DISAPPEARED: FIGHTING TOWARD THE LIGHT by Laura Castellano laurita_castellano@yahoo.com December 28, 1999 - January 15, 2000 Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be. Rating: R for disturbing imagery and references to sex Summary: Mulder has been "disappeared" and he could never guess the evil of their plans for him. ------------------ Prologue: Scene 1-- Disappeared. That's what they call what has happened to me. Disappeared. Gone without a trace. No explanation, no evidence, no body. Nobody. That's who I've seen since they brought me here. Nobody. Three times a day, someone shoves a tray of food through a slot at the bottom of my door. Three times a day they return, half an hour later, to remove the remains. Once I tried keeping the tray out of their reach, in the hopes that they'd be forced to open the door and at least let me see their faces. The slot opened, and a hand (a man's hand, I could tell) reached for the absent tray. When it came up empty, the slot quietly closed, and I could hear faint footsteps receding. After a while, the food I'd left on the tray began to smell, and I capitulated, placing it within reach of the slot. It was taken away without comment when the next meal was brought. And other than that hand, I've seen nobody. Once a day, a bundle containing a clean set of clothing, a towel and a washcloth is brought to me. The same routine is followed, with the hand reaching through the slot to shove in the bundle, and taking away the soiled clothes if they are within reach. As far as I know, the door has not opened once since I arrived. I don't even know how long I've been here, although my best guess is three weeks. I tried counting the meals, at first, to keep track of the days, but soon lost count in the ebb and flow of sleep and the uncertainty of days. The light in my room is never dimmed, never darkened. The room is white, completely white. No color anywhere. Even the clothing is white. At first I tried to talk to the hand that brought me food. "Who are you?" I demanded, bravely to begin with, but with less certainty as time passed. "Why have you brought me here?" No answer was ever made, and my own is the only voice I've heard since I awakened in this room. I threw myself against the door once, over and over, until I feared I would dislocate a shoulder. I stopped then, only out of fear that no medical care would appear should I actually injure myself. I haven't yet reached the point that death is preferable to living in this white, noiseless prison. It doesn't take great deductive skills to reason out *who* has brought me here...if I only knew *why*. Ever since my unscheduled brain surgery, I've kept my nose clean and my eyes strictly on my work. I haven't branched out into any unexplained government conspiracies, nor have I encountered *him* even once. And yet, I feel his presence, and I know he's the mastermind behind this evil scheme to drive me slowly insane. I can almost smell the smoke. There really isn't enough room for pacing here, but I try my best. I always think better when I'm moving. So far my thoughts have led me nowhere, but I won't give up. There must be a way out, a weakness somewhere if I can only stay focused long enough to figure it out. Surely they're looking for me. Surely *she* is looking for me. She'll find me. She has to. She always does, when I need her most. How long can a person live with no visual, or mental, or emotional, or physical stimulation of any kind? How long can we endure no contact with another living person? Isolation can be the worst form of torture. If only I *knew*. If they would just tell me. Instead, I'm just gone, without warning, without word, without a trace. Gone. Disappeared. ----------------- Prologue: Scene 2-- How long have I been here now? I've completely lost track of the days. It could be Saturday or Wednesday or Monday and I'd have no idea. It could be July or September or May, although I don't think it's been as long as six months. I don't think. The only way I've kept even moderately sane is by going over old case files in my head. I'll close my eyes, and picture myself opening the file cabinet, rifling through the files until I find the one I want to work on, and pulling it out. Then I watch (as from a distance) while I seat myself behind my desk and flip open the folder. I can see the red and white border so vividly--god I miss colors. My eyes scan the page, and I can feel them moving back and forth behind my closed lids as I picture each word, each phrase, each case. I've even come up with a few possible solutions for some of them, and when Scully gets me out of here, I'll tell her all about them and she can shoot me down. I wish someone would shoot me down. Shoot me dead. Once, when the mysterious hand shoved my breakfast tray through the slot in the door, I grabbed it and wouldn't let go. I held on for as long as I could, until finally my strength gave out (lack of exercise, I guess) and he managed to jerk his arm back. I wasn't afraid of reprisal at that point--I welcomed the idea that someone might fling open the door and finally confront me--but soon I learned to fear the consequences of misbehaving. They gave me time to finish my breakfast (one last meal for the condemned!), what little I ate, and came back to remove the tray as always. Soon afterwards, the light in my room went out. The heating was turned off (and it was winter when they took me, so it must have still been winter then, for surely I hadn't been here more than a week or two when this happened). I don't know how long I stayed that way, in the dark, in the cold, huddled under the thin white blanket they give me to cover myself, but it was long enough to grow hungry, and then *really* hungry, and finally ravenous. By the time the light and heat came back and the meals resumed, I had learned my lesson. Don't grab the arm. Another time, instead of pulling that arm inside my cell, I shoved my own outside through the slot. How good it felt, just to have a part of myself with the illusion of freedom! But only for a moment, and then the pain began. He must have been standing nearby, silently watching, for my arm had only been seeking its escape for a few minutes when I felt a hand clamp down on my wrist to hold it in place. Then, with a pain so sudden and sharp I was unable to suppress a yelp, he ground his cigarette into my tender forearm. Of course, at first I didn't realize that was what had happened, all I knew was the pain, but when I was finally released, and withdrew my throbbing limb, I saw the telltale, almost perfectly round wound on my arm. I smelled the burning flesh. It's a sickening smell, and between that smell and the pain (which was incredible, considering how small the burn actually was) I made my way to the toilet and quickly heaved up my breakfast. Maybe I'll die from this, I thought. Maybe it will become infected, and slowly spread through my arm, my chest, my entire body until I finally give up and fall into that chilling sleep, never to wake. Maybe I'll escape at last. It soon became apparent that this type of escape was to be denied me, for on my next meal tray was a small foil packet of antibiotic cream and a bandage. I wondered what would happen if I refused to use them--would I finally be able to confront my captors? Would they force me to receive medical treatment, or would they even care? I didn't wait for the answer to that question--I used the stuff. I'm not stupid. I have to be healthy enough to run. When she finds me. ------------------ Prologue: Scene 3-- The Johnson case. I've gone over and over in my mind everything we've worked on lately, desperately trying to puzzle out why they've brought me here. It finally struck me-- Brian Johnson was the key. He is like Gibson Praise. Only they didn't make Brian like Gibson. He was born that way. And I'll bet that means his parents--at least one of them, but probably both--were test subjects. Is this the first time two of their lab rats have mated? Is this the result? And is it something they planned, or the greatest of accidents? Brian Johnson is the reason I've been disappeared. My guess is that neither he nor his parents know what he is. I hadn't yet figured it out, but they must have realized I'd put the pieces together eventually. They'll kill him--kill them all if they haven't already. They didn't create him. They can't control him. They can't take the risk of letting him live. And what powers might he have of which they know nothing? Wrong, Mulder. They won't kill him. They'll study him. He'll be better off dead. The slot at the bottom of my cell door bangs open suddenly, and a tray is shoved through. It is mealtime, although which meal of the day it is time for, I'm uncertain. I ignore the food and continue my thoughts. I have to assume they've taken Brian, and that his parents are dead. If they brought me here just because they knew I'd puzzle it out-- Scully. I've been clinging to the hope that she will find me. Now I wonder if that hope is in vain. Oh god, oh god Scully, have you been taken as well? Have you been disappeared? Will either of us ever see the light of day again? And yet, for some reason they want me alive. Maybe they just intended to get me out of the way until they could get their hands on Brian. But they must have taken him already, I've been here--who the hell knows how long I've been here? Long enough they could have grabbed the kid and let me go a hundred times over. No, they're keeping me here for another reason. Eventually I'll understand what that reason is. After all, I have nothing to do except think. CHAPTER ONE The White Room I can write about it, now that it's all over, but I'll be damned if I'll ever show these pages to anyone. Not even Scully, locked inside her own prison of memories, will have that privilege, in part to preserve my privacy--for I've decided this accounting will be a place where I can record any thoughts I wish without fear of revealing any part of myself I'd rather keep secret. Also because, in the final analysis, Scully has enough to deal with without knowing what I went through in that place. She knows about Melinda, and the baby, and that's enough. If I were a practicing psychologist, I might consider this a therapy of sorts, except that I am not a practicing psychologist, or a practicing anything else at this point, and I have no intention of forcing myself into the really painful memories. It isn't as if we can ever get back to where we were before...everything happened. Therefore, these pages are for my benefit and mine alone. Perhaps one day my children's children will find them and read them...or maybe I'll destroy them as soon as I'm finished writing. I only know I have to get this off my chest--have to *talk* about it, damn it!--and Scully, as I've said, refuses to discuss the entire chain of events. Her way of dealing with it is to ignore it all, taking one day at a time. In her present condition, I can't really blame her, but I can't do that. So this is what happened: I went to sleep in my apartment and woke up in a room. I felt slightly nauseous, which only served to emphasize the obvious--I'd been drugged. It was the only way they could have gotten me there in a state of total oblivion. I was lying on a cot, barely large enough for my tall frame, when I opened my eyes. I blinked a few times, uncertain of what had happened, and willing the wooziness I felt to disappear. The room was white. Everything was white. The walls, floor, ceiling, blanket, sheet, toilet, sink, and the door with the little slot at the bottom. Shit, I can't do this. But I have to, I just fucking have to. Because if I don't, then one day very soon, I'm going to climb to the top of that monument I can see in the distance and throw myself off. ----- I had to stop for a bit, grab a glass of diet soda, and reassure myself that Scully was still nearby, but I think I'm all right now. Scully tells me I should cut back on the caffeine, but I refuse--it makes me feel human. Shit, I'm avoiding. Okay, the room. It was, as I've already mentioned, completely white. The only color in that room was the chrome of the fixtures--and me. It was mind-numbingly white, although it took a little while for the lack of visual stimulation to get to me. Once it did, color became one of the hardest things to live without. I pulled myself to a sitting position, swallowing the nausea which, I discovered to my gratitude, was rapidly diminishing, and looked around. I was wearing a white t-shirt, white sweat pants, no underwear, no shoes or socks. It was disconcerting to realize that not only had I been kidnapped from my apartment, my abductors had obviously changed my clothes while I was unconscious. Since I had no idea, at that point, who had taken me or why, I was somewhat concerned. Hell, I was scared shitless, in truth, but not ready to admit that just yet. I still had some feelings of bravado left, and it occurred to me that the whole thing might be a particularly vivid nightmare. As soon as I had the thought, I knew it wasn't the case. Never in my entire life have I been aware, during a dream, that I was dreaming. The second that thought--'it's just a dream'--crosses my mind, I am painfully aware that I'm wide awake. I got up from my cot and made a tour of my quarters--four steps by seven steps. Cot, toilet, sink. Nothing else. It was frightfully apparent that whomever had brought me here intended me to stay a while. The door, solid white metal, I was unable to budge. If the walls had been sheetrock I'd have tried gouging my way through, but they were cement block. At the bottom of the door was a slot, like a pet door only smaller, about four inches high and about a foot wide. I shoved my arm through it, reaching up as far as I could, and found myself wishing for Eugene Tooms' unique ability. I was certain there was a lock up there somewhere, the key to my freedom, but naturally I was unable to reach that far. I shouted through the slot for a little while, calling for my captors to show themselves, but was met with only silence. Finally I gave up, pulling my arm back inside the room. From what I'd been able to see out of the slot, I was in a corridor (white, of course) containing many doors. I believe it was at that moment, when I saw the bottoms--for all I could see was the bottoms--of all those doors, that I began to know real fear. Wherever I was, it was a facility meant to contain many prisoners. I wondered if I was the only captive, or if there were imprisoned souls behind all of those doors. After my explorations, I sat down to wait--there seemed nothing else I could do. I have no idea how long I waited, having been relieved of my wristwatch, before I heard noises in the corridor. I scrambled to the floor, trying to peer through the slot again, and could make out the wheels of a cart, and a pair of white shoes walking behind. Periodically, the cart would stop and I would see a tray of food placed on the floor, shoved through a slot, and then the cart would move on. I never saw the face of the person delivering the food, for he didn't bend close enough to the floor for that. I could only see him from the knees down, but I was certain it was a man. When the slot in my door opened, I called to him. "Who are you?" I demanded angrily. "Why have you brought me here?" There was no answer, indeed, it was if I'd not spoken at all. A tray of food slid into my room, then I heard the cart wheels rolling and the footsteps receding. There were no more stops. Apparently I was the end of the line, but it was obvious to me now that there *were* people other than myself being