Title: Bodhisattva Author: Ophelia E-Mail: OpheliaMac@aol.com Rating: PG-13, language, some violence Category: X, A Spoilers: Avatar, Ascension Keywords: Mulder/Scully/Skinner friendship Summary: Skinner's in the hospital, Mulder's in jail, and the mysterious old woman from "Avatar" is back. Is she here to save or damn them? ******************************************************* Disclaimer: (Sung to "All things Bright and Beautiful:") All things dark and horrible, each hidden evil plot, all things weird and miserable, Chris Carter owns the lot. Aaaaaa-men. Other Disclaimer: This story contains strong opinions on several topics, including the Vietnam War and the nature of violent crime. Not all these opinions are those of the author. Other Other Disclaimer: Thank you to my Shadowy Informants for telling me how to build a bomb, to Joe for sharing his Vietnam experiences, to John Douglas for writing about how the F.B.I. develops profiles, and to Richard A. Guidry for writing "The War in I Corps" from which I stole a lot of information. ******************************************************* October, 1969 South Vietnam Approximately 5 km from DMZ The early-morning mist swirled all around as Private Skinner stalked through the tall grass of the streambed. He was point man for Alpha Company, which meant that he needed the eyes of a hawk and the woodcraft of Davy Crockett, despite going twenty-four hours without sleep. The VC had engaged Delta Company last night, just as they'd prepared to dig in, but fortunately there had been no casualties. Even still, everyone in Skinner's corps had remained awake in the miserable puddles that served them as foxholes. Lack of sleep didn't matter to Skinner. He would stay awake as long as it took to make sure they all stayed alive. Then he saw a footprint in the mud, slowly filling up with water. He dropped to his belly, jamming his M-16 against his shoulder. He knew that the rest of his squad did the same, due to the near-simultaneous snapping sounds of them pulling the bolts of their weapons back. For some time, there was silence. Gorman scrambled forward at a high crawl, and Skinner pointed at the print. He nodded and motioned the first-fire team ahead. Instinctively, the squad formed a line. At a half-signaled, half -intuited moment, they charged into the clearing ahead, ready to blow away anything that resisted them. There was nothing but the mist. Lieutenant Weiss came forward then, and said, "All right, men, nothing here. Let's form a wedge and continue up the mountain." They did so, and they soon found a dead VC man--no, a boy, Skinner amended--sprawled against a hacked and burned tree, his chest exploded with gunfire. The boy wore only shorts and a T-shirt, with one rubber thong on his foot and one lost who knew where. His AK-47 was cast forward into the mud. Dead from the firefight last night, probably, and already some fungus-like growth was turning his face and arms black. Things rotted quickly out here. As Skinner slogged on past the corpse a snatch of poetry from his high school English class--Jesus, had that been last winter?--flitted through his mind: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold/ And mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." That's what he's enlisted for, what he'd come halfway around the earth to do, to keep anarchy from being loosed upon the world. He hadn't been 48 hours in-county before he'd learned that there was plenty of anarchy loosed, already. All the trees in these foothills were scorched and hacked to bits. It made for an unattractive landscape, but at least it increased visibility. That was a plus for the U.S. and a minus for the VC. There wasn't much short of a pitch- black night with a roaring typhoon--which you did sometimes get here--that would hide a corps of Marines on the move, but any little standing shrub could hide a Viet Cong sniper. The VC were different from the NVA, or the official army of North Vietnam. The NVA at least fought like soldiers. The VC pulled this now- you-see-'em, now-you-don't shit, where you'd look over and see the guy next to you had lost half his face. Skinner had to remind himself to keep his eyes from fixing on the toes of his boots. "You're supposed to be *watching,* idiot," he told himself. When he raised his head he thanked any guardian angel willing to watch over him that he'd come out of his reverie in time. About a hundred yards up the slope there was a cluster of little earthen bunkers. Experience had taught Skinner that the amount of enemy fire that could come out of such things was very disproportionate to their size. He stopped and prodded Curtiss to go ask the Lieutenant for permission to "recon by fire." The first time Skinner had heard that expression he'd thought it was funny. He didn't think about it at all, now. The obligatory period of standing around followed. Then came the cry of "machine gun up!" and Kemp the gunner came forward with his M-60. Skinner stepped back from him as he walked forward into a clearing, apparently hoping for an unobstructed shot. Then everything around them seemed to explode. Kemp's body jerked and danced as a hail of bullets ripped into him at once. Skinner turned to urge Curtiss to fall back, but the man had a string of bullet holes in him from hip to shoulder. He was dead, he just hadn't fallen over yet. Skinner ducked behind a charred tree trunk for the minimal protection it provided, and fired a few unaimed shots at the bunkers. Somebody was probably shouting orders from somewhere, but it made no difference. He could hear nothing but the pounding of gunfire, like the fist of an angry god. A shot from a Light Anti-Tank Weapon turned one of the trees ahead into a ball of flame. The only effect this produced was to send up a billow of smoke which blew right back in the Marines' faces. Coughing, his eyes stinging, Skinner could still see well enough to notice the grass rippling on all sides of him as volleys of bullets struck it. He got off a few more shots before his rifle jammed. "Son of a fucking bitch," Skinner snarled, but was silenced when a bullet took a divot of wood out of the tree right next to his face. He was going to have to get out of here. He slung his rifle over his back and dropped flat on his belly. There was another tree about fifteen paces back down the trail, and he'd focus on making it to that. Afterward, he would scramble to another spot of skimpy cover, and another . . . the only way to think about this was to set small, concrete goals and refuse to let his mind go past the present moment. Bullets made the grass dance all around him as he crept along the ground. For a few, agonizingly slow seconds, it looked like he was going to make it. Then a bullet tore into his thigh. His cry of pain was inaudible above the gunfire, and it was cut short by shots that hit his hip, his side, his arm. Heaving himself up in a last, hopeless effort to reach cover, Skinner saw the shadowy figure of the gunman off to his right, half-concealed by the smoke and burned-out trees. Skinner stretched out his hand, trying to tell the guy, "It's ok, you can stop shooting. I'm dead," but no words came. The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was the figure of the sniper jamming another clip into his rifle. Then there was dark. Then there was a light in the dark. It was a pretty light; all warm and wobbly, like the image of the summer sun when you looked up at it from the bottom of a lake. Skinner tried to crawl toward the light. He found this was easier than crawling through the mud and the grass, it was more like swimming, or flying. He reached out his hands toward the light. He wanted it, and he was sure it wanted him. Then suddenly, there was a shadow in front of it. "No," he thought. "Not the sniper . . ." Could the VC follow him even here? But as he got closer the shadow resolved itself into the figure of an old woman. Her face was haglike, terrible; her mouth contorted grotesquely as she spoke words he couldn't hear. She reached out one clawlike hand toward him. He backed away--this was harder than going forward. It wasn't fair. Why was this witch between him and the light? Why was she driving him back toward the pain and the bullets and the mud? The witch took his hand and then lifted him effortlessly, as if he'd been a child. As she carried him away from the light it got smaller and dimmer. This made him very sad. At last, he looked down and saw the image of the hill where he'd fallen, small and far away, like something seen through the wrong end of binoculars. The hag carried him closer and closer. There was his broken body lying in the grass. Skinner was surprised at how very young he looked, and how very dead. His skin was like white wax and his uniform was soaked through with blood. A field medic was leaning over him. The man shook his head and said, "Bag him." Another medic came over with a body bag and started to shovel him in. Skinner watched this with a detached, almost academic curiosity. When the medic got his hands beneath the body's neck and shoulders, he stopped suddenly. "Charlie! This guy's got a pulse," he called out. "You're shitting me," said Charlie, running back over. "Feel it for yourself," said the other man. Charlie didn't bother. He whipped out a pair of shears and started cutting off what was left of Skinner's clothes. "I want a backboard over here!" he shouted. The other guy had already tourniqueted off the worst spots and was busy dousing them with antiseptic. Slowly, Skinner began to feel the pain. Fairleigh Hospital, Washington D.C. Present Day The pain was