycloth shoulder of her robe.  Between exhaustion, codeine 
 and an excess of stress, Fox was feeling pretty stoned.  Once he stopped 
 crying, he stared glassy-eyed at the muted television, which displayed weather 
 patterns for the Eastern Seaboard.

 Teena continued to weep softly, occasionally blotting her eyes with a tissue. 
 "I'm so sorry," she told him.

 "What for?" he asked.  He was currently mesmerized by the blue blob of a 
 low-pressure front inching up from the Gulf Coast.

 "Your life's been so hard," she said.  "I feel responsible for that."

 He shrugged.  "You did the best you could," he said.

 "I should never have stayed with your father as long as I did . . ."

 He sat up a bit and turned to her.  "Mom, don't start that.  You thought you 
 were doing the right thing."

"It was the weak thing," she said.  "I don't know how I could have let it get so 
bad. . ."

Fox knew what she meant.  There had been some terrible nights.  "You loved him," 
Fox said.  No response.  "Didn't you?"

 "There was a time when I thought I did," she said.  "He was so enamored of his 
 principles, and I took that for goodness, for strength.  It never occurred to 
 me that he'd put those principles before people -- before his own family."

 Fox thought about this.  He had never seen his father in that way before.  "I 
 worshipped him, when I was small," he said, sadly.

"I know," she said.  "And he never had any time for you."

"That's not true," he said.  "We used to do stuff."

"According to his schedule and his convenience, not yours," she replied. 

"You know what his last words were to me?"  Fox asked, a little shakily.  "He 
said, 'Forgive me.'  I don't know if I can or should or even need to, but . . . 
I don't know.  He did try."

Teena pulled away from him.  "They took my little girl," she said, her voice 
rough with rage and grief.  

Fox kept his hand on her arm to calm her, to keep her close.  "They were 
supposed to take me," he said.  She looked over at him sharply.  "I've seen the 
file, Mom, they were supposed to take me.  I don't know why they took Samantha 
instead.  She was just little, and she was scared . . . I'd have gone with them, 
if they'd asked."

"I wouldn't have given up either of you," Teena said. 

She embraced him again, and Fox pressed his face against her shoulder and wept. 
These tears went very deep.  He drank in the feel of her touch, the sound of her 
voice, the unique smell of her. He'd already lost his father and sister. She was 
all he had.

Sheer exhaustion kept him from crying very long, but somehow the tears triggered 
a tremendous sense of relief.  He hadn't realized how afraid he'd been, for how 
long, that his mother would resent him because Samantha was taken and he was 
allowed to stay.  "Mama?" he asked.  Good God -- had he actually called her 
that?  He hadn't called her Mama since he was about five.

"What?" she asked, gently.  

"You know . . . you know the best memory I have of Dad?"

"What's that?"  She didn't seem mad at him for talking about good memories of 
his father.

"Remember when I hit that kid with the chair?  When they said I couldn't come 
back to school?"

 "Oh, God," she said, putting her hand to her forehead.  Eighth grade had been a 
 low point in Fox's life.  

"I remember how mad you guys were.  I remember how you and Dad were yelling at 
each other over the phone about whether you were able to 'handle' me.  When he 
said he was coming out here, I was terrified.  I thought he was going to beat 
the crap out of me."

"I wouldn't have let him," she said.  "Not in my house."

Fox shrugged, uncertain why the change in location would have made a difference.  
He didn't challenge her on it, though.  "When he finally got here, I was a 
nervous wreck.  But he didn't even scream at me.  I don't think he knew what to 
do with me.  We ended up doing that road trip thing kind of by default. We drove 
down to Georgia and explored some of the limestone caves there."

"I don't remember that part," Teena said.

"Yeah, I know," Fox admitted.  "I think officially we were fishing, or something 
like that.  We kind of figured you might not approve."

"I see," she said.  She did not look at all pleased.

Fox picked at the lint pills on his blanket as he explained, "A cave wall was 
something physical I could master.  I could look back at the way we climbed up 
and think,  'Hey, I did that.'  It was . . . I don't know.  When we were done I 
felt proud of myself, for the first time in a long time." 

"You might have been killed," Teena said.  Her tears were dried, now, and she 
looked angry.  

"But I wasn't," Fox pointed out.  "In his own way, Dad was trying to do me a 
favor.  That experience did teach me to think on my feet."  Fox would have been 
the first to admit that Bill Mulder was not father-of-the-year material. 
However, he had found a way to reach his son at a critical time, when no one 
else could, and he was grateful for that.

"Hmm," was all Teena said.  Fox knew he wasn't going to get any further comment 
from her on the subject.

Before long, he was close to dropping off to sleep.  Hearing him yawn, Teena 
pulled back from him and said, "You should get up to bed."

Fox shook his head and said, "I think I'll sleep here." The old bedroom upstairs 
was too depressing.

"Are you sure?" she asked, looking worried.

"Yeah," he said, and to his relief she didn't press him.  She kissed him on the 
forehead, then got up and walked over to the television.  She was about to turn 
it off when Fox said, "Don't.  I like it on."

"I don't see how you can sleep that way," she said.

"I like it," he repeated.  

"All right," she said, and left the TV alone.  He got himself settled as she 
went back upstairs.  He watched the blue low-pressure zone scoot across the TV 
screen until he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer.

Fox was not much happier on the following day, but he could tell that his 
behavior was getting closer to his version of normal.  Instead of following his 
mother wherever she went, he rummaged around in the attic, and when he got tired 
of that, he tormented the cats.  He'd found an old Slinky in a box, and was 
currently dangling it just above Twinkles' head.  Her shiny yellow eyes followed 
every movement the Slinky made, but every time she jumped for it, the spring 
would bounce out of reach.  just as the cat made a particularly heroic leap that 
caused her to smack her head into the wall, Mulder heard a familiar, piercing 
ring.  Someone was calling him on his cell phone.  He patted his pockets 
reflexively, but it wasn't in any of them.  Where had he put the thing?  He got 
off the attic steps and followed the ringing into his bedroom.  He found the 
phone on a chair, under his clothes.

He fished it out and punched the speaker button.  "Mulder," he said.

"I knew you couldn't have left it at home," came Scully's voice.  "You'd have 
gone into withdrawal."

"Cell phone detox is ugly," Mulder replied.  "They have to shut you in a locked 
room and watch you 24-7.  Some people go nuts.  Ever see a man talking to his 
calculator?  It's sad."

"You're sounding better," she said.

"Am I?"

"I think so.  Don't you feel any better?"

"Not really."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.  "Would you rather that I called back 
later?"

"No," Mulder said.  "What's going on?"

"I got hold of the on-call homicide detective in Berlin," she said, "and I asked 
him to check out any activity on Moernicke's credit cards.  He did, and he 
didn't find any, at least not after the day Moernicke was found dead."

"Damn it," Mulder said.  "That was the one real lead we had."

"Well, then I started wondering why Knowlton was in Cincinnati on Monday night 
anyway.  I called the police department there and asked if there had been any 
recent missing person reports.  There were three in the last week -- a teenager, 
an elderly Alzheimer's patient and a 50-year-old man named Robert Packard.  His 
ex-wife reported him missing on Friday, but no one had seen him for days before 
that."

"Since Monday?" Mulder asked, hopeful.

"The ex-wife said that Packard had an appointment with his lawyer on Tuesday, 
but that he was a no-show.  She wasn't certain of the last time anyone saw him."

"What did Packard do for a living?" Mulder asked.

"Apparently, he was an 'independent financier,' whatever that means.  When I 
hear that I think, 'drug lord,'" Scully said.

"Knowlton's last hit," Mulder said.  "Anybody run a check on Packard's credit 
cards?"

"They did when I asked them to.  The Cincinnati PD called back a few minutes ago 
and said that Robert Packard bought a plane ticket to Berlin, via New York, on 
the morning of the 9th.  There have been some other charges since then, mostly 
to hotels."  She hesitated a moment, and he guessed that she wasn't sure she 
wanted to tell him the rest.

"What?" he asked.

"The last hotel bill was charged yesterday, when someone calling himself Packard 
checked out of the Watergate in Washington, D.C."

"Shit," he said.  "Could you ask Cincinnati to call the credit card company, and 
have them monitor any calls about Packard's account?  If I were Knowlton, I'd 
want to check up periodically to see if the cards had been reported stolen. When 
they are, we may be able to pick him up as Moernicke."

"All right, I can do that," she said. 

"Thank you," Mulder said.  "If you can get me the exact time of the transaction 
at the Watergate, I can call them and ask to see their security cam footage from 
around then.  Thanks, Scully.  It's terrific of you to do all this work over the 
weekend.  You're the best."

"Can I quote you?" she asked.

"Hey, if you want the public endorsement of the least-wanted agent in the 
Bureau, then you've got it," he said.

"How are you?" she asked, more seriously.

"Well, I get to mentally abuse Twinkles the cat, so life isn't all bad," he 
said.

"Why are you mentally abusing Twinkles the cat?"

"Because Twinkles is a fuzzy, four-footed waste of oxygen," Mulder said.  Like 
his father, Fox officially detested all of his mother's cats, although for both 
men, the antipathy was mostly talk.  

"Twinkles," he called out invitingly, and began to bounce the Slinky again. 
Twinkles, who had not learned her lesson the last time, crept to the corner of 
the doorway and stared at the spring, fascinated.

"What are you doing?" Scully asked.  The characteristic "slink-slink" noise 
probably sounded bizarre over the phone.

"It involves a Slinky," was all Mulder would say.

"Never mind. I don't want to hear about it," she said.  "You take care of 
yourself."

"You, too."

"Talk to you later."

"'Bye."

Mulder hung up, then continued to frustrate Twinkles with the Slinky for a 
while.  When he thought about it, he decided Scully was right.  He was doing a 
little better. 

Watergate Hotel Washington, D.C. Monday Afternoon

Mulder was wearing a suit for the first time in days. He found that he hadn't 
missed the experience much.  Still, he was asking a favor from the Watergate 
staff, and he needed to look as professional as possible.   A little polite 
badge flashing had gotten Doug Simons, the "Security and Loss Prevention chief 
of Staff" to allow him to look at the security cam footage from Saturday. Simons 
seemed to be a nice guy, but Mulder couldn't help feeling amused that anywhere 
but the Watergate, Simons would have been a "hotel detective."  He supposed that 
the janitors were "Waste Management Engineers" around here, too.

There were other fine hotels in D.C., and some were less expensive, but none 
carried quite the aura of power that the Watergate did.  The Watergate was where 
diplomats gave parties for foreign ambassadors, where senators' children held 
their wedding receptions.   Staying at such a place on a stolen charge card was 
a glorious "fuck you" to the world of wealth and political might. Mulder made a 
mental note that Knowlton probably came from an obscure and struggling family.

Currently, Mulder sat in an empty conference room where a TV and VCR had already 
been set up.  Simons had gone to find the correct tape.  Packard's charge card 
record showed a transaction to the Watergate at 11:06 a.m. on the 14th.  Mulder 
thought that if Packard turned out to be alive after all and was just toodling 
around the world's airports and hotels to avoid his ex-wife, he was going to 
have to kill him. 

Simons came back into the room holding a tape.  He was a tall man with silvered 
hair and a well-tailored suit, indistinguishable from most of the Watergate's 
patrons.  "Good thing we didn't let Maria tape her soap operas over this," 
Simons joked.

"I have to admit, that would have been disappointing," Mulder said.  

"What time were you looking for?" Simons asked, sticking the tape into the VCR.

"Start it at eleven o'clock," Mulder said.

"You got it," said Simons.  An image of the front desk area appeared on the 
screen.  There was the gleaming tile floor, the tastefully subdued wall art, the 
bored-looking desk clerk.  A white digital readout in the bottom corner 
displayed the time in military format.  After some dickering with the 
fast-forward, Simons got the tape to 10:99:74.  Then he hit "play" and the 
hundredths of a second sped forward.  The Watergate had a nice security camera 
system.  Unlike some footage Mulder had seen, this was in color, with sound, and 
mostly in focus.  

Unfortunately, nothing interesting was happening.  At 11:03:42 the desk clerk 
answered the phone, said something about housekeeping, hit a button, and hung 
up.  Then she went back to looking bored.  

"I'll have to tell Shawna to work up a song and dance routine," said Simons.

"A strip tease," Mulder answered.  Simons burst out laughing.  Shawna was only 
reasonably cute.  Mulder had made the comment because he guessed that Simons 
would be amused and begin to feel comfortable around him.

They watched Shawna be bored for another couple minutes, while Mulder got Simons 
to talk about the hotel's security policies and the placement of the lobby's 
video camera.   At 11:05:77 the image on the TV screen dissolved into static.

"Hey," said Simons.  He leaned over and smacked the side of the TV.

"Does that happen often?" Mulder asked.

"No," Simons said, "we keep those things in good repair."  He sounded irritated 
and a little embarrassed.  He got up as if to fiddle with the television's 
controls but Mulder waved him back to his seat, saying, "No, don't."

Simons gave Mulder a curious glance but sat back down.  The static lasted only a 
few moments, and then the screen went black.  Only the green light on the VCR 
indicated that it was playing at all.  Suddenly, the image returned.  The clock 
in the corner read 00:00:00.  "There -- he shut it off," Mulder said, pointing 
at the re-set time.  A man stood at the desk, perhaps thirty feet away, with his 
back facing the camera.  The picture clarity still wasn't good, but Mulder could 
make out a man of medium height and build, with short, dark hair, wearing slacks 
and blue shirtsleeves.  A small traveling case sat next to him on the floor.  He 
might have been almost anybody: a business traveler; a politician in after a 
long flight, even a member of the press.  

The one thing he wasn't was Robert Packard.  Packard's ex-wife had described him 
as being about 5' 8" and weighing nearly 250 pounds.  "That's our guy, it's got 
to be," Mulder said.  The man at the desk stood waiting for about 30 seconds -- 
approximately the time it would take for a credit card number to be approved -- 
and then the picture went out again.  

Mulder asked, "Has anybody spoken to Shawna?  What about the person who checked 
him in on Friday?  Do they remember anything?"



It turned out to be Shawna's day off, but Simons got Mulder her number.  She was 
clearly less than happy about being called at home, and insisted that she 
recalled nothing at all about Saturday morning except that a woman tried to 
check in while leading "three wiener dogs on a leash."  The best Mulder could do 
was get her to agree to look at the tape when she came into work tomorrow. The 
man calling himself Robert Packard had checked in at 4:20 p.m. on Friday, but 
the lobby videotape taken at that time showed only static, and the afternoon 
desk clerk likewise remembered nothing.  

Simons agreed to let him take the original videotape from Saturday morning, 
promising to send him back a copy.  Mulder thanked him profusely, both for the 
tape and for allowing him to take up more than two hours of his time.  It 
occurred to him as he left that almost everyone he'd dealt with in this 
investigation had been cooperative.  That was unusual.  Suspicious, even.  He 
wondered if that was what happened when They decided they were on your side.

Paranoid musings notwithstanding, Mulder found himself feeling pretty good as he 
pulled out of the Watergate's parking lot.  He had something physical -- a 
picture taken with electronic equipment.  Knowlton's powers didn't make him 
invincible after all. 



Mulder's next stop was the offices of the Lone Gunmen.  After some debate, he'd 
decided to ask them to enhance the video image, instead of the agents at the FBI 
lab.  The Gunmen worked faster than the lab techs did, and they asked fewer 
questions.  The problem was that Frohike and the boys were more likely to get 
distracted and erase something.  Mulder figured that he'd ask them to copy the 
tape first, and if they screwed that up, then he'd kill them.  

Frohike opened the door before Mulder ever knocked.  He had some kind of bizarre 
helmet on his head, complete with wires and an opaque visor.

"Oh, my God," Mulder said.

"I feel the Force!" Frohike announced.

"I hope that's all you've been feeling," Mulder said.

"This visor gauges the tension in my eye muscles, allowing me to pick options 
from a list on its palm-sized screen merely by gazing at them for a certain 
length of time.  Without moving from my chair, I can read e-mail, turn up my 
stereo, or access the video feed from the camera monitoring the hallway.  I *am* 
my environment!"

"I am very, very scared," Mulder replied.  As he slipped past Frohike into the 
darkened entranceway he added, "I notice you still have to get up to open the 
door."

"Rome was not built in a day," Frohike responded, sounding a little hurt.

Langly got up from one of the front room's computer terminals and asked, "What 
can we do to help defend the cause of Truth today?"  He might have been either 
serious or sarcastic.  It was hard to tell with Langly.

"This one's easy," Mulder said, holding up the videotape.  "I just need to you 
enhance some video frames."

"Isn't that the sort of thing your people at the FBI usually do?" Frohike asked, 
flipping up his visor.  He seemed a bit testy, probably at having his new gadget 
mocked.

"You guys are better," Mulder said, trying to smooth his feathers.  Besides, in 
some ways it was true.  He had reasons for giving the tape to the Gunmen rather 
than the lab. 

"We have to be in order to stay alive," Langly responded.

It occurred to Mulder that they might also stay alive by being completely inept 
and harmless to the forces they claimed to fight, but he didn't say so.  After 
all, the Gunmen were basically good guys.  It didn't take Langly long to find 
and enhance the image of the man at the Watergate desk.  After he did so Byers 
leaned in and pointed at the screen.

"Have you got some scale here?" he asked.  "How tall is this desk?"

Mulder thought about it.  "I think it hit me about here," he said, resting his 
hand at the base of his ribcage.

"Looks like it hits him higher.  He's a couple inches shorter than you," Byers 
said.

"So we've got height: about 5' 10", medium build, straight brown hair cut short 
at the back of the neck . . ." Mulder began.

"It's thinning a little on top," Langly observed, selecting the portion of the 
screen around Knowlton's head and enlarging it.  The resolution was not 
spectacular, but when Langly pointed, Mulder thought he could see a light patch 
on the crown of the man's head.

"Any distinguishing marks?  Moles, scars, anything?" Mulder asked.  His hopes of 
getting such detail out of the grainy video weren't high, but perhaps the others 
could spot something.

"You really can't see much skin," Langly said, "just the back of his neck. Even 
his hands are in front of his body."

"Go through the frames and see if he turns at all," Mulder said.  Langly shrank 
the image to a thumbnail and proceeded to flip through the video frame by frame.  
After a few seconds he enlarged the image again.

"What's that there?" Langly asked, pointing to one side of the screen.  Mulder 
thought Knowlton had turned slightly to the left.  He stared hard at the image, 
but was unable to glimpse even the side of the man's face.

Mulder shook his head.  "Still no good," he said.

"No, I mean *that,*" Langly said, tapping the image of a vase of flowers on the 
reception desk. 

"Is that a reflection?"

"Hard to tell," Frohike said, "it's not a good one."  

"Can you enlarge it and sharpen it?" Mulder asked.

"Not at the same time," Langly answered.  "Actually, let me try shrinking it." 
He downsized the image and the focus got a little clearer.  The black enamel 
vase resting on the desk *did* cast a faint reflection of the man's face. "Well, 
you won't get a police sketch out of it," Langly said, "but I think that dark 
patch there might be a mustache."

"It could be an anomaly caused by a flaw in the vase's surface," Byers pointed 
out.

"It kind of looks like he's eating a mouse," Frohike said.

"Shut up," said the other two Gunmen.  

"Okay, great," Mulder interrupted, before the debate went any further.  "We've 
got a possible distinguishing characteristic.  That's better than we had 
before."

"What is this man wanted for, anyway?" asked Byers.

"He's a killer," Mulder said.  He sensed the others looking at him, but he kept 
his gaze fixed the screen.  "A killer and a rapist."

"Are you worried about Agent Scully?" asked Frohike.  Fox glanced sharply over 
at him, but Frohike seemed truly concerned and to intend no more than he said. 



"Yeah," Fox said, looking away.  Actually, it was true.  Knowlton had walked 
straight through Scully's hotel room in Cincinnati.  It was clear that he 
*could* hurt her, if he chose.  "Yeah, I'm worried."

"We'll do anything we can to help," Frohike said.  The other Gunmen nodded their 
assent.  

Mulder flashed them a grateful smile, but he couldn't help wondering what they 
would have said if they knew Mulder himself had been raped.  He didn't bring it 
up.  "Thanks," was all he said.



Exhausted and sore, Mulder reached his apartment building at about 6:30 in the 
evening.  He checked his mail and found ads, bills and a copy of "Babewatch!" 
magazine, which was labeled, "This may be your last issue!"   It always came 
labeled that way, so he wasn't terribly concerned.  He tucked the whole stack 
under his arm and punched the button for the elevator.  Normally, he took the 
stairs, but he didn't have that kind of energy today.  

When he exited on his floor he saw a yellow Post-It Note stuck to his doorknob. 
He figured it was from his landlord, who would be pissed that Mulder had removed 
and tinkered with the lock core.  He contemplated the wisdom of ignoring it.  In 
the end he decided that it was better to get it over with, and tugged the note 
off of the knob.  When he unfolded it he saw one word written across the paper:

"Cute."  He did not recognize the handwriting.

Mulder backed off --  one step, two.  "Cute" doubtless referred to his abortive 
boobytrap.  His *electrical* boobytrap.  Shit -- he'd managed to make it easier 
for Knowlton to get into his apartment.  

Fox was armed; he had a little, snub-nosed .38 clipped to the waist of his 
pants.  Unlike his regulation 9 mm, he didn't have to account for every shot the 
.38 fired.  He drew it and reached toward the knob, then stopped.  

Was there current running through it?  He'd unplugged the trap days ago, but 
what would keep Knowlton from plugging it back in?  He ordered himself to stay 
calm.  Perhaps Knowlton hadn't even been here.  Perhaps "cute" referred to . . . 
well, he'd heard enough women say things like "cute ass" that the comment no 
longer made him blush.  Still, most women told him what they thought of him in 
person.  He'd never yet known one to stick a note on his apartment door.  

Okay, all right.  How do you test if your doorknob is electrified?  He glanced 
up and down the hall -- no observers, as usual.  He spat on the knob.  No 
sparks.  Gingerly, as if testing a hot frying pan, he tapped his forefinger 
against the knob.  Nothing.  Mulder gripped the knob and turned.  The door moved 
effortlessly; it was unlocked.  He *never* left his door unlocked.  

He turned the gun's muzzle down and away from his body, then kicked the door 
open.  Inside, all was quiet.  His heart beat hard for perhaps a count of five. 
He entered the front room fast, flipping the entrance light switch with his 
elbow.  "I'm armed!"  He snapped at anyone who was listening.  

There was no one there.  

He stood in his entranceway a long time, breathing hard.  He sensed no movement 
inside.  He walked to the kitchen, hit the switch with his elbow there, too, and 
found nothing unusual.  He stalked back to his bathroom and bedroom, which 
looked just as he left them.

Fox checked under his bed and in his closet, things he hadn't done since his 
young boyhood.  Finding nothing, he sat down on his mattress.  He was alone in 
his apartment.  Because Knowlton chose to let him alone.  

When he finally felt comfortable putting his gun down, he wrapped his arms 
around his ribcage.  His whole body was shaking.  "I can't live like this," he 
thought.  

The attacks on Christopher Harwood had taken place over a year and a half, with 
months passing between each assault.  However, Knowlton had been employed by the 
Syndicate at the time.  Now he was free to go wherever, and do whatever, he 
chose.

Fox got up and quickly stripped off his suit, then pulled on some comfortable 
jeans and a T-shirt.  he would have liked to have taken a shower, but he'd seen 
"Psycho" way too many times.  He threw some essentials in a bag, fed the fish, 
and got the hell out.  

At least Knowlton hadn't killed his fish, he thought, as he headed down the 
stairs.  Then it occurred to him that he'd probably seen "Fatal Attraction" too 
many times, too.  He got into the car without knowing where he was going. After 
what had happened, he was not going to feel safe in a hotel.  He hated to impose 
on Scully further, when she'd already gone above and beyond the call of duty for 
him.  He supposed he could crash on the Gunmen's floor, but they'd ask 
questions.  That plan also involved spending the night with the Gunmen.  He 
scratched that idea.  In the end, he got on the freeway to Annapolis.  





To his relief, Scully seemed glad to see him.  He supposed that having a couple 
days away from him had helped.  That was the way to use a support system, he 
thought -- annoy different people at different times.

She took him in; she fed him spaghetti; she left him alone while he sat at the 
kitchen table, drafting sketches of the Watergate's lobby.  When he was done he 
had a reasonably recognizable floor plan with a wide circle superimposed in it. 
He sat back in his chair and Scully came over.

"What's that?" she asked.

"I'm trying to gauge the radius of Knowlton's power over electricity," he said, 
lifting a hand to rub his tired eyes.  "This is the front desk of the Watergate 
Hotel.  This is the security cam by the door, which is about thirty feet away. 
The videotape came up blank until the moment the clerk ran Knowlton's charge 
card, then we got about a half-minute of footage.  That says to me that Knowlton 
can't direct his power with precision, and that it's effective up to at least 
ten yards."

She nodded.  "What are you going to do with this information?"

"I don't know," he said.  He sighed and leaned forward to rest his head on his 
folded arms.  There was only so much data gathering and preparation he could do.  
The bottom line was that he was going to have to contact Knowlton, to try and 
catch the hunter before the hunter caught him.  And he was going to have to do 
it soon.  The thought made him feel frightened and desperate.  

Scully laid her hand on the back of his neck.  "Are you feeling all right?" she 
asked.  "You're a little warm."

"I'm still on antibiotics," he said.

"Which won't protect you from viruses," Scully pointed out.  "Let me take your 
temperature."   

"Don't do that," he protested, although the objection sounded unreasonable even 
to himself.   It would cost him nothing to sit for three minutes with a glass 
tube in his mouth, but somehow the suggestion bothered him.  He suspected that 
he'd used up his allotment of sanity for the day.  Actually, he felt like 
gearing up for a good bout of hysteria.  He thought that he should've stayed at 
his mother's.  At least she had a lot of experience with him acting like a 
child.  

Scully came back, shaking down her thermometer.  He made himself accept it from 
her and stuck it in his mouth, then moved to curl up on the couch.   When he 
closed his eyes for a moment the world seemed to swim.  How much sleep had he 
gotten last night?  He'd been up and restless until about two, then he'd 
awakened at seven to catch his flight home.  His mother had wanted him to stay, 
but he'd begun to find the Greenwich house confining.  Actually, he suspected he 
wouldn't be happy no matter where he went.  What was that line from Milton -- 
"Where I fly, myself am hell."

The next thing he knew Scully was taking the thermometer out of his mouth. 
"100.5," she said.  "You've gone and made yourself sick, all right."

"Not on purpose," he said.  "I'm doing the best I can."  He'd worked so hard, 
and he'd felt as though he were gaining control.  The little Post-It Note on his 
doorknob had destroyed that false sense of security.  Now he felt just as 
helpless as before, but far more tired.  He began to wonder if Knowlton would 
run him to ground, after all.

"Of course you're doing your best.  You always do.  You're very brave," she 
said.

"No I'm not.  I'm scared shitless," he replied.

"Mulder, I want you to take some of your Tylenol," she said.  

Fox didn't like being prodded.  He thought about refusing on principle, but it 
was true that he was sore and overdue for his pain meds.  He finally grunted an 
assent and rummaged through his bag until he came up with the correct medicine 
bottle.  

 She brought him a huge glass of water and said, "I want you to drink all of 
 this."

He glared at her.  He was trying to be sensible against his natural instincts. 
She was pushing it with the mothering routine.  "If I drink all of that, I will 
have to pee every five minutes during the night."  He told her.

"Fine," she said.  "Don't drink it.  If you'd rather stay sick, then go ahead."

"God dammit," he said, but couldn't think of anything good to come after it. One 
of the few things more annoying than having Scully boss him around was having 
her boss him around and be right.  He tossed back the Tylenol, then discovered 
that he was more thirsty than he'd thought.  He managed to put back most of the 
water before he set the glass down on the coffee table.

"You want to go to sleep right there, or do you want to take a cool shower 
first?" she asked.  "That would help bring your temperature down and might it 
make you feel better."

"I don't want to do either," he said.  

"Well, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know."  He was exhausted, frightened and in pain, and clearly was not 
going to be rational for the rest of the night.  He hoped Scully wouldn't end up 
strangling him.

"Why didn't you stay at your mother's, again?" she asked.

"Because I started to drive her nuts.  I got bored and cleaned out her kitchen 
cupboards.  I threw away stuff like her lemon peel extract, which she swore she 
really was going to find a use for, sooner or later."  Actually, Mrs. Mulder 
would have been happy to have him stay, even after he threw out her lemon peel 
extract.  But he sensed that his jumpiness was making her jumpy, and the last 
thing he needed was for both of them to be insane.  

"I see," Scully said.  "Well, whatever you're going to do, do it quietly, 
because I don't want to have to listen to you complain about every suggestion I 
make."

"Okay, fine," Fox said.  She was right to be firm with him, he thought.  She was 
right to set limits so that he didn't annoy the hell out of her.  He'd told her 
he wanted that.  Of course, now he felt wretched and unloved.  

She stood looking at him with her hands on her hips, as if wondering what to do.  
"You're really on the edge, aren't you?" she asked.  Her tone was more kindly, 
this time.

"Yeah," he said, very soft.

"When do you go see your psychiatrist?"

"Tomorrow morning," he said.

"Are you going to take what he prescribes?"

"She," he corrected.  "Yes."

"Good."  The silence stretched on for a few seconds.  "Do you think you can 
sleep?" she asked.

He shook his head.  He was torn between the desire to start throwing stuff 
around and the desire to burst into tears.  If he'd been home alone he would 
probably have done both, but he couldn't do that here.  If he really lost it 
Scully would call the Nice Young Men in the Clean White Coats.  He didn't know 
what to do.  All his options seemed equally bad.

She grabbed his wrist with both her hands and pulled him to his feet.  "Where am 
I going?" he asked, as she led him down the hall.

"I'm sticking you in the shower," she said.

Fox tried to think of a lewd comment to make, but couldn't come up with anything 
good.  That alone was enough to convince him that he was really losing it.  Dana 
parked him on the bathroom mat, then started the fan and turned on the shower 
taps.  

Fox worked his feet out of his shoes and tugged off his socks.  The air felt 
wonderfully cool against his toes, another sign that he was running a fever. 
When he pulled his shirt off over his head the chills started.  "Crap," he said, 
and hugged the shirt against himself.

Dana turned toward him.  Her expression was one of deep compassion.  He was glad 
she wasn't feeling frustrated with him anymore.  "God, you look miserable," she 
said.

"I am extremely miserable," he said.  

"Let me leave you alone," she said.  Apparently she'd interpreted his clinging 
to his shirt as a gesture of modesty.  Modesty was not a quality Mulder 
possessed a great deal of, but at the moment he appreciated the consideration.

"'S'allright," he said.  "Just gimme a second."  She turned away until he was in 
the shower with the curtain closed, but she didn't leave him, bless her.

As soon as the shower spray hit him he started shivering.  "Holy Christ," he 
said.

"That's about normal body temperature," she told him.  "You need to stay in 
there until it no longer feels cold." 

"It makes my skin ache," he said.  He wrapped his arms tight around his ribcage.  


"I know," she said gently.  "The Tylenol should start kicking in pretty soon."

He found that Scully did not have a washcloth and a bar of soap, like normal 
people.  She had a plastic squeeze-bottle labeled "Raspberry Body Gel" and a 
bizarre, nylon-mesh scrubby-thing that reminded him of what his mother used to 
wash the dishes in the Mulders' summer home.  He removed the scrubby-thing from 
the shower's towel bar.

"Why do you have a plastic tribble?" he asked her, between chattering teeth.

"A what?" she asked.  He held the scrubby outside the curtain so she could see.

"That's not a tribble," she told him.  "It's an exfoliant."

"Like Agent Orange?" he asked.

"Not really."

He squeezed some body gel onto the tribble and quickly washed himself.  Scully 
had weird shampoo, too, in a tiny bottle with kangaroos all over it.  It looked 
expensive.  "You want me to use this shampoo?" he asked.

"Go for it," she said. 

By the time he got out of the shower, the water no longer seemed so cold.  

Once he was settled beneath blankets on the couch, she ran her hand over his 
forehead and said, "Feels like your temperature's getting back to normal."  

"At least something about me is normal."  He caught her hand in both of his 
before she could move it, then pressed the knuckles against his cheek.  Fox shut 
his eyes and said, "Thank you, Scully.  I don't know why you're so good to me."

"You're a good person," she responded.  "You deserve to have people be good to 
you."  Fox's breaths came hard for a few moments.  He was uncertain if he were 
going to cry.  

Dana used her free hand to stroke his hair out of his face. 

"Stay with me," he asked, suddenly.

"I live here," she pointed out.  "Where would I go?"

"I dunno," he said.

"Go to sleep," she said.  "Go to sleep."  The last thing Fox was aware of before 
he dropped off was Dana placing his hand on his chest and kissing him lightly on 
the forehead.



At nine a.m. the next morning Fox was in the waiting room of Dr. Hana Najar, 
filling out an enormous intake form which contained questions about everything 
from his bowel habits to the names of his grandparents.   When he came to the 
part about listing all hospitalizations in the last five years he groaned.  The 
form only gave three lines and there wasn't enough room to write them all.  He 
had to use the back.

Dr. Najar turned out to be a petite Indian woman who asked him even more 
questions.  He was pretty honest with her, explaining that he'd been referred by 
Heintz Werber because of depression and suicidal thoughts.  He mentioned the 
rape but not the part about the Shadowy Syndicate.  Then again, she didn't ask. 
She made out prescriptions for Zoloft and Xanax and then proceeded to give him 
the side Effects Speech: do not drink alcohol, take all your medication as 
directed, do not pass "Go" do not collect 200 dollars, etc. etc.  During his 
psyche internship Mulder had heard the same speech made to patients too many 
times to count.  

After he was through seeing Najar he went straight to the pharmacy, to make sure 
he didn't get cold feet and pitch the scripts into the trash.  He'd come 
perilously close to losing it last night, and he couldn't afford to lose it. If 
anything, he needed to be sharper than ever.  Zoloft was supposed to start 
working within days of the first dose, so with any luck he'd soon be suffering 
fewer crying spells.  The Xanax worked immediately, but Dr. Najar had warned him 
it would probably make him sleepy until his body adjusted to it.  For this 
reason, he didn't quite dare take it now.  It occurred to him that if you were 
too afraid to take your anti-anxiety medicine, you were probably screwed.  