held here. The food on my tray was basic, simple, edible, but I didn't eat. Not only was I not hungry, I was afraid it might be drugged. They'd managed to drug me somehow in order to get me here. I wasn't going to make their next steps--whatever they might be--easier for them. I soon found that there didn't appear to be any 'next steps'. For a long time, keeping me behind that door seemed to be their goal, accomplished and forgotten, and I remembered a word I'd heard somewhere, although for the life of me I'm unable to recall where-- 'Disappeared.' And I think that's all I'm going to write for now. This is turning out to be more difficult than I had imagined. I should check on Scully, she's been pretty uncomfortable today. Then maybe I can work up to more of this before bedtime. ---------- Well, Scully's sleeping peacefully at last, and since that's something I don't think I'll ever do again, I decided to finish up the first part of this record. I've been avoiding it all day, but if I don't do it now, I never will, and the monument beckons. Where was I? The food, I think. Which was certainly nothing to write home about. Three times daily, the slot would open and a seemingly disembodied hand would shove a tray of simple, basic food through. Thirty minutes or so later (by my best guess, anyway), the hand would return, reach through the slot and retrieve the tray. At first I didn't eat. Who can eat in a situation like that one? Not me, anyway. I always lose my appetite in times of great stress. Eventually, though, hunger won out and I began to take in enough food to stay alive. One day, after I'd been there for a week or more, a thought crossed my mind--what if the tray wasn't there when the hand returned? (I couldn't even think of him as one of my captors, he was simply 'The Hand' or 'The Arm.') With a feeling akin to glee, I removed the tray from in front of the door, shoving it into a far corner, then sat down to wait. My plan was to attempt to overpower anyone who came through the door. Boy, did they fool me. Nobody came through the door. The hand returned a little while later, pushed through the slot, felt around for a few seconds, and then withdrew. Nothing more. I waited, tense and ready, for a long time, and finally decided they weren't coming. Obviously, if I wanted to clutter up my cell with uneaten food, it was fine with these people. Eventually the slot opened and the next meal was pushed inside. After a couple of days, the smell from the food on the tray I'd held back became unbearable. Ham sandwiches have a pretty nasty odor when they go to the bad, I discovered. In defeat, I placed the stinking tray next to the remains of my latest meal, and hoped the hand would actually take it away when he came back. He did, removing the evidence of my first protest without comment. Every morning, soon after the breakfast tray, I received a clean towel and washcloth, t-shirt and fresh sweat pants. All white. Apparently I was expected to wash myself in the sink, which I did, naturally. No reason to stink up the cell with *me*, after all. It was damn difficult to wash my hair, but I managed, after a fashion. Toothbrush and toothpaste were also provided, although no razor. For obvious reasons, I assumed. (Incidentally, I can report that I'll never try to grow a beard again--it itches like hell while it's growing in.) This was the extent of my days for what had to have been several weeks--five or six, at least. I tried to count the days at first, but since the light in my cell was never turned off, there was, effectively, no night for me. After a while in captivity, I found my desires began to shape themselves to what I thought I *could* have. At first I dreamed of escape. I explored every avenue available, mentally and physically, turned over every possibility in my mind, and finally concluded--and what a blow to my ego it was--that, unless that damn door opened, escape was pretty much impossible. Then, rescue was the focal point of my thoughts. Surely Scully would find me. Scully always found me when I was in terrible trouble. She'd never failed to save my ass before when it got too close to the fire, had she? And yet, I waited and waited, and Scully never came. The worst of possibilities haunted me--Scully couldn't find me; Scully didn't care to look for me; Scully was a captive as well; and the worst of all--Scully was dead. I shook that thought off immediately, but I could still feel the chill from it creeping down my spine. Wherever Scully was, I was still in that damned room. Over time I began to lose the hope that she would arrive. Once I abandoned all hope of rescue or escape, my greatest wish was for a window. All I wanted was to see the outdoors again, even if from a distance. Would it be so difficult, I reasoned, for them to put me in a cell with a window? They could easily install some steel bars to keep me from trying to escape, I wouldn't mind, hell, I might even *help* them if it meant I could see something other than these goddamned fucking white walls for once! Gotta take a breather--go *outside* for a few minutes. Better now, I think. Deep gulps of fresh air (if you can call this city air "fresh") helped me calm down. Just remembering my time inside that place is stirring up frantic emotions I thought I had under control. And I haven't even gotten to the hard part yet. --------- A few hours sleep can work wonders sometimes. I feel almost ready to tackle this task again. You know, it occurred to me that of all of us who spent time in those white rooms, Melinda really had the worst of it. She lost, ultimately, everything. Endured more than an average human being should have to endure, but then, Melinda wasn't exactly "average"--at least, her DNA wasn't. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I hadn't yet seen Melinda, indeed, hadn't even though of her once since I'd awakened in that seemingly sterile hell. I tried very hard to keep a grip on my sanity, but as hours and days passed, the number unknown to me, it became less and less possible. I knew I was close to snapping, and one day it happened. The catalyst was cornflakes. I hate cornflakes. Plain, tasteless, nasty little things. Give me chocolate-coated-sugar-bombs any day of the week, but keep those disgusting yellow flakes out of my sight. Breakfast--(the only distinguishable meal due to its distinctive food)--usually included cereal of some sort, milk, mushy canned fruit, and either an egg or some type of identifiable breakfast meat, i.e. sausage or ham. The cereal had been acceptable, for the most part--rice krispies, fruit loops (kid stuff, I know, but sue me, I like it), even oatmeal once, which wasn't my favorite, but I could live with it. Nothing to make me turn up my nose and complain. I didn't eat all that much at lunch or supper, but usually by the time breakfast came I was hungry, and I almost always ate everything on that tray. When I saw the cornflakes, I broke. I'd kept hold of myself very well up to that point. I'd managed not to begin talking to myself, I'd made certain my thoughts flowed in a normal process (if anyone could call the thought process "normal"), but the cornflakes were the last straw. I picked up the bowl, which luckily I had not poured milk into, and hurled it at the damned door as hard as I could. It was plastic, it bounced off the door with nary a scratch to show for its trauma, but I was on a roll by then. I picked up the rest of the tray and threw it as well, watching as the fried egg stuck to the wall for a couple of seconds before falling to the floor with a soft 'plop.' Then, with nothing else left to throw, I ran at the door, attacking it with all my might. I kicked it, remembering all the times I'd done that with simple wooden doors and had them splinter beneath my force. The only thing I got for my efforts was a sore foot. I threw myself over and over again at the door, screaming at the top of my lungs to be let out. I don't know how long I kept it up, but at last a rational thought filtered through my consciousness, and it occurred to me that a dislocated shoulder is no fun. I know, I've been there. I realized I could be a captive, or I could be an *injured* captive, which would make escape all the more difficult when the opportunity finally presented itself (and at that point I was still certain one would). As soon as I stopped, I began to run out of steam. Lack of exercise and proper nourishment had taken its toll, and I didn't have the stamina I'd had when I was a free man. I bent over at the waist to catch my breath, and it hit me in that very instant how much I missed being able to go for a run. I barely made it to my cot before the tears came to my eyes, and I buried my face in the blanket to hide the sound of my sobs, both from anyone who might be listening, and from myself. Real men don't cry, right? Wrong. Real men cry, and they beg, and they even capitulate if they're tortured enough. I know. I've been there. After I got myself under control, I turned over so that I was lying on my back on the cot idly studying the ceiling (white, endless white). If I hadn't been so used to seeing miles and miles of whiteness, I'd have missed the tiny black spot in one corner. Curiosity aroused, I climbed on my bunk to get a better look. I couldn't move the cot directly beneath the black dot, because it was bolted to the floor, but I was able to get a close enough look to decide that what I was seeing was a surveillance camera. Someone was watching me, and had been ever since I had arrived. End chapter 1 ---------- CHAPTER TWO Rebellion After carefully and deliberately flipping off the camera, I lay back down on the cot. There was nothing else to do. I wasn't going to clean up the mess I'd made--not yet, anyway. I wondered what, if anything, they'd do about it, and if I would finally see another whole human being. Again, I waited, tensed, for the door to open, and again I was disappointed. Eventually I lost myself in thought, closing my eyes and allowing myself to drift back to my office, my apartment, the great outdoors. The memories of these places were almost painful, and yet I couldn't keep from summoning them. If I concentrated, I imagined I could almost hear Scully's voice in my ear, telling me my latest theory was insane. I let a little smile drift across my lips as I imagined her cocked eyebrow, incredulous tone, and dancing eyes. I must have lain there for several hours, immersed in memories, because before I was aware the time had passed, the slot opened again and a lunch tray was shoved through. I wasn't hungry, but it provided some break in the monotony, so with a sigh I hauled myself to my feet and crossed to the door. Decent food this time. Nothing nasty. I sipped at the warm chicken soup in the mug and ignored the crackers and salad. It was obviously canned soup, just like everyone's mother used to make, and I found it comforting in a strange way. I drank most of the broth, but left the chicken and the noodles. After my outburst of the morning, my appetite had fled. When the soothing liquid was gone, I crawled back into my bed and pulled the covers over my head. Depression had settled in good and strong by then, and I would get occasional bouts of it so heavy I thought I'd suffocate. One such episode was obviously upon me now, brought on by the morning's activities and nurtured with the chicken soup, which in another time, place or dimension might have been a pleasant diversion, but in my present situation only emphasized my hopelessness. At moments like this one, I understood how a seemingly healthy person can become suicidal. If someone had handed me a weapon during one of those episodes, I'd have gladly ended it all. I began to almost hope for death--at least it would be a change. I found myself growing sleepy, and finally succumbed, praying that the nightmares which often plagued me would stay away for once. They did--I slept a dreamless sleep for what must have been around eighteen hours, and completely missed supper. When I finally awakened, I had that groggy, disoriented feeling, and wondered if I had been drugged again. I opened my eyes and glanced listlessly around the room, and it took several minutes for my befuddled brain to register the fact that it was clean. I had been drugged, then. Someone had come into the room while I slept and cleaned up the evidence of my tantrum of the day before. It must have been in the soup, since it was the only thing I touched. I turned over in my cot, not caring, and went back to sleep. There was nothing else to do. ---------- I still have the scar on my arm. I don't suppose it will ever go away, now--it has to have been close to a year since he burned me. I'm getting ahead again. Avoiding. If I can rush past the scar, I don't have to write how it happened, or the events that led up to it, and they're not so bad, really, not in light of everything else that happened, but...damn it, now I'm rambling. All right, Mulder...I mean Jacobson...the fucking scar. I still can't call Scully 'Lisa' in my mind--she'll always be my Scully, even though legally she's Lisa Jacobson now...well, not really legally...oh hell, am I the world's greatest at avoidance, or what? I wanted to see another human being. Well actually, I wanted out, but by then my expectations had been diminished--I already wrote about that--and at that point just seeing another human being--a *whole* human being, not just an arm--would have done wonders for my morale. I had given up trying to talk to the person who brought my food--no answer was ever forthcoming. It was apparent that any time they wanted to come into my room, they'd just drug my food--how would I know? I had to eat, at least part of the time. Pacing around the room that morning, (four steps by seven) I finally hit upon an idea. What if I just grabbed that arm and didn't let go? What would they do? If only they would just open the fucking door, let me see their faces, even just *one* face... So I did it. When the arm came through the slot, bringing my breakfast, I grabbed on with both hands and wouldn't let go. The owner of the arm jerked and tried to pull away, but I was determined. "Open the door!" I yelled. "Open the door and let me see your face, you fucking coward!" I lost this particular arm-wrestling match after a couple of minutes--he gave a mighty tug and I went tumbling onto my ass. The arm disappeared. A little apprehensive at what my actions might bring, I ate my breakfast, glancing now and again toward the camera in the ceiling. I listened intently, wondering if I'd hear ominous footfalls outside the door, if I'd soon regret my impulsiveness, but nothing happened. I ate the meal, a short time later the arm returned and fearlessly took the tray, and this time I kept my hands to myself. Almost immediately after the tray disappeared, the lights in my room went off, for the first time ever. Scared the shit out of me. I thought at first the bulb had merely burned out, but pretty soon it became apparent that it was getting colder in the room. I hadn't gotten my clean clothes that morning--they usually came some time after breakfast--and I snuggled under the thin blanket, trying not to shake with the cold. Soon it became impossible *not* to shake with the cold. It was freezing in that room, and I was in bare feet with almost nothing to cover myself--and I didn't even have the warmth of a lightbulb now. I banged on the door, yelling for someone to come and help me, and was met with the usual response--complete silence. As stupid as it sounds now, I think that was when I realized how truly helpless I was. I mean, I'd been