incredible. Skinner reached up to touch his face and found it covered with what felt like plastic wrap coated in slime. Then his fingertips went to eyes. They were covered by some sort of pads and then wrapped in a layer of gauze. He groaned. "What the hell happened?" he asked, and got no response. The last thing he remembered was Vietnam . . . no--that had been a dream, or a hallucination. He was forty-eight now, an Assistant Director of the F.B.I. Unless that had been the dream and he was still in the field hospital near Khe Sanh. No, he thought, this bed was dry, and the air was missing the peculiar stinks of mildew and infection and carbolic soap. In a way, it would have been good to find out that the last twenty-five-- no, thirty, years had all been a dream. If he had it to live over, there were a lot of things he'd do differently. "Hey, can anybody tell me where I am?" he called out. There was probably button around here for calling the nurses, but of course he couldn't see it. He began groping gingerly along the bed rail, hoping to find it by touch. He heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. "Assistant Director Skinner?" came a woman's voice. It was maddeningly familiar, but it took a moment for him to place it. "Agent Scully?" he asked. "I'm glad to see you awake, sir. How are you feeling?" she asked. His answer would have been, "Like shit," but the bone-deep sensibilities of his early education kept him from saying such a thing in front of a woman, even if she was a doctor. "Like I've been battered and deep fried," he said. "In a sense, you have," she answered, and he could hear relief and amusement in her voice. He supposed it was a good sign that he'd kept his sense of humor. "You're suffering from shrapnel wounds and burns over fifty percent of your body. The good news is that the burns are mostly first- and second- degree, so if they don't get infected, they won't scar. The bad news is that they're going to hurt like hell for a while." Skinner smiled slightly, and then discovered that hurt. "Do I get any pain meds, or do I just have to bite a wooden spoon?" he asked. "Lucky for you, the government hasn't cut back that far yet in trying to balance the budget. Give me a minute and I'll catch your doctor," she said. While she was gone he contemplated what she'd said: "shrapnel." Well, that explained the dreams about 'Nam. Where the hell had he picked up shrapnel? He tried to recall what he'd been doing last before he woke up here. Working late, he thought, in his office answering an insane amount of correspondence. Everybody from the Deputy Attorney General to some loon in Federal Prison who liked wasting stamps felt a need to generate more paper for him to push around his desk. At some point, he'd realized someone else was in the room. What had made him decide that? Motion maybe, seen in the corner of his eye, he thought. His first, worried thought was that it was the Cigarette Smoking Man, come to twist the knife in his back a little further. When he'd looked up he saw no one. But then, in the polished surface of his desk lamp, he'd seen the blurred reflection of a figure in white. The face had been distorted in the curved metal, but he thought it was an old woman, mouthing unrecognizable words. He'd turned sharply to confront her, but no one was there. Telling himself he was losing it, he'd turned back to his desk and pulled forward a package. As soon as he remembered that he realized what must have happened. He groaned--he couldn't believe he'd been so stupid as to actually open the thing. It was small, about the size of two videotapes stacked together, but quite heavy for its size. Someone had stamped it with the word "confidential." They might as well have stamped it with the words, "Do not open this, call the Explosives Unit instead." He heard Scully's footsteps coming down the hall. "One of the nurses will be in a moment to get some painkillers into your IV," she told him. "Great," Skinner said. "Agent Scully, I set off a package bomb, didn't I?" he asked. "Yes, sir, you did. Although no one knows how you managed to do that from across the room. Actually, I was hoping you could enlighten us," she said. "The lights went out as I started to tear the package open," Skinner said. "Sir?" Scully asked, sounding confused. "I started to pull up a corner of the paper it was wrapped in, and then the power went out. The whole place was pitch dark. I got up to go unplug the floor lamp in the corner. It's got a halogen bulb which draws a lot of power, and at least in my apartment, that can cause a short. Just as I pulled the plug out and turned to go back to my desk, the lights came back on, and then, boom. It must have had a photo-sensitive mechanism controlling the blasting cap." he said. "That power outage saved your life," Scully said. "The guys at the Lab say the explosive compound was nitromethane, packed in with ceramic shards *and* some kind of fiberglass resin that was mixed with magnesium powder. The resin and magnesium created a crude, Napalm-like substance which caused your burns. The flash also burned your retinas, hence the blindfold. Really, you're lucky to be doing as well as you are--you were out nearly three days." Skinner was silent a moment. "Will I get my sight back?" he asked. His voice sounded rather smaller and more frightened than he would have liked. "Well, sir . . . to be honest, the jury's still out on that," she said, then added quickly, "but if worse came to worst, I'm sure that under the circumstances the Bureau would waive its sight requirements for you. After all, you're not a field agent, you don't need to fire a gun . . ." she must have been able to read his expression despite the gauze and sticky Second Skin because she let the issue drop. "Just one other thing, Agent Scully," Skinner said. His voice had the clipped tones of an ex-Marine again. "Do they have any suspects? Do they have any leads on who did this to me?" She was silent so long he began to wonder if she'd somehow left the room. "They have only one subject in custody," she said. This time it was her voice that sounded small and worried. "Federal agents went and arrested Agent Mulder yesterday afternoon." Washington D.C. Municipal Jail Mulder glared across the little metal table at his former colleague, SSA James Springer of the Investigative Support Unit. The Municipal Police had stuck them in one of the rooms usually reserved for prisoners and their attorneys, but Mulder had waived his right to have an attorney present. He hadn't even had a chance to call one yet, and he wanted to talk to Springer right now. "You were at the Felony Presentment," Mulder said. "What the hell was all that?" Springer shrugged. "You know what that was. The U.S. Attorney's Office decided there was enough evidence to charge you, and the judge ruled to keep you in custody until the preliminary hearing. You'll be transferred to the Federal Detention Center in Brooklyn in the morning." "What fucking evidence is there?" Mulder shouted. "That I was in the building when it the bomb went off? So were dozens of other people." "Yeah, but you were the one who attacked Skinner in May of '95. That's still on record, although he never pressed charges," Springer said. "And there's the incident in October of '94, when a suspect mysteriously choked to death soon after you were done interrogating him. Then there's the fact that two days ago you called me up offering your help on a case that had nothing to do with your unit, involving a man that you'd injured before. The first thing a lot of intelligent killers do when their crimes are discovered is try to insinuate themselves into the investigation. Add that to the fact that this bombing looks like an inside job, and what was I supposed to think?" "Maybe that I was actually offering to help?" Mulder said. "Springer, did the entire ISU develop shit for brains after they put Patterson away? I have nothing in common with the profile of this bomber. Or at least what should be the profile." "Which is what?" Springer asked. He folded his forearms over his chest and kicked back in his chair. He was a short, stocky guy a little older than Mulder, with a very pink face and hair that would have a thinning shrub of tight brown curls if he hadn't kept it cut so short. At the moment he was in his shirtsleeves, his suit jacket hung over the back of his chair. Mulder, who'd been arrested at home, was still wearing his jeans, a black T-shirt and scuffed sneakers, but from the sound of things, he'd soon be trading these in for ever- stylish prison-issue scrubs. "First of all, he's an organized, assassin-type personality," Mulder said. "Thank you for sharing that piece of boundless wisdom," Springer said. "Would you shut up?" Mulder said. "This isn't his first bombing job. He may have prior arrests for arson or possessing explosive devices--you should check with ATF on that. He may even have applied for a blasting permit at one time; he'd give a reason like the need to clear stumps from farm property. He's got experience, so he's older, late twenties at least. If he's done time, he could even be in his forties to fifties. "He's a loner. He doesn't connect to people well, and he's not good at talking to them. He'll live alone and have a job were he doesn't have to deal much with the public. He feels inadequate and powerless and he gravitates toward activities where he can be in control. He's attracted by symbols of authority and power, so he'll probably drive police or military-like vehicle. It'll be older but very well maintained. He knows cars. He works on the real thing and he