Authors: Chris Carter
Langly nodded. "Three centimeters to the left and we'd all be playing harps."
"They gave you a craniotomy to relieve the pressure from a subdural hematoma," Byers went on. "But you've been unconscious since they brought you in."
"Your guy Skinner's been with you around the clock," said Frohike.
Langly broke in, "We got the news and made a trip to your apartment. Found a bug in your phone line—"
To illustrate, Byers dangled a minuscule microphone in front of Mulder's face.
"
And
one in your hall," Frohike added. He held up a small vial containing a bumblebee.
Mulder stared at it, eyes widening as his memory flooded back. "Scully had a violent reaction to a bee sting—"
"Right," said Byers. "And you called 911. Except that call was intercepted."
Mulder shook his head. "They took her—"
He pushed the covers off, moving shakily as he tried to swing his legs to the ground. As he did so, the door to his room opened a bit. Assistant Director Walter Skinner peeked in, his expression changing from concern to sur-prise when he saw Mulder standing up.
"Agent Mulder!"
Mulder looked up, nearly losing his balance in the process. "Where's Scully?" he asked thickly.
Langly grabbed his shoulder to keep him from falling.
Skinner came into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him. He crossed to Mulder's side and regarded him for a long moment before saying flatly, "She's missing. We've been unable to locate her or the vehicle they took her in."
"Whoever they are—" Mulder's voice shook, and Langly tightened his hold on him protectively.
"—this goes right back to Dallas. It goes right back to the bombing."
Skinner nodded. "I know." At Mulder's stunned look he went on, "Agent Scully reported your suspicions to OPR. On the basis of her report, I sent techs over to SAC Michaud's apartment. They picked up PETN residues on his personal affects—and analysis showed the residue was consistent with the construction of the vending machine device in Dallas."
Mulder sat back down on the bed, his head reeling. "How deep does this go?"
"I don't know."
For a minute Mulder just sat there, taking it all in. When he lifted his head again, he saw a figure momentarily framed in the small win-dow of the room door. A man in a suit, casting a furtive glance in to where Mulder, Skinner, and the Lone Gunmen were gathered. The stranger stared at them, then hurried off. Mulder quickly turned back to Skinner.
"Are we being watched?"
"I'm not taking any chances."
Mulder nodded. He pulled tentatively at the bandage on his head, grimaced and then peeled it away, revealing the still-livid wound. He tossed the bandage away and looked at one of the Lone Gunmen. "I need your clothes, Byers."
Byers started. "Me?"
Skinner frowned. "What are you doing, Agent Mulder?"
Already Mulder was undoing his hospital gown, angling himself behind Frohike as he ducked toward the bathroom. "I've got to find Scully."
"Do you know where she is?" asked Frohike.
"No." Mulder dropped his hospital gown and motioned anxiously at Byers. "But I know someone who might have an answer…"
"Who better," he ended with grim determi-nation, as reluctantly Byers began to remove his clothes.
A short while later the door to Mulder's room opened. First Langly and then Frohike stepped out into the corridor, glancing around nervously as behind them a third figure appeared, clad in Byers's jacket and natty tie. Standing a few feet away, his back to them, a man in a suit leaned against the wall reading a newspaper. As they started down the hall the man in the suit looked up. He glanced at them, then casually turned and drifted toward Mulder's room, his eyes revealing his suspicions as he peered through the little glass window.
Inside, tucked into the hospital bed with the sheets pulled up to his nose, a figure lay motionless.
Beside him Walter Skinner stood talking on the phone. The man in the suit stared at the bed, frowning, then turned to look back down the hall again.
At the end of the corridor the three men walked quickly, Langly and Frohike flanking Mulder. As they rounded the corner Frohike covertly passed him a cell phone. Without hesita-tion, Mulder punched in Dr. Kurtzweil's number.
CHAPTER 12
CASEY'S BAR
SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON, D.C.
In the dark alley behind Casey's, Alvin Kurtzweil waited anxiously, scanning the night for any sign of Fox Mulder. When he saw no sign of him, he turned and started back for the door, reaching for the knob. He twisted it and stepped inside, and came up short against a sparely elegant man in a cashmere overcoat, his hands raised in mock surprise and delight to find Kurtzweil there.