locked in that room for weeks, dependent upon these people for the very food I ate, which they'd already proven they would drug on occasion if it suited their purposes, but the fact that I was now without light and heat really brought home to me that I was completely at their mercy. I guess my subconscious mind hadn't let me accept that fact before, but I was facing it now, with a vengeance. If they so chose, they could let me freeze, or starve. I could die slowly in this room without ever seeing another human being, not even The Arm. That realization sobered me up in a hurry. I tried moving around to keep warm, but was too damn cold to stay out from under the blanket for long. Eventually I just huddled there, shivering, and tried to fall asleep. My fervent hope was that I'd wake up and find the lights and heat turned back on. See how far gone I was already? I wasn't wishing for freedom--I was just wishing for heat. Give a man an inch and he'll ask for a mile, but take away an inch and he'll beg for a centimeter. That was a lesson I learned all too well. I'm not sure how long they left me in the dark, in the cold, but it must have been a couple of days, because by the time they turned on the light and heat, and fed me again, I was ready to start gnawing on my limbs for nourishment. I tried filling up with water, but the water was cold, too, and it chilled me from the inside out. At least that's how it felt. I had no warning that my punishment was over, it happened suddenly--could have been the middle of the night, for all I knew. One minute I was sleeping, curled up under my blanket into as tight a ball as I could manage, and the next minute the lights came on and I could feel the room gradually beginning to warm. Soon after, a breakfast tray was shoved under my door. Liquids only, but by then I was so happy for anything at all that I didn't complain. One of these days, if I can find the time, I'm going to do a psychological study of the human response to deprivation. It will have to be on my own time, though. I no longer have a psych degree from Oxford. I am a high school history teacher. At least, I will be when the fall semester starts. Well, this is the longest I've written at a stretch--I'm getting better. I would like to say it's getting easier, but the truth is, if I'm having a difficult time writing about the scar, I don't know what I'll do when I get to Melinda. Shit, I can't deal with this now. I think it's time to wake Scully up for breakfast. She didn't eat enough yesterday--she's been having indigestion problems. Maybe she'd like some fruit and toast. Anything but those fucking cornflakes. ---------- I've fortified myself with breakfast (eleven essential vitamins and minerals, kids!) and given myself a pep talk. It's time to write about how I got the scar. And really, it was nothing. I mean, they did a lot worse things to me there, and poor Melinda--she lost it all. Scully was...well, I'll get to Scully later. The scar. It's a cigarette burn. I hate smokers still. I can't abide the smell of cigarette smoke now. I tell anyone who asks that I have asthma, but it's a lie--I just can't bear to think of *him*. It must have been a week or more after my punishment for grabbing the arm, but of course I can't really be sure. Could have been two weeks or even three. I'd spent most of my time pacing around my cell (and those four steps by seven were *small* steps, baby steps almost, not the normal size strides a man of my height would make), willing my mind to come up with some miraculous way to get me out of there. So far, my mind had been singularly uncooperative in this endeavor. It kept insisting to me that there was no way out, and I wasn't ready to accept that yet. One day, just after a meal tray had been removed from my door slot, I found myself almost overwhelmed with the need to get out. Not just the desire, but the *need*. I was slowly dying from lack of oxygen, or at least I felt that I was, and desperately wanted fresh air. Naturally, there was no fresh air to be found, but maybe, I thought, just maybe I could breathe the air from the corridor for a few minutes. It might be cleaner, cooler, more satisfying somehow--after all, presumably the corridor led to freedom. I lay on the floor and pushed the slot open, peering at the very little that I could see beneath my door. I had been right--the air did smell cleaner, in fact it smelled of disinfectant. Nobody had been in to clean my cell since I'd arrived (as far as I knew, for I suppose they could have drugged me again, but I wasn't aware of it if they had), but apparently the corridor was to be kept germ-free. After a few minutes, breathing the air simply wasn't enough. I thought enviously (and not for the first time) of Eugene Tooms and his remarkable ability to stretch his body. I ran my hand up the outside of the door as far as I could reach, stretching painfully toward the place the doorknob had to be and falling painfully short, as expected. Finally I just let my arm fall to the floor, lying limply across the corridor. Maybe one of the bastards will trip over me and break a neck, I thought maliciously. Almost before the thought was completed, I felt a hand clamp down hard on my wrist and pin me to the floor. "Hey!" I protested, more out of surprise than fear, and a second later my cry turned to a yelp of unexpected pain. Something was boring into my arm, and I bit my lip as hard as I could to keep back a scream. It hurt, oh fuck it hurt! Shit. I'm sweating like mad, sitting in this air-conditioned room, just remembering the pain. I can feel my heart racing as adrenalin pumps throughout my body, and I'm certain I can smell the horrible odor even now. I didn't know, yet, what was causing the pain, but when it had reached the point of unbearable, it suddenly diminished a bit, and I felt my wrist released. I yanked my arm back inside my cell as quickly as I could, staring in horror at the circular burn on the tender side of my forearm. "You fucking sonofabitch!" I yelled through the door, and amidst the faint sounds of footsteps receding, I thought I heard just a hint of laughter. Suddenly, the smell of my burning flesh registered, and I barely made it to the toilet in time to lose my latest meal. For a long time I dry-heaved over the toilet, retching every time a flash of pain would shoot through me. Eventually I made my way to the sink, and after rinsing out my mouth, ran cold water over the burn for a long time, attempting to alleviate the pain. I was only partially successful. I wondered what would happen now--the burn wasn't large, but it was deep, and it still hurt like hell. At first I feared infection, then, after careful thought, almost hoped for it. I expected my injury to be ignored, but when my lunch tray came, a small foil packet of antibiotic ointment and a bandage were included. It occurred to me at first to simply not use them--maybe I would find a means of escape, even if it wasn't the preferred means. After all, an infection, left untreated, can quickly spread throughout the body. I hadn't worked with Scully all those years for nothing. Self-preservation was still strong enough in me that I eventually used the first-aid supplies provided. I felt a modicum of relief from the pain when I applied the cooling ointment, but for the rest of the day and night I was unable to sleep for the throbbing in my arm. Please find me soon, Scully, I prayed to her, as I did every night, lying on my cot. I can't take much more. Please find me. Well hot damn, Mulder--or Jacobson, or whatever the hell my name is today. You got past the scar, and it only took three cups of coffee and two hours. Two hours to write the pathetic little bit you've done since breakfast. Well hell. It's my record, and I'll write it as quickly or as slowly as I need to. Melinda, though--that's going to be the tough part. And as to what happened to Scully...well other than the bit of information Asbrook gave me (a damned important bit of information!), I can only speculate. At least Scully was unconscious through it all. I wish to hell I had been. ---------- I couldn't write anymore yesterday after I'd gotten through describing how I got the scar, and now I know why. It wasn't the burning of my arm that was difficult to remember--it was what came after. The testing. But even before the testing, there was another small rebellion on my part, when I took the dinner tray they brought me and shoved it forcefully back through the slot. It hit the wall on the other side of the corridor, and food scattered everywhere. A few minutes later the lights went out and I panicked. "Aw shit, not again!" I murmured, and then yelled toward the camera, "Come on, guys, I'm sorry! Hey, turn the lights back on. I won't do it again!" They didn't turn the lights back on, of course, and I spent another couple of days shivering beneath my blanket. I've already described what that was like and I won't go into it again. Suffice to say it was cold and I was hungry. And very grateful when the light, heat and food were restored. And I never did anything like that again. Then came the testing. It was a long time after I'd thrown the tray, maybe as much as a month, but again--who knows? Well, I suppose they knew, but I was clueless as to the passing of days by then. I slept when I was tired (which was often, due to lack of exercise and depression, no doubt), ate when the meals were provided, if I was hungry, and the rest of the time I either paced my cell or sat on my bunk, lost in thought. I'd learned to close my eyes and transport myself back to my office, and in my mind I would take a file out of my cabinet, sit at my desk, and flip through the pages. I'd glance up now and then, and Scully would be sitting in front of me, smiling her little smile that tells me she's indulging my latest theory out of kindness, and we would argue. I never spoke aloud, but I could hear my words and hers in my imagination. Occasionally, as I would pore over the files, I'd come up with what I thought might be a solution for a case, and would carefully store it in my memory banks to use later. After Scully rescued me. Surely, sooner or later, Scully would find me, although I was beginning to grow quite concerned that it had taken her so long. I feared she had been incapacitated as well, and sometimes I wondered if she was contained in one of the little cells in the corridor. I shouted for her through the slot in the door, but never received an answer. The thought that Scully was a prisoner as well chilled my blood. I tried to convince myself that there had been no reason for them to take her, but then--I hadn't yet come up with the reason why they had taken me. When I finally did, I worried even more that Scully had been disappeared--or worse. Because, you see, it was Brian Johnson. Scully and I had been investigating the case of a four-year-old boy who could apparently read minds. His parents had called me in, having read about me in a newspaper account somewhere. They really only wanted me to confirm their suspicions, and give my "expert" opinion on their son. As if I have an "expert" opinion where mind-reading is concerned. Imagine my surprise when the boy turned out to be like Gibson. Of course, we never got as far as analyzing the blood that Scully drew from Brian's arm before I was taken, so I don't know what the results of that were, but Scully may have them. She may know exactly what is going on. And yet, if I was taken because of Brian, why not take Brian himself? And his parents? And Scully, too? Pretty soon, I'd managed to convince myself that Brian had been abducted as well, and his parents probably killed. And Scully? Well, Scully's fate was still a mystery to me at that point, and I nearly drove myself crazy imagining the worst. Brian was a cute little boy, blond and blue-eyed, an intelligent, inquisitive face, and a ready smile. Would they kill him, I wondered? No, not kill him--they'd study him like a lab rat. Because it occurred to me that, while Gibson had been a controlled experiment from the beginning, Brian was an accident. And it was my fault they'd discovered him. Because I'm sure they were watching me, and as soon as I was called on the case by his parents, they learned of him and his ability. They didn't waste any time moving in on the situation. So now I have the abduction of this little boy and the death of his parents on my conscience. I still have nightmares about Brian's fate. Maybe one day I can help him--but my main concern has to be for my own family. Still, the thought of him trapped there still...of course, he might not even be alive. I wasn't sure what Asbrook meant when he gave me that cryptic head-shake. Shit. I really thought I was past that--thought I'd convinced myself it wasn't my fault, that nothing which happened was my fault. My only consolation is that it can't happen again--nobody gives a damn what a high school history teacher does, as long as he keeps his hands out of the students' pants, and even if that *did* interest me (that certainly evokes a shudder!), Scully--Lisa--would kill me. Even in her condition, she's a formidable woman when in a temper. Hell, even more so *because* of her condition. I'm getting sidetracked again, and I wonder if I'm subconsciously doing it deliberately, in order to avoid writing about what happened next. Probably. Hell, look how much trouble I had just writing about the burn. I need coffee. All right, deep breath, Mulder, and let's begin. How's this: They took me from my room, tested me, repeated the process three times, and then left me alone for a while. Sorry, old pal, that won't do. You gotta feel the burn, baby. Thought I already did that? Oh fuck, now I'm having conversations with myself! Shit. I have to do this. 