builds model ones, too. He does or has worked for the Post Office or UPS, probably here in D.C." "Oh, now you're full of shit," Springer said. "Am I?" Mulder asked. "The reason I say he is or was a postal worker is that he knew what precautions to take to get that bomb through the mail. My partner gave me the scoop on what the Lab found shortly before I was forcibly checked into the Municipal Hilton here," he said, holding up his hands to indicate the jail in general, and in specific the cramped little conference room with its mesh-reinforced window-walls. "The subject created an epoxy shell for the bomb, sealing all its components inside except for the wire that connected the photo cell to the blasting cap. When the epoxy dried, he washed the shell thoroughly, and probably soaked it in bleach, to get rid of any trace of explosive that might set off a detector. For shrapnel, he used ceramics and fiberglass, which ensured that there wouldn't be enough metal inside to set off a metal detector, either. I think he's probably familiar with the Bureau mail- handling procedures, too, since he put a 'confidential' stamp on the package. Skinner usually has his secretary open his mail. Therefore, we're looking for a local guy. "The epoxy and fiberglass resin he used are commonly found in hobby stores. Fiberglass in particular is used for forming the bodies of both real and model race cars. The explosive he used, nitromethane, is an additive to race car fuel. You can get that at race car supply stores. There can't be too many of those around here, so my guess is that if you ask at one or two of them who their UPS guy is, you'll be getting pretty warm." "Very nice," Springer said, nodding. "Want to see if you can come up with as good an explanation for this?" he asked. He leaned down to open the briefcase he'd stashed under his chair and lifted out two zipper-seal plastic bags. In the large one was a softcover book labeled "The Poor Man's James Bond." In the small one was a Post-It Note covered in Mulder's nearly illegible handwriting. "Investigators found these in your office," Springer said. "I only have this because other people use it," Mulder said, pointing at the book. It contained a lot of information on do-it-yourself destruction, and had been a favorite of vigilantes, would-be anarchists and violent crackpots in general for decades. "What about this?" Springer asked, tossing the bagged note in front of Mulder. Mulder picked it up and looked at it, but he already knew what it said. Across the top was written: "Things not to do today," and underneath was a list containing items such as, "apply Napalm to the tape transcription machine; firebomb the Hoover Building; strangle my boss; arrange for a tactical nuclear strike on Washington, D. C." He shrugged and looked up at Springer a little sheepishly. "The X Files unit was closed briefly and I got transferred to white collar crime," he said. "I hated it. This was just me venting my frustration." He pushed the note back across the table at Springer. "Actually, I can't believe I never bothered to throw the thing out. I guess that's what I get for never cleaning my office." "Uh-huh," Springer said. "You want to explain an e-mail message you sent to a newsgroup called--wait a minute," he checked a note in his briefcase, "alt.recovery.trauma.unexplained, whatever that is. You posted the words, and I quote, 'Sometimes I want to pitch all the work I've done into the Potomac, move to a buried bomb shelter in rural North Dakota, and become the next Unabomber.'" "Where the hell did you get that?" Mulder demanded. "The Bureau's got a filter that picks out phrases like 'I want to become the next Unabomber,' you idiot," Springer said. "And you posted this to a newsgroup in the public domain, making this admissible evidence. I'd say you're in pretty deep shit." The reality of the situation began to come home to Mulder, and he got very quiet. Finally he said, "I didn't do it, Springer." He sounded scared, even to himself. Being a Federal officer in Federal prison was a very bad thing to be. "That's not for me to decide," Springer said. "You're guaranteed a preliminary hearing within three weeks. If I were you, I'd retain an attorney and prepare my arguments for the judge." "Will you at least take the profile I gave you into an account?" Mulder asked. "I swear to you, the guy's still out there." "A thirtyish disgruntled postal worker who plays with model cars. Sure Mulder, I'll keep that description in mind." "He's been inside the Hoover Building, he knows how we run our mail room. If he's ever been a Federal employee, we have his prints on file. He's very catchable, Springer," Mulder said. "Right," Springer said. "You take it easy in Brooklyn. You watch your back." He gathered his things up and buzzed for the guard to let him out. After he was gone, Mulder pressed his hands to his face. "Holy fuck," he whispered. August, 1969 South Vietnam Camp Douglas 15 km south of DMZ It was raining. And it was going to rain. When Skinner had arrived in Da Nang three months ago, as a green recruit who'd never been off U.S. soil, he'd asked a couple of the guys heading out whether it was always this wet here. They'd nearly fallen over themselves, laughing. At the moment, he had something over his head, at least. Three months ago he wouldn't have thought much of the fungus-patched GP that had been partially set up in the middle of camp--only the top and the poles had been erected, since the sides just kept in heat and moisture--but now it seemed like a delicious luxury, almost as wonderful as being able to wash. During the ten days or so you were out on patrol, you didn't bathe. Ever. The returning men were always strangely unable to smell themselves as they slogged back into camp, but everyone else could smell them. The other guys would never have let Skinner under the shelter before he'd washed. There wasn't much room, and they all had to stand too close together. Currently he was squatting on his haunches under one corner, since there was nothing to sit on and the ground had been churned up to three-inch deep mud. He was gazing out at the camp gates, where a line of supply trucks worked their way through the ooze with agonizing slowness. On a whim, he patted his pockets down until he found a little spiral-bound notebook and a pencil. This would be a good time to scratch a short note home, he thought. There was very little that happened here that was both interesting and suitable to tell his mother, but he knew that she lived for the days when she found one of his letters in the mailbox. "Dear Mom and Dad," he wrote, and stopped. What was there to say? "It's raining here," he wrote, then scratched it out. Stupid ass thing to say, he thought. What was he supposed to tell them? "Thank God I'm not dead? My bunkmate from basic training got caught in a sapper tunnel and burned to death? I have mildew in my socks?" Fletcher walked up and hunkered down beside him. He had also washed and shaved since they'd returned from patrol. "Wassup, Casper?" Fletcher asked. Skinner half-smiled without looking up at him. "My dick," he said, giving him the standard reply. They called him Casper partly because he was so quiet, like a friendly ghost, and partly as a good- natured--he hoped--racial slur. It was no secret that black guys made up a very disproportionate amount of the military. One of the things that pissed Skinner off about the college anti-war movement was that it was full of white kids who got student deferments, effectively sending black kids to war in their place, all the while blathering about racial equality and harmony. "That what you're writing home?" asked Fletcher. "'Dear Ma: my dick is up. Love, Casper." "No, that's what I write to *your* mom," Skinner said. "You'd *have* to tell my mom when that marshmallow dick of yours was up. Hell, you'd have to draw a big red arrow on your gut pointing down, and label it, 'dick.'" Fletcher said. Skinner looked up to make a reply, and then saw something past Fletcher's shoulder that made him stop. "What?" Fletcher asked, his expression turning serious. By now he could tell when Skinner thought he saw trouble. "Hang on," said Skinner. Somebody was slogging along in the wake of the supply trucks. A little, dark-haired someone that was clearly not a Marine. It was hard to tell from here, but it looked like the sodden jacket he wore was part of an NVA uniform. Skinner stood and walked though the rain toward the gates. Nobody seemed to be guarding them, and none of the guys unloading the trucks, giving orders, or just milling around challenged the little figure. "Hey!" Skinner called out to the dark-haired person--a kid, he realized. "Hey, what's your name? What are you doing here?" He realized that the kid probably spoke no English, and he knew only what Vietnamese he'd picked up in Da Nang, which was mostly a collection of obscenities. Skinner held a hand to his forehead to shield the lenses of his glasses from the rain. Because of the water, he couldn't tell for sure what the kid was wearing until he was practically in the gates. By the time he was three yards away, Skinner couldn't miss it, even through all the rain. The boy's jacket was NVA and way too big for him. Beneath it he wore no shirt. He had grenades clipped all over his body--to his jacket, to the loose folds of his waterlogged pants, and he held one loose in his right hand. The left was free to pull the pin. In retrospect, what happened next must have taken little more than a second, but each detail was burned permanently into his mind. Skinner heard himself shout, "Holy shit!" and