Subject: Re: By any means necessary 4/15 Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 13:03:09 EST From: OpheliaMac@aol.com To: sonjablue@ozemail.com.au D'oh! A lot of people seem to be having problems accessing the story. Here's the whole thing as a text attachment. If there are any problems with it, let me know. Thank you for your interest, --Ophelia --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Subject: By Any Means Necessary 1/15
From: opheliamac@aol.com (OpheliaMac)
Date: Thu, Oct 29, 1998 09:53 EST
Message-id: <19981029095314.26076.00000917@ng43.aol.com>

Hello, this is my first story post to AXTC.  I've tried to follow the
protocols, but if they're a little off, blame it on inexperience.  Feedback is
encouraged, particularly if you can tell me what *specifically* you liked or
didn't like.

Thank you,
--Ophelia
**********************************************************

Title: Any Means Necessary
Author: Ophelia
E-Mail: OpheliaMac@aol.com
Rating: R -mature themes, language
Category: X, A
Spoilers:   General third season
Keywords: Mulder/Scully friendship/UST. Rape.
Summary:   Mulder suffers a brutal sexual attack, which unexpectedly puts him
and the Consortium on the same side.
Archive: Please don't just now.  Depending on reader response, this may or may
not be a final version.

*******************************************************

Disclaimer: (Sung to "All things Bright and Beautiful:") All things dark and
horrible, each hidden evil plot, all things weird and miserable, Chris Carter
owns the lot. Aaaaaa-men.

Other Disclaimer: This story was inspired by Amperage's "Mistress," which while
it is *very* adult-oriented, is an excellent piece of fiction.  The story also
benefited tremendously from the generous help of my beta readers: Nonie Rider,
WPAdmirer, and Youneek, and my consultants, AmandaY (German customs and law)
and Dawson Rambo, (telephony and security issues).  Thanks to all of them!

Note: the name "Moernicke" ought to end just like "Frohike," i.e., in "icky."
The beginning three letters should be pronounced like the sound a real cow
makes--not "Mooo," but "Muuuuh."   Stick an R-N in the middle, and you've got
it.   I promise never to write about German people ever again.   : )
******************************************************

46th Street
New York, NY

"He's done *what?*" demanded the Well-Manicured Man.  For a few moments the
only sound was the soft ticking of the mantel clock.  The Cigarette Smoking Man
paused a moment, to show he wasn't intimidated, and took another drag from his
Morley.  The room was already thick with smoke.  The room's blinds split the
pale morning sun was into bars.

"You heard what I said," the Cigarette Smoking Man replied.

"This is unconscionable!  You told us the situation was under control," the
Well Manicured Man said.

"I told you that I'd spoken to him and that he understood the situation.  And
so he does," said the Cigarette Smoking Man.

"And yet he doesn't care," the Well-Manicured Man said, bitterly.  "He's worse
than that other protégé of yours . . . Mr. Krycek."

"I never trusted him," the First Elder said.

"No one asked you to," the Cigarette Smoking Man replied.  "The issue was one
of utility, not trust."

The Well Manicured Man sat with his fist clenched upon the table.  He glared at
the Cigarette Smoking Man, who looked back with an expression of mocking calm,
his Morley dangling from his lips.

"Well, do you have any suggestions?" the Well Manicured Man snapped.

"Clearly, he will have to be removed from the field," the Cigarette Smoking Man
replied.  "He's demonstrated that he's outlived his utility."

"And he couldn't have picked a worse person to draw into his particular web of
. . . pathology." The Well Manicured Man spat out the last word.  The Cigarette
Smoking Man raised his eyebrows, but did not respond.

"Is he dangerous to us, as well?" asked the First Elder.

"Not if we get to him first," the Cigarette Smoking Man said.

"I never thought I'd hear myself say the words," said the Well Manicured Man,
shaking his head.  "Poor Agent Mulder."
********

Mulder curled up on the gurney on his side, his eyes squeezed shut.  They
wouldn't let him take anything for the pain.  He'd already been drugged, they
said.  No medicine until they "identified the substance."  Right.  He could
handle that, couldn't he?  He tried to focus on his breathing, to master the
pain through concentration.  It didn't work very well.  You'll get through
this," he told himself.  "You've gotten through worse."

No--he wasn't sure he had.

He'd awakened on the floor of his Cincinnati hotel room, naked, wrapped only in
a tangled sheet.  He'd felt sick and lightheaded.  The cloth around his legs
and buttocks was cold and wet, and at first he'd wondered what in God's name
had made him wet the bed.  Then he'd looked down and seen that the sheet was
soaked in blood. Blurred images of the night before began to flash before him.
He'd cried out, he must have, because Scully burst through the adjoining door
between their rooms and gasped

She was here with him now.  She ran her hand over his hair again and again.  He
knew he must be in terrible shape, because she never touched him like that
unless she was terrified for him.  Mulder wondered if he were going to die.  He
wondered if he had AIDS.
********

Scully sat in a plastic chair by her partner's bedside, stroking the hair from
his forehead.  As soon as she did so his bangs would flop over again.  The poor
guy had been complaining that he hadn't had time for a haircut.  The floppy
bangs had annoyed him a lot yesterday.  She doubted he cared at all today.

She'd listened to the ER doctor as he explained that Mulder had been exposed to
at least one, possibly two, depressant-type substances, and that medical and
forensic necessity prevented the hospital from giving him painkillers.  Someone
had given him a rolled-up towel to squeeze instead, which quickly ended up on
the floor.  Scully tried giving it back to him but he pitched it away.

She understood the doctor's position.  Had she been in his place, she would
likely have done the same thing.  However, she'd also seen Mulder's injuries.
She knew he had to be in agony.

"You won't need surgery," she told him, giving him what little good news there
was.  "Your bowel was badly lacerated in places, but not perforated.  There
wasn't any semen inside you, either.  If this son-of-a-bitch has anything, he
hasn't given it to you."  A shudder went through him and she thought he relaxed
a little.  She didn't have anything else positive to offer, so she just went
back to repeating the words she'd said for hours, "It's all right.  It's okay."
 They sounded empty, even to her own ears.

Mulder's permission had gotten her into the examining room with him, although
God knew if he knew what he was approving her to see.  He'd still been pretty
dazed.  It had been over an hour since she'd found him and he was still
bleeding badly from his rectum.  A lamp and a speculum revealed deep, cruel
cuts inside, which looked as though they'd been made by something pointed.
Mulder caught at her hands during that terrible 20 minutes, holding her fingers
in a white-knuckle grip.  "Almost done," the doctor said, over and over for
what seemed like an eternity.   Mulder withstood a quarter of an hour without
complaint, then suddenly half-stifled sobs wracked his whole body.  Scully had
wanted to kill somebody.  The rapist, the doctors, anyone stupid enough to get
in her way.  She'd forced herself to push that feeling aside.  There was
nothing she could do for Mulder but hold his hands and keep telling him that he
was safe, that he'd be all right.

Anyone who looked at him would know that was complete bullshit.

No one had been able to ascertain a specific time for the attack.  Scully had
seen Mulder last at about 11:30 p.m.  He'd been fine, then.  "The Exorcist" was
on TV, and they'd watched in their respective rooms.  Mulder stuck his head
through the unlocked suite door during the last commercial break and announced,
"I can't believe we're watching this.  It's too much like work."

She'd shrugged and said, "So count it as research experience and demand a
promotion."  He'd laughed.  The movie ended around midnight and she'd gone to
sleep.  She'd heard nothing, seen nothing.  Just before four she'd stirred, and
heard him crying for her.  She'd opened the door to find him sprawled on the
carpet, bloody and disoriented.

Scully lifted one of his hands to look at the skin beneath his fingernails.  It
was turning a purplish-blue.   She put her hand to his forehead and found it
clammy.  "Mulder," she said, "how are you doing?  Do you feel nauseous at all?"

"Yeah," he said.  He still kept his eyes closed.

"Think you're going to throw up?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said.  She stood and pulled a trash can to the side of the gurney.

"I'm going to go find your doctor and tell him to give you something," she
said.

"Okay."

Mulder was going into shock from blood loss and prolonged agony.  If the doctor
still refused to prescribe pain meds she'd have to strangle somebody.

She caught Dr. Keller by the ER nurses' station.  "He's cold, he's nauseous,
and he's starting to go cyanotic.  You damn well better do something for his
pain."