He went back to Scully's place after that.  She was at work, but she said it was 
fine with her if he let himself in.  He filled up a glass with water and then 
opened the bottle of his anti-depressants.  He set one of the pills down on the 
kitchen table and looked at it.  It was an innocuous-looking yellow tablet.  it 
represented a lot of painful things -- an admission of being ill, a kind of 
psychic defeat.  He recalled a quote from the Bible: "If it is Your will, let 
this cup pass from my lips."  However, Mulder failed to receive any signs from 
above.  

He stuck the pill in his mouth, took a sip of water, and swallowed it.  

Well.  He'd crossed a line.  

It had been the intelligent thing, the responsible thing to do.  Scully would be 
proud of him.  He still felt a sense of shame and loss.  

Now what?  He ought to call X, to make arrangements for a sting on Knowlton. He 
had as good an idea of Knowlton's location, powers and intentions as he was 
going to get.   Waiting around longer would only result in someone else -- or 
maybe himself -- getting raped or killed.  He pulled his cell phone out of his 
pocket and looked at it.  He did not want to have to do this.   He wanted 
somebody else to take care of Knowlton.  That's what the police were for, wasn't 
it?  To protect and serve, and all that?  Of course, the police weren't going to 
catch him.   The Consortium would have turned to anyone else but Fox Mulder for 
help, if they could.  The fact that they'd chosen him showed that he was their 
only realistic hope of getting Knowlton off the street.  "I'm the champion of 
the Shadowy Syndicate," Mulder thought.  "Just what I always wanted."

He'd lost the piece of paper with X's phone number on it, but unfortunately he 
couldn't use that as an excuse.  He remembered the number perfectly well.  He 
took a deep breath, released it, and dialed.  The phone rang and rang.  Mulder 
wondered what X could be doing.  He realized that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen 
the informant during the day.  He thought maybe he slept in a coffin.  

Suddenly, the phone picked up.  "What?" demanded X.

"You really have to work on your customer service skills," Mulder told him.  It 
was surprisingly easy to fall into his usual, sarcastic manner.

"What do you want, Agent Mulder?"  X said.

"I have a picture of your 'Invisible Man,'" Mulder said.  To Mulder's 
satisfaction that shut X up for a moment.

"Are you sure?" X asked.

"The guy on my video was in the right place at the right time, and he matches 
what little description I've got of Knowlton," Mulder said.

"I'd like to arrange to get a copy from you," X said.

"Sure, no problem, "Mulder replied, "but there's something else.  He's in the 
D.C. area, or was as of last night.  I got a note on my door that I'm pretty 
sure is from him.  He's clearly interested in running into me again.  I think we 
can use that to our advantage."

"You want to set a trap," said X.

"That's the idea."

"How are you going to go about doing this?" X asked.

"I hope I can get him to answer either Packard's or Moernicke's cell phones.  I 
wanted to ask Skinner if I could have the help of some of the FBI tech support 
people.  They might be able to use the connection to track him down."

"That won't work," X said.  "Not with a cell phone."

"I know we can only track him as far as the closest cell site, but come on, how 
many cell sites are there in Washington?  There's got to be one every few 
blocks," Mulder said.  He knew that X was probably right to have dim hopes for 
the plan of tracking Knowlton, but the thought of pinpointing his location and 
just sending the cops to go get him was so attractive.  "Even if we can't catch 
him the easy way," Mulder said, "we can at least get a voice imprint from the 
phone conversation.  Maybe there will be useful background noises to analyze, or 
something."

"Maybe," X conceded.  "And if this brilliant scheme doesn't work?"

"Then I'll agree to meet with him.  If I can lure him into the open, we can grab 
him."

"Very well," said X.  "When are you planning on contacting him?"

"I was thinking this evening," Mulder said.  He couldn't quite keep from 
sounding unhappy.  "The longer I wait, the more likely he is to discard one or 
both stolen phones and then he'll be unreachable."

"I take it that it's my job to arrange protection for you, if this meeting with 
Knowlton goes forward?" X asked.

"That was my understanding of the agreement, yes," Mulder said.

"And who will coordinate the efforts of my organization and the FBI?" X asked.

"I think I can work something out with Skinner," Mulder said.  "If not . . . 
well, I've got backup technical people I can use."

"Your Lone Gunmen friends," X said.  "I wouldn't trust them to find their own 
behinds in a locked closet with a compass."

"That's . . . a really disturbing mental image.  Let's not go there."

"All right, let's not.  When can you get me the pictures of Knowlton?"

"Can you be in the Hoover Building parking garage by five?" Mulder asked.

"Of course."

"I'll see you there, then.  It's a date."

Dead silence for a second, then X said, "You disgust me," and hung up.  Mulder 
couldn't help feeling a little pleased at being able to get the man's goat.  

He glanced over at the clock.  It was a quarter past eleven.  He would have to 
call Skinner and get an appointment, go home, put on something more presentable 
than the jeans and T-shirt he'd worn yesterday . . . the thought made him very 
tired.

His head and his eyes ached, and he suspected his temperature was going up 
again.  He really wanted to take a nap.  Actually, if he could have had anything 
he wanted, he would have asked for a beautiful woman to come in, rub the sore 
spots out of his back, give him a really good screw and let him curl up against 
her as he fell asleep.  

Well, that's what he would usually want.  He wondered if he would ever be able 
to go to bed with anyone again, after what had happened.  Knowlton had even 
managed to take the fun out of his fantasies.  The thought both angered and 
depressed him utterly.  He curled up on the couch, hoping to find solace in 
sleep.  



Assistant Director Skinner's Office, That Afternoon

Skinner had just gotten off a conference call with the Director, the NYPD and 
some guys from ATF about a bomb threat against the Manhattan subways.  Home 
grown terrorists  -- could anything be worse?  All the TV cameras of the world 
were pointed at the US -- land of the free, home of the homicidal maniacs.  

All he wanted was five stress-free minutes.  He hit the "do not disturb" button 
on his phone and took off his glasses so he could rub his eyes.  He heard the 
inner door of his office open and startled. 

"Kim, I want you to knock before you --" he began, but when he turned, it wasn't 
his secretary, Kim.  The Cigarette Smoking Man stood there, his ever-present 
Morley dangling from his lips.  "What do *you* want?" Skinner demanded.

The Smoking Man seated himself without being invited.  "I want to talk to you 
about Agent Mulder," he said.

"He's on medical leave," Skinner said.  "There's nothing to say about it."  He 
grabbed some papers from his desk and pretended to study them, in order to show 
that the conversation was over.

"I understand he contacted you today," the Smoking Man said.

Skinner couldn't help wondering where this son-of-a-bitch got his information. 
Did he tap every call that went into the Hoover building?  "He called several 
times.  When I was finally able to speak to him he asked to see me, and I told 
him I could fit him in tomorrow," Skinner said.

"How did he react to that?" the Smoking Man asked.

"He seemed fine with it," said Skinner.  

A corner of the Smoking Man's mouth quirked up into a humorless smile.  "Mulder 
is faced with a duty he doesn't particularly want to perform," he said.  "I 
imagine delay would not be unwelcome to him."

"What are you talking about?" Skinner asked.  The Smoking Man looked around, 
clearly seeking an ash tray.  "All federal buildings are smoke free now, didn't 
I tell you that?" Skinner asked, with malicious satisfaction.  The Smoking Man 
glanced at him quickly with his lidded, fishy eyes, and then wordlessly drew 
over Skinner's wastebasket and flicked his ashes into it.

"Mulder's assailant is a wanted man in many quarters," the Smoking Man said. "He 
killed a man in Berlin -- an increasingly senile and worthless man, but still a 
member of the Old Guard."

"You mean of your . . . 'organization?'" Skinner asked.  The last word came like 
spitting out a frog.  

"Quite so," said the Smoking Man.  "Understandably, certain key members are very 
concerned."

"Cry me a river," said Skinner.  

That got another sardonic half-smile.  "Tell me, do you consider yourself a 
friend of Agent Mulder's?" the Smoking Man asked.

"We don't always see eye-to-eye, but he's a man I respect," said Skinner.

"Then perhaps you'd be glad to know that it's in Mulder's interest to act 
sooner, rather than later.  He wants backup and technical services from the FBI, 
in order to lay a trap for his attacker.  My 'organization,' as you put it, will 
not wait very long.  They'll force Mulder's hand, and he'll be worse off without 
the protection the FBI can give."

Skinner eyed the Smoking Man with suspicion.  "Since when did you develop such a 
concern for mulder's welfare?" he asked.

"I have always preferred that Mulder be controlled, rather than destroyed," he 
said.

"Why?" asked Skinner.

"I have my reasons."

"So what exactly are you asking me?" Skinner said.

"Tell Mulder that you'll meet with him today.  Give him what he asks," said the 
Smoking Man.

"Are you actually *advocating* for him?" Skinner asked.

"In this case, he and I share a common objective, and so should you.  We all 
want a dangerous man off the street."

"For widely differing reasons," said Skinner.

"True," said the Smoking Man. 

Skinner looked at him for a count of five or six, trying to gauge what his real 
motivations were.  As usual, they were unfathomable.  "All right," he said at 
last.

"I believe Mulder should be reachable at his cellular phone number.  He usually 
is," said the Smoking Man.





Mulder had finally fallen asleep on Scully's couch.  He'd given in and taken his 
anti-anxiety meds, and they'd knocked him right out, just as Dr. Najar said they 
would.  He barely even stirred when his cell phone rang.  Its sharp, piercing 
beeps continued, however, until his eyelids fluttered open.  Foggily, he groped 
for the phone on the floor.

Once he found it he managed, "H'llo?"

"Agent Mulder, it's me," came Skinner's voice.

Mulder hauled himself into a sitting position.  "Hello, sir," he said, "what's 
up?"  He realized after he said it that this was not the way to greet an 
Assistant Director of the FBI.  "I mean," he amended, "what's going on?"  This 
wasn't much better, and he had to wipe half-dried drool off his cheek as he said 
it.  Good God, he'd been out.  

"Are you all right?" asked Skinner.

"Uh, yeah," he said, "I was just kind of sleeping."

"Someone dropped by to speak for you this afternoon," Skinner said

"Who . . . Scully?  About what?" Mulder asked, confused.

"No, our smoking friend," said Skinner.  

This took a while to compute for Mulder.  When the thought clicked he said, 
"He's no friend of mine."

"He says I ought to see you this afternoon and give you whatever you ask," said 
Skinner.

Mulder looked at Scully's VCR clock; it was 3:45.  Holy crap.  He'd have to go 
home, put something respectable on, get over to the Hoover Building . . . . 
"Sir, I'm not really dressed to come in," he said.

Skinner said,  "The FBI's not running a fashion show.  So long as you don't show 
up naked or in drag, I don't care."

That got a smile out of Mulder.  "All right," he said.  Could he handle this, he 
wondered?  Was he ready?  He knew that he'd never be ready.  "I think I can be 
there in 20 minutes," he heard himself say.

"Good.  I'll see you then," said Skinner, and the connection terminated.  

Fox looked at the disconnected phone in his hand.  "Oh, my God," he thought. 
"Oh, Holy Christ."  He was actually going to have to talk to the bastard who'd 
raped him.



The security guys at the Hoover Building's front entrance had to razz Mulder 
about his appearance.  He was wearing grubby jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt that 
read, "Every Oak Tree Is A Nut That Stood its Ground."  Mulder told them he was 
going undercover to infiltrate a gang of slobs, and they laughed.  

At home, these were Mulder's comfort clothes, but here they made him feel 
decidedly uneasy.  As he walked through the halls his immaculately-dressed 
colleagues gave him strange looks.  Wearing a suit would have allowed him to 
feel more detached and professional.  He'd been able to get cooperation from the 
Watergate staff because he'd been in Mr. FBI Agent mode.  At the moment he felt 
like plain old Fox Mulder, exposed and vulnerable, fresh from the humiliation of 
having taken his first dose of psychiatric medication.

He went down to his own office first, hoping to find Scully.  The lights inside 
were on but the door was locked, indicating that she was planning to return, but 
not soon.  Dammit, he thought, and looked at his watch.  It was nearly a quarter 
past four.  He needed to get upstairs and see Skinner ASAP.  Maybe Scully had 
gone up already.  He hoped so; he wasn't going to be able to do this alone.

His feeling in the elevator was one of subdued panic.  If he was still feeling 
the effects of his anti-anxiety medication he didn't notice.  He was a little 
surprised at how much the idea of facing Skinner frightened him.  He hadn't done 
anything wrong.  His medical leave had been approved and scully had said that 
Skinner seemed understanding.  

For the most part, Skinner struck Mulder as an honorable man, if a traditional 
one.  And traditionally, men did not get raped.  He hoped to God Skinner 
wouldn't say anything cruel, even unintentionally.  Mulder felt so fragile right 
now.  He doubted very much that anything the AD said would make him cry, but an 
ill-considered comment might make him defensive enough that he'd start yelling 
at people and humiliate himself further.

By the time he'd reached Skinner's office, he'd nearly worried himself to tears.  
The small, sane portion of his brain told him, "You are in no emotional shape 
for this.  You're getting so squirrelly you should start to seriously consider 
checking yourself into the bin."  

"A lot of good that did Chris Harwood," Mulder answered himself.  When Kim saw 
him she hit the intercom button and told Skinner that Mulder was here.  Mulder 
wondered if her expression was too-carefully blank, or if he was just paranoid. 
Not everyone in the Hoover Building would know about what happened to him. Yet.  
But the Cincinnati office was officially working this case, and those agents 
would know other agents . . . .  His coworkers were investigators, after all.  
Nosiness was in their blood.  Inside of a month, the whole FBI would probably 
know.

Skinner told Kim to send Mulder in, and she rose to get the door for him.  He 
thought she gave him an odd look as he walked past her.  He hoped he didn't 
smell like sweat.  Then he realized he probably smelled like Scully's flowery 
conditioner, which was almost worse.

Skinner stood as he entered, looking extremely official in his suit and tie. 
Mulder felt a renewed sense of self-consciousness about his scruffy appearance. 
Scully stood in front of one of the other chairs.  Her expression was concerned.  
Mulder began to feel reassured, until the smell of old cigarette smoke hit him.  
He looked to his right and found the Smoking Man kicked back in a visitors' 
chair.  He had not bothered to stand.

"I don't want him in here," Mulder said, pointing at the man.

"You wound me," said the Smoking Man.

"I'd like to," was Mulder's reply.

The Smoking Man rolled his smoldering Morley between his finger and thumb and 
said, "I was the one who arranged this meeting for you."

"I don't care," Mulder said.  As usual, the Smoking Man's expression was 
unreadable.

"Go," said Skinner, jerking his head toward the door.

The Smoking Man's eyebrows lifted just a little.  "Very well," he said at last, 
and stood.  "If that is what you wish."

"You bet it is," said Mulder.

The Smoking Man shrugged his jacket into a squarer position and stuck the 
cigarette in his mouth.  He spoke around the butt end of it: "I shall require a 
detailed brief of the proceedings, in order for my organization to be of any 
help.  You know how to contact me," he said, gazing at Skinner.

The AD's ears actually turned red, whether from rage at the presumption or shame 
because what the Smoking Man said was true, Mulder didn't know.  "Get out," said 
Skinner.  The Smoking Man went, slowly, trailing his nicotine fumes behind him.

Mulder felt an aversion to sitting in the Smoking Man's vacated chair, so he 
looked around for another.  There was a simple one in the back corner, no 
armrests, no casters, probably Kim's when she took dictation, but he didn't 
care.  He pulled it over and dropped down into it.  

*Ouch.*  Was he ever going to learn not to plunk down into chairs?  "Agent 
Mulder," Skinner began, his voice more gentle than Mulder had ever heard it. Oh, 
hell.  This was bad too.  Actually, everything was bad right now.

"Can I offer you a drink?" Skinner asked.  Mulder glanced up, a little startled 
at the offer.  No agent on duty was allowed to drink, but then, Mulder was on 
medical leave, and Skinner was an Assistant Director.

"No, sir, thank you," he said, his voice steadier than he felt.  "I'm on 
medication."  He managed to hold Skinner's gaze as he said it.  It was right 
that Skinner know.  It was related to his medical leave, and with any luck, the 
medicine would allow him to return to work quickly.  "I'm hoping treatment will 
help me resume my regular duties as soon as possible," he explained.

"That's admirable," said Skinner.  "But don't push yourself for the Bureau's 
sake.  We'll be better off with you at 100 percent in six months, rather than 50 
percent right now."

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think so," he said.  "John Knowlton is a 
problem that needs to be dealt with immediately.  I'm not the only person in 
danger."

"I don't really care about the Consortium's 'Old Guard,'" Skinner began, but 
Mulder cut him off.

"I don't think they're in danger," he said, very soft, glancing at the door. 
Cancer Man wouldn't be out there with a stethoscope, would he?  Mulder decided 
he probably wouldn't, and continued, "It's more likely to be people like me, 
guys who've been targeted by the 'organization,' who Knowlton would have had 
some reason to keep tabs on.   He'll continue to strike as long as we let him."

"What are you proposing?" asked Skinner.  He sounded as if he already knew.

"I've got a couple of contact numbers for Knowlton," Mulder said, "Ideally, I'd 
call him and we would track him down by his cell phone signal, end of story.  I 
think we've got enough to convince *somebody* to press charges, even if it's 
only for credit card fraud.  If we can't target him with the phone signal . . . 
then I'd meet with him.  Hopefully I'd have backup right behind me and they'd 
take him out."

"Cancer Man said that you were requesting backup from the FBI," Skinner said.

"Did he?  Actually, all I wanted was the help of some of our technical guys.  I 
wouldn't put agents in danger on the street unless I had to." 

"I'd rather that the Consortium wasn't your only line of defense," said Skinner.

Mulder glanced up at him, saw that he seemed grimly serious, as usual.  Was 
Skinner actually being *nice* to him?  "If there's federal agents along, that 
raises the question of who gets to keep Knowlton if we catch him.  I mean, I 
personally don't care, as long as he's put out of action, but that would be a 
nasty thing to have to argue out in the field."

Skinner just looked at him a moment, then he said softly, "Our smoking friend 
out there says it's in everyone's best interest to let his people get him.  The 
Bureau doesn't even have a warrant for this guy.  If we haul a foreign national 
off the street and then can't pin anything on him, the German Embassy gets 
involved and we look like morons.  If *they* get him, then you know we're not 
going to see or hear from him again.  I don't like it, but it seems to be the 
only practical course of action.  If you wrestle with a pig you get dirty." The 
expression got a slight smile out of Mulder.  "We can avoid conflict in the 
field if we use agents who appreciate the unique elements of this situation," 
Skinner said.  "I volunteer myself.  Agent Scully?"

She looked fully as startled as Mulder felt, but she managed, "Yes, sir, 
absolutely.  It never occurred to me that I wouldn't go."

"Good," said Skinner.  "That acceptable to you, Agent Mulder?"

"Yes, sir," Mulder said, still a little shocked.  "Of course.  Thank you."

"I've spoken to some guys from the Technical Support Squad and they said they 
can set up in my office.  It shouldn't take long.  Morley's Ghost out there 
tells me that it's best to do this as soon as possible.  Do you agree?" Skinner 
asked.

Mulder swallowed.  "Yes, he's probably right," he said. 

"All right," said Skinner.  "Let me call down to Technical Support."  He did so, 
and within minutes a guy showed up with a laptop and a coil of cording. Mulder 
was impressed that Skinner had gotten someone from TSS to drop everything at the 
end of a workday and come running. 

"How well will this work?" Mulder asked the techie.

"You're trying to trace a cell phone, right?" the man asked.

"Yeah," said Mulder.

"Well, the best we can do is the triangulation method.  We use the signals from 
three different cell sites to try and pinpoint the caller's location," said the 
man.

"In this case, it's the receiver," Mulder pointed out. "Does it work?"

"It doesn't work so well in urban areas because of high signal traffic," he 
said.  "And it doesn't work so well in rural areas because the cell sites are 
too far apart."

"Does it work well anywhere?" Mulder asked.

"Not really," said the other man.

"Great," said Mulder.  "Does everybody have to be in the room with me while I 
make this call?"

"I can set up outside the door, if you want," the techie said.

"I have no problem leaving, but I'd just as soon you had some kind of backup," 
Skinner said.  "Ordinarily I'd get one of our negotiators to do it, but under 
the circumstances I think Agent Scully would be fine.  Assuming that's all right 
with her."

"Of course, sir," she said.  "Although I'm not trained in negotiation tactics--"

"You won't be doing any of the talking," Skinner said.  "You'll have earphones 
only.  Your job is risk assessment."

Mulder knew that was polite phrasing for calling Scully his babysitter.  She was 
supposed to step in if he started freaking out.  "I don't think that's 
necessary," he said.

"It is if you're using my office and my phone," Skinner said.  "Besides, maybe 
Scully can pick up on some identifying background noise, if the trace doesn't 
work."

That was a real long shot, and Mulder knew it.  "Have you got someone to record 
this, so you can analyze background noise?"

"I don't have a warrant," was all Skinner said.  That could have meant anything.

"All right," Mulder said with a sigh, "Let's get this over with."

The Tech Support guy put an adapter in the jack of Skinner's phone that allowed 
a headset for Scully to be plugged in.  She settled the earphones on her head 
and pulled a second chair over to Skinner's desk.  Mulder supposed he got 
Skinner's chair, which would have been kind of cool under any other 
circumstances.

The TSS guy took his laptop into the outer office and Skinner followed him. 
Skinner stopped in the doorway and said, "If you need anything else, let me 
know."

"Thank you, sir," Mulder said.

Once the A.D. left Scully said softly, "You don't have to do this."

"If I want to catch him I do," Mulder replied.  The paradox was typical of his 
life -- the only way to avoid the enemy was to bring him closer.

Mulder settled himself at Skinner's desk, then he lifted the phone receiver and 
slowly dialed Packard's cell number.  One ring.  Click.  Mulder's whole body 
shuddered. 

"The cellular unit you have tried to reach is either turned off or out of the 
service area.  If you should--" Mulder hung up.

"I think he ditched Packard's phone," he said.  The "discreet" inquiries into 
Packard's disappearance had apparently done their work.  He began to dial 
Moernicke's number.  Would a German cell phone work in the USA?  He'd forgotten 
to ask the techie.  One ring, two, three . . . maybe it wasn't turned on. Maybe 
Knowlton had tossed the handset into a river.  

Click.  "Guten Abend," came a voice.

"Hello?" he managed.  "Is this John Knowlton?"  Dead silence.  "This is Fox 
Mulder."

Another few moments of static, and then a man drawled, "Well, hel-lo, love."

The accent was unplaceable, almost Australian, the tone rough and of medium 
depth.  

Dana put a steadying hand on Fox's back.  She would be able to feel that he was 
trembling all over. 

"Did you try to come see me yesterday?" Mulder asked.  

"Of course," said Knowlton.  "I was in the area.  The set-up you had around your 
doorknob was quite clever."

"But it never stopped you," Mulder said.

"Certainly not," said Knowlton.  "I *am* a professional."

I know you are," Mulder said.  He told himself to play up to the SOB's ego, 
because that was the man's weak point.  "When did . . . why did you decide to 
come see me, in Cincinnati, I mean?" he asked.

"I was passing through on business of my own," said Knowlton, "and you looked 
lonely."

Well.  That was a new one.  Mulder realized that he hadn't asked how long he 
needed to keep Knowlton on the line for a trace.  He grabbed one of Skinner's 
pens and wrote on the blotter, "How long . . .?"  Scully glanced at it and held 
up her forefinger.  Her wire was long enough to allow her to go to the door.

Trying to make conversation, Mulder asked, "Um, what can you tell me about 
yourself?  You seem to know a lot about me, but I don't know anything about 
you."

That got a low chuckle.  "You knew the right phone number to call," he said.

"I'm a professional, too," Mulder pointed out.

"You're the profiler.  You guess," said Knowlton.  

Mulder had had conversations with other criminals that went very much like this.  
The trick was to be bland, non-confrontational, and to try and get them going on 
some topic that interested them.  He was beginning to feel like he might be 
getting his feet under him.  "I know you're originally from South Africa," 
Mulder said, "and that somewhere along the line you picked up German 
citizenship.  How did that happen?"

"Got on the train in Johannesburg and ran out of money in Bonn," said Knowlton.

Mulder suspected that he must have met Josef Moernicke there, accepted the older 
man's protection because he had nowhere else to go.  "How old were you?" Mulder 
asked.

"Fourteen," said Knowlton.  Oh.  To his surprise, Mulder found himself feeling 
something close to pity.  

"So . . . was that before or after you found out that you had unusual powers 
over electricity?" mulder asked.

"Hard to say, love.  Was a long time ago," said Knowlton.  

"You had to have noticed at some point," Mulder pressed.  "Was there a moment 
when you realized that you were special, that you could do something no one else 
could do?"  With your average, organized, antisocial personality, flattery would 
get you everywhere.

"Oh, well, I remember Mum beating me with a mop handle because she wouldn't 
believe I could turn the streetlights on and off," Knowlton said cheerfully. "I 
guess then I must have realized I was different.  I would have been . . . oh, 
eight?  Must be, because I don't recall much before that."

Mulder made a mental note of the British turn of phrase.  "Were your parents 
native to South Africa?" he asked.

"Mum was a Kiwi," Knowlton said.  It took Mulder a moment to recognize the slang 
term for a New Zealander.  "Don't know about my dad.  Never met him. Wouldn't 
want to, from what I've heard."  Knowlton sounded perfectly bright and chipper 
about the whole thing, as if he were describing an interesting sporting match.  
This was a sign of a deep, underlying pathology, but somehow Mulder found 
himself feeling almost sympathetic.  He told himself not to be naive. Knowlton 
could be making the whole thing up.  

Scully came back in the door holding a little folded Post-It Note.  When he read 
it he found it said, "Georgetown. Trying to close in."

Mulder started trembling again.  ID-ing Georgetown was good, but not good 
enough.  He quickly scratched on the blotter, "Hotel?"  He glanced up and saw 
her shrug.  Georgetown was tourist country.  The place had more self-consciously 
quaint bed and breakfasts than a wild dog had fleas.

He realized he'd been silent too long and said, "Um, so . . . so what can you do 
with this ability of yours?  Can you affect the functioning of someone's brain?"

Knowlton laughed softly.  "I think I'll keep that to myself," he said. 

"What about credit cards?  How do you keep from frying the magnetic strips?"   

"I've got a cigarette case I keep my cards in," Knowlton said.  "It's a 
filigreed iron thing from the old days.  It works all right.  If the strips go 
bad anyway I can usually get a clerk to enter the number by hand."

An idea occurred to Mulder.  He wrote on Skinner's blotter, "Checked Moern.'s 
CC#?" 

Scully grabbed the pen from him and wrote, "Know it?"

Mulder had to shake his head.  He'd never looked into it.  He felt like a moron.  
This was why you didn't let recent rape victims run an investigation, he 
thought.

"So . . . so why me?" he asked.  It was the first thing that came to mind.

"Why not you?" was the reply.

"I dunno . . . most people are attracted to others for a reason.  You know, 
there's a certain look, a smile, something somebody says . . . ." 

"Ah," said Knowlton.  The interjection had a tolerant sound to it that suggested 
he thought Mulder wanted to be praised.  If it kept the man talking, so be it, 
Mulder thought.

"I liked the way you walked from the first time I saw you," said Knowlton.

"Which was when?" he asked.

"Oh, my," Knowlton said.  "Must have been . . . '90?  '91?  Hard to recall, I'm 
afraid."  That was about the time Mulder had been assigned to the X files.

Mulder had another idea and wrote, "Ask Morley's Ghost," on the blotter and drew 
a line to the abbreviation "CC."  After that he scratched, "Make the SOB be 
useful."  Scully gave him a grim smile and left again.  He felt strangely 
bereft.

"You all right, love?" Knowlton asked.  Mulder realized he'd been silent too 
long. 

"Yeah -- it's just I'm, I'm a little bit nervous."  Knowlton would hear it in 
his voice anyway, so he might as well own up to it.  The other man would 
interpret it as he wanted.

"Aw--you needn't be frightened of me, love," Knowlton said.  That confirmed 
Mulder's suspicion that Knowlton believed the sex had somehow been consensual 
and that he and Mulder had "feelings" for each other.  

The thought turned Mulder slightly sick.  "Why shouldn't I be afraid of you?" he 
asked.

"Wouldn't do anything with you that you didn't like," Knowlton replied.

"You already did," Mulder said.

"Oh, is that how it is, now?"  Knowlton said, his tone both mocking and 
flirtatious.  "You should have heard yourself carrying on the other night.  I'd 
say you were pretty excited."

Tears of rage and shame stung Mulder's eyes.  He didn't want Scully to be 
listening in on this.  He told himself to count to ten, to be rational, to be 
professional.

Knowlton must have heard a catch in his breath because he said, "Now now, Love, 
none of that."

"Sorry . . ." Mulder managed.  "This is really hard for me."  Honesty was the 
best policy when dealing with an intelligent psychopath.  Most of them were 
eerily accurate at picking out lies.

Knowlton chuckled.  "Getting hard for me, too," he said.

Oh, hell.  Mulder didn't need to hear that.

Skinner's door burst open again and Scully stalked in.  Her lips were pressed in 
a hard line and she made cutoff motions with her hands, like an umpire declaring 
a runner safe.  Apparently, she hadn't thought much of Knowlton's last comment, 
either.  Mulder knew that she'd hit the hang-up button if she got close enough, 
and he said, "I need to see you."

"When?" asked Knowlton.  Mulder held his hand up to stop Scully's advance.

"Tomorrow, 9 p.m., the Jefferson Memorial," he said.  It was the first thing 
that came to mind.  

"You'll be alone?" Knowlton asked.

"Yes," Mulder said.  "I gotta go."  

"All right.  Love you, love."  

Mulder couldn't make himself respond.  He hung up the phone without Scully's 
assistance.

"What did you just agree to?" she cried, sounding more grieved than angry.

"Did you get a location?" he asked.

She shook her head slowly and said, "Not a precise one, no."

"Nothing on the credit card, either?"

"When I got out there, the Smoking Man was gone," she said, sounding apologetic.

"Then the only way we'll catch him is for me to meet with him," Mulder answered.  


She looked very sad, but did not contradict him.  Instead she put her arms 
around him and hugged him tight.  The closeness felt awfully good.  He heard 
Skinner's door open briefly, then close again. Apparently Skinner had decided to 
leave his agents alone for a while. 

It was just as well.  Exhaustion and stress were beginning to take their toll on 
Mulder, and he shed silent tears into the hollow of his partner's shoulder. 
After a few moments he pulled away from Scully and looked around Skinner's desk 
for tissues.  He couldn't find any.  Of course--*real* G-Men didn't need 
Kleenex.  Scully dug some tissues out of her purse and handed them to him.  

She gave him a look of sorrow and bewilderment as he blotted his eyes.  "I can't 
believe you do these things to yourself," she said.

"This is nothing compared to what other people do to me," Mulder pointed out. He 
wished he'd brought some of the Xanax with him.  He found he would rather face 
Skinner wasted than teary. Mulder told himself he better get hold of himself 
quick; there was a limit to how long the AD would stand outside his own office.  


Suddenly, he remembered that he was supposed to meet with X.  "Shit, what time 
is it?" he asked.

Scully looked at her watch and said, "Twenty past five."

"Ah, hell. I've got to get out of here," Mulder said.  He stood up and strode 
out of the office, brushing past Skinner on the way.  That was a solution to his 
problem--he'd just move too fast to talk to the guy.

He heard Skinner's, and then Scully's, footfalls behind him. "Agent Mulder, 
where are you going?" Skinner demanded. 

"I'm late for a meeting with my shadowy informant," Mulder called back.



When he got down to the parking garage it occurred to him that maybe this hadn't 
been such a great idea for a meeting place.  When he'd met X here before, it was 
during off hours when the place was nearly deserted.  Now it was 5:30 and agents 
were everywhere, getting into their cars.  

On a hunch, Mulder headed for one of the corners in deepest shadow, and sure 
enough, X was there, lurking.  There really wasn't any other word for it.  He 
also did not look pleased.

"I've been here over half an hour," he snapped, as Mulder approached.  

"I'm surprised nobody arrested you. Hanging out in dark corners while everyone 
else goes to their cars is not the way to be inconspicuous."

"And whose fault is that?" X demanded. 

"It was unavoidable," Mulder said. "I was stuck in a meeting with our respective 
bosses.  And I talked to Knowlton," he added.  Just mentioning it made him feel 
tired.  He hoped X wasn't able to tell he'd been crying.

The informant's expression showed neither contempt nor compassion.  However, he 
did begin to look interested.  "What did he say?" he asked.

"I'm meeting with him tomorrow, 9 p.m., the Jefferson Memorial," Mulder said.

"Why there?" X asked.  "It's isolated, there's cover.  It seems a poor choice."

"It was just what came to mind," Mulder admitted.

"You went with the first place that came to mind?" X asked.  "You put no thought 
into it?  You have to be the most suicidally stupid man I have ever met."

"Cut me some fucking slack, would you?" Mulder said, louder than he'd meant to.



Now people really were looking at them.   Mulder felt his face flush.  

"Keep it quiet," X said, but the fury had left his voice.  Perhaps even for him 
there was such a thing as going too far.  "Very well.  9 o'clock tomorrow at the 
Jefferson Memorial.  Have you made arrangements with the representative of my 
organization you met with today?"

"No," Mulder confessed, truly beginning to feel suicidally stupid.  "I wouldn't 
talk to him."

X looked disgusted, but at least he kept his comments on the subject to himself.  
"Then I strongly suggest you meet with both of us tomorrow morning, to 
coordinate our efforts.  You may be perfectly willing to wander out into the 
dark to play hide and seek with the Invisible Man, but I am not."

A cozy little brunch with Cancer Man.  Oh, joy.  "Scully and Skinner will have 
to be there," Mulder said.  "They want to come with me tomorrow night."

X did not look surprised.  He asked, "Can they be counted on to cooperate?  We 
won't catch Knowlton if we turn on one another."

"I think they'll be willing to do what it takes," Mulder said.  Then he added, 
more softly,  "I have it from Skinner that we'll turn Knowlton over to you if we 
catch him."

X actually looked a little startled.  "I think my associates will find that 
provision most agreeable.  It's so much extra effort to have to arrange a hit in 
a prison."  

Mulder wished X hadn't put it like that.  The expression, "conspiracy to commit 
murder" came to mind.

"You said you had video images," X prompted.

"In the car," Mulder said.  He turned on his heel and walked over to where he'd 
parked.  Scully stood on the far side of his car.  Even in her neat suit and 
long coat, she looked a little forlorn.  Mulder wondered if she were 
disappointed in him for working with his informant, or hurt that he'd run off 
and not waited for her.  He glanced up, met her eyes for a second, silently 
willing her to understand.  