he yanked the strap of his rifle to bring it from its resting spot on his back to his hands. The child's left hand went for the pin. Skinner brought the gun's barrel up to point at the one place that kid hadn't covered with explosives, his face. The boy's face was beautiful; in fact it was only the clothes and the military-style haircut that betrayed his sex at all. His full, peach-blossom lips were slightly parted, the lids of his dark eyes were lowered in an expression of desperate hate. The boy's fingertips brushed the pin. Skinner fired. The kid's body hit the muddy ground and seemed to stick, as if the mud were glue. All around him, guys came running as Skinner lowered his rifle barrel. "Shit," said Fletcher as he reached Skinner's side. "Holy shit, man, what did you just do?" Blood carved rivulets in the soft earth, like a red river delta. Skinner stirred and moaned as the image of Vietnam broke apart and faded. He struggled toward wakefulness against the pull of exhaustion and drugs, preferring even waking pain to the horrors of his dreams. He tried to open his eyes, and couldn't. He remembered that they'd been bound shut. Was he awake? He wasn't sure. He thought he could hear the sounds of the hospital corridor, nurses talking, the grating of gurney wheels, but visions continued to play themselves out before his burned eyes. He saw the face of the old woman, silently mouthing warnings, curses, or maybe just the ravings of a lunatic. Then the face of the young Vietnamese boy became superimposed on the image, beautiful and perfect save for its expression of deep-dyed hate. Skinner shook his head but failed to dispel the ghosts. He put his hands to his eyes and met with only gauze and Second Skin. The vision blurred, shifted, the boy's features strengthened to become those of a man. A man sitting at a table covered in newspaper, its surface scattered with tubes of resin and fragments of plastic. Nearby on a set of shelves was a collection of hobby models, military vehicles and airplanes, a Huey helicopter, race cars. The man was pouring some kind of thick, liquid plastic into what looked like a small Tupperware container. Once he was done, he looked up to meet Skinner's eyes. The seething rage in his face seemed to burn into Skinner until the image was extinguished by rivulets of running blood. "Nurse!" Skinner shouted. He didn't bother groping around to try and find the call button. When he got no response he shouted again, and again. Eventually he heard his door opening. "Mr. Skinner? What's wrong?" came a woman's voice. "I need somebody to help me place a phone call," he said. "It's extremely urgent. I need to talk to Agent Mulder." Washington D.C. Superior Court Building Scully caught up with Justice Halter as he headed toward the cafeteria. "Sir?" she called out. "Judge Halter? Excuse me a moment." He turned around, looking annoyed. "Can I help you?" he asked. Halter was sixtyish, white haired but robust, the very image of the distinguished elder judiciary. He'd taken off the zip-up black robe he'd worn at Mulder's Felony Presentment that morning, revealing a sober, charcoal-gray suit. "Sir, I wanted to talk to you about Agent Mulder's case," Scully said, walking up beside him. "I'm sorry, that's out of my hands. I'm sure The U.S. Attorney's Office will keep all relevant parties informed of any developments." He turned to go, but Scully caught his sleeve. "Are you aware that by placing a Federal officer in a Federal Detention Facility you may well be giving him a death sentence?" she asked. "Look here, Miss--" "Scully. Agent Scully. I'm Agent Mulder's partner," she said. "Agent Scully then," Helter said. "I'm sure you appreciate the extreme seriousness of the charges made against your partner. Turning him loose on his own recognizance would be sending entirely the wrong message, both to U.S. citizens and to foreign nationals within our borders. The Federal Government must make it clear that we will not tolerate acts of terrorism on our soil. Doing anything else is an invitation to anarchy." "Sir, Agent Mulder is innocent," Scully said. "Yes, well, the U.S. Attorney's Office is disinclined to agree with you," he said. "Who at the U.S. Attorney's Office?" Scully asked. "I'm sorry, I'm not at liberty to discuss that." "Justice Halter, I had the pleasure this morning of calling Agent Mulder's mother and explaining to her that her son was going to prison without trial for something he didn't do," Scully said. "One of the first things she asked me was whether Fox had made someone in the Justice Department angry. I told her I didn't know. Maybe you can tell me." Halter's face flushed a deep shade of purple and he said, "Young lady, I don't know what you are insinuating and I don't care to know. If you really wish to assist Agent Mulder, I suggest you help him retain the services of a lawyer. Now good day to you." He jerked his arm out of Scully's grip and stalked away through the cafeteria doors. Scully sighed and wandered away to a nearby bench, feeling defeated. She supposed she ought to get back to F.B.I. Headquarters and try to get some kind of work done, although with Mulder in jail and Skinner in the hospital the X Files unit was on something of a hold status. She wondered how many people that would make ecstatically happy. Just then her cell phone rang and she fished in the pocket of her blazer for it. "Scully," she said, answering. "Agent Scully, it's me," came Skinner's voice. Surprised, Scully said, "Sir, how are you feeling?" "I'm fine," he said. "I've been trying to contact Agent Mulder, but they won't let me talk to him." "They won't let him talk to anyone," she said. "He's supposed to be shipped out to the Brooklyn Detention Center in the morning." "Brooklyn?" Skinner said. "They just had a major shakedown of corrupted staff over there." "Yes sir, I know," Scully said. "Apparently some of the guards were taking bribes to turn a blind eye while prisoners did everything from sell drugs to assault one another. They dismissed about twenty corrections officers. I suppose it's possible that the Bureau of Prisons rooted all the rot out." "We can't sit around praying for that. They'll kill Mulder over there," Skinner said. "I hope not, sir," Scully said, hearing the frightened tremor in her own voice. "Can you come over here?" he said. "There's something I'd rather discuss with you in person." "Of course, I can be there in a few minutes. Can you give me any idea at all what this is about?" she asked. "It's . . . about my experiences in Vietnam," Skinner said. "And there's something else. Bring a laptop and a cord for a modem connection, if you can. I want to get into the ID Division's computer network." "I don't have the clearance to do that, sir," she said. "I do," he answered. Half an hour later, Skinner sat in bed listening to Scully rooting behind the room's end table for the phone jack. He still wasn't exactly sure what he was going to tell her. Gingerly, he reached up to touch his gauze blindfold and began to tug it off. Years of turning in field reports had taught him to touch- type after a fashion, but for what he wanted to do he needed to be able to see the computer screen. Scully must have seen what he was doing because she gasped and said, "Sir, don't do that!" "Why? Do you think that if I take this off for fifteen minutes I'll make myself any blinder?" he asked, continuing to unwind the gauze. "Those bandages are there to act as a barrier between germs and your damaged skin. If infection set in, then yes, you could make yourself a lot blinder," she said. "Tell you what, I'll wash my hands before I touch my face," he said. He removed the two rounded pads that had been placed over his eyes and then encountered another barrier, a layer of Second Skin. They'd literally plastered his eyes shut. With his fingertips he went hunting for the edge of the plastic sheet. "Don't, sir, don't," Scully protested. She reached out and grabbed one of his hands. "Wait a minute. Let me help you." He heard her walk to the adjoining bathroom and rip open a package of something. Then he heard water running and splashing sounds. When she came back she gave off the sharp smell of iodine. He felt her small, cool fingers brush his temple and gently begin peeling up the edge of the protecting plastic. The Second Skin was held on by moisture alone, so removing it didn't hurt, but without it his skin felt very raw and dry. Cautiously, he cracked his eyes open. The result was not encouraging. Myopic at the best of times, Skinner found that the center of his field of vision was covered with an impenetrable haze, as if someone had smeared his glasses with Vaseline. "Holy Christ," he said, squinting into the room. "Is my vision going to stay like this?" "The rear portion of your eye was severely flash burned," Scully said. "The precise name for the symptom is macular edema, if you want to know. The capillaries in the central part of your retina have begun to leak, causing swelling, which destroys the resolution of the central area of your vision." "You didn't answer my question," he said. "I'm afraid I don't know the answer, sir," she said, sounding regretful. "Many people with this condition do eventually regain their previous level of visual functioning." "But many others do not," he finished for her. "Correct," she said. He suspected that this information was really going to scare him when he let himself think about it, but he was not going to do that now. "Well," he said, "since there seems to be nothing we can do about it, let's get this computer plugged in." Scully got him to the network's log