Mulder sat in front of an Internet terminal in the detention center's law library. He'd explained to the chair assembling supervisor that as a pre-trial inmate with an imminent trial date, he was allowed to take off from work and go do legal research. The supervisor said he didn't give a flying fuck what Mulder did. Once on-line, he'd called up a search engine and typed in "nitromethane," just to see what he'd get. He got a surprising amount. The chemical was expensive and its pure form was difficult to find retail, but every major city seemed to have at least one race car supply center that sold it in pre-mixed dragster fuel. He found a lot of pages that described its molecular composition, some race car sites that were virtual shrines to it, and a couple of scary pages that discussed what a great additive to bombs it was. He also found a posting to a bulletin board from someone called "Jr. Kazinski" which read, "If any 1 knows how to purify nitromethane from model engine fuel please tell me I like really need to know this. IF U DO I WILL REPAY YOU WIT SOME STUFF tell me as son as possible!" The post had generated a couple of responses, which described the construction and use of a still in much the way that Skinner had seen in his vision of Dave Eddy. Mulder chose the print option and listened as the tired old printer whirred to life. He went back to the search engine and typed in "model engine fuel." This time he got a lot of links to hobby shops. The first site he tried was "Model World: The One-Stop Shop for All your Hobby Model Needs." The homepage had a mailto address, and he considered dropping them a note to ask if they had hobby Penthouse models available, but he refrained. They did have a catalogue page that listed about 10 brands of model engine fuel, however. A couple of brand names were in highlighted blue hypertext, indicating further information was available. Mulder clicked on one and waited while an image downloaded. Just then the library door slammed. "Hey, dumbass," came a man's voice. Mulder recognized it as belonging to Booger Boy from the chair assembly room. Mulder ignored him. "Hey, dumbass, you fucking deaf?" The image on the screen was a stupid JPEG, and it was taking its sweet time downloading. Mulder slowly turned around. Booger Boy stood behind him, and he'd brought a couple of friends, too. One was a skinny, weasely little guy, but the other one looked like Mr. Clean in a federal prison uniform. "Are you talking to me?" Mulder asked. Booger Boy did his best Goodfellas impression. "'You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?'" he said. "You see any other dumbass in here?" Mulder just looked at him a moment before answering. "Do you really want me to answer that question?" he asked. He had the uncomfortable realization that the library monitor was nowhere in sight. "You're the son-of-a-bitch that killed his boss, aren't you?" asked Booger Boy. "I saw your picture on Hardcopy. They gonna pull a Dr. Jack on you. How does that feel, Fedboy? How does it feel to be on Death Row?" Booger Boy smiled. He had a gray front tooth. "I didn't kill my boss and I'm not on Death Row," Mulder told him. "You will be," said Mr. Clean, "Just like Tim McVeigh." "Thanks. I'm so touched by your concern," Mulder said. He turned back to the screen and saw that the image had finished downloading. It was of a plastic jug labeled "RunRite Model Fuel." The label was decorated with black and yellow diagonal stripes. Underneath ran the heading, "1 Quart, 20% nitromethane -- $8.99" Somebody slugged him on the side of his head. "Don't you turn away when I'm talking to you," said Booger Boy. Mulder stood up and deliberately backed away. "Do not lose your temper," he told himself. "Do what you can to get out of the room." "There's no need to get violent," he told Booger Boy. Booger Boy shoved the chair at him. "I think there's plenty of reason to get violent," he said. "You stupid fucking Feds run this shithole, and when one of you gets stuck in here, you act like you're too good for it. Listen to you-- taking about your stupid-ass rights down in the shop. Like anybody cares! You think you're too good to put together chairs, Fedboy?" Mulder backed up another step, trying to angle toward the door as he did so. He held his hands up in a wordless pacifying gesture. "No," he said, "actually I'm terrible at putting together chairs. You saw that this morning." He glanced at Weasely and Mr. Clean, hoping that one of them would look squeamish about starting a fight. Weasely looked nervous enough, but he was holding his ground. Maybe he figured Booger Boy would kick his butt if he ran. "You're going to be sorry you came here," said Booger Boy. "You gonna be sorry you were ever born." Clearly it didn't matter what Mulder said, the guy wanted to take a piece out of a cop. Mulder took another couple of steps back, trying to coax Booger Boy away from his friends. He kept his hands up, waiting for the other man to make the first move. After a couple of seconds Booger Boy's patience wore out and he swung at Mulder's face. Mulder's forearm was already there, deflecting the blow. He wrapped one hand around Booger Boy's bicep and slammed the heel of the other one up under his nose. He put his foot behind Booger Boy's and pushed him backward, effectively tripping him onto the floor. While the three inmates were stunned, Mulder darted to the other side of the computer table, putting it between them and him. Unfortunately, they were still between him and the door. "Hey, Lanny, you all right?" called out Mr. Clean. Booger Boy raised himself up on one elbow and said, "That fucker broke my nose." Although blood was running from it, Mulder knew he hadn't broken it. He knew what a nose felt like when it broke. Booger Boy climbed to his feet and said, "You're going to fucking die for that." He ran at Mulder, this attack even more headlong and careless than the last one. Mulder sidestepped him, grabbed him by the arm and threw him at Mr. Clean, who was coming around the other side of the table. That left only Weasely between him and the door, and he figured he could just run right over Weasely. He hadn't counted on the sharpened screwdriver. Later, he decided Weasely must have had it up his sleeve, but at the time it seemed to come out of nowhere. It dug through the muscle of his upper chest and scraped bone as he tried to knock the smaller man aside. Mulder made it a few steps into the hall, dragging the tenacious Weasely, before the other two caught up and dropped him. Mr. Clean slammed Mulder's head into the floor while Booger Boy repeatedly kicked him in the kidneys. Mulder went fetal, holding his arms over his face. He could feel hot blood soaking the cloth of his uniform. Weasely kicked him in the shins and forearms. "You think you're hot shit? You think you're fucking Jackie Chan?" Booger Boy shouted as he kicked him. Mulder didn't know how long the beating lasted, but it was probably not as long as it felt. Suddenly, the men were being pulled off him. A corrections officer rolled Mulder over and briefly examined the wound on his chest. "We got to get this one to the hospital," the officer said. Scully had been able to work fast. She'd spoken to Skinner, and being able to invoke the Assistant Director's name at the Baltimore Sun had worked a small miracle. Before 5 o'clock she was outfitted with a plausible-looking press release, a pin-on button with the Sun logo on it, and a clipboard holding several copies of her manufactured survey questions. Speed was a blessing. Skinner had told her that he'd seen Eddy posting another package bomb. The Agents in Charge of this case knew that she was sounding out a potential suspect at Skinner's request, but she had not been much more specific than that. Visions and thirty-year-old flashbacks had not even come into it. She felt it was best to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible, and so had not taken Mulder's advice that she bring someone with her. Eddy lived in a quiet, working-class neighborhood of Baltimore. It was about