This is a fiction story based on the characters created by Chris Carter. No infringement of copyrights held by 10/13 Productions, Twentieth Century Productions, or Fox Broadcasting is intended. All unrecognised characters and plot-lines belong to me. Names, characters, and places exist solely within my imagination, or are used fictitiously. No connection to any person, living or dead, is intended, and any resemblance is entirely coincidental. Feel free to distribute, but please keep me as the author. Rating - PG Classification - X, A. No post-third season spoilers. Summary - Mulder and Scully go to investigate some strange disappearances in Denver, Colorado, and discover that the people who have returned from being "missing" seem to have changed while they were gone. This story is the result of an experiment by Gerry Hill and I at simultaneously writing stories about clones. Gerry's story is entitled "Another Lie", and is a very good read. Danielle Culverson. Double A young woman in her late twenties hurried along the dusk streets on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado. Her wavy long dark hair and large black eyes gave her an exotic look, added to by her style of dress. A long, multi-coloured skirt with tassles around the bottom swished about her long legs, and a shirt with an intricate pattern on the front hung loose over it. Her jewellery was heavy, - two gold chains, a pair of dangling enamel earrings, and a gold hoop in the top of her right ear. A mood ring decorated the third finger of her right hand, it's colour a pale green, signifying uncertainty and withdrawal, or the cold of the September evening. The sun had disappeared over the mountains half an hour earlier. It's reddish glow was fading from the sky as Lula Corvette headed home. The streets were mostly quiet, just as they were every evening when she returned from her work at the small craft shop she owned two miles from her house in the suburbs of Denver. She always walked home. - She thought the exercise was good for her. A cat watched her from the window-sill of a house across the street. It's green eyes followed her as she walked along the street. Then it's head turned suddenly to look at something behind her. With a yowl of fright it leaped from the window-sill and disappeared down the alleyway at the side of the house. Lula glanced over the street at the departing cat, but then continued on her way, paying little attention to it. It had been a bad day. The summer tourists had gone, and the winter tourists hadn't yet arrived. Business was bad, and there was a slump in the market for her type of goods recently anyway. If things didn't look up soon she was going to have to rethink the sort of stock she kept in. These thoughts buzzed lazily in Lula's mind, but she thought mostly of more immediate things. Like the mince pie that was waiting in the fridge at home. A young man of about Lula's age spotted her from his garden across the street. He looked up, and waved. "Evening, Lula!" "Evening, Tommy." she smiled in reply, and continued on her way, pausing at the end of the road before turning into her own street to bend down and pat the head of the dog which lived at the house on the corner. He always waited at his gate for her to pass by, and never a night went by that she didn't stop to greet the aging animal. Moving into the long street she lived in, Lula quickened her pace slightly, aware that she was a little later than usual in arriving home. She was vaguely aware of footsteps moving quickly behind her, but took no notice. Suddenly a hand holding a rag covered her mouth, and an arm wrapped around her left arm and waist, pinning her arm to her side. She was pushed into an alleyway. The rag over her mouth smelled of something she couldn't quite place, but she guessed it to be an anaesthetic when her legs weakened beneath her, and she collapsed backwards against the person holding her. Her vision swam, and then everything went black. * * * Fox Mulder pulled his car over to the side of the road in the Annapolis suburb, and shifted into park. Switching the engine off, he picked up the folder on the seat at his side, got out of the car, and locked the door behind him before jogging up the path to the door of the house he had stopped outside. He rang the bell. A few moments later Dana Scully opened the door. Mulder stood in the light which flooded out from the hall-way for a moment, tongue-tied as he took in his partner's appearance. She was wearing a short black cocktail dress, with a dark blue shawl around her bare shoulders. A gold necklace lay against her skin just above the line of the dress, which dipped suggestively a little way in the centre. Her hair was curled, and pinned up on one side. Diamond earrings twinkled on each earlobe, and a ring on her finger complimented the newly-applied nail polish. She wore a little more make-up than she usually did to the office, and it made her look both sophisticated and extremely feminine. She had a small black bag in her hands, and an expression on her face which was plainly of surprise. - She had been expecting someone else. Mulder tried to cover his long pause with a lame joke. "Umm... I must be at the wrong house, - I was looking for Dana Scully..." he peered behind his partner as though looking for someone else. Another glance at her face told him that he had picked the wrong time to make jokes. "I... er, I'm sorry. - Can I come in?" Scully stood back to let Mulder enter the house. He wandered into the main room, and then turned back to face her. She figured that he must think she looked stupid as he had stared so long when she opened the door, and then not managed to say anything other than to make a joke about her appearance. She followed him into the main room, not in the best of moods with her partner. He seemed to have realised this, and had sobered up. "I guess you're going out to dinner." Mulder said quietly. Scully nodded. "Derek's treating me." she replied. - Derek was a cardiac specialist she had met at Saint Elizabeth's hospital a few weeks earlier, and had gone on a couple of dates with since. They had been getting on well together, much to Mulder's silent disappointment. "I... I'm sorry, Scully." Mulder said carefully, knowing that the news he brought was not going to help his partner's mood, "We've got a new case from Skinner. - Disappearances in Denver. - Our flight leaves Washington in two and a half hours." Scully stared at him for a long moment, and then let out a sigh. She closed her eyes briefly, and looked down at the floor. - Sometimes she hated her job which ripped her away from her life at a moment's notice. It didn't exactly improve her social life. - Moving to the sofa, she sat down, and put her bag on the floor at her side. Mulder took the opportunity to take a seat himself, and sat in one of the armchairs. He leaned over and passed Scully the file he had been holding. "There have been three people go missing so far." he said, "All aged between twenty-four and thirty-six. All the disappearances occurred between 5pm and 7am. The first person to go missing was Becky Isling, aged twenty-four. The second Sid Mawley, aged thirty-six. The third, Lula Corvette, aged twenty-nine. No other obvious links between the victims. - Becky Isling lived with her parents. Sid Mawley was married. Lula Corvette lived alone." "And this came from...?" "Skinner. - The law enforcement in Denver called in the FBI, and Skinner decided we should look into it." "Skinner thinks it might be an X-file?" "I'm not sure. - It's just odd, which is reason enough to call in "Spooky" and Scully." Mulder replied. Scully nodded. In the hall-way, the doorbell rang. She got to her feet. "That'll be Derek." she muttered, and headed out of the room to go to the door. Mulder followed a little way behind her. Scully opened the door, and sure enough the good-looking doctor was standing on the porch step. "Umm... Derek, I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand you up." Scully said, her voice embarrassed, "A new case has just come from my superior officer, and I have to catch a flight to Colorado in two and a half hours." From his position behind Scully, Mulder saw the young man's face fall. "That's a shame." he said, "We'll have to do it when you get back instead. - Have you any idea how long you'll be away?" Scully shook her head. "No, I'm sorry." Derek nodded. His gaze came to rest on Mulder, standing just behind Scully, almost protectively. Something in the doctor's face hardened a little. "Have a nice time in Colorado." he