Then he opened his car door and leaned across the seat to rummage in the glove 
compartment.  Mulder came out with a computer disk.  He'd labeled it 
"Minesweeper," after a popular time wasting game, since you never could be to 
careful.  He held it out to X, who looked extremely skeptical.

"This is not the same as pictures," he said.

Mulder wasn't sure if the man was pissed because he hadn't bothered to print 
them out, or if X was computer illiterate enough to be put off by images on a 
disk.  It had never before occurred to Mulder that X might have points of 
vulnerability too.

"Go to 'Start,' then 'Programs,' 'Photoshop,' 'File,' and 'Open.'  They're in 
JPEG format.  It's not hard," Mulder said.  X gave him a sour look but took the 
disk.

"10 a.m., Nana Jay's, on 18th Street, between Wyoming and Kalorama," X said. "Do 
*not* be late this time," he said.  He turned and strode away, his trench coat 
rippling at his heels.  Somehow, Mulder wanted to hear Darth Vader's Theme as he 
stalked off.

Once the informant was out of earshot, Mulder turned to face Scully.  "I bet 
he's not going to refund me the price of the disk," he said.  

She didn't look amused.  "I don't trust that man," she said.  

"You shouldn't," he said.  "I don't trust any of them.  Still, in this case I 
think we do have a common goal."

"You *think?*" she asked.  "Jesus, Mulder, do you realize you're gambling with 
your *life?*"  Her clipped words hung in the air.  Most of the agents had gone 
home by now, but a few still filtered through, and they glanced over at Mulder 
and Scully.  What a tableau they must make -- her leaning toward him, tense and 
burning despite the parking garage's dim illumination, him gazing down at an oil 
stain by his shoe, scruffy and exhausted.  Mulder could just feel the rumor mill 
starting up again.  

"You mad at me?" he asked, softly.

"Am I *mad* at you?" she asked.  She seemed at a loss for words.  Mulder braced 
himself for a spectacular, public reaming.  Oh well, he thought.  Not like life 
could get much worse.

"I feel sick over what's happened to you," she said.  Her voice was quieter than 
he'd expected.  He glanced up at her.  "I don't want to watch you destroy 
yourself."  Tears shone in her eyes, and she seemed to be fighting for control.



That set off every protective instinct he had.  He strode around the front of 
the car and caught her in his arms.  He didn't even want to *think* about the 
rumors that would be circulated in the break rooms, tomorrow.  "Fuck 'em," he 
thought.  If people wanted to call them "the Sex Files Unit" just because he was 
a man and she was a woman and they didn't date other people and they spent a lot 
of time alone in the basement together . . . well to hell with them.  

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  I didn't want you dragged so far into this," he said 
softly.  "It's just that . . ."  The honest thing to say would be "I need you." 
Could he say that?  Was it manipulative to say that he needed her support in a 
venture she deeply disapproved of?  He let the sentence trail off and just held 
her tight.  

He could see the whole crown of her head when he looked down.  "Coppertop," he 
teased her.  "You just keep on going, and going, and going . . ."  She made a 
sound between a sob and a giggle, then reached up to punch him in the arm.  It 
was the way a sister would have responded to a brother, or a third grade girl to 
a boy she had a crush on.  Fox found it didn't bother him at all.  He rocked her 
a little.  She deserved some soothing, after all she'd given him. 

Dana cried for perhaps five minutes.  She stepped back from him at last, and 
started rooting in her purse, presumably for Kleenex.  "I think you gave it to 
me," he said.

She glanced up at him.  Her mascara was running like sooty tears.  She wiped at 
her cheeks with her fingers, but that just smeared the makeup and gave her a 
waif-like, chimneysweep look.

Fox didn't think he'd ever felt such tenderness for her.  He lifted the hem of 
his T shirt and wiped her eyes.  Someone on the other side of the parking garage 
made a whistling noise.  

"Take it all off!" a woman shouted.  There was laughter.  Scully glanced aside, 
her face reddening. 

Fox flipped up his middle finger and tucked his hand behind the small of his 
back so the onlookers could see.

More laughter.  "You go, baby!" came another woman's voice.  The comment could 
have been directed at either Mulder or Scully.  "Go home," Fox said to Dana, 
softly.

"You shouldn't be alone, tonight," she answered, just as quietly.  Mulder opened 
his mouth to protest, but then it occurred to him that maybe *Scully* didn't 
want to be alone.  

"Okay," he said.  "I need to get something a little more dignified to wear for 
tomorrow.  You got a problem with me driving by my place?" he asked.  She shook 
her head.  "All right.  I'll meet you back at your apartment," he said.  While 
he doubted that Knowlton would drop by early, he still did not want either of 
them staying at his place.  "See ya," he said.

"See ya," she replied.  

Although there were few places in D.C. more secure than the Hoover Building's 
parking garage, Mulder stood and watched until Scully was safely in her car.

Mulder drove home feeling tired and ill.  He discovered that the landlord had 
replaced his lock core, so in theory he could tell Scully he'd changed his mind 
and just crash here.  The thought of sleeping in his own home for the first time 
in days was appealing.  However, he'd told her that he would go over, and she 
might need him, so he'd go.

Mulder fed his fish, and noted with satisfaction that they had not begun to eat 
one another from hunger.  He always felt a little guilty when they did that. He 
changed into clean clothes and put together what he'd need for tomorrow.  He 
sighed when he saw that one zippered pocket of his overnight bag was now 
completely full of medication bottles.  

Resigned, he got back into the car and headed right back the way he'd just come, 
toward Annapolis.  Why the hell couldn't she live somewhere closer, he wondered?  
It didn't occur to him that maybe he should move, instead. 

When he finally pulled into her parking lot, all he wanted to do was sleep. His 
muscles ached, his insides were sore, and he could tell he had a fever.  He 
hoped he wouldn't act like an irrational jerk again tonight.  Guiltily, he found 
he hoped that Scully wouldn't need too much from him.  He felt like he was 
running on empty.

To his relief, she looked like her usual calm, collected self when she answered 
her door.  Of course Scully wasn't freaking out, he told himself.  He was the 
one who kept losing it.  Though self-confidence wasn't something he was usually 
short on, at the moment he felt like a Loser with a capital "L."  He walked in, 
put his stuff on a chair, and curled up on the couch.

"Have you eaten?" she asked.

He thought about this.  He looked at her VCR clock.  It was just before 7.  He 
would have to confront Knowlton in just over 24 hours.  With Cancer Man as 
backup.  Oh, holy fuck.  How did he get himself into these things?  He decided 
he'd better not dwell on what could happen tomorrow.  That way lay madness.  He 
remembered that Scully had asked him a question.  "I dunno," he managed.  Ah. 
Apparently he was going to be an idiot again tonight.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" she said, and he heard her open a kitchen cupboard.

It occurred to him that she'd been feeding him a lot lately.  "Hey, Scully, we 
could order pizza or something.  I've got money on me.  You don't need to let me 
eat you out of house and home."

"Tell you what, if you start chewing on the furniture, I'll tell you to stop 
it," she said.  "You want grilled cheese?  I've been wanting grilled cheese all 
day.  I don't know why.  I haven't had that in years."

"Childhood favorite?" Mulder guessed.

"Yeah," she admitted.  He heard her pulling bread out of a plastic wrapper.

"Wanna make a tent out of a blanket and some chairs and spill Kool Aid on the 
carpet?" he asked. 

She laughed, a little sadly, he thought.  "Not with the security deposit I had 
to put down.  Sometimes being an adult sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," he said, and shut his eyes.  Being a kid had sucked, too, but he didn't 
want to get into that.

The next thing he was aware of was Scully waking him.  She laid a plate with a 
hot grilled cheese sandwich on it on the floor next to the couch, along with a 
paper napkin.

He sat up and took the plate over to the table.  They ate for a while in 
silence.  Mulder found the sandwich was very good.  He hadn't realized how 
hungry he was. He'd scarfed his before she was done with half of hers.

"You want another one?"  she asked.

He shook his head, feeling sleepy and a little dazed.  How did that song go? "I 
have become comfortably numb."  Great.  Nothing like drugs and denial to take 
the edge off a guy.  He wondered if the Consortium would be thrilled.  

"How are you doing?" Scully asked.

"I'll live," Mulder answered.  "How are you?"

"All right," she said.  "Better, thank you."

"Good," he said.  He leaned down and rested his head in the crook of his arm.

"You look like you need to go to bed," Scully told him.

Mulder had dumped ketchup over his grilled cheese and now occupied himself by 
scraping up dabs of it on his fingers and sucking it off.  "You know what I 
wanna do?" he asked.

"What?" she replied.

"One day I'm going to write a book on the psychology of mutants."

"Oh," she said.  It did not seem to be what she expected him to say.   

"I mean, think of all the mutants we've run into.  For most of 'em, their 
physical abnormalities were the least of their problems."

"I don't know about that," Scully replied.  "I think being a giant flukeworm 
grown in toxic sludge would limit your opportunities in life."

"Oh man, I wasn't even thinking about that thing," Mulder said.  Suddenly, he 
didn't want to eat his ketchup anymore.  "I was thinking about Darin Oswald, 
about Knowlton.  I mean, what must it be like to know that you're -- you're 
'different from other men?'  That's how the Smoking Man said Knowlton described 
himself."

"Everybody's different," Scully said.

"No," Mulder said.  "Not like Tooms was.  Well, he might not have been human 
enough to feel alienated.  Think of Modell, or Barnett, after the hand thing. 
These are people who've been cut loose from society, and that's the trait that 
unites all kinds of violent criminals.  You once called Modell a 'little man.' 
That's what these people are like.  They're loners, outsiders, looking for 
something to make them feel big." 

"That's your analysis of Knowlton?"  Scully spoke gently, but her expression was 
skeptical.

"Well, it's a pretty broad analysis," Mulder said.  "Everybody feels alienated 
sometimes.  The difference lies in what people choose to do about it."  He 
pushed himself up straight and said, "Oswald's an erotomaniac.  His life was so 
empty that he created this fantasy world around the only woman who was ever nice 
to him.  She was completely unavailable, but he couldn't see that.  Even after 
he'd nearly killed her husband, after he dragged her out of the hospital, 
frightened and crying, he was sure she had to love him back.  The illusion was 
that necessary to him.  I guess he -- he wanted to believe."

"Do you think Darin Oswald would have done to Mrs. Kiveat what Knowlton did to 
you?" Scully asked.

"Think we should call it Oswald's Syndrome?" he asked.  "Think that would please 
our little Darin?"

"Probably not," she said.

"No," he agreed.  "I don't remember Oswald having any priors, but if he'd gotten 
in trouble for breaking and entering, maybe peeping Tom behavior, then I'd say 
he was a pretty good candidate to become a Power Reassurance Rapist. That's the 
kind that thinks his victim likes it.  That's the kind who sometimes calls on a 
victim more than once."

"And you think that's what Knowlton is?" Scully asked.

"I think he's got a lot in common with that type.  He's got ... things in common 
with the Sadistic Rapist type, too.  That'd be like--" he nearly said, "Donnie 
Pfaster," and then mentally bit his tongue.  That was a name he tried not to 
mention around Scully.  What he actually said was, "Gary Heidnik or Jeffrey 
Dahmer.  With that type control is everything.  They're terror artists. 
Everything they do is aimed at total possession of the victim."

She bent her head.  Mulder was unsure the gesture was one of fatigue or grief. 
Perhaps it was both.  "How could he torture you that way and think that you 
enjoyed it?"  She asked.  The question sounded almost rhetorical, like the 
things one says to God, but he attempted to answer.

"Carl Wade thought he loved the girls he kept chained in his basement.  He 
thought he was 'taking care' of them.  Well -- I guess that doesn't address the 
bigger question, 'why?'  As in, 'why do these things happen?'  I don't know the 
answer to that one."

She lifted her head and he saw the hard glint of tears in her eyes.  "I'm 
sorry," he said.  Couldn't he even open his mouth without making someone else 
miserable?

"It's all right," she said.  She reached out and wrapped her small, warm fingers 
around his.  "It's not you."

She seemed to be implying that she would have been sad whether Mulder was there 
or not.  This contradicted his impression that she'd been all right at the time 
he showed up, but he didn't challenge her.

Instead he managed a smile and said, "I think I'll turn in, if you don't mind. 
Wouldn't want to keep cancer Man waiting in the morning." "Sure," she said.

He got up and went into the bathroom to wash.  The place had a nice, herbal 
smell.  He looked at himself in the mirror.  His reflection was skinnier and 
more haggard-looking than he remembered.  There were dark smudges beneath his 
bloodshot eyes and his T-shirt was wrinkled.  "Jesus, you look like you spent 
all night in a bus station," he thought.  His hair was getting too long on top, 
too, like Krycek's stupid-ass haircut.  Angrily, Mulder ran his free hand under 
the sink tap and plastered his bangs back over the top of his head. 

"You are not going to lose your identity over this," he ordered himself. 
"Knowlton can fuck you, he can even kill you, but he can't destroy you.  The 
whole world's been trying to do that for years, and it hasn't worked yet. You're 
still you.  Nothing's changed." 

It wasn't true.

It wasn't just Knowlton who had made him question his selfhood.  Accepting the 
drugs from Najar had been very hard.  He'd worked with dozens of patients on 
medication when he was a psyche intern, and had never looked down on them.  But 
it was different when it was himself.

He brushed his teeth and glanced at the closed bathroom door.  He didn't want to 
go out there yet.  Ordinarily he went running when he needed to think, but even 
Mulder wasn't stupid enough to run now.  He still sometimes found blood spots on 
his underwear, and he hadn't done anything more athletic than plunk into a few 
chairs and occasionally yield to the necessities of nature.  Which itself was a 
new species of hell.  He sighed and stripped off his clothes.  He turned on the 
fan and the shower water.  Once he found a good temperature he hopped in.

Either he was less feverish than yesterday or he'd turned the water on hotter, 
because it didn't make him shiver.  He didn't use Scully's Body Gel this time, 
either.  He'd been smart enough to bring actual soap in a Ziploc bag and his own 
shampoo, which was supposed to have conditioner built in.  It didn't leave his 
hair feeling as soft as Scully's, but it also didn't make him smell like a damn 
flower bed. 

"So," he thought to himself as he ran the soap bar over his body.  "So you got 
fucked and you're on drugs, now.  What is this going to mean?  That you're a 
failure?"

He heard the ghost of an old, angry voice in his mind: "What's the matter with 
you, boy?  Your baby sister could do better than that.  Jesus Christ, try to act 
like a man."

The dry, profiler voice replied, "What were my options?"  Madness, was the 
answer.  Madness and helplessness, and those were unacceptable.  He'd taken the 
pills, and he did feel a little less hysterical today.

"Forgive me," his father had said, just before he died. 

He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory, failed to keep it out.  He'd 
cradled Bill Mulder's body in his arms, the man who'd raised him, who'd cared 
for him, who'd beaten him. 

In the vision Fox had while he lay near-dead in the New Mexico desert, his 
father had said, "If you are to continue, the things you will discover will 
destroy me."

Fox had loved his dad, and he'd hated him, but he didn't want the responsibility 
of destroying him.  He put down the soap and pressed his hands to his eyes.  
He'd wanted his father and sister so badly when he was at his mother's house.  
Still, what could they have done for him?  With Samantha, it was impossible to 
say.  She'd been tiny, only eight years old, when she vanished.  Depending on 
what she'd been through, Sam could be almost anyone by now.  If she was alive.  
Of course she had to be alive.  She had to be.  That tragedy could not be 
irreversible. 

Trying to turn his mind aside from that abyss, he wondered what his father would 
say, if he could.  Fox wanted him to say that it was all right, that what had 
happened wasn't Fox's fault.  He wanted his father's embrace, his comforting . . 
. as if.  Bill had never been comfortable giving physical affection to his son.  
It had been a minor miracle that he'd agreed to hug Fox on the night he'd died, 
a miracle Fox was humiliatingly grateful for.

Fox gave in to his sorrow and cried for his family -- for the whole, terrible 
world.



Dana poised to rinse the grease off her plate in the kitchen sink, then stopped.  
She could hear the shower running in the next room.  She'd grown up in houses 
where you couldn't run water without torturing the person in the shower.  She'd 
also lived alone too long to be sure what would happen if she turned the sink 
tap on.  She ended up leaving the dirty dish on the counter. 

She wandered into the living room, thinking she'd catch any news there was. She 
had the remote in her hand when she heard Mulder cry out.  The sound froze her 
in her tracks.  She hoped to God that he wasn't experiencing massive hemorrhage.

She knocked hard on the bathroom door and asked, "Mulder, are you okay?"

No response.  She put her hand on the knob, found it didn't turn.  She didn't 
like that at all.  Dana grabbed a butter knife from the kitchen and pressed it 
into the knob slot.  She twisted and it popped right open. 

"Mulder . . ." she called out, pushing the door in.  Swirls of steam inside. She 
recalled him miming a gunshot to his head.  Oh, God, she'd left her razors in 
there . . . 

"Mulder?"  When she still got no answer she swept the shower curtain aside, 
needing to know, afraid of what she'd find. 

Mulder stood in the shower with one arm was wrapped around his chest.  Dana 
looked down, saw no rivulets of blood on the bathtub floor.  Oh, thank God.  He 
slowly lifted his other palm and turned away from her.

Suddenly she was ashamed.  "I'm sorry, Mulder," she said softly.  "I'm so sorry.  
I was afraid . . ."

She could see why he hadn't answered her.  He was crying too hard. 

She let the curtain fall closed and after a moment she heard the water shut off. 


"You don't have to get out because of me," she said, backing off.  She'd managed 
to further violate a man who'd been raped.  Scully didn't think she could have 
felt worse if she'd physically kicked him. 

Mulder reached out from behind the shower curtain and grabbed a towel from the 
bar on the wall.  Moments later he emerged, the towel tied tightly around his 
hips.  He had regained his composure somewhat, and he sat carefully on the wet 
edge of the tub.  "You figured I was gong to off myself?" He asked, his voice 
hoarse.

"You're stronger than that," she said, but her cheeks burned and she couldn't 
meet his eyes.

"You don't . . ." he began, "you don't think less of me, because I went to see a 
psychiatrist, do you?  Because I've got medication?"

She looked over at him, incredulous.  "No, no of course not," she said.

He nodded and gazed down at the floor, his hair dripping on his toes.  He looked 
exhausted.  She got the impression he was being beaten down, by shame and 
anxiety and the relentless criticism in his own head. 

Oh, she would kill John Knowlton, the "Invisible Man," or whatever his name was, 
if he broke her friend.  Much as Mulder's perverse determination sometimes 
frustrated her, the thought of him without it filled her with grief.  "Mulder . 
. ." she began, uncertain what to say.  Encouragement against impossible odds 
was Mulder's forte, not hers.  If he had run out of reasons to keep fighting, 
what could she tell him?   "Mulder, have you ever read Azimov's 'Foundation' 
series?" she asked, at last.

That got him to glance over at her.  "Yeah," he said.

"You remember Stars' End?  The lighthouse at the edge of the known universe?" 
she asked.  She thought he gave her a suspicious look. 

"What about it?" he asked.

She had to turn away as she spoke.  "That's like you," she said.  "You're this 
light way out in the darkness.  If you let them put you out . . . the rest of us 
will never find our way to that unexplored space."

Silence for a long time.  Scully felt her face flush even hotter.  She shouldn't 
have spoken like that.  It was a stupid metaphor.  Probably he felt as 
embarrassed as she did.

She was surprised by the sudden tension in his muscles, the hand that lifted to 
his eyes.  "And here I figured you thought the 'Foundation' series was about 
makeup," he said.

She managed a squeak of outrage, lifted a hand to bop him on the head, and ended 
up wrapping her arms around him instead. 

As the fan cooled the room he started to shiver, and she finally pulled back and 
said, "Why don't you put something on and get into bed?" she asked.

He glanced up at her.  She read in his expression the temptation to say 
something filthy, then the decision not to.  He looked away.  "It's your house," 
he said.  "You get to sleep in the bed."

Scully looked at him, saw he was exhausted and half naked and cold.  He needed 
sleep, needed to be somewhere comfortable and warm.  She couldn't tell him that.  
As soon as she said the words, "You need," his hackles would go up. 

"I need," she began instead, and found those words were hard to say.  Perhaps 
she was more like Mulder than she'd thought.  "I need you to be safe tonight. 
I'll feel better if I know you're comfortable."

He looked at her, looked away again.  "But . . . but if I kick you out of your 
own bed I'll feel like an asshole," he said.

"What if I lay on top of the covers next to you, until you fell asleep?" she 
offered.  "I wouldn't touch you, I'd just--"

"You'd just be there?" he interrupted.

"Yeah," she said.

He took a long time thinking about it.  "Okay," he said at last.  "Let me get 
dressed."

"Yeah, sure," she said, standing.  She left the room and closed the door. 





Later, Dana wandered into her bedroom, saw Mulder's body limned faintly in the 
orange streetlight glow that crept through the cracks of her blinds.  He had, of 
course, appropriated both pillows.  His breathing was deep and even.  As she'd 
promised, she lay down on the comforter next to him.  Fox stirred, glanced up at 
her, then snuggled close. 

She tugged at the extra pillow.  He relinquished it willingly, but when she 
rested her cheek against the case she felt the dampness of recent tears.  Oh, 
dear.  Dana put her right arm around Mulder's shoulders.  He returned the 
embrace, pressed his face into the crease between her breast and biceps.

"It's all right," she assured him.  "I'm here.  Go back to sleep."  She stroked 
his hair with her free hand, found it was still damp with washing.

"Sing to me," he said, suddenly.

Startled and rather embarrassed, she said, "You don't want me to do that."

"Yes, I do," he argued.

Oh, hell.  Dana couldn't sing worth a damn.  "No, you really don't," she 
insisted.  "I don't even know any songs."

"You used to be a Girl Scout, didn't you?  You have to know some songs."

"Yeah, like the 'Eensy Beensy Spider,'" she said.

"So?" he asked. 

Oh, crap.  He really wanted to be sung to.  She couldn't blame him; Dana had 
loved it when her mother sang to her, when she was small.  An old, old tune 
began to filter through her head.  Like the most ancient of Irish lullabies, it 
was a lament.  "It's Gaelic," she warned him.

"So what?"

"It's depressing," "Even better," he said.

She began a song that was sometimes called "Buttermilk Hill," which she only 
knew in a corrupted, Irish/English form:

"Siubhal, siubhal, siubhal a run. Siubhal go sochair, argus siubhal go cum. 
Siubhal go den duras, argus eligh liom, Is go de to, mo muirnin slan.

I sold my flax, I sold my wheel, To buy my love a sword of steel So it in battle 
he might wield, Johnny's gone for a soldier."

Dana wended her way through the verses she knew, until she thought Mulder was 
asleep.  She brushed his hair with her fingertips. He stirred, then asked, "What 
does that mean?"

"What does what mean?"

"Your song.  The 'Shule aroon' part."

"Oh," she said.  "I was told it means, 'Walk to me, love, walk to my door and 
run away with me."

"Very romantic," he said.  He sounded as if he meant it. 

Suddenly embarrassed, she explained, "It's a traditional song, handed down from 
the end of the 17th century.  I seem to recall that it's a protest against 
William and Mary of Orange.  The English words were written around the time of 
the Civil War."

"American, or English?" Fox asked.  Trust an Oxford grad . . .

"American," Scully said. 

"Ah," said Mulder.  "It's very pretty."`

"I've always liked it," she said.

He was quiet after that.  Lulled by the soft rhythm of his breath, Dana became 
drowsy herself.  Although she hadn't intended it, they fell asleep in each 
other's arms.



Some hours later, Fox startled awake with a gasp.  It took a few moments for the 
nightmare images to fade and for him to orient himself.  Dana was still curled 
next to him; there was sunlight in the room.  He struggled to sit up and peer 
over her at the clock.  Just before eight.  Holy crap.  He'd been dead asleep 
for 12 hours.  Actually, he felt like he could easily sleep the rest of the day.  
As if.  He needed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for breakfast with Cancer 
Man. 

Scully blinked sleepily at him as he dropped back onto the pillow.  She turned 
to look at the clock as well, and said, "Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh,'" Mulder agreed, rubbing his sore eyes with the heels of his palms.



"Did you have a nightmare?" she asked.

He sighed.  "I was having this dream," he said.  "You and me were in it, and a 
bunch of people that I knew in the dream, but I don't really.  We were like . . 
. out in the middle of Kansas or something, way out on the prairie.  There were 
these cyclones touching down all around us, and the only building out there was 
this house that had no doors.  There was great big windows all over it, too, 
lots of glass, and we're all thinking, 'What the fuck? What are we going to 
do?'" 

"A house without doors is a pretty good metaphor for someone who's been 
violated," Dana said gently.  "What happened when the storm hit?"

"Actually, it didn't.  Instead a bunch of zeppelins showed up and all these Nazi 
frogmen paratroopers jumped out with flame throwers."

"Oh," she said.

"They started setting fire to everything, and there was this kind of 
televangelist guy controlling them with orders over a microphone.  We were 
shooting at 'em and some of the other people were throwing stuff, and this one 
guy, all he had was a garbage can lid, and he was trying to keep them off with 
that.  Just before one of 'em torched me, I woke up."

"Do you have dreams like this often?" she asked.  She sounded as if the thought 
worried her.

"Oh no, no," he said.  "Well . . . I don't think I've ever had a dream about 
cyclones before.  I see the Nazi frogmen all the time."

"I see," she said.  There didn't seem to be much else to say.

Fox gazed up at the ceiling for a few moments and then said, dreamily, "You know 
what the weirdest thing was?"

"What was the weirdest thing?"

"They used to fill zeppelins with hydrogen.  You'd have to be insane to take a 
flame thrower up in one of those things."

She just looked at him for about a count of three.  "Well, I'm getting up," she 
said, and rolled to her feet.  Fox curled into the warm spot she'd left and felt 
a little sad. 

"I'm making toast, you want anything?" she called to him.

He remembered what he was supposed to do that day and nearly said, "A .38 to the 
head," but stopped himself.  If he wasn't careful, she really would call the 
Nice Young Men in the Clean White coats.  "No," he said, then recalled that if 
he didn't eat before he took his antibiotic, he'd be sick.  "Yes," he said. 
"Toast will be fine."

She leaned around the bedroom door and said, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"'Okay' does not in any way do justice to the way I feel," Mulder said.

"You don't have to do this, you know," she said.  "You could let Skinner and me 
handle it.

"No," he said, rolling over to gaze at the light filtering through Scully's 
blinds.  "It's my problem.  It's my fight.  Besides, this is my only crack at 
Knowlton.  Or whatever his name is."

"Hmm," she said.  She sounded unhappy, but she didn't scold him.  "You want 
white toast or rye?"

He thought about this.  It seemed too momentous a decision at the moment. "Burn 
the hell out of it and I won't know the difference," he said.



The cross-streets X had given them were in the Adams - Morgan district of 
Washington, once a low-status community of working-class immigrants, now 
fashionable in the multicultural 90's.  The restaurants on 18th street were 
famously good and increasingly expensive.  There was also never anywhere to 
park.  Scully guided the car through tangled streets while Mulder glanced 
anxiously at her dashboard clock.  9:51, it said.  They would probably be on 
time.  He wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.  T minus 11 hours 
and nine minutes until the scheduled meeting with Knowlton.

She finally found a place to park -- probably illegally -- in the lot of a tall, 
brick apartment building a couple blocks away from their destination.  He hopped 
out as soon as the car stopped moving.  He was craving sunflower seeds, even a 
cigarette -- good God, he'd given that up years ago -- anything to keep his 
hands occupied.  He settled for jamming them in the pockets of his trousers.  He 
was clean, shaved, dressed in a suit and his most subdued tie. Feeling 
professional would help him act professional.  Or so he hoped.  He'd taken no 
Xanax or codeine that morning, since he wanted to avoid the dopey, weepy state 
he'd been in recently.  At worst, skipping the drugs would leave him jittery and 
in pain.  This would probably make him homicidal, which might actually be 
adaptive behavior in the current situation.  He wondered if it would be better 
if he were taking Prozac instead of Zoloft.  Didn't Prozac make people 
homicidal?

Scully shut off the engine and got out.  "You all right?" she asked, walking 
over to him.  She was also wearing the outfit that screamed "FBI Agent" the most 
loudly, a knee length navy skirt and blazer, matching shoes, white blouse. Well.  
The Syndicate could say a lot of things about the X Files Unit, but they 
couldn't call them sloppy.

Mulder shrugged in answer to her question.  "If I say 'yes,' you won't believe 
me.  If I say 'no,' you'll haul my ass home and call Werber."

"Should I?" she asked.  She appeared deadly serious.  "Is that how distressed 
you are?"

He looked away from her.  "I need to do this," he said softly.  "This thing 
started with me, I want it to end with me."  He strode off across the parking 
lot, both afraid and eager to meet his foe.  No -- his temporary allies.  Shit.

After a few paces Scully caught up with him and grabbed his elbow.  He realized 
that she'd been calling to him.  "What?" he asked, slightly annoyed.

"The restaurant is *that* way," she said, pointing in the opposite direction.

Oh.  "I knew that," he said.  She walked back the way they'd come, and Mulder 
hoped that he was inconspicuous about following her lead. 

The building fronts on 18th street were mostly turn-of-the-century brick, tall 
and narrow with lots of windows.  Nana Jay's occupied the lower floor of one 
such building. The place smelled good.  Apparently X knew how to choose his 
restaurants.  Even at an off-hour like 10 a.m., the sidewalk tables were all 
taken and there seemed to be a line inside.  Mulder and Scully waited just 
inside the glass door. 

Once they moved forward a bit, Mulder caught a glimpse of X, who was sitting by 
himself in a corner booth.  Mulder tapped Scully's shoulder and they slid 
through the crowd.  Once they got close he noticed the "Thank You For Not 
Smoking" tent card that sat upon the table.  He touched it as he slid in next to 
the informant and said, "I'm starting to like you." 

"Please keep such comments to yourself," X said.

Scully looked completely bewildered. 

"I think he protests too much," Mulder told her. 

X's lips pressed into a tight line, then he seemed to spot someone in the crowd 
at the entrance way.  "Your superior," he said. 

Mulder and Scully glanced up.  Skinner stood in the doorway, looking perplexed.

"Sir!"  Scully called out, half standing and waving her hand. "Sir!"

Skinner did eventually look their way and walked over.  Like X, he was wearing a 
long coat despite the heat.  Mulder wondered if this was some kind of fashion 
conspiracy.  Skinner settled himself next to Scully, leaving only one place, on 
the far side of X, conspicuously vacant. 

"Where's your boss?" Skinner asked the informant.

X raised his eyebrows and said, "I'm hardly his keeper."

All three Federal Agents checked their watches.  Mulder's said it was 10:05. Not 
very late, but late.  He wondered if Cancer Man had been unable to find a place 
to park, or if his tardiness was just a big "fuck you."

"I say we begin without him," Skinner said.  "What safeguards do your people 
have in place to protect my agents?"

Mulder was embarrassed about being spoken for, and he began, "Sir, I--" but a 
look from Skinner silenced him. 

X seemed equally uncomfortable.  His gaze kept slipping over toward the empty 
seat and the doorway.  "I would rather not discuss matters of substance until 
all the relevant parties are here," he said. 

"If you're not your own man, if you've got to wait on your smoking friend, I 
understand," Skinner said.  He looked anything but understanding.  Actually, the 
AD looked downright poisonous.  Mulder wondered if this was how they taught 
agents to interrogate subjects back in the good old days. 

Skinner's sneering hostility was clearly doing its work on X's pride.  The 
informant narrowed his eyes and every muscle in his shoulders tensed, as if he 
were preparing to spring.  In the end, he seemed to master himself and relaxed a 
little.  "I *am* my own man," he said, with dangerous softness.  "When my 
'smoking friend' deigns to grace us with his presence, you may feel free to 
explain the proceedings from the beginning."

"Done," Skinner said.  "I repeat, what means do you have in place to ensure 
Agent Mulder's safety?  Why should I let a good agent, who's already on medical 
leave, be put in a dangerous situation?"

Mulder startled and looked over at him.  It had never occurred to him that 
Skinner would not "let" him help bring in Knowlton.

"Sir," Mulder began again, but this time Scully gave his arm a vigorous pinch. 
"Ow, would you quit it?" Mulder whispered to her, but she continued to look over 
at the AD, as if completely engrossed in what he was saying.

"My organization has some of its best people on call for this evening," X said.

"'Best,' how?" Skinner asked.  "Best wardrobe?  Best personality?  I want to 
make sure we all agree as to our priorities-- " he stopped when X suddenly 
turned toward the doorway.  The Smoking man sauntered in, minus his usual 
smoldering Morley.

"Sorry," the Smoking Man said, as he settled himself in the booth next to X. "I 
was outside finishing my cigarette."  His pale eyes slid over to glare at X, but 
the informant held his gaze without wavering.

"The Assistant Director has volunteered to catch you up on the meeting so far," 
X said.

"Your 'associate' here was dodging my questions, that's what's happened so far," 
Skinner said.  X's lips pressed tight together and he gave Skinner a scanning 
look, as if memorizing him for some future hit. 

Cancer Man glanced at X, then back at Skinner.  "Dodging your questions about 
what?" he asked.

"Where our respective priorities lie," Skinner said.  "You want to catch this 
former employee of yours.  Fine.  I want to protect a couple of my better 
agents.  What assurance do I have that I'm not sending Mulder and Scully into 
some kind of death trap?"

"None," the Smoking Man said, mildly.  "All dealings with violent criminals are 
potential death traps, or hadn't you noticed?"

"I mean a trap set by *your* people," Skinner said.

"Ah," said the Smoking Man.  "So you think this is all a double-cross."

"Maybe," Skinner said.  "You're sure not falling over yourselves to convince me 
otherwise."

Cancer Man gazed at him a moment or two from beneath lowered lids.  His 
expression was unreadable.  "If you think about it, I could have ordered 
Knowlton -- or someone like him -- to kill Mulder and Scully ages ago, if I 
wished it.  As I recall, Knowlton had no difficulty getting access to Mulder's 
hotel room, and met with little, if any, resistance inside."  He shifted his 
gaze to Mulder as he spoke the last words.

Mulder clenched his fists and half rose out of his seat.  "What do you think I 
was supposed to do about it, you son of a bitch -- " he began, but Scully, and 
to his surprise, X, each grabbed one of his shoulders and forced him to sit 
again.  The impact hurt.  "Don't even touch me," Mulder snapped at X, and 
violently shrugged his hand off.  People were staring at them from across the 
room and whispering.  The greeter at the door looked worried, as if she was 
debating calling the cops.