Keller was a youngish man and Scully's tone backed him off a little.  She felt
she could bully him if she had to.  "I'm going to do that," Keller said.  He
turned to one of the nurses and said, "Could you get one of the warmed blankets
for Mr. Mulder?"  The woman nodded and left.  "I think I found out part of the
reason the rapist wore a condom, and it wasn't out of concern for your friend's
health," he told Scully.  "It looks like he mixed something with a water-based
lubricant and spread it over the surface of the condom.  I can't swear to it
until we get some tox people to look at the sample, but my guess is it's
chloral hydrate.  There's a characteristic irritation of the rectal wall.  My
guess is the attacker wounded Mulder in the way he did to speed up membrane
absorption."

"Chloral hydrate?" Scully asked, surprised.   That was a very old drug, not
much used anymore.

"I wouldn't have thought of it, except that I spent a few months in Algeria
with the World Health Organization.  Chloral hydrate's cheap and it's still a
common sedative in some countries.  It's often given rectally, because it makes
such a mess of the GI tract.  For what it's worth, that's the most common way
it's prescribed in both Europe and Africa," Keller said.

"Mulder went to school in England," Scully said, putting her hand to her
forehead.  It was important that she try to think, now, instead of just react.

She walked with Keller toward Mulder's bedside.  "You think this is someone he
knew?" Keller asked.

"He hasn't said so," she replied.  "But I suspect that if this crime had
happened to someone else, he would say that the rapist and the victim probably
knew each other."  It was a high-risk crime and a low-risk victim.  In other
words, the attack was so risky that it was damn unlikely to be random.  Keller
looked at her with an expression of mild surprise.  "He's a profiler with the
F.B.I.," she explained, "although he doesn't do that full-time anymore.  He's
considered to be one of the best."

"Sounds like you're going to need the best," Keller said.  "I haven't been able
to make much of the substance Mulder says he was forced to inhale.  Probably
some other CNS depressant.  Maybe the FBI people can get something off the bed
sheets."

"Maybe," Scully said.

Keller ordered acetaminophen and caffeine injected into Mulder's IV, and had a
nurse give him a dose of Coke syrup and some ginger ale for his stomach.  These
were simple, conservative remedies which the physician in Scully approved of,
even while the worried friend in her wanted to shout at Keller to do something
more.  Mulder did seem better within minutes--probably due to the caffeine.
Scully appropriated a nurse's thermometer and found his temperature was 98, up
from 97.2 a half hour ago.   "Doing better?" she asked, as she shot the plastic
thermometer cover into the trash.

He nodded.

"Want to talk?" she asked, as gently as she could.  He hadn't been very
coherent since the time she'd found him.  She hadn't even been certain that his
injuries were caused by a sexual assault until the ER staff examined him.  He
shut his eyes and slowly shook his head.  "It's okay," she said.  "You don't
have to."

For a few moments he didn't answer, and she began to wonder if he were dropping
off to sleep.  Finally, he said, "I will."  His voice was low and hoarse.

"You will what?" she asked.

"I'll have to talk.  To the police."

"Not until you're ready," she said.

"I'll never be ready," he said.  He opened his eyes.  "Have you got a pen?" he
asked.

"A pen?" she repeated, startled.

"I don't think I can talk about it.  Not the way they'll need for an
investigation.  If I get it on paper now, before I have to think about it,
it'll be easier. I'll sign it when the police are here "

"Okay, sure," she said, and rummaged in her purse until she found a pen and a
small notebook she often used to jot down field notes.  She gave them to him
and he pushed himself up on one elbow so he could write.  Of course he couldn't
sit up.  Oh, Mulder . . .

"You going to be all right like that?  You want to dictate?" she asked.  The
position he was in did not look comfortable.  He shot her an impatient look
that made him seem nearly his usual self.

"If I wanted to dictate, I wouldn't be writing this down," he pointed out.

"You're right," she said.  "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he said, then curled up around the notebook and began scribbling.
Reluctantly, Scully left him alone, thinking that it might do her some good to
get caffeine into her, as well.
*****

Mulder wrote it up like it was any other profile.  He had to do it that way.
He wrote across the top:

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE ANALYSIS
Analyst--F. Mulder, X-Files Unit

UNSUB
Cincinnati, OH
Breaking and Entering
Battery of a Federal Officer
Forcible Rape

He had to stop for a moment after that.  "You can do this," he told himself.
"They're just words.  They're not going to bite you."  He managed to jot down
the obvious stuff:

SEX:  M
RACE: W
AGE: 35 -45
IQ: Above average
CRIMINAL RECORD: B&E, burglary, rape, drug possession/intent to deliver

When he got to the part labeled "Victimology," he stared at the block-printed
word for some time before he was able to write anything.   Then he released his
breath slowly and wrote down:

WM, 35, unmarried, F.B.I. agent.
Blitz-type attack as victim slept in locked hotel room.

Deliberately, he printed out the words, "use of depressant-type inhalant," and
then he couldn't write any more.

He'd been wakened by something cold and wet on his face.  Something
vile-tasting, caustic, in his nostrils and mouth.  He gagged on it.  Cloth over
his face, a forearm crushing down against the big vein in his neck.  His lungs
begged for air but every desperate gasp sucked in more of the poison.  He heard
rushing in his ears and the room spun.

He'd fought, hadn't he?  There were moves you could use against the joint of an
assailant's thumb, holds you could break by shifting your center of gravity.
The guys from the Hostage Rescue Team could get out of anything on the training
floor at Quantico.  Mulder wasn't so bad at hand-to-hand himself.  Some of the
tactical types had said so--although they'd still kicked his ass.

None of the regular agents lasted long against the special ops/tactical guys.

With shaking hands he added a heading under UNSUB, "OCCUPATION."  He wrote
down, "military, private security.  If Military: has disciplinary record.
Dishonorable discharge."   Under the Victimology section he wrote, "victim
resistance: low/none."  Mulder closed his eyes and lay down again.  The attempt
and/or success of resistance wasn't supposed to reflect on the victim.  During
the course of his psychological studies, Mulder had interviewed countless crime
victims as well as perpetrators.  Over and over again the question, "Did you
struggle?" while necessary to understanding the crime's dynamic, had brought
rape victims to outrage or to tears.  They all seemed to hear a hidden
question: "Did you want it?"

He'd gently told the women--and they'd all been women--"Whatever happened, it
wasn't your fault."  He'd said it a dozen times to some of them and they still
hadn't seemed to hear it.  Not all interviewers were as compassionate as Mulder
was.  What in God's name was he going to tell the police when they asked, "Did
you struggle?"  If he broke down under the questioning, would they tell him it
wasn't his fault?  Would he believe them?

Closing his eyes turned out to be a mistake.  Images flickered across the
darkness there.  He'd tried to fight, half-conscious though he was, when the
rapist started hurting him.  Oh, God . . . it had been worse than Ellens Air
Force Base, worse than any beating he'd taken from the Syndicate's operatives.
 The closest thing to it he could imagine was a coat-hanger abortion.  Why had
the man done that to him?  Mulder had tried to get his arms loose -- couldn't;
they were caught in some kind of stretchy web.  Bindings of some sort.

"No physical force until he knocked you out, then bound you," said the quiet,
sane profiler voice in his head. "He knows how to fight, but he prefers to
fight dirty.  Assassin-type personality.  He's probably smaller than you are or
significantly older."

Stretchy bindings, something like nylons, which held but didn't bite.  Why did
the rapist choose a relatively gentle means of bondage?  He could have used
anything he wanted.  Clearly, he hadn't had Mulder's comfort in mind when he'd
. . . technically, the term would be, "committed symbolic rape with a sharp
object."

Mulder curled up like a wounded animal.  He heard the pen hit the floor, and
the sound had a strange finality to it.

When Scully returned with her coffee she found Mulder's half-finished profile
lying on the floor, and Mulder himself huddled in bed, crying.  He lay on
partly on his stomach, his forehead resting in the crook of one elbow, and he
did not look up or acknowledge her.  His sobbing had a terrible, desolate sound
to it.  It made her think of a wild creature with its underbelly ripped open,
abandoned in a lonely place to die.  It was the sound things made when they
were mourning the loss of themselves.  Scully put her hand on the skin of his
back and stroked it with her thumb.  Mulder startled at the contact, then after
a moment seemed to relax.  She kept caressing him.  There was nothing else she
could do.
*****

"I think you should stay with me tonight," Scully told him as they exited the
plane in D.C.  She hadn't been overly sorry to leave the Interagency Law
Enforcement Co-Operation Seminar a day early, but she fervently wished it could
have been for a different reason.

Mulder shook his head and said, "I want to go home."  His face was pale and he
had dark smudges under his eyes.