said, and turned away from the door. Scully closed it after him as he walked away down the path, and turned to face her partner. "I'd better go and get changed, and then pack to leave." she said, handing the folder back to Mulder. As she turned to go, he spoke to her again. "Scully..." She turned to look at him. He was looking at her really intensely. "You look really beautiful." he said after a moment's silence. Scully's eyes widened in surprise, and then a smile broke onto her face. "Thank you." she murmured, and then turned and went to her room to get ready to leave. * * * A man in a white laboratory coat moved almost silently among the large and expensive machines in the cramped laboratory. Glass conical flasks filled with clear liquids were agitated in incubators. Powerful chromatograph machines analysed tiny samples, and the printers at their sides produced charts of their findings. Infra red lights shone in covered boxes on circular petri dishes of micro-biological samples. On a shelf above a desk in the corner, a row of heavy, well-used appearing textbooks stood, leaning against the wall at the end of the shelf. Claude Aitkenhead sat down at the desk, and made some notes in his journal. A faint smile came to his face as his mind began to take in what was happening. - He was finally getting results. And he had beaten *Them*. Aitkenhead looked at the backs of his hands, and his smile widened. They were coming to look familiar to him now. *They* thought that they had killed him, but he lived on... The scientist looked up at the newspaper clipping attached to the bottom of the shelf above his desk. It was about the latest girl to go missing, - Lula Corvette. - The cutting said that the FBI had been called in to investigate, and he knew who it was that was coming. Adrian Pinslow looked again at the back of Claude Aitkenhead's hands. His smile widened again, an insane smile. *They* thought that they had killed him after the experiment he had been working on had been terminated. But he had managed to save himself with a discipline he had been taught in his youth... Who would think that a man who was dead could live on in another man's body? Pinslow hardly believed it himself, and yet here he was, alive and well in the body of another scientist who worked for *Them*. He was no longer working on the alien-human hybrids, but he was still in genetics, and that was his real life's love. And Agent Mulder was coming to Denver to investigate the disappearances. At last he would have the chance for his revenge. He had waited so long for the chance to hurt Mulder, whom he saw as being responsible for the termination of the experiment, and ultimately his own "death". It wouldn't be much longer. * * * Scully paused at the end of the corridor in Denver National Airport, and turned to look for her partner. They had been separated in customs as a rather young and exuberant customs officer had taken a dislike to Mulder's appearance. It would have been simple enough had Mulder just shown his Bureau ID, but, enjoying the prospect of embarrassing the over-confident rookie, Mulder had only shown his licence to carry a firearm. He was waiting for the kid to get in a bit deeper before letting on who he really was. - Typical Mulder... As their new case wasn't an X-file, Mulder hadn't got over-hyped up before they left Washington, which meant that he hadn't crashed during the journey, which was always a good start. Scully, however, was tired from the flight, - she hated red-eye flights, especially away from the east coast. - She wished that her partner would show a little more consideration so that they could get to their hotel, and get a little more sleep than the brief nap she had managed on the 'plane between the bouts of turbulence. Mulder, of course, had slept like a baby. In his Washington apartment he seemed to find sleep impossible unless he was in some contorted position on his couch in front of the t.v. - Anywhere else, however... Seeing Mulder approaching, a grin on his face, Scully sighed and rolled her eyes in a gesture of her impatience. He recognised the signs at last and hurried to join her. They proceeded towards the airport main exit. A burly man in a police officer's uniform waited near the door. Mulder recognised the face before his partner, - benefits of a photographic memory, - and approached the police chief in charge of the disappearances case. "Chief Martins?" Mulder enquired, holding out his hand. Martins took it, and shook it firmly, his grip testing Mulder's own calibre as he scrutinised the agent with small dark eyes. "Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully." Mulder introduced himself and his partner. Scully nodded to the police chief, who looked her up and down before returning his gaze to Mulder. She groaned internally. - Another man who thinks women aren't good enough for a job like this, she thought. "Good morning, Agent Mulder, Agent Scully." Martins greeted them, "I've got the car waiting outside. - I imagine you'll want to go to your hotel and take a rest after your journey." "Thank you." Scully said. Martins led them out to a squad car. Scully got into the back seat, while Mulder sat alongside the police chief. "I imagine you've been told most of the information we've got." Martins continued as he started the engine, and manoeuvred out of the airport car park, "There've been just the three to go missing so far, and we're pretty sure they're connected. Becky Isling disappeared seven days ago, Sid Mawley three days ago, and Lula Corvette just over a day ago. The one bit of information that you might not know, is that Becky Isling turned up yesterday evening." "Turned up?" Scully asked. Martins glanced at her in his rear view mirror. "She arrived at her home, and her parents called me to tell me she was back. I don't know much more than that. - I haven't sent any of my people over there yet, I figured you'd be going once you got here." "Did she say anything about what had happened to her?" Mulder asked, and from the tone of his voice Scully immediately knew that her partner's interest had been caught. "No, that's all I know." Martins replied. There was silence for a few minutes, and then the police chief pulled up outside the "Golden Gate Hotel". The two agents got out of the squad car, thanked him, and then went inside as the sky started to lighten with the oncoming dawn to get a little sleep before they started work. * * * Mulder jogged up the steps to the front door of the suburban house. He turned to look at the street behind him as Scully joined him at the front door of the Isling household. It was a quiet, friendly-looking upper class street, with well-tended lawns stretching down to the sidewalk, highly polished cars standing in the driveways, and large houses with conservatories and extensions on the sides. Scully faced the blinding whiteness of the PVC door of the house, and heard the locks inside being released. The door opened a little way, and a pale woman with short blonde, bobbed hair looked out at the two agents. "Mrs Isling?" Scully asked, and held up her FBI identification with her left hand. The woman nodded. "Special Agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, with the FBI. - We're investigating the recent spate of disappearances. Can we come in?" "Yes..." the woman said, sounding a little dazed. "Is your daughter, Becky, in, Mrs Isling?" Mulder asked, as he followed his partner into the house. The woman nodded. "She's in her room. - She's really shaken up." "Do you mind if we go and talk to her?" Scully asked gently. The woman stared at her for a moment, and then shook her head. "I'll take you upstairs." she said. She led the two agents up the stairs to a wooden door, which she knocked on hesitantly. A voice on the other side of the door answered, and she pushed it open a little way. Around the side of the door, Mulder and Scully could see a girl in her early twenties sitting on a queen-sized bed, reading a book. "Becky, honey, these people are from the FBI. - They want to ask you a few questions about your disappearance." "Okay." the girl replied. Mrs Isling pushed the door open a little further, and let the two agents enter the room. Then she turned and went back downstairs. "Good morning, Becky." Scully greeted the girl with a smile, "I'm Dana Scully, and this is my partner, Fox Mulder." "Hi." Becky greeted them. Scully pulled a chair over from the desk in the corner, and sat at the side of the bed. Mulder remained standing, his eyes wandering around the room, taking in as much information