a mile from Scully's mother's place. Like her mother's neighborhood, most of the houses were small with tidy yards and detached garages. Scully parked her car down at the end of the street and began working her way toward Eddy's house. It was the dinner hour, and no one was very pleased to see her, but at least that meant she got through the neighbors quickly. The five households she surveyed turned out to take a fairly dim view of the federal government. She wondered if that was because they were grumpy about having their meals interrupted. David Eddy lived in the bottom floor of a duplex at the end of the street. What looked like an auctioned-off soft top Army Jeep sat in the driveway. The Jeep's body had been painted black and there were neon peace sign stickers in the back window. Scully walked up to Eddy's door and rang the bell. A cat peered out the dingy front room window at her, opened its eyes wide, and fled. She heard footsteps inside, the sound of latches being undone. The door opened and a handsome young Asian man looked out. Skinner's composite picture had been eerily accurate. "Yeah?" Eddy said. Scully had her spiel down pat by now. "Hello, I was wondering if you could spare a few minutes of your time to answer a survey questionnaire on attitudes toward the federal government. This survey is being conducted by the Baltimore Sun in response to the recent upswing of domestic terrorism and widespread concern over the effectiveness of the federal crime labs." She smiled big, trying to look every inch the perky cub reporter. "Is this going to take long?" he asked. "'The Simpsons' is on." This was not the enthusiastic response she'd been hoping for. "Ah--no, no it won't take long at all," she said. "Okay, well fire away," said Eddy, folding his arms and leaning in the doorway. "Do you feel you can trust the federal government?" she asked. "Implicitly," he said, "to fuck up everything from the flavor of cheese to building a toilet for the space shuttle." "I'll . . . put that down as a 'no,'" Scully said, and checked the appropriate box. "Do you think that federally funded crime labs are a waste of tax dollars?" He shrugged. "I dunno, compared to what?" Scully tucked a strand of hair behind her ear in an unconscious, nervous gesture. Eddy was coming off a lot more like a disaffected Gen-X'er than a murderous bomber. She realized how much she'd wanted this to be the lead that broke the case. Looking back and remembering where the information had come from, she was surprised and a little alarmed at how naive she'd been. Her next few questions got equally noncommittal answers. Finally, she asked her litmus test question: "The F.B.I. crime lab recently determined that there was metal shrapnel in the bomb sent to Assistant Director Skinner at the Hoover Building. Given this evidence that the bomber intended to kill, should Fox Mulder be given the death penalty if he is convicted?" Eddy blinked at her. "Huh? Uh, yeah," he said. "Would you like to see a copy of the latest press release on the case?" she asked, "Yeah, sure," he said. She pulled a photocopy of the fake release out of her folder and handed it to him. He scanned it quickly. "I've heard it was a big mistake to send metal in the bomb," Scully said. "Apparently that incriminated Agent Mulder more than anything." He glanced up at her and then down at the paper. "Where did this come from?" he asked, handing the release back. "A federal agent closely involved in the case submitted it to the Sun office," she said. That was true enough. "What kind of an idiot do you have to be to send a metal bomb through the mail?" Eddy asked. "What kind of an idiot postal worker do you have to be to let that get through the metal detector?" "I don't know," Scully said. "Maybe as you said, the federal government is just good at fucking things up. Sounds like a smart guy would have no trouble getting a bomb through." "Well, I don't know about that," he said. "It would take a lot of work." Scully's heart started hammering. If this is your guy, he'll be proud of his efforts, she thought. He's going to have to show off a little. She widened her eyes at him. "Really?" she said. "What would you have to do?" "Well," he said, relaxing against the doorframe with a smug expression that reminded her irresistibly of Mulder, "you'd need to use a plastic resin for the shell, and hard plastic or ceramic if you wanted shrapnel. Those will get through the metal detector. Use as few wires as you can get away with. They've got chemical detectors and even bomb-sniffing dogs, now, too, so you'll have to seal any powder or accelerant inside and then wash the shell down when it's dry. You could soak it in bleach or even coffee. You should put the addressee's name on it, too, and spell it correctly. A lot of people know not to open packages with just their job title on them." Scully nodded. None of this had been released to the press. "What's an accelerant?" she asked. She knew damn well what it was, she just wanted to hear him describe it. "That's what you use to make a fire burn," he said. "Gasoline, Methanol, nitromethane, if you can get it. Those are all accelerants. You can use a bit of black powder for the blasting cap, but if you've got the right juice, you can get away with just closing an electrical connection." Scully had heard enough. She slipped her right hand into the inside pocket of her blazer and pulled out her ID and badge. "Mr. Eddy, I'm a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation," she said. "I'm going to have to ask that you come with me." His eyes went wide with surprise, and then he closed the door in her face. She started knocking on it. "Mr. Eddy," she said, "Mr. Eddy, open up. I don't want to have to ask the police to break down this door." She didn't expect a reply. She pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and punched the 'on' button, ready to call the local police for backup. The phone came to life with a soft beep. Eddy's door opened and he held out a small plastic cylinder at her. Scully had a split second to be perplexed before pepper spray hit her in the face. Thirty minutes later Scully was kneeling on the floor of Eddy's living room. She'd been divested of her gun and her phone, and the handcuffs she'd had clipped at her belt were know locked around her wrists. He'd given her a wet towel to press against her eyes, which were still streaming. Her nose and throat felt swollen, and she hoped she didn't turn out to be one of the people who were deathly allergic to pepper spray and died of anaphylactic shock after being exposed. "The Simpsons" ended and Eddy switched channels to something with a particularly tinny laughtrack. Scully thought she recognized the theme song to "I Dream of Genie." Every so often Eddy would ask her, "Are you okay?" which really got on her nerves. She kept telling him, "No." Eventually, she asked, "What are you going to do with me?" As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew it was a dumb thing to have said. Mulder had told her about situations like this. Never push your captor to make decisions, never rush them into anything, he'd said. Time is on your side. Given enough time, you may be rescued or your captor may bond to you enough that he feels he can't kill you. "I don't know," Eddy said. "This isn't a situation I'd prepared for. This wasn't supposed to happen." "What was supposed to happen?" she asked. She was unable to keep the edge of anger out of her voice. "The strikes were supposed to be surgical. That's why the men's names have to go on the packages. Innocent parties weren't supposed to be involved," he said. "You consider Walter Skinner guilty for something he did as an eighteen- year-old, something his country legally required him to do?" she asked. Actually, Skinner had enlisted before he could be drafted, but she thought that she would not point this out to Eddy. "He made a choice," Eddy said. His voice was hard and bitter. "Everybody makes choices, and they have to live with the results." "Why Skinner?" Scully asked. He laughed. "Why