Authors: Chris Carter
"You've been
using
me—"
"
I've
been using
you
!" Now it was Kurtzweil's turn to sound offended.
"You didn't know my father—"
The doctor shook his head. "I told you—he and I were old friends."
"You're a liar," Mulder spat. "You lied to me to gather information for you. For your god-damn books. Didn't you?" He shoved the older man against the bathroom door. "Didn't you?"
Suddenly the door swung open. A man hastily exited, making his way between them. As he did so, Kurtzweil broke away and hurried out the back door. Mulder stared after him, then quickly followed.
"Kurtzweil!"
He blinked in the blaze of afternoon light, looking around vain in for his prey. After a moment he sighted him, and Mulder took off. "Hey!"
When he came up alongside Kurtzweil, the older man turned on him with unexpected ferocity.
"You'd be shit out of luck if not for me," he gasped, pushing at Mulder's chest. "You saw what you saw because I
led you to it
. I'm putting my ass on the line for you."
"
Your
ass?" Mulder's voice crackled with disdain. "I just got chased across Texas by two black helicopters—"
"And why do you think it is that you're standing here talking to me? These people don't make mistakes, Agent Mulder."
Kurtzweil spun on his heel and strode off. Mulder gazed at him, dumbfounded by the logic of this, when his attention was abruptly shaken by a noise above him. He whirled and looked up to see a figure straddling a fire escape. A tall man, only his legs and feet clearly in sight; but it was obvious he had been watching them. As Mulder moved back to get a better view the man turned and stared down at him, then ducked into an open window and disappeared.
It was only a glimpse, but something about the figure was familiar. His height, the close-cropped hair…
Mulder frowned and ran a hand wearily across his forehead, then hurried down the alley after Kurtzweil.
He was gone. Breathlessly Mulder chugged onto the sidewalk, scanning the street and sur-rounding buildings. Kurtzweil was nowhere to be seen. For several minutes he walked around, searching for any sign of the familiar raincoat and stooped gray head. But finally he had to admit it: Kurtzweil had given him the slip.
When he reached his apartment Mulder jammed the key into the lock and hurried inside, forgetting to close the door behind him. He tossed his jacket on the couch and crossed quickly to his desk, yanking open one drawer after another until at last he discovered what he wanted: a stack of photo albums. One after another he opened them, glancing at the Polaroids and faded 4x5s in their plastic sleeves and then dropping each book on the floor.
Until he found it. An album with peeling daisy decals on the cover, its contents spilling out as he tore it open. Inside, page after page of photos taken during his Wonder Years: lawn sprinklers and summer camp, fishing at the lake and his sister Samantha's fifth birthday party. Fox and Samantha on the first day of school. Fox and Samantha and their mother. Samantha with their dog.
And there, alongside pictures of his parents and cousins he hadn't seen in decades, a family barbecue.
His mother kneeling on the lawn between Fox and his sister; above them their father at the grill, smiling.
At his side a tall man with dark hair, lean-faced, smiling as well, not stooped at all and younger, oh much younger.
Alvin Kurtzweil.
A knock shattered his reverie. Mulder turned, dazed, and looked up to see Scully standing in the open door of his apartment. Her eyes met his.
"What?" He got to his feet, scattering pho-tos around him. "Scully? What's wrong?"
"Salt Lake City, Utah," she said softly. "Transfer effective immediately."
He shook his head, refusing to hear her.
"I already gave Skinner my letter of resig-nation," she added brokenly.
Mulder stared at her. "You can't quit, Scully."
"I can, Mulder. I debated whether or not to even tell you in person, because I knew—"
He took a step toward her and then stopped, gesturing at the photos at his feet. "We're close to something here," he said, his voice rising desperately. "We're on the verge—"
"
You're
on the verge, Mulder." She blinked and looked away. "Please—please don't do this tome."
He continued to gaze at her. Not believing she was here, not believing this could be it. "After what you saw last night," he said at last, "after all you've seen, Scully— You can't just walk away."
"I have. I did. It's done."
He shook his head, stunned. "Just like that..:"
"I'm contacting the state board Monday to file my medical reinstatement papers—"
"But I
need
you on this, Scully!" he said urgently.