as he could about the girl they were interviewing. "How much do you remember about your disappearance, Becky?" Scully asked. Becky shook her head. "I don't really remember anything." she replied, "I just woke up on a bench in the park yesterday evening. I came back here." "What about before you disappeared? Do you remember what happened to you?" "No... not really." "What were you doing?" Scully persisted gently. "Umm... sleeping, I guess. - I went to bed, and when I woke up I was in the park." Scully frowned slightly. Something about this just didn't sit right. The girl didn't seem to remember things from *before* her disappearance, let alone the disappearance itself. "Becky," Mulder spoke to get the young woman's attention, "have you ever suffered lost time in the past?" "I don't understand." "Have you ever had unexplained sections of lost time, - blackouts, or time moving on without you being aware of it?" Mulder expanded. Becky pursed her lips in confusion, and shook her head. "I don't know what you mean. - I don't think so." "I want you to think back to the night you disappeared. - Do you remember hearing any strange noises, or seeing any lights?" "Mulder..." Scully said warningly. He glanced at her momentarily and then lowered his head slightly. "Becky, you may find that your memory of what happened starts to come back as your body recovers from your experience. You may remember things in dreams or daydreams. - If you do, we'd like you to get in touch." On cue, Mulder produced a plain white business card from the pocket of his suit jacket, and handed it to the young woman. it had his cell phone number on it. "You can contact me on that number at any time." he told her. She nodded, still looking more than a little dazed. The two agents thanked her, and moved to the door. Once outside the house, Scully rounded on her partner. "Mulder, I don't know what you thought you were doing in there, but that girl is confused enough without you spouting abduction theories at her." "Did I mention...?" "Come on, Mulder, we both know perfectly well what your explanation for this case is, but until one of the victims comes back with a reasonable-sounding memory, or concrete proof of visiting a UFO, we've got an investigation to do." she turned on her heel, and headed for the car. Mulder sighed, and followed her. * * * Mulder grinned at his partner as she slid into her seat opposite him at the table in the breakfast room of the "Golden Gates Hotel". He had beaten her to breakfast this morning, - for once, and had already ordered for her. Being so close after working together for so long, Mulder had known exactly what his partner would want for breakfast on the second day of their investigation. A pot of coffee stood just in front of Scully's place, where a bowl of muesli was waiting, with a jug of ice cold milk beside it. He had known, just as she would have known without looking at his plate that her partner would be eating something to raise his cholesterol level. Bacon, two fired eggs, and a slice of toast adorned his plate, making Scully's stomach churn in disgust so early in the morning. A cup of herbal tea stood near his right hand. His suit jacket hung over the chair behind him. "So what's our plans for today?" Scully asked, pouring milk over her muesli. "I thought we'd visit the scene of Lula Corvette's disappearance, and speak to some of her neighbours." Mulder replied, slicing his bacon with a gleaming knife and fork. "Do you have any ideas for what's happening, - other than the abduction angle?" Scully asked. Mulder shrugged. "Not yet, - but I'm working on it." He took a sip from his cup, and then nearly dropped the cup in his haste to reach his jacket when his cell phone rang. "Mulder... Yes, Chief Martins... He did? - This morning?... Yes, I understand. - Scully and I will go over there straight away." Mulder disconnected, and put the phone down on the table at the side of his plate. "That was Martins. Sid Mawley reappeared last night. I said we'd go straight over." * * * Half an hour later saw the partners at a medium sized house in a Denver suburb. They had visited the house the previous day in order to speak to Lettie Mawley, the missing man's wife. She knew very little of his disappearance, - only that he had gone out one evening, and not come back. Scully knocked on the door a second time, and was rewarded a moment later by the sound of footsteps. Mrs Mawley opened the door. "Good morning, Mrs Mawley." Scully greeted her, "Chief Martins called us, - he said your husband reappeared this morning?" Lettie Mawley nodded, and stepped back to let the agents enter the house. She was a petite, timid woman, but this morning seemed even more nervous that she had the previous day. "Will you go and talk to him?" she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "There's something wrong. - I know it sounds terrible to say it, but that man's not my husband. I'm sure it's not Sid." "But who else could it be, Mrs Mawley?" Mulder asked gently. She shook her head in despair. "I don't know." she whimpered, her arms gesturing about her uncertainly, "I'll go and get you some coffee..." With that she turned and headed towards the kitchen. The partners looked at each other, exchanging knowing glances, and then proceeded into the house, looking into the rooms they passed until they saw the man in the case-file photograph, sitting in a cane chair in the back room. "Mr Sid Mawley?" Scully asked, entering the room. The man turned his head after a moment, and fixed his gaze on them. "Yeah?" "Federal Agents, Mr Mawley." Mulder continued, "This is Agent Scully. I'm Agent Mulder. - We're investigating the disappearances that have been occurring in Denver over the last two weeks." "Oh." The reply was disinterested. "Mr Mawley, do you remember what happened to you on the night you went missing?" Scully asked. The man shook his head. "Can you tell us where you went that night?" "I don't remember." the man replied. Scully raised an eyebrow, and glanced over at her partner. "Is there anything you do remember from the events of the last few days?" Mulder asked, "Anything at all?" Behind them, Lettie Mawley entered the room with a tray supporting three cups of coffee. She moved to Scully first, who thanked her, and took a cup, then to Mulder, and then to her husband. Sid Mawley turned in his seat to look up at his wife as he reached for his drink. His arm brushed against hers as he reached for the cup, and she screamed, dropping the tray to the floor, and ran from the room. Sid Mawley yelped. Hot coffee had spilled down the side of his up-reaching arm, and was burning him. He was wearing a t-shirt, and the hot liquid was scalding his skin. Scully moved quickly to his side. "Let me take a look, Mr Mawley, I'm a medical doctor." She took his arm in her hands, and looked at the reddening. Mulder was watching over her shoulder, and they both saw the already peeling, reddened skin start to pale and heal. Within a few minutes the burn had healed, leaving only a whitish scar of an old wound. Scully stared in amazement. Mulder took control of the situation. "Well, if you don't remember anything, Mr Mawley, we'll be on our way. - If you need to get in contact with us, or you remember anything at all about what happened to you, I can be reached at this number." Mulder dropped a business card onto the arm of the cane chair, and then put his hand on Scully's arm, urging her from her crouched position, and to the door. They quickly left the house. Once outside, and safely in their car, Scully took a deep breath. "Okay Mulder, tell me what just happened in there. - Did we just see that scald heal in less than two minutes?" "Mm-hm." Mulder nodded. "So how could that *happen*?" Scully cried. Mulder shook his head. "Well, I've one theory, but there's absolutely nothing to back it up." "And what's that?" "That man is a clone of Sid Mawley. - Genetically identical, but grown up in a laboratory, and sent back instead of the real Sid Mawley. That's why he doesn't remember anything, and explains his accelerated healing rate. Becky Isling may well be similarly affected." "A clone?" Scully repeated, disbelief in her voice. Mulder nodded. "It's far out, I know, but so far what else do we have to go on?" Mulder turned the engine on, and Scully sighed as she fastened her seat-belt as they pulled away from the kerb. * * * It was dark in the "Golden Gate" hotel room. Everything was quiet and still. The curtained window was a faint patch of grey against the black of the rest of the room, the orange sodium