"Well let me go with you, then.  I don't think you should be alone just yet."
It had been less than 24 hours since the rape.  The hospital had discharged him
that afternoon with a supply of antibiotics and painkillers, along with
instructions to contact his personal doctor the next day.  Since Scully
basically *was* his personal doctor, this wasn't a problem.  Dr. Keller had
also sent Mulder home with various accouterments given to patients who'd had
rectal surgery.  Those had enabled Mulder to make the plane ride home, but it
was clear that he was far from comfortable.

"Do whatever you want," he said.  She did not like the exhausted, apathetic
sound of his voice.   He walked slowly toward the baggage claim area and she
followed.

"Mulder, what do *you* want?" she asked.  She hoped to God he'd let her help.
No one should have to go through something like this alone.

He stopped suddenly and looked down at her.  "What if I said a .38 to the
head?" he asked.

"That does it -- I'm going with you.  That, or I take you to the hospital right
now."

That got a sardonic half-smile out of him.  "You gonna pick me up and carry me,
or you gonna get a judge to call the nice men with the butterfly nets?"  Scully
felt her body tense, gearing up for a battle.  She needn't have bothered.
"Sure, come with me," he said finally.  "I haven't had a woman beg me to take
her back to my place in months."

Under other circumstances she would have snarled something caustic at him, or
at least slugged him in the arm.  As it was, she was relieved to hear Mulder
sounding like his usual, arrogant self.  All she said was, "Must be your lucky
day."

Back at Mulder's apartment, Scully knew she was hovering.  She knew she should
stop even as she did it, but somehow she couldn't seem to quit.  Dr. Keller had
strongly recommended sitz baths as cold as Mulder could stand, to help keep
inflammation down, and he'd understandably balked at the idea.  She'd kept at
him, however, until he finally shouted, "Fine.  I'll do whatever you want.
Just give it a rest, okay?  I don't want to hear any more about it."  The
neighbors probably thought they were having a lovers' spat.  Perhaps in their
own way, they were.

He shut himself in the bathroom for 20 minutes, doing whatever.  Scully could
hardly check up on him.  Every so often she heard him blow his nose, and she
wondered if he were crying.  Who could blame him, she thought?  She cried, too,
on the other side of the bathroom door.

At least he wasn't so surly later, when she told him to go sleep in his bed,
rather than on the couch.  He'd looked at her with red-rimmed, exhausted eyes
and said, "I should be chivalrous and argue with you."

She'd said, "You should go to bed before I drag you there and sit on you."

"Oh, baby," was his response, but there was no life in the words.

"Go on," she said, shooing him.  The bed was already made, which told Scully
exactly how often he slept in it.  Quite possibly not since the last woman had
begged him to take her back to his place.

He let her pull the covers back and tuck him in once he dropped into bed.
Oddly, she was grateful for this small opportunity to show care.  Mulder was
very picky about how he let people be fond of him.  "You've got your
antibiotics and your pain pills?" she asked.  She knew she couldn't ask if he'd
taken them.  He was a grown man, she reminded herself.  If he felt like making
himself suffer then there was nothing she could do.  He nodded.  "Good," she
said.  She stroked his hair back from his forehead -- something her mother used
to do, when Dana was little.  "If you want anything during the night, you just
call me, okay?" she said.

He smiled and said, "You'll be my number one call girl."  Scully picked up the
extra pillow and hit him across the chest with it.  Mulder laughed -- he was
probably relieved.  There was only so much fussing-over he could stand.  Only
after she flicked off the light and left the room did she hear him say, "Thank
you."
******

Despite how tired he was, Mulder couldn't sleep.  He stared at the glowing red
numbers of his clock as they flicked to 11:21.  Usually, that wasn't late, but
he'd had so little sleep.  He was overtired, and who knew when he'd finally
manage to pass out.

His body hurt.  Even worse, some of the emotional shock seemed to be wearing
off.  He hadn't really been serious before when he said he wanted a .38 to the
head.  Now, he began to consider that option.

It wasn't as if he didn't have enough problems already.  Lying curled up in
bed, frightened and in pain, reminded him of too many long-ago nights -- when
angry adult voices echoed downstairs and stuff got broken.  Sometimes little
Samantha would creep into his bed and say, "I'm scared, Fox.  I wanna stay with
you," and they'd go to sleep clinging to each other.

Then one night she was gone, too.

"If I blow my brains out, I won't have to feel this," he thought.  "A lot of
people wouldn't blame me for checking out early."

He considered this plan.  He had a will.  If he died suddenly, things would be
taken care of.  Financially, his mother would be all right.

Emotionally, she would never be the same.  She'd already lost one child.

Scully probably wouldn't take kindly to seeing his brains splattered across the
headboard, either.

Fuck.  "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all," Hamlet had said.  Fox's
eyes flooded and the numbers on the clock swam.  He did not bother wiping away
the tears as they ran down either side of his nose.

The dry, quiet voice in his mind pointed out that if he didn't kill himself, he
could find the rapist and blow *his* brains out instead.   He found this to be
a plan worth considering.

For a while he just stared at the clock.  It was 11:30, flicked to 11:31 as he
watched.  He'd seen what rape survivors went through.   He'd once spoken to a
woman who hadn't left her house for three years after she'd been raped.

He decided that if he was going to live, it wouldn't be like that.  Afraid to
go out, afraid to stay in, walling himself into smaller and smaller circles . .
. being controlled by fear would be worse than suicide.

The problem was that if he wasn't going to shoot himself, he would insist on
going through this on his feet.  He would have to keep going to work.   If he
sat at home with nothing to do but think, he would go insane.  Still, he was
not going to be chasing suspects down alleys or jumping on top of freight
trains for a while.  He hurt -- somewhere he didn't want to talk about, for a
reason he didn't want to discuss.   Skinner, at least, would have to know.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he whispered, putting his hands to his eyes.

He told himself not to think about it.  He wouldn't be able to stand feeling
like this for months and months, but just for tonight it wouldn't kill him.  If
he had to, he could shoot himself in the morning.  He could re-evaluate his
decision to live on a day-to-day basis.  All he needed to worry about right now
was making it through tonight.   What did he need to do?  How could he tolerate
the time before he could finally fall asleep?

The clock said that it was barely twenty to midnight.  It hadn't even been 24
hours since it happened.  Oh, God.
******

Scully wasn't sleeping either.  She lay curled up on Mulder's couch, listening
to the soft burble of his fish tank aerator.

She'd had a friend who'd been raped in college, by a boy who offered to walk
her home from a party.   Scully recalled that her own initial reaction to the
news was shock.   She'd seen Lisa a few hours before the attack, and the girl
was her usual bright, bubbly self.   Lisa seemed to be one of those charmed
people whom the storm clouds of life just drifted by.   Dana thought later, "If
it could happen to her, it could happen to any of us."

In a way, dozens of young women had been victimized by one drunken goon.
After January, 1984, none of Lisa's girlfriends went outside at night without
their hearts beating faster.  Many of them -- Dana included -- did not sleep
well at school, after that.  A kind of innocence had been destroyed.

Mulder was not Scully's idea of an innocent.  Lisa Curran had been open and
friendly and trusting, everything the All-American Girl was supposed to be.
Although she'd never blamed Lisa, Scully the F.B.I. Agent could pinpoint those
naive qualities as ones that might make a person a target for a rapist.

Fox Mulder possessed none of them.  He was Lisa's antithesis -- paranoid,
angry, aloof.  It really *could* happen to anybody.  Poor Mulder.  She didn't
think she would ever forget the sound of his tortured sobbing in the Cincinnati
ER.  Her arms ached to hold him; to . . . what?  Nothing she could do would
eradicate that pain.  "Let him sleep," she told herself.  "Let him find any
relief he can."

About the time her breathing became slow and even, she heard the door to
Mulder's bedroom creak.  She opened her eyes and saw him walk in, silhouetted
against the faint light from the crack beneath the front door.  He wore a
T-shirt and boxers and moved slowly, as if very sore.

"What's going on?" she murmured.  "You okay?"

He stopped beside the couch.  "Can I, um . . . can I curl up over here a
while?" he asked.  She heard the faint tremor in his voice and sat up at once.

"Yeah, sure," she said.

Resting one hand on the couch's back, he lowered himself to a position lying on
his side.   She coaxed him into scooting over so that his head and shoulders
lay in her lap.  "You all right?" she asked.  She got no answer at first, but
she didn't press him.

At last he said, "I don't know if I can do this."  His voice was choked with
tears.

"You can," she encouraged.  "You can do it.  You're a fighter -- I've seen how
hard you can fight."

"I'm scared."