X narrowed his eyes and hissed, "Don't be any stupider than you are, any of 
you."  He looked around the table, his gaze encompassing all three federal 
agents and the Smoking Man.  "This is not a situation in which we can bicker or 
try to settle old scores.  If we can't cooperate, some or all of us will end up 
dead.  I don't know about *you,*" he said, looking directly at Mulder, "but I'm 
against that idea."

Just then a stocky African American woman with graying hair strode over to their 
table.  She wore a loose floral print dress and sensible shoes.  Mulder 
suspected that this was Nana Jay herself.  She stopped in front of their table 
and planted her hands on her hips.  "Is there a problem over here?" she 
demanded.

"Things are under control," X assured her.  She looked at him, frowned a bit and 
then suddenly seemed to place him.

To Mulder's utter shock, she burst into a wide smile.  "Well, hel-lo," she said.  
"What brings you out here after all this time?"

"Business," was all X said, but he did give the woman a slight smile.

"Mm hm," she said, sounding skeptical.  "I heard about the kind of business you 
in."

"And what would that be?" X asked.  If he was nervous about her blowing his 
cover he didn't show it.

"Getting yourself killed," she replied.  "No good will ever come of you hanging 
around the likes of him."  She pointed at Cancer Man.

"I'm sorry, have we met?" the Smoking Man asked mildly.

"Have we met," she repeated derisively.  "You stick out like a sore thumb, 
snooping and spying around here."

"Ma'am, I apologize," Skinner began.  "We didn't mean any offense.  We're just 
trying to conduct a meeting here."

"Hmm," she said, looking at him with obvious disapproval.  "You watch your 
mouth," she said, turning to point her finger at Mulder.

Mulder swallowed, quite thoroughly mortified.  "I'm sorry, I got angry.  I 
shouldn't have," he said.

"Everything's under control here, Nana Jay," X said, "but if you prefer, we can 
leave."

She gave them displeased looks all around, and finally said, "As long as you act 
like ladies and gentlemen, you're welcome.  None of my business what you do for 
a living."  Mulder realized that she must think they were all Syndicate members.  
"One other thing," she said, pointing at Cancer Man, "you will *not* smoke in my 
non-smoking section."  With that she turned and swept off.

There was an uncomfortable silence at the table for a few seconds.  "Well, that 
was entertaining," the Smoking Man said.  He did look almost amused.

"So much for keeping a low profile," Scully muttered.

Mulder turned to X and said, "You implied that you had a plan."  He wanted to 
get this meeting over as soon as possible.

"My idea was to have my own people and Agents Scully and Skinner at the Memorial 
some time in advance, as soon as it's dark enough for the surrounding trees to 
provide good cover.  I understand that it's supposed to rain tonight, so it 
should get dark early," said X

Mulder heard Scully say, "Great."

"Agent Mulder will arrive just before the scheduled time, and wait in the 
lighted area of the Memorial.  I suggest that he wear a wire.  If nothing else, 
if we lose contact with him we may assume that Knowlton is using his power over 
electricity, and that we must use caution."  To Mulder's surprise no one 
challenged the idea that Knowlton had such power. 

"Then what?" Scully asked. 

"Mulder will lead Knowlton into the Memorial itself.  The walls will obstruct 
Knowlton's view of the area and he will be easier to surround.  We ought to 
place an operative in each of the Memorial's openings and station others at the 
perimeter of the steps.  Once Knowlton enters the building, we start to move 
in."

"And if he wipes the minds of all these operatives and walks away?" asked the 
Smoking Man.

"If you have a better suggestion I'd like to hear it," X said.

The Smoking Man just gave him a thin-lipped smile.



Their brunch probably would have tasted better if it wasn't so quiet.



By the time they got back to her apartment, Dana knew Mulder was running a 
fever.  His face was pale and his eyes had an odd, glazed look.  He changed into 
his T-shirt and jeans as soon as they got in, and then paced around the living 
room, rummaging though his bags to no apparent purpose.  She sensed his fear, 
his exhaustion, and his barely-contained rage at the world.  Dana suspected was 
in for a difficult afternoon.

"I figured I'd go back home for a few hours," he said.  "The lock on the door's 
fixed and since I have a time and place to meet Knowlton, I don't think he'll 
bother me."  He didn't look up at her as he said it.  He clearly expected her to 
disapprove.

"What's back home?" she asked.

"You know . . . stuff."  He tried to jam all his medication bottles into one 
pocket of his bag and found they wouldn't go.  He ended up pitching them all 
into the main compartment, where he certainly wouldn't be able to find anything.

"I'd rather you weren't alone right now," she said.  When he didn't answer she 
added, "You're sick, you're upset and you just started a course of psychiatric 
medication.  Actually, I'd prefer it if you didn't even drive."

"Yeah, well, you can't always get what you want."

Scully looked up at the ceiling and counted to ten.  "What do you want, Mulder?" 
she asked at last.  "What do you get out of driving yourself until you're sick 
and exhausted?  Are you trying to go out in some blaze of martyred glory?"

"Yeah.  It's better to burn out than fade away," he said.  He pitched his bag of 
toiletries onto the couch. 

"Fine."  Scully said, turning her back on him.  "Fine, whatever."  Then she 
thought about it and realized it was *not* fine.  She rounded on him and said, 
"When are you going to realize that you are not the only person in the world 
who's hurting?"  The anger in her voice at least got him to stop and look at 
her.  "It's like you think you're this little island and nothing that happens to 
you touches anybody else.  How do you think your mom would feel if she knew you 
were using yourself as bait to catch a mutant killer?  How do you think *I* 
feel?  I've been helping you out with this plan because I couldn't think of 
anything better.  I shouldn't even have done as much as I did.  I was probably 
remiss as a doctor and a friend by not sending you to a hospital the minute your 
temperature spiked." 

"Scully, don't treat me like some kind of convalescent--"

"Mulder you *are* a convalescent.  I'm not trying to offend your sense of 
manhood.  I'm just pointing out a reality.  I don't think you should go tonight.  
You've gotten Knowlton to agree to show up, which was extremely brave and 
resourceful of you.  Let Skinner and I do the rest."

"I can't," Mulder said.

"Why not?" she asked.

He sighed and some of the tension left his shoulders.  Finally he said, "When I 
was a New Agent at the ISU, I interviewed this guy who was doing time for lust 
murder.  One of the smartest criminals I ever met.  I asked him whether he'd 
ever taken anything from his victims -- kind of as a souvenir.  Most killers 
like him do, and the cops had been going nuts looking for his stash.  He laughed 
at me when I asked.  He said, 'You know what I like to take from a girl?  I take 
her essence.  Once she's dead, she's all mine.  What do I need her stupid 
pantyhose for?'  That's what a rapist wants.  To own his victim. When somebody 
like Knowlton calls a person up in the middle of the night, just to harass them, 
he's trying to possess them through fear.  He wants to be a part of their every 
waking moment.  I'll be damned if I let him do that to me."

Scully smoothed her hair back from her forehead in a half-conscious soothing 
gesture.  When he put it that way she understood, but she didn't feel any 
better.  "You want to get this man off the street.  I want to keep you alive and 
unharmed.  Those goals shouldn't be mutually exclusive.  I'll help you with this 
sting operation," she said.

"If . . .?" he asked, looking suspicious.

"If you take my advice on your health, and not just use me as a backup gun.  I 
*won't* blindly follow orders that'll get you killed."

Mulder sighed, seemed to relent.  "You want me to go to bed, don't you?" he 
asked.

"How well are you going to fight if you're exhausted and sick?" she pointed out.  
Nothing like a little enlightened self-interest to put things in perspective.  
"I want you to do three things," she said. "Take your medication. Call up Janet 
and get an appointment as soon as possible so she can check that fever out.  Get 
some rest before you go to the Memorial tonight.  If you'll do that, I'll shut 
up and do everything I can to help you bring in this Invisible Man."

His face took on the sad, far-away expression he got whenever she told him she 
cared for him.  He turned soulful hazel eyes up to meet hers and said, "You 
promise you'll shut up?"

She repressed an urge to pitch a couch pillow at him.  "Girl Scout's honor," she 
said, and gave him the three-fingered Scout solute.

Mulder returned the gesture, but then he folded down his first and third 
fingers.  He gave her an evil grin despite the water in his eyes.



He did take a nap, though.



When Scully gently shook Mulder awake the room was dimmer than he remembered it.  
The light filtering through the blinds was slate gray and he could hear the 
faint patter of raindrops on the window. 

"It's seven thirty," Scully she told him.  "I'm getting ready to go."

"Fuck . . ." he said, hauling himself into a sitting position.  "This early?"

"It's a twenty-minute ride to the city," she said.  "I'm supposed to be there 
before it's dark.  By the way, your friend dropped by while you were sleeping 
and said to give you this."  She pressed some small metal object into his hand.

He looked at it.  "A tie clip," he said.  "How thoughtful."  He knew a wire when 
he saw one and was sure Scully did too, so he didn't bother mentioning it. "It's 
an ugly tie clip, too."  Actually, it wasn't; it was an understated little gold 
diamond with a faint cross-hatch pattern etched into it.  Probably very 
tasteful, for people who liked that sort of thing.  It was just that everything 
to do with the Consortium was ugly on principle.  "Who's going to be on the 
other end of this thing?" he asked.

"I told the man who gave it to me that Skinner and I would expect to have 
pickups, and he assured me that some of his 'best people' would be listening in 
as well."

"Uh huh.  Just what I always wanted."  He got up and said, "Well, I guess I 
might as well make myself presentable.  Wouldn't want a gang of international 
murderers to think I'm a slob."

He was heading for her bathroom when she said, "Mulder . . ." and he stopped and 
turned.  She looked down and away from him.  The pale light from the window cast 
the scene in grays, like a charcoal drawing.  "Please be careful," she said at 
last, very quiet.

"Oh, yeah.  Yeah," he assured her.  He stepped forward to brush his fingertips 
under her chin and gently lifted her face.  There was a moment of electrifying 
eye contact, then they both turned away. 

Mulder cleared his throat, gazing at some imaginary object by his foot.  "I 
mean, I only get one life, right?" he asked.  "It's not like I'm going to throw 
it away on this."

"Good," she said.  She did not look up at him again, but she ran her fingers 
over his hand as she walked past him and out the door.





At a little before 9 p.m. Mulder had no difficulty finding a parking place by 
the Jefferson Memorial.  The rain had stopped, mostly, but a fine mist had risen 
from the tidal basin, making haloes around the sodium lamps.  The dome of the 
Memorial itself was washed in a luminous blue glow, cast by the lights that 
ringed the lower tier of the roof.  It was a short hike around the sodden lawn 
to the front steps.

The building's foreskirts were empty.  Floodlights set along the water 
illuminated every step, every well-groomed hedge.  The waist-high cement flower 
beds cast strange, multiple shadows.  Fox looked up and saw there were breaks in 
the clouds.  A few hardy stars and a sickle moon shone through the city light 
pollution.  "It's all right," he told himself.  "After tonight, it's over." 

Ha.  As if.  He ascended the first set of steps, trying to scan the surrounding 
tree cover with being obvious about it.  Nothing moved.  As far as he could 
tell, he was alone.  Scully and Skinner wouldn't abandon him, would they?

He remembered what Cancer Man had said: "So you think this is all a set up."

Too late to worry about that now.  Fox had a 9 mm in his shoulder holster and a 
snub-nosed .38 in a special holster at his ankle.  The .38 was heavier than it 
looked, and he had to resist the urge to pull his sock up. 

"God, if you're listening," he thought to a deity he wasn't sure he believed in, 
"I don't want to die here.  I don't want . . ." he found he was unable, even in 
his mind, to name the horrors he didn't want.  "Just give me the strength to do  
. . . whatever it is I have to do, okay?" 

As he finished this rough prayer, he reached the Memorial's uppermost step. Fox 
leaned against one of the towering white columns and gazed out over the tidal 
pool.  The lights from the Mall were visible over the canopy of trees. The basin 
itself was cloaked in fog.

The view reminded him of something.  Oxford, seen from across the Thames?   No. 
He shook his head, trying to clear a sudden wave of dizziness.  What had he been 
thinking about, again?  He wasn't sure.

"Hello, love."  Fox jumped and grabbed for his gun.  A strong hand caught his 
wrist and then another clamped onto his shoulder.  Fox was spun around, lost his 
balance and fell to his knees.  His right hand got pinned behind his back and he 
narrowly escaped smacking his head against the cement by throwing his left hand 
out in front of him. 

The pain of his scraped hand seeped through the adrenaline rush, along with the 
sensation of body heat against his back. 

Oh, God, no.  Not again.  "Don't, please don't," Fox protested, before he could 
stop himself. 

"Don't?" Knowlton asked.  Who else could it be but Knowlton?  The soft, 
unplaceable drawl was there, the tone somewhere between flirting and mocking. 
"Don't what?"

Fox cried out involuntarily. "Please don't do this."  The cruel twisting against 
his shoulder joint increased.  His eyes teared.  The profiler voice in his mind 
told him to say, "Not out in public."

Fox got no reply for a few, terrifying seconds.  "All right, love," Knowlton 
said at last.  He wrenched the 9 mm from Mulder's grasp and slammed his pelvis 
into the agent's buttocks.  Knocked forward, Mulder had to straighten up quickly 
to avoid getting his teeth smashed into the cement. 

Afterward, Fox slowly got his feet under him and stood.  "Would you let my hand 
go?" he asked, mildly.  "I won't cause any more trouble."

"You won't, eh?" Knowlton asked.  "What's my guarantee of that?"

"I'm sorry," Fox said.  "You startled me.  I wasn't sure who you were."

"Mm-hm," said Knowlton.  "And just how many men do you meet out here?"

"On purpose?  Only you," Fox said.  Actually, it was true.  "But I meet people 
by accident all the time."

"There are no accidents," Knowlton said, but he released Mulder's arm.  Mulder 
gripped his shoulder to try and rub some circulation back into it.

"Perhaps not," Fox conceded,  "Can we go inside?"  He did not turn around to 
face Knowlton.  He would not make eye contact until he was invited to do so. It 
was important that Knowlton believe he himself was in control here.  If he began 
to suspect that Mulder was a threat to his authority, he just might shoot.  Or 
worse.

"All right," Knowlton said.  Mulder walked slowly into the Memorial. 

There was Tom Jefferson, 19 feet of weathered bronze.  Cement laurel wreaths 
decorated the walls, and Jefferson's most famous quotes were carved beneath:

"We hold these truths to be self evident . . ."

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of 
tyranny over the mind of man."  Fox led Knowlton to the far side of the circular 
chamber, turned and leaned his back against a section of curved wall. This would 
be a really, really good time for the cavalry to come in, he thought.  He heard 
no footsteps outside. 

"Oh, Lord, please, don't let me have been double crossed," he thought.  "Don't 
let this son-of-a-bitch have shorted out everybody's brains . . ." He gazed over 
at Knowlton.  What did he look like?  Even in the well-lit Memorial it was hard 
to tell.  Fox had the impression of someone shorter than himself, someone whose 
close-cropped hair was graying at the temples, but who moved with a catlike 
litheness that suggested he was still in his prime.  Mulder did *not* want to 
get into a physical fight with him.

Knowlton got awfully close.  He'd been out in the rain -- Mulder could feel 
dampness radiating from his clothes.  What was he wearing?  Something dark. God, 
it was hard to focus.  The next thing he knew he was shoved back hard against 
the wall.  Knowlton pressed his forearm across Mulder's chest, a gesture away 
from his throat.  Knowlton's free hand caught Mulder's and held it against the 
wall beside Mulder's head.  Mulder felt the assassin's thumb gently stroke the 
skin over his wrist bones.  "You said you needed to see me, Fox."

The sibilants in the words sounded like water striking a burning surface, like 
the serpent whispering in Adam's ear.  Fox felt a shudder go through him at the 
sound of his name.  He told himself, "Think, you idiot."  It was easy to get 
dreamy, listening to that voice.  It was hypnotic, like the rushing of waves on 
the beach -- no, maybe that was the sound of blood singing in his ears.

"I -- I wanted to ask you something," Mulder said.

"What's that?" Knowlton said.  He leaned forward so that they were practically 
kissing.  There was a faintly herbal smell about him, like a garden in the rain, 
overlaying the scent of old gun smoke. 

"You hurt me, in the hotel," Mulder said.  He couldn't keep his voice from 
breaking slightly over the words.

"Allus hurts the first time, love," Knowlton murmured.

The words "first time" sent another jolt of terror through Mulder's body. "No," 
he said, "you cut me.  Since you did that, I was thinking that--" he faltered, 
uncertain whether the next words would offend Knowlton and put himself in 
greater danger.

"You were thinking what?" Knowlton asked.

"I was thinking you had to blitz me.  That you couldn't take me out when I was 
armed and awake.  now I think . . . I think maybe you could."

He sensed Knowlton's smile.  "I think so, too," he said.

Mulder swallowed.  "Then why did -- why did you do to me what you did?"

"Why do you think?"  Knowlton's lips brushed his cheek as he spoke.  Mulder felt 
the scratchiness of a mustache.

Mulder's heart was slamming into his ribcage.  He felt sweat dampening his hair 
and forming a clammy layer under his shirt.  Under other circumstances, caresses 
on his hand and soft lips against his face would have been pleasurable.  He got 
a sick feeling in his stomach.  

"I think," he managed.  "I think you did it because you liked it."

Breath against his cheek -- Knowlton's quiet laugh.  "You think right," he said.  
Knowlton turned his head, touched his mouth to Mulder's.

"Stop where you are," snapped Scully.  From the way she spoke, Mulder was sure 
she had a weapon leveled at Knowlton's back.  "Put your hands up and turn 
around," she ordered.

Knowlton took one step back, slowly lifted the hand that held Mulder's.

"Both of them," Scully said. 

Mulder got a flash of eyes -- Knowlton had green eyes -- and then something 
slammed across the side of his face.  He saw sparks, and then blackness.  

People were shouting.  Was he unconscious?  Was he dead?  His knees and then his 
hands struck concrete.  More sparks -- then brilliant flashes and the sound of 
gunshots amplified horribly by the dome above.  Confused cries -- Mulder got hit 
in the head again.  "Scully!" he called, got no answer.  Don't let her be down . 
. .

Knowlton grabbed Mulder's wrist and wrenched it up between his shoulder blades, 
then yanked him to his feet. "Did you lie to me, love?" came his hoarse whisper.  
"Did you?  That's too bad.  I'll have to teach you better."

More gunshots -- sparks as the bullets ricocheted.  The flash briefly 
illuminated dark, swarming figures.  Knowlton shoved him toward an exit and 
fired at someone coming up the steps.  Mulder heard a man's strangled cry, and 
then he was half pushed, half hauled toward the stairs.  Pitchy black outside. 
There should be visible lights from cars on the freeway.  Surely, Knowlton 
couldn't turn those off?

"Where are we going?" Mulder asked.

"Someplace quiet."  Mulder thought Knowlton had a specific place in mind. 
Somewhere hard to find, where a man's cries would go unheard.  

Mulder encountered the steps before he expected to and stumbled, pulling 
Knowlton off-balance.  Mulder seized the opportunity.  He flung himself forward, 
hoping to turn his fall into a shoulder roll and get the assassin's body under 
him at impact.  Knowlton did the sensible thing and let go.  Mulder hit the 
steps hard.  He'd only ever practiced this move on mats.  He tumbled down the 
stairs but managed to roll to his feet on the landing. He spun, unsnapped the 
.38 from his ankle holster and fired.  He heard no cry, but drew no answering 
fire.

Mulder bolted down the last flight of steps and headed across the grass for -- 
what?  The car was the obvious answer, but what if Knowlton could short out the 
starter?  Even if he couldn't, what would happen to Scully, and Skinner as well, 
if they were left alone with Knowlton and a dozen Consortium goons as "backup?"  
Instead, Mulder turned and headed for the highway that bridged the tidal basin.  
There had to be lights over there.  He had to be able to see at least a little.  
He could hear people shouting up in the Memorial, and he thought he could pick 
out Scully's voice, high above the voices of the men. She was alive.  Mulder 
silently thanked any deity that might be listening.

When he reached the tree line he kicked off his shoes and slipped into the thin 
brush.  He had not heard a pursuer, but he doubted anyone ever heard Knowlton's 
approach.  Mulder was good at being quiet too, when he had to be.  He walked as 
he'd learned in Indian Scouts, coming down on the side of his foot and rolling 
smoothly onto the ball, feeling for twigs underfoot.  He crept from shadow to 
shadow, edging toward the roar of the highway.

He stopped at the edge of the tree line, several yards' distance from the 
bridge.  The lights on the bridge were still lit, and the headlights shone on 
passing cars.  The resulting illumination was not good, a bright moon would have 
been preferable, but it was better than nothing.

About ten yards away a shadow slipped from the woods, the silhouette of a human 
body.  Mulder's finger pressed against the trigger.  He could gauge the person's 
location from the space where the headlights of distant cars winked out.  It 
could be Knowlton.  It could be a member of the Consortium.  It could be Scully 
or Skinner or some hapless evening wanderer.

Mulder decided not to take the chance.  "Federal agent.  I'm armed!" he shouted.

"That what it's come to, love?" came Knowlton's voice.  The words blended with a 
soft rushing sound -- raindrops sprinkling on the leaves of the trees. Pretty.   


"Seems you want it the hard way. "

Mulder jumped -- found Knowlton had covered a third of the distance between 
them.  "Lucky I'm not a man who takes no for an answer."

"You damn well didn't ask," Mulder said.  He shook his head, tried to clear it. 
It was so hard to think right now . . .

"We've got some work to do on that troublesome streak of yours."

The silhouetted figure slowly came closer.  It looked like the vision-figures 
he'd seen during his sojourn among the dead in New Mexico, like the shadow in 
the door the night Samantha disappeared.  It felt as if he were trapped in 
amber, as if time were winding backward.

Body heat -- breath in his ear.  "You've twice pointed a gun at me tonight," 
Knowlton said.  "I don't like that.  It won't happen again.  I'm going to teach 
you a lesson, and this time it'll be one you *will* *not* *like.*"  Fingers 
brushed Mulder's gun hand.

The touch brought it all back.  Pain tearing him up from the inside, rough 
kisses on his neck and teeth sunk into his shoulder, hands running over his 
buttocks, his thighs, his groin . . . 

Knowlton lifted the gun barrel, going for a disarm.  

Mulder fired.  The shot took the assassin in the chest and knocked him backward.   


Other shots hit in the belly, the chest again . . . when Knowlton fell to the 
ground Mulder kept firing until the trigger responded with a soft *snick.*  

"Mulder!" came Scully's voice.  He realized that she couldn't know whether he 
himself had been shot.  

"I'm all right," Mulder managed.  It felt as if his tongue was moving in thick 
glue.  He put his hand against a tree trunk to steady himself.  Suddenly an 
orange light flickered on above the trees, one of the Memorial's sodium lamps. 
He heard the sound of feet crunching on leaves and glimpsed figures ahead 
through the darkness and fog. One by one the Memorial's lights came back on, 
slowly retrieving the stand of trees from darkness.  Mulder walked stiffly 
toward where the figures stood.  A small silhouette disengaged itself from the 
others and hurried over to him.

"Scully," he said.  He half-limped, half-ran the last few steps to reach her. 
She threw her arms around him and he gasped -- something in his ribs pinched 
horribly.  

She pulled back and said, "You're hurt."  

He shook his head as she slipped her hand beneath his jacket to touch his sore 
side.  This was nothing compared to what he'd been afraid would happen. Nothing 
compared to what had already happened. He'd never had a flashback that vivid 
before.  Knowlton had hurt him.  He'd touched him in private places and Fox 
couldn't make him stop and it had hurt so much.  It was all over and it still 
hurt.

Scully held him more gently and he fought hard against the urge to cry.  He was 
*not* going to cry in front of Cancer Man.  He was *not.*  

The price for stifling the tears was a violent spasm in his stomach that made 
him bolt for the trees to be sick.  Not glamorous.  Not what Eliot Ness would 
have done.  Still it was better than showing the tiniest shred of emotional 
vulnerability to people he hated.

Once Mulder left the trees Scully caught his arm.  The support was more than 
emotional; he suspected he might have fallen over if she hadn't held onto him.

"You okay?" she asked.  He nodded.  "Does your head hurt?  How many fingers?"

"Yes and two.  I don't have a concussion."  His voice was rough with sickness 
and exhaustion.  "What about you?  You all right?  There were all those shots 
and I couldn't see who got hit . . ."

"I'm fine," she assured him.  "There's two men down, one badly.  Both 
Consortium, as far as I can tell. the paramedics are already on their way. 
They'll take good care of you."  Then she sighed and said,  "This is going to be 
hell to explain."

"Refer anyone who asks to Cancer Man," Mulder said.  He walked slowly toward the 
spot where men in dark suits gathered around Knowlton's body.  

Scully stopped and said, "Mulder, don't."  Her expression pled with him to stay 
away.  It must be bad.  He hadn't gotten a good look before.

He gently disengaged himself and said, "It's all right."  The shadow-men shifted 
aside as he approached.  Mulder managed not to fall down and humiliate himself 
further.  He saw Skinner in the group, as well as the Smoking Man and X.  All 
looked unharmed.  Skinner gazed at the ground with his first knuckle pressed 
against his lips, probably worrying about legal implications.  Cancer Man 
casually flicked ashes into the grass.

As Mulder continued walking through the ring of men someone grabbed the back of 
his jacket.  He shrugged the hand off and stepped forward into something hot.  

There was blood in the grass.  Mulder's shoes were on the other side of the 
trees.  When he looked down at himself he realized that he was covered in blood 
spatters.  No wonder Scully had been worried.  

He backed away quickly and stripped off one of his socks.  The other was under 
his ankle holster and wouldn't come off.  He pulled at it hard, got sticky blood 
on his fingers.  Now he was nauseous again.  He spat on the ground, thought he 
might have to go back to the trees.  He thought to himself: "I will not throw 
up, I will not throw up . . ."

Suddenly Scully was beside him, gripping his elbow to keep him steady.  "I'm 
getting you out of here," she said.  This time he didn't argue with her.

As she helped him away from the group the Smoking Man called out, "Agent Mulder, 
don't you want to see the face of the Invisible Man?  As a successful hunter you 
can claim that right."

Mulder did not know what to make of the mocking tone in the man's voice.  Was he 
insulting Mulder for his weakness, or trying to goad him into traumatizing 
himself further?

"Leave him alone," Scully snapped, but Mulder stopped and turned toward the men.  
They cleared away from in front of the body, which was an indistinct heap in the 
darkness.

The Smoking Man pulled a cigarette pack from his coat pocket and twisted it into 
a cylinder.  He touched the flame of his lighter to the paper, then tossed it 
onto the grass by the body.  The tongue of fire guttered in the gore, nearly 
went out, and then suddenly caught again.  

The flickering light gave a disturbing lifelikeness to Knowlton's dead features.  
As Langly had said, he had a mustache and hair that was beginning to thin.  The 
face was narrower and more gaunt-looking than Mulder had expected. The nose was 
straight and the jaw square, although the parted lips revealed crooked front 
teeth.  Perhaps people would have considered Knowlton handsome. 

The body did not upset Mulder as the blood had.  It was dreary in its 
ordinariness.  Like any violent death, it posed many questions and answered 
none.  He allowed Scully to lead him away as the first of the ambulances roared 
across the bridge.





Georgetown Medical Center,  Next Day

This time Mulder was admitted to the hospital.  They gave him pain meds too, 
which made the twitching second hand on the wall clock much too interesting.  

The big hand was on the nine and the little hand was on the five when a nurse 
opened the door.  Mulder waved her away.  "I'm fine," he said, pointing up at 
his still-full IV.  He didn't want to be poked anymore.

"There's somebody here to see you, Mr. Mulder," the nurse said.  "You up to 
having a visitor?"

"Yeah, sure," he said.  He struggled into a sitting position.  The nurse was 
about to leave when he said, "Wait--it's not some old guy with cigarette breath, 
is it?"

She looked puzzled.  "No," she said.

"Okay," Mulder said, relaxing.  "That's fine then."

A few minutes later Scully came into the room, and he held both hands out to 
her.  "We have to stop meeting like this," he said.

She caught his hands in her own and asked, "How are you?"

"Better than that guy," Mulder said, inclining his head toward the room's 
curtained partition.  "That's my roommate, George.  George has acute food 
poisoning, and every so often he wakes up and starts retching." 

"Great," Scully said.

"With any luck, he'll stay asleep."

"How's your fever?" she asked.

"Down this afternoon..  They say its a virus, but they put me on new antibiotics 
anyway.  They make my guts hurt."

"I'm sorry," she said.  

"I talked to the police today," Mulder said.  "They seem all right with the 
claim of self-defense.  I think it was the 6-inch bruise over my ribs I got 
fighting on the stairs.  Nothing broken by the way, it just hurts like a bitch."

Scully loosened one of her hands and ran it over his hair.   It felt nice. "What 
do they have you on for the pain?" 

"I dunno, but it must be the good shit.  That street value of my blood is like . 
. . a lot."

That got a smile from her.    "I tested some of Knowlton's blood this morning. 
He had hypokalemia, the same condition Darin Oswald had.  Even though we didn't 
get DNA from the semen sample, the electrolyte imbalance is rare enough that I 
think we can make an  ID.  Looks like you closed a case."

"Whoopee," Mulder said.

She pulled up a chair and sat down.  "You said before that you'd feel better if 
Knowlton were out of the picture.  Has it helped?"

He sighed, closed his eyes a moment.  "I'm less afraid now."

"Good."

"As for the rest of it, I don't know.  Will I ever be able to sleep in a hotel 
room without barricading the door?  Will I ever be able to -- to sleep with 
somebody without feeling sick when they touch me?  I don't know."

"I think you'll be able to do whatever you put your mind to," Scully said. 
"You're a pretty determined guy."  She rubbed the back of his hand with her 
thumbs, avoiding the IV lead.  The IV made his arm feel cold, and she would know 
that.  Nice of her.  She looked down at his hand as she spoke, "Mulder . . . I 
admire the way you dealt with what happened to you.  You never gave up fighting, 
you refused to play the victim.  I don't know if I would have been that strong.  
I think a lot of people wouldn't be."

Mulder shook his head.  "It's no big deal."  He watched her massage pinkness 
back into his fingers for a while, then said, "When I was at Oxford I knew this 
guy who had a huge poster of Malcolm X holding an AK-47.  Underneath the picture 
it said, 'By Any Means Necessary.'  Funny thing for a British white kid to have.  
Anyway, the phrase stuck with me.  People do what they have to do to survive.  I 
don't think there's anything special or admirable about it.  It's just the will 
to live kicking in."  

"It's hard to keep fighting when you're scared, when you don't feel well," she 
said. 

"Yeah," he admitted softly.   They were both quiet a while and he let his eyes 
fall shut.  "You wouldn't give up on me," he said at last.

"Hmm?"

"I said you wouldn't give up on  me.  You had no patience with me at all when I 
was whining and didn't want to take care of myself."   He opened his eyes and 
saw she looked sad.  He wondered if she'd taken the comment as a rebuke. "That's 
a good thing," he explained.

"You didn't whine."

"The night you put me in the shower I was whining."

"Not really.  You were . . . complaining vociferously.  I can't blame you, 
really."

"Nobody likes a whiner."  

"Mulder, you are not a whiner.  Look-- can you at least believe that *I* think 
you're brave?"

"I guess," he said.

"I'm not so stupid, am I?"

"No."

"I think you're brave and I'm proud of you, and I think you're going to be able 
to put this behind you."  

"Can I put it behind me while sitting in the smallest room in my house?"  She 
looked confused a moment, then smiled and shook her head at him.  "Speaking of 
which, I was able to use the toilet this morning without feeling like I wanted 
to scream.  You'd be surprised how much that improves your outlook on life," he 
said.

"I'll bet."

Mulder considered what he'd just said and added, "I'm sorry, you didn't need to 
know that.  I get honest when I'm stoned."

"You're honest all the time.  That's why you get in so much trouble."

"Oh yeah."  He closed his eyes again.

"You want me to go so you can rest?"  Scully asked.  He shook his head.  "All 
right.  I'll stay."

He dropped off to sleep with the warm sensation of Scully's fingers pressing his 
own.  For the first time since he left Cincinnati, he felt safe.  

 ************************************************************************** Just 
 in case you care:  According to the U. S. Department of Justice's Bureau of 
 Statistics, an adolescent or adult woman is raped every 50 seconds.  An 
 adolescent or adult man is raped every fifteen minutes.  Be careful out there, 
 boys and girls. 

Research material for this story included (alphabetical by author):

By Ann Burgess, Allen G. Burgess, John Douglas and Robert K. Ressler: "Crime 
Classifiaction Manual"

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker: "Mindhunter" "Journey Into Darkness" 
"Obsession" "UNABOMBER: On the Trail of America's Most Wanter Serial Killer"

By Joseph J. Grau, Ph.D.: "Criminal and Civil Investigation Handbook"

By Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shactman: "I Have Lived Inside the Monster"

By Ann Rule: "The Stranger Beside Me"

By Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner: "Deadly Doses: A Writer's Guide to 
Poisons"

By Billie Ann Wilson, Margaret T. Shannon and Carolyn L. Stang: "Nurses' Drug 
Guide"

**************************************************************************




Title: Any Means Necessary
Author: Ophelia






By midnight, Fox was wondering if it wasn't a mistake to come home.  He lay 
curled in his old, single bed, more depressed than ever.  Perhaps it was because 
he didn't have happy memories of this house.  He and his mother had come here 
after Samantha's disappearance, after the divorce.  Perhaps it was because he'd 
tried to geographically outrun his current misery, and it hadn't worked.  

Teena had tried to help.  She'd washed his sheets, saying she was sure they were 
too musty to sleep on.  Fox had to admit that the dryer warmth and smell of 
fabric softener was nice.  Still, the familiar surroundings seemed to provide 
more sorrow than comfort:  the heirloom clock ticking in the hall; the rustling 
of trees in the back yard; the sounds of his mother's cats pattering up and down 
the stairs; himself in bed, sleepless, lonely and close to tears. He'd spent so 
many nights like that in high school.  However, back in those days, when Fox got 
too unhappy at Teena's house he could go stay with his father for a few days.   
Now that was no longer an option.  He missed his father and sister terribly.  
However, he suspected that even if they'd been there he wouldn't have felt any 
better.