"Dr. Kurtzweil, isn't it? Dr
Alvin
Kurtzweil?"
"Jesus Christ…" Kurtzweil gasped and reached behind him for the door. He glanced around fearfully, trying to edge back outside, but the Well-Manicured Man only smiled.
"You're surprised. But certainly you've been expecting some response to your indiscretion…"
Kurtzweil shook his head furiously. "I didn't tell him anything."
"I'm quite sure that whatever you told Agent Mulder, you have your good reasons," the other man said evenly. "It's a weakness in men our age: the urge to confess." He paused, then added, "I have much to confess myself."
Kurtzweil stared at him, confused by his words and serene tone. Finally he blurted, "What are you doing here? What do you want from me?"
"I'd hoped to try and help you understand. What I'm here to do, is to try and protect my children.
That's all. You and I have but short lives left. I can only hope that the same isn't true for them."
He stood quite calmly and held the door open, as if in invitation. Kurtzweil stood there for a moment, as though considering the other man's words; then suddenly bolted, pushing past him and back into the alley. He ran toward the street, but had gone only a few paces when headlights blinded him. A town car pulled into the alley, accelerating as it roared down the narrow corridor. Kurtzweil stopped, panting, and squinted at the approaching car. He turned to stare with terrified eyes at the man still standing calmly in the doorway.
Fox Mulder barreled through the front door of Casey's, looking around frenziedly for Kurtz-weil. The bar was crowded, more people than he'd ever seen there. He elbowed past them, pausing to get his bearings and peer vainly through the dim room. There was no sign of Kurtzweil anywhere. Mulder sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and hurriedly made his way to the back to the doctor's usual booth.
It was empty. Mulder sucked his breath in, fighting real panic. He turned and ran to the dank hallway where the bathrooms were, edg-ing by a knot of laughing women, and burst out into the alley.
"Shit," he whispered.
A town car sat idling on the cobblestone pavement. At its rear, a tall, beautifully dressed man and his uniformed driver were arranging something in the car's trunk. As Mulder stared, they closed the trunk.
The elegant man looked up, and said in greeting, "Mr. Mulder."
Mulder's hands clenched. "What happened to Kurtzweil?"
The Well-Manicured Man shrugged off-handedly. "He's come and gone."
He started toward Mulder and Mulder backed away, still breathing hard. "Where's Scully?"
The Well-Manicured Man stopped a few feet in front of him. He took in Mulder's shoes, the too-short trousers and ill-fitting jacket bor-rowed from Byers. After a moment he looked up and said, "I have answers for you."
"Is she alive?"
"Yes." The Well-Manicured Man hesitated, then said, "I'm quite prepared to tell you every-thing, though there isn't much you haven't already guessed."
Mulder's throat felt tight. "About the con-spiracy?"
"I think of it as an agreement," the other man said lightly. "A word your father liked to use."
Mulder took a step toward him. "I want to know where Scully is."
The Well-Manicured Man nodded. Mulder tensed as he reached into his jacket pocket, and removed a thin envelope of dark-green felt. The Well-Manicured Man weighed it in his palm, then said, "The location of Agent Scully. And the means to save her life. Please—"
He gestured toward the car, where the driver stood holding the back door open. Mulder hesitated, then stepped toward it. He moved past the Well-Manicured Man and slid into the seat. The older man got in after him and closed the door. He motioned at the driver, and the town car pulled away.
Mulder sat bolt upright, looking guardedly from the man beside him to the driver, who returned his gaze in the rearview mirror. Without a word, the Well-Manicured Man handed Mulder the small felt envelope.
"What is it?" Mulder asked.
"A weak vaccine against the virus Agent Scully has been infected with. It must be administered within ninety-six hours."
Mulder stared at him, then at the felt enve-lope in his hand. "You're lying."
"No." The Well-Manicured Man stared broodingly out the tinted window. "Though I have no way to prove otherwise. The virus is extraterrestrial. We know very little about it, except that it is the original inhabitant of this planet."
Mulder looked dubious. "A
virus
?'
"A simple, unstoppable life form. What
is
a virus, but a colonizing force that cannot be defeated?
Living in a cave underground, until it mutates. And attacks."
"This is what you've been trying to con-ceal?" Mulder no longer tried to keep the con-tempt from his voice. "A disease?"