"You don't, Mulder. You've never needed me. I've only held you back." She forced herself to look away from him, biting her lip to keep herself from crying. She turned and started for the door. "I've got to go."
He caught her before she reached the ele-vator, running to keep up with her. "You're wrong," he cried.
Scully turned on him. "
Why
was I assigned to you?" she asked fiercely. "To
debunk your work
. To rein you in. To shut you down."
He shook his head. "No. You've saved me, Scully." He put his hands lightly on her shoul-ders and gazed down into her open blue eyes. "As difficult and frustrating as it's been some-times, your goddamn strict rationalism and science have saved me—a hundred times, a
thousand
times. You've—you've kept me honest and made me whole. I owe you so much, Scully, and you owe me nothing."
He dipped his head, a knot in his throat as he went on in a voice barely above a whisper. "I don't want to do this without you. I don't know if I can. And if I quit now, they win…"
He gazed down at her and she stared back at him, silent, her blue eyes dark in the half light. She moved very slightly away from him, not breaking his gaze; her own registering respect and sorrow. His hands remained barely touching her arms as she lifted herself on tiptoe and kissed his forehead.
He did not move away, did not for a moment respond. Their eyes met and linked. A sudden, inexplicable tension flared. And then his hands tightened on her, his head dipped as he drew her toward him, his fingers moving upward to trace the long line of her neck, her skin warm beneath the thick mane of auburn hair, her eheek. For only an instant she hesi-tated, then reached for him. She could feel his mouth grazing hers, when—
"Ouch!" Scully pulled away from Mulder, rubbing her neck where his hand had been.
"I'm sorry." Mulder stared at her, worried he had done something wrong.
Scully's voice was thick. "I think… some-thing… stung me."
She withdrew her hand as Mulder moved around her, running his fingers quickly across her neck. He shook his head. "It must've got-ten in your shirt."
He gasped as Scully slumped forward, as he hastily caught her in his arms. Her head lolled drunkenly as Mulder whispered, frightened, "Scully…"
She stared up at him through slit eyes and opened her hand. In the palm lay a bumblebee, legs feebly twitching. "Something's wrong," she murmured, barely coherent. "I'm having… lancinating pain… my chest. My… motor functions are being affected. I'm—"
Frantically, but as gently as he could, Mulder lowered her until she lay upon the floor. She felt limp and helpless as a sleeping child, her head rolling to one side. She contin-ued to speak, her voice growing fainter and fainter, eyes no longer focusing.
"… my pulse feels thready and I—I've got a funny taste in the back of my throat."
Mulder knelt above her, straining to hear. "I think you're in anaphylactic shock—"
"No—it's—"
"Scully…" Mulder's voice cracked.
"I've got no allergy," she whispered. "Something… this… Mulder… I think… I think you should call an ambulance…"
He stumbled to his feet and raced for the phone, punching in 911. "This is Special Agent Fox Mulder.
I have an emergency. I have an agent down—"
Scant minutes passed before he heard sirens wailing outside. He ignored the elevator and ran downstairs, holding the door open as two paramedics rushed past him carrying a folded gurney. He followed them, giving them a broken version of all that had occurred. When they reached Scully, one paramedic opened the gurney while the other knelt beside her.
"Can you hear me?" he said in a loud voice. "Can you say your name?"
Scully's lips moved but no words came out. The paramedic shot a look at his partner. "She's got constriction in the throat and lar-ynx." He looked back down at her and asked, "Are you breathing okay?"
No reply. He lay his head beside her mouth, listening. "Passages are open. Let's get her in the van."
They bundled her onto the gurney and Mulder went with them back into the corridor. Neighbors were standing in doorways, staring as the paramedics hustled the gurney toward the elevator.
"Coming through, people! Here we go, coming through—"
Mulder rode with them down the elevator and ran outside to where the EMT van waited, lights flashing. The paramedics banged out the front door, stutter-stepping the gurney down the front walk.
Mulder ran after them.
"She said she had a taste in the back of her throat," he said. "But there was no preexisting allergy to bee stings. The bee that stung her may have been carrying a virus—"
The second paramedic stared at him. "A virus?"