light outside not quite extinguished by the thick curtains. Faint outlines of the furniture in the room were visible. A double bed stood in the centre of the room. To the left of it was a small cupboard, beyond which was the window. To the right of it was a wardrobe, and a small table. Near to the door, at the foot of the bed, was a coffee table with a television on it. The remote rested on the covers of the double bed, not far from the hand of the man sleeping there. An alarm clock on the bedside cabinet glowed in the dark. It said 11.21pm. Mulder sighed, and turned over in bed, one arm thrashing out to the side as he pushed someone away in his dreams. He and Scully had retired early, as they had the previous night, in order to try and overcome their tiredness from the overnight journey to Denver two days ago. A crack of light showed under the door to Mulder's room. A shadow passed over it, and then the light disappeared. A click on the other side of the door indicated that someone had unlocked it, but the sleeping agent heard nothing. The door opened a little way, and then closed again. Mulder turned his head in sleep. A dark figure moved across the hotel room, creeping towards the sleeping form. Reaching the bed, he placed one hand holding a rag over the sleeping agent's mouth and nose. Mulder awoke instantly. He grabbed the arm of the hand against his face, and tried to force it away, but the sedative was already taking hold. The harder he struggled, the faster it affected him. He tried to cry out, but the cloth muffled his words. A dizziness smote him, and his hands dropped back onto the bedclothes. Exhausted, a different kind of sleep took him. * * * Agent Scully knocked on the door of Chief Martins' office, opened it, and went in without waiting for an invitation. Martins was at his desk, and he looked up at the female agent in slight exasperation. "Don't they teach manners at the FBI Academy?" he asked irritably. "I've got better manners than you, you good-for-nothing chauvinist." Scully retorted, her hands on her hips, "Who gave you the right to determine what good manners are? - Because if you had any, you'd treat women with the respect they deserve, instead of assuming that the so-called "weaker sex" are incapable of carrying out anything more complicated than cooking a roast chicken!" Martins raised his eyebrows and sat back in his seat under Scully's sudden uncharacteristic onslaught. "Just because we don't brag about our abilities all the time, doesn't mean we don't have any. And just because we're partnered with male colleagues doesn't mean that we need them to support us in order to carry out our jobs!" "Okay, okay, calm down!" Martins raised his hands in defense against Scully's anger. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. - She hadn't liked Martins' attitude since the start of the case, and now she just wasn't willing to put up with it. Martins looked at her curiously. "What's the matter, Agent Scully?" he asked. Scully sighed again, "Mulder." she replied, "Agent Mulder, - he went missing from his hotel room last night, apparently a victim of the person we've been searching for." "Mulder...?" Martins looked worried. Scully sat down on the chair in front of his desk. There was a long pause. "I do have *some* good news." Martins added. Scully raised her head and looked at him questioningly. "Lula Corvette returned home last night." Scully stared at the police chief, and then got to her feet suddenly, and headed for the door. He stared after her in disbelief. * * * Scully sat back on her bed in the hotel room, her back against the headboard, and closed her eyes. She raised her left hand to the bridge of her nose to soothe a headache forming there. The case folder was open on the table by the window, but Scully didn't need it any more. Over the last two days she had read it enough to recite it, but still didn't seem to be getting anywhere. She had visited Lula Corvette, and determined that the woman was the same one who had disappeared, and not a clone. Then she had re-visited Becky Isling, and discovered that she was a clone of the girl who had been taken, and still claimed to remember nothing. It was now early morning two days after she had discovered his disappearance, and Scully had still made no headway in her search for her partner. Martins was being a little more cooperative with her since her outburst in his office, but that meant little as there was so little to go on. Scully wondered vaguely if Mulder had been a victim of *Them*, rather than the kidnapper they were investigating. Perhaps there was something about this case which *They* wanted to keep the partners from. If there was, these actions were only increasing her desire to find out what it was. Or if Mulder was a victim of the kidnapper they were pursuing, where was he? Why was somebody kidnapping people, and making clones of some of them to replace them? Scully didn't know the answers to the questions raging in her head, and she didn't know how to go about finding them. There was a knock at the hotel room door. "Come in?" Scully called, one hand reaching towards her gun as the door opened. Her impassive expression dropped when she saw the figure in the doorway. "Mulder?" He stepped into the room. He was dressed in the suit he had worn the day before he went missing. Scully had noticed that it had been taken from his room when she went in the next morning and discovered his disappearance. It was creased from three days wear. His eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep, and the way he held his body gave Scully the impression that he was close to exhaustion. Rising quickly to her feet, she took his hand and drew him into the room, closing the door behind him, and urged him to sit down on the edge of her bed. "Mulder, are you alright?" she asked, her concern showing in her voice. "I'm fine... I think." he replied, "Just... a little confused." "Do you remember what happened to you?" "I... remember someone being in my room... but not much else. Then I woke up in an alleyway a little way from here." "Woke up?" Scully asked, her hands resting on his as he stared down at the floor. He raised his head to look at her face. "I was lying on the ground. - I guess I'd been unconsciouss." "But you don't remember what happened while you were missing?" Mulder shook his head in response. "How long have I been gone?" he asked. "Two days." Scully replied, "Lula Corvette reappeared the night you went missing. She isn't a clone, but she doesn't remember much about what happened to her. - Just that someone grabbed her from behind when she was on her way home from work, and put a rag over her mouth." Mulder raised a hand, and frowned, "That sounds familiar..." he murmured. Scully squeezed his other hand. "No-one else has yet gone missing. - But I've still no clue as to where they're going, or why some of them are being cloned." "Then we'll have to get back to work on that." Mulder said enthusiastically. Scully smiled weakly. "Are you sure you're up to it?" she asked. Mulder nodded. "Let's get things back to normal." he said, and got to his feet. Scully followed him out of the room. * * * Light slowly dawned on Mulder, and he became aware first of the intense cold. This was shortly followed by the realisation that he was lying on a cold, hard surface. Sight and sound quickly followed, and Mulder sat up from where he had lain, and looked about himself. He had been lying on the floor in an alleyway. His clothes, - an old sweat top and a pair of jeans that he didn't recognise, - were dirty and wet from the puddle of rainwater he had been lying in. At least, he hoped it was rainwater. He ran one hand through his tousled dark hair, and tried to get to his feet. Dizziness swam over him, and he had to sit for a minute to shake off the feelings of nausea that accompanied it. Struggling to his feet, Mulder stretched his stiff muscles and joints, and then leaned against the alley wall as another wave of nausea swept over him. With it came a sudden picture, like a memory. He saw his hands, covered by another pair of hands, which were smaller, and more feminine. The picture changed, and he saw that the hands were those of his partner, and she was looking at him in concern. Then the picture was gone. Mulder shook his head in confusion, but this only served to add to the feelings of nausea. After a few moments, he began to move towards the end of the alleyway. Reaching the street, Mulder looked around and saw that it was deserted, - possibly a good thing given his appearance. - Recognising