Finally he gave up on sleeping and pulled the blanket off the bed, then went 
downstairs to curl up on the couch.  About three years ago his mother had 
finally gotten a decent cable system.  Fox punched the channel changer on the 
remote repeatedly, and discovered how many varieties of nothing were on TV. 
Cubic zirconia jewelry on the Home Shopping Network, Sister Mary-Somebody 
teaching painting on the Catholic Education Channel, reruns of Senatorial 
speeches on C-Span.  Oh, joy.

 A light clicked on upstairs.  "Fox?" his mother called out.

 "Yeah," he said.  His voice sounded shaky and wretched, even to himself. Teena 
 came downstairs, belting on her bathrobe.  She sat next to him and rubbed his 
 back with her hand.  The touch was warm and gentle.

 "Please," she said, "please don't shut me out.  The not knowing is worse." Fox 
 knew that his father had kept her perpetually in the dark, and that it had hurt 
 her deeply.

 He turned and hugged her tight.  He told her, haltingly, leaving out the 
 goriest parts, but he told her enough.  They were both crying before he was 
 done.  Fox hadn't cried that hard in years, especially not in front of his 
 mother.  She rocked him, she called him all the stupid pet names she'd used 
 when he was little, and he sobbed until he gave himself hiccups.

 When he started to quiet down a little, Teena got up to get him some tissues 
 and a glass of water.  He blew his nose and curled up against her, resting his 
 cheek against the terrycloth shoulder of her robe.  Between exhaustion, codeine 
 and an excess of stress, Fox was feeling pretty stoned.  Once he stopped 
 crying, he stared glassy-eyed at the muted television, which displayed weather 
 patterns for the Eastern Seaboard.

 Teena continued to weep softly, occasionally blotting her eyes with a tissue. 
 "I'm so sorry," she told him.

 "What for?" he asked.  He was currently mesmerized by the blue blob of a 
 low-pressure front inching up from the Gulf Coast.

 "Your life's been so hard," she said.  "I feel responsible for that."

 He shrugged.  "You did the best you could," he said.

 "I should never have stayed with your father as long as I did . . ."

 He sat up a bit and turned to her.  "Mom, don't start that.  You thought you 
 were doing the right thing."

"It was the weak thing," she said.  "I don't know how I could have let it get so 
bad. . ."

Fox knew what she meant.  There had been some terrible nights.  "You loved him," 
Fox said.  No response.  "Didn't you?"

 "There was a time when I thought I did," she said.  "He was so enamored of his 
 principles, and I took that for goodness, for strength.  It never occurred to 
 me that he'd put those principles before people -- before his own family."

 Fox thought about this.  He had never seen his father in that way before.  "I 
 worshipped him, when I was small," he said, sadly.

"I know," she said.  "And he never had any time for you."

"That's not true," he said.  "We used to do stuff."

"According to his schedule and his convenience, not yours," she replied. 

"You know what his last words were to me?"  Fox asked, a little shakily.  "He 
said, 'Forgive me.'  I don't know if I can or should or even need to, but . . . 
I don't know.  He did try."

Teena pulled away from him.  "They took my little girl," she said, her voice 
rough with rage and grief.  

Fox kept his hand on her arm to calm her, to keep her close.  "They were 
supposed to take me," he said.  She looked over at him sharply.  "I've seen the 
file, Mom, they were supposed to take me.  I don't know why they took Samantha 
instead.  She was just little, and she was scared . . . I'd have gone with them, 
if they'd asked."

"I wouldn't have given up either of you," Teena said. 

She embraced him again, and Fox pressed his face against her shoulder and wept. 
These tears went very deep.  He drank in the feel of her touch, the sound of her 
voice, the unique smell of her. He'd already lost his father and sister. She was 
all he had.

Sheer exhaustion kept him from crying very long, but somehow the tears triggered 
a tremendous sense of relief.  He hadn't realized how afraid he'd been, for how 
long, that his mother would resent him because Samantha was taken and he was 
allowed to stay.  "Mama?" he asked.  Good God -- had he actually called her 
that?  He hadn't called her Mama since he was about five.

"What?" she asked, gently.  

"You know . . . you know the best memory I have of Dad?"

"What's that?"  She didn't seem mad at him for talking about good memories of 
his father.

"Remember when I hit that kid with the chair?  When they said I couldn't come 
back to school?"

 "Oh, God," she said, putting her hand to her forehead.  Eighth grade had been a 
 low point in Fox's life.  

"I remember how mad you guys were.  I remember how you and Dad were yelling at 
each other over the phone about whether you were able to 'handle' me.  When he 
said he was coming out here, I was terrified.  I thought he was going to beat 
the crap out of me."

"I wouldn't have let him," she said.  "Not in my house."

Fox shrugged, uncertain why the change in location would have made a difference.  
He didn't challenge her on it, though.  "When he finally got here, I was a 
nervous wreck.  But he didn't even scream at me.  I don't think he knew what to 
do with me.  We ended up doing that road trip thing kind of by default. We drove 
down to Georgia and explored some of the limestone caves there."

"I don't remember that part," Teena said.

"Yeah, I know," Fox admitted.  "I think officially we were fishing, or something 
like that.  We kind of figured you might not approve."

"I see," she said.  She did not look at all pleased.

Fox picked at the lint pills on his blanket as he explained, "A cave wall was 
something physical I could master.  I could look back at the way we climbed up 
and think,  'Hey, I did that.'  It was . . . I don't know.  When we were done I 
felt proud of myself, for the first time in a long time." 

"You might have been killed," Teena said.  Her tears were dried, now, and she 
looked angry.  

"But I wasn't," Fox pointed out.  "In his own way, Dad was trying to do me a 
favor.  That experience did teach me to think on my feet."  Fox would have been 
the first to admit that Bill Mulder was not father-of-the-year material. 
However, he had found a way to reach his son at a critical time, when no one 
else could, and he was grateful for that.

"Hmm," was all Teena said.  Fox knew he wasn't going to get any further comment 
from her on the subject.

Before long, he was close to dropping off to sleep.  Hearing him yawn, Teena 
pulled back from him and said, "You should get up to bed."

Fox shook his head and said, "I think I'll sleep here." The old bedroom upstairs 
was too depressing.

"Are you sure?" she asked, looking worried.

"Yeah," he said, and to his relief she didn't press him.  She kissed him on the 
forehead, then got up and walked over to the television.  She was about to turn 
it off when Fox said, "Don't.  I like it on."

"I don't see how you can sleep that way," she said.

"I like it," he repeated.  

"All right," she said, and left the TV alone.  He got himself settled as she 
went back upstairs.  He watched the blue low-pressure zone scoot across the TV 
screen until he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer.

Fox was not much happier on the following day, but he could tell that his 
behavior was getting closer to his version of normal.  Instead of following his 
mother wherever she went, he rummaged around in the attic, and when he got tired 
of that, he tormented the cats.  He'd found an old Slinky in a box, and was 
currently dangling it just above Twinkles' head.  Her shiny yellow eyes followed 
every movement the Slinky made, but every time she jumped for it, the spring 
would bounce out of reach.  just as the cat made a particularly heroic leap that 
caused her to smack her head into the wall, Mulder heard a familiar, piercing 
ring.  Someone was calling him on his cell phone.  He patted his pockets 
reflexively, but it wasn't in any of them.  Where had he put the thing?  He got 
off the attic steps and followed the ringing into his bedroom.  He found the 
phone on a chair, under his clothes.

He fished it out and punched the speaker button.  "Mulder," he said.

"I knew you couldn't have left it at home," came Scully's voice.  "You'd have 
gone into withdrawal."

"Cell phone detox is ugly," Mulder replied.  "They have to shut you in a locked 
room and watch you 24-7.  Some people go nuts.  Ever see a man talking to his 
calculator?  It's sad."

"You're sounding better," she said.

"Am I?"

"I think so.  Don't you feel any better?"

"Not really."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.  "Would you rather that I called back 
later?"

"No," Mulder said.  "What's going on?"

"I got hold of the on-call homicide detective in Berlin," she said, "and I asked 
him to check out any activity on Moernicke's credit cards.  He did, and he 
didn't find any, at least not after the day Moernicke was found dead."

"Damn it," Mulder said.  "That was the one real lead we had."

"Well, then I started wondering why Knowlton was in Cincinnati on Monday night 
anyway.  I called the police department there and asked if there had been any 
recent missing person reports.  There were three in the last week -- a teenager, 
an elderly Alzheimer's patient and a 50-year-old man named Robert Packard.  His 
ex-wife reported him missing on Friday, but no one had seen him for days before 
that."

"Since Monday?" Mulder asked, hopeful.

"The ex-wife said that Packard had an appointment with his lawyer on Tuesday, 
but that he was a no-show.  She wasn't certain of the last time anyone saw him."

"What did Packard do for a living?" Mulder asked.

"Apparently, he was an 'independent financier,' whatever that means.  When I 
hear that I think, 'drug lord,'" Scully said.

"Knowlton's last hit," Mulder said.  "Anybody run a check on Packard's credit 
cards?"

"They did when I asked them to.  The Cincinnati PD called back a few minutes ago 
and said that Robert Packard bought a plane ticket to Berlin, via New York, on 
the morning of the 9th.  There have been some other charges since then, mostly 
to hotels."  She hesitated a moment, and he guessed that she wasn't sure she 
wanted to tell him the rest.

"What?" he asked.

"The last hotel bill was charged yesterday, when someone calling himself Packard 
checked out of the Watergate in Washington, D.C."

"Shit," he said.  "Could you ask Cincinnati to call the credit card company, and 
have them monitor any calls about Packard's account?  If I were Knowlton, I'd 
want to check up periodically to see if the cards had been reported stolen. When 
they are, we may be able to pick him up as Moernicke."

"All right, I can do that," she said. 

"Thank you," Mulder said.  "If you can get me the exact time of the transaction 
at the Watergate, I can call them and ask to see their security cam footage from 
around then.  Thanks, Scully.  It's terrific of you to do all this work over the 
weekend.  You're the best."

"Can I quote you?" she asked.

"Hey, if you want the public endorsement of the least-wanted agent in the 
Bureau, then you've got it," he said.

"How are you?" she asked, more seriously.

"Well, I get to mentally abuse Twinkles the cat, so life isn't all bad," he 
said.

"Why are you mentally abusing Twinkles the cat?"

"Because Twinkles is a fuzzy, four-footed waste of oxygen," Mulder said.  Like 
his father, Fox officially detested all of his mother's cats, although for both 
men, the antipathy was mostly talk.  

"Twinkles," he called out invitingly, and began to bounce the Slinky again. 
Twinkles, who had not learned her lesson the last time, crept to the corner of 
the doorway and stared at the spring, fascinated.

"What are you doing?" Scully asked.  The characteristic "slink-slink" noise 
probably sounded bizarre over the phone.

"It involves a Slinky," was all Mulder would say.

"Never mind. I don't want to hear about it," she said.  "You take care of 
yourself."

"You, too."

"Talk to you later."

"'Bye."

Mulder hung up, then continued to frustrate Twinkles with the Slinky for a 
while.  When he thought about it, he decided Scully was right.  He was doing a 
little better. 

Watergate Hotel Washington, D.C. Monday Afternoon

Mulder was wearing a suit for the first time in days. He found that he hadn't 
missed the experience much.  Still, he was asking a favor from the Watergate 
staff, and he needed to look as professional as possible.   A little polite 
badge flashing had gotten Doug Simons, the "Security and Loss Prevention chief 
of Staff" to allow him to look at the security cam footage from Saturday. Simons 
seemed to be a nice guy, but Mulder couldn't help feeling amused that anywhere 
but the Watergate, Simons would have been a "hotel detective."  He supposed that 
the janitors were "Waste Management Engineers" around here, too.

There were other fine hotels in D.C., and some were less expensive, but none 
carried quite the aura of power that the Watergate did.  The Watergate was where 
diplomats gave parties for foreign ambassadors, where senators' children held 
their wedding receptions.   Staying at such a place on a stolen charge card was 
a glorious "fuck you" to the world of wealth and political might. Mulder made a 
mental note that Knowlton probably came from an obscure and struggling family.

Currently, Mulder sat in an empty conference room where a TV and VCR had already 
been set up.  Simons had gone to find the correct tape.  Packard's charge card 
record showed a transaction to the Watergate at 11:06 a.m. on the 14th.  Mulder 
thought that if Packard turned out to be alive after all and was just toodling 
around the world's airports and hotels to avoid his ex-wife, he was going to 
have to kill him. 

Simons came back into the room holding a tape.  He was a tall man with silvered 
hair and a well-tailored suit, indistinguishable from most of the Watergate's 
patrons.  "Good thing we didn't let Maria tape her soap operas over this," 
Simons joked.

"I have to admit, that would have been disappointing," Mulder said.  

"What time were you looking for?" Simons asked, sticking the tape into the VCR.

"Start it at eleven o'clock," Mulder said.

"You got it," said Simons.  An image of the front desk area appeared on the 
screen.  There was the gleaming tile floor, the tastefully subdued wall art, the 
bored-looking desk clerk.  A white digital readout in the bottom corner 
displayed the time in military format.  After some dickering with the 
fast-forward, Simons got the tape to 10:99:74.  Then he hit "play" and the 
hundredths of a second sped forward.  The Watergate had a nice security camera 
system.  Unlike some footage Mulder had seen, this was in color, with sound, and 
mostly in focus.  

Unfortunately, nothing interesting was happening.  At 11:03:42 the desk clerk 
answered the phone, said something about housekeeping, hit a button, and hung 
up.  Then she went back to looking bored.  

"I'll have to tell Shawna to work up a song and dance routine," said Simons.

"A strip tease," Mulder answered.  Simons burst out laughing.  Shawna was only 
reasonably cute.  Mulder had made the comment because he guessed that Simons 
would be amused and begin to feel comfortable around him.

They watched Shawna be bored for another couple minutes, while Mulder got Simons 
to talk about the hotel's security policies and the placement of the lobby's 
video camera.   At 11:05:77 the image on the TV screen dissolved into static.

"Hey," said Simons.  He leaned over and smacked the side of the TV.

"Does that happen often?" Mulder asked.

"No," Simons said, "we keep those things in good repair."  He sounded irritated 
and a little embarrassed.  He got up as if to fiddle with the television's 
controls but Mulder waved him back to his seat, saying, "No, don't."

Simons gave Mulder a curious glance but sat back down.  The static lasted only a 
few moments, and then the screen went black.  Only the green light on the VCR 
indicated that it was playing at all.  Suddenly, the image returned.  The clock 
in the corner read 00:00:00.  "There -- he shut it off," Mulder said, pointing 
at the re-set time.  A man stood at the desk, perhaps thirty feet away, with his 
back facing the camera.  The picture clarity still wasn't good, but Mulder could 
make out a man of medium height and build, with short, dark hair, wearing slacks 
and blue shirtsleeves.  A small traveling case sat next to him on the floor.  He 
might have been almost anybody: a business traveler; a politician in after a 
long flight, even a member of the press.  

The one thing he wasn't was Robert Packard.  Packard's ex-wife had described him 
as being about 5' 8" and weighing nearly 250 pounds.  "That's our guy, it's got 
to be," Mulder said.  The man at the desk stood waiting for about 30 seconds -- 
approximately the time it would take for a credit card number to be approved -- 
and then the picture went out again.  

Mulder asked, "Has anybody spoken to Shawna?  What about the person who checked 
him in on Friday?  Do they remember anything?"



It turned out to be Shawna's day off, but Simons got Mulder her number.  She was 
clearly less than happy about being called at home, and insisted that she 
recalled nothing at all about Saturday morning except that a woman tried to 
check in while leading "three wiener dogs on a leash."  The best Mulder could do 
was get her to agree to look at the tape when she came into work tomorrow. The 
man calling himself Robert Packard had checked in at 4:20 p.m. on Friday, but 
the lobby videotape taken at that time showed only static, and the afternoon 
desk clerk likewise remembered nothing.  

Simons agreed to let him take the original videotape from Saturday morning, 
promising to send him back a copy.  Mulder thanked him profusely, both for the 
tape and for allowing him to take up more than two hours of his time.  It 
occurred to him as he left that almost everyone he'd dealt with in this 
investigation had been cooperative.  That was unusual.  Suspicious, even.  He 
wondered if that was what happened when They decided they were on your side.

Paranoid musings notwithstanding, Mulder found himself feeling pretty good as he 
pulled out of the Watergate's parking lot.  He had something physical -- a 
picture taken with electronic equipment.  Knowlton's powers didn't make him 
invincible after all. 



Mulder's next stop was the offices of the Lone Gunmen.  After some debate, he'd 
decided to ask them to enhance the video image, instead of the agents at the FBI 
lab.  The Gunmen worked faster than the lab techs did, and they asked fewer 
questions.  The problem was that Frohike and the boys were more likely to get 
distracted and erase something.  Mulder figured that he'd ask them to copy the 
tape first, and if they screwed that up, then he'd kill them.  

Frohike opened the door before Mulder ever knocked.  He had some kind of bizarre 
helmet on his head, complete with wires and an opaque visor.

"Oh, my God," Mulder said.

"I feel the Force!" Frohike announced.

"I hope that's all you've been feeling," Mulder said.

"This visor gauges the tension in my eye muscles, allowing me to pick options 
from a list on its palm-sized screen merely by gazing at them for a certain 
length of time.  Without moving from my chair, I can read e-mail, turn up my 
stereo, or access the video feed from the camera monitoring the hallway.  I *am* 
my environment!"

"I am very, very scared," Mulder replied.  As he slipped past Frohike into the 
darkened entranceway he added, "I notice you still have to get up to open the 
door."

"Rome was not built in a day," Frohike responded, sounding a little hurt.

Langly got up from one of the front room's computer terminals and asked, "What 
can we do to help defend the cause of Truth today?"  He might have been either 
serious or sarcastic.  It was hard to tell with Langly.

"This one's easy," Mulder said, holding up the videotape.  "I just need to you 
enhance some video frames."

"Isn't that the sort of thing your people at the FBI usually do?" Frohike asked, 
flipping up his visor.  He seemed a bit testy, probably at having his new gadget 
mocked.

"You guys are better," Mulder said, trying to smooth his feathers.  Besides, in 
some ways it was true.  He had reasons for giving the tape to the Gunmen rather 
than the lab. 

"We have to be in order to stay alive," Langly responded.

It occurred to Mulder that they might also stay alive by being completely inept 
and harmless to the forces they claimed to fight, but he didn't say so.  After 
all, the Gunmen were basically good guys.  It didn't take Langly long to find 
and enhance the image of the man at the Watergate desk.  After he did so Byers 
leaned in and pointed at the screen.

"Have you got some scale here?" he asked.  "How tall is this desk?"

Mulder thought about it.  "I think it hit me about here," he said, resting his 
hand at the base of his ribcage.

"Looks like it hits him higher.  He's a couple inches shorter than you," Byers 
said.

"So we've got height: about 5' 10", medium build, straight brown hair cut short 
at the back of the neck . . ." Mulder began.

"It's thinning a little on top," Langly observed, selecting the portion of the 
screen around Knowlton's head and enlarging it.  The resolution was not 
spectacular, but when Langly pointed, Mulder thought he could see a light patch 
on the crown of the man's head.

"Any distinguishing marks?  Moles, scars, anything?" Mulder asked.  His hopes of 
getting such detail out of the grainy video weren't high, but perhaps the others 
could spot something.

"You really can't see much skin," Langly said, "just the back of his neck. Even 
his hands are in front of his body."

"Go through the frames and see if he turns at all," Mulder said.  Langly shrank 
the image to a thumbnail and proceeded to flip through the video frame by frame.  
After a few seconds he enlarged the image again.

"What's that there?" Langly asked, pointing to one side of the screen.  Mulder 
thought Knowlton had turned slightly to the left.  He stared hard at the image, 
but was unable to glimpse even the side of the man's face.

Mulder shook his head.  "Still no good," he said.

"No, I mean *that,*" Langly said, tapping the image of a vase of flowers on the 
reception desk. 

"Is that a reflection?"

"Hard to tell," Frohike said, "it's not a good one."  

"Can you enlarge it and sharpen it?" Mulder asked.

"Not at the same time," Langly answered.  "Actually, let me try shrinking it." 
He downsized the image and the focus got a little clearer.  The black enamel 
vase resting on the desk *did* cast a faint reflection of the man's face. "Well, 
you won't get a police sketch out of it," Langly said, "but I think that dark 
patch there might be a mustache."

"It could be an anomaly caused by a flaw in the vase's surface," Byers pointed 
out.

"It kind of looks like he's eating a mouse," Frohike said.

"Shut up," said the other two Gunmen.  

"Okay, great," Mulder interrupted, before the debate went any further.  "We've 
got a possible distinguishing characteristic.  That's better than we had 
before."

"What is this man wanted for, anyway?" asked Byers.

"He's a killer," Mulder said.  He sensed the others looking at him, but he kept 
his gaze fixed the screen.  "A killer and a rapist."

"Are you worried about Agent Scully?" asked Frohike.  Fox glanced sharply over 
at him, but Frohike seemed truly concerned and to intend no more than he said. 



"Yeah," Fox said, looking away.  Actually, it was true.  Knowlton had walked 
straight through Scully's hotel room in Cincinnati.  It was clear that he 
*could* hurt her, if he chose.  "Yeah, I'm worried."

"We'll do anything we can to help," Frohike said.  The other Gunmen nodded their 
assent.  

Mulder flashed them a grateful smile, but he couldn't help wondering what they 
would have said if they knew Mulder himself had been raped.  He didn't bring it 
up.  "Thanks," was all he said.



Exhausted and sore, Mulder reached his apartment building at about 6:30 in the 
evening.  He checked his mail and found ads, bills and a copy of "Babewatch!" 
magazine, which was labeled, "This may be your last issue!"   It always came 
labeled that way, so he wasn't terribly concerned.  He tucked the whole stack 
under his arm and punched the button for the elevator.  Normally, he took the 
stairs, but he didn't have that kind of energy today.  

When he exited on his floor he saw a yellow Post-It Note stuck to his doorknob. 
He figured it was from his landlord, who would be pissed that Mulder had removed 
and tinkered with the lock core.  He contemplated the wisdom of ignoring it.  In 
the end he decided that it was better to get it over with, and tugged the note 
off of the knob.  When he unfolded it he saw one word written across the paper:

"Cute."  He did not recognize the handwriting.

Mulder backed off --  one step, two.  "Cute" doubtless referred to his abortive 
boobytrap.  His *electrical* boobytrap.  Shit -- he'd managed to make it easier 
for Knowlton to get into his apartment.  

Fox was armed; he had a little, snub-nosed .38 clipped to the waist of his 
pants.  Unlike his regulation 9 mm, he didn't have to account for every shot the 
.38 fired.  He drew it and reached toward the knob, then stopped.  

Was there current running through it?  He'd unplugged the trap days ago, but 
what would keep Knowlton from plugging it back in?  He ordered himself to stay 
calm.  Perhaps Knowlton hadn't even been here.  Perhaps "cute" referred to . . . 
well, he'd heard enough women say things like "cute ass" that the comment no 
longer made him blush.  Still, most women told him what they thought of him in 
person.  He'd never yet known one to stick a note on his apartment door.  

Okay, all right.  How do you test if your doorknob is electrified?  He glanced 
up and down the hall -- no observers, as usual.  He spat on the knob.  No 
sparks.  Gingerly, as if testing a hot frying pan, he tapped his forefinger 
against the knob.  Nothing.  Mulder gripped the knob and turned.  The door moved 
effortlessly; it was unlocked.  He *never* left his door unlocked.  

He turned the gun's muzzle down and away from his body, then kicked the door 
open.  Inside, all was quiet.  His heart beat hard for perhaps a count of five. 
He entered the front room fast, flipping the entrance light switch with his 
elbow.  "I'm armed!"  He snapped at anyone who was listening.  

There was no one there.  

He stood in his entranceway a long time, breathing hard.  He sensed no movement 
inside.  He walked to the kitchen, hit the switch with his elbow there, too, and 
found nothing unusual.  He stalked back to his bathroom and bedroom, which 
looked just as he left them.

Fox checked under his bed and in his closet, things he hadn't done since his 
young boyhood.  Finding nothing, he sat down on his mattress.  He was alone in 
his apartment.  Because Knowlton chose to let him alone.  

When he finally felt comfortable putting his gun down, he wrapped his arms 
around his ribcage.  His whole body was shaking.  "I can't live like this," he 
thought.  

The attacks on Christopher Harwood had taken place over a year and a half, with 
months passing between each assault.  However, Knowlton had been employed by the 
Syndicate at the time.  Now he was free to go wherever, and do whatever, he 
chose.

Fox got up and quickly stripped off his suit, then pulled on some comfortable 
jeans and a T-shirt.  he would have liked to have taken a shower, but he'd seen 
"Psycho" way too many times.  He threw some essentials in a bag, fed the fish, 
and got the hell out.  

At least Knowlton hadn't killed his fish, he thought, as he headed down the 
stairs.  Then it occurred to him that he'd probably seen "Fatal Attraction" too 
many times, too.  He got into the car without knowing where he was going. After 
what had happened, he was not going to feel safe in a hotel.  He hated to impose 
on Scully further, when she'd already gone above and beyond the call of duty for 
him.  He supposed he could crash on the Gunmen's floor, but they'd ask 
questions.  That plan also involved spending the night with the Gunmen.  He 
scratched that idea.  In the end, he got on the freeway to Annapolis.  





To his relief, Scully seemed glad to see him.  He supposed that having a couple 
days away from him had helped.  That was the way to use a support system, he 
thought -- annoy different people at different times.

She took him in; she fed him spaghetti; she left him alone while he sat at the 
kitchen table, drafting sketches of the Watergate's lobby.  When he was done he 
had a reasonably recognizable floor plan with a wide circle superimposed in it. 
He sat back in his chair and Scully came over.

"What's that?" she asked.

"I'm trying to gauge the radius of Knowlton's power over electricity," he said, 
lifting a hand to rub his tired eyes.  "This is the front desk of the Watergate 
Hotel.  This is the security cam by the door, which is about thirty feet away. 
The videotape came up blank until the moment the clerk ran Knowlton's charge 
card, then we got about a half-minute of footage.  That says to me that Knowlton 
can't direct his power with precision, and that it's effective up to at least 
ten yards."

She nodded.  "What are you going to do with this information?"

"I don't know," he said.  He sighed and leaned forward to rest his head on his 
folded arms.  There was only so much data gathering and preparation he could do.  
The bottom line was that he was going to have to contact Knowlton, to try and 
catch the hunter before the hunter caught him.  And he was going to have to do 
it soon.  The thought made him feel frightened and desperate.  

Scully laid her hand on the back of his neck.  "Are you feeling all right?" she 
asked.  "You're a little warm."

"I'm still on antibiotics," he said.

"Which won't protect you from viruses," Scully pointed out.  "Let me take your 
temperature."   

"Don't do that," he protested, although the objection sounded unreasonable even 
to himself.   It would cost him nothing to sit for three minutes with a glass 
tube in his mouth, but somehow the suggestion bothered him.  He suspected that 
he'd used up his allotment of sanity for the day.  Actually, he felt like 
gearing up for a good bout of hysteria.  He thought that he should've stayed at 
his mother's.  At least she had a lot of experience with him acting like a 
child.  

Scully came back, shaking down her thermometer.  He made himself accept it from 
her and stuck it in his mouth, then moved to curl up on the couch.   When he 
closed his eyes for a moment the world seemed to swim.  How much sleep had he 
gotten last night?  He'd been up and restless until about two, then he'd 
awakened at seven to catch his flight home.  His mother had wanted him to stay, 
but he'd begun to find the Greenwich house confining.  Actually, he suspected he 
wouldn't be happy no matter where he went.  What was that line from Milton -- 
"Where I fly, myself am hell."

The next thing he knew Scully was taking the thermometer out of his mouth. 
"100.5," she said.  "You've gone and made yourself sick, all right."

"Not on purpose," he said.  "I'm doing the best I can."  He'd worked so hard, 
and he'd felt as though he were gaining control.  The little Post-It Note on his 
doorknob had destroyed that false sense of security.  Now he felt just as 
helpless as before, but far more tired.  He began to wonder if Knowlton would 
run him to ground, after all.

"Of course you're doing your best.  You always do.  You're very brave," she 
said.

"No I'm not.  I'm scared shitless," he replied.

"Mulder, I want you to take some of your Tylenol," she said.  

Fox didn't like being prodded.  He thought about refusing on principle, but it 
was true that he was sore and overdue for his pain meds.  He finally grunted an 
assent and rummaged through his bag until he came up with the correct medicine 
bottle.  

 She brought him a huge glass of water and said, "I want you to drink all of 
 this."

He glared at her.  He was trying to be sensible against his natural instincts. 
She was pushing it with the mothering routine.  "If I drink all of that, I will 
have to pee every five minutes during the night."  He told her.

"Fine," she said.  "Don't drink it.  If you'd rather stay sick, then go ahead."

"God dammit," he said, but couldn't think of anything good to come after it. One 
of the few things more annoying than having Scully boss him around was having 
her boss him around and be right.  He tossed back the Tylenol, then discovered 
that he was more thirsty than he'd thought.  He managed to put back most of the 
water before he set the glass down on the coffee table.

"You want to go to sleep right there, or do you want to take a cool shower 
first?" she asked.  "That would help bring your temperature down and might it 
make you feel better."

"I don't want to do either," he said.  

"Well, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know."  He was exhausted, frightened and in pain, and clearly was not 
going to be rational for the rest of the night.  He hoped Scully wouldn't end up 
strangling him.

"Why didn't you stay at your mother's, again?" she asked.

"Because I started to drive her nuts.  I got bored and cleaned out her kitchen 
cupboards.  I threw away stuff like her lemon peel extract, which she swore she 
really was going to find a use for, sooner or later."  Actually, Mrs. Mulder 
would have been happy to have him stay, even after he threw out her lemon peel 
extract.  But he sensed that his jumpiness was making her jumpy, and the last 
thing he needed was for both of them to be insane.  

"I see," Scully said.  "Well, whatever you're going to do, do it quietly, 
because I don't want to have to listen to you complain about every suggestion I 
make."

"Okay, fine," Fox said.  She was right to be firm with him, he thought.  She was 
right to set limits so that he didn't annoy the hell out of her.  He'd told her 
he wanted that.  Of course, now he felt wretched and unloved.  

She stood looking at him with her hands on her hips, as if wondering what to do.  
"You're really on the edge, aren't you?" she asked.  Her tone was more kindly, 
this time.

"Yeah," he said, very soft.

"When do you go see your psychiatrist?"

"Tomorrow morning," he said.

"Are you going to take what he prescribes?"

"She," he corrected.  "Yes."

"Good."  The silence stretched on for a few seconds.  "Do you think you can 
sleep?" she asked.

He shook his head.  He was torn between the desire to start throwing stuff 
around and the desire to burst into tears.  If he'd been home alone he would 
probably have done both, but he couldn't do that here.  If he really lost it 
Scully would call the Nice Young Men in the Clean White Coats.  He didn't know 
what to do.  All his options seemed equally bad.

She grabbed his wrist with both her hands and pulled him to his feet.  "Where am 
I going?" he asked, as she led him down the hall.

"I'm sticking you in the shower," she said.

Fox tried to think of a lewd comment to make, but couldn't come up with anything 
good.  That alone was enough to convince him that he was really losing it.  Dana 
parked him on the bathroom mat, then started the fan and turned on the shower 
taps.  

Fox worked his feet out of his shoes and tugged off his socks.  The air felt 
wonderfully cool against his toes, another sign that he was running a fever. 
When he pulled his shirt off over his head the chills started.  "Crap," he said, 
and hugged the shirt against himself.

Dana turned toward him.  Her expression was one of deep compassion.  He was glad 
she wasn't feeling frustrated with him anymore.  "God, you look miserable," she 
said.

"I am extremely miserable," he said.  

"Let me leave you alone," she said.  Apparently she'd interpreted his clinging 
to his shirt as a gesture of modesty.  Modesty was not a quality Mulder 
possessed a great deal of, but at the moment he appreciated the consideration.

"'S'allright," he said.  "Just gimme a second."  She turned away until he was in 
the shower with the curtain closed, but she didn't leave him, bless her.

As soon as the shower spray hit him he started shivering.  "Holy Christ," he 
said.

"That's about normal body temperature," she told him.  "You need to stay in 
there until it no longer feels cold." 

"It makes my skin ache," he said.  He wrapped his arms tight around his ribcage.  


"I know," she said gently.  "The Tylenol should start kicking in pretty soon."

He found that Scully did not have a washcloth and a bar of soap, like normal 
people.  She had a plastic squeeze-bottle labeled "Raspberry Body Gel" and a 
bizarre, nylon-mesh scrubby-thing that reminded him of what his mother used to 
wash the dishes in the Mulders' summer home.  He removed the scrubby-thing from 
the shower's towel bar.

"Why do you have a plastic tribble?" he asked her, between chattering teeth.

"A what?" she asked.  He held the scrubby outside the curtain so she could see.

"That's not a tribble," she told him.  "It's an exfoliant."

"Like Agent Orange?" he asked.

"Not really."

He squeezed some body gel onto the tribble and quickly washed himself.  Scully 
had weird shampoo, too, in a tiny bottle with kangaroos all over it.  It looked 
expensive.  "You want me to use this shampoo?" he asked.

"Go for it," she said. 

By the time he got out of the shower, the water no longer seemed so cold.  

Once he was settled beneath blankets on the couch, she ran her hand over his 
forehead and said, "Feels like your temperature's getting back to normal."  

"At least something about me is normal."  He caught her hand in both of his 
before she could move it, then pressed the knuckles against his cheek.  Fox shut 
his eyes and said, "Thank you, Scully.  I don't know why you're so good to me."

"You're a good person," she responded.  "You deserve to have people be good to 
you."  Fox's breaths came hard for a few moments.  He was uncertain if he were 
going to cry.  

Dana used her free hand to stroke his hair out of his face. 

"Stay with me," he asked, suddenly.

"I live here," she pointed out.  "Where would I go?"

"I dunno," he said.

"Go to sleep," she said.  "Go to sleep."  The last thing Fox was aware of before 
he dropped off was Dana placing his hand on his chest and kissing him lightly on 
the forehead.



At nine a.m. the next morning Fox was in the waiting room of Dr. Hana Najar, 
filling out an enormous intake form which contained questions about everything 
from his bowel habits to the names of his grandparents.   When he came to the 
part about listing all hospitalizations in the last five years he groaned.  The 
form only gave three lines and there wasn't enough room to write them all.  He 
had to use the back.