'The monument is an octagonal shaft, faced with Texas Cordova shellstone, that rises 570 ft. above the battlefield.' That's from the brochure they give you when you visit. It was one of the first things I did when we arrived here, because even then it beckoned me. Besides, how would it look for the history teacher to never have visited such an historic site? And practically in his own backyard, too. So I ignored Scully's jibes about giant phallic symbols, and took the elevator all the way to the observation level, 489 feet straight up. The view was breathtaking. So was the temptation to jump. I didn't stay long, and I've never been back, but I've always been fascinated by that monument, especially during the really difficult times. Times when I wasn't sure being Andrew Jacobson, professional history teacher, was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I almost choked when Frohike presented me with that name. I don't look at all like an 'Andrew.' Never 'Andy', either, I really can't abide that. Fuck. Your "history" may not say anything about a psych degree from Oxford, but memory tells me you have one, and you, my friend, are weaseling. That's not a psych term, that's a Mulder term. Goddammit, all right! If it'll get my fucking subconscious off my ass, I'll write it! I was pacing my room one day--and pacing was damned difficult, as I believe I've already mentioned--when I got my wish. Well, one of my wishes. I mean, they didn't let me go, and I didn't wake up to find it had all been a bad dream. But I saw another human being. Four of them, in fact. My cell door opened without warning, and suddenly I was swarmed upon by four men. I could do little more than protest, "Hey!" before they had grabbed me and wrestled me onto a padded gurney they'd left in the corridor. "What the hell? What are you doing?" I demanded, struggling against them as best I could. I was too weakened, by then, to put up much of a fight, and they overpowered me easily. I felt my wrists and ankles being secured, and then a large strap was bound across my chest, another across my waist, and one more at my legs. The gurney began to move, and doors flashed by as I was rolled down the hallway. "Help!" I tried to yell, but couldn't get enough air to make much sound. I was breathless from fighting. "Someone! Scully!" As we rounded a corner, I was almost positive I heard a faint response..."Mulder!" I managed to convince myself it had been my imagination. They completely ignored me, conversing only with one another, as I was wheeled into what looked for all the world like a sterile operating room. He was waiting there. "You didn't undress him," he complained from behind a surgical mask. "We couldn't, he was awake. We just got him on the gurney and brought him here," one of the men who'd grabbed me answered. "This will take care of the problem," I heard someone say, and turned my head to see a woman who appeared to be a doctor swabbing my arm with an alcohol rub. "No, don't!" I managed before she injected me, and a few minutes later, the room began to spin. I don't know what they gave me, but it didn't knock me out--it just made me stoned. It didn't do anything to alleviate the pain, either. At least I don't think so--if what I felt was *diminished* pain, I'm sure I'd have died otherwise. I absolutely refuse to write specifics about what they did to me there. I just can't cope with that detail of memory right now. It hurt. It hurt a lot, and I was awake through it all. That's when I discovered that real men beg, as well as cry. And now I think I'm done for the day. Maybe I'll take a trip over to the monument this afternoon, if Scully will be all right alone for a little while. End Chapter 2 ---------- CHAPTER THREE Melinda It's been two days since I wrote about the testing--the little bit I wrote about the testing--and only now do I feel I can continue. Every time I would pick up the pen to write, my hands would start to shake so much I'd just give up. I'm writing this in longhand in order to give myself plenty of time to think as I go along. The whole purpose of making this record, after all, is to rid myself of some of my demons. I'm afraid if I typed these words, the temptation to skim over important things would be too great to resist. Scully seemed to understand what I was feeling after I finished on Tuesday--she has to know what I'm writing, even though we haven't discussed it. When I told her I was going for a walk, she insisted on coming with me. She knew, I'm telling you--knew that I wanted to go to the monument, knew that it had been a difficult morning for me and that I wasn't to be trusted alone. She can't walk all that far at this stage, so I was forced to stay close to home, which I'm certain was her plan all along. We took a stroll around the block surrounding our apartment complex, nodding and waving to the neighbors who greeted us as "Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson" or "Andrew and Lisa", pretending to be exactly what we're not--a young couple, only recently married, still excited and happy at the prospect of starting our family. If they only knew how long we'd been together, and the things in our past... But our past is "officially" a lot simpler than it used to be, thanks to our friends. Andrew Jacobson, aged 39, and Lisa Allen, 36, both formerly of Chicago, Illinois, married just over a year, he's a high school history professor, she a biology teacher who has temporarily given up her profession in order to raise a family. Not what either of us would have chosen, but when you're trying to save your life, you do what you have to do. Sometimes I ache for my old life--not that I don't enjoy being Scully's husband--you're damn right I enjoy that. We did it, too, as soon as we were given our new identities-- went right to the nearest judge and got married. I don't know if she was completely convinced we should marry, but at that point we really had no choice--not if we wanted to stay together, and after all we endured, we sure as hell weren't about to separate. There are days, though, when I really miss my files, and the FBI, and the work I used to do. I enjoy history, and teaching it should be a lot of fun, especially to high school kids (yeah, I'm a sick puppy, but I *like* teenagers), but I miss the rush of adrenaline that comes from saving a life or solving a really difficult case. None of that is an option any longer, I'm afraid. We are what we are, and at least we're both alive. After the first testing session, I really wished I would die. (See how neatly I tricked myself into getting started?) I don't know how long it lasted, but it seemed like hours. After I was injected with the drug--and to this day I have no idea what that drug was, but I suspect it might have been heroin--they were able to take the straps off me and remove my clothing without getting too much of a fight from me. When I was naked, they replaced the straps on my wrists, ankles and chest. I was too drugged up to fight them much at that point. I still have the scars. I'll always have the scars. Both inside and out. I don't know what those tests were for, I only know that I have never felt such pain in my life. By the time they finished with me, my throat was hoarse from screaming, my nose was stuffed up from the tears I'd shed, and never had I uttered the word 'please' so many times in one day. Nothing mattered. They continued on, ignoring my cries and whimpers, and treating me as the experimental animal that I was to them. Fuck. I can't. I really can't. Coffee. Or maybe beer. ---------- Two beers later, I'm a little more relaxed. I really would like to go to a doctor and get some sort of medication for depression, but Scully won't let me. I think she's afraid I won't be able to handle whatever they give me, and that I might try to hurt myself with it. I think she's right. Jesus, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And yes, I *do* have to do it. Although I could put this pen down and never write another word...but we all know where that would eventually lead, now don't we? Four hundred eighty-nine feet straight up, and straight down again. I put down the pen again and must have heaved a heavy sigh... Scully brought me another beer, kissed the top of my head, and went back into the other room without saying a word. How the hell did I get so lucky as to wind up with her, I ask you? And to think--they are the ones who threw us together in the first place. I call that poetic justice of some sort. Okay...deep breath... Finally they took me back to my cell, and the really sad thing is that I was happy to be there. They unstrapped me from the gurney, helped me over so I could collapse on my cot, and left the room, locking me inside. I buried my face in the pillow and cried myself to sleep. I still hurt when I woke up, but the pain was bearable by then. It was a soreness, but not the sharp, wrenching pain that I'd endured the day before. When a meal was pushed through my slot, I glanced at it listlessly, turned over, and tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, of course, I had to eat. The testing had taken a lot out of me, and I found myself trembling with hunger and fatigue. When the next tray arrived, I crawled over to it, lifting the food slowly to my mouth, and ate. When I finished, I fell asleep right there, leaning against the wall, and when I woke up, the tray was gone. I guess they gave me a couple of days to recover, because by the time they came for me again, I'd gotten past the pain and had almost convinced myself it wasn't as bad as I remembered. Almost. Until the door opened. I never dreamed they'd come back--stupid asshole that I was, I really thought one time through the torture chamber was all they would require of me, and then they'd leave me alone to rot in my cell as before. I don't know where I got that idea--self delusion, maybe. At any rate, when the door was opened this time, I was sitting on my bunk, staring at the wall (white, always so fucking white). I hollered and fought when they strapped me down, but I never had a ghost of a chance against them, and this time I think the testing lasted longer. And they dumped me back in my room, and a couple of days later it happened again, and again a few days after that. The last time they came for me, I cowered in the corner, shaking and crying before they ever lay a hand on me. I begged them not to take me again, cried real tears, and was completely ignored. I was not human to those people. I refuse to write any more about the testing. I don't want to push myself too far. We're on the third floor, and we have a balcony. And besides, the next time they opened my door, it was to shove a naked woman into my cell. ---------- It was February when we were taken, and November when we were released, so we spent roughly nine months in captivity. After that it was four months in Chicago, but that went sour after Scully spotted someone she thought she'd seen working for them. She may have been wrong, she may have been overly paranoid, but within a day we were out of Chicago and they sent us here. So far, neither of us has seen anyone suspicious, and we've begun to relax our guard just a bit, which is probably dangerous, but damn, it's difficult to live looking over your shoulder every minute. I don't suppose we'll ever lose the need to do that, but I keep hoping that they'll forget all about us eventually. Or discover that the baby is normal in every way, and decide we're no good to them. I'll never know exactly what all those tests they subjected me to were meant to accomplish. If they'd only wanted to know if Melinda and I could produce a child with Brian's ability, I'm certain they could have determined that without all the pain involved. They were testing me for a hell of a lot more than that, I know that for sure. Or at least I think I do. Fuck, for all I know, they were just pissed off at me and wanted to torture me a little as payback for being a pain in their collective asses for so long. I'm getting ahead of myself again. I find it's easier to cope that way. I'm going to be a hard-ass, though, and force myself to write about the really painful part now. Not the physically painful part--I skimmed past that already, and that's all anyone is getting of it--but the part that really wrenched at my guts. The part that makes it difficult to sleep at night. Even after all I've seen, all I've learned about them and their methods, I still reel in horror at the depths to which they plunged while we were all at their mercy. I think I've seen the face of evil, and yet still suspect that in reality I've only seen the tip of its nose. That if I were shown the *full* face of that evil, I'd find myself screaming into an abyss of madness from which there could be no recovery. I've never been a big believer in God--not really an atheist, wouldn't even call myself an agnostic, simply unsure of what I believe--but then I've never believed in the devil either. Now I do. Not as an individual entity, perhaps, but I'm here to tell you--the concept, at least, of Satan, is real. It has existed in mankind since the first evil act was committed in the world. It was in the Nazis, among many others, and I saw it in the faces of those men and women. After the fourth round of testing, they threw me back in my cell and left me alone for a while. Not a long time, because I was still achy when they brought her to me, but long enough that I didn't groan in agony every time a muscle in my body twitched. The door opened again, without warning, and I could do nothing more than cower in a corner of my bunk, trembling in terror. I really thought they'd come to get me again, you see, that four times through the sideshow wasn't enough and that it was my turn to perform for them again. I covered my head with my arms, shaking like a leaf in a strong wind, and waited for them to grab me, wrestle me to the gurney, and tie me down as usual. When it didn't happen, and I heard the door slam shut, I risked a peek around the room. What I saw dropped my jaw straight to the floor. It was Melinda Johnson, Brian's mother, although I didn't recognize her immediately. When I'd met her while on the case, she'd been a beautifully groomed, self-assured woman, unafraid to look anyone in the eye. The person I saw before me was a mere shadow of that Melinda. To begin with, she was completely naked, and I reflected later that this must have been their unsubtle attempt to entice me. It didn't work. Who the hell would feel sexual attraction in that situation? Her blond hair hung limply, unkempt and dirty, and she was incredibly thin. There were deep hollows beneath her cheekbones, but nothing prepared me for the desolation I saw when her eyes finally met mine. At first I could only stare, not in appreciation, but in shock. The last thing I'd expected was to have a nude female delivered to my cell, and for a few minutes I simply wasn't thinking clearly. Finally, I realized that not only must she be thoroughly embarrassed, she was also freezing. I grabbed the blanket from my cot and gently wrapped it around her, and she allowed it, flinching only a little when my fingers brushed her bare shoulder. I led her over to the cot and made her sit down, and for a long time we were quiet. I wanted to break the silence, but I didn't know what to say, or even what the hell was happening, and Melinda didn't look like she could tolerate a lot of verbal fumbling at that point. Indeed, she looked to me as if any word at all might make her break down. So I waited, until she was ready to speak to me, and when she did...damn. I still can't believe how lucky I am in having Scully, and in the fact that we're both alive and still in one piece. If Asbrook hadn't helped us, they'd have undoubtedly taken our baby, tested it, killed it if it wasn't up to snuff, and then...what? Tried again? Or killed us both? Who knows. For that matter, who's to say they're not *still* trying? I'm sure they have enough of my sperm and Scully's ova to make quite a few fetuses to test. And I don't want to think about that, because the truth is, there's not a fucking thing I can do about it. If it was just me, alone, I might try going after them, might try to bring them down, but I have a wife and child to think about, and I'll be damned if I'll jeopardize them. I'll never sacrifice someone I love to a cause again. I can't live with it. "They killed him," she murmured, tears filling her eyes, and I stared at her, resisting the urge to put a comforting hand on her arm because I was afraid it would only frighten her. "Who, Melinda? Who did they kill?" My voice sounded so odd--since they'd brought me here I'd only spoken to them, and only on rare occasions, and most of that time I'd been screaming for them to stop hurting me. To hear my own voice, speaking words of conversation (even if the conversation was sad and morbid) felt so almost-normal that for a minute I choked up. When she answered, her voice was barely above a whisper. "My baby." "Brian? They killed Brian?" She shook her head, taking a deep, laborious breath. "My baby," she repeated, and her voice was stronger then; I could hear the hatred it contained. "I was pregnant and they killed my baby." I felt bile rising in my throat at her revelation--that they could take this woman, this family, and tear them apart the way they'd done... A few weeks ago, Melinda and Allen Johnson and their son Brian had been living normal, happy, middle-class