the street, he set off towards the hotel, his mind vaguely pondering his recent whereabouts. As he walked towards the hotel, he was repeatedly assaulted by the nauseous feelings, and glimpses of what he took to be memories sparked by whatever drug he had been given. He glimpsed his hotel room, and then the inside of the hotel elevator. Shaking his head to clear the pictures only served to worsen the nausea. As he approached the hotel, Mulder saw Scully come out of the door. She was smiling, and turning back to talk to someone. As he paused for a moment in the street, the person came out of the hotel, and followed Scully down the steps. Mulder's breathing stopped for a moment. - It was him. He was the man with Scully... - But that wasn't possible. The man with his partner must be another clone, like the ones returned instead of Sid Mawley and Becky Isling. Mulder started to move towards his partner again, but she had already got into the rental car they were currently driving with the other Mulder, and drove away before she saw him. He stared after her in surprised disbelief, and then shook his head, and went into the hotel. - He wanted some clean clothes and a shower before going after Scully or working any more on the case. * * * Mulder sat down on a wooden chair just behind the door of his hotel room to wait for the return of Scully and his alter ego. He had showered and dressed in one of the suits from his wardrobe, and felt reasonably human again, although the nauseous spells were still affecting him. They were less frequent now, but he was still getting the odd memory-pictures, and these were becoming more frequent. He saw Scully most often, and usually the pictures were of her legs. He knew his gaze often lingered where it shouldn't if he considered his relationship with his partner entirely professional, but he hadn't realised he did it quite as much as the pictures suggested, or that it was so much on his mind. Footsteps in the corridor caught Mulder's attention. He tensed, wishing he had his gun, but guessing that his clone must have it. - That would be something more to deal with when his partner returned. - The footsteps passed the door, and grew quieter. Mulder relaxed slowly. Another memory-picture came to him, this time of the front of the hotel through the windscreen of the rental car he and Scully had been using. Mulder shook off the picture, and forced himself to stay alert. Minutes later he heard more footsteps outside, and then Scully's voice in the corridor. "I'll just go into my room and wash up. - Then I'll come over." There was a faint click as Scully apparently opened the door to her room, then a louder one as Mulder's clone opened the door to his room. The door opened. Mulder tensed, rising to his feet. The man entered, pushing the door closed behind him, and Mulder pounced. With the slight advantage of surprise, and the fact that his alter ego hadn't had defense training, Mulder managed to disarm the man, tossing the gun out of reach when he realised that the man's identical strength made their struggle almost equal. Having knocked the man to the floor, Mulder strived to gain control of the situation, but his double was fighting back with equal determination, and neither of them were winning the cause. They rolled across the floor, punching and kicking, each trying to pin the other's hands, but only managing it for short seconds at a time. The door to the room opened, and Scully came in. Seeing the fight in progress, she drew her weapon, half crouching as she aimed it at the two men. A frown came to her face as she realised that both the men in the room looked like her partner. "Stop!" she yelled. They paused in their struggle, and both looked up at her, their hands locked. "Release each other, this instant." Her voice was quieter, calmer. The two men looked at each other, and then back at her. "I can't Scully, he'll..." one began. "He'll kill us both if I..." the other started. Scully stared from one to the other. "Get up." she ordered, her gun on both of them, flicking from one to the other, "And stay together. - The first one of you to try and move away gets shot." "Okay." the first man agreed. The second nodded. They rose to their feet slowly, releasing the grip they had on each other. Scully's eyes flicked between the two. "Now what's going on here?" she asked, "You first." she nodded towards the Mulder nearest the window. "I woke up in an alleyway this morning, and when I got back here I saw you with this man. - He's another clone." "When I got back with you just now I came in here and he jumped me." the second Mulder put in, "You've been with me until now, you know who I am. - He doesn't even deny that he's new here." "I don't." the first Mulder agreed. Scully looked from one man to the other, and shook her head very slightly. "I'm going to handcuff you both," she began, "and then test you. - The one who passes the test will be released. - The clones have accelerated rates of healing, so I will prick both your fingers, and if one heals quicker than the other, that will determine the difference between you." "Okay." the first Mulder nodded, and winced as another wave of nausea hit him. This would be simple enough. "Alright." the second Mulder agreed. The first looked at him in surprise. - Surely the clone realised he was about to be trapped? Scully glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on Mulder's handcuffs, on the floor where they had been dropped during the fight. She picked them up, and tossed them to the first Mulder. Then she tossed her own to the second Mulder. "Put them on." she ordered. Mulder slipped the handcuffs around his wrists, and watched as his alter ego did the same. Scully kept her gun on both of them as they cuffed themselves, and then stepped forward to make sure they were secure. Satisfied, she picked up her bag from where she had dropped it upon entering the room, and took out a finger-pricker. Mulder glanced at his alter ego, wondering what it was the man had planned to get himself out of this. - Perhaps he had just resigned himself to the fact he was about to be caught. "Hold out your hands." Scully ordered. Both men held their cuffed hands in front of them as she stepped forward, and sharply jabbed their left index fingers. All three watched as the blood welled in the two tiny wounds. Mulder glanced towards his alter ego, tense for any sudden attempt at escape which might ensue when the case was decided, and then back at his own finger. In horror he felt the tingle of healing, and he stared at the cut on his finger as the blood stopped flowing, and the wound healed over. Both Mulder's alter ego and Scully had noticed the change as well. Scully brushed the drop of blood from his finger, and they both stared at the puncture mark, now barely visible. The other man's finger was still dripping. Mulder raised horrified eyes to meet the icy-blue eyes of his partner. "Scully, I..." he trailed off, pain in his eyes as he looked again at the offending healed wound. How could *he* be the clone? Was it possible that his memories had been duplicated as well as his body? - But if so, why had the Sid Mawley clone not remembered more of his own life? Why had it been so obvious that he wasn't the man who had gone missing? Scully was undoing the handcuffs of the man at Mulder's side, and releasing him. Mulder desperately tried to think of something he could say that would prove his identity, but he knew that his scientific and rational-minded partner would dismiss anything he had to say now that science had proved his "identity". "Sorry, Mulder." Scully apologised to the man she had just released, "He does look very like you." "It's okay." the man nodded, and took Mulder's arm, "We'd better take him and have him put in a cell at the police station until we can work out what's going on around here." Scully nodded her agreement, and the two of them hustled Mulder out of the room. * * * Mulder sat alone in the silence of his cell. It had been over an hour since Scully and the man had left him here, and he had been lost in thought for all that time, trying to find a logical explanation for how a clone could have the memories of the original body. He kept coming back to the same two explanations. - Either the original had been copied so exactly that the memories were included, which he didn't think was possible excluding the theoretical possibility of genetic memory, and was anyway unlikely as "Sid Mawley" had remembered nothing of his own life. Or somehow his memories had been displaced into