Skinner?" he echoed, "Why me, or you? Why those people in the Oklahoma City Federal Building or on Pan Am flight 209? Because, that's why." "First you say that people make choices and have to live with the consequences, then you imply that everything happens in a kind of Russian roulette. You can't have it both ways," Scully said. "You ever study Buddhism at all?" Eddy asked. "I'm afraid not," she said. "You should. It's a very unsentimental religion. Tenet one: 'life is suffering.' You've gotta respect that." "What does that have to do with personal responsibility?" she asked. "You know what the Atman is?" "No," she said. "It's the universal soul. It's the Force--'it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together.' That sort of thing. We're all part of the Atman, but we have this illusion that we're individuals. When you start imagining that you're an individual, you start to think action has a point. When you start committing actions, that causes reactions, and nothing good comes of that. That's karma. "You've heard about karma, right? As in 'my karma ran over my dogma?' In my case literally true, by the way. I'm Catholic by education. Feel free to mention that if I ever go to trial. Not because it would help me out any, but because it would really piss off some priests to see a Church-raised homicidal maniac on TV." "I see," Scully said. "Anyway, the idea of karma is: what goes around comes around. Everybody's out there doing stupid things, and having stupid things done to them. But none of it matters. That it why it's both Walter Skinner's own fault that he got blasted and why it's completely random and meaningless." "That sounds like a very elaborate rationalization to avoid responsibility for your actions." "Like it?" Eddy asked. "If I said that to a federal judge, do you think he'd have the brains to figure it out?" "I don't think it would go over real well," Scully said. She found Eddy reminded her a lot of her partner. She was having a hard time not warming up to him, despite his obviously defective conscience. "Too bad. I'll have to think of a way to avoid going to court, then," he said. Scully found she didn't like to think about what that way might involve. Mulder was brought back to the detention center after midnight. He had surgical staples in his chest wound and the ER doctors had detected blood in his urine, but they hadn't seemed overly concerned. He was not sure if this was because his injuries weren't serious, or because he was just another federal inmate and who cared, anyway. Mulder found that the worst part of incarceration wasn't the loss of his freedom, or even the physical threat from the other prisoners. It was the automatic revoking of his human status as soon as he'd come through the detention center doors. The doctor had discussed Mulder's treatment solely with the corrections officers, as if Mulder himself weren't even present. Claiming Scully was his doctor, he'd managed to convince one of the nurses to call her mobile phone, but apparently it was turned off. He had been unable to persuade the woman to try Scully's home number. They would have let him call his mom, but he didn't want to have to do that. "Hi, Ma, I just got beat up in prison," was on the bottom-ten list of things he ever wanted to say to his mother. At the very least, the detention center administration had approved him being moved to a cell by himself, for his own protection. Flea had been genuinely sorry when Mulder came in to move his things. Apparently, Mulder's being willing to listen to his lousy rap songs had been a bonding experience. Mulder got moved to a more secure area of the prison, near all the crazy and really violent guys. They'd taken the laces out of his shoes, because laces could be used as garrote cords. Bureau of Prisons policy, the guards had said. The cell block was under lights-out, so Mulder had to get settled into his new quarters by the illumination of a guard's flashlight. Fortunately, it hadn't taken long. He didn't have a lot of stuff to organize. He curled up on his cot in the pitchy dark, and discovered it was just as uncomfortable as the last one. His whole body hurt. He had a prescription for pain medication, but he could only get it through the prison staff at certain hours. He wished he could talk to Scully. He remembered that he'd forgotten to ask her to feed his fish. Mulder felt bad for his fish. Stuck inside their little tank, they were helpless to affect the world around them. At the moment, he knew just how they felt. "They're going to pull a Dr. Jack on you," Booger Boy had said. Mulder had seen the federal execution chamber. It wasn't much--just a room. There was a bed with armrests on it splayed out like a cross in the center, and straps made of thick webbing lay across it at several points. Thinking about it now, it reminded him of Tunguska. Mulder thought that if they executed him, he did not want his mother in the room, even if she said she wanted to be there. She didn't need to see that. He found his eyes were wet, and wiped them with his thumb and forefinger. "You are not going to cry," he told himself. Unlike Skinner, Mulder did not attach any intrinsic shame to tears. The problem was more that he was alone in a comfortless place, and if he started crying, he might not stop and he wouldn't get any sleep. Tomorrow would likely be lousy enough as it was. "They are not going to execute you. Everything in the American criminal justice system is designed to prevent an innocent man getting convicted," he told himself. Unless of course, someone high up in the criminal justice system was out to get him. That could be very bad. There was also the question of whether his fellow inmates were going to make the whole question academic by killing him before he ever got to trial. Mulder gave up and went to get a wad of toilet tissue to blot his eyes. He would have given anything he possessed in exchange for Scully's presence, for her touch. He curled up in bed and wrapped his arms around himself instead. He hadn't had to do that since Tunguska. At least there, the guy in the adjoining cell had been interesting. Here it was probably some schizoaffective nut who would rant for hours about bugs crawling under his skin. Mulder wondered if he was going to get nostalgic for Flea and his crummy rap repertoire. It took the better part of an hour for him to cry himself to sleep. Dave Eddy had channel surfed until he found a "Twilight Zone" rerun. It was the episode where the woman's dead husband calls her from the graveyard. "This is the best show," Eddy had raved. Scully just shrugged. She used to like "The Twilight Zone," but she found it didn't do much for her anymore. It was too much like work. The raw agony had eventually faded from her eyes and throat, and she sat on the floor of Eddy's living room, leaning her back against the armrest of his couch. He'd made Rice-a-Roni and left a bowl of it on the coffee table for her. She'd eaten some of it, but found swallowing made her throat hurt again. Her handcuffs were still around her wrists and Eddy had wrapped a metal cable around the links that joined the bracelets, then tied that to a radiator in the corner. This meant that while she clearly wasn't going far, she had a little freedom of movement. Now that her vision was clear she could look around the living room. Eddy owned a rickety old couch and mismatched chair, a TV, and several dusty bookshelves that lined all of the walls. The books had strange titles like "The Lurking Fear" and "Sex as a Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble." Model vehicles, small and large, sat on all the horizontal surfaces. Scully decided she'd try to get some more information out of her captor. "So, Dave, how did you get interested in Buddhism?" she asked. He'd specifically asked her to call him Dave. She glanced over to where he sat on the couch and saw him shrug. "Antidote to all that catechism crap," he said. "You're not Catholic, are you?" "Actually, yes, I am," she said. "Oh, sorry to hear it," he said. "Buddhism's a traditional