"I know."

Fox's whole body shook as he cried, although his sobs were breath-quiet.  On
impulse Dana wrapped her arm around him and rubbed his belly.  He gasped,
stiffened at the touch, then at last relaxed.   "You're all right," she said.
"You're all right."

"I'm not," he said.

"You will be."

Despite his protests, he eventually twisted onto his back, giving Dana easier
access to his tummy.  "You're safe," she said, again and again, "you're safe."
She felt the warmth of his tears run onto her stomach and her thigh.

 "Scully?" he asked, after a while.

 "What?"

 "If -- if I get really messed up over this, will you let me come to you first?
 I mean, instead of you doing the doctor thing and ordering me around before I
even tell you something's wrong.  I've just . . ."  His voice faltered and he
fell silent for a few moments.  When he continued he said, "I've just had
enough forcing, you know?"

Dana felt her own tears warming her cheeks.  "Of course," she said.  "I won't
make you do anything you don't want to do."

"Okay," he said.  "Good."

They fell asleep huddled against one another, like lost children on a park
bench.

F.B.I. Headquarters,
Washington, D.C.
Two Days Later

Skinner just sat and looked at her, his expression somewhere between shock and
revulsion.  Scully stood ramrod straight in front of him, her hands clasped in
front of her jade-green suit coat.

"He asked that I tell you, sir," she said.  "He felt that he couldn't."

Skinner seemed at a loss for words at first.  Finally he managed, "This is . .
. this happened?"

"Yes sir," she replied crisply.  She kept her gaze focused on a spot just
beyond the back of Skinner's skull.

"I don't understand," Skinner said.  "The doors were locked, Mulder was armed.
How did this happen?"

"Sir . . . I believe that the metal latch on my door was off," she said.  She
hadn't even said this to Mulder, yet.  She hadn't remembered it at first, and
now she was afraid he'd hate her for it.  "There was a knock on my door . . . I
don't know what time or who it was.  I was half-asleep.  I guess I assumed
someone went to the wrong room by mistake.  I think I got up, opened the door,
spoke to whoever it was, and then went back to bed.  I'm not certain that I
shut the latch again.  There was an electric lock on the door, but that won't
keep an experienced criminal out."

"You think this attacker walked right by you into Agent Mulder's room?" Skinner
asked.  She didn't know what to make of the incredulity in his voice.  Perhaps
he was only shocked that a sexual predator would ignore a lesser physical
threat and deliberately engage a greater one.  Maybe Skinner, as a heterosexual
man, couldn't understand why a rapist would pass Scully up in favor of Mulder.
She tried not to react at all, to keep her stance and gaze fixed.

"Mulder swears that he threw the latch in his own room," she said, "and we
didn't lock the suite door that separated us.  It seems the only likely
explanation."

"All right," Skinner said.  He looked as if he was trying to process this
information.

"The assailant appears to have used two chloroform-related substances to subdue
Mulder during the attack," she said.  "The first was an industrial solvent
called tetrachloroethane.  Its fumes produce unconsciousness ten times faster
than chloroform. It's been  seldom used in the U.S. since other, less toxic,
solvents were introduced.  The other was a very early synthetic sedative,
called chloral hydrate.  Dashiell Hammett would have called it a Mickey Finn.
It also has fallen out of favor in this country.  Unlike true barbiturates,
chloral hydrate has a depressant effect without any analgesic properties."

"I'm sorry, that means . . .?" Skinner asked.

"It reduced Mulder's ability to defend himself without dulling any of the
pain," she said.

"Ah," was Skinner's response.  His eyebrows quirked upward, and for the first
time, Scully saw compassion in her supervisor's face.

"The use of these substances supports Mulder's theory that his attacker is
older, and possibly foreign-born."

"He's profiling this guy?" Skinner asked.

"I don't think he could keep from doing it if he tried," Scully said.  "It's
part of the way Mulder thinks."

Skinner nodded solemnly.  "What has he got?" he asked.

Scully sighed.  She wished that Mulder wasn't trying to work his own rape case,
even in an unofficial capacity.  However, no one could blame him for taking
control the only way he knew how, and his analyses were usually brilliant.  "He
says that his attacker knew him, at least by sight.  He believes this person
has an interest in law enforcement but was kept out of that field by a criminal
record.  The attacker may work in a related field, such as private security.
Mulder wants us to check with Interpol, Immigration and Nationalization
Services, and the military.  He thinks the rapist has a special ops
background."

"That gives us someplace to start," Skinner said.  "Who's handling the case?
The Cincinnati PD or the Field Office?"

"The police handed it over to us, in deference to the fact that Mulder's an
F.B.I. agent."  In some ways the Bureau hadn't changed at all since the Hoover
era.  It still liked to take care of its own, even an outcast like Spooky
Mulder.  She hoped that Mulder could accept that interest as a show of support.


"Good," Skinner said.  "Have they shown him pictures of any suspects?"

"Yes," Scully said.  "They've been communicating with Mulder through e-mail and
fax.  He hasn't been able to positively ID anyone.  He was drugged . . . it was
dark," she said, shaking her head.

"How is he?" Skinner asked.  His tone was one of genuine concern.

"About as well as you'd expect," she said.  She didn't bring up the things
Mulder had told her in confidence: that he had nightmares; that he cried over
almost anything; that he was having panic attacks for the first time since he
was a boy.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Scully thought about this.  Mulder had talked about getting back in touch with
Heintz Werber, the therapist who'd helped him uncover the memories of his
sister's abduction.  Scully didn't think much of psychologists who hypnotized
people and made them "remember" evil space aliens, but at least Mulder was
willing to reach out for help.  For him, that was a step forward.  "I think
he'll do what he needs to do, sir," she replied.

"All right," Skinner said, seeming satisfied with that.

"He wanted me to tell you that he'll be out for a few days, although he plans
on coming back to work as soon as he can.  He told me . . ." she paused, trying
to think of the best way to put this.  "He said that he doesn't want special
treatment; he doesn't want people fussing over him."

"I understand," Skinner said.  He sounded as if he did.  "Let him know that
he'll have anything he needs."

"Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir," Scully said.  Finally, she felt able to relax.
For the first time, she acknowledged how much she'd feared that Skinner would
reject Mulder for what had happened.  It would have felt like a rejection of
herself.

Mulder's Apartment
Same Afternoon

Langly brought the blowtorch and the wire wheel, and Byers had a pager of
uncertain origin.  Frohike showed up grinning, carrying something heavy in a
black bag.  "I'm glad that you finally took us up on our offer," Frohike said.

Langly turned off the torch, lifted the black welder's mask from his face and
looked up from what he was doing to the doorknob.  "We've been concerned since
the liquidation of your last informant.  And the death of your father," he
added.  "They're onto you."

"You're a good man," Byers said.  "We'd hate to lose you."

"I'm deeply touched," Mulder said, giving them a sarcastic half-smile.
Actually, he *was* rather touched.  There weren't a lot of friends a guy could
ask to boobytrap his door who wouldn't demand to know the reason why.  The Lone
Gunmen had simply accepted his statement that the need for added security was
something he was "not at liberty to discuss."

"What's in the bag?" Mulder asked Frohike.

"Transformers," Frohike said.

"'They're more than meets the eye,'" Langly quoted, deadpan.

"Guys, you're dealing with a layman," Mulder said.  "Spell it out for me."

Frohike unzipped the bag and pulled out a black, rectangular box.  "This is a
photocopier transformer," he said.  "It'll be a drain on your electricity, but
boy, does it deliver a jolt."

"Extra Crispy Style," said Langly.

"That'll kill an intruder?" Mulder asked.

"Not necessarily," Byers said.  "It depends on his physical make-up."

"Whether he has a heart condition, what kind of shoes he's wearing," Frohike
added.

"I was kind of thinking 'discourage,' not 'kill,'" Mulder said.

"Why?" Frohike asked, looking startled.

"Because if my doorknob kills somebody, I go to jail for manslaughter, and you
go to jail as an accessory.  If it just seriously injures somebody, the best he
can do is sue my landlord," Mulder said.

The Gunmen seemed to think about this.  "I've got a television transformer,"
Frohike said.

"Let's go with the television transformer," said Byers.

Scully was driving home when her cell phone rang.  She'd balanced it on the
dash, thinking that Mulder would probably want to talk to her.  He'd known she
was going to speak to Skinner that day.  She picked up the phone and punched
the "talk" button.  "Scully," she said.

"Hey, it's me," Mulder said.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Same as usual," he said.  "How did it go?"

"It went okay," she said.  "He's all right about it.  He says he'll get you
anything you need."