Dr. Najar turned out to be a petite Indian woman who asked him even more 
questions.  He was pretty honest with her, explaining that he'd been referred by 
Heintz Werber because of depression and suicidal thoughts.  He mentioned the 
rape but not the part about the Shadowy Syndicate.  Then again, she didn't ask. 
She made out prescriptions for Zoloft and Xanax and then proceeded to give him 
the side Effects Speech: do not drink alcohol, take all your medication as 
directed, do not pass "Go" do not collect 200 dollars, etc. etc.  During his 
psyche internship Mulder had heard the same speech made to patients too many 
times to count.  

After he was through seeing Najar he went straight to the pharmacy, to make sure 
he didn't get cold feet and pitch the scripts into the trash.  He'd come 
perilously close to losing it last night, and he couldn't afford to lose it. If 
anything, he needed to be sharper than ever.  Zoloft was supposed to start 
working within days of the first dose, so with any luck he'd soon be suffering 
fewer crying spells.  The Xanax worked immediately, but Dr. Najar had warned him 
it would probably make him sleepy until his body adjusted to it.  For this 
reason, he didn't quite dare take it now.  It occurred to him that if you were 
too afraid to take your anti-anxiety medicine, you were probably screwed.  

He went back to Scully's place after that.  She was at work, but she said it was 
fine with her if he let himself in.  He filled up a glass with water and then 
opened the bottle of his anti-depressants.  He set one of the pills down on the 
kitchen table and looked at it.  It was an innocuous-looking yellow tablet.  it 
represented a lot of painful things -- an admission of being ill, a kind of 
psychic defeat.  He recalled a quote from the Bible: "If it is Your will, let 
this cup pass from my lips."  However, Mulder failed to receive any signs from 
above.  

He stuck the pill in his mouth, took a sip of water, and swallowed it.  

Well.  He'd crossed a line.  

It had been the intelligent thing, the responsible thing to do.  Scully would be 
proud of him.  He still felt a sense of shame and loss.  

Now what?  He ought to call X, to make arrangements for a sting on Knowlton. He 
had as good an idea of Knowlton's location, powers and intentions as he was 
going to get.   Waiting around longer would only result in someone else -- or 
maybe himself -- getting raped or killed.  He pulled his cell phone out of his 
pocket and looked at it.  He did not want to have to do this.   He wanted 
somebody else to take care of Knowlton.  That's what the police were for, wasn't 
it?  To protect and serve, and all that?  Of course, the police weren't going to 
catch him.   The Consortium would have turned to anyone else but Fox Mulder for 
help, if they could.  The fact that they'd chosen him showed that he was their 
only realistic hope of getting Knowlton off the street.  "I'm the champion of 
the Shadowy Syndicate," Mulder thought.  "Just what I always wanted."

He'd lost the piece of paper with X's phone number on it, but unfortunately he 
couldn't use that as an excuse.  He remembered the number perfectly well.  He 
took a deep breath, released it, and dialed.  The phone rang and rang.  Mulder 
wondered what X could be doing.  He realized that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen 
the informant during the day.  He thought maybe he slept in a coffin.  

Suddenly, the phone picked up.  "What?" demanded X.

"You really have to work on your customer service skills," Mulder told him.  It 
was surprisingly easy to fall into his usual, sarcastic manner.

"What do you want, Agent Mulder?"  X said.

"I have a picture of your 'Invisible Man,'" Mulder said.  To Mulder's 
satisfaction that shut X up for a moment.

"Are you sure?" X asked.

"The guy on my video was in the right place at the right time, and he matches 
what little description I've got of Knowlton," Mulder said.

"I'd like to arrange to get a copy from you," X said.

"Sure, no problem, "Mulder replied, "but there's something else.  He's in the 
D.C. area, or was as of last night.  I got a note on my door that I'm pretty 
sure is from him.  He's clearly interested in running into me again.  I think we 
can use that to our advantage."

"You want to set a trap," said X.

"That's the idea."

"How are you going to go about doing this?" X asked.

"I hope I can get him to answer either Packard's or Moernicke's cell phones.  I 
wanted to ask Skinner if I could have the help of some of the FBI tech support 
people.  They might be able to use the connection to track him down."

"That won't work," X said.  "Not with a cell phone."

"I know we can only track him as far as the closest cell site, but come on, how 
many cell sites are there in Washington?  There's got to be one every few 
blocks," Mulder said.  He knew that X was probably right to have dim hopes for 
the plan of tracking Knowlton, but the thought of pinpointing his location and 
just sending the cops to go get him was so attractive.  "Even if we can't catch 
him the easy way," Mulder said, "we can at least get a voice imprint from the 
phone conversation.  Maybe there will be useful background noises to analyze, or 
something."

"Maybe," X conceded.  "And if this brilliant scheme doesn't work?"

"Then I'll agree to meet with him.  If I can lure him into the open, we can grab 
him."

"Very well," said X.  "When are you planning on contacting him?"

"I was thinking this evening," Mulder said.  He couldn't quite keep from 
sounding unhappy.  "The longer I wait, the more likely he is to discard one or 
both stolen phones and then he'll be unreachable."

"I take it that it's my job to arrange protection for you, if this meeting with 
Knowlton goes forward?" X asked.

"That was my understanding of the agreement, yes," Mulder said.

"And who will coordinate the efforts of my organization and the FBI?" X asked.

"I think I can work something out with Skinner," Mulder said.  "If not . . . 
well, I've got backup technical people I can use."

"Your Lone Gunmen friends," X said.  "I wouldn't trust them to find their own 
behinds in a locked closet with a compass."

"That's . . . a really disturbing mental image.  Let's not go there."

"All right, let's not.  When can you get me the pictures of Knowlton?"

"Can you be in the Hoover Building parking garage by five?" Mulder asked.

"Of course."

"I'll see you there, then.  It's a date."

Dead silence for a second, then X said, "You disgust me," and hung up.  Mulder 
couldn't help feeling a little pleased at being able to get the man's goat.  

He glanced over at the clock.  It was a quarter past eleven.  He would have to 
call Skinner and get an appointment, go home, put on something more presentable 
than the jeans and T-shirt he'd worn yesterday . . . the thought made him very 
tired.

His head and his eyes ached, and he suspected his temperature was going up 
again.  He really wanted to take a nap.  Actually, if he could have had anything 
he wanted, he would have asked for a beautiful woman to come in, rub the sore 
spots out of his back, give him a really good screw and let him curl up against 
her as he fell asleep.  

Well, that's what he would usually want.  He wondered if he would ever be able 
to go to bed with anyone again, after what had happened.  Knowlton had even 
managed to take the fun out of his fantasies.  The thought both angered and 
depressed him utterly.  He curled up on the couch, hoping to find solace in 
sleep.  



Assistant Director Skinner's Office, That Afternoon

Skinner had just gotten off a conference call with the Director, the NYPD and 
some guys from ATF about a bomb threat against the Manhattan subways.  Home 
grown terrorists  -- could anything be worse?  All the TV cameras of the world 
were pointed at the US -- land of the free, home of the homicidal maniacs.  

All he wanted was five stress-free minutes.  He hit the "do not disturb" button 
on his phone and took off his glasses so he could rub his eyes.  He heard the 
inner door of his office open and startled. 

"Kim, I want you to knock before you --" he began, but when he turned, it wasn't 
his secretary, Kim.  The Cigarette Smoking Man stood there, his ever-present 
Morley dangling from his lips.  "What do *you* want?" Skinner demanded.

The Smoking Man seated himself without being invited.  "I want to talk to you 
about Agent Mulder," he said.

"He's on medical leave," Skinner said.  "There's nothing to say about it."  He 
grabbed some papers from his desk and pretended to study them, in order to show 
that the conversation was over.

"I understand he contacted you today," the Smoking Man said.

Skinner couldn't help wondering where this son-of-a-bitch got his information. 
Did he tap every call that went into the Hoover building?  "He called several 
times.  When I was finally able to speak to him he asked to see me, and I told 
him I could fit him in tomorrow," Skinner said.

"How did he react to that?" the Smoking Man asked.

"He seemed fine with it," said Skinner.  

A corner of the Smoking Man's mouth quirked up into a humorless smile.  "Mulder 
is faced with a duty he doesn't particularly want to perform," he said.  "I 
imagine delay would not be unwelcome to him."

"What are you talking about?" Skinner asked.  The Smoking Man looked around, 
clearly seeking an ash tray.  "All federal buildings are smoke free now, didn't 
I tell you that?" Skinner asked, with malicious satisfaction.  The Smoking Man 
glanced at him quickly with his lidded, fishy eyes, and then wordlessly drew 
over Skinner's wastebasket and flicked his ashes into it.

"Mulder's assailant is a wanted man in many quarters," the Smoking Man said. "He 
killed a man in Berlin -- an increasingly senile and worthless man, but still a 
member of the Old Guard."

"You mean of your . . . 'organization?'" Skinner asked.  The last word came like 
spitting out a frog.  

"Quite so," said the Smoking Man.  "Understandably, certain key members are very 
concerned."

"Cry me a river," said Skinner.  

That got another sardonic half-smile.  "Tell me, do you consider yourself a 
friend of Agent Mulder's?" the Smoking Man asked.

"We don't always see eye-to-eye, but he's a man I respect," said Skinner.

"Then perhaps you'd be glad to know that it's in Mulder's interest to act 
sooner, rather than later.  He wants backup and technical services from the FBI, 
in order to lay a trap for his attacker.  My 'organization,' as you put it, will 
not wait very long.  They'll force Mulder's hand, and he'll be worse off without 
the protection the FBI can give."

Skinner eyed the Smoking Man with suspicion.  "Since when did you develop such a 
concern for mulder's welfare?" he asked.

"I have always preferred that Mulder be controlled, rather than destroyed," he 
said.

"Why?" asked Skinner.

"I have my reasons."

"So what exactly are you asking me?" Skinner said.

"Tell Mulder that you'll meet with him today.  Give him what he asks," said the 
Smoking Man.

"Are you actually *advocating* for him?" Skinner asked.

"In this case, he and I share a common objective, and so should you.  We all 
want a dangerous man off the street."

"For widely differing reasons," said Skinner.

"True," said the Smoking Man. 

Skinner looked at him for a count of five or six, trying to gauge what his real 
motivations were.  As usual, they were unfathomable.  "All right," he said at 
last.

"I believe Mulder should be reachable at his cellular phone number.  He usually 
is," said the Smoking Man.





Mulder had finally fallen asleep on Scully's couch.  He'd given in and taken his 
anti-anxiety meds, and they'd knocked him right out, just as Dr. Najar said they 
would.  He barely even stirred when his cell phone rang.  Its sharp, piercing 
beeps continued, however, until his eyelids fluttered open.  Foggily, he groped 
for the phone on the floor.

Once he found it he managed, "H'llo?"

"Agent Mulder, it's me," came Skinner's voice.

Mulder hauled himself into a sitting position.  "Hello, sir," he said, "what's 
up?"  He realized after he said it that this was not the way to greet an 
Assistant Director of the FBI.  "I mean," he amended, "what's going on?"  This 
wasn't much better, and he had to wipe half-dried drool off his cheek as he said 
it.  Good God, he'd been out.  

"Are you all right?" asked Skinner.

"Uh, yeah," he said, "I was just kind of sleeping."

"Someone dropped by to speak for you this afternoon," Skinner said

"Who . . . Scully?  About what?" Mulder asked, confused.

"No, our smoking friend," said Skinner.  

This took a while to compute for Mulder.  When the thought clicked he said, 
"He's no friend of mine."

"He says I ought to see you this afternoon and give you whatever you ask," said 
Skinner.

Mulder looked at Scully's VCR clock; it was 3:45.  Holy crap.  He'd have to go 
home, put something respectable on, get over to the Hoover Building . . . . 
"Sir, I'm not really dressed to come in," he said.

Skinner said,  "The FBI's not running a fashion show.  So long as you don't show 
up naked or in drag, I don't care."

That got a smile out of Mulder.  "All right," he said.  Could he handle this, he 
wondered?  Was he ready?  He knew that he'd never be ready.  "I think I can be 
there in 20 minutes," he heard himself say.

"Good.  I'll see you then," said Skinner, and the connection terminated.  

Fox looked at the disconnected phone in his hand.  "Oh, my God," he thought. 
"Oh, Holy Christ."  He was actually going to have to talk to the bastard who'd 
raped him.



The security guys at the Hoover Building's front entrance had to razz Mulder 
about his appearance.  He was wearing grubby jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt that 
read, "Every Oak Tree Is A Nut That Stood its Ground."  Mulder told them he was 
going undercover to infiltrate a gang of slobs, and they laughed.  

At home, these were Mulder's comfort clothes, but here they made him feel 
decidedly uneasy.  As he walked through the halls his immaculately-dressed 
colleagues gave him strange looks.  Wearing a suit would have allowed him to 
feel more detached and professional.  He'd been able to get cooperation from the 
Watergate staff because he'd been in Mr. FBI Agent mode.  At the moment he felt 
like plain old Fox Mulder, exposed and vulnerable, fresh from the humiliation of 
having taken his first dose of psychiatric medication.

He went down to his own office first, hoping to find Scully.  The lights inside 
were on but the door was locked, indicating that she was planning to return, but 
not soon.  Dammit, he thought, and looked at his watch.  It was nearly a quarter 
past four.  He needed to get upstairs and see Skinner ASAP.  Maybe Scully had 
gone up already.  He hoped so; he wasn't going to be able to do this alone.

His feeling in the elevator was one of subdued panic.  If he was still feeling 
the effects of his anti-anxiety medication he didn't notice.  He was a little 
surprised at how much the idea of facing Skinner frightened him.  He hadn't done 
anything wrong.  His medical leave had been approved and scully had said that 
Skinner seemed understanding.  

For the most part, Skinner struck Mulder as an honorable man, if a traditional 
one.  And traditionally, men did not get raped.  He hoped to God Skinner 
wouldn't say anything cruel, even unintentionally.  Mulder felt so fragile right 
now.  He doubted very much that anything the AD said would make him cry, but an 
ill-considered comment might make him defensive enough that he'd start yelling 
at people and humiliate himself further.

By the time he'd reached Skinner's office, he'd nearly worried himself to tears.  
The small, sane portion of his brain told him, "You are in no emotional shape 
for this.  You're getting so squirrelly you should start to seriously consider 
checking yourself into the bin."  

"A lot of good that did Chris Harwood," Mulder answered himself.  When Kim saw 
him she hit the intercom button and told Skinner that Mulder was here.  Mulder 
wondered if her expression was too-carefully blank, or if he was just paranoid. 
Not everyone in the Hoover Building would know about what happened to him. Yet.  
But the Cincinnati office was officially working this case, and those agents 
would know other agents . . . .  His coworkers were investigators, after all.  
Nosiness was in their blood.  Inside of a month, the whole FBI would probably 
know.

Skinner told Kim to send Mulder in, and she rose to get the door for him.  He 
thought she gave him an odd look as he walked past her.  He hoped he didn't 
smell like sweat.  Then he realized he probably smelled like Scully's flowery 
conditioner, which was almost worse.

Skinner stood as he entered, looking extremely official in his suit and tie. 
Mulder felt a renewed sense of self-consciousness about his scruffy appearance. 
Scully stood in front of one of the other chairs.  Her expression was concerned.  
Mulder began to feel reassured, until the smell of old cigarette smoke hit him.  
He looked to his right and found the Smoking Man kicked back in a visitors' 
chair.  He had not bothered to stand.

"I don't want him in here," Mulder said, pointing at the man.

"You wound me," said the Smoking Man.

"I'd like to," was Mulder's reply.

The Smoking Man rolled his smoldering Morley between his finger and thumb and 
said, "I was the one who arranged this meeting for you."

"I don't care," Mulder said.  As usual, the Smoking Man's expression was 
unreadable.

"Go," said Skinner, jerking his head toward the door.

The Smoking Man's eyebrows lifted just a little.  "Very well," he said at last, 
and stood.  "If that is what you wish."

"You bet it is," said Mulder.

The Smoking Man shrugged his jacket into a squarer position and stuck the 
cigarette in his mouth.  He spoke around the butt end of it: "I shall require a 
detailed brief of the proceedings, in order for my organization to be of any 
help.  You know how to contact me," he said, gazing at Skinner.

The AD's ears actually turned red, whether from rage at the presumption or shame 
because what the Smoking Man said was true, Mulder didn't know.  "Get out," said 
Skinner.  The Smoking Man went, slowly, trailing his nicotine fumes behind him.

Mulder felt an aversion to sitting in the Smoking Man's vacated chair, so he 
looked around for another.  There was a simple one in the back corner, no 
armrests, no casters, probably Kim's when she took dictation, but he didn't 
care.  He pulled it over and dropped down into it.  

*Ouch.*  Was he ever going to learn not to plunk down into chairs?  "Agent 
Mulder," Skinner began, his voice more gentle than Mulder had ever heard it. Oh, 
hell.  This was bad too.  Actually, everything was bad right now.

"Can I offer you a drink?" Skinner asked.  Mulder glanced up, a little startled 
at the offer.  No agent on duty was allowed to drink, but then, Mulder was on 
medical leave, and Skinner was an Assistant Director.

"No, sir, thank you," he said, his voice steadier than he felt.  "I'm on 
medication."  He managed to hold Skinner's gaze as he said it.  It was right 
that Skinner know.  It was related to his medical leave, and with any luck, the 
medicine would allow him to return to work quickly.  "I'm hoping treatment will 
help me resume my regular duties as soon as possible," he explained.

"That's admirable," said Skinner.  "But don't push yourself for the Bureau's 
sake.  We'll be better off with you at 100 percent in six months, rather than 50 
percent right now."

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think so," he said.  "John Knowlton is a 
problem that needs to be dealt with immediately.  I'm not the only person in 
danger."

"I don't really care about the Consortium's 'Old Guard,'" Skinner began, but 
Mulder cut him off.

"I don't think they're in danger," he said, very soft, glancing at the door. 
Cancer Man wouldn't be out there with a stethoscope, would he?  Mulder decided 
he probably wouldn't, and continued, "It's more likely to be people like me, 
guys who've been targeted by the 'organization,' who Knowlton would have had 
some reason to keep tabs on.   He'll continue to strike as long as we let him."

"What are you proposing?" asked Skinner.  He sounded as if he already knew.

"I've got a couple of contact numbers for Knowlton," Mulder said, "Ideally, I'd 
call him and we would track him down by his cell phone signal, end of story.  I 
think we've got enough to convince *somebody* to press charges, even if it's 
only for credit card fraud.  If we can't target him with the phone signal . . . 
then I'd meet with him.  Hopefully I'd have backup right behind me and they'd 
take him out."

"Cancer Man said that you were requesting backup from the FBI," Skinner said.

"Did he?  Actually, all I wanted was the help of some of our technical guys.  I 
wouldn't put agents in danger on the street unless I had to." 

"I'd rather that the Consortium wasn't your only line of defense," said Skinner.

Mulder glanced up at him, saw that he seemed grimly serious, as usual.  Was 
Skinner actually being *nice* to him?  "If there's federal agents along, that 
raises the question of who gets to keep Knowlton if we catch him.  I mean, I 
personally don't care, as long as he's put out of action, but that would be a 
nasty thing to have to argue out in the field."

Skinner just looked at him a moment, then he said softly, "Our smoking friend 
out there says it's in everyone's best interest to let his people get him.  The 
Bureau doesn't even have a warrant for this guy.  If we haul a foreign national 
off the street and then can't pin anything on him, the German Embassy gets 
involved and we look like morons.  If *they* get him, then you know we're not 
going to see or hear from him again.  I don't like it, but it seems to be the 
only practical course of action.  If you wrestle with a pig you get dirty." The 
expression got a slight smile out of Mulder.  "We can avoid conflict in the 
field if we use agents who appreciate the unique elements of this situation," 
Skinner said.  "I volunteer myself.  Agent Scully?"

She looked fully as startled as Mulder felt, but she managed, "Yes, sir, 
absolutely.  It never occurred to me that I wouldn't go."

"Good," said Skinner.  "That acceptable to you, Agent Mulder?"

"Yes, sir," Mulder said, still a little shocked.  "Of course.  Thank you."

"I've spoken to some guys from the Technical Support Squad and they said they 
can set up in my office.  It shouldn't take long.  Morley's Ghost out there 
tells me that it's best to do this as soon as possible.  Do you agree?" Skinner 
asked.

Mulder swallowed.  "Yes, he's probably right," he said. 

"All right," said Skinner.  "Let me call down to Technical Support."  He did so, 
and within minutes a guy showed up with a laptop and a coil of cording. Mulder 
was impressed that Skinner had gotten someone from TSS to drop everything at the 
end of a workday and come running. 

"How well will this work?" Mulder asked the techie.

"You're trying to trace a cell phone, right?" the man asked.

"Yeah," said Mulder.

"Well, the best we can do is the triangulation method.  We use the signals from 
three different cell sites to try and pinpoint the caller's location," said the 
man.

"In this case, it's the receiver," Mulder pointed out. "Does it work?"

"It doesn't work so well in urban areas because of high signal traffic," he 
said.  "And it doesn't work so well in rural areas because the cell sites are 
too far apart."

"Does it work well anywhere?" Mulder asked.

"Not really," said the other man.

"Great," said Mulder.  "Does everybody have to be in the room with me while I 
make this call?"

"I can set up outside the door, if you want," the techie said.

"I have no problem leaving, but I'd just as soon you had some kind of backup," 
Skinner said.  "Ordinarily I'd get one of our negotiators to do it, but under 
the circumstances I think Agent Scully would be fine.  Assuming that's all right 
with her."

"Of course, sir," she said.  "Although I'm not trained in negotiation tactics--"

"You won't be doing any of the talking," Skinner said.  "You'll have earphones 
only.  Your job is risk assessment."

Mulder knew that was polite phrasing for calling Scully his babysitter.  She was 
supposed to step in if he started freaking out.  "I don't think that's 
necessary," he said.

"It is if you're using my office and my phone," Skinner said.  "Besides, maybe 
Scully can pick up on some identifying background noise, if the trace doesn't 
work."

That was a real long shot, and Mulder knew it.  "Have you got someone to record 
this, so you can analyze background noise?"

"I don't have a warrant," was all Skinner said.  That could have meant anything.

"All right," Mulder said with a sigh, "Let's get this over with."

The Tech Support guy put an adapter in the jack of Skinner's phone that allowed 
a headset for Scully to be plugged in.  She settled the earphones on her head 
and pulled a second chair over to Skinner's desk.  Mulder supposed he got 
Skinner's chair, which would have been kind of cool under any other 
circumstances.

The TSS guy took his laptop into the outer office and Skinner followed him. 
Skinner stopped in the doorway and said, "If you need anything else, let me 
know."

"Thank you, sir," Mulder said.

Once the A.D. left Scully said softly, "You don't have to do this."

"If I want to catch him I do," Mulder replied.  The paradox was typical of his 
life -- the only way to avoid the enemy was to bring him closer.

Mulder settled himself at Skinner's desk, then he lifted the phone receiver and 
slowly dialed Packard's cell number.  One ring.  Click.  Mulder's whole body 
shuddered. 

"The cellular unit you have tried to reach is either turned off or out of the 
service area.  If you should--" Mulder hung up.

"I think he ditched Packard's phone," he said.  The "discreet" inquiries into 
Packard's disappearance had apparently done their work.  He began to dial 
Moernicke's number.  Would a German cell phone work in the USA?  He'd forgotten 
to ask the techie.  One ring, two, three . . . maybe it wasn't turned on. Maybe 
Knowlton had tossed the handset into a river.  

Click.  "Guten Abend," came a voice.

"Hello?" he managed.  "Is this John Knowlton?"  Dead silence.  "This is Fox 
Mulder."

Another few moments of static, and then a man drawled, "Well, hel-lo, love."

The accent was unplaceable, almost Australian, the tone rough and of medium 
depth.  

Dana put a steadying hand on Fox's back.  She would be able to feel that he was 
trembling all over. 

"Did you try to come see me yesterday?" Mulder asked.  

"Of course," said Knowlton.  "I was in the area.  The set-up you had around your 
doorknob was quite clever."

"But it never stopped you," Mulder said.

"Certainly not," said Knowlton.  "I *am* a professional."

I know you are," Mulder said.  He told himself to play up to the SOB's ego, 
because that was the man's weak point.  "When did . . . why did you decide to 
come see me, in Cincinnati, I mean?" he asked.

"I was passing through on business of my own," said Knowlton, "and you looked 
lonely."

Well.  That was a new one.  Mulder realized that he hadn't asked how long he 
needed to keep Knowlton on the line for a trace.  He grabbed one of Skinner's 
pens and wrote on the blotter, "How long . . .?"  Scully glanced at it and held 
up her forefinger.  Her wire was long enough to allow her to go to the door.

Trying to make conversation, Mulder asked, "Um, what can you tell me about 
yourself?  You seem to know a lot about me, but I don't know anything about 
you."

That got a low chuckle.  "You knew the right phone number to call," he said.

"I'm a professional, too," Mulder pointed out.

"You're the profiler.  You guess," said Knowlton.  

Mulder had had conversations with other criminals that went very much like this.  
The trick was to be bland, non-confrontational, and to try and get them going on 
some topic that interested them.  He was beginning to feel like he might be 
getting his feet under him.  "I know you're originally from South Africa," 
Mulder said, "and that somewhere along the line you picked up German 
citizenship.  How did that happen?"

"Got on the train in Johannesburg and ran out of money in Bonn," said Knowlton.

Mulder suspected that he must have met Josef Moernicke there, accepted the older 
man's protection because he had nowhere else to go.  "How old were you?" Mulder 
asked.

"Fourteen," said Knowlton.  Oh.  To his surprise, Mulder found himself feeling 
something close to pity.  

"So . . . was that before or after you found out that you had unusual powers 
over electricity?" mulder asked.

"Hard to say, love.  Was a long time ago," said Knowlton.  

"You had to have noticed at some point," Mulder pressed.  "Was there a moment 
when you realized that you were special, that you could do something no one else 
could do?"  With your average, organized, antisocial personality, flattery would 
get you everywhere.

"Oh, well, I remember Mum beating me with a mop handle because she wouldn't 
believe I could turn the streetlights on and off," Knowlton said cheerfully. "I 
guess then I must have realized I was different.  I would have been . . . oh, 
eight?  Must be, because I don't recall much before that."

Mulder made a mental note of the British turn of phrase.  "Were your parents 
native to South Africa?" he asked.

"Mum was a Kiwi," Knowlton said.  It took Mulder a moment to recognize the slang 
term for a New Zealander.  "Don't know about my dad.  Never met him. Wouldn't 
want to, from what I've heard."  Knowlton sounded perfectly bright and chipper 
about the whole thing, as if he were describing an interesting sporting match.  
This was a sign of a deep, underlying pathology, but somehow Mulder found 
himself feeling almost sympathetic.  He told himself not to be naive. Knowlton 
could be making the whole thing up.  

Scully came back in the door holding a little folded Post-It Note.  When he read 
it he found it said, "Georgetown. Trying to close in."

Mulder started trembling again.  ID-ing Georgetown was good, but not good 
enough.  He quickly scratched on the blotter, "Hotel?"  He glanced up and saw 
her shrug.  Georgetown was tourist country.  The place had more self-consciously 
quaint bed and breakfasts than a wild dog had fleas.

He realized he'd been silent too long and said, "Um, so . . . so what can you do 
with this ability of yours?  Can you affect the functioning of someone's brain?"

Knowlton laughed softly.  "I think I'll keep that to myself," he said. 

"What about credit cards?  How do you keep from frying the magnetic strips?"   

"I've got a cigarette case I keep my cards in," Knowlton said.  "It's a 
filigreed iron thing from the old days.  It works all right.  If the strips go 
bad anyway I can usually get a clerk to enter the number by hand."

An idea occurred to Mulder.  He wrote on Skinner's blotter, "Checked Moern.'s 
CC#?" 

Scully grabbed the pen from him and wrote, "Know it?"

Mulder had to shake his head.  He'd never looked into it.  He felt like a moron.  
This was why you didn't let recent rape victims run an investigation, he 
thought.

"So . . . so why me?" he asked.  It was the first thing that came to mind.

"Why not you?" was the reply.

"I dunno . . . most people are attracted to others for a reason.  You know, 
there's a certain look, a smile, something somebody says . . . ." 

"Ah," said Knowlton.  The interjection had a tolerant sound to it that suggested 
he thought Mulder wanted to be praised.  If it kept the man talking, so be it, 
Mulder thought.

"I liked the way you walked from the first time I saw you," said Knowlton.

"Which was when?" he asked.

"Oh, my," Knowlton said.  "Must have been . . . '90?  '91?  Hard to recall, I'm 
afraid."  That was about the time Mulder had been assigned to the X files.

Mulder had another idea and wrote, "Ask Morley's Ghost," on the blotter and drew 
a line to the abbreviation "CC."  After that he scratched, "Make the SOB be 
useful."  Scully gave him a grim smile and left again.  He felt strangely 
bereft.

"You all right, love?" Knowlton asked.  Mulder realized he'd been silent too 
long. 

"Yeah -- it's just I'm, I'm a little bit nervous."  Knowlton would hear it in 
his voice anyway, so he might as well own up to it.  The other man would 
interpret it as he wanted.

"Aw--you needn't be frightened of me, love," Knowlton said.  That confirmed 
Mulder's suspicion that Knowlton believed the sex had somehow been consensual 
and that he and Mulder had "feelings" for each other.  

The thought turned Mulder slightly sick.  "Why shouldn't I be afraid of you?" he 
asked.

"Wouldn't do anything with you that you didn't like," Knowlton replied.

"You already did," Mulder said.

"Oh, is that how it is, now?"  Knowlton said, his tone both mocking and 
flirtatious.  "You should have heard yourself carrying on the other night.  I'd 
say you were pretty excited."

Tears of rage and shame stung Mulder's eyes.  He didn't want Scully to be 
listening in on this.  He told himself to count to ten, to be rational, to be 
professional.

Knowlton must have heard a catch in his breath because he said, "Now now, Love, 
none of that."

"Sorry . . ." Mulder managed.  "This is really hard for me."  Honesty was the 
best policy when dealing with an intelligent psychopath.  Most of them were 
eerily accurate at picking out lies.

Knowlton chuckled.  "Getting hard for me, too," he said.

Oh, hell.  Mulder didn't need to hear that.

Skinner's door burst open again and Scully stalked in.  Her lips were pressed in 
a hard line and she made cutoff motions with her hands, like an umpire declaring 
a runner safe.  Apparently, she hadn't thought much of Knowlton's last comment, 
either.  Mulder knew that she'd hit the hang-up button if she got close enough, 
and he said, "I need to see you."

"When?" asked Knowlton.  Mulder held his hand up to stop Scully's advance.

"Tomorrow, 9 p.m., the Jefferson Memorial," he said.  It was the first thing 
that came to mind.  

"You'll be alone?" Knowlton asked.

"Yes," Mulder said.  "I gotta go."  

"All right.  Love you, love."  

Mulder couldn't make himself respond.  He hung up the phone without Scully's 
assistance.

"What did you just agree to?" she cried, sounding more grieved than angry.

"Did you get a location?" he asked.

She shook her head slowly and said, "Not a precise one, no."

"Nothing on the credit card, either?"

"When I got out there, the Smoking Man was gone," she said, sounding apologetic.

"Then the only way we'll catch him is for me to meet with him," Mulder answered.  


She looked very sad, but did not contradict him.  Instead she put her arms 
around him and hugged him tight.  The closeness felt awfully good.  He heard 
Skinner's door open briefly, then close again. Apparently Skinner had decided to 
leave his agents alone for a while. 

It was just as well.  Exhaustion and stress were beginning to take their toll on 
Mulder, and he shed silent tears into the hollow of his partner's shoulder. 
After a few moments he pulled away from Scully and looked around Skinner's desk 
for tissues.  He couldn't find any.  Of course--*real* G-Men didn't need 
Kleenex.  Scully dug some tissues out of her purse and handed them to him.  

She gave him a look of sorrow and bewilderment as he blotted his eyes.  "I can't 
believe you do these things to yourself," she said.

"This is nothing compared to what other people do to me," Mulder pointed out. He 
wished he'd brought some of the Xanax with him.  He found he would rather face 
Skinner wasted than teary. Mulder told himself he better get hold of himself 
quick; there was a limit to how long the AD would stand outside his own office.  


Suddenly, he remembered that he was supposed to meet with X.  "Shit, what time 
is it?" he asked.

Scully looked at her watch and said, "Twenty past five."

"Ah, hell. I've got to get out of here," Mulder said.  He stood up and strode 
out of the office, brushing past Skinner on the way.  That was a solution to his 
problem--he'd just move too fast to talk to the guy.

He heard Skinner's, and then Scully's, footfalls behind him. "Agent Mulder, 
where are you going?" Skinner demanded. 

"I'm late for a meeting with my shadowy informant," Mulder called back.



When he got down to the parking garage it occurred to him that maybe this hadn't 
been such a great idea for a meeting place.  When he'd met X here before, it was 
during off hours when the place was nearly deserted.  Now it was 5:30 and agents 
were everywhere, getting into their cars.  

On a hunch, Mulder headed for one of the corners in deepest shadow, and sure 
enough, X was there, lurking.  There really wasn't any other word for it.  He 
also did not look pleased.

"I've been here over half an hour," he snapped, as Mulder approached.  

"I'm surprised nobody arrested you. Hanging out in dark corners while everyone 
else goes to their cars is not the way to be inconspicuous."

"And whose fault is that?" X demanded. 

"It was unavoidable," Mulder said. "I was stuck in a meeting with our respective 
bosses.  And I talked to Knowlton," he added.  Just mentioning it made him feel 
tired.  He hoped X wasn't able to tell he'd been crying.

The informant's expression showed neither contempt nor compassion.  However, he 
did begin to look interested.  "What did he say?" he asked.

"I'm meeting with him tomorrow, 9 p.m., the Jefferson Memorial," Mulder said.

"Why there?" X asked.  "It's isolated, there's cover.  It seems a poor choice."

"It was just what came to mind," Mulder admitted.

"You went with the first place that came to mind?" X asked.  "You put no thought 
into it?  You have to be the most suicidally stupid man I have ever met."

"Cut me some fucking slack, would you?" Mulder said, louder than he'd meant to.



Now people really were looking at them.   Mulder felt his face flush.  

"Keep it quiet," X said, but the fury had left his voice.  Perhaps even for him 
there was such a thing as going too far.  "Very well.  9 o'clock tomorrow at the 
Jefferson Memorial.  Have you made arrangements with the representative of my 
organization you met with today?"

"No," Mulder confessed, truly beginning to feel suicidally stupid.  "I wouldn't 
talk to him."