religion of Vietnam, my mother's country. Mine, sort of. I was born there, but I came to the States when I was eight." "How did that happen?" Scully asked. "Adopted," he said. "I was a 'special needs child' in a Catholic foundling home. Supposedly I'm the son of an American serviceman stationed in Vietnam during the war, or so my mother told the nuns. The Eddys found out about me and had me shipped over. There are people who collect special needs kids like Cabbage Patch dolls. You get the little birth certificate and everything. So there I was, a Vietnamese-American kid living with an Irish-American family, and they called me David Aaron, which is this Jewish name. Go fig. The Eddy family was a real rolling zoo. They had two Down's syndrome kids--brother and sister. Can you imagine having two Down's syndrome kids in two years? Apparently their mother couldn't, because she ditched 'em. Then they had this polka-dotted boy who was born addicted to crack. He was supposed to be black, but he had these albino patches all over him so he kind of looked like a Holstein cow. He used to bang his head on the floor and scream all night. I think of all of them, I had the most in common with him. Then there was the girl with CP so bad they used to park her in her wheelchair upside-down, so mucus wouldn't collect in her throat and choke her. She was why they finally pitched me. I'd been setting fires, and they were afraid I'd burn the house down and Marnie wouldn't be able to get out. After that it was institutions, a couple of foster placements that didn't last. Pretty much the same as Vietnam, or what I remember of it." "You sound very angry," Scully said. He shrugged again. "I would be, if I thought there was any point. I went through this identity-searching phase as a teenager and read up a lot on Southeast Asia. That's how I found out about Buddhism. It helped me make sense of a lot of things. "For instance, Buddhism teaches that annihilation is the ultimate aim of all souls. Nirvana, before it was a strung-out grunge band, was a Sanskrit word that meant 'blown out,' as in like a candle. Call it the Freudian death wish if you want, or the mystic's union with God. Death is something to be embraced, not avoided. It's the life after life thing that's so shitty, which my past life regression therapy amply demonstrated. You're basically doing somebody a favor by blowing them away. You're moving them a step further along on their journey out of Samsara, the Buddhist equivalent of the Vale of Tears. At least, that's if you want to look at it from the compassionate point of view. If you don't, you can just say, hey, here's a fucker that could really use a .45 to the head." "So you enjoy killing, and you think this religion provides you with a rationalization," Scully said. "Well, what's any religion for?" Eddy asked. "Talk to the Pope about the crusades." "It all seems like such a waste," Scully said sadly. "You've clearly got a good mind, you've got your whole life ahead of you, and all you want to use it for is senseless killing." "Hey, lady, don't barge into my house packing a gun and complain about senseless killing. I'm a killer, you're a killer, every person on this fucking planet is a killer. That's what people are. The universe would be better off if we just nuked ourselves." Scully found she had no answer for that and fell silent. She wondered what young Dave Eddy had seen in Vietnam that had made him so bitter, or whether it was just the fact that no one had loved him. Children could be so resilient, but they could also be so fragile. She recalled what Mulder had said about George Metesky becoming a bomber because he obsessively loved his mother and hated his father. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. "You're going after vets who were serving in Vietnam about the time you were conceived," she said. "You're trying to kill your father. You think Skinner might have brought you into the world and then abandoned you, so you wanted him to die." "Not even close," Eddy said, then he admitted, "Well, a little bit close. You're right that I'd like to take out the guy who brought me into the world, whoever that was. I can only bomb a relative few, so that hope's probably unrealistic. The reason I wanted to kill Skinner is because he's the son-of-a- bitch who blew me away me the last time." Skinner dreamed that he was moving through deep, thick water, like an ocean of gel. There was light under the water, but it was hard to move and hard to breathe. His ears were filled with a soft humming sound which he first thought was his blood singing in his capillaries, until it began to resolve itself into something like whispering. He could not make out the words; all he heard were vowel sounds that sometimes hissed into hard consonants. He continued to push through the gel, his lungs burning for a breath of air. His fingertips brushed something as he struggled toward what he hoped was the surface. He felt flesh and realized he'd touched a human hand. He gripped the fingers, then drew back sharply when he found they were cold and stiff. He found himself face to face with the hag of his nightmares, her long white hair floating Medusa-like around her head. Her withered lips continued to move, but no bubbles of breath escaped them. The sounds they made were as meaningless as ever. Skinner pushed backward away from her and ran into something. He turned and saw the body of the little red-headed girl he'd seen in his earlier vision. She hung still, like a fetus in amniotic fluid, with some kind of cord tied tight around her neck. Skinner tried to undo the cord and discovered that it was a metal cable that ran around her neck and down her back to her bound hands. The girl's skin was rigid and cold. Her head turned toward him and her eyes snapped open, but they remained unseeing as a corpse's. Skinner startled awake and lay still a moment, breathing heavily. Where was he? What was going on? As the nightmare images lost their urgency he began to remember. He wondered what time it was. By peeling up the edge of his blindfold, he could at least register that it was dark. Agent Scully should have contacted him by now. He groped for the call button and punched it. He wanted to bawl the nurses out if Scully had called and they wouldn't wake him to speak to her. If she hadn't called . . . then he was going to need to use the phone. Scully lay curled on the floor of Dave Eddy's living room. Like Mulder, Dave apparently preferred to sleep on the couch. That, or he didn't trust her alone. He'd drunk several beers as the evening wore on, and with each successive one he began to seem less friendly. She knew he felt he was losing control of the situation, and Mulder had taught her that this sort of person was most dangerous when he felt out of control. Eddy was snoring now, and Scully scooted along the floor, following the metal cable that bound her to the radiator against the wall. All the lights of the house except the one over the stove in the kitchen were out, and it was very difficult to see what she was doing. She hadn't seen Eddy tie the cable because she'd been blinded by the pepper spray. Systematically, her fingertips followed the cable around and around the radiator pipes until she found the knot in back. It was tied tight and she had to hold her cuffed hands in a very awkward position to get at it. She could tell she wasn't going to be able to free herself that way. The frustrating thing was that she knew there had to be wire cutters in the house, it was just that she could easily waste hours hunting in the dark and she was likely to wake Eddy. She decided to see if she could pull her hands through the cuffs. Petite women had been known to do that, and Eddy hadn't cinched them especially tight. It was more difficult than she'd expected, and it hurt like hell. Tears stung her eyes as she worked at getting the metal band over the bone of her thumb, cutting off circulation and scraping away skin in the process. Her right hand was half in and half out of its cuff when a police siren started