in screen, and he was able to peck in his password. For some reason, his peripheral vision did not seem to be much worse than usual, so he could see a little if he gazed slightly away from the object he wanted to look at. Between his efforts and Scully's, they were able to call up the composite sketch program Skinner wanted. "Do you mind if I ask what we're doing?" Scully asked. "Trying to create an image of the bomber," Skinner said. "You saw him?" she asked, sounding startled. "Why didn't you say something before?" "Because I only saw him this afternoon," he said. "I saw him in a vision." He could not quite keep the last words from sounding embarrassed. "Of Vietnam?" Scully asked. "Yeah," he said. "Of Vietnam." "Sir . . . it's completely understandable that this experience should call up memories of your time in the war. That combined with narcotic analgesics and the sensory deprivation of blindness--" "Do you want to do everything possible to help your partner, or not?" Skinner snapped. "Of course I do, sir," she said. "It's just that in my experience, visions offer a pretty slim avenue for hope." "Mulder's going to be spending the next twenty days in the Brooklyn Detention Center," Skinner said. "I'd say his avenues of hope are pretty slim already." With Scully's help he was able to create a composite face that he was fairly sure looked like the one he had seen. "The man in your vision was Asian?" Scully asked. "Yes, he was," Skinner said. "I probably don't need to remind you of this," she said, "but it's rare to find a non-white perpetrator of this type of crime. If you want this released, you'll be heading into some very sensitive territory. Remember the Susan Smith case, when police spent days looking for--" "Yes, I remember," Skinner cut her off. "And no, I don't want it released. I would greatly appreciate it if you would look into this yourself. Discreetly." She didn't answer right away and he wondered if he'd been too brusque with her. Skinner wasn't used to asking for favors and he suspected he was bad at it. "This isn't an order, Agent Scully," he explained, "It's a request. One you can freely turn down if it makes you uncomfortable in any way." He hoped she wouldn't turn it down. He was sure he was onto something important, and he didn't know who else might be willing to listen to him. He looked up at where she stood beside his bed, but could not make out her expression. "All right," she said at last. "I'll do it, for your and Mulder's sake. But if the Professional Responsibility Office tries charging me with racial bias, I'll deny any knowledge of this conversation." "Hey, I never saw you here," Skinner said. He sensed her smile. "In my vision, he was building another plastic bomb," he told her. "Did you see where he was going to send it?" she asked. "No," he said, "I'm afraid I didn't see very much. I have a suspicion, though. I think his next target will also be someone who served in Vietnam. He hates me in particular, he blames me for--" he very nearly said "his death," "-- something that happened to him," he substituted, "but I think he hates others like me almost as much." "Did you get an idea of where he lived, what kind of car he drove, anything like that?" she asked. Skinner had to shake his head. "The only other thing I saw was that his house was full of plastic models. Military planes, race cars, that sort of thing." To her credit, she didn't laugh at him. He supposed five years with Mulder had rendered her pretty unshockable. "I guess that makes sense, considering the type of resin he used," was all she said. "I'll do my best, sir. But even you've got to admit, this isn't much to go on." "It's all I've got," he muttered. "I know a good attorney, and I was going to put her in touch with Agent Mulder," Scully said. "We should be able to communicate with him through her. Maybe he can think of something we haven't." "Maybe," Skinner said. He must have sounded too depressed, because she seemed to be hovering, uncertain of what she wanted to say. "Is anyone going to be with you this evening, sir?" she asked. "Is your wife coming down at all?" "Um, no," he said, not looking at her. "The reconciliation didn't work out." Dead silence. Damn it, why did she have to ask that? "I'm sorry, it was none of my business. I shouldn't have--" "Don't worry about it. These things happen." He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Now, if you wouldn't mind helping me get my blindfold back on, I think I could rest for a while." "Sure, of course," she said. She bandaged his eyes up again, then took her computer and went away. Somewhat to his surprise, Skinner found that he really was tired enough to sleep. A mixed blessing, he thought. On the one hand, he'd probably be prey to nightmares. On the other, he got to avoid the misery of spending the evening blind and alone. The Law Offices of Zimmler, Zimmler and Prine Next Afternoon Scully sat across a polished desk from Peggy Prine, a former prosecutor with the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Prine was heavyset and fortyish, but her news-anchor-perfect hair and impeccably tailored navy suit made her look anything but matronly. She had a reputation as a teflon-skinned legal shark, and Scully was hoping to take advantage of that. She also suspected Prine of having a soft spot for Agent Mulder. He and Scully had turned a few cases over to her before she went into private practice, and Prine had been known to turn into a giggling schoolgirl when he was around. A speaker phone sat in the middle of Prine's desk, and both women looked at it expectantly. They'd been on hold with the Brooklyn Detention Center for several minutes. "I suppose it's possible they haven't processed him yet," Scully said, glancing at the glass-faced clock on Prine's wall. It was after three, so he should certainly be there by now. "That, or they're just trying to give us shit," Prine said. As a former federal employee herself, Prine cherished few illusions about the general cooperativeness of government staff. A click came over the speaker phone and they both instinctively leaned toward it. "Hello?" came Mulder's voice, hard to hear over several voices in the background. He sounded confused. "Hi, Mulder, it's me," Scully said, leaning in toward the phone. "How are you doing? How was the trip?" "Oh, great," he said. "I am now wearing a stylish outfit in ten-mile orange from the Ted Kaczynski line of men's fashion, and I have met my new cellmate, whose name is Flea. Say hello, Flea!" he called out. "Hello!" came a distant voice. "Flea has already explained to me about that skank bitch Yolanda who set him up. He has a rap song about it, which he calls, 'That Skank Bitch Yolanda Set Me Up.' He was all set to perform it for me when you called." "I'm sorry to have disappointed you," Scully said. "I have twenty days to listen to Flea's rap songs, Scully," Mulder replied. "So what's going on? I hear I have an attorney." "You remember Ms. Prine, who used to work for the Criminal Division," Scully said. "Oh, yeah, hello," Mulder said. Prine looked thrilled to death that he remembered her. Scully wouldn't have had the heart to point out that Mulder had an eidetic memory and could sing thirty-year-old jingles for breakfast cereal, too. Scully offered to leave the room while Prine and Mulder discussed his legal options, but Mulder asked that she stay. The conversation didn't take very long. Mulder didn't have very many legal options. Once they were through Prine told Mulder that Scully had asked to speak with him alone, but that he was not required to discuss his case without legal counsel present. "Thank you, I'll keep that in mind," Mulder said. Prine turned off the phone's speaker, handed the receiver to Scully and then left the room. "Mulder, I spoke with Skinner yesterday afternoon," she said. "He's conscious? How is he doing?" Mulder asked. "He suffered extensive burns and some retinal damage, but considering what could have happened he's very lucky. I saw his office-burning resin melted holes in the furniture and the carpet. If the sprinkler system hadn't gone on he could have died of smoke inhalation before the EMTs ever got there." "Has he . . . has he said anything about who he thinks did this?" Mulder asked. "Yes," Scully said. "He doesn't think it was you. In fact, he was talking about how we had to get you out of Brooklyn as soon as possible." Mulder made a sound that might have been a sigh of relief. "Has he spoken to Springer at all?" "To who?" Scully asked. "Jim Springer from the ISU. I contacted him with an unsolicited profile of the bomber, which apparently got me chalked up as suspect number one." "I don't think he's talked to Skinner," Scully said, "This is the first time I've heard Springer's name." She thought Mulder muttered, "Asshole." Then he said, "I gave him the profile anyway while I was still in D.C. He's probably lined his birdcage with it." "Mulder, Skinner gave me his own profile of the bombing suspect when I spoke to him yesterday. He was very anxious to talk to you about it," Scully said. "I'm flattered, but there's not a whole lot I can do while I'm in here. Has he called the police or the U.S. Marshals about it?" "No," Scully said. "He asked me if I would handle this matter myself, discreetly. He says he saw the bomber's face in a vision." "Skinner?" Mulder asked, sounding stunned. "Skinner doesn't have visions. It's against Bureau policy." "Well, he's having them now. He thinks that this is somehow related to his experience in Vietnam. He says that the bomber is an Asian man who blames Skinner for something terrible