X looked disgusted, but at least he kept his comments on the subject to himself.  
"Then I strongly suggest you meet with both of us tomorrow morning, to 
coordinate our efforts.  You may be perfectly willing to wander out into the 
dark to play hide and seek with the Invisible Man, but I am not."

A cozy little brunch with Cancer Man.  Oh, joy.  "Scully and Skinner will have 
to be there," Mulder said.  "They want to come with me tomorrow night."

X did not look surprised.  He asked, "Can they be counted on to cooperate?  We 
won't catch Knowlton if we turn on one another."

"I think they'll be willing to do what it takes," Mulder said.  Then he added, 
more softly,  "I have it from Skinner that we'll turn Knowlton over to you if we 
catch him."

X actually looked a little startled.  "I think my associates will find that 
provision most agreeable.  It's so much extra effort to have to arrange a hit in 
a prison."  

Mulder wished X hadn't put it like that.  The expression, "conspiracy to commit 
murder" came to mind.

"You said you had video images," X prompted.

"In the car," Mulder said.  He turned on his heel and walked over to where he'd 
parked.  Scully stood on the far side of his car.  Even in her neat suit and 
long coat, she looked a little forlorn.  Mulder wondered if she were 
disappointed in him for working with his informant, or hurt that he'd run off 
and not waited for her.  He glanced up, met her eyes for a second, silently 
willing her to understand.  

Then he opened his car door and leaned across the seat to rummage in the glove 
compartment.  Mulder came out with a computer disk.  He'd labeled it 
"Minesweeper," after a popular time wasting game, since you never could be to 
careful.  He held it out to X, who looked extremely skeptical.

"This is not the same as pictures," he said.

Mulder wasn't sure if the man was pissed because he hadn't bothered to print 
them out, or if X was computer illiterate enough to be put off by images on a 
disk.  It had never before occurred to Mulder that X might have points of 
vulnerability too.

"Go to 'Start,' then 'Programs,' 'Photoshop,' 'File,' and 'Open.'  They're in 
JPEG format.  It's not hard," Mulder said.  X gave him a sour look but took the 
disk.

"10 a.m., Nana Jay's, on 18th Street, between Wyoming and Kalorama," X said. "Do 
*not* be late this time," he said.  He turned and strode away, his trench coat 
rippling at his heels.  Somehow, Mulder wanted to hear Darth Vader's Theme as he 
stalked off.

Once the informant was out of earshot, Mulder turned to face Scully.  "I bet 
he's not going to refund me the price of the disk," he said.  

She didn't look amused.  "I don't trust that man," she said.  

"You shouldn't," he said.  "I don't trust any of them.  Still, in this case I 
think we do have a common goal."

"You *think?*" she asked.  "Jesus, Mulder, do you realize you're gambling with 
your *life?*"  Her clipped words hung in the air.  Most of the agents had gone 
home by now, but a few still filtered through, and they glanced over at Mulder 
and Scully.  What a tableau they must make -- her leaning toward him, tense and 
burning despite the parking garage's dim illumination, him gazing down at an oil 
stain by his shoe, scruffy and exhausted.  Mulder could just feel the rumor mill 
starting up again.  

"You mad at me?" he asked, softly.

"Am I *mad* at you?" she asked.  She seemed at a loss for words.  Mulder braced 
himself for a spectacular, public reaming.  Oh well, he thought.  Not like life 
could get much worse.

"I feel sick over what's happened to you," she said.  Her voice was quieter than 
he'd expected.  He glanced up at her.  "I don't want to watch you destroy 
yourself."  Tears shone in her eyes, and she seemed to be fighting for control.



That set off every protective instinct he had.  He strode around the front of 
the car and caught her in his arms.  He didn't even want to *think* about the 
rumors that would be circulated in the break rooms, tomorrow.  "Fuck 'em," he 
thought.  If people wanted to call them "the Sex Files Unit" just because he was 
a man and she was a woman and they didn't date other people and they spent a lot 
of time alone in the basement together . . . well to hell with them.  

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  I didn't want you dragged so far into this," he said 
softly.  "It's just that . . ."  The honest thing to say would be "I need you." 
Could he say that?  Was it manipulative to say that he needed her support in a 
venture she deeply disapproved of?  He let the sentence trail off and just held 
her tight.  

He could see the whole crown of her head when he looked down.  "Coppertop," he 
teased her.  "You just keep on going, and going, and going . . ."  She made a 
sound between a sob and a giggle, then reached up to punch him in the arm.  It 
was the way a sister would have responded to a brother, or a third grade girl to 
a boy she had a crush on.  Fox found it didn't bother him at all.  He rocked her 
a little.  She deserved some soothing, after all she'd given him. 

Dana cried for perhaps five minutes.  She stepped back from him at last, and 
started rooting in her purse, presumably for Kleenex.  "I think you gave it to 
me," he said.

She glanced up at him.  Her mascara was running like sooty tears.  She wiped at 
her cheeks with her fingers, but that just smeared the makeup and gave her a 
waif-like, chimneysweep look.

Fox didn't think he'd ever felt such tenderness for her.  He lifted the hem of 
his T shirt and wiped her eyes.  Someone on the other side of the parking garage 
made a whistling noise.  

"Take it all off!" a woman shouted.  There was laughter.  Scully glanced aside, 
her face reddening. 

Fox flipped up his middle finger and tucked his hand behind the small of his 
back so the onlookers could see.

More laughter.  "You go, baby!" came another woman's voice.  The comment could 
have been directed at either Mulder or Scully.  "Go home," Fox said to Dana, 
softly.

"You shouldn't be alone, tonight," she answered, just as quietly.  Mulder opened 
his mouth to protest, but then it occurred to him that maybe *Scully* didn't 
want to be alone.  

"Okay," he said.  "I need to get something a little more dignified to wear for 
tomorrow.  You got a problem with me driving by my place?" he asked.  She shook 
her head.  "All right.  I'll meet you back at your apartment," he said.  While 
he doubted that Knowlton would drop by early, he still did not want either of 
them staying at his place.  "See ya," he said.

"See ya," she replied.  

Although there were few places in D.C. more secure than the Hoover Building's 
parking garage, Mulder stood and watched until Scully was safely in her car.

Mulder drove home feeling tired and ill.  He discovered that the landlord had 
replaced his lock core, so in theory he could tell Scully he'd changed his mind 
and just crash here.  The thought of sleeping in his own home for the first time 
in days was appealing.  However, he'd told her that he would go over, and she 
might need him, so he'd go.

Mulder fed his fish, and noted with satisfaction that they had not begun to eat 
one another from hunger.  He always felt a little guilty when they did that. He 
changed into clean clothes and put together what he'd need for tomorrow.  He 
sighed when he saw that one zippered pocket of his overnight bag was now 
completely full of medication bottles.  

Resigned, he got back into the car and headed right back the way he'd just come, 
toward Annapolis.  Why the hell couldn't she live somewhere closer, he wondered?  
It didn't occur to him that maybe he should move, instead. 

When he finally pulled into her parking lot, all he wanted to do was sleep. His 
muscles ached, his insides were sore, and he could tell he had a fever.  He 
hoped he wouldn't act like an irrational jerk again tonight.  Guiltily, he found 
he hoped that Scully wouldn't need too much from him.  He felt like he was 
running on empty.

To his relief, she looked like her usual calm, collected self when she answered 
her door.  Of course Scully wasn't freaking out, he told himself.  He was the 
one who kept losing it.  Though self-confidence wasn't something he was usually 
short on, at the moment he felt like a Loser with a capital "L."  He walked in, 
put his stuff on a chair, and curled up on the couch.

"Have you eaten?" she asked.

He thought about this.  He looked at her VCR clock.  It was just before 7.  He 
would have to confront Knowlton in just over 24 hours.  With Cancer Man as 
backup.  Oh, holy fuck.  How did he get himself into these things?  He decided 
he'd better not dwell on what could happen tomorrow.  That way lay madness.  He 
remembered that Scully had asked him a question.  "I dunno," he managed.  Ah. 
Apparently he was going to be an idiot again tonight.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" she said, and he heard her open a kitchen cupboard.

It occurred to him that she'd been feeding him a lot lately.  "Hey, Scully, we 
could order pizza or something.  I've got money on me.  You don't need to let me 
eat you out of house and home."

"Tell you what, if you start chewing on the furniture, I'll tell you to stop 
it," she said.  "You want grilled cheese?  I've been wanting grilled cheese all 
day.  I don't know why.  I haven't had that in years."

"Childhood favorite?" Mulder guessed.

"Yeah," she admitted.  He heard her pulling bread out of a plastic wrapper.

"Wanna make a tent out of a blanket and some chairs and spill Kool Aid on the 
carpet?" he asked. 

She laughed, a little sadly, he thought.  "Not with the security deposit I had 
to put down.  Sometimes being an adult sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," he said, and shut his eyes.  Being a kid had sucked, too, but he didn't 
want to get into that.

The next thing he was aware of was Scully waking him.  She laid a plate with a 
hot grilled cheese sandwich on it on the floor next to the couch, along with a 
paper napkin.

He sat up and took the plate over to the table.  They ate for a while in 
silence.  Mulder found the sandwich was very good.  He hadn't realized how 
hungry he was. He'd scarfed his before she was done with half of hers.

"You want another one?"  she asked.

He shook his head, feeling sleepy and a little dazed.  How did that song go? "I 
have become comfortably numb."  Great.  Nothing like drugs and denial to take 
the edge off a guy.  He wondered if the Consortium would be thrilled.  

"How are you doing?" Scully asked.

"I'll live," Mulder answered.  "How are you?"

"All right," she said.  "Better, thank you."

"Good," he said.  He leaned down and rested his head in the crook of his arm.

"You look like you need to go to bed," Scully told him.

Mulder had dumped ketchup over his grilled cheese and now occupied himself by 
scraping up dabs of it on his fingers and sucking it off.  "You know what I 
wanna do?" he asked.

"What?" she replied.

"One day I'm going to write a book on the psychology of mutants."

"Oh," she said.  It did not seem to be what she expected him to say.   

"I mean, think of all the mutants we've run into.  For most of 'em, their 
physical abnormalities were the least of their problems."

"I don't know about that," Scully replied.  "I think being a giant flukeworm 
grown in toxic sludge would limit your opportunities in life."

"Oh man, I wasn't even thinking about that thing," Mulder said.  Suddenly, he 
didn't want to eat his ketchup anymore.  "I was thinking about Darin Oswald, 
about Knowlton.  I mean, what must it be like to know that you're -- you're 
'different from other men?'  That's how the Smoking Man said Knowlton described 
himself."

"Everybody's different," Scully said.

"No," Mulder said.  "Not like Tooms was.  Well, he might not have been human 
enough to feel alienated.  Think of Modell, or Barnett, after the hand thing. 
These are people who've been cut loose from society, and that's the trait that 
unites all kinds of violent criminals.  You once called Modell a 'little man.' 
That's what these people are like.  They're loners, outsiders, looking for 
something to make them feel big." 

"That's your analysis of Knowlton?"  Scully spoke gently, but her expression was 
skeptical.

"Well, it's a pretty broad analysis," Mulder said.  "Everybody feels alienated 
sometimes.  The difference lies in what people choose to do about it."  He 
pushed himself up straight and said, "Oswald's an erotomaniac.  His life was so 
empty that he created this fantasy world around the only woman who was ever nice 
to him.  She was completely unavailable, but he couldn't see that.  Even after 
he'd nearly killed her husband, after he dragged her out of the hospital, 
frightened and crying, he was sure she had to love him back.  The illusion was 
that necessary to him.  I guess he -- he wanted to believe."

"Do you think Darin Oswald would have done to Mrs. Kiveat what Knowlton did to 
you?" Scully asked.

"Think we should call it Oswald's Syndrome?" he asked.  "Think that would please 
our little Darin?"

"Probably not," she said.

"No," he agreed.  "I don't remember Oswald having any priors, but if he'd gotten 
in trouble for breaking and entering, maybe peeping Tom behavior, then I'd say 
he was a pretty good candidate to become a Power Reassurance Rapist. That's the 
kind that thinks his victim likes it.  That's the kind who sometimes calls on a 
victim more than once."

"And you think that's what Knowlton is?" Scully asked.

"I think he's got a lot in common with that type.  He's got ... things in common 
with the Sadistic Rapist type, too.  That'd be like--" he nearly said, "Donnie 
Pfaster," and then mentally bit his tongue.  That was a name he tried not to 
mention around Scully.  What he actually said was, "Gary Heidnik or Jeffrey 
Dahmer.  With that type control is everything.  They're terror artists. 
Everything they do is aimed at total possession of the victim."

She bent her head.  Mulder was unsure the gesture was one of fatigue or grief. 
Perhaps it was both.  "How could he torture you that way and think that you 
enjoyed it?"  She asked.  The question sounded almost rhetorical, like the 
things one says to God, but he attempted to answer.

"Carl Wade thought he loved the girls he kept chained in his basement.  He 
thought he was 'taking care' of them.  Well -- I guess that doesn't address the 
bigger question, 'why?'  As in, 'why do these things happen?'  I don't know the 
answer to that one."

She lifted her head and he saw the hard glint of tears in her eyes.  "I'm 
sorry," he said.  Couldn't he even open his mouth without making someone else 
miserable?

"It's all right," she said.  She reached out and wrapped her small, warm fingers 
around his.  "It's not you."

She seemed to be implying that she would have been sad whether Mulder was there 
or not.  This contradicted his impression that she'd been all right at the time 
he showed up, but he didn't challenge her.

Instead he managed a smile and said, "I think I'll turn in, if you don't mind. 
Wouldn't want to keep cancer Man waiting in the morning." "Sure," she said.

He got up and went into the bathroom to wash.  The place had a nice, herbal 
smell.  He looked at himself in the mirror.  His reflection was skinnier and 
more haggard-looking than he remembered.  There were dark smudges beneath his 
bloodshot eyes and his T-shirt was wrinkled.  "Jesus, you look like you spent 
all night in a bus station," he thought.  His hair was getting too long on top, 
too, like Krycek's stupid-ass haircut.  Angrily, Mulder ran his free hand under 
the sink tap and plastered his bangs back over the top of his head. 

"You are not going to lose your identity over this," he ordered himself. 
"Knowlton can fuck you, he can even kill you, but he can't destroy you.  The 
whole world's been trying to do that for years, and it hasn't worked yet. You're 
still you.  Nothing's changed." 

It wasn't true.

It wasn't just Knowlton who had made him question his selfhood.  Accepting the 
drugs from Najar had been very hard.  He'd worked with dozens of patients on 
medication when he was a psyche intern, and had never looked down on them.  But 
it was different when it was himself.

He brushed his teeth and glanced at the closed bathroom door.  He didn't want to 
go out there yet.  Ordinarily he went running when he needed to think, but even 
Mulder wasn't stupid enough to run now.  He still sometimes found blood spots on 
his underwear, and he hadn't done anything more athletic than plunk into a few 
chairs and occasionally yield to the necessities of nature.  Which itself was a 
new species of hell.  He sighed and stripped off his clothes.  He turned on the 
fan and the shower water.  Once he found a good temperature he hopped in.

Either he was less feverish than yesterday or he'd turned the water on hotter, 
because it didn't make him shiver.  He didn't use Scully's Body Gel this time, 
either.  He'd been smart enough to bring actual soap in a Ziploc bag and his own 
shampoo, which was supposed to have conditioner built in.  It didn't leave his 
hair feeling as soft as Scully's, but it also didn't make him smell like a damn 
flower bed. 

"So," he thought to himself as he ran the soap bar over his body.  "So you got 
fucked and you're on drugs, now.  What is this going to mean?  That you're a 
failure?"

He heard the ghost of an old, angry voice in his mind: "What's the matter with 
you, boy?  Your baby sister could do better than that.  Jesus Christ, try to act 
like a man."

The dry, profiler voice replied, "What were my options?"  Madness, was the 
answer.  Madness and helplessness, and those were unacceptable.  He'd taken the 
pills, and he did feel a little less hysterical today.

"Forgive me," his father had said, just before he died. 

He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory, failed to keep it out.  He'd 
cradled Bill Mulder's body in his arms, the man who'd raised him, who'd cared 
for him, who'd beaten him. 

In the vision Fox had while he lay near-dead in the New Mexico desert, his 
father had said, "If you are to continue, the things you will discover will 
destroy me."

Fox had loved his dad, and he'd hated him, but he didn't want the responsibility 
of destroying him.  He put down the soap and pressed his hands to his eyes.  
He'd wanted his father and sister so badly when he was at his mother's house.  
Still, what could they have done for him?  With Samantha, it was impossible to 
say.  She'd been tiny, only eight years old, when she vanished.  Depending on 
what she'd been through, Sam could be almost anyone by now.  If she was alive.  
Of course she had to be alive.  She had to be.  That tragedy could not be 
irreversible. 

Trying to turn his mind aside from that abyss, he wondered what his father would 
say, if he could.  Fox wanted him to say that it was all right, that what had 
happened wasn't Fox's fault.  He wanted his father's embrace, his comforting . . 
. as if.  Bill had never been comfortable giving physical affection to his son.  
It had been a minor miracle that he'd agreed to hug Fox on the night he'd died, 
a miracle Fox was humiliatingly grateful for.

Fox gave in to his sorrow and cried for his family -- for the whole, terrible 
world.



Dana poised to rinse the grease off her plate in the kitchen sink, then stopped.  
She could hear the shower running in the next room.  She'd grown up in houses 
where you couldn't run water without torturing the person in the shower.  She'd 
also lived alone too long to be sure what would happen if she turned the sink 
tap on.  She ended up leaving the dirty dish on the counter. 

She wandered into the living room, thinking she'd catch any news there was. She 
had the remote in her hand when she heard Mulder cry out.  The sound froze her 
in her tracks.  She hoped to God that he wasn't experiencing massive hemorrhage.

She knocked hard on the bathroom door and asked, "Mulder, are you okay?"

No response.  She put her hand on the knob, found it didn't turn.  She didn't 
like that at all.  Dana grabbed a butter knife from the kitchen and pressed it 
into the knob slot.  She twisted and it popped right open. 

"Mulder . . ." she called out, pushing the door in.  Swirls of steam inside. She 
recalled him miming a gunshot to his head.  Oh, God, she'd left her razors in 
there . . . 

"Mulder?"  When she still got no answer she swept the shower curtain aside, 
needing to know, afraid of what she'd find. 

Mulder stood in the shower with one arm was wrapped around his chest.  Dana 
looked down, saw no rivulets of blood on the bathtub floor.  Oh, thank God.  He 
slowly lifted his other palm and turned away from her.

Suddenly she was ashamed.  "I'm sorry, Mulder," she said softly.  "I'm so sorry.  
I was afraid . . ."

She could see why he hadn't answered her.  He was crying too hard. 

She let the curtain fall closed and after a moment she heard the water shut off. 


"You don't have to get out because of me," she said, backing off.  She'd managed 
to further violate a man who'd been raped.  Scully didn't think she could have 
felt worse if she'd physically kicked him. 

Mulder reached out from behind the shower curtain and grabbed a towel from the 
bar on the wall.  Moments later he emerged, the towel tied tightly around his 
hips.  He had regained his composure somewhat, and he sat carefully on the wet 
edge of the tub.  "You figured I was gong to off myself?" He asked, his voice 
hoarse.

"You're stronger than that," she said, but her cheeks burned and she couldn't 
meet his eyes.

"You don't . . ." he began, "you don't think less of me, because I went to see a 
psychiatrist, do you?  Because I've got medication?"

She looked over at him, incredulous.  "No, no of course not," she said.

He nodded and gazed down at the floor, his hair dripping on his toes.  He looked 
exhausted.  She got the impression he was being beaten down, by shame and 
anxiety and the relentless criticism in his own head. 

Oh, she would kill John Knowlton, the "Invisible Man," or whatever his name was, 
if he broke her friend.  Much as Mulder's perverse determination sometimes 
frustrated her, the thought of him without it filled her with grief.  "Mulder . 
. ." she began, uncertain what to say.  Encouragement against impossible odds 
was Mulder's forte, not hers.  If he had run out of reasons to keep fighting, 
what could she tell him?   "Mulder, have you ever read Azimov's 'Foundation' 
series?" she asked, at last.

That got him to glance over at her.  "Yeah," he said.

"You remember Stars' End?  The lighthouse at the edge of the known universe?" 
she asked.  She thought he gave her a suspicious look. 

"What about it?" he asked.

She had to turn away as she spoke.  "That's like you," she said.  "You're this 
light way out in the darkness.  If you let them put you out . . . the rest of us 
will never find our way to that unexplored space."

Silence for a long time.  Scully felt her face flush even hotter.  She shouldn't 
have spoken like that.  It was a stupid metaphor.  Probably he felt as 
embarrassed as she did.

She was surprised by the sudden tension in his muscles, the hand that lifted to 
his eyes.  "And here I figured you thought the 'Foundation' series was about 
makeup," he said.

She managed a squeak of outrage, lifted a hand to bop him on the head, and ended 
up wrapping her arms around him instead. 

As the fan cooled the room he started to shiver, and she finally pulled back and 
said, "Why don't you put something on and get into bed?" she asked.

He glanced up at her.  She read in his expression the temptation to say 
something filthy, then the decision not to.  He looked away.  "It's your house," 
he said.  "You get to sleep in the bed."

Scully looked at him, saw he was exhausted and half naked and cold.  He needed 
sleep, needed to be somewhere comfortable and warm.  She couldn't tell him that.  
As soon as she said the words, "You need," his hackles would go up. 

"I need," she began instead, and found those words were hard to say.  Perhaps 
she was more like Mulder than she'd thought.  "I need you to be safe tonight. 
I'll feel better if I know you're comfortable."

He looked at her, looked away again.  "But . . . but if I kick you out of your 
own bed I'll feel like an asshole," he said.

"What if I lay on top of the covers next to you, until you fell asleep?" she 
offered.  "I wouldn't touch you, I'd just--"

"You'd just be there?" he interrupted.

"Yeah," she said.

He took a long time thinking about it.  "Okay," he said at last.  "Let me get 
dressed."

"Yeah, sure," she said, standing.  She left the room and closed the door. 





Later, Dana wandered into her bedroom, saw Mulder's body limned faintly in the 
orange streetlight glow that crept through the cracks of her blinds.  He had, of 
course, appropriated both pillows.  His breathing was deep and even.  As she'd 
promised, she lay down on the comforter next to him.  Fox stirred, glanced up at 
her, then snuggled close. 

She tugged at the extra pillow.  He relinquished it willingly, but when she 
rested her cheek against the case she felt the dampness of recent tears.  Oh, 
dear.  Dana put her right arm around Mulder's shoulders.  He returned the 
embrace, pressed his face into the crease between her breast and biceps.

"It's all right," she assured him.  "I'm here.  Go back to sleep."  She stroked 
his hair with her free hand, found it was still damp with washing.

"Sing to me," he said, suddenly.

Startled and rather embarrassed, she said, "You don't want me to do that."

"Yes, I do," he argued.

Oh, hell.  Dana couldn't sing worth a damn.  "No, you really don't," she 
insisted.  "I don't even know any songs."

"You used to be a Girl Scout, didn't you?  You have to know some songs."

"Yeah, like the 'Eensy Beensy Spider,'" she said.

"So?" he asked. 

Oh, crap.  He really wanted to be sung to.  She couldn't blame him; Dana had 
loved it when her mother sang to her, when she was small.  An old, old tune 
began to filter through her head.  Like the most ancient of Irish lullabies, it 
was a lament.  "It's Gaelic," she warned him.

"So what?"

"It's depressing," "Even better," he said.

She began a song that was sometimes called "Buttermilk Hill," which she only 
knew in a corrupted, Irish/English form:

"Siubhal, siubhal, siubhal a run. Siubhal go sochair, argus siubhal go cum. 
Siubhal go den duras, argus eligh liom, Is go de to, mo muirnin slan.

I sold my flax, I sold my wheel, To buy my love a sword of steel So it in battle 
he might wield, Johnny's gone for a soldier."

Dana wended her way through the verses she knew, until she thought Mulder was 
asleep.  She brushed his hair with her fingertips. He stirred, then asked, "What 
does that mean?"

"What does what mean?"

"Your song.  The 'Shule aroon' part."

"Oh," she said.  "I was told it means, 'Walk to me, love, walk to my door and 
run away with me."

"Very romantic," he said.  He sounded as if he meant it. 

Suddenly embarrassed, she explained, "It's a traditional song, handed down from 
the end of the 17th century.  I seem to recall that it's a protest against 
William and Mary of Orange.  The English words were written around the time of 
the Civil War."

"American, or English?" Fox asked.  Trust an Oxford grad . . .

"American," Scully said. 

"Ah," said Mulder.  "It's very pretty."`

"I've always liked it," she said.

He was quiet after that.  Lulled by the soft rhythm of his breath, Dana became 
drowsy herself.  Although she hadn't intended it, they fell asleep in each 
other's arms.



Some hours later, Fox startled awake with a gasp.  It took a few moments for the 
nightmare images to fade and for him to orient himself.  Dana was still curled 
next to him; there was sunlight in the room.  He struggled to sit up and peer 
over her at the clock.  Just before eight.  Holy crap.  He'd been dead asleep 
for 12 hours.  Actually, he felt like he could easily sleep the rest of the day.  
As if.  He needed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for breakfast with Cancer 
Man. 

Scully blinked sleepily at him as he dropped back onto the pillow.  She turned 
to look at the clock as well, and said, "Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh,'" Mulder agreed, rubbing his sore eyes with the heels of his palms.



"Did you have a nightmare?" she asked.

He sighed.  "I was having this dream," he said.  "You and me were in it, and a 
bunch of people that I knew in the dream, but I don't really.  We were like . . 
. out in the middle of Kansas or something, way out on the prairie.  There were 
these cyclones touching down all around us, and the only building out there was 
this house that had no doors.  There was great big windows all over it, too, 
lots of glass, and we're all thinking, 'What the fuck? What are we going to 
do?'" 

"A house without doors is a pretty good metaphor for someone who's been 
violated," Dana said gently.  "What happened when the storm hit?"

"Actually, it didn't.  Instead a bunch of zeppelins showed up and all these Nazi 
frogmen paratroopers jumped out with flame throwers."

"Oh," she said.

"They started setting fire to everything, and there was this kind of 
televangelist guy controlling them with orders over a microphone.  We were 
shooting at 'em and some of the other people were throwing stuff, and this one 
guy, all he had was a garbage can lid, and he was trying to keep them off with 
that.  Just before one of 'em torched me, I woke up."

"Do you have dreams like this often?" she asked.  She sounded as if the thought 
worried her.

"Oh no, no," he said.  "Well . . . I don't think I've ever had a dream about 
cyclones before.  I see the Nazi frogmen all the time."

"I see," she said.  There didn't seem to be much else to say.

Fox gazed up at the ceiling for a few moments and then said, dreamily, "You know 
what the weirdest thing was?"

"What was the weirdest thing?"

"They used to fill zeppelins with hydrogen.  You'd have to be insane to take a 
flame thrower up in one of those things."

She just looked at him for about a count of three.  "Well, I'm getting up," she 
said, and rolled to her feet.  Fox curled into the warm spot she'd left and felt 
a little sad. 

"I'm making toast, you want anything?" she called to him.

He remembered what he was supposed to do that day and nearly said, "A .38 to the 
head," but stopped himself.  If he wasn't careful, she really would call the 
Nice Young Men in the Clean White coats.  "No," he said, then recalled that if 
he didn't eat before he took his antibiotic, he'd be sick.  "Yes," he said. 
"Toast will be fine."

She leaned around the bedroom door and said, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"'Okay' does not in any way do justice to the way I feel," Mulder said.

"You don't have to do this, you know," she said.  "You could let Skinner and me 
handle it.

"No," he said, rolling over to gaze at the light filtering through Scully's 
blinds.  "It's my problem.  It's my fight.  Besides, this is my only crack at 
Knowlton.  Or whatever his name is."

"Hmm," she said.  She sounded unhappy, but she didn't scold him.  "You want 
white toast or rye?"

He thought about this.  It seemed too momentous a decision at the moment. "Burn 
the hell out of it and I won't know the difference," he said.



The cross-streets X had given them were in the Adams - Morgan district of 
Washington, once a low-status community of working-class immigrants, now 
fashionable in the multicultural 90's.  The restaurants on 18th street were 
famously good and increasingly expensive.  There was also never anywhere to 
park.  Scully guided the car through tangled streets while Mulder glanced 
anxiously at her dashboard clock.  9:51, it said.  They would probably be on 
time.  He wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.  T minus 11 hours 
and nine minutes until the scheduled meeting with Knowlton.

She finally found a place to park -- probably illegally -- in the lot of a tall, 
brick apartment building a couple blocks away from their destination.  He hopped 
out as soon as the car stopped moving.  He was craving sunflower seeds, even a 
cigarette -- good God, he'd given that up years ago -- anything to keep his 
hands occupied.  He settled for jamming them in the pockets of his trousers.  He 
was clean, shaved, dressed in a suit and his most subdued tie. Feeling 
professional would help him act professional.  Or so he hoped.  He'd taken no 
Xanax or codeine that morning, since he wanted to avoid the dopey, weepy state 
he'd been in recently.  At worst, skipping the drugs would leave him jittery and 
in pain.  This would probably make him homicidal, which might actually be 
adaptive behavior in the current situation.  He wondered if it would be better 
if he were taking Prozac instead of Zoloft.  Didn't Prozac make people 
homicidal?

Scully shut off the engine and got out.  "You all right?" she asked, walking 
over to him.  She was also wearing the outfit that screamed "FBI Agent" the most 
loudly, a knee length navy skirt and blazer, matching shoes, white blouse. Well.  
The Syndicate could say a lot of things about the X Files Unit, but they 
couldn't call them sloppy.

Mulder shrugged in answer to her question.  "If I say 'yes,' you won't believe 
me.  If I say 'no,' you'll haul my ass home and call Werber."

"Should I?" she asked.  She appeared deadly serious.  "Is that how distressed 
you are?"

He looked away from her.  "I need to do this," he said softly.  "This thing 
started with me, I want it to end with me."  He strode off across the parking 
lot, both afraid and eager to meet his foe.  No -- his temporary allies.  Shit.

After a few paces Scully caught up with him and grabbed his elbow.  He realized 
that she'd been calling to him.  "What?" he asked, slightly annoyed.

"The restaurant is *that* way," she said, pointing in the opposite direction.

Oh.  "I knew that," he said.  She walked back the way they'd come, and Mulder 
hoped that he was inconspicuous about following her lead. 

The building fronts on 18th street were mostly turn-of-the-century brick, tall 
and narrow with lots of windows.  Nana Jay's occupied the lower floor of one 
such building. The place smelled good.  Apparently X knew how to choose his 
restaurants.  Even at an off-hour like 10 a.m., the sidewalk tables were all 
taken and there seemed to be a line inside.  Mulder and Scully waited just 
inside the glass door. 

Once they moved forward a bit, Mulder caught a glimpse of X, who was sitting by 
himself in a corner booth.  Mulder tapped Scully's shoulder and they slid 
through the crowd.  Once they got close he noticed the "Thank You For Not 
Smoking" tent card that sat upon the table.  He touched it as he slid in next to 
the informant and said, "I'm starting to like you." 

"Please keep such comments to yourself," X said.

Scully looked completely bewildered. 

"I think he protests too much," Mulder told her. 

X's lips pressed into a tight line, then he seemed to spot someone in the crowd 
at the entrance way.  "Your superior," he said. 

Mulder and Scully glanced up.  Skinner stood in the doorway, looking perplexed.

"Sir!"  Scully called out, half standing and waving her hand. "Sir!"

Skinner did eventually look their way and walked over.  Like X, he was wearing a 
long coat despite the heat.  Mulder wondered if this was some kind of fashion 
conspiracy.  Skinner settled himself next to Scully, leaving only one place, on 
the far side of X, conspicuously vacant. 

"Where's your boss?" Skinner asked the informant.

X raised his eyebrows and said, "I'm hardly his keeper."

All three Federal Agents checked their watches.  Mulder's said it was 10:05. Not 
very late, but late.  He wondered if Cancer Man had been unable to find a place 
to park, or if his tardiness was just a big "fuck you."

"I say we begin without him," Skinner said.  "What safeguards do your people 
have in place to protect my agents?"

Mulder was embarrassed about being spoken for, and he began, "Sir, I--" but a 
look from Skinner silenced him. 

X seemed equally uncomfortable.  His gaze kept slipping over toward the empty 
seat and the doorway.  "I would rather not discuss matters of substance until 
all the relevant parties are here," he said. 

"If you're not your own man, if you've got to wait on your smoking friend, I 
understand," Skinner said.  He looked anything but understanding.  Actually, the 
AD looked downright poisonous.  Mulder wondered if this was how they taught 
agents to interrogate subjects back in the good old days. 

Skinner's sneering hostility was clearly doing its work on X's pride.  The 
informant narrowed his eyes and every muscle in his shoulders tensed, as if he 
were preparing to spring.  In the end, he seemed to master himself and relaxed a 
little.  "I *am* my own man," he said, with dangerous softness.  "When my 
'smoking friend' deigns to grace us with his presence, you may feel free to 
explain the proceedings from the beginning."

"Done," Skinner said.  "I repeat, what means do you have in place to ensure 
Agent Mulder's safety?  Why should I let a good agent, who's already on medical 
leave, be put in a dangerous situation?"

Mulder startled and looked over at him.  It had never occurred to him that 
Skinner would not "let" him help bring in Knowlton.

"Sir," Mulder began again, but this time Scully gave his arm a vigorous pinch. 
"Ow, would you quit it?" Mulder whispered to her, but she continued to look over 
at the AD, as if completely engrossed in what he was saying.

"My organization has some of its best people on call for this evening," X said.

"'Best,' how?" Skinner asked.  "Best wardrobe?  Best personality?  I want to 
make sure we all agree as to our priorities-- " he stopped when X suddenly 
turned toward the doorway.  The Smoking man sauntered in, minus his usual 
smoldering Morley.

"Sorry," the Smoking Man said, as he settled himself in the booth next to X. "I 
was outside finishing my cigarette."  His pale eyes slid over to glare at X, but 
the informant held his gaze without wavering.

"The Assistant Director has volunteered to catch you up on the meeting so far," 
X said.

"Your 'associate' here was dodging my questions, that's what's happened so far," 
Skinner said.  X's lips pressed tight together and he gave Skinner a scanning 
look, as if memorizing him for some future hit. 

Cancer Man glanced at X, then back at Skinner.  "Dodging your questions about 
what?" he asked.