up with a loud chirp. Scully jumped and Eddy jumped almost as much. A dizzying whirl of red and blue flickered over the ceiling, the light coming over the top of the drawn curtains. A moment later the phone started ringing. "Holy fuck," said Eddy. He charged over to the corner where Scully sat and backhanded her across the side of her face. "You set me up," he shouted. "You lied to me twice, you fucking bitch. They followed you here." "They didn't," Scully protested, curling up against the radiator in an attempt to ward off further blows. Eddy grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her into the radiator's metal side. Leaving her, he ran to the TV stand and turned on the VCR. Scully wondered what in hell he was doing. Eddy put a tape in and fiddled with some buttons and knobs. He turned on the TV and punched the volume button until static hissed painfully loud from the speaker. For the moment, there was nothing on the screen. Then he pulled a multitool keychain from his back pocket and opened up a set of needlenose pliers. He cut Scully's cable off close to the radiator and half carried, half dragged her toward the door. The phone was still ringing. Within seconds Eddy had the cable around Scully's neck and then threaded it down between her wrists and around her ankles. He left her on the floor pushed up against the front door. He seemed ready to bolt, then apparently thought better of it and grabbed something off the top of the TV. Scully heard a snapping sound and with the little breath she could draw smelled a magic marker. Eddy twisted her face toward him and wrote something across her forehead, then he spat on the ground next to her. Scully's vision was quickly graying, but she was aware of him picking up something by the couch, and then he was gone. The phone had stopped ringing and the cops had resorted to banging on the door and shouting. "Mr. Eddy! Mr. Eddy, open up right now. This is extremely serious, Mr. Eddy, we want to talk to you about the disappearance of a federal officer." There was a flash of light from the living room and a horrific thunder of gunfire. Scully made a strangled cry and squeezed her eyes shut. Over the noise she could just hear the voices of the officers shouting outside, and then came a crash as a riflebutt smashed through a window. Rapidly suffocating, Scully was only dimly aware of what happened next. The door burst open and she was knocked in a corner. Shouting, activity--the shooting noise suddenly stopped. Then one of the officers seemed to notice her and bent to clip the wire wound around her neck. "Is she breathing?" someone asked. Scully answered them with a deep gasp. The guy in the cell across from Mulder actually did turn out to be a schizoaffective nut. The nut started the morning out by screaming very loudly at 6 a.m. and then hiding under his cot, whispering to himself. Out of a combined sense of pity and crushing boredom, Mulder decided to psychoanalyze him. He took notes on a legal pad with a felt-tipped pen. They wouldn't let him have anything sharp here. "So, can you tell me about what brought you here?" Mulder asked. "The man, the man with the van, vrrrrrrrrrmmmmmm, vrrm-vrrm," said the nut, who mimed turning an imaginary steering wheel. "What about the man with the van?" Mulder asked. "The man with the van the can. The can. He come driving, driving, driving, driving, . . ." The nut bounced up and down on his bed, making the springs squeak horribly. Mulder wrote down, "Organic brain disorder(?) Order EEG." The guy in the cell to the nut's right had lain in bed without moving all morning. Mulder had a separate section of notes on him. The first one said, "Catatonic?" When he hadn't moved after an hour, Mulder had written, "Dead?" After another hour he'd written, "A dummy with a microphone in it planted to record everything we say?" He had a bad feeling that he would be needing the services of a psychologist himself if he didn't get out of here soon. Footsteps sounded in the hall. Mulder hoped they weren't bringing another cell block buddy for him. At least not another loud one. When the owners of the footsteps came into view, Mulder was faced with two guards and Jim Springer, of all people. "What are you doing here?" Mulder asked. "Letting you out," Springer said. Mulder said, "You mean it?" like an excited kid before he could stop himself. He got rather painfully to his feet and crossed the few steps to the barred door as a guard unlocked it. "You got the guy who did this? Did my profile help?" he asked. "No, and yes," Springer said. "He was a disgruntled UPS worker who played with model cars, you got that part. I'm afraid he roughed up Agent Scully and ran off before we caught him." "Is she all right?" Mulder asked, suddenly worried. "She'll be okay," Springer said. "Both she and Skinner swear that this guy's got at least one more package bomb in transit to a Vietnam-era vet, though." "And you want my help finding him," Mulder said. He didn't bother trying not to sound smug. "Yeah," Springer admitted. Mulder couldn't resist rubbing it in. "Are you sure? Is that legal? I'd hate to get myself into trouble again so soon after this wonderfully rehabilitative spell in federal prison. They were going to teach me a trade, but then some guy tried to dig my left lung out with a screwdriver." "Look, Mulder, I'm sorry about that," Springer said. Mulder knew Springer and knew what it cost him to have to eat his words. "You know how the job is. The investigation has to come first, before any personal considerations." "I understand completely," Mulder said. "You ought to be congratulated on doing your part to keep law enforcement personnel off the streets and behind bars where they belong." "Mulder . . ." Springer said, looking pained. It took Mulder less than a minute to gather up his few belongings. As he exited the cell, he handed his notes on the nut and the catatonic guy to one of the guards. "See that these are implemented," he said. Scully's first sight of Mulder in days was in the waiting area of Skinner's hospital ward. "Hi," she called out, and hurried over to catch him in an uncharacteristically impulsive hug. "Ow," he said, as soon as she had her arms around him. "Ow, don't do that." "What's the matter?" she asked, backing off. "I had an unfortunate accident involving my spine and some guy's boot," he said. "Oh, My God," Scully said. That was exactly what she'd been afraid would happen. "Were you hurt badly?" "No, no, I'm fine," he said. "I heard you had an unfortunate accident, too." "Not too bad," she said. He noticed the bandage around her wrist and lifted her hand. "What's this?" he asked. "I uh, tried pulling my hand out of a pair of handcuffs. Actually, they were my own," she admitted. "And I missed it?" He said. "Damn, see if I ever go to federal prison again. Let me see here." Despite the warm weather outside, Scully was wearing a turtleneck to hide the ligature mark around her neck. Mulder gently pulled it away from her skin. "Mulder--" she protested. Once he saw the bruising his face got a look of compassion he usually reserved for self-styled alien abductees and the seriously socially maladjusted. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. "Looks like the cavalry came in just in time," he said. "No, actually, he didn't try this until after the police showed up. Then he arranged me in front of the door so the police would practically trip over me as the came in. He had an interesting trick--he put a tape of a war movie in the VCR and set its timer to start playing about a minute after he got out the door. When the cops heard gunfire they broke in and started working to free me, meanwhile Eddy was long gone. I don't think he really intended for me to die." "You don't know that," Mulder said. "I've seen a lot of guys like this, and they almost never release someone who can identify and present evidence against them. He might not have wanted to kill you, but he would have eventually figured that he couldn't keep you hidden in the house forever." She looked away, not liking where that train of thought led. "Skinner thinks the same thing," she said. "He says he saw . . . well, it's better that the police showed up when they did." "What's this?" he asked, brushing aside her carefully arranged bangs. "Don't do that . . ." she said. Scrubbing and makeup had mostly covered where Eddy had written "Bitch" across her forehead, but if you looked you could still read it. "Aw, geez," Mulder said. He put his arms around her and this time she was careful to hug him gently. "Our boy wasn't too pleased with you, was he?" "No, he wasn't," she said. "Actually, I think he pretty much hates the whole world." "Well, I can relate to that," he said. She stepped back and said, "Don't even say that. That's what got you stuck in Brooklyn the last time." He grinned and started walking down the hall toward Skinner's room with her. "So how's the boss?" he asked. "Better," she said. "He says his eyesight is improving somewhat." "Any more visions?" Mulder asked quietly. "Not since last night, apparently. He's pretty anxious to catch this guy, though." "I'll bet," Mulder said. Skinner was sitting up in bed and the blindfold had been removed from his eyes. His glasses were balanced gingerly on the end of his nose, probably because the friction of the bridge was uncomfortable. Many of the blisters on his face had gone down, and his skin showed the shiny pink color of healing. He still looked pretty horrific, though, and Scully sensed Mulder's brief, startled reaction. He hadn't seen Skinner since that first day, when his head was encased in bandages. Mulder quickly regained his usual nonchalant manner however, and reached out to shake Skinner's hand. "Glad to see you're doing better, sir," he said. "I'm glad to see you're out," Skinner replied. "Yeah, I was looking for a 'Congratulations on surviving your mail bombing attempt' card, but the stores were out. But then, I figured you probably wouldn't be able to find a "Congratulations on getting your felony case dismissed," card, either," Mulder said. "I've been going over this list of names the police found in Eddy's house," Skinner said, holding up a large printout that lay over his lap. "None of them means anything to me. Everybody else in my company is already dead. I did see Eddy cross a name off when he mailed the package, though. That means you only have to concentrate on about fifty of the several hundred on this sheet." "Oh, joy," Mulder said. "I was going to take the list over to the lab next," Scully said. "I wanted them to test the various ink marks for age, since the one we're looking for was written less than two days ago." "Sir, you didn't see what mail priority he put on the package, did you?" Mulder asked. Skinner looked grim and shook his head. "It didn't look like the postal worker did anything special to it, so I'll guess third class." "Well, depending on where the target lives, we've got anywhere from a week to until tomorrow afternoon to identify him," Mulder says. "Before we find out the hard way," Scully added. "Have you got anyone looking up the social security numbers of these men?" Mulder asked her. "Yes, I spoke to the Veterans' Administration earlier this afternoon," she said. "You can call over there and ask if they're done compiling them yet." "It'll still take a while to run down those guys' last known location, though," Skinner said, sounding unhappy. "I've got access to better than the VA and Social Security," Mulder said. "I've got geeks." As soon as Mulder knocked on the Lone Gunmen's door, he heard Frohike shout, "It's Mulder!" He figured they must have gotten their closed-circuit unit up and running again. This time, Mulder couldn't even spot the camera lens. Frohike threw the door open and gave Mulder a bear hug. "Ow!" Mulder said. "Don't *do* that." "Oh, sorry," Frohike said, backing off. "I forgot. They mentioned your 'incident' on NPR this morning." "The celebrity is all very nice," Mulder said, "but I'm going to be glad when I can take a leak without the whole world knowing." Langley moseyed up behind Frohike and looked over the shorter man's head. He had a clunky, old-fashioned looking pair of earphones around his neck. Mulder found he didn't really want to know why. "What can we do for you today?" Langley asked. "I think I have an idea," came Byers' voice from inside. The other two Lone Gunmen stepped aside to let Mulder through the door. "You want us to help identify the bomber's next intended victim," Byers said. He sat at one of the terminals in the Gunmen's perpetually dimmed office. "You're good," Mulder said. "You get that off NPR too?" "No," Byers said. "There was no other logical reason for you to come here. Frohike's next porno party isn't until next week." Thirty minutes later, three geeks sat at three terminals, each cross- referencing names through a different database. "He seems to have had eccentric reasons for crossing names off his list," Byers said. "You'd assume that they were all people he'd already bombed, but that appears not to be the case. Here we have Lorenzo D. Falla, who was very much alive when he applied to have his diver's license renewed a month ago." "Do you have an address?" Mulder asked. "Yeah, 273 Peterbrook, Pittsburgh, PA," he said. "Great, print that," Mulder said. "This is interesting," Frohike said. "What?" asked Mulder. "Gerald Freedman, former Private First Class of the Marine Corps, now living as Loretta Freedman in Bangor, Maine. Ah, Bangor. What a town." Mulder fidgeted, peered over the other men's shoulders and looked at the clock. "Do you *mind?*" Frohike asked. "You're making me anxious." "Hey Langley," Mulder said, "I'll bet you five bucks that you can't finish researching your list before Frohike here finishes his." "Please, we're not ignorant children," Langley, said, not turning from his computer screen. "Twenty bucks." About eleven o'clock at night Scully called Skinner from the F.B.I. lab. The phone rang several times before Skinner picked up, sounding sleepy. "Hello?" he said. "Sir, it's me," she said. "The most recent ink mark on this last is across the name Terrence White. He lives locally, outside Arlington." "That's the guy," Skinner said. His voice held no uncertainty. "Sir, are you sure? How do you--" "I just know," Skinner replied. "He's got a cement pineapple on his front porch." White Home, Arlington, VA Terry was channel surfing, and coming across 99 varieties of crap. Game show . . . game show . . . stupid infomercial . . . his phone started ringing. "Jean, you gonna get that?" he shouted to his wife. "Jean?" No response. She must have gone to bed, and the woman slept like the dead. Cursing quietly, he grabbed the rims of his wheelchair and pushed himself into the kitchen. There was a cordless around here, but he'd be damned if he could ever find the thing. It usually ended up under the couch, where he couldn't get it. The phone rang and rang. Terry's answering machine had a long delay before it picked up because it took him a long time to get to the phone. Finally, he grabbed the receiver and said, "Hello?" "Mr. White?" came an unfamiliar voice. "I'm calling from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. If you receive a suspicious package in the mail tomorrow or the next day, it is extremely important that you not open it." "Oh, yeah, right, and this message will self-destruct in ten seconds. Don't you people have anything better to do?" he said, and hung up. His son's drunken fraternity friends were getting more obnoxious all the time. He started to wheel himself away and then the phone rang again. "God damn it," he said. He backed up, picked up the phone again and said, "Get a job," then pushed down the hang-up button. He left the phone off the hook this time. He wheeled himself back into the living room, grumbling. He grabbed the remote control off his end table and picked up surfing where he left off. At ten a.m. the next day, Mulder was still in bed. He'd warned his co- workers that even he wasn't enough of a workaholic to go straight back to the office after a week like he'd had. Besides, sleeping felt