that happened to him, and that he may be targeting other Vietnam veterans in the near future. He couldn't come up with a name or an occupation, but he says that the suspect builds hobby models." There was silence on the line for a moment. "Race cars?" Mulder asked. "Yeah, actually," Scully said, surprised. "How did you know that?" "Because that's in my profile that Springer's lining his birdcage with. Did you follow up on this at all?" Mulder asked. "I talked to some people at the lab and they said that the fiberglass resin used in the bomb is manufactured by a company called PlasTech, which has its headquarters in Maryland. Most of the resin gets shipped to companies that make car or boat bodies, but a certain amount gets sold to hobby and art supply stores," Scully said. "Sounds like a good start," Mulder said. "I suppose its too much to hope that PlasTech does business in a small geographic area?" "All over the eastern seaboard, in Canada, and Germany," Scully said. "Shit," said Mulder. "What about the accelerant--the race car fuel? That's not something you find at every corner gas station." "You'd be surprised," she said. "The Yellow Pages for the greater D.C. area lists 25 racing car supply stores." "It does not," Mulder said. "I'll mail you one and you can count," she told him. "Shows you what I know," he said. "The good news is that every batch of racing car fuel is slightly different, and fuel inspectors perform gas chromatography tests on it to determine its exact composition or 'fingerprint.' That's how officials at professional races decide which fuels to allow. In theory, we could not only determine which company manufactured the fuel, we could also figure out which plant made it on which day." "Hot damn," said Mulder. "What's the bad news?" "We've got no matches so far," she said. "There are a lot of fuel vending companies out there, Mulder, and many are in Europe. If this guy got his batch from Italy, this could take a lot longer." "Fuck," Mulder said. "Don't get too discouraged," she told him. "You know how most investigative work is--slow and systematic. The holes in the net are closing, Mulder. We'll get him." "Yeah, I just hope it's before he blows someone else off the face of the earth," he said. "And before one of my fellow inmates decides to stick a shiv between my ribs. I told Springer to investigate postal and UPS employees, since our bomber seems to know a lot about how to get explosives through the mail. He may have been fired from a mail handling job recently, which could have helped set him off. If he was dismissed or pressured into resigning it would probably be because of interpersonal problems, conflicts with the boss or complaints from customers. He doesn't deal real well with the public. He may be working on cars as a freelance job right now." "I'll call Springer and tell him to go peel that profile off the bottom of his birdcage," Scully said. "Good," said Mulder. "Listen Scully . . . has this been on TV much? Have they been splashing my picture around on the news?" "Some," she admitted. "Although the authorities mostly aren't talking." "Leaving lots of room for media speculation. Wonderful," Mulder said. "If you're worried about your mother, I've already told her. I also told her that you're innocent and that we're doing everything we can to help you." "Good," he said, "thank you." "Are you all right? I mean, really all right. Is there anything else I can do for you?" she asked. She felt painfully helpless. "No, you're doing a great job. I couldn't ask for better," he said. "For now we'll have to stay in touch through Prine, because I'm not supposed to talk to anybody but my lawyer and immediate family. Media blackout, I think. Give the Brooklyn number to my mom, would you? She's probably having a heart attack." "Okay," she said. "I'll do that. You take care of yourself, all right? "You bet," he said. "Me and Flea are going to have a high old time. If you're good, maybe I'll make you a license plate." "Oh, joy. I'll talk to you soon." "Yep. 'Bye." Mulder hung up the phone and turned slowly back to the day room, where several dozen other inmates chain smoked, played ping pong on a dilapidated table, or watched TV. There were a couple of reasons he'd wanted to know if his case was on television. One really was because of his mother. In particular, he hoped the news wasn't broadcasting the fact that it was a capital crime to send a bomb through the mail. Mom didn't need to have to worry about that. The other reason was he wanted to know how quickly the other prisoners would identify him as a Fed. Since prisoners didn't have much else to do but watch TV, he could bet that most of them already knew. Skinner was trying to hallucinate. He'd never done this before, and he wasn't sure how to go about it. More than ever, he wanted to be able to speak with Agent Mulder, because he would certainly know about vision quests and how the Native Americans forced their minds to look into the spirit world. Skinner had a vague idea that you were supposed to go out into the desert and smoke jimsonweed until you half keeled over. That, or practice various acts of self- torture like hanging your body from a pole by hooks sunk into your skin. While these were not practical options, at the moment he had plenty of access to drugs and sensory deprivation and pain. To some extent the nurses allowed him to control the amount of pain meds he took, and he tried to work it out so that a combination of narcotics and physical discomfort created a maximum sense of unreality. It was not a sensation he enjoyed, but he figured he owed it to Mulder, and to whoever was next on this bomber's list, to do whatever he could to help solve the case. Even if the methods he used were decidedly unconventional. He was in a state that was not quite dreaming, where he was aware of what went on in the world around him, but dreamlike images played themselves out before his blinded eyes. He saw the stream in Vermont where he sometimes used to take off and go fly fishing. He visualized a summer afternoon spent mowing the lawn behind the house he'd shared with Sharon. He tried directing his thoughts to something more relevant, tried to fix on the image of the face he'd seen the previous day, but somehow his mind seemed to slip away onto its own paths. Finally, he stopped fighting it. Inevitably, his thoughts turned back to 1969. The year had opened with him in high school, an earnest teenager watching his Government teacher point out the countries of Southeast Asia and drone on about the Domino Effect. First Vietnam would fall, then Laos and Cambodia, then the evil Soviet grip would begin to extend into Korea and the Indian subcontinent, and the Reds would effectively own all of Asia. From there they would sweep into Africa, crush Europe and begin their assault on the Western Hemisphere. It hadn't seemed such a silly idea, then. Walter was too young to remember Hitler, but his father remembered. Within a space of five years, Western Europe had been swept under the cloak of Nazi night. Ralph Skinner had enlisted to help carpet-bomb the so-called Aryan Race into submission. Walter knew he owed it to his country and to the ideal of democracy to enlist and fight the Communists in Vietnam. He hadn't known that the South Vietnamese dictator was in many ways just as bad as Ho Chi Minh. He hadn't foreseen the ignominious American withdrawal or the fall of Soviet Communism two decades later. He'd believed he fighting evil, defending the women and children of the free world. He had ended up killing women and children. Sometimes, the villagers wouldn't move. Private Skinner had slogged through poor, muddy streets, helping to push ox carts full of belongings that had gotten stuck in the mud and herding wailing old women who stood barely higher than his waist. The U.S. was trying to move the friendly and neutral villagers to refugee camps, in order to separate them from the VC. Sometimes, they refused to go. He'd found blackened bodies in a Buddhist temple destroyed by fire, the tiny fists of children balled up before their charred faces. They weren't supposed to be there, but that didn't make them any less dead. On an altar above the bodies was an equally blackened statue, of a pretty woman reclining on a flower. Even under the soot, her expression looked kind and sad as she gazed down toward where the corpses lay. At the time, Walter had wondered if she were some Vietnamese conception of the Virgin Mary. Vietnam was Catholic as well as Buddhist. He would have taken his helmet off in respect if he hadn't been worried that chunks of the ceiling might fall on his head. "God help us," he'd thought, as he looked down at the burned, little bodies. Skinner was pierced with almost unbearable grief, for the life and innocence and idealism that had been lost in that long-ago war. He stirred in bed, cried out softly. The image of the carnage in the temple faded, was replaced with a memory of happier times. He saw his younger brother Bob at about fourteen, the age he'd been when Walter enlisted, tossing a tennis ball for Ragmop the dog. The dog bounded back and forth between the boy and the field, knocking dew off the tall grass. The maple trees were turning yellow, so it must be the fall of '69, when Walt was busy killing and dying half a world away. School images, a sea of children's faces. A little red-headed girl stood on a playground, chubby knees sticking out below the hem of her yellow dress. She stared up wide-eyed at the brick school building, fiddling with a button on her cardigan. Big sister came and took her by the