the clone body for some reason, and this had not been done with "Sid Mawley" or "Becky Isling". If the second theory was the correct one, which seemed more bizarre, and yet more likely, that meant that Scully was still with a stranger whom she believed to be her partner. Who that stranger was, Mulder had no idea. Another memory-picture assailed him, again of Scully, this time in her hotel room. Suddenly Mulder straightened against the wall he had been leaning on. These memory-pictures he had been having weren't really memories at all. They were happening at the moment, to his true body, which was with Scully. That lent weight to his hypothesis, and as he considered it further, Mulder began to find links between the ideas. If he had been somehow mentally displaced by another person, and forced into a clone of himself, there must still be some sort of mental attachment to his own brain. That was how he was receiving these images from his body. - There was a link between him and his original brain. If he tried, he might be able to find out who had displaced him, and what was currently happening to his partner. He might even be able to re-take his body... Mulder pushed these ambitious thoughts aside, and concentrated on making the picture become clearer. It made his head hurt a little, but with careful concentration he saw that it was indeed actual events, not a still glimpse of something as he had first believed. He was almost seeing through "his" own eyes. Not shaking off the feelings this time, Mulder allowed himself to slip further into the picture. He could see Scully sitting at her table in her hotel room. She had a map out in front of her, and "he" was looking at it over her shoulder. She was apparently plotting out where people had gone missing from so far, and where they had been returned to. He saw his hand move to a position on the map, and point out the alleyway where he had awoken after his disappearance. Remaining as quiet as he could, Mulder realised he could hear "Mulder"'s thoughts. The man's name was Adrian Pinslow. He was a scientist in the field of genetics. The overwhelming thought in his mind was that of revenge. Revenge against Mulder for causing his death. Mulder frowned slightly, remembering no-one of that name, and concentrated on moving into the man's mind. Pinslow had worked on an experiment involving alien-human hybrids. He had been the top scientist involved, and the experiment had been going successfully. Then an enthusiastic FBI agent named Mulder had discovered the laboratory where the work was taking place, and the decision had been made high up that the experiment must be terminated. Completely terminated. No loose ends were to be left. The work had been destroyed, the notes and files burned, and all the people involved executed. Including Adrian Pinslow. But he had been lucky. He had used a discipline he had been taught been taught in his youth to transfer his consciousness and soul into another body, after casting out the soul in that body into the abyss. He had continued his work, this time in a different field of genetics, but still working for the same shadowy people, and planned his revenge against the man he blamed for the loss of his life. And now he had it. - The ultimate revenge. - To take over that man's entire life, and condemn him to watching it from the position of a genetically identical clone, - but one which everyone knew was a clone. Mulder would never be able to prove what had happened, and would have to watch and cope with seeing Pinslow take over everything in "his" life, and turn it to his own advantage. And one advantage to start with was sitting right in front of him. Mulder swallowed as he drifted more towards Pinslow's consciouss thoughts. He could still see Scully thought "Mulder's" eyes, poring over the map. From the way she looked at him, there must have been something between her and her partner. Something he could certainly turn to his advantage. "Mulder's" gaze dropped from the map to the line of Scully's neck where it curved down to her right shoulder. He leaned forward slightly, and Mulder realised in horror that he was trying to get a glimpse down the front of Scully's blouse, - and wasn't being entirely unsuccessful, either. Mulder tried hard to force his own will on the body that had been his, but could make no impression on it. His headache growing, he was forced to retreat a little, and watch was happening far away in the hotel room with growing discomfort and guilt. * * * Scully straightened the map out of the table in her hotel room with both hands, flattening it out. The door opened behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Mulder entering the room. "What've you got?" he asked. "A street map of Denver." Scully replied, "I'm going to mark on the places where people went missing, and the places where they found themselves afterwards, to see it there's any geographical link." Mulder nodded, and leaned over Scully's shoulder to get a closer look at the map. "Becky Isling was taken from her home, here," Scully marked a cross on the map, "and found here." She marked a circle at the approximate area "Becky" had given her when she had visited her the second time. "Sid Mawley we think was taken from around here, and reappeared here." Two more circles. "And Lula Corvette was taken from here, and awoke here." Two more crosses. "Then you were taken from here," Scully marked the hotel with a cross, "and found...?" "Here." Mulder reached forward, and touched his finger to an alleyway on the map. Scully marked another cross on that spot. she surveyed the map critically. "I don't see anything obvious linking those places, do you, Mulder?" Scully turned to look up at her partner, who didn't seem to be listening. "Mulder?" "N...no." Mulder winced, and raised his right hand to his right temple. Straightening up slightly, he winced again, and then dropped his hands, heaving a sigh. "Mulder?" Scully's voice was concerned, "Are you alright?" "I... er... I'm fine." he replied after a moment, "Just a bit of a headache. - I guess whatever they used to knock me out is still having effects." "I guess so." Scully agreed, a little uncertainly. She turned back to the map, and then shook her head, and folded it up. "I don't think this is helping. - Let's go for an early lunch, and then try and get some proper investigating done." * * * Mulder sat silent in his cell, waiting for his headache to subside. His exertions of the morning had left his feeling vaguely disillusioned, but at the same time, hopeful. He no longer believed he could re-take his body, but if he could just control it enough to make Scully believe that the "clone" was in fact her true partner, it might not matter. - After all, this body was his own, just with accelerated healing powers... But what could he say or do to make Scully believe, it he ever managed to gain enough control to try and give her a message? Still vaguely aware of the images coming from his brain. He could see Scully across a table in the "Golden Gate" dining room, eating her lunch. A pang of guilt went through him, knowing that she was in the hands of vengeful man, who planned to use her in the worst way... But there it was. - What he needed to prove to Scully that the man she was with was not her partner. - Now he had only to get enough control... Mulder relaxed, trying to make his headache subside before re-entering "his" brain, and watched from a distance. As Scully and "Mulder" returned to Scully's room after lunch before leaving to continue their investigation, Mulder made his best effort. Sliding easily into "his" brain, Mulder became acutely aware of what "he" could see and hear. He might well have been there himself. Concentrating hard, he tried to control what "Mulder" said. It was difficult, and he only managed to force a gurgle. He saw Scully turn around, her face filled with concern at his apparent distress. "Mulder" was fighting Mulder off, which virtually incapacitated both men. Scully moved "Mulder" to her bed, and made him lie down. Mulder took a deep breath, and made his supreme effort. * * * Scully unlocked her hotel room door, and went inside, with Mulder a little way behind her. She went over to the table by the window, and picked up the case-file, although why she had wanted to take it with her, she wasn't really sure, since she knew all the information in it by heart now anyway. Behind her, Mulder made a strangled noise, and she turned in concern to see what was the matter. His eyes were glazed, and he was clutching his head again. "Mulder?" her voice showed her concern. He made no response, not even acknowledging her. Fearful for his health, she pushed him gently towards her bed, and urged him to lie down. As his head came to rest on the pillow, his eyes focused on her, and the expression in their hazel orbs was one of pain. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, as though he found it difficult to speak. "Scully, you made a mistake, but don't blame yourself for it like I would. - Help me..." his voice trailed off, and his eyes glazed again. Scully frowned in confusion. A moment later his eyes cleared again, and he seemed to visibly cheer up. He tried to sit up, but she held him down. "Are you alright, Mulder?" she asked. "I'm okay, - just the headache." Mulder replied with a smile which seemed a little strange after the look of pain she had just been graced with. "But you said..." she trailed off, and shrugged. Mulder looked at her as though he didn't understand what she was saying. She got up from the side of the bed where she had sat as he spoke to her, and moved to the table, anxious thoughts racing through her head. Blame herself. - That was just like her partner. He would have blamed himself for any mistake he made regarding her. But what mistake had she made that she shouldn't blame herself for? The only decision she had made recently was when she tested the two men in Mulder's room to see which was the clone... Which was the clone. Had that been her mistake? Scully shook her head in confusion as she tried to organise her thoughts. The man in the cell at the police station was the clone. His rapid healing had proved that. So why was the man now with her not acting quite like himself either? Was it just the drug? Scully thought again about his recent words. "... don't blame yourself for it like I would..." That was her partner speaking. - He knew that if he had made a mistake he would have blamed himself for it, just as she knew he would. - So he must be her partner. But it seemed it had been a struggle for him to speak, almost as though he had needed to gain control over his own mouth in order to say the words... Going on a hunch that Scully didn't even dare to fully form in her own mind because she felt it was right, but also instinctively felt she would have to turn away from if she analysed it at all, she turned back to her partner, who was now sitting up on the bed. "Are you coming?" she asked. He nodded, and got to his feet. Looking down at the case-file in her hands, she commented, "You know, this case reminds me a little of the disappearances we investigated in Minneapolis." Scully waited for her partner's contradiction. - The case they had investigated in Minneapolis had involved an escalating death fetishist, not disappearances, and even if his photographic memory didn't remind him of that fact, the fact that she herself had nearly fallen victim to the deranged killer she knew had imprinted the case forever in both their minds. She waited for the contradiction, but it never came. Mulder merely nodded his head in silent agreement, and followed her as she moved towards the door. * * * Scully hurried along the dark streets of Denver. She glanced at her watch. - It was 11.21pm. - She had left her partner, or the man posing as her partner, or whoever he was, in his room at the hotel, and had set off to try and find a way of setting her "mistake" to rights. She was still very uncertain about what she was doing, and the sanity of her reasoning, but she hoped that eventually, one way or another, everything would turn out right. - But before she could sort out her partner's problems, she had to get a little closer to solving the case. Scully hurried up the street where "Sid Mawley" lived, and up to his front door. She knocked hard, and slightly impatiently. The door was opened a few moments later by Lettie Mawley. "Good evening, Mrs Mawley, - I'm sorry to call so late." Scully apologised, as she stepped inside the house without waiting to be invited, "I need to speak to your husband. - It's quite urgent." "He's... in the front room." Lettie Mawley told the agent, her voice low and uncertain. She put a hand on Scully's arm as she started to move towards the door the woman had indicated. "Have you made any progress with the case?" she asked. "I believe so." Scully said, guardedly. "I heard that your partner went missing, the same as my husband did." Scully nodded, but didn't answer. She went into the main room where she saw "Sid Mawley" sitting in an armchair in his dressing gown, a newspaper open in front of him. She glanced back at the doorway, where Lettie was standing, and the woman hurriedly closed the door. Scully was left alone in the room with the clone of Sid Mawley. She sat down on the sofa. "Mr Mawley," she began carefully, hoping she wasn't about to make a big mistake, "I want to help you. - I know that you're only a clone of the real Mr Mawley..." The man closed his paper, and folded it quickly. Scully continued. "You're genetically identical to the Mr Mawley who went missing, but that doesn't make you the same person. - You're an individual in your own right. - You can't take over Mr Mawley's life like this, but if you help me, I can make sure you get to have an independent life of your own." The man stared at her, and then lowered his head slightly. "I knew it wouldn't work." he muttered, "When she spilled the coffee on my arm I knew someone would work it out, - I just hoped that no-one would guess something so weird." "You want to have a life of your own, don't you?" Scully persisted. He nodded slowly. "Then help me. - Can you remember where you were "born"?" "I remember..." he began, nodding his head. Scully sat forward, and listened to the story unfold. * * * Scully hurried down the stairs to the cell where Mulder was being held. She paused at the bars, and looked in at the man who looked so much like her partner. She knew that his body was cloned from the body of the man back at the hotel, - she had proved that much with her test that morning, - but was his mind that of her partner? "Mulder?" He looked up at the sound of her voice, and a faint smile crossed his face. "Scully!" he exclaimed, "You *did* hear me!" Then he raised one hand to his temples suddenly in a gesture that seemed incredibly familiar to Scully. "Hear you?" she questioned. "I didn't know of you had. - It hurts so much to fight my way back into my brain that it makes my head ache, and I can only do it for short periods. - Makes his head ache as well, I imagine." Scully nodded, but her expression was still one of uncertainty. "How do I know who you really are?" she asked. "Ask me something." he exclaimed, "Ask me anything about our relationship, our past cases... He doesn't remember, - he can't, - let me prove that I can." "Okay..." Scully said carefully, "What was the first thing I ever heard you say after I'd been assigned as your partner?" ""Nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted."" Mulder quoted. - Sometimes a photographic memory came in very useful. "What was your impression of the appearance of the female Jersey Devil?" "She was beautiful." Mulder replied. "What did you tell me when I locked you up in Icy Cape?" "That I would be safer than you while I was locked in the vault." "What was your initial explanation for the ineffectiveness of the road blocks set up in the Reardon and Simmons murders case?" "I thought they were looking for the kidnappers in the wrong direction." Mulder answered, "They should have been looking up. - I feel like a candidate on "Twenty Questions"!" "What did Boggs tell me just before he was executed?" "You don't know. - You didn't go." Mulder got to his feet and moved over to the bars of his cell, until he was facing his partner, and looking directly into her eyes. "What did you mind for me while I was missing?" "Your cross and chain." Mulder reached through the bars and gently lifted the chain out from inside the collar of Scully's blouse. "And what happened on the bridge in Bethesda?" "I traded the girl I believed to be my sister for your life. The alien bounty hunter took her and they fell off the bridge." Pain shot through Mulder's eyes at the memory, and it was that more than anything else which told Scully that the man she was talking to had her partner's mind, even if only a clone of his body. She took out the key to the cell door. "I've been doing some investigating of my own..." she began. * * * Scully paused outside the door to the laboratory that "Sid Mawley" had told her about, and unholstered her gun. She glanced back at "Mulder" to see if he was ready. "Okay?" she asked. He nodded. "Are you sure about this?" he asked. She nodded. "Positive." Inserting her skeleton key into the Yale lock, Scully unlocked the door. It swung open a little way, and they went inside. They were in a lighted corridor, with doors off it along it's length. Scully moved quickly along it, looking for the door she wanted, and peering through the darkened panes of glass in each door. She paused at one, and tried it. - It was locked. - Peering closer, she stared at the surgery room she saw inside. It looked as though someone had been planning a little medical experiment. Moving on to another door, Scully saw four green-fluid-filled tanks, each containing what appeared to be a small mass of tissue. It looked like the scene Mulder had described to her two and a half years ago when he found a secret lab. growing alien-human hybrids. "Sid Mawley" had described this place as the room where he had been created. Scully moved on along the corridor to the next door on the left, and took out her skeleton key again. She pushed open the door. Inside the darkened room were six beds. Three of them were occupied, - two on one side of the room, and one on the far side. - As Scully looked closer she recognised Becky Isling and Sid Mawley sitting on adjacent beds, and Lula Corvette's clone on the far side of the room. All three looked up at her, squinting at the light from the corridor behind her. Scully moved further into the room, and felt, rather than saw, "Mulder" follow her. She smiled at the three worried occupants. "It's alright, Becky, Sid,... "Lula", - we've come to get you out." "You have?" There was relief in Becky's voice. "How did you find us?" Sid asked. "Your clone helped." Scully replied. Sid's face turned angry, and he shot a glance at "Lula", who had also risen to her feet with the other two as "Mulder" and Scully had come into the room. A shot rang out from the door. Scully whirled to see the Mulder-clone standing in the open doorway. To her left, "Mulder" had been hit. "Mulder!" she cried, aghast. Raising her weapon, she fired two shots at the clone standing in the doorway, who fell backwards to the floor. Then she crossed the room to "Mulder"'s side. He had been hit in the back, just above his shoulder blades, and lay on his front on the cold stone floor of the room. Scully carefully removed his suit jacket, and ripped open the holed shirt across his back to examine the wound. When she spoke again, her voice was worried. "You're losing a lot of blood." she muttered, using the piece of torn shirt to try and stem the flow. After a few moments of apparently fruitless efforts, she sighed, and shook her head in despair, her hands still working to try and stop the vital liquid leaking away. "I can't stop it!" she cried. "Mulder" turned his head towards her, and looked up at her face. What he saw there was the horror of failure. After taking this in for a moment, his body suddenly went limp. On the far side of the room, "Lula" stiffened, as though in pain. Scully looked up from what she was doing, and saw this. "Grab her!" she cried to Becky and Sid, indicating "Lula". They rushed over to the clone, and restrained her on the bed she had been lying on. Scully quickly fastened the piece of torn shirt across the bullet-wound properly so that it stopped the blood flow, and then got to her feet. She went to the Mulder-clone lying in the doorway, and checked for a pulse. Her face filled with horror when she didn't find one. She rushed back to the man lying on the floor. "Mulder?" she asked, her voice full of desperate hope. She put her fingers to his neck and found a pulse, as she had known she would. "Mulder?" After a long moment, his eyes flickered open, and his gaze fixed on her face. "Hi." he murmured, "I'm back." He winced as he tried to turn over, and raised his right hand to his wounded left shoulder, "But I don't know how I'm going to explain to Skinner that I shot myself." he said with a rueful smile. Scully returned the smile. * * * Mulder and Scully sat in front of Assistant Director Walter Skinner's desk, waiting for him to finish reading their case report, and the questions to begin. It was two days since they had returned from Colorado, and they had spent the intervening time writing up their personal field reports, and gathering up the last bits of evidence they needed for their case. - Skinner wasn't going to like what they had found. Scully smoothed her dark blue skirt over her knees, and put one hand to her hair to check it was in place. For once even Mulder sat up straight on his chair, and tried to look presentable. Skinner looked up from the file, and removed his glasses for a moment to squeeze the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb, before replacing them. "So..." he began carefully, "The disappearances in Denver were due to an experiment in cloning being carried out?" "Yes, sir." Scully agreed, nodding her head. "And the main scientist involved with this was...?" "Claude Aitkenhead, - although he was really Adrian Pinslow." Mulder supplied. Skinner nodded slightly, as though humouring the agent. "This Adrian Pinslow had a grudge against you, Agent Mulder?" "Yes, sir. - My actions in a case Agent Scully and I investigated two and a half years ago resulted in the termination of a secret experiment into alien-human hybrids. The termination involved the execution of all the scientists involved, including Adrian Pinslow. "Pinslow survived because he was able to somehow transfer his essence into the body of another scientist." "Claude Aitkenhead." Skinner observed. Mulder nodded. "So this Pinslow kidnapped and cloned you, and then took over your body, confining your "essence" to the clone he had made?" Another nod from Mulder. "Why didn't he simply use the clone himself, and confine you?" "Because he wanted revenge, sir. - By inhabiting my body, he was able to prove himself to be the "original", and me to be the clone. He saw it as punishment for me to have to see what he was doing, - that he was taking over my life." "So Agent Scully realised you were in the clone, and released you, and then found the laboratory where the tests were being carried out. - But why did you find it necessary to shoot each other?" "In order to have Pinslow vacate Agent Mulder's body, we needed to persuade him that he was near death, and provide a suitable body for him to go to. The Lula-clone was a suitable body, - the easiest for him to enter as the clones had less personality than the originals." "So Mulder in his clone's body shot himself..." Skinner's voice was becoming increasingly disbelieving, "... in order to have Pinslow believe he was dying, which you persuaded him of by giving your medical opinion, and pretending to be unable to stop his blood loss." "Yes." Both agents nodded. "So why did you shoot Agent Mulder's clone?" Skinner directed his question to Scully. She shook her head. "I didn't." she replied. "It needed to look like I still believed Pinslow to be the true Mulder, and the Mulder-clone was out of the way. - So I fired two shots over the clone's shoulder, and he dropped to the ground, unhurt." "But the clone died." "I imagine that it couldn't survive after the separation." Mulder put in, "It had never had the chance to build it's own personality like the other clones had." Skinner stared at the two agents in silence for a long moment. "I think we can safely say this case is closed." he said finally, closing the folder, and signing his name on the front of it, "Although I have my doubts that separation from your presence, or your essence's presence would kill someone, Mulder." he added. Scully's lips quirked up at the corners in a small smile. Mulder put on a hurt expression. They got to their feet together, and Scully took the case-file back from Skinner's outstretched hand. "Thank you, sir." she said. Mulder nodded to the Assistant Director, and then they both turned and left the office. They headed quickly down the second floor corridor to the elevator that would take them back to their basement office. Stepping inside the elevator car, Mulder reached to press the button for the basement, and winced at a pain in his shoulder. Scully smiled slightly when she saw his expression. "I've no sympathy for you, Mulder." she said, "After all, *you* shot yourself." "Thanks a lot, Scully." Mulder muttered good-naturedly, and the elevator doors closed over them. The End. I'd greatly appreciate any comments or constructive criticism from fellow X-Philes. Email me at . Danielle Culverson.