wonderful. Being able to take painkillers whenever he wanted felt wonderful. Not having to listen to bad rap or psychotic shrieks felt wonderful. Mulder's phone started ringing. That wasn't so wonderful, but he figured it was a price people paid for freedom. He groped for the phone by his bedside and picked it up. "Hello?" he said. "Did I wake you?" Scully asked. "Sorta," he said. "What time is it?" he looked at the clock. "Crap. Boy, am I a slug." "I wanted to let you know that David Eddy is still on the loose, and that Skinner's got two agents outside his hospital room door as protection. I also wanted to tell you to be careful. The ISU did a risk assessment and they think it's possible Eddy could come after you or me, if he thinks we were in some kind of plot to set him up." "We were," Mulder pointed out. "Well, don't panic, but don't let your guard down," she said. "That's never been a problem for me," he said. "There's something else. No one's been able to reach Terrence White yet. His phone's not giving a busy signal anymore, but no one's answering it. Agents have been leaving message after message," she said. "I can go over and talk to him," Mulder said. "You sure? How are you feeling?" she asked. "Hell, I'm not in jail. I'm on cloud nine. I'll be all right--I promise I'll stay in touch," he said. "All right, I guess there's nothing I could say to dissuade you, anyway," she said. "Nope," he said cheerfully. "Talk to you later." Mulder hung up. Terry White worked part-time at the local youth center. Sometimes it could be rewarding, sometimes it could be pure hell. Today had been a little of both, and he was just as happy to be able to wheel himself the three blocks home for lunch. Terry had a PAWS dog, a black lab named Thelma, who did things like turn on lights Terry couldn't get to and dig the cordless phone out from under the couch. Thelma trotted contentedly alongside Terry with her tongue lolling out. She wore a leash and harness, but that was mostly to carry her "Don't pet me, I'm working" button. Terry knew she wasn't about to run off. When they got to Terry's driveway he opened the mailbox and pulled out his mail. Bills, bills, disability check from the VA, that was good, and more bills. He stashed them in the backpack hanging from the handles of his chair and headed up to the house. The postman had stuck a package too big to fit in the mailbox inside the screen door of the house. Terry scooted up close to it and bumped his knee into the screen. Then he backed up and hit the cement pineapple on his front porch. He hated that stupid pineapple. What had Jean been thinking when she bought that thing? He leaned forward to grab the package but found he couldn't reach it anymore. Well, never mind, that was what Thelma was for. He unhooked her from her harness and worked himself out of her way. "Go fetch, girl," he told her. "Bring it here." Thelma sniffed the package and whined. She turned and looked at him inquiringly. "Come on, bring it here," he coaxed. She sniffed the package again, slurped it a couple of times, and then backed away. "Jesus, Thel, what's the matter? Did somebody subscribe me to the bomb of the month club?" Terry asked. Suddenly he remembered the call from last night. That had to have been bullshit--hadn't it? With Thelma out of the way Terry made another go at retrieving the package, this time wheeling up alongside and leaning sideways over the chair's armrest. He snagged it with his fingertips and pulled it into his lap. His name and former military rank were written in black ink on the paper wrapping, in a hand he didn't recognize. There was no return address. What the hell was this? He held it up to his ear and shook it. "Mr. White! Mr. White, don't do that!" Terry turned around and saw some nut running up the street at him. The guy reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet that might have contained a picture of his pet beagle, for all Terry could tell at this distance. "I'm a federal agent," claimed the nut. "Mr. White, what you're holding is a bomb." Terry's upper-body coordination was not so great. He startled, turned to look at the box in his hands and then dropped it on his knee. He grabbed for it and knocked it further away instead, straight toward the running nut. As it struck the ground both men shouted, "Holy fuck!" and flung their arms up over their faces. Nothing happened. The nut, looking very shaken, walked up to Terry and displayed his wallet again, which did in fact contain an ID and badge. "Let's just back away, shall we?" he said, "and wait for the nice people from ATF to get here." The agents guarding Skinner's door switched off at noon. The fresh set walked up to their tired colleagues carrying a box of doughnuts. One of the men who'd been up all night looked at the box and said, "Man, Sherwood, you are a god." "I know it," said Sherwood. "But I am a cruel and vengeful god. You gotta guess what's in here before you can have any." He hid the box behind his back. His partner and the two other agents surrounded him, all taking part in good- natured bickering. They didn't notice the shadow slipping behind their backs. Skinner was startled out of a sound sleep. Someone was touching him. He opened his eyes and saw the blurred image of a figure standing above him. The face was one he'd seen in visions, and before that in nightmares, hundreds of times. Something cold and metallic was being held to Skinner's neck. "So you decided to come pay me a visit," was all Skinner said. "Yeah," replied David Eddy. "We've come full circle now. It's funny that you're old. Somehow, I didn't imagine you as old." Skinner, who didn't think of himself as old, said, "It happens to everyone eventually." "Not really," Eddy said. "Not to me, last time. You saw to that." Skinner didn't pretend not to know what he was talking about. "You were ready to pull that pin," he said. "You wanted to die." "Only because I was desperate," Eddy said, half-shouting now. "Because of what you fucking people did to my country." "The Vietnamese were busy killing each other before America ever got involved," Skinner said. "Besides, I thought your father was one of us 'fucking people.'" He heard the clicking sound of a gun hammer being drawn back. Skinner could not keep the muscles of his back and jaw from tightening. Eddy's voice was deadly quiet now. "This isn't about politics or national boundaries," he said. "It's about karma, about retribution. This was meant to happen." He pressed the muzzle of the gun hard into Skinner's neck. "There's nothing I can do about the past," Skinner said. Scully walked into the hospital corridor and found Skinner's guards wrangling over doughnuts. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Uh, nothing," said one of them. "I can see that," she said. "There's a man in there you're supposed to be protecting." She stalked past them toward Skinner's room. David Eddy jammed the muzzle of his gun into Walter Skinner's neck. He wanted to savor this moment, to give Skinner a little taste of the terror and helplessness of a child alone during war. Eddy knew perfectly well what had happened to him was not all Skinner's fault. It was God's fault, if there was a God. But God was absent and untouchable, and Skinner was here. The fact that Skinner was here, at Eddy's mercy, proved Eddy's cause was just. Karmic law only permitted just things to happen. "There is one thing you can do to atone for the past," he whispered, up against Skinner's burned ear. "You can die." He saw Skinner close his eyes. "Stop right there." Eddy glanced up and saw the female agent who'd been at his house the previous night. She stood in the doorway with her legs apart, pointing a gun at him. The look on her face told him she was prepared to fire. "Scully," Skinner said. "Put the gun on the floor and put your hands up, or I'll shoot," she said. "You shouldn't do that in a hospital," Eddy told her. "Extra oxygen in the air and everything. You'll blow the place up." Her hard expression didn't soften one bit. "Put the gun on the floor," she repeated. Eddy