There was no response for a moment.  "*How* did he say it?" Mulder asked,
sounding suspicious.

"Like he meant it," Scully said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."  Nothing but static over the line for perhaps a count of three.

"Can you come over?"

"Sure," she said, glancing up at the road signs.  She hadn't hit the Beltway
yet, and she could take that around to Mulder's place.  It was 5:20 and the
traffic would be a nightmare, but under the circumstances she'd do it.  "What's
going on?"

"I want to show you how to open my door," he said.

She found she didn't like the sound of that.  "Mulder . . ." she said.

"It's all right," he said  "It's not dangerous if you know how to do it.  I'd
rather not discuss it over the phone though -- security issues."

"All right," she said.  She looked up to determine the next exit.  "I think I
can be there in 20 minutes."

"Great," he said.

Scully had a key to Mulder's door, but she knocked anyway.  The doorknob's lock
core had clearly been removed, ground down, wrapped in insulation tape and then
replaced.  She had a bad feeling that Frohike was behind this.  Mulder answered
almost immediately, wearing loose jeans and a white T-shirt.  "C'mon in," he
said, smiling at her.  He almost seemed his usual self.

She noticed that his apartment was cleaner than she'd ever seen it.  The stacks
of magazines, both professional and filthy, were gone from the corners where
they usually gathered dust.  No heap of unanswered correspondence lay on his
coffee table, and the wooden floor actually looked shiny from recent sweeping.

"You been going so stir crazy you needed to clean?" she asked.

"No--I just got rid of a bunch of stuff," he said.  He sounded like he didn't
much want to talk about it, and she let the subject drop.  He led the way into
the living room and then shut the door.

"What do you think?" he asked.

The back of his door was covered in a mass of wires duct-taped to the wood at
irregular intervals.  The wires led to an unidentifiable pile of equipment
sitting on an end table.  A thick electric cord led from the equipment into the
wall.  "What is *that?*" Scully asked.

"This is a television transformer," he told her, pointing to a small black box.
 "It's hooked up to this pager over here.  When you call it and leave a certain
number -- which I'll give you in a minute--it closes a connection that sends
current into my lock core.  Anybody tampering with it's gonna get a nasty
surprise.  Then if you want to disarm the system you call the pager, leave the
same number, and that turns it all off.  You can turn it on or off from
anywhere.  Langly even installed this little light, so I can tell if it's on or
not."  He pointed to a small LED bank that had been taped to the top of the
transformer.

"Mulder, this isn't a good idea," she said.  "How do you know that the
insulation around the lock core will work?  You could kill one of your
neighbors if they accidentally brushed against the doorknob."

"It wouldn't kill them," Mulder said.  "It's sort of set on 'stun.'  Frohike
did leave a photocopier transformer, though, in case I felt a need for a
greater deterrent."

"You're going to hurt an innocent person, maybe yourself," she said.  "What if
Frohike wired that thing wrong?  You could electrocute yourself trying to get
in."

"Well, I got these electrician's gloves, too," he said, turning to grab
something off his kitchen counter.

"Oh, God . . ." she said.   He held up two pairs of gloves coated in black
rubber.  "Mulder, I am not wearing those."

"Sure you are.  Black latex is every woman's ideal accessory," he handed the
gloves to her and she accepted them as if they were something that might bite.

"You're insane," she said.  "This is not going to make you any safer."

"It'll make me *feel* safer," he told her.  "Scully, that first night back here
. . .  you know -- after, I really wanted out.  I wanted . . ."  He mimed
putting a gun to his head and firing.

"Mulder . . ." she said, distressed.

"I decided not to do it," he said.  "I decided that I wasn't going to do the
Consortium any favors by killing myself.  But I figured if I was going to live,
I had to be able to do it without fear.  If every sudden noise scared me out of
my skin, I'd go crazy.  Maybe the boobytrapped door won't help very much, but
it'll help a little.   It's some kind of action I can take, instead of just
sitting around, being paranoid."  He paused a moment and then muttered, "Maybe
it'll at least let me sleep."

"Jesus, Mulder, why don't you come stay with me?" she asked.  It was the only
thing she could think of to suggest.

He gave her a half-smile and said, "Don't think I'm ungrateful, but remember
how much good your presence did last time."

"You think he's going to try and get at you again?" she asked.

He looked away and did not answer immediately.  "You ever read my article, 'A
Taxonomy of Rapists?'" Mulder asked.

A little startled by the question, she replied, "That one must have gotten by
me."

"You should look it up sometime.  They're teaching with it at Quantico, now."

"I'll have to see if I can find it."

He sighed, as if very tired, and she waited until he felt like talking.  At
last he said, "This guy's got characteristics of a couple different types of
rapist.  One type sometimes contacts his victim after an attack, and the other
type almost never does."

"And you don't know which type this person is," she said.

"He may be both," Mulder said.  "There was some stuff I wanted to ask you," he
added, but then fell silent again.   Apparently, whatever was coming next was
difficult to say.  "When, um, when they had me in the examining room . . . what
did the cuts inside me look like?  You know, length, depth, made by what sort
of instrument . . . the stuff you'd put in an autopsy protocol.  It'll help me
understand this guy," he said.  He glanced up at her, his expression almost
pleading.  Her reluctance to give him such information must have shown on her
face.

"Are you sure you want to know that?" she asked, as gently as she could.  "I
know it's hard, but if I were you I'd seriously consider letting someone else
do the profiling work on this case."

"I don't want the people at the ISU to do it because I know them," Mulder said.
 "And I don't want the Cincinnati PD to do it because I *don't* know them."

"I see," Scully said.

"It's my body," Mulder said.  "It's my goddamned rape case.  I have a right to
know."

She supposed he had a point.  "All right, but I didn't do the exam," she warned
him.  "Most of the time I wasn't in a position to see."

"You were in a better one than I was," he pointed out.

"I'd say there were . . . ten to twelve lacerations to the last six or seven
inches of the bowel," she said.  She tried to speak as if she were reciting
information about somebody else.  It would probably be easier for both of them
that way.  "All seemed to be scoring marks made by a pointed, but less than
sharp, object.  There were no splinters or shards of foreign material in the
wounds, so I'll guess the object was metal, maybe screwdriver-like.  The cuts
appeared to be of a fairly uniform depth, although I can't give a depth
measurement exactly.  There were no hesitation marks.  The wounds were narrow
and straight and there was a great deal of blood, perhaps as much as a
half-pint from the time I found you.  That would be consistent with several,
quick thrusts with a foreign object, applied with a lot of force.  There was
also . . ." she paused.  Mulder seemed too still, and he had a far-away look in
his eyes that she didn't like.

"You sure you want to hear this?" she asked, gently.  He nodded.

"I need to know," he said.

She continued with reluctance, "There was extensive bruising and tearing of the
anal and rectal tissues, suggesting a violent sexual assault, in addition to
the penetration with the object," she said.  "No semen found in the body
cavity, although there was some on--" she stopped herself before she could say
"the victim's."  There was really no point in going too deep into denial.
"There was some on the back of your thigh and on the sheets, probably left
after a condom was quickly removed.  The UNSUB's got type O blood, and he's a
non-secretor."  The last part wasn't good--it meant that the seminal fluid was
missing the enzymes necessary to test for DNA.  Still, that trait was limited
to 15 percent of the population, which was something.  "There was also some
inflammation and irritation of your rectal wall, probably caused by a reaction
to the chloral hydrate.  You had a bite mark on your left shoulder.  There was
an incised fabric weave pattern in the bite, and it was likely made through a
couple layers of sheets.  You could see the general mouth shape, but I'm not
sure even a skilled forensic dentist would be able to get an ID from it.  That
what you wanted to know?"

He swallowed, still avoided her eyes.  "I sent a profile of this guy to the
ASAC in Cincinnati," he said. "I think he thinks I'm a nut, but he's humoring
me.  He said it was the damnedest victim's statement he'd ever seen.  It's
pretty good, as profiles go, but they won't catch him with it.  This is the
kind of guy who doesn't get caught, unless he screws up.  I, um . . . one of
the reasons I want to find out if he's the type who'll  contact me again is I
think we might be able to get him that way.  We could set up a kind of sting."

"With you as the bait," Scully said.

"Yeah," he said.

"Is that something you could stand, emotionally?  I know you're struggling as
it is.  Do you really need to put yourself in additional danger?"

"I'd be willing to be terrified for one night, if it meant I wouldn't have to
worry about this son-of-a-bitch again.  Anyway," he said, "I'm not even sure
he'd go for it.  I don't *know* that he'll try to recontact me.  I just . . . I
have this feeling."