"Get on the radio," the first medic shouted at the van driver. "Tell them we have a cyto-genic reaction, we need an advise and adminis-ter—"
They guided the gurney to the back of the vehicle, lifting it in with expert hands. Scully's eyes rolled and then focused on Mulder. Unable to communicate, she held his gaze as they rolled her into the brightly lit interior. The paramedic quickly moved into the van. Before Mulder could climb aboard and join Scully, the paramedics swung the doors closed.
"Hey—what hospital are you taking her to?" he said as the doors were closing.
He ran to the driver's side of the van, wav-ing frantically. Mulder knocked on the window.
"What hospital are you taking her to?"
He got his first look at the driver, a tall man in a light blue EMT uniform, his hair close-cropped. He stared coldly out at Mulder, who drew up short in shock.
Because suddenly, in a split second, it all fell together. It was the uniform that triggered his memory: the tall man on the fire escape, sliding into an open window; the tall man in a vendor's uniform exiting the snack room where the bomb had been. And now the driver of the van…
It was the same man. His hand was raised, aiming a handgun directly at Mulder. The next instant a blast echoed through the night. Mulder fell backward, clutching his head as the ambulance shrieked away. He lay bleeding in the street and his neighbors watched, horrified, as a second ambulance roared up, skidding to a halt to let two other paramedics leap out and rush to the fallen man's side.
NATIONAL AIRPORT WASHINGTON, D.C,
An hour later an unmarked auxiliary truck sat on the runway overlooking Haines Point, its engine idling. In the distance a private Gulfstream jet emerged from an unmarked hangar and taxied slowly down the tarmac. At sight of the Gulfstream, the truck's engines cut off. Two men in black fatigues hopped down from the cab and swiftly moved to the rear of the vehicle. They opened the doors and care-fully, deftly, removed a large translucent con-tainer, a cryobubble, its exterior a crazy grid of monitors and gauges, oxygen tanks and refrig-eration units. A thin layer of frost coated its interior, and behind this, dimly seen as though through fog, lay Scully. Her body strapped in, her limbs and torso so still she might have been dead; save that as the men carried the con-tainer from the truck, her eyes moved every so slightly, blinking.
The Gulfstream turned and rolled toward the truck, nosing through the darkness. When it was perhaps twenty feet from the waiting truck it halted. The men moved even more quickly then, bearing the container and its human cargo to the jet. As they did a door on the plane opened. Steps unfolded down to the runway, and a moment later man appeared. He stood at the top of the stairs, watching, then withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and lit one. He stood there for a minute, smok-ing, as the men brought the container to the cargo hold and loaded it inside.
When they were finished the men turned and hurried back to the truck. The Cigarette-Smoking Man dropped his cigarette onto the tarmac and reboarded the aircraft. The steps retracted, the plane swung around and headed for the central runway. Ten minutes later its lights could be seen arcing through the night as it arrowed above the city.
CHAPTER 11
INTENSIVE CARE UNIT
GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
WASHINGTON, D.C.
^T think he's coming out…"
JL "He is—he's coming to!"
"Hey, Mulder…"
In his bed, Mulder blinked painfully. It hurt even to think about opening his eyes, so for a long time he didn't; he only lay there listening to the voices above him. Men's voices, vaguely familiar.
"Mulder… ?"
He opened his eyes. Above him, ringed by hospital lights and banks of monitoring equip-ment, three faces were framed by the ceiling. "Oh god…" Mulder moaned.
Langly shook his head, his long hair falling in his face. "What's wrong?" Beside him the diminutive Frohike and Byers, courtly as ever, gazed at the agent in concern.
"Tin Man," Mulder whispered in amaze-ment, staring first at Byers, then Langly. "Scarecrow—"
He raised his head slightly, indicating Frohike. "—Toto." He winced, then sat up, gingerly rubbing his face and frowning at the bandage there. "What am I doing here?"
"You were shot in the head," Byers explained in a low voice. "The bullet broke the flesh on your right brow and glanced off your temporal plate."
Mulder ran a finger over the bandage. "Penetration but not perforation," he said woozily.