thought about it. He thought about prison life, about living on Death Row for the next dozen years with a sense of failure. He made his choice. "Fuck that," he said, and began pressing on the trigger. The woman fired. Then there was nothing but the light. Scully lowered her gun, watching Eddy's body slide down the wall. His pulped skull left a smear of red against the hospital white. Outside the room, there were people shouting, running. Skinner looked up at her with wide, brown eyes, curiously naked-looking without his glasses. It seemed to take him a few moments to catch his breath. When he did, he said, "Thank you." F.B.I. Headquarters Washington, D.C. One Month Later After Skinner's first full day of work, his eyes were killing him. He'd passed the Bureau's vision test and had re-certified with his gun, but that had not taken the full eight hours a workday did. He leaned his elbows on his desk and pressed his fingertips to his eyelids. His secretary buzzed him. Skinner hit the intercom button and said, "Yeah, Jane, what is it?" "Agent Mulder would like to see you sir," she said. Ordinarily, Skinner would have told him to make an appointment and come back later, but he really owed the guy. Mulder had gone to the ropes, working to save Skinner, and he'd taken more than his share of licks. "Send him in," Skinner said. He let his glasses fall back into place and settled himself into a calm, authoritative pose. Mulder came in carrying a thin black book which he'd shut around his forefinger. "Hi, sir, I won't take up much of your time," he said. "I just wanted to show you something." He set the book down on Skinner's desk and let it fall open to the page he'd marked with his finger. On the right-hand leaf was a picture. It was of a beautiful Asian woman, reclining on a flower. Her expression was both kind and sad. "Recognize her?" Mulder asked. The look on Mulder's face said that he already knew Skinner did. "I've seen that before," Skinner said. He ran his fingertips over the image. "Can you tell me where?" Mulder asked. "Vietnam," Skinner breathed. "She was in a ruined temple. There were--" he found he couldn't speak of the burned bodies lying at her feet. "I thought she was very lovely," he said instead. "She's a kind of Buddhist saint, or bodhisattva," Mulder explained. "The word literally means 'Enlightenment being.' In China, they call her Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. They also call her the Iron Lady of Mercy." "I thought she might be some Asian version of the Virgin Mary," Skinner said. "She is, more or less," Mulder said. "She's a very popular object of veneration in countries that practice the Pure Land denomination of Buddhism. That includes Vietnam." Skinner looked up at him. "What does this mean?" he asked. Mulder shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I just thought it was suggestive that David Eddy kept going on about karma. Well, that and the fact that you kept seeing an old woman." "The old woman was Caucasian," Skinner said, "and she looks nothing like this at all. She's ugly, and this woman is . . ." he shrugged, letting the sentence trail off. He found he didn't know the right word for what Kuan Yin was. "Zen Buddhism is also popular in Vietnam," Mulder said. "The Zen Buddhists are particularly disdainful of appearances. There's a story about two Enlightened masters having a conversation: 'What is Buddha?' says one. 'Shit on a stick,' says the other. That's to show that even the homeliest, basest things contain the seeds of Enlightenment. A Christian parallel would be Jesus saying, 'blessed are the poor,' or 'I was hungry and you gave me food, I was sick and you visited me.'" Skinner was silent for some time. He remembered looking at the statue in the ruined temple and thinking, "God help us." "I guess it's a good idea to watch who you pray to," Skinner said at last. "You never know who may be listening." Rosalie Torres sat typing by the phone at the Washington, D.C., office of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Her day job was as an elementary schoolteacher. Rosalie had once lost a student to a man who posed as a "talent scout" for a juvenile modeling agency. Unfortunately, that was how she'd learned about NCMEC. She spent her evenings here now, hoping to take the call that would reunite a family with their lost child. The front door opened and she glanced up. A man entered, immaculate in his navy-blue suit and striped tie. He was balding, bespectacled, and looked about fiftyish, like Rosalie herself. Even still, she could tell he had a pretty good body under that suit coat of his. She couldn't help smiling up at him with extra warmth. "Can I help you?" she asked. "Yeah," he said. "I was wondering how someone went about volunteering." She could just feel her heart going pitter-pat. "Oh, I have a volunteer form right here," she said. She pulled one out, attached it to a clipboard and pushed it across the desk at him. "May I ask why you're interested?" She hoped he and his wife hadn't lost a child. She hoped he didn't have a wife, period. Rosalie thought he looked a little embarrassed as he filled out the form. She hoped she hadn't asked anything rude. "I have a colleague, a behavioral scientist, who lost a sister once," he said. "He never stops talking about her. That, and . . . I had an unfortunate experience with violent crime recently. I'm told that the only way to stop violence is to prevent it, to keep children from getting damaged in the first place. I'd like to help do that. Maybe that'll give some meaning to what happened, to me and to a lot of other people." By now, Rosalie was absolutely lost. "Of course," she said, batting her eyelashes at him. "You've come to the right place." St. Vincent's Hospital Toledo, OH Miriam Rosen's fingers twisted in those of her husband, Chaim's. Chaim looked down at her and loosed one hand to stroke her tangled, dark curls. "It's all right, Mir," he said. "Push. Just push." She cried out, her whole body spasming. Chaim tried not to think of the last two times they'd done this. The Rosens had lost their first two children to Tay-Sachs disease. The doctors had said done an amniocentesis and said that this one was all right. This one would live. "Push, Mir," he pressed. "I'm trying!" she cried. Before long the baby's wails filled the delivery room. "It's a boy," said the doctor. "A beautiful little boy." "It's David Aaron," Miriam gasped. They'd named him after a king and a prophet. Chiam reached out and stroked the fuzz on the baby's head. God willing, they would be allowed to keep this one. It was a new start, a new beginning. ************************************************************ Final Disclaimer/Just in Case You Care The BBS posting from "Jr. Kazinsky" is a real posting I found on the net. To this fellow and those like him I say: Dave Eddy is a professional imaginary person specially trained to ignite bombs without hurting actual human beings. Kids, don't try this at home. Also, if you're going to name yourself after a criminal, learn to spell his name right. I hope this should go without saying, but here goes anyway: I have no particular grudge against persons of Asian descent, Vietnam veterans, adoptees, corrections officers, the Brooklyn federal detention facility, postal workers (gruntled or disgruntled), or federal inmates who assemble chairs. What I said about the Brooklyn Detention Center firing 20 employees for taking bribes is true (i.e., I got the info from a news article. The news writers could, of course, be working for Them). The facts that Dave Eddy recited about Buddhism are also true, although he gave them his own peculiar interpretation. I doubt many Buddhists would agree with his rationalization of violence any more than Christians would. P.S. "Fred Przybyz" is a real name. He's a guy I occasionally have to send faxes to for my employer. He doesn't really work for UPS, though. P.P.S. If you really are a federal agent searching for phrases like "I want to become the next Unabomber" on the Internet, I didn't mean it!!! --Ophelia