"Can you pinpoint why?  Do you have any impressions?" she asked.  Mulder's
hunches sometimes seemed spooky, but when he explained them there was usually
some subtle piece of evidence that tipped him off.

He shook his head. "Nothing definite, but I'm pretty sure he spoke to me when
it happened.  I've tried, but I can't remember what he said.  I don't know if
I'm blocking on it or if I was just too drugged to know what was going on.  I
figured I could give hypnosis a shot.  Werber's done it with me before."

"I'm not a big fan of hypnosis-induced memory recovery," Scully said.  "It's
hard on the patient and there's often so little return.   Please don't push
yourself like you're some . . . suspect being interrogated.  Be gentle with
yourself.   You've taken enough abuse."

When he glanced up at her his expression was very sad.  "Why did he do it,
Dana?" he asked.  "He didn't have to do it the way he did.   Most guys would
use a garrote or a club to the back of a victim's head if they wanted to keep
him from struggling.  This guy used drugs, soft restraints . . . almost as if
he didn't want to hurt me, except for -- well, there was the notable exception.
 You said you found no hesitation marks.  He tore me up without a second
thought.  The method's not consistent at all.  Why?"

She shook her head.  "I don't know," she said.  "I wish I did.  Mulder, there's
something else . . ."  It was her turn to look away.  She chewed her lower lip,
ashamed and anxious.  "I'm afraid the attacker got in because of me."  She
explained to him what she'd already told Skinner, that a late-night visitor had
caused her to undo her door's latch.  "I'm so sorry," she said, when she was
finished.  "I didn't even remember it at first.  I must have been half asleep
-- or more than half, to be so stupid."  She glanced up at him, afraid to find
him furious.  He wasn't.  Instead, he looked interested, almost like his usual
Spooky Mulder self, catching the scent of a new lead.

"Can you describe the person who came to your door?" he asked.

"God, I've tried and tried to come up with something useful," she said, "but
every time I imagine distinct features on this person I can't be sure I'm not
making them up.   I have a general impression that it was a man, taller than
me, maybe not quite as tall as you.  But that describes almost everybody in the
hotel, at the time.   I don't know his hair color, eye color, what he was
wearing, anything."  Actually, Scully reflected, it was she who was furious at
herself.   She was supposed to be a forensic scientist, trained to observe
minute details, and she'd noticed practically nothing about a stranger who'd
come to her door in the middle of the night with no good explanation for being
there.

"Do you think you knew him?" Mulder asked.

"What?" she asked, startled.

"His presence didn't surprise or frighten you.   He must have seemed very
ordinary and non-threatening.  Was he someone you'd seen around the conference?
 Spoken to, maybe?" he asked.

"I guess . . . I don't know.  Really, it seems almost like a dream, except I
remember closing the latch when I went to bed, and I don't think it was on when
I got up.  No, I know it wasn't---because I undid the latch in your room when
the paramedics came and I went out to the ambulance with you, then I ran back
to get my purse and used the electronic key to get back into my room.  If the
latch had still been on, I couldn't have gotten in.  I definitely undid it at
some point during the night."

"It was our guy, Scully, it had to have been," Mulder said.  "That's good --
that's the first real lead we've had.   I'll bet anything he spoke to at least
one of us that day.  He knew we were partners, that we were sharing a suite and
that the door between the rooms would be unlocked.  Don't feel so bad about not
noticing much about him.  I'm sure I've seen him, probably spoken to him, maybe
even several times.  He went to a lot of trouble to target me specifically, so
he knew me, even if I can't place him."

Scully tried to recall the people she'd met that day.  There had been so
many--cops from everywhere inside the U.S. and some from other countries, who'd
nodded to her or shook her hand or tried to peer down the front of her blouse
in the elevator.  And there had been one who hadn't been a cop at all, but a
predator.  It was like a sick game of "Where's Waldo?"  She shook her head.  "I
can't picture him, Mulder.  It feels like I spoke to half the world that day,
and nobody stood out."

"That's useful information, in itself," Mulder said.  "He's intelligent,
sophisticated, average-looking.  He knows enough about the law enforcement
world that he can pass himself off as one of us.  Hell, if we got a hold of the
registration info from that conference and crunched the numbers, we'd probably
have a pretty good profile of our UNSUB."

She looked up at him uncertainly.  He was sounding like his usual, manic,
brilliant self, and that worried her.  Somehow it was much less fitting than
the broken sobbing of two days before.  It did not seem to square with the
elaborately boobytrapped door.  "When were you going to see Heintz Werber?" she
asked.

The change of topic seemed to surprise him.  "Tomorrow," he told her, "bright
and surly.  He says that he rearranged his schedule for me, so I guess I better
haul my sorry ass over there on time."

"I guess," she said.  There were a lot of things she would have liked to say to
him, but she let the silence drag on and he began to look embarrassed.

"Let me get you that pager number," he said, turning away.  He headed for the
kitchen, and as he entered it she heard the sound of his shoe crushing glass.

"You all right?" she asked, following him.  When she looked up she saw a brief
flash of something: shame?  Fear? in his eyes.

"Oh, yeah," he said.  She didn't buy the nonchalance in his voice.  She
crouched to examine what he had stepped on.  From what she could see, it looked
like the smooth, white shard of a ceramic plate.  She'd eaten Chinese food and
"Garbage of Eden" pizza off those plates uncounted times.

"I dropped it," Mulder said, lifting his foot to pick the slivers out of his
shoe.

"On purpose," Scully countered, standing.  He shrugged and did not contradict
her.  "How many did you break?" she asked.

He didn't respond at first.  Finally he said, "What if I said all of them?"

"I'd believe you." she said.  "That's why your floor's so clean, isn't it?"

"Yeah," he admitted.

"You get in trouble with your neighbors?"

"Shit, Scully, my neighbors don't complain when Consortium goons come in and
ransack my apartment.  I think some of 'em sit behind their doors and get off
on it.  It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'Neighborhood Watch.'"

Scully didn't let him use humor to change the subject.  "You have every right
to be angry," she said.

"I don't want to talk about it." he replied.

She knew what the problem was.  He was trying so hard to stay in control, and
he'd been out of control.  He didn't want her seeing the evidence of that.

"Okay," she said.  "If the time comes when you do want to talk about it, you
let me know."  He turned his gaze aside, and before long she saw grimace lines
starting around his mouth and forehead.  He'd told her he wanted to be
permitted the dignity of asking for comfort, so she didn't offer it.  Finally,
he stepped forward and caught her in his arms, holding her in a crushing grip.
She hugged him back.  He didn't cry openly, but he pressed his face hard into
her shoulder.  She rubbed his back and was silent.

After a while he released her, and she saw that he had indeed teared up.  He
smiled at her, though, and said, "Thank you."

"Sure," she replied.

He made a quick swipe at his eyes with forefinger and thumb, then grabbed a
marker from his kitchen counter.  He wrote out his secret, boobytrapped door
number on a paper towel and gave it to her, advising her to "Commit it to
memory."

She thought about kissing his cheek as she left, but did not do so.  As she
entered the elevator and turned, something in her was gratified to see that he
watched from his doorway.  He lifted his hand in farewell and gave her a sad,
sweet smile.  "See ya," he said.

"See ya," she responded, as the elevator doors closed.

Later that evening, Mulder lay curled up on his couch, repeatedly punching the
button on his remote control.  The only things on were reruns, and as he
occasionally remarked to people: for a guy with an eidetic memory, reruns were
a drag.   He settled for the episode of M*A*S*H* where Winchester talks about
the death of his brother.  It *would* have to be a depressing one.

He thought he'd feel better when he was able to return to work.  Physically, he
was doing better, but he still wasn't in any shape to chase mutants though the
sewers, or even to sit at his desk for eight hours.  He slept poorly at night
and took cat naps during the day.

Emotionally, Mulder was on very shaky ground.  Scully had only asked about the
dishes, not the bottles or the glass-covered photographs he'd inherited from
his father, who died just over a year ago.  He'd broken all of them.

He hadn't smashed his windows or his fish tank, though, and he'd been glad
about that.  "Even when everyone else wants to do me in, my fish still like
me," he'd thought at the time.  Now, he glanced over at the tank and wondered,
"If they *did* decide to reject me, where would they go?"