hand, said something, led her toward the doors. The edge of the cardigan swung out and revealed a construction-paper balloon pinned to her dress, with the name "Dana" written on it. God, how old had Scully been in 1969? Suddenly, Skinner felt like a dinosaur. Strange to think that the little girls he'd gone to war to defend were grown women now, some of them toting guns. Strange to think that Scully was out there fighting for him, now. The children who'd died in Vietnam had never grown up. Except for one. Skinner saw the face of the boy with the grenades, felt the recoil of his rifle, watched the body hit the ground. Rivulets of blood. He saw the face of the man, beautiful as the altar statue in the temple, dark brows knitted with concentration. He poured something from a plastic jug into a funnel, then bent to adjust a small gas burner. Loops of tubing sealed with tape. A still? Skinner looked at the jug, yellow and black label, diagonal lines. He tried to read it but his hazy vision prevented him. He tried speaking to the man, "Who are you? What do you want?" but the man did not seem to hear. He walked away out of Skinner's field of vision. Skinner groaned. He began to feel as if his body was on fire. Thousands and thousands of damaged nerve endings fired their anger at his brain. He was atoning for something. This was happening for a reason, to punish him for . . . what? Being willing to kill and die for his country? How could he have known that the Soviets were not about to gather up their allies and attack the United States? It was a cruel dilemma, to which both possible answers were wrong. He'd only been eighteen. He came to in agony. Shorting himself on the pain meds seemed not to have been such a smart idea, after all. At least they'd taped the call box to the rail of his bed, so he could find it. He punched the button and waited for a nurse to show up. He wanted someone to change his bandages, anyway. His face felt slick with moisture, from sweat and Second Skin slime. At least, that's what it should have been. God knew, it shouldn't have been tears. Scully sat in a plastic chair outside the office of the amazingly-named Fred Przybyz, Human Resource director for the local branch of UPS. On her lap she held a list of names faxed to her by the company's headquarters in Atlanta. She'd asked for the names of all UPS employees in the D.C. area who'd been dismissed within the last year, particularly any men of Asian descent. The woman she'd spoken to in Personnel had explained that while there was a space on the employment application for people to indicate their race, they were not legally required to do so. None of the dismissed employees had identified themselves as Asian. She had decided to examine UPS before the post office because the government theoretically screened its employees more carefully for things like past arrests for arson, and Mulder seemed to think this fellow might have a record. Despite Mulder's paranoid suspicions, Jim Springer really had submitted his bomber profile to the staff at the ISU, and they agreed to fax Scully a copy. She also carried a printout of the face Skinner had created with the composite program. As prepared as she could possibly be, she waited until Przybyz was able to see her. Finally, he opened his office door and said, "Miss Scully?" He was a short, bowling-pin shaped man with a large bushy mustache. Scully stood, reflexively straightened her cranberry blazer and held out her hand. "Thank you for being willing to see me, Mr. . . . I'm sorry, I don't know how to say your last name," she admitted. He smiled. She imagined he was used to this. "It's Priz-a-biz," he said. "There's no biz like Przybyz, that's what I tell people." She smiled back as she shook his hand. "Mr. Przybyz," she said. "I don't want to take up a lot of your time. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the people who've worked here in the last year." "Sure, come on in," Przybyz said, holding the door for her. She sat in one of the visitors' chairs stuck in the cramped office's corners while Przybyz settled himself at his desk. "First of all, I was wondering if this face looked at all familiar to you," she said, pulling out Skinner's composite. Her hopes weren't real high. She was nearly rocked back on her heels when he glanced at it and said, "Oh, yeah, that's Dave." "Dave?" Scully asked, looking at him in surprise. "Dave Eddy, one of our drivers. Well, he was, up until about three or our months ago," Przybyz said. "What happened?" Scully asked. "Why did he leave?" "Well . . . let's say that Dave and UPS turned out not to be such a good match," Przybyz said. "He had a low frustration threshold, a bit of a temper. I talked to him about it, but in the end enough customers complained that we had to suggest that Dave move on." "'Move on?'" Scully echoed. "He wasn't fired?" "Well, I don't like to have to actually fire people," Przybyz said. "I just pointed out that it would be in both Dave's and the company's best interest if he resigned, and he agreed to do that. He's all right, really. He's a very smart guy. He just isn't at his best working with the public." "I see," said Scully. "Would you mind showing me his personnel file?" Pryzbyz looked a little embarrassed. "I hate to ask this," he said. "But could I see some ID? It's just something I need to see before I show personnel files around." Scully obligingly pulled her ID wallet out and handed it to him. He examined it and then called up David Eddy's file on the computer. A little under an hour later, Scully sat by Skinner's bedside. He'd been awake when she came in and looked tolerably well, although he seemed tired and distracted. "I've got a name to match the face you compiled, sir," she said. "David Aaron Eddy of Baltimore. He's an American citizen and too young to have known you in Vietnam, though. His birthdate is listed as 12/15/70. He agreed to resign from UPS four months ago, after repeated customer complaints about his rudeness and abusive language. I tried calling the phone number in his personnel file, but it was disconnected." "All right, good. That's a start," Skinner said. She suspected he'd hardly been listening to her. "Sir?" she asked. "Are you all right?" "Yes," he said, turning toward her although his eyes were obscured by gauze. "I'm fine. I just have a lot on my mind." "If you want me to come back later--" "No," he said, reaching out a hand toward her. "No, stay." Then he turned away again and said, "I had another vision about the bomber." "What happened?" she asked, as gently as she could. "I saw him pouring liquid into what looked like a still," he said. "He was using this plastic jug with a black and yellow design on it. I couldn't read the label." Scully frowned. "A still?" she asked. "He could be using that for a lot of chemical processes, from making bathtub gin to--" she stopped suddenly. "To what?" he asked. "To purifying the nitromethane from his race car fuel," she said. "Which would explain why we can't find a batch match from any of the local distributors. He's altering the chemical composition." "Can you do that without making it explode?" he asked. "Sure," she said. "So long as you know what the boiling point of nitromethane is and you watch the temperature gauge on your still." Skinner nodded. "Are you going after him?" he asked. "I . . . I wanted to talk with Agent Mulder first," she said. "I want to get some advice on how to approach Eddy. I don't think I can get warrant, sir. I mean, most people would say that we don't exactly have probable cause. If I spook him he may just destroy any evidence and clam up." Skinner looked less than pleased, but he nodded again. "Work as fast as you can," he said. "There's a veteran out there whose hours are numbered." Federal Detention Center, Brooklyn Next morning Mulder sat at a long table, looking at the scattered parts of a chair base. Then he looked at the assembly directions in his hand, and back at the chair. He was not terribly good at things like this. As a pre-trial inmate, he was not legally required to work, but he'd volunteered for a work assignment anyway. He'd figured being stuck in his cell with nothing to do all day would drive him insane. Of course, this might drive him insane, too. There were a lot of chair bits lying on the table in front of him, and there were not so many bits in the picture in his hand. Had he gotten someone else's bits by mistake? He glanced sidelong at the pointy-faced redheaded guy next to him, who seemed to be screwing chair bits together without any difficulty. If the other guy was missing bits, then he didn't appear to have noticed yet. Mulder looked down at the pile of metal parts in front of him and wondered if it would be a big problem if he'd accidentally appropriated some of the other guy's bits. The redheaded guy turned to glare at him. "What are you looking at, dumbass?" he asked. "Nothing," Mulder said, and immediately began screwing chair bits together in what he hoped was the correct fashion. After a few moments the redheaded guy looked over at him and asked, "What the fuck are you doing?" "Assembling a chair," Mulder informed him. "What the fuck are you doing?" "You've got a G-773-42 screwed onto a G-663-71," the other guy said. "Well, maybe you want to screw it yourself," Mulder said. The redheaded guy's eyes narrowed to slits and he placed his forefinger alongside one nostril. He exhaled hard through his nose and blew a booger right onto the front of Mulder's prison scrubs. "Aw, man," Mulder said, looking around for something to remove it with and finding nothing handy. "You . . ." he began, but could think of nothing better than, "you are an incredibly disgusting individual." "Fuck me," said the redheaded guy. Law Offices of Zimmler, Zimmler and Prine The phone at the Brooklyn Detention Center rang and rang. "Why does it take them so long to answer?" Scully complained. "These people are in prison. What else do they have to do besides answer the phone?" Prine shrugged. Eventually the speaker phone clicked and they got the switchboard operator. It was the one who'd put them on hold for a long time before. He did not appear to remember them and they had a brief go-around about whether there really were people with first names like "Fox" before the man put them on hold and said he'd send someone to go get Mulder. Mulder himself answered a few minutes later, sounding tired and frustrated. "Hi, how you doing?" Scully asked. "Don't ask," he replied. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said. "Maybe it'll make you feel better to know we've got a name for the suspect in Skinner's vision. He's David Aaron Eddy, age 27, a former UPS employee from Baltimore, Maryland. I wanted to get some guidance from you as to how to approach him." "You want to do this yourself?" Mulder asked. "Skinner wanted this discreet," she said. "And besides, I'm not sure I could convince anyone else to go out there, given the source of our information. Skinner's very adamant about wanting this done quickly. He says other veterans' lives are in danger." "Yeah, well, don't you go putting your life in danger unnecessarily," Mulder said. "Of course not. I'll be careful," she said. "What's your objective, here? To make him slip up? To get a confession?" Mulder asked. "That would be ideal, but just being able to get into the house would work. Skinner seems to think he keeps his bomb-making paraphernalia there," Scully said. "The trick is being able to look around inside without a warrant." "I don't think you should go in there, not alone," Mulder said. "Just because this guy hasn't resorted to face-to-face violence yet doesn't mean he won't. At the very least, get somebody from ATF or the U.S. Marshals to go with you. Somebody somewhere's got to owe us a favor." "All right, I'll keep that in mind," she said. "Now how do I get him to talk to me?" Mulder seemed to think about this for a moment. "He's going to be real curious about his case," he said. "He may be clipping articles out of the paper, taping news shows, that sort of thing. He'll also probably be congratulating himself on how smart he is, for setting off a bomb under the government's nose and getting some Fed to take the fall for it. The package bomb had Skinner's name on it, didn't it, and not just his title?" "Yes, it did," Scully said. "He might not have opened it, otherwise." "Well, if the bomber had his name, he could have sent the package to his house. That would have been easier. He sent it to the Hoover Building to prove that he could. He'll be feeling cocky about that. You'll get him to talk to you if you discuss the case and dwell on the ingenious elements of the bomb scheme. By the way, was there any information that was kept out of the press?" "Yeah, they didn't release much information about how the bomb was constructed. I think they want to avoid giving people ideas," Scully said. "Did they mention the nitromethane?" he asked. "I'll have to check, but I think so. I don't think they released anything about the ceramic shrapnel or the magnesium powder, though," she said. "Okay," Mulder said. "Call up one of the Baltimore papers and see if you can get a fake press release made up. Make it look as official as possible. Have them put in it that the F.B.I. crime lab has got me dead to rights, and the damning evidence is that I was stupid enough to put metal shrapnel in the bomb. Claim it's traceable to me or something. The bomber already thinks we're idiots, so he'll buy it. "Then, pose as a pollster from the newspaper. Make up some questions like, 'Do you feel you can trust the federal government,' or 'is the F.B.I. crime lab a waste of tax dollars.' Those ought to get him going. Take your press release with you and a press pass or whatever else a real pollster would have, and go up and down Eddy's street. Really ask all his neighbors those questions, because he'll probably want to use your visit as an excuse to talk about the bombing case with them. When you get to his house, play up what a moron I am and all the mistakes I made to get myself caught. Let slip the metal shrapnel thing, and show him the press release if he asks questions. Watch his reactions. See if you can get him to tell you how a smart guy would have built the bomb. If he hits on any significant details that weren't in the papers, you've got probable cause and you can arrest his ass. Then at least I'll have company here in stir." "We're working on getting you out of there," Scully said. "Ms. Prine is petitioning the Superior Court and the U.S. Attorney's Office to have you held in D.C. municipal jail instead of the detention center. We're arguing that since you're a federal officer and yours is a high profile case, incarcerating you with other federal prisoners would constitute a threat to your safety." "All right, I'll buy that," Mulder said. "Although so far I've only been menaced by bad rap performances and the occasional booger." "I'm sorry to hear that," Scully said. "Hey, it could be worse," he said. "I could be under the unsolicited protection of a large, hairy sex offender named Bubba." "Knock on wood," Scully said. "Mulder, I'd like to speak to you alone for a minute, if Ms. Prine doesn't mind." She glanced up at the attorney, who said, "No problem," and turned off the phone's speaker. She handed Scully the receiver and left the room. "I spoke with Skinner again last night, he says he had another vision," she said. "Of what?" Mulder asked. "He says he saw Eddy doing something involving a homemade still and a plastic jug with black and yellow diagonal lines on it. Does that mean anything to you?" "No," Mulder said. "Did he give it any interpretation?" "No, but I thought it might mean that he was distilling the nitromethane out of pre-mixed race car fuel. It would explain why our gas chromatography tests have come up with zero matches," Scully said. "I can see what I can dig up on the computer if you want," he said. "God knows, I've got the time. I've got Internet access through the law library here, although my guess is the sites I can get to are going to be pretty limited. No filthy FTP sites for me." "Good luck on surviving this cruel and unusual punishment," Scully said. "How are you holding up, by the way? Other than being menaced by the occasional booger." "Ah, well, you know . . ." he said. "I spoke to my mother last night, she was pretty upset. Apparently my case was on Hardcopy yesterday. Mom says she hates watching news about what's happening to me, but somehow she can't turn it off. Hardcopy didn't have any actual information about the case, so they spent fifteen minutes going on about bombers in the past and all the horrific things the government will do to me if I'm convicted. They even had a shot of the lethal injection room in Indiana." "Oh, my God," Scully said, putting her hand to her forehead. She could only imagine how her own mother would react to seeing something like that. "It was almost funny in a really sad way, because my mother always had this big anxiety thing about me and George Metesky." "You and who?" Scully asked. "Don't you remember George Metesky, the Mad Bomber? That was the first case that was ever solved using a behavioral profile. The psychiatrist working with the police predicted everything about Metesky from the kind of suits he wore to the fact that he hated his father and obsessively loved his mother. There was a big media circus about it when my mom was a young woman. She followed it because she thought it was fascinating, but it was that one detail that always stuck with her, that somehow Metesky's mother had made him what he was. This was in the late fifties, by the way, at the height of the fashion for mother-blame. Then a few years later I came along and I was kind of a weird little kid . . ." "And she was afraid she'd do something to turn you into the next George Metesky," Scully said. "Something like that. I went through this playing with fire stage when I was five or six and scared the hell out of her," he said. "I'd always thought it was amusing that I ended up on the other side of the behavioral profiling process, until now." "Were you able to make her feel any better?" Scully asked. "I think so. I hope so. She doesn't really think I'm like George Metesky, by the way." "That's for the best," Scully said. "I think she'd feel a whole lot better if you could get me out of the detention center, though. I have to admit, so would I," Mulder said. "We're working on it, Mulder. Hang in there." Skinner was getting better at his visualizations, or maybe in this case, the vision was looking for him. David Eddy sat in a room lit only by a small night light, wrapping what looked like a plastic brick in brown postal paper. A little metal rectangle lay on top of the brick--it must be the photo cell. Once the package was wrapped up and sealed with tape, he consulted a list lying on the table next to him. He wrote an address on the top of the package and crossed something off the list. He went for a walk down the street. Skinner saw low hedges, grass clippings lying on a driveway. Eddy went to the post office and stood in line, then pushed the package across the postal desk. The clerk stamped it and tossed it in a cart.