"Where our respective priorities lie," Skinner said.  "You want to catch this 
former employee of yours.  Fine.  I want to protect a couple of my better 
agents.  What assurance do I have that I'm not sending Mulder and Scully into 
some kind of death trap?"

"None," the Smoking Man said, mildly.  "All dealings with violent criminals are 
potential death traps, or hadn't you noticed?"

"I mean a trap set by *your* people," Skinner said.

"Ah," said the Smoking Man.  "So you think this is all a double-cross."

"Maybe," Skinner said.  "You're sure not falling over yourselves to convince me 
otherwise."

Cancer Man gazed at him a moment or two from beneath lowered lids.  His 
expression was unreadable.  "If you think about it, I could have ordered 
Knowlton -- or someone like him -- to kill Mulder and Scully ages ago, if I 
wished it.  As I recall, Knowlton had no difficulty getting access to Mulder's 
hotel room, and met with little, if any, resistance inside."  He shifted his 
gaze to Mulder as he spoke the last words.

Mulder clenched his fists and half rose out of his seat.  "What do you think I 
was supposed to do about it, you son of a bitch -- " he began, but Scully, and 
to his surprise, X, each grabbed one of his shoulders and forced him to sit 
again.  The impact hurt.  "Don't even touch me," Mulder snapped at X, and 
violently shrugged his hand off.  People were staring at them from across the 
room and whispering.  The greeter at the door looked worried, as if she was 
debating calling the cops.

X narrowed his eyes and hissed, "Don't be any stupider than you are, any of 
you."  He looked around the table, his gaze encompassing all three federal 
agents and the Smoking Man.  "This is not a situation in which we can bicker or 
try to settle old scores.  If we can't cooperate, some or all of us will end up 
dead.  I don't know about *you,*" he said, looking directly at Mulder, "but I'm 
against that idea."

Just then a stocky African American woman with graying hair strode over to their 
table.  She wore a loose floral print dress and sensible shoes.  Mulder 
suspected that this was Nana Jay herself.  She stopped in front of their table 
and planted her hands on her hips.  "Is there a problem over here?" she 
demanded.

"Things are under control," X assured her.  She looked at him, frowned a bit and 
then suddenly seemed to place him.

To Mulder's utter shock, she burst into a wide smile.  "Well, hel-lo," she said.  
"What brings you out here after all this time?"

"Business," was all X said, but he did give the woman a slight smile.

"Mm hm," she said, sounding skeptical.  "I heard about the kind of business you 
in."

"And what would that be?" X asked.  If he was nervous about her blowing his 
cover he didn't show it.

"Getting yourself killed," she replied.  "No good will ever come of you hanging 
around the likes of him."  She pointed at Cancer Man.

"I'm sorry, have we met?" the Smoking Man asked mildly.

"Have we met," she repeated derisively.  "You stick out like a sore thumb, 
snooping and spying around here."

"Ma'am, I apologize," Skinner began.  "We didn't mean any offense.  We're just 
trying to conduct a meeting here."

"Hmm," she said, looking at him with obvious disapproval.  "You watch your 
mouth," she said, turning to point her finger at Mulder.

Mulder swallowed, quite thoroughly mortified.  "I'm sorry, I got angry.  I 
shouldn't have," he said.

"Everything's under control here, Nana Jay," X said, "but if you prefer, we can 
leave."

She gave them displeased looks all around, and finally said, "As long as you act 
like ladies and gentlemen, you're welcome.  None of my business what you do for 
a living."  Mulder realized that she must think they were all Syndicate members.  
"One other thing," she said, pointing at Cancer Man, "you will *not* smoke in my 
non-smoking section."  With that she turned and swept off.

There was an uncomfortable silence at the table for a few seconds.  "Well, that 
was entertaining," the Smoking Man said.  He did look almost amused.

"So much for keeping a low profile," Scully muttered.

Mulder turned to X and said, "You implied that you had a plan."  He wanted to 
get this meeting over as soon as possible.

"My idea was to have my own people and Agents Scully and Skinner at the Memorial 
some time in advance, as soon as it's dark enough for the surrounding trees to 
provide good cover.  I understand that it's supposed to rain tonight, so it 
should get dark early," said X

Mulder heard Scully say, "Great."

"Agent Mulder will arrive just before the scheduled time, and wait in the 
lighted area of the Memorial.  I suggest that he wear a wire.  If nothing else, 
if we lose contact with him we may assume that Knowlton is using his power over 
electricity, and that we must use caution."  To Mulder's surprise no one 
challenged the idea that Knowlton had such power. 

"Then what?" Scully asked. 

"Mulder will lead Knowlton into the Memorial itself.  The walls will obstruct 
Knowlton's view of the area and he will be easier to surround.  We ought to 
place an operative in each of the Memorial's openings and station others at the 
perimeter of the steps.  Once Knowlton enters the building, we start to move 
in."

"And if he wipes the minds of all these operatives and walks away?" asked the 
Smoking Man.

"If you have a better suggestion I'd like to hear it," X said.

The Smoking Man just gave him a thin-lipped smile.



Their brunch probably would have tasted better if it wasn't so quiet.



By the time they got back to her apartment, Dana knew Mulder was running a 
fever.  His face was pale and his eyes had an odd, glazed look.  He changed into 
his T-shirt and jeans as soon as they got in, and then paced around the living 
room, rummaging though his bags to no apparent purpose.  She sensed his fear, 
his exhaustion, and his barely-contained rage at the world.  Dana suspected was 
in for a difficult afternoon.

"I figured I'd go back home for a few hours," he said.  "The lock on the door's 
fixed and since I have a time and place to meet Knowlton, I don't think he'll 
bother me."  He didn't look up at her as he said it.  He clearly expected her to 
disapprove.

"What's back home?" she asked.

"You know . . . stuff."  He tried to jam all his medication bottles into one 
pocket of his bag and found they wouldn't go.  He ended up pitching them all 
into the main compartment, where he certainly wouldn't be able to find anything.

"I'd rather you weren't alone right now," she said.  When he didn't answer she 
added, "You're sick, you're upset and you just started a course of psychiatric 
medication.  Actually, I'd prefer it if you didn't even drive."

"Yeah, well, you can't always get what you want."

Scully looked up at the ceiling and counted to ten.  "What do you want, Mulder?" 
she asked at last.  "What do you get out of driving yourself until you're sick 
and exhausted?  Are you trying to go out in some blaze of martyred glory?"

"Yeah.  It's better to burn out than fade away," he said.  He pitched his bag of 
toiletries onto the couch. 

"Fine."  Scully said, turning her back on him.  "Fine, whatever."  Then she 
thought about it and realized it was *not* fine.  She rounded on him and said, 
"When are you going to realize that you are not the only person in the world 
who's hurting?"  The anger in her voice at least got him to stop and look at 
her.  "It's like you think you're this little island and nothing that happens to 
you touches anybody else.  How do you think your mom would feel if she knew you 
were using yourself as bait to catch a mutant killer?  How do you think *I* 
feel?  I've been helping you out with this plan because I couldn't think of 
anything better.  I shouldn't even have done as much as I did.  I was probably 
remiss as a doctor and a friend by not sending you to a hospital the minute your 
temperature spiked." 

"Scully, don't treat me like some kind of convalescent--"

"Mulder you *are* a convalescent.  I'm not trying to offend your sense of 
manhood.  I'm just pointing out a reality.  I don't think you should go tonight.  
You've gotten Knowlton to agree to show up, which was extremely brave and 
resourceful of you.  Let Skinner and I do the rest."

"I can't," Mulder said.

"Why not?" she asked.

He sighed and some of the tension left his shoulders.  Finally he said, "When I 
was a New Agent at the ISU, I interviewed this guy who was doing time for lust 
murder.  One of the smartest criminals I ever met.  I asked him whether he'd 
ever taken anything from his victims -- kind of as a souvenir.  Most killers 
like him do, and the cops had been going nuts looking for his stash.  He laughed 
at me when I asked.  He said, 'You know what I like to take from a girl?  I take 
her essence.  Once she's dead, she's all mine.  What do I need her stupid 
pantyhose for?'  That's what a rapist wants.  To own his victim. When somebody 
like Knowlton calls a person up in the middle of the night, just to harass them, 
he's trying to possess them through fear.  He wants to be a part of their every 
waking moment.  I'll be damned if I let him do that to me."

Scully smoothed her hair back from her forehead in a half-conscious soothing 
gesture.  When he put it that way she understood, but she didn't feel any 
better.  "You want to get this man off the street.  I want to keep you alive and 
unharmed.  Those goals shouldn't be mutually exclusive.  I'll help you with this 
sting operation," she said.

"If . . .?" he asked, looking suspicious.

"If you take my advice on your health, and not just use me as a backup gun.  I 
*won't* blindly follow orders that'll get you killed."

Mulder sighed, seemed to relent.  "You want me to go to bed, don't you?" he 
asked.

"How well are you going to fight if you're exhausted and sick?" she pointed out.  
Nothing like a little enlightened self-interest to put things in perspective.  
"I want you to do three things," she said. "Take your medication. Call up Janet 
and get an appointment as soon as possible so she can check that fever out.  Get 
some rest before you go to the Memorial tonight.  If you'll do that, I'll shut 
up and do everything I can to help you bring in this Invisible Man."

His face took on the sad, far-away expression he got whenever she told him she 
cared for him.  He turned soulful hazel eyes up to meet hers and said, "You 
promise you'll shut up?"

She repressed an urge to pitch a couch pillow at him.  "Girl Scout's honor," she 
said, and gave him the three-fingered Scout solute.

Mulder returned the gesture, but then he folded down his first and third 
fingers.  He gave her an evil grin despite the water in his eyes.



He did take a nap, though.



When Scully gently shook Mulder awake the room was dimmer than he remembered it.  
The light filtering through the blinds was slate gray and he could hear the 
faint patter of raindrops on the window. 

"It's seven thirty," Scully she told him.  "I'm getting ready to go."

"Fuck . . ." he said, hauling himself into a sitting position.  "This early?"

"It's a twenty-minute ride to the city," she said.  "I'm supposed to be there 
before it's dark.  By the way, your friend dropped by while you were sleeping 
and said to give you this."  She pressed some small metal object into his hand.

He looked at it.  "A tie clip," he said.  "How thoughtful."  He knew a wire when 
he saw one and was sure Scully did too, so he didn't bother mentioning it. "It's 
an ugly tie clip, too."  Actually, it wasn't; it was an understated little gold 
diamond with a faint cross-hatch pattern etched into it.  Probably very 
tasteful, for people who liked that sort of thing.  It was just that everything 
to do with the Consortium was ugly on principle.  "Who's going to be on the 
other end of this thing?" he asked.

"I told the man who gave it to me that Skinner and I would expect to have 
pickups, and he assured me that some of his 'best people' would be listening in 
as well."

"Uh huh.  Just what I always wanted."  He got up and said, "Well, I guess I 
might as well make myself presentable.  Wouldn't want a gang of international 
murderers to think I'm a slob."

He was heading for her bathroom when she said, "Mulder . . ." and he stopped and 
turned.  She looked down and away from him.  The pale light from the window cast 
the scene in grays, like a charcoal drawing.  "Please be careful," she said at 
last, very quiet.

"Oh, yeah.  Yeah," he assured her.  He stepped forward to brush his fingertips 
under her chin and gently lifted her face.  There was a moment of electrifying 
eye contact, then they both turned away. 

Mulder cleared his throat, gazing at some imaginary object by his foot.  "I 
mean, I only get one life, right?" he asked.  "It's not like I'm going to throw 
it away on this."

"Good," she said.  She did not look up at him again, but she ran her fingers 
over his hand as she walked past him and out the door.





At a little before 9 p.m. Mulder had no difficulty finding a parking place by 
the Jefferson Memorial.  The rain had stopped, mostly, but a fine mist had risen 
from the tidal basin, making haloes around the sodium lamps.  The dome of the 
Memorial itself was washed in a luminous blue glow, cast by the lights that 
ringed the lower tier of the roof.  It was a short hike around the sodden lawn 
to the front steps.

The building's foreskirts were empty.  Floodlights set along the water 
illuminated every step, every well-groomed hedge.  The waist-high cement flower 
beds cast strange, multiple shadows.  Fox looked up and saw there were breaks in 
the clouds.  A few hardy stars and a sickle moon shone through the city light 
pollution.  "It's all right," he told himself.  "After tonight, it's over." 

Ha.  As if.  He ascended the first set of steps, trying to scan the surrounding 
tree cover with being obvious about it.  Nothing moved.  As far as he could 
tell, he was alone.  Scully and Skinner wouldn't abandon him, would they?

He remembered what Cancer Man had said: "So you think this is all a set up."

Too late to worry about that now.  Fox had a 9 mm in his shoulder holster and a 
snub-nosed .38 in a special holster at his ankle.  The .38 was heavier than it 
looked, and he had to resist the urge to pull his sock up. 

"God, if you're listening," he thought to a deity he wasn't sure he believed in, 
"I don't want to die here.  I don't want . . ." he found he was unable, even in 
his mind, to name the horrors he didn't want.  "Just give me the strength to do  
. . . whatever it is I have to do, okay?" 

As he finished this rough prayer, he reached the Memorial's uppermost step. Fox 
leaned against one of the towering white columns and gazed out over the tidal 
pool.  The lights from the Mall were visible over the canopy of trees. The basin 
itself was cloaked in fog.

The view reminded him of something.  Oxford, seen from across the Thames?   No. 
He shook his head, trying to clear a sudden wave of dizziness.  What had he been 
thinking about, again?  He wasn't sure.

"Hello, love."  Fox jumped and grabbed for his gun.  A strong hand caught his 
wrist and then another clamped onto his shoulder.  Fox was spun around, lost his 
balance and fell to his knees.  His right hand got pinned behind his back and he 
narrowly escaped smacking his head against the cement by throwing his left hand 
out in front of him. 

The pain of his scraped hand seeped through the adrenaline rush, along with the 
sensation of body heat against his back. 

Oh, God, no.  Not again.  "Don't, please don't," Fox protested, before he could 
stop himself. 

"Don't?" Knowlton asked.  Who else could it be but Knowlton?  The soft, 
unplaceable drawl was there, the tone somewhere between flirting and mocking. 
"Don't what?"

Fox cried out involuntarily. "Please don't do this."  The cruel twisting against 
his shoulder joint increased.  His eyes teared.  The profiler voice in his mind 
told him to say, "Not out in public."

Fox got no reply for a few, terrifying seconds.  "All right, love," Knowlton 
said at last.  He wrenched the 9 mm from Mulder's grasp and slammed his pelvis 
into the agent's buttocks.  Knocked forward, Mulder had to straighten up quickly 
to avoid getting his teeth smashed into the cement. 

Afterward, Fox slowly got his feet under him and stood.  "Would you let my hand 
go?" he asked, mildly.  "I won't cause any more trouble."

"You won't, eh?" Knowlton asked.  "What's my guarantee of that?"

"I'm sorry," Fox said.  "You startled me.  I wasn't sure who you were."

"Mm-hm," said Knowlton.  "And just how many men do you meet out here?"

"On purpose?  Only you," Fox said.  Actually, it was true.  "But I meet people 
by accident all the time."

"There are no accidents," Knowlton said, but he released Mulder's arm.  Mulder 
gripped his shoulder to try and rub some circulation back into it.

"Perhaps not," Fox conceded,  "Can we go inside?"  He did not turn around to 
face Knowlton.  He would not make eye contact until he was invited to do so. It 
was important that Knowlton believe he himself was in control here.  If he began 
to suspect that Mulder was a threat to his authority, he just might shoot.  Or 
worse.

"All right," Knowlton said.  Mulder walked slowly into the Memorial. 

There was Tom Jefferson, 19 feet of weathered bronze.  Cement laurel wreaths 
decorated the walls, and Jefferson's most famous quotes were carved beneath:

"We hold these truths to be self evident . . ."

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of 
tyranny over the mind of man."  Fox led Knowlton to the far side of the circular 
chamber, turned and leaned his back against a section of curved wall. This would 
be a really, really good time for the cavalry to come in, he thought.  He heard 
no footsteps outside. 

"Oh, Lord, please, don't let me have been double crossed," he thought.  "Don't 
let this son-of-a-bitch have shorted out everybody's brains . . ." He gazed over 
at Knowlton.  What did he look like?  Even in the well-lit Memorial it was hard 
to tell.  Fox had the impression of someone shorter than himself, someone whose 
close-cropped hair was graying at the temples, but who moved with a catlike 
litheness that suggested he was still in his prime.  Mulder did *not* want to 
get into a physical fight with him.

Knowlton got awfully close.  He'd been out in the rain -- Mulder could feel 
dampness radiating from his clothes.  What was he wearing?  Something dark. God, 
it was hard to focus.  The next thing he knew he was shoved back hard against 
the wall.  Knowlton pressed his forearm across Mulder's chest, a gesture away 
from his throat.  Knowlton's free hand caught Mulder's and held it against the 
wall beside Mulder's head.  Mulder felt the assassin's thumb gently stroke the 
skin over his wrist bones.  "You said you needed to see me, Fox."

The sibilants in the words sounded like water striking a burning surface, like 
the serpent whispering in Adam's ear.  Fox felt a shudder go through him at the 
sound of his name.  He told himself, "Think, you idiot."  It was easy to get 
dreamy, listening to that voice.  It was hypnotic, like the rushing of waves on 
the beach -- no, maybe that was the sound of blood singing in his ears.

"I -- I wanted to ask you something," Mulder said.

"What's that?" Knowlton said.  He leaned forward so that they were practically 
kissing.  There was a faintly herbal smell about him, like a garden in the rain, 
overlaying the scent of old gun smoke. 

"You hurt me, in the hotel," Mulder said.  He couldn't keep his voice from 
breaking slightly over the words.

"Allus hurts the first time, love," Knowlton murmured.

The words "first time" sent another jolt of terror through Mulder's body. "No," 
he said, "you cut me.  Since you did that, I was thinking that--" he faltered, 
uncertain whether the next words would offend Knowlton and put himself in 
greater danger.

"You were thinking what?" Knowlton asked.

"I was thinking you had to blitz me.  That you couldn't take me out when I was 
armed and awake.  now I think . . . I think maybe you could."

He sensed Knowlton's smile.  "I think so, too," he said.

Mulder swallowed.  "Then why did -- why did you do to me what you did?"

"Why do you think?"  Knowlton's lips brushed his cheek as he spoke.  Mulder felt 
the scratchiness of a mustache.

Mulder's heart was slamming into his ribcage.  He felt sweat dampening his hair 
and forming a clammy layer under his shirt.  Under other circumstances, caresses 
on his hand and soft lips against his face would have been pleasurable.  He got 
a sick feeling in his stomach.  

"I think," he managed.  "I think you did it because you liked it."

Breath against his cheek -- Knowlton's quiet laugh.  "You think right," he said.  
Knowlton turned his head, touched his mouth to Mulder's.

"Stop where you are," snapped Scully.  From the way she spoke, Mulder was sure 
she had a weapon leveled at Knowlton's back.  "Put your hands up and turn 
around," she ordered.

Knowlton took one step back, slowly lifted the hand that held Mulder's.

"Both of them," Scully said. 

Mulder got a flash of eyes -- Knowlton had green eyes -- and then something 
slammed across the side of his face.  He saw sparks, and then blackness.  

People were shouting.  Was he unconscious?  Was he dead?  His knees and then his 
hands struck concrete.  More sparks -- then brilliant flashes and the sound of 
gunshots amplified horribly by the dome above.  Confused cries -- Mulder got hit 
in the head again.  "Scully!" he called, got no answer.  Don't let her be down . 
. .

Knowlton grabbed Mulder's wrist and wrenched it up between his shoulder blades, 
then yanked him to his feet. "Did you lie to me, love?" came his hoarse whisper.  
"Did you?  That's too bad.  I'll have to teach you better."

More gunshots -- sparks as the bullets ricocheted.  The flash briefly 
illuminated dark, swarming figures.  Knowlton shoved him toward an exit and 
fired at someone coming up the steps.  Mulder heard a man's strangled cry, and 
then he was half pushed, half hauled toward the stairs.  Pitchy black outside. 
There should be visible lights from cars on the freeway.  Surely, Knowlton 
couldn't turn those off?

"Where are we going?" Mulder asked.

"Someplace quiet."  Mulder thought Knowlton had a specific place in mind. 
Somewhere hard to find, where a man's cries would go unheard.  

Mulder encountered the steps before he expected to and stumbled, pulling 
Knowlton off-balance.  Mulder seized the opportunity.  He flung himself forward, 
hoping to turn his fall into a shoulder roll and get the assassin's body under 
him at impact.  Knowlton did the sensible thing and let go.  Mulder hit the 
steps hard.  He'd only ever practiced this move on mats.  He tumbled down the 
stairs but managed to roll to his feet on the landing. He spun, unsnapped the 
.38 from his ankle holster and fired.  He heard no cry, but drew no answering 
fire.

Mulder bolted down the last flight of steps and headed across the grass for -- 
what?  The car was the obvious answer, but what if Knowlton could short out the 
starter?  Even if he couldn't, what would happen to Scully, and Skinner as well, 
if they were left alone with Knowlton and a dozen Consortium goons as "backup?"  
Instead, Mulder turned and headed for the highway that bridged the tidal basin.  
There had to be lights over there.  He had to be able to see at least a little.  
He could hear people shouting up in the Memorial, and he thought he could pick 
out Scully's voice, high above the voices of the men. She was alive.  Mulder 
silently thanked any deity that might be listening.

When he reached the tree line he kicked off his shoes and slipped into the thin 
brush.  He had not heard a pursuer, but he doubted anyone ever heard Knowlton's 
approach.  Mulder was good at being quiet too, when he had to be.  He walked as 
he'd learned in Indian Scouts, coming down on the side of his foot and rolling 
smoothly onto the ball, feeling for twigs underfoot.  He crept from shadow to 
shadow, edging toward the roar of the highway.

He stopped at the edge of the tree line, several yards' distance from the 
bridge.  The lights on the bridge were still lit, and the headlights shone on 
passing cars.  The resulting illumination was not good, a bright moon would have 
been preferable, but it was better than nothing.

About ten yards away a shadow slipped from the woods, the silhouette of a human 
body.  Mulder's finger pressed against the trigger.  He could gauge the person's 
location from the space where the headlights of distant cars winked out.  It 
could be Knowlton.  It could be a member of the Consortium.  It could be Scully 
or Skinner or some hapless evening wanderer.

Mulder decided not to take the chance.  "Federal agent.  I'm armed!" he shouted.

"That what it's come to, love?" came Knowlton's voice.  The words blended with a 
soft rushing sound -- raindrops sprinkling on the leaves of the trees. Pretty.   


"Seems you want it the hard way. "

Mulder jumped -- found Knowlton had covered a third of the distance between 
them.  "Lucky I'm not a man who takes no for an answer."

"You damn well didn't ask," Mulder said.  He shook his head, tried to clear it. 
It was so hard to think right now . . .

"We've got some work to do on that troublesome streak of yours."

The silhouetted figure slowly came closer.  It looked like the vision-figures 
he'd seen during his sojourn among the dead in New Mexico, like the shadow in 
the door the night Samantha disappeared.  It felt as if he were trapped in 
amber, as if time were winding backward.

Body heat -- breath in his ear.  "You've twice pointed a gun at me tonight," 
Knowlton said.  "I don't like that.  It won't happen again.  I'm going to teach 
you a lesson, and this time it'll be one you *will* *not* *like.*"  Fingers 
brushed Mulder's gun hand.

The touch brought it all back.  Pain tearing him up from the inside, rough 
kisses on his neck and teeth sunk into his shoulder, hands running over his 
buttocks, his thighs, his groin . . . 

Knowlton lifted the gun barrel, going for a disarm.  

Mulder fired.  The shot took the assassin in the chest and knocked him backward.   


Other shots hit in the belly, the chest again . . . when Knowlton fell to the 
ground Mulder kept firing until the trigger responded with a soft *snick.*  

"Mulder!" came Scully's voice.  He realized that she couldn't know whether he 
himself had been shot.  

"I'm all right," Mulder managed.  It felt as if his tongue was moving in thick 
glue.  He put his hand against a tree trunk to steady himself.  Suddenly an 
orange light flickered on above the trees, one of the Memorial's sodium lamps. 
He heard the sound of feet crunching on leaves and glimpsed figures ahead 
through the darkness and fog. One by one the Memorial's lights came back on, 
slowly retrieving the stand of trees from darkness.  Mulder walked stiffly 
toward where the figures stood.  A small silhouette disengaged itself from the 
others and hurried over to him.

"Scully," he said.  He half-limped, half-ran the last few steps to reach her. 
She threw her arms around him and he gasped -- something in his ribs pinched 
horribly.  

She pulled back and said, "You're hurt."  

He shook his head as she slipped her hand beneath his jacket to touch his sore 
side.  This was nothing compared to what he'd been afraid would happen. Nothing 
compared to what had already happened. He'd never had a flashback that vivid 
before.  Knowlton had hurt him.  He'd touched him in private places and Fox 
couldn't make him stop and it had hurt so much.  It was all over and it still 
hurt.

Scully held him more gently and he fought hard against the urge to cry.  He was 
*not* going to cry in front of Cancer Man.  He was *not.*  

The price for stifling the tears was a violent spasm in his stomach that made 
him bolt for the trees to be sick.  Not glamorous.  Not what Eliot Ness would 
have done.  Still it was better than showing the tiniest shred of emotional 
vulnerability to people he hated.

Once Mulder left the trees Scully caught his arm.  The support was more than 
emotional; he suspected he might have fallen over if she hadn't held onto him.

"You okay?" she asked.  He nodded.  "Does your head hurt?  How many fingers?"

"Yes and two.  I don't have a concussion."  His voice was rough with sickness 
and exhaustion.  "What about you?  You all right?  There were all those shots 
and I couldn't see who got hit . . ."

"I'm fine," she assured him.  "There's two men down, one badly.  Both 
Consortium, as far as I can tell. the paramedics are already on their way. 
They'll take good care of you."  Then she sighed and said,  "This is going to be 
hell to explain."

"Refer anyone who asks to Cancer Man," Mulder said.  He walked slowly toward the 
spot where men in dark suits gathered around Knowlton's body.  

Scully stopped and said, "Mulder, don't."  Her expression pled with him to stay 
away.  It must be bad.  He hadn't gotten a good look before.

He gently disengaged himself and said, "It's all right."  The shadow-men shifted 
aside as he approached.  Mulder managed not to fall down and humiliate himself 
further.  He saw Skinner in the group, as well as the Smoking Man and X.  All 
looked unharmed.  Skinner gazed at the ground with his first knuckle pressed 
against his lips, probably worrying about legal implications.  Cancer Man 
casually flicked ashes into the grass.

As Mulder continued walking through the ring of men someone grabbed the back of 
his jacket.  He shrugged the hand off and stepped forward into something hot.  

There was blood in the grass.  Mulder's shoes were on the other side of the 
trees.  When he looked down at himself he realized that he was covered in blood 
spatters.  No wonder Scully had been worried.  

He backed away quickly and stripped off one of his socks.  The other was under 
his ankle holster and wouldn't come off.  He pulled at it hard, got sticky blood 
on his fingers.  Now he was nauseous again.  He spat on the ground, thought he 
might have to go back to the trees.  He thought to himself: "I will not throw 
up, I will not throw up . . ."

Suddenly Scully was beside him, gripping his elbow to keep him steady.  "I'm 
getting you out of here," she said.  This time he didn't argue with her.

As she helped him away from the group the Smoking Man called out, "Agent Mulder, 
don't you want to see the face of the Invisible Man?  As a successful hunter you 
can claim that right."

Mulder did not know what to make of the mocking tone in the man's voice.  Was he 
insulting Mulder for his weakness, or trying to goad him into traumatizing 
himself further?

"Leave him alone," Scully snapped, but Mulder stopped and turned toward the men.  
They cleared away from in front of the body, which was an indistinct heap in the 
darkness.

The Smoking Man pulled a cigarette pack from his coat pocket and twisted it into 
a cylinder.  He touched the flame of his lighter to the paper, then tossed it 
onto the grass by the body.  The tongue of fire guttered in the gore, nearly 
went out, and then suddenly caught again.  

The flickering light gave a disturbing lifelikeness to Knowlton's dead features.  
As Langly had said, he had a mustache and hair that was beginning to thin.  The 
face was narrower and more gaunt-looking than Mulder had expected. The nose was 
straight and the jaw square, although the parted lips revealed crooked front 
teeth.  Perhaps people would have considered Knowlton handsome. 

The body did not upset Mulder as the blood had.  It was dreary in its 
ordinariness.  Like any violent death, it posed many questions and answered 
none.  He allowed Scully to lead him away as the first of the ambulances roared 
across the bridge.





Georgetown Medical Center,  Next Day

This time Mulder was admitted to the hospital.  They gave him pain meds too, 
which made the twitching second hand on the wall clock much too interesting.  

The big hand was on the nine and the little hand was on the five when a nurse 
opened the door.  Mulder waved her away.  "I'm fine," he said, pointing up at 
his still-full IV.  He didn't want to be poked anymore.

"There's somebody here to see you, Mr. Mulder," the nurse said.  "You up to 
having a visitor?"

"Yeah, sure," he said.  He struggled into a sitting position.  The nurse was 
about to leave when he said, "Wait--it's not some old guy with cigarette breath, 
is it?"

She looked puzzled.  "No," she said.

"Okay," Mulder said, relaxing.  "That's fine then."

A few minutes later Scully came into the room, and he held both hands out to 
her.  "We have to stop meeting like this," he said.

She caught his hands in her own and asked, "How are you?"

"Better than that guy," Mulder said, inclining his head toward the room's 
curtained partition.  "That's my roommate, George.  George has acute food 
poisoning, and every so often he wakes up and starts retching." 

"Great," Scully said.

"With any luck, he'll stay asleep."

"How's your fever?" she asked.

"Down this afternoon..  They say its a virus, but they put me on new antibiotics 
anyway.  They make my guts hurt."

"I'm sorry," she said.  

"I talked to the police today," Mulder said.  "They seem all right with the 
claim of self-defense.  I think it was the 6-inch bruise over my ribs I got 
fighting on the stairs.  Nothing broken by the way, it just hurts like a bitch."

Scully loosened one of her hands and ran it over his hair.   It felt nice. "What 
do they have you on for the pain?" 

"I dunno, but it must be the good shit.  That street value of my blood is like . 
. . a lot."

That got a smile from her.    "I tested some of Knowlton's blood this morning. 
He had hypokalemia, the same condition Darin Oswald had.  Even though we didn't 
get DNA from the semen sample, the electrolyte imbalance is rare enough that I 
think we can make an  ID.  Looks like you closed a case."

"Whoopee," Mulder said.

She pulled up a chair and sat down.  "You said before that you'd feel better if 
Knowlton were out of the picture.  Has it helped?"

He sighed, closed his eyes a moment.  "I'm less afraid now."

"Good."

"As for the rest of it, I don't know.  Will I ever be able to sleep in a hotel 
room without barricading the door?  Will I ever be able to -- to sleep with 
somebody without feeling sick when they touch me?  I don't know."

"I think you'll be able to do whatever you put your mind to," Scully said. 
"You're a pretty determined guy."  She rubbed the back of his hand with her 
thumbs, avoiding the IV lead.  The IV made his arm feel cold, and she would know 
that.  Nice of her.  She looked down at his hand as she spoke, "Mulder . . . I 
admire the way you dealt with what happened to you.  You never gave up fighting, 
you refused to play the victim.  I don't know if I would have been that strong.  
I think a lot of people wouldn't be."

Mulder shook his head.  "It's no big deal."  He watched her massage pinkness 
back into his fingers for a while, then said, "When I was at Oxford I knew this 
guy who had a huge poster of Malcolm X holding an AK-47.  Underneath the picture 
it said, 'By Any Means Necessary.'  Funny thing for a British white kid to have.  
Anyway, the phrase stuck with me.  People do what they have to do to survive.  I 
don't think there's anything special or admirable about it.  It's just the will 
to live kicking in."  

"It's hard to keep fighting when you're scared, when you don't feel well," she 
said. 

"Yeah," he admitted softly.   They were both quiet a while and he let his eyes 
fall shut.  "You wouldn't give up on me," he said at last.

"Hmm?"

"I said you wouldn't give up on  me.  You had no patience with me at all when I 
was whining and didn't want to take care of myself."   He opened his eyes and 
saw she looked sad.  He wondered if she'd taken the comment as a rebuke. "That's 
a good thing," he explained.

"You didn't whine."

"The night you put me in the shower I was whining."

"Not really.  You were . . . complaining vociferously.  I can't blame you, 
really."

"Nobody likes a whiner."  

"Mulder, you are not a whiner.  Look-- can you at least believe that *I* think 
you're brave?"

"I guess," he said.

"I'm not so stupid, am I?"

"No."

"I think you're brave and I'm proud of you, and I think you're going to be able 
to put this behind you."  

"Can I put it behind me while sitting in the smallest room in my house?"  She 
looked confused a moment, then smiled and shook her head at him.  "Speaking of 
which, I was able to use the toilet this morning without feeling like I wanted 
to scream.  You'd be surprised how much that improves your outlook on life," he 
said.

"I'll bet."

Mulder considered what he'd just said and added, "I'm sorry, you didn't need to 
know that.  I get honest when I'm stoned."

"You're honest all the time.  That's why you get in so much trouble."

"Oh yeah."  He closed his eyes again.

"You want me to go so you can rest?"  Scully asked.  He shook his head.  "All 
right.  I'll stay."

He dropped off to sleep with the warm sensation of Scully's fingers pressing his 
own.  For the first time since he left Cincinnati, he felt safe.  

 ************************************************************************** Just 
 in case you care:  According to the U. S. Department of Justice's Bureau of 
 Statistics, an adolescent or adult woman is raped every 50 seconds.  An 
 adolescent or adult man is raped every fifteen minutes.  Be careful out there, 
 boys and girls. 

Research material for this story included (alphabetical by author):

By Ann Burgess, Allen G. Burgess, John Douglas and Robert K. Ressler: "Crime 
Classifiaction Manual"

By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker: "Mindhunter" "Journey Into Darkness" 
"Obsession" "UNABOMBER: On the Trail of America's Most Wanter Serial Killer"

By Joseph J. Grau, Ph.D.: "Criminal and Civil Investigation Handbook"

By Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shactman: "I Have Lived Inside the Monster"

By Ann Rule: "The Stranger Beside Me"

By Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner: "Deadly Doses: A Writer's Guide to 
Poisons"

By Billie Ann Wilson, Margaret T. Shannon and Carolyn L. Stang: "Nurses' Drug 
Guide"

**************************************************************************