The thought was both a little funny and a little sad.  Mulder grinned and wiped
his eyes with his fingertips.  He wished, not for the first time, that he was
involved with someone who would sit with him and hold him and make love with
him until he could drop off to sleep.  Fox's last relationship had ended with
the woman leaving the country entirely.  She'd become a legal attaché in the
newly unified Germany, which was a plum assignment that no one in their right
mind would turn down.  Diana's pulling up stakes and moving several thousand
miles away probably had nothing to do with the fact that she'd been dating Fox
Mulder.  Probably.  As usual, he was suspicious.

That relationship, and others like it, were among the reasons Mulder had never
tried to seduce Dana Scully.  She was cute, she was smart, she cared for him,
and he felt she deserved more than he could give her.  She needed a good,
solid, sane guy who could give her stability and lots of chubby, Catholic
babies.  What could Fox offer her but paranoia and danger?

His reverie was broken by someone banging on his door.  He wiped his eyes on
the sleeves of his T-shirt, then got up slowly and peered through the peephole
in the door.  The person outside was not who he wanted to see.   It was the man
he knew only as "X," who sometimes gave Mulder information on the doings of the
Consortium.  Often, it was useless or inaccurate information.  Although the
temperature outside was over 80 degrees, X still wore his tightly-belted trench
coat.  Every so often he'd glance over his shoulder toward the elevators, as if
afraid of being seen.  Mulder sighed and went to grab his gun off an end table,
then he unplugged his door boobytrap mechanism.  He opened the door a crack and
peered out.  "I don't want any," he said.

X looked at him with the burning-eyed gaze of a fanatic or a madman -- his
usual expression, as far as Mulder could tell.  "I'd rather not speak to you
here in the hall," X said.

"Well, that's one thing we agree on," Mulder said, and started to close the
door.  It stuck, and Mulder looked down to discover that X had actually stuck
his foot in it.

"Mr. Mulder," X said softly, but with precise enunciation, "I know what
happened to you."

Mulder transferred his gun from his left hand to his right and pointed it
through the crack of the door.  "Get out," he snarled.

X didn't even blink.  "The man who assaulted you has a name," he said.

"Yeah, but you're not going to tell me what it is.  You'll tell me his shoe
size and the first letter of his mother's maiden name in return for me risking
my neck for you.  Thanks, but no thanks."  He tried pushing the door shut,
pinching X's foot, but X never budged.  Mulder had to admit, the guy was
persistent.

"It's in your best interest to speak with me," X said.  "Consider yourself
lucky that I got to you before your former assailant did."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mulder demanded.  "Keep calm," he mentally
ordered himself, "He's trying to play on your fears.  It doesn't take a
Sherlock Holmes to guess that you're scared your attacker will come after you
again."

"There are too many ears and eyes in this hall," X snapped, in a hissing
whisper.

"Are you kidding?  I think my neighbors are all deaf, blind and mute," Mulder
answered.  X just glared at him.  Something about that steady, furious stare
made Mulder uneasy.  "They're not deaf," he said slowly, "they're afraid.  Your
people have been threatening them."

"I'm going to ask you one last time," X said, "Will you let me in to speak with
you?"

Mulder looked at him hard for a moment.  He did not trust this man.  However,
it was possible that he needed to know what X knew.  "All right," he said at
last, "but keep your hands where I can see them.  And *don't* touch anything."
He opened the door wide enough to let the other man enter, hoping that he
wouldn't regret this.

"I feel like a battered girlfriend," Mulder said, as he shut the door behind
his informant.  "Every time I talk to you, I let you convince me that *this*
time it'll be different."

X looked annoyed.  "I give you the most accurate, up-to-date information
available to me," he said.  "It's hardly my fault if you're not competent to
make proper use of it."

"Why don't you find yourself a new FBI contact, then?" Mulder asked.

"Why don't you find yourself a new informant?" X countered.  Mulder had never
really "found" any of his informants.  For obscure reasons of their own, they
had found him.  He chose not to pursue the subject further.

"What did you want to say?" he asked.

X took a step closer and said softly, "There's a man dead in Berlin."  He
looked at Mulder intently, as if this information should mean something to him.

"There's dead men lots of places," Mulder said.

"He wasn't supposed to die," X said.

"Okay . . ." Mulder said, running his fingers through the short hair at the
back of his head.  "This was an unauthorized hit?" he guessed.

"Yes," said X.

"Well, that's the most definitive information I've ever gotten out of you,"
Mulder said.  "The same guy who . . . attacked me, killed this guy in Germany?"
 He found he couldn't say "raped."

"Yes," X repeated.

"And the dead man was a--" he frowned a moment, trying to think of the correct
phrasing, "an 'associate' of the Syndicate?'"

"Correct," X said.  For once, the double agent looked pleased.

Mulder was silent a moment, allowing himself to consider what X had told him.
The profile he'd sent to Cincinnati had predicted that the attacker would be in
private security.  Within the Shadowy Syndicate, that job description would
provide a lot of latitude.  "He's an assassin," Mulder said.  "He's worked for
your bosses for years.  He's always been a sexual predator, but they had no
problem with his activities until he started doing damage that they didn't
order."

"You're doing well," X said.  "I'm beginning to understand the interest my
predecessor took in you."

"Why didn't your superiors just bump this guy off, when their man turned up
dead in Berlin?" Mulder asked.

"He has proven difficult to locate," X said.

"You can't *find* him?" Mulder exclaimed, incredulous.  "I thought you people
were supposed to be all-knowing and omnipotent."

"Even men who handle snakes for a living sometimes get bitten," X said.

"All right," Mulder said, trying to process this information, "Okay.  So we've
got an uppity hit man whose bosses can't control him.  One day he takes out a
least-favorite boss and then up and vanishes.  No chance one of your own people
got him, or else some rival assassin?"  Mulder couldn't quite keep the hopeful
tone out of his voice.

"Unlikely," X said.  "This man is known as the assassin's assassin.  He kills
his rivals, not the other way around."

"He's that good, huh?" Mulder asked, feeling unhappy.

"It has been suggested that his success is due to more than skill," X said, "He
has had a history of luck which seems . . . hardly natural."

Mulder just looked at him a moment, trying to interpret that remark.  "What are
you telling me?" he asked, "That this guy's a fucking mutant?"

"No one has ever done a genetic analysis of him," X said.

"Oh, great.  This is just fucking great.  What does he do?  Shape shift?
Squeeze himself though heating vents or the cracks under doors?"

"No, no, and no," X said.  "To be honest, there is someone else who would be
better able to answer your questions."

"Whose name you won't give me," Mulder said.

"Whose name I wouldn't give you if I knew it, but who is willing to speak with
you," X said.

Mulder looked at him hard.  "Why?" he asked.

"You may find this difficult to believe, but this incident is being taken
seriously at the very highest levels.  Others besides yourself want this man
off the street.  Even my 'superiors,' as you call them, would not have wished
on you what happened."

"They don't give a shit about me," Mulder said, "they're scared for themselves.
 None of them lifted a finger to stop this guy until he killed one of their
own."

For some reason, X looked amused.  Mulder wondered if he'd warned his bosses
that Mulder would never fall for the, "We're from the Syndicate, and we care,"
line.  "Let's just say that there are many men whose chances of survival would
be enhanced by an alliance between this assassin's foes, whatever those foes
think of one another," X said.

X's offer sounded plausible, which made Mulder feel uneasy.  "What assurance do
I have that this wasn't all engineered, that I'm not walking straight into a
trap?" he asked.

"You don't," X said.  "Life is a series of calculated risks.  However, if it
makes you feel better, I can give you this."  He lifted a hand toward the
inside pocket of his trench coat and Mulder dropped back, pointing his gun at
X's chest.

X looked thoroughly disgusted.  "If I were going to shoot you, I'd have done so
before now," he said.  Then with exaggerated courtesy he asked, "May I reach
into the inner pocket of my coat?"

Mulder didn't answer immediately, but after a moment he said, "Yeah."  He
didn't take the gun off the man, however.

X removed a small, white piece of paper.  "It's not even poisoned.  See?" he
said, making a point of handling it with his bare fingers.  He held the paper
out to Mulder, who considered a moment before accepting it.  Once unfolded, it
turned out to be the wrapper from a pack of Morley's cigarettes.  Inside were
the words, "Safe Passage," written in large block letters.

"I told them it wouldn't impress you," X said.

"It doesn't," Mulder replied.

"It's the best assurance you're going to get."

Mulder thought hard.  He'd told Scully that he didn't think the police were
going to get his attacker.  He also knew that he wouldn't sleep well until the
guy was locked up, or preferably dead.  An alliance with the Consortium, even
if it were one of Mutually Assured Destruction, might well be his best bet.
"All right," Mulder said at last.  "But if I'm going with you I get to know
where we're headed, and I'm going armed to the teeth."