American lives. Now they'd been abducted, separated, the unborn baby aborted against the mother's will...and what of Brian and Allen? "Melinda, do you know what happened to your husband and Brian?" I asked as gently as I could. She shook her head, real tears beginning to make their way down her cheeks. "I haven't seen them since they brought us here. They hurt me...I heard them saying some things...Agent Mulder, I think they might have killed Allen, too." Shit. This is so fucking difficult, and that monument is looking better all the time. I'm so torn between wanting to live, for the sake of Scully and the baby, and wanting to end it all so I don't have to endure the memories any longer. Nobody should be required to remember this shit, and my memory has always been more accomodating than most. Which basically means, I remember every poke, prod, prick, probe, and generally evil thing they did. And I'll never forget Melinda's sorrow...soul-wrenching sorrow that I saw in her eyes and heard in her voice. I wanted to cry for what they had done to her, and I wanted to cry for myself, for all the people that had suffered because of me, for I knew this was one more person who would be tortured by the bad guys due to her association with Fox Mulder. I sat next to her on the cot, and she let me draw her into a comforting hug while she sobbed against my shoulder for a long time. At last, when she seemed to have no more tears to cry, she pulled away. "Do you know why they brought you to me?" I asked, thoroughly puzzled. "And why..." I gestured at her nude body, wrapped in my blanket. She nodded, her eyes downcast as if afraid to meet mine. "They didn't tell me anything, but I heard them talking." She fell silent, and eventually I prodded, "And?" "And they want us to make a baby." No more. No more for today. I'm sure Scully needs me to help out with something in the kitchen. She's turned out to be quite a good cook, that wife of mine. I never knew she had it in her--she always seemed to be such a professional woman that I never noticed the layer of domesticity inside her. Sometimes I think she even enjoys the comparatively non-pressurized lifestyle she has now, even if the threat of the wolf is constantly at our door. You learn to live with the threat. ---------- Well, I've had a new experience this morning. I have baked my first cake. Oh, not a cake from a mix--I've made those, who hasn't? Nope, this time it was a made-from-scratch, straight-from-the-pages-of-Betty-Crocker *cake*. A chocolate one. I mentioned before that Scully has this domestic thing going, and as her time draws nearer, she seems to want to do a lot of baking. Maybe it's some instinctive, womanly thing, making sure the man is taken care of while she's laid up, because god knows I'd have a difficult time if I had to fend for myself after all these months. Although I do remember how to use a microwave. I wandered into the kitchen, hoping I'd find her there, and was pleased to see she was beginning to pull out a bunch of ingredients for some goodie or other. I'm going to get fat if she keeps this up, but she assures me that after the baby is born, not only will she not have time for this sort of thing, she'll probably lose the desire. As long as she doesn't lose *all* her desires...ha ha. So I asked if I could help, and then next thing I knew, she was sitting at the kitchen table with her feet propped up, and I was standing at the counter measuring this and mixing that, with a level of concentration I used to reserve for only the most complicated X-Files. Hey, it was my first attempt at impressing my wife with my kitchen prowess, I didn't want to fuck it up. The cake turned out pretty good, too, although it had a big crack across the top of it...Scully said her mother could have told us why, but she hadn't a clue. She's still pretty new at this stuff too, but she seems to be enjoying it. I do get a flash of guilt, at times, wondering how long it will be before the urge to slice and dice a corpse becomes so strong in her that she feels all jittery and restless inside. I know that feeling well--I get it every time I read or hear about anything unusual, unexplained...anything I'd have investigated not all that long ago. It isn't that I don't like the life we have now, but once you've lived the way we did, anything else seems a bit boring by comparison. Maybe we're both addicted to the adrenalin rush. Fortunately, we both would rather stay alive..at least most of the time. I haven't thought about the monument all morning. Maybe I should forget teaching history and become a baker. Anyway, I've had a slice of that cake--delicious, even if cracked--and a chicken salad sandwich, and now I'm sitting here with a tall glass of iced tea, made just the way I like it by my loving wife...ah shit. I'm stalling again, aren't I? Damn right you're stalling, Mulder. Jacobson. Fuck. Fuck..that was apparently what they wanted me to do with Melinda. Make a baby, she said. Well, I only know two ways to make a baby (both of which I've now been an unwilling participant in, by the way), and only one of them requires the male and female in question to be in the same room. Therefore...they must want us to fuck. Make a baby, have sex, make love, exchange mutual passion...except neither of us felt that for the other, nor were we exactly, shall we say, in the mood. I mean really, the whole idea was absurd, wasn't it? We'd been abducted, tortured, confined for...how long had it been by then? It must have been several months. She'd had her baby aborted, and suspected her husband was dead. I still had *no* idea what had become of Scully, or even if she was still alive, had no idea what their plans for me were...other than to make a baby with Melinda, but why? Well, the "why" of it really didn't take long to figure out, once we discussed things and put two and two together. Apparently, from what we were able to puzzle out, Melinda's baby hadn't had the ability, the "gift" that Brian had been born with. They had subjected her to the same painful tests I'd endured, and found that the fault didn't lie with her, but with her husband, Allen, so they had killed him. This was all conjecture on our parts at that time, but based on what Asbrook told me later, we were pretty much on the money with it. And, conversely, their testing had found that I *did* have the necessary...genes, DNA, whatever...to make one of those "special" babies, so they decided to breed a couple of their lab rats and try to make super offspring. Naturally, we refused to comply with their polite request. We talked a lot, though, and I'm glad I had a chance to get to know her before she died. She was a remarkable woman. I still feel an incredible burden of guilt at what was done to her family because of me. Anyway, for about three days they left her in my cell, delivering two trays instead of one at each meal. Only one set of clothes arrived each morning, though--presumably, having her naked was supposed to make me lose control of myself, throw her to the floor and force myself upon her. Apparently not only did they not *view* me as human, they completely forgot that I had *ever* been human. Melinda stayed wrapped in my blanket for the first night, and I slept on the floor, leaning against the wall. When the clothing arrived the next morning, I gave her the clean ones and kept the dirty ones for myself. Hey, it wasn't as if I'd gone running and gotten all sweaty. I decided I could do with a little b.o. to give her back her dignity. Maybe the watchers felt they needed to leave us alone for a few days for nature to take its course--it's the only explanation I can think of for why we were allowed to figuratively thumb our noses at them for so long. Eventually, though, they grew tired of waiting. I'd learned to keep one ear trained on the corridor at all times. I couldn't hear much through my door, but generally by the time someone reached the outside of my cell, I could make out their footsteps. I usually knew when a meal tray was about to be shoved through a few seconds before it made its appearance, for instance. Because of that, and because I just happened to be paying attention, when the door opened the next time, I was ready for them. They were ready for me, too. The second a face appeared at the door, I threw the hardest punch I could muster right at it. Connected, too, and heard a satisfying "smack" for my efforts. The bad guy in question cursed and rubbed his jaw, but I was out of practice--I hadn't even managed to give him a bloody nose. Before I could throw a second punch, I was wrestled up against the wall by two more men that I hadn't even known were waiting in the corridor. One of them twisted my arms behind my back, drawing them up so far that I had to press my lips together hard to keep from crying out, and the other shoved a gun against my temple. "Stupid move, Mulder," the one with the gun grinned, and I resisted the urge to tell him to go fuck himself. It didn't seem prudent at that point. "Let's go," growled the other one, the gorilla holding my arms, and without releasing me, he began to march me out of my cell and down the hall that I'd only previously seen while strapped to a gurney. I tried to muster up some characteristic, trademark-type humorous remark, but after being alone for so long, I was badly out of practice. Not one smart-assed comment came to mind, I'm ashamed to report. Instead, I asked the obvious. "Where are we going?" They didn't deign to answer me--who talks to lab rats, after all? I was a little concerned about Melinda--the man I'd punched had stayed behind with her--but before I had time to worry too much, we rounded a corner and went through another door (white, always so fucking white). Cancerman was there. It was some sort of control room, with computers and video monitors all over the place, and he stood before me, grinning around that goddamned cigarette that he can't seem to be without, not saying a word. They stood me before him, and the gorilla released my arms, but his friend didn't lower the gun that still pressed against my head. I guess it's a testament to the survival instinct that I still cared. "You're looking well, Mr. Mulder, all things considered," he said mildly, blowing smoke into the air. "What the fuck do you want with me?" I demanded, my fingers itching to claw at his eyes, twitching with the desire, but restrained by the cold steel barrel. He smiled again, and I realized just how sinister that man's smile has always been. It chilled my blood, and I had thought I wasn't really afraid of him any longer. Instead of speaking, he pointed to his left, to a video monitor, and the gorilla obediently pushed a button on the VCR below. The screen was soon filled with...me. Screaming. Crying. Begging. All the things a man likes to tell himself that manly men don't do, but which I knew for a painful fact they did. They'd videotaped my torture. I was proud of the fact that I only flinched a little before turning back to him. "What's your point?" I asked, fighting harder than I ever had before to keep my voice steady. He still didn't speak, but this time instead of pointing, he moved aside so I could see the monitor behind him, the one that had been hidden by his body. When I saw the image there, my heart almost stopped. I could feel all the blood draining from my face and for a moment I was afraid I'd pass out from dizziness. Scully. They had Scully. Oh dear god, they had Scully, too. She was sitting on a bunk, remarkably similar to mine, gazing into nothingness. Occasionally I would see her move slightly, so I knew she was alive, but other than that, she was still and silent. I finally tore my eyes away from the monitor, meeting his, and asked in a deadly voice, "Have you hurt her?" He shook his head, his smile turning almost regretful, as if he'd really *like* to hurt her, but just hadn't gotten around to fitting it into his schedule yet. "No," he answered, and somehow I knew he was telling the truth, at least as much as the devil is capable of telling the truth. "Not yet." I closed my eyes briefly at the implication in his words. Do what we want, and we won't hurt her, he was offering me. Do as we say. Fuck Melinda Johnson, make a baby for us to experiment on, and we won't hurt Scully. I can still feel the knot in my stomach growing as realization dawned on me. "Why?" I asked then, my voice sounding much more defeated than before. "Why me?" I got more information out of the old bastard in the next few minutes than I had in all my previous dealings with him. "You have it," he told me casually. "I put it there." I shook my head, confused, not understanding. "When your mother was pregnant with you, Fox, she was given a series of injections by one of our doctors. She was told they were vitamin shots. In reality, they were a little more. They helped...change you. Subtle changes, to be sure, not anything that would show up on routine medical testing, as I'm sure you realize. Changes that it would take our technology to detect. Changes we can use." "That doesn't make any sense," I objected. "If I had that ability, why don't I know it? Why can't I use it? Why didn't I know you were going to kidnap me and Scully and the Johnsons, so I could have murdered your sorry ass years ago and prevented all this?" He laughed then, a little, weak, old-man's laugh, but a laugh nonetheless, and I wanted to spit in his face. "The...ability, as you put it...has been dormant in you all your life, Mr. Mulder. But even undeveloped talents can be passed to the next generation." I allowed probably thirty seconds to process everything before I spoke. "Let Scully go," I bargained. "Let her go and I'll do whatever you want. You can do anything to me you like, and I won't fight you." "We can't let her go," he replied. "We may have need of her yet, and certainly she can be used to ensure your cooperation, you've just proven that. However," he hastened, seeing me about to rage at him, "if you do what we ask with Melinda Johnson, Scully won't suffer when it's her turn for the testing. We'll make sure she's unconscious through it all." My heart hit my shoes then. They did intend to put Scully through what they'd done to me. Could she stand it? I wondered then, but I know now she's a hell of a lot stronger than I am. If I was faced with delivering a baby, as she will be in a few days (we hope!), I'd check myself into the hospital, ask for morphine and a voluntary C-Section, and not want to know a thing until it was over. We've decided to go the midwife, birth-at-home route, simply because neither of us trusts the personnel in a hospital. We're afraid if we let our baby out of our sight for even a second, he'll disappear. And yeah, we know it's a boy, and yeah, I'm insufferably proud. So sue me. There wasn't a lot left I could say--I had no guarantee they'd keep their word, but I knew for sure that if I continued to defy them, Scully would suffer. Hell, they'd probably hurt her worse, just to punish me. They might even decide I needed to watch. I hated what I did next, but I had no choice. I would never be able to live with myself if Scully was hurt again because of me. "Fine," I muttered, eyes glued to Scully on the monitor. "I'll fucking do what you want. Just don't hurt her." End chapter 3 ---------- Chapter Four Scully I had to step back for a few days, regain my perspective. I had fallen so deeply into the memory of that time that I almost made myself forget it's over. At least, as over as it will ever be. Besides, I'd let myself get into such a state of mind that I was walking around the apartment saying "fuck this" and "fucking that" to the point that Scully finally could take no more. She grabbed me by the arms, pulled me down nose-to-nose with her, and told me if I didn't clean up my act, she'd wash my mouth out with soap. She looked just angry enough that I believed she might keep that promise. Note to self: never mess with a pregnant woman. Especially a redhead. Today is Scully's due date, but I don't think we're going to have a baby today. She's not showing any signs of going into labor, her water hasn't broken...in short, it's a day just like all the previous days for the last few months. She's miserable, naturally--the weather turned unseasonably cool for a few days but now we're back to hundred degree temps and ninety percent humidity--but misery is to be expected when you're nine months pregnant. I was concerned about the baby coming late, but she says not to worry, that it's perfectly natural. Also, it was a bit difficult for the doctor to give us an exact due date, since we were both rather vague about approximately when conception occurred. Since neither of us was aware of it at the time. I'm getting ahead again, I know, but it is so hard to do this. I've managed to build up an aura of clinical detachment over the past couple of days, examining the ordeal in my mind as if I was nothing more than an observer, but I know as soon as I begin writing about it, that illusion will fly out the window and I'll be back in that white room. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate colors now? I surround myself with them. I don't believe either of us owns a single piece of white clothing. The walls of our apartment are painted the lightest shade of blue, and are adorned with the most colorful prints we could find. We're trying to make up for lost time, I guess. And to eradicate memories. Those memories that I'm now forcing myself to delve into, but it's only to avoid the monument. Today is hazy, and the monument looks like a dream through the atmosphere, but I'm always aware of its presence. But if I quit now, as someone I once knew so memorably stated, they win. And I'll be damned--I mean darned--if I'll let them win. So, to stave off the draw of the monument...back to the memories. I told them I'd do what they wanted, but as they led me back to my cell I wondered just exactly how I was going to accomplish that. I reminded myself that I was *still* a human being, in spite of their treatment of me, and so was Melinda. She wasn't just a means to ensuring Scully's safety--and I had no guarantee they'd keep their word anyway. If they didn't, how would I know? My concern about method was for nothing, I discovered when they had locked the two of us up together again. This time it was I who couldn't meet her eyes, but she placed a hand gently on my arm and said, "I know." I glanced up at her briefly, then back to my bare feet. "Melinda--" I began, but she cut me off. "It's all right, Agent Mulder." To hear someone call me that, after all those weeks--felt odd. I didn't think of myself as "Agent Mulder" any longer, I was just a guy who'd been kidnapped, who was trying to find a way out of an intolerable situation. The FBI seemed worlds away at that point. "He talked to me while you were gone." I risked another glance at her face. It was calm, impassive, but her eyes were so sad. "Did he tell you...?" I couldn't finish. She took a deep breath, and seated herself on the bunk. "They reminded me that they still have my son," she said flatly. "And that if I don't cooperate, they'll hurt him." I grinned mirthlessly and sat beside her. So, they'd found both our leverage points, and with no effort at all. I wondered then, briefly, if Scully had been taken for the sole purpose of being used against me. See, I'm still a self-centered sonofa--gun, at times. (I'm trying, Scully, I really am. Mom washed my mouth out with soap once, liquid soap, and I never want to repeat the experience. And I wouldn't put anything past you right now!) "They have my partner," I offered after a moment. "They told me the same thing." She nodded. "So we have to...do this...to save them?" She sighed again. "I can't let them hurt Brian." She shrugged. "Of course, maybe they already have, or will anyway, but I can't take the risk." We sat there for a long time, each lost in our own thoughts. I felt the least they could do was turn out the light and give us some privacy, but remember, we weren't human to them, we were lab rats. So the lights stayed on, and eventually we covered ourselves with the blanket and did what they wanted. And it wasn't easy, and neither of us enjoyed it, other than the obvious physical release for me, and Melinda threw up afterwards, and I almost did, and that's all I'll write about that time. ---------- Scully claims indigestion again, but I'm wondering if it's the beginning of labor. ---------- Coffee is a wonderful substance. I live on it these days, along with the goodies Scully was baking all this week. I haven't ventured into the kitchen again after my success with the chocolate cake--didn't want to jinx myself--and she seems to have tapered off on the domesticity bit. Right now she's so uncomfortable she doesn't like to move. I'll get her settled in the recliner with the tv remote and a huge glass of ice water, and then I'm at her beck and call for bathroom breaks, more and more frequent these days. We bought one of those nice, big, La-Z-Boy chairs because she was having trouble sleeping in the bed some nights, and when that happens I usually end up stretched out on the couch next to her. I can't stand to sleep in the bed alone. I want to know she's nearby. I'm stalling again. Obviously they were watching us through their little monitor, although we kept ourselves hidden beneath the blanket and refused to put on a show for them. It was perfunctory sex. Melinda had to do little more than lie there, and I managed to work up enough excitement to get the job done by remembering some of my videos and magazines. I thought of Scully for a brief second, and immediately pushed the thought away. I didn't want to bring Scully into this degradation, not even in my mind. I did manage not to hurt Melinda, for which I was grateful--I don't think I could have done what they demanded if it had hurt her, no matter what their threats. I'm no rapist. After we finished, and Melinda threw up her lunch, they came and got her. Nobody spoke a word to us as they marched her out of my cell, and the door slammed behind them. For the first time in days, I was alone, and I felt desolate. Melinda had been company, good company, and we'd done a lot of talking. I had been almost embarrassingly grateful to have another person in the same room, and she'd felt the same. Now it was back to white walls and interminable days, and when that realization hit me, I crawled back into the bed, still warm from our bodies, and fell into a funk. They brought her back the next day. Apparently they had a way of determining whether or not she'd gotten pregnant within twenty-four hours of conception. They had a lot of medical advances at their disposal, but many were still at the experimental stage, and most, unless I miss my guess, were certainly not FDA approved. At any rate, we'd apparently failed on our first attempt, so we had to try again. Same story, next verse. Same aftermath. Same feelings of self-loathing and disgust, and unbearable loneliness when they took her away. After that, I never saw her again, so I assumed they'd gotten what they wanted from us. It was weeks before I saw another person, and the next time they came to get me, they strapped me to the gurney, and I trembled my way down the corridor, certain they'd decided to put me through the testing again. It had been long enough since the pain that I was able to refrain from screaming, but I felt terror, make no mistake. I may have distanced myself from the agony, but I hadn't forgotten it. They didn't hurt me that time, but they took a semen sample, and it was degrading and humiliating, and I'm done for the day. Maybe Scully would like me to rub her back. I'd better check on her "indigestion." ---------- Scully says she doesn't remember any of it, and I don't know if she's telling the truth, or if she's in denial, or flat-out lying in order to spare me. I feel certain they must have done some sort of testing on her, and I pray they kept their word and she didn't feel a thing, but I know they didn't do the same things to her that they did to me. Not all of them, anyway. She doesn't have the scars. She says of all the scars I have, the cigarette burn on my arm makes her the most furious. The others, she thinks, must have had some purpose, even if it was against my will, and even if we wouldn't agree with the purpose should we ever discover what it was. The cigarette burn, though, that was done out of simple cruelty. She's right, naturally, but I'm still not sure the other wasn't done out of cruelty as well. I can't imagine what they could have accomplished with electric shock applied to my extremities, or rubbing the lotion that felt like fire over my entire body, or-- enough. I swore when I began this record that I wasn't going into the really painful memories. I'm just not ready for that yet--I may never be ready for it. I know, I know, I'm a psych major--well, Mulder was anyway--and I'm fully aware of what can happened with repressed memories, but these memories aren't repressed. I'm simply not willing to go there. Besides, if my children's children (or should I say my *child's* children, since I'm not likely to ever have others, none that I know of anyway) do read this someday, there's no reason for them to know all the ins and outs of what Grandpa suffered at the hands of the nasty people. After they took their semen sample (and I still shudder when I remember how *that* little chore was accomplished!), they left me alone. For weeks. Of course, I had plenty of time to think, and I began to try and piece together the little bit that Cancerman had told me when he'd garnered my cooperation where Melinda was concerned. So they'd given my mother injections that made oh-so-subtle changes in my genetic structure, had they? Well it must not have worked all that well, else why not simply create their master race by injecting all the pregnant women? They could have had two generations of super-humans by now. The only thing I could come up with was that their experiment had been a failure. After all, hadn't that smoking bast..er..jerk--said the ability was dormant in me? What good did it do anyone lying dormant? I consciously tried to make it work after that, too, tried like hell, but was completely unsuccessful. (Can I say 'hell' Scully? I fear if you don't deliver this baby soon you're going to kill me--you give the term "moody" a whole new meaning these days. Can't blame you, though--neither of us knows if we're going to have a normal child, although the doctor says he can't detect any abnormalities. But then, he wouldn't be able to detect this one, would he? If he could, he'd be one of their doctors, and we'd be in deep doo-doo. But I digress.) Anyway, by all my reasoning, the results of the experiment on Mom had not met their expectations, and according to Asbrook, that was true. By his best guess, they had injected close to three hundred women with the "vitamin shots" they gave my mother, and I was the only offspring that picked up their special ability. And it was dormant in me. Guess I know now why they never just shot me and got it over with--they probably always figured they might be able to make use of me later. I really don't think they knew about Brian, but they had altered Melinda when she was abducted. They'd tried to do the same to her husband, but apparently it didn't take with him. Melinda's ability was also "dormant", for lack of a better word--that isn't really the right term, I suppose, but it will suffice--but Brian had it in spades. When I began investigating Brian's ability, those who were always paying attention, as Max Fenig pointed out, alerted them, and all of us were kidnapped on the same night. Maybe they took me and Scully to keep us quiet, or maybe they intended even then to try and breed Melinda and me...shit, now I'm talking about *myself* like I was less than human. Let me rephrase that. Perhaps they intended from the beginning to discover whether or not Melinda and I could produce "special" children. Sounds better, huh? Not when you consider how our baby was conceived, but if I want to put a civilized veneer on it... At any rate, I spent my days and nights worrying after the semen sample. I wasn't sure what they wanted it for, but it didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that they probably intended to make more babies. I wondered how many women they had locked away there, and if some of them would be unwillingly impregnated with my sperm. I also wondered why they made Melinda and me do it the old-fashioned way, but according to Asbrook, they did that because it was the most reliable method. Guess their "medical advances" haven't perfected in vitro yet, but it worked well enough where Scully was concerned. Of course, I didn't know then that Scully was pregnant. I fretted constantly over whether or not they were hurting her, but for some reason it never once crossed my mind that they might make her pregnant. For one thing, I didn't realize they still had some of her ova, but Asbrook says I didn't get them all. Well, had I been thinking clearly, I should have known that. I mean, there were more vials in that drawer than the one I took, and Scully's name was on the drawer...I should have put two and two together, but I was so knocked back at discovering the Kurts, and realizing what had happened to Scully, not to mention being scared to death that I was going to lose her soon to cancer...well I suppose it's not surprising that this important little fact escaped me. Hell, I was lucky to get out of that place alive. I'm started to swear again, and I know that means I'm getting too deep into the memories, but I've just got to get through this. Somehow, I really think writing it all down like this might help me sleep better. It's like talking to someone about it, but without the risk. I can't exactly go to a shrink with this story--he'd lock my sorry ass up in a mental institution in two seconds flat. Either that, or he'd turn out to be untrustworthy, and Scully and I would be back in their custody. Last night, sitting on the couch, I was holding her when a mental image of our baby in their hands flashed across my vision. I gasped out loud, and she was understandably alarmed. I didn't want to tell her what had caused my sudden fear, but Scully is relentless when she's *not* pregnant. While gestating, that woman is downright scary. Needless to say, I told her everything before she threatened to shove splinters beneath my fingernails. "I'll never let them take our baby, Andrew," she said to me flatly. She's a lot better at calling me 'Andrew' than I am about calling her 'Lisa.' I think she's afraid that, in the throes of labor, she might yell out 'Mulder' and completely blow our cover with the neighbors. "How would you stop them?" I asked, pulling her back into my arms. I really just wanted to keep her talking. I suppose it's understandable that I'm not really fond of prolonged silence these days. "If anyone ever threatens our child, I'll kill them," she said in a positive, determined voice. "I won't even hesitate, not for a moment." There didn't seem to be anything to say in response. I felt the same way, of course, and I didn't feel comfortable pointing out to her that we might