"No!" exploded the Well-Manicured Man. "For god's sake, you've got it all
backward
—
"AIDS, the Ebola virus—on an evolution-ary scale, they are newborns.
This
virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs."
Mulder scowled. "What do you mean, 'walked'?"
"Your aliens, Agent Mulder. Your little green men—they arrived here millions of years ago. Those that didn't leave have been lying dormant underground since the last Ice Age, in the form of an evolved pathogen. Just waiting to be reconstituted when the alien race returns to colonize the planet. And using
us
as hosts. Against this we have no defense. Nothing but a weak vaccine…"
He paused and stared pointedly at Mulder, who finally looked shaken. "Do you see why it was kept secret, Agent Mulder? Why even the best men—men like your father—could not let the truth be known?
Until Dallas, we believed the virus would simply control us. That mass infection would make us a slave race."
"That's why you bombed the building," said Mulder slowly. "The infected firemen… the boy…"
The Well-Manicured Man nodded grimly. "Imagine our surprise when they began to ges-tate. My group has been working cooperatively with the alien colonists, facilitating programs like the one you saw.
To gain access to the virus, in hope that we might secretly develop a cure."
"To save yourselves," broke in Mulder.
The Well-Manicured Man shrugged. "When war is futile, victory consists of merely staying alive.
Survival is the ultimate ideology." He hesitated, then gave Mulder a cool smile. "Your father wisely refused to believe this."
"My father sacrificed my sister!" cried Mulder angrily. "He let them take Samantha—"
"No." For a moment the Well-Manicured Man looked almost sorrowful. "Without a vac-cination, the only true survivors of the viral holocaust would be those immune to it: human/alien clones. He
aUowed
your sister to be abducted, to be taken to a cloning program. For one reason."
"So she'd survive," Mulder breathed in sud-den understanding. "As a genetic hybrid…"
The Well-Manicured Man nodded. "Your father chose hope over selfishness. Hope in the only future he had: his children. His hope for you, Agent Mulder, was that you would uncover the truth about the Project. That you would do everything you could to stop it—-
"That you would fight the future."
He fell silent. On the other side of the backseat, Mulder sat stunned, feeling as though all at once his destiny had been validated, or maybe simply justified. "Why are you telling me this?" he said at last.
The Well-Manicured Man stared at his hands for a long time before replying. "For the sake of my own children. Nothing more, noth-ing less. Once they learn what I've told you, my life will be over."
He raised his head, and Mulder looked up to see the driver staring back at them from the rearview mirror. At their notice he quickly brought his attention back to the road, and Mulder asked, "What happened to Dr. Kurtzweil?"
"His knowledge became too great for his indiscretion. As your father knew, some things need to be sacrificed to the future."
Mulder stared at the other man's impassive face and suddenly realized the truth of it.
"You—you
murdered
him," Mulder said in shocked disbelief. When the Well-Manicured Man said nothing, Mulder grabbed his door handle. "Let me out. Stop the car."
The Well-Manicured Man gestured at the front seat. "Driver…"
Slowly the limo pulled to a stop. Outside the street was empty, lit only by a single yellow crime light.
There were no houses, no people, only an abandoned gas station flanked by sev-eral rusting Dumpsters.
Mulder jimmied the handle. It was locked. He whirled to challenge his captor, and found himself looking down at a handgun resting carefully, almost casually, on the other man's leg. Its barrel was aimed directly at Mulder's chest.
"The men I work with will stop at nothing to clear the way for what they believe is their stake in the inevitable future," the Well-Manicured Man said as Mulder recoiled. "I was ordered to kill Dr.
Kurtzweil."
Mulder backed against the door as in one fluid motion the other man lifted the gun. "—as I was ordered to kill you." But before Mulder could cry out, the Well-Manicured Man whirled and shot the driver in the head.
Blood spattered the front windshield and Agent Mulder's jacket. He gasped, still trying to comprehend what had just happened, and stared horrified at the man holding the gun beside him. "Trust no one, Mr. Mulder," said the Well-Manicured Man matter-of-factly. Mulder looked at him, expecting to be next. But the Well-Manicured Man only opened the door and stepped from the town car. He stood in the desolate street and held the door open for Mulder, who was still frozen in his seat.