not have the chance to kill them, that we certainly hadn't been able to prevent our abductions, nor had we been able to save the Johnson family. I wish I knew for sure that Brian was dead. That sounds morbid, I know, but I'd rather picture him dead than still in their hands. And there's not a damned thing I can do to help him now. I suppose I'll always feel a burden of guilt over that. I spent my time pacing my cell as best I could, worrying, and sleeping. I don't know how long I was alone, again without any human contact other than The Arm, but it was weeks. I know for certain it was weeks--must have been eight or nine. Evidently they could determine whether or not she was pregnant almost immediately, but the fetus had to be several months along in its development before they could test for the ability. I'd almost forgotten what the sound of a human voice was like. I still steadfastly refused to begin talking to myself, egotistically telling myself that as long as I didn't, I could still call myself sane. As if it mattered. I did a lot of sleeping--I think I mentioned that depression does that--and I was sound asleep one night when I was jolted awake by the sound of the door being ope ---------- I have a son! I have a son and he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Scully says he has my mouth (not my nose, thank god!), but it's too early to tell about eye color, hair color, etc. His eyes are blue, like all newborns, and his hair is just dark fuzz at this point. It could turn red, and that's what I'm hoping for. Nice red, like Scully's, not carrot-top red. I was in the middle of writing--in fact, I was in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a *word*--when I heard this godawful moan come from the living room. I dropped everything and ran in to see what was happening, and there was Scully, bent double over the couch, panting, white-faced. Even though I knew what was happening, it still scared the hell out of me. "Call Mary!" she hissed through her teeth, and I stumbled toward the phone. Mary Burks is our nurse-midwife, the one who's been working to prepare Scully for the birth for several weeks now. We had been seeing an ob/gyn, but after he determined that we were nearing the due date and everything appeared normal, we grew paranoid. Decided to go the midwife route. Luckily, Dr. Adams was an understanding man. We told him it was a financial issue, and he gave us his blessing, so to speak, although he did consult with Mary and made arrangements for her to call him should any complications arise. He was concerned about Scully's age, for delivering her first child. The older a woman is when her first baby is delivered, the more chance for something to go wrong, apparently. But we were lucky, and little Tyler Andrew Jacobson arrived at 4:23 this morning, healthy and, from what we can tell, perfect. He's beautiful. Did I already mention that? He and Scully are both sleeping now, curled up together in our big queen-sized bed, and I snuck away to exorcise some more demons while I have a moment. My life has changed radically over the course of the last twelve hours, and suddenly I have a whole new perspective. I thought I loved this child before he was born, but it was nothing compared to the way I feel now. I'm with Scully; if anyone ever threatens Tyler, I'll kill them first and ask question later. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah--I was actually getting to the good part, if a story like mine could be construed to have a "good part." I'd been alone for weeks after they took the semen sample, and I was beginning to go slowly out of my mind, although, as I mentioned, I still refused to begin conversing with myself. I paced, I slept, I fidgeted...I was bored nearly to death. I was thankful every day they didn't take me back for the testing, but at the same time I'd have given anything just to talk with another human being. I'd had that, briefly, in all those months of imprisonment, and it had only made me crave companionship even more. I was sleeping soundly, and it was midnight, as I discovered later, when the door suddenly opened. I awakened immediately--so little happened in my life that I was attuned to every sound--and stared into the face of a man I'd never seen before. He wasn't one of the guards who had hustled me back and forth, and as far as I remembered, he hadn't been present when they'd tortured me. He was alone, and his expression was grim. "If you want to get out of here, follow me and don't ask questions," he ordered in a low voice, and after a split-second of hesitation, I obeyed. Hey, he said he'd get me out. And what did I have to lose, at that point? Not much, I reasoned, so with a nervous glance up at the camera, wondering if I was walking into another kind of trap, I followed. We emerged into the corridor, and for the first time I got a good look. It was white (I'm quite sure I've mentioned the whiteness before) and not very long--five doors lined each side of it, all bolted from the outside. It crossed my mind that all those doors possibly concealed captives, and I had a momentary flash of myself running down the hall, flinging open doors and freeing prisoners right and left. I didn't have time to consider actually putting the thought into action--my would-be rescuer was moving fast. He stopped three doors down from my cell and threw open another door. I peered inside and saw one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. Scully's frightened blue eyes stared back at me. She stared sleepily at us, confused for a minute, until recognition dawned on her face. She had to look past my growth of facial hair to realize it was me. "Mulder!" she cried and flung herself at me. I was ready to catch her, holding on for dear life for all of ten seconds before the man who'd released me hissed at us to come on before it was too late. He didn't have to tell us twice--I grabbed Scully's hand and dragged her out the door and the two of us followed him down the corridor and around a corner. I stopped suddenly when I recognized the room where they'd taken me for the testing, feeling fear throughout my body. He saw my hesitation and grabbed my arm, pulling me along until we passed the room and reached a security door. Silently we waited while he ran a key-card through the slot and punched in a code, and then the door opened and I got my first breath of fresh air in I didn't know how many months. The night was chilly, and we were barefoot, but we didn't care. We stepped outside and both stopped to look up at the stars, stunned for a moment. The guy who'd sprung us gave us each a light shove and said in a low voice, "The guard takes a fifteen minute break at midnight. We still have five minutes to get away before they drag you back and lock you up again." No words could have been more effective. He ushered us into a car and sped away, while I tried to get my bearings. My best guess was that we were somewhere in New York, and I learned I was correct--on the outskirts of Brooklyn, in a warehouse district. "Who are you?" I demanded as our prison receded in the background. "Why are you helping us? Where are you taking us?" He made a lot of turns, doubling back and managing to avoid pursuit. He'd driven for about twenty minutes, finally pulling to a stop at a city park in a nice residential neighborhood. "I'm Tyler Asbrook," he told me, turning in the seat to face us. As he spoke, he reached into his coat pocket and produced a thick brown envelope. "You'll need this." "What is it?" I questioned, fingering the paper carefully. "It's money. All I have. There are clothes in the trunk, I hope some of them fit you. Sorry about you, Agent Scully, but maybe you can find something that will do until you can buy new ones. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare." "Prepare for what?" I was growing more confused as he continued. "Prepare for this," he said, climbing out of the car. I got out and stood beside him, but Scully stayed in her seat, listening to our conversation. "I've been a part of this for too long," he told me, sadness in his voice. "It's more than I can stand. After what happened to Mrs. Johnson--" "What happened to her?" I asked anxiously. "Did she get pregnant from what they--made us do?" I felt Scully's eyes boring into me at that, but I had to know what had happened to Melinda, and our child, if there was one. "She did," he replied grimly. "When they discovered the child had the ability, she killed herself." "How--?" "She rammed her head into the wall of her cell so hard it caused a brain hemorrhage. I had to admire her determination," he said, shaking his head from side to side. "If she'd tried to hurt herself in any other way, the guards would have gotten to her before she could succeed, but this was so unexpected--by the time they reached her, there was no saving her, or the child. They tried putting her on life support, keeping her body alive so the fetus could continue to develop, but it spontaneously aborted later that day." He grinned. "They lost that one." "But they took a semen sample from me," I reminded him, shuddering at the memory. He nodded in acknowledgment. "And they impregnated Agent Scully." "What?" we demanded in unison. I don't think Asbrook could have shocked us more if he'd had weeks to plan. "How is that possible?" Scully asked tremulously. "They stole my ova, and Mulder--" I couldn't look at her. I'd finally been forced to tell her the whole story about how I'd taken the vial of her ova from the lab. I'd had them tested as quickly as possible, and had been told that none were viable. Either they'd lied, or-- "They had more of your ova than the ones Agent Mulder took," Asbrook said hurriedly. "Look, we don't have time for this. They've already discovered you missing, and eventually they're going to find you if you don't get out of here." I heard a jangle, and caught the keys to the car as he dropped them into my hand. "Get in the car, Mulder," Scully ordered immediately, and I did as I was told, climbing behind the wheel and adjusting the seat for my height--Asbrook was almost as short as Scully. I started the car, ready to put it in gear, when a horrible thought occurred to me. "The chip!" I exclaimed. "What about the chip in Scully's neck? Won't they be able to find us? They managed to summon her to a place they wanted her to go in the past, and she couldn't even remember how--" "I programmed that chip, Mr. Mulder," Asbrook said smugly. "Believe me, that chip is useless to them now. I managed to trash the program so completely, it can never be salvaged." "Her cancer..." He shook his head impatiently. "They can't give her cancer again. They can't do anything to her. Her cancer won't return because the chip isn't active. They *gave* her the cancer--once the chip was removed, they lost their ability to control it. That's why you were allowed to put another chip in its place--they wanted to control her. So they could control you. Now they can't control either of you, unless they find you." Asbrook leaned closer to me, and stared at me intently. "Disappear, Mr. Mulder. Disappear and don't ever resurface. They'll be looking for your child." That was all it took. "Thanks," I called as he backed away from the car, and he raised his hand in farewell. We hadn't gotten halfway down the block when we heard a gunshot and both jumped, startled at the sound. Scully turned around, and I looked in the rear-view mirror. Asbrook was lying on the pavement--apparently he'd shot himself. "Mulder?" Scully asked, and I could hear the shock beginning to color her voice. "He had to, Scully," I told her, and my own voice sounded as if it was miles away. "He couldn't go back, they'd have killed him. Maybe he didn't want to disappear." Which is what we did, as fast as we could, just as Asbrook had suggested. I hear Tyler beginning to stir. Must be time for the little guy to eat. I'll finish this up later--right now I want to be with my wife and son. End chapter 4 ---------- Chapter Five Freedom's Light, Danger's Shadow We drove until almost noon the next day, by which time my eyes were beginning to cross and I simply couldn't stay awake any longer. Scully had slept in the car some, and she wanted to drive us on further, but I told her we ought to check into a motel somewhere and see if we could get some help. We found one of those fleabag motels--the kind you think probably rent rooms by the hour--and managed to avoid showing any identification by paying cash in advance. The proprietor didn't care, he had his money, and I suppose we looked like his typical clientele at that point--we were both unkempt and tired-looking. I was wearing the shoes Asbrook had provided for me and the same clothes I'd been wearing when he released us. Scully was still barefoot, and remained in the car while I procured our room, but he glanced at her through the window, then at me, then shoved a book over for me to sign. I wrote down the first names that came to mind--I don't even remember what they were now, but nothing as mundane as 'Bob and Mary Jones,' I do know that. One of my shadier sources once told me that if you wanted to really disappear in this country, you needed a new identity that was unobtrusive, but not so obscure as to look suspicious. Never take the name 'Smith' or 'Jones,' he'd said. Take a name like 'Harris' or 'Johnson.' Then find a large city and melt into the population there--get a normal job, buy a normal house, live a normal life. Nothing that would stand out on either end of the scale. But for now, we just needed rest, and food. The nice thing about sleazy motels--or at least, this particular sleazy motel--was that privacy of the customers was an issue. The parking was behind the main building, hidden from view of the street. I drove Asbrook's car around and parked it about ten doors down from the room where we would be staying. Then Scully and I unloaded the two suitcases from the trunk and checked out our new digs. She wrinkled her nose when the door opened, and I tried not to grimace. It was fairly clean, but not sparkling. Cleaner than I'd have expected in a place like that one, although the bedspread did have a rather large stain in the middle. We folded it down and were relieved to find fresh sheets. "You always could pick 'em, Mulder," she commented, trying hard to find good humor, and I jangled the key in her face. "It may not be as luxurious as our most recent accommodations, Scully, but at least we can leave at will," I reminded her, and she nodded. I'd love to say that we went to bed together for the very first time and made mad, passionate love, but the truth is, we just crashed. I was exhausted, and Scully was still pretty tired too. As soon as my head hit that pillow, I was out, and when I woke up, it was nearly midnight. Scully was sitting up in the bed, eating a hamburger, watching television. "I'll give you fifteen thousand dollars for that burger," I offered. That was how much money Asbrook had given us, roughly--Scully had counted it while we were driving. Apparently the guy had cleaned out his bank account for us. He'd obviously put some thought into our escape, it wasn't a spur of the moment deal for him. We would find out later that he had sold his car that day--the one the Consortium members recognized as his--and bought a nondescript compact car at a used car lot a hundred miles from the facility where we'd been held. He'd been planning to release us for a while--my guess is he decided to do it when they impregnated Scully. "Not a chance, Mulder, I haven't had a decent hamburger in months," she shot back, tossing me a paper bag. "Besides, I knew you'd harass me about it, so I got you your own." We sat side by side in the bed, munching on hamburgers and watching late-night talk shows for a while, not talking. We glanced nervously toward the door every time there was a noise from the parking lot. Eventually, when our door wasn't busted in and we weren't hauled off at gunpoint by the bad guys, we began to relax our guard, but only a little. It would be a long time before we would feel even an hour of relaxation. When the show we were pretending to watch ended, and an infomercial began, Scully yawned and flicked off the television. I was kind of wishing she'd leave it on, because at least it was noise, and I'd always surrounded myself with noise even before we were taken, but I didn't say anything. I figured she wanted to sleep some more. Her words startled me. "Do you think it's true?" she asked, unconsciously rubbing her hand over her belly. I shook my head briefly. "I don't see why he would lie," I told her. "Don't you know--what they did to you?" She stared at her lap, steadfastly refusing to meet my eyes. "I don't remember anything," she muttered at last. "I wasn't aware of leaving that room the entire time." "Scully--did they hurt you at all?" I didn't want to ask, didn't want to know, but at the same time I had to know. If what I'd done with Melinda had been for nothing...well, there wasn't a thing I could do about it now, but the thought sickened me. She still didn't look at me, but she reached over and squeezed my hand. "The didn't hurt me, Mulder," she said gently. "Did they hurt you?" I was silent for a long time before answering simply, "Yeah." She didn't say anything else, but she leaned over and embraced me, laying her head on my shoulder, and it was nice. It was very nice. I don't know if I've mentioned just how long I was in love with Scully before we were married. I must have actually fallen for her sometime during our first year together, but I was too stupid to realize it until she was taken from me. Only then, when half my heart, half my life was gone, did I realize just how much she meant to me, and just how much I needed her. Even after she was returned, it took me years to finally work up the nerve to tell her--years and morphine--and even longer before she could admit to caring deeply for me. She'd never actually said she loved me, not in those words, but she'd shown it to me in enough ways that I felt pretty secure about it. At least I had until now. "Mulder?" "Hmm?" I rumbled, slipping my arm around her shoulders and holding her against me, lest she decide to pull away. "What are we going to do?" I thought about that for a long time. 'Disappear,' Asbrook had said, and I couldn't see that we had any choice. For now, though, there was only one thing to do. "We're going to think about it tomorrow," I told her, switching off the lamp and sitting there in the dark, just holding her. We slept the rest of the night in that position, and I woke up about 5:30 with a crick in my neck. ---------- Scully is a natural mother. I know how devastated she was when she lost Emily--I was there, grieving in my own way as she pushed me aside and refused the comfort I offered her. When I see her, nursing Tyler, looking down into his dark baby eyes, I feel a tightness in my throat that I haven't felt in a long time. Nobody has ever meant this much to me in my life--not even Sam. I still love my sister, and I still miss her, although my days of being able to actively search for her may be over forever, but the feelings I have for Scully and Tyler--they transcend common sense. I am, to put it simply, quite nuts about my family. I just hope they'll leave us alone and let us live in peace, but for as long as they want our son, we can never stop hiding. ---------- I took the car, since I had shoes, and left Scully asleep while I went out to one of those tacky all-night discount stores and bought us some things. Shoes and clothes for Scully--the salesclerk must have thought I was some kind of weirdo--and minor personal effects for each of us. I also bought something I hoped to surprise her with later--not the greatest quality, considering where I bought it, but not cheap junk either. I thought they were nice. I stopped at a McDonalds and picked up some breakfast for us, and when I returned to our room, Scully was wide awake and pacing. "Where the hell have you been?" she demanded the minute I opened the door, and then her face softened at my startled look. "I'm sorry, Mulder,' she apologized. "I woke up alone and panicked. I was afraid..." I tossed the stuff on the bed and folded her in a hug. "We'll be all right, Scully," I murmured into her hair as she clung to me. "They won't find us again." "What are we going to do?" she asked again, and I could hear an unfamiliar note of despair in her voice. I'd been thinking about that, I told her, and then I seated her on the bed, handed her an Egg McMuffin, and began outlining my plan. By the time I was done, her face had gone from worried, to thoughtful, to hopeful. "I think you just might be on to something," was her only comment. I left the motel to make the call, driving several miles to find a pay phone. We were both still afraid to take any chances, and I'd left Scully armed with a heavy crowbar I found in the trunk of Asbrook's car. He'd thought of everything, it seemed, except weapons. Oh well, the man was apparently planning his suicide along with our escape, so I guess I can't fault him. "They're on their way," I told her when I returned, and for the next few hours we waited, on pins and needles, for Frohike, Byers and Langly to arrive. I had begun to believe that we just might survive. They arrived, finally, bearing pizza, and I resisted the urge to hug them all--gooey, cheesy pepperoni pizza...you don't realize how delicious it is until you've been denied the opportunity for months on end. It tasted like heaven. "Gee, Mulder, we really thought..." Langly began, and stopped. I knew what they'd thought. What everyone thought. They'd believed us dead, after all this time. "Did they leave any evidence behind?" I asked, reaching for a second slice of pizza, and Byers shook his head. "Not a trace," he said in his familiar, mild-mannered way. "We went over both your apartments thoroughly. It was as if you'd just vanished." "Disappeared," I correctly absently, savoring the pepperoni. "Huh?" I swallowed quickly. "It's a word I heard somewhere once. I don't remember where--maybe I dreamed it--but I have this impression of people who are considered a risk being spirited away and locked up. They called it being "disappeared." They all stared at me as if I were insane, but I had such a clear memory of that one word and its meaning that I knew it was real. Unfortunately, I had no idea where the memory had come from, and no other memories to wrap around it and make it familiar. Maybe it was a dream, I don't know, but wasn't that exactly what had happened to us? "Well," Scully said, joining the discussion at last, "we need to disappear again. For good this time. If they ever find us..." "Scully's pregnant," I explained shortly. "With my child. They want our baby." The guys gaped. "They still had some of her ova, they took my...uh...they made a baby," I finished lamely. I found it difficult to talk about what had happened to me, and the recollection was so humiliating that I didn't want to have to explain further. "Gotcha," Byers said tactfully. "When exactly is the blessed event?" Scully and I stared at each other. "We don't really know," I said, at the same time she told them, "We don't even know for sure." More confused looks. "We have no way of determining, at this point, if I'm really pregnant," Scully said with a sigh. "The man who released us told us that I was, but we have no proof." I pointed out, "She can't be more than a few weeks along." "Home pregnancy test," suggested Frohike. "We tried that, this morning," I supplied. "It was negative. But it might still be too early for a home test to be accurate. The only sure way, at this point, would be visiting a doctor, and that's out of the question." "So what do you need us to do, Mulder?" Langly cut in, seeing that Scully was growing more uncomfortable with the subject of her possible pregnancy. "New identities?" "Yeah," I nodded, swallowing the last of my pizza. "Can you make us disappear, Langly?" They all three laughed. "Mulder," Byers said confidently, "we can make the Federal Witness Protection Program look like a child's kindergarten game." "Just leave it to us," Frohike added, and we did. We had no choice. ---------- It took them two days, during which time we moved to another fleabag motel. We were afraid to stay in any place too long, lest we be discovered. When the guys returned to us, they had everything we needed to be new people--birth certificates, social security cards, drivers' licenses, even a credit card and credit record. I discovered, reading through the file on my new persona, that I had spent time in the Navy, (ironic, since I get seasick at the raising of an anchor), then after my honorable discharge I'd gone to college, graduating recently with a master's degree in education, That would explain my lack of work history, although I supposed if they tried to contact my university professors for references, I was sunk. I should have known better. "We took care of it, Andrew," Frohike assured me in a slightly offended tone, and I glared at him. Andrew. I think I've mentioned before that I don't look at all like an Andrew. "Any inquiries into your education will be routed directly to me," Byers added. "Don't worry, Mulder, I'll give you a glowing reference." "History?" I asked, one eyebrow raised in curiosity. "We can't put you in Psychology," Langly informed me. "It's too obvious. Besides, with your memory, you ought to be able to fake your way through. Better start studying." I only grimaced a little before thanking them gruffly. After all, they had just saved our hides. At least for a little while longer. It was Chicago at first. We were only there for a couple of weeks, still trying to get used to calling each other Andrew and Lisa, when Scully returned to our apartment one day, breathless, white-faced and trembling. She'd run out to the store for a few staples, since our larder was practically bare, but I could only stare when she returned empty-handed, obviously frightened out of her wits. "I saw one of them, Mulder," she blurted out, and that's when I understood how deeply terrified she was of being re-captured. I'm not truly in the habit, even yet, of calling her Lisa, but Scully rarely forgets to address me by my new name. When she called me 'Mulder,' I knew she was frantic. "Where?" I demanded. "Did he see you?" She shook her head, already reaching for my embrace. Not bad for a woman who'd initially been reluctant to marry me. "Wouldn't it be better, safer, if we were to split up and go our separate ways?" she'd asked that day when we were presented with our new identities. It isn't like me to lay down the law--as if I could do any such thing without Scully's approval--but I did my level best. "No way," I responded flatly. "I am not losing you again, Scully. Especially not if you're carrying my child. We stick together." I presented my argument in my best "I'm-the-man-and-I'll- make-the-decisions" voice, and the wonder of it all was that Scully didn't kill me. She stared at me for a few minutes, then nodded her agreement, and she's never mentioned leaving me again. Thank god. Anyway, once we got to Chicago, I presented her with the little gift I'd bought that first morning when I went shopping. It was a nice, nondescript wedding ring set, and when I slipped the engagement ring on her finger she smiled up at me, so I allowed myself to hope she really did want to marry me. We did the deed quietly, three days later, in a judge's office in downtown Chicago. It was the first real test of our new identities, and my heart was in my throat as I presented my "papers" to the clerk. I've learned since then that nobody really looks too closely at all that stuff. If you have it, they assume it's real. The first time we made love, it was hungry--as if we were both desperate to assuage a need neither of us had fully recognized until we touched. After that first time, it became more deliberate, more sweet and loving, and by the time we were actually married, it seemed we had been lovers forever. I've gotten a bit far afield of my original point, though, haven't I? Scully told me she'd been walking through the store, putting this and that into the shopping cart, when she began to get the distinct impression she was being followed. She put her FBI training to use and finally decided one of the other customers looked a little *too* casual. Also, he was everywhere she went. When she managed to get a close look at him, she thought she recognized him--not from our time in captivity, because she swears she never saw anyone during that time--but from before we were taken. One of the Consortium's cronies that we'd had a slight run-in with once upon a time. We immediately left our apartment and found an isolated phone booth, where we placed a call to the special number Byers had given us in case we needed to contact them. After a short explanation, we were told to go to a particular motel, take a room, and wait. Within six hours, we were on our way to Houston. They had done a bit of investigating, and to the best of everyone's knowledge, it was a false alarm--thus we kept the same identities, but still it was the general consensus that getting us far away from Chicago was a good idea. Houston, being an enormous city, but not as cliché as Los Angeles, seemed the perfect choice. Frohike even managed to arrange for my teaching position. So far, we haven't spotted anyone suspicious around our neighborhood. This morning, while Tyler and Scully were still sleeping, I took a trip over to the monument. I hadn't trusted myself to visit the observation deck since the first time, but this morning I felt it was one more demon I needed to conquer. I stood there, all alone, since it was still early and the museum had just opened, and stared out over the grounds. It was a beautiful place, made more so by the story that went behind the battlefield below. Texas won its independence from Mexico here, over a hundred and fifty years ago. Against all odds, the small, scraggly army of volunteers managed to defeat Santa Ana's troops and win a war everyone had told them they were fools to fight. It reminded me of my life, and how much I now had to live for. Tyler needs me--depends upon Scully and me for his very survival. Truly, if I quit now, they win, and although I thought they already had, I see now, as I think of my beautiful wife and son, that I was mistaken. On my first trip to the monument, I'd seen only the war. Now I can see the chance for victory. I guess I'll never shake the feeling that every day we live is borrowed time. There is the constant threat of discovery, but that's not my only concern. There's one more thing that really, really troubles me, particularly late at night when I'm awake and the rest of the world is sleeping. I did ask Asbrook, sometime during our escape, although for the life of me I've forgotten just when it was, about Brian Johnson. My exact words, in fact, were, "What about Brian?" He didn't really answer. He just gave a cryptic shake of his head, and at the time I assumed that meant Brian was dead, along with his father and mother. Now I wonder. I wonder if Brian is still alive, and if he is... will they use him to find us. END