"Be my guest," X said, still with that false politeness.  "Charming door, by
the way."  He waved a hand at the electronic nightmare wired to Mulder's lock.

"Fuck you," was all Mulder could think to say.

Contrary to Mulder's expectation, there was no windowless black van parked by
the curb with its engine running.  Instead, X pulled a cell phone from his
trench coat pocket and called for a cab.  One arrived with what Mulder
considered to be suspicious swiftness.  "Where we going?" Mulder asked, as X
opened the cab's back door.

X slid onto the seat and told Mulder and the cab driver at the same time,
"Washington National Airport."

"Oh, no we're not," Mulder said, taking a step backward.  The cabbie glanced
up, but seemed only mildly surprised.  Perhaps he saw people argue with their
Shadowy Informants all the time.

"To the airport, and no further," X said, looking irritated.  "We're meeting
someone who's come to see *you.*"

"Since when did I rate such consideration?" Mulder asked.  He got into the cab,
but with a sense of trepidation.

"Tell me, is there any state of affairs about which you don't complain?" X
asked.

"Yeah, when I'm minding my own business and I get left alone," Mulder said.

"You haven't minded your own business in years," X replied.  Mulder glared at
him a moment and then turned to look out the window.

It was a quiet ride.

The rush hour traffic had dissipated and the drive to the airport was quick.
Before long, 747's were roaring low over the roadway, their landing lights
flashing against the apricot sky of evening.  The cab driver pulled up to the
curb near the airport door and X settled the fare.  Mulder hoped he wouldn't be
expected to pay his own way home; he had no cash on him.  Both X and Mulder got
out, and Mulder asked, "Now what?"

X just strode past him and Mulder followed.  X did not enter the building.
Instead he walked a few yards beyond the crowded section of drive where
taxicabs idled and skycaps hauled luggage on wheeled carts.  He stopped,
apparently waiting, and Mulder stopped too.  "Your contact knows to meet us
here?" Mulder asked.

"He requested that I bring you to this place at this time," X said.

"And if I'd refused to come?" Mulder asked.

X's gaze never wavered; he seemed to be looking at something away on the
horizon.  "Then I would have had to tell him that I'd failed," he said, without
emotion.

Mulder found that he would not have envied X in that position.  They stood
silent for a few minutes.  Although the air temperature had fallen, the asphalt
still radiated the warmth of the day.  Mulder thought that X looked extremely
improbable in his trench coat.  No one else seemed to notice, however.

Mulder looked up at a low-flying plane, and discovered that the first stars
were peeping though the light-polluted sky.  Under any other circumstances, it
would have been a lovely night.  "Jesus, why aren't I out here with a girl?" he
wondered, "Or with anybody else besides a bad-tempered informant named after a
letter of the alphabet?"  He glanced over and saw that X was gazing up at the
sky, too.  Was he thinking of someone?

"You married?" Mulder asked, on impulse.

X looked annoyed at the question.  "Is that a come-on?" he asked.  Mulder
responded with a barrage of  abuse that probably said too much about his
anxieties over his recent attack.  It was only as he began to calm down that he
realized how easily X had dodged the question.  The informant looked smugly
pleased.

Further conversation was forestalled by a limousine with tinted windows sliding
soundlessly to a stop beside the curb.  Fox's heart was beating hard.
Something about the slowness of the limo's approach, the way that X eyed it,
told him that some species of predator was in that car.  Against all his
instincts, Fox stood his ground.

"You've been assured safe passage, Mr. Mulder," X said softly.

"I trust your people about as far as I could kick them," Mulder replied.

The corner of X's mouth quirked up in a smile.  "You're a wise man," he said.
"Perhaps you'll survive, after all."

The limo's back door opened.  A well-dressed, elderly gentleman sat in the
forward-facing seat.  "Good evening, Mr. Mulder," he said.  The investigator in
Mulder noted a forced cheerfulness, a British accent -- terribly upper class,
old boy.  High Church, West End or South of England.

The part of Mulder that was a frightened, injured man wanted to run.  "Good
evening," he managed.

"It's all right," the Well Manicured Man said, with a thin smile.  "Consider
this situation a temporary truce."

"I'm armed," was Fox's terse reply.  The Well Manicured Man's eyebrows lifted
and he looked to X.

"It was on this condition that he agreed to meet with you," X said.  If the
informant was nervous about presenting this information, he gave no sign.

The Well Manicured Man seemed less than pleased, but his gaze shifted back to
Mulder and he said, "Very well.  I have no plans to harm you.  Please feel free
to enter the car."

Mulder glanced at X and back at the old man, then got into the car.  He slid
over on the seat as X got in after him.  The informant closed the door.  "Where
are we going?" Mulder asked.

"Nowhere, just yet," the Well Manicured Man said, looking at his watch.  "It
seems our associate is running late."  He looked out the tinted window and
pressed his lips together.

"Do we need to wait for this guy,  or can you fill me in  about  what's going
on?" Mulder asked.

"I suppose I shall have to fill you in," the Well Manicured Man said.  "After
all, I do have a schedule to keep.  How much has he told you?" he asked,
nodding at X.

"Not much," Mulder said.  The Well Manicured Man looked pleased.  Apparently,
only those at "the highest levels" were qualified to give this information the
correct spin.

"The man who attacked you is a German citizen," said the Well Manicured Man,
"although he was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.  His legal name is John
Knowlton.  I don't believe he goes by that any longer."

Mulder nodded.  This was the most concrete information he'd ever gotten out of
a member of the Consortium.  "I hear this guy killed someone in Germany.  When
did this murder take place?" he asked.

"Between 4 and 8 this morning, Berlin time," said the Well Manicured Man.

"Berlin's--what, six hours ahead of us?" Mulder asked.

"Correct," said the Well Manicured Man.

Mulder thought about this.  According to Scully, he had been assaulted between
11:30 on the night of the 8th and 4 a.m. on the morning of the 9th.  John
Knowlton had allegedly been in Berlin committing murder by 2 a.m. on the 11th,
Eastern Standard Time.  "He took a commercial flight?" Mulder asked.

"Most likely," said the Well Manicured Man.

"That's just over 48 hours between attacking me and killing this other guy,"
Mulder said.  "Knowlton would've spent about 14 hours in the air --more than
that, probably, since I don't know of any non-stops from Cincinnati to Berlin.
You almost never see a criminal cycle that fast.  Not unless he's really
starting to lose it, anyway, and I don't remember him acting particularly
crazy.  Are you sure this is the same person?"

The Well Manicured Man was silent a moment, rubbing the tips of his long
fingers together.  He seemed to be considering what information he was willing
to give up.  "Knowlton has a certain . . . MO, I believe you'd call it.  He was
known to be near you at the time of the attack, so the connection wasn't too
difficult to make.  And as for Moernicke," he said, shaking his head, "Knowlton
as much as took credit for his death.  He left a note at the scene, announcing
that he intended to break his contract with our organization."

"What do you mean, 'MO'?" Mulder asked.  "He's done . . . what he did to me
before?  To how many people?"

The Well Manicured Man avoided Mulder's gaze as he said, "Only once, that we
know of."

"I'll need to know about it," Mulder said.

Suddenly the car door opened.  Mulder recognized the person standing outside as
the Smoking Man who sometimes lurked in Skinner's office.  His face was deeply
lined and impassive, and a half-smoked cigarette dangled from his lips.

"Put that out," snapped the Well-Manicured Man.

The Cigarette Smoking Man raised his eyebrows, but removed the cigarette from
his lips.  "My my, aren't we touchy?" he asked.

"Why are you late?" the Well Manicured Man demanded.

The Smoking Man looked at him with half-lidded eyes, like a lizard's.
"Unavoidable circumstances," was all he said.  He dropped the cigarette onto
the street and ground it out with a deliberate twist of his foot.

"Get in," said the Well Manicured Man.  The Smoking Man got in and sat next to
him.  "Knock on the window, would you?" the Well Manicured Man asked X.  The
informant did so, and the limo slowly moved out into traffic.

"Where are we going?" Mulder asked, again.

"It doesn't matter," said the Well Manicured Man.  "This situation was chosen
for convenience and relative security.  Once we're through speaking, you can go
anywhere you like."

"Take Washington Memorial south," Mulder said.  "If we're not done by the time
we get to my apartment, we can circle the highways around Alexandria."

"Very well," said the Well Manicured Man.  He hit an intercom button on the arm
of his seat and relayed these instructions to the driver.

"Where were we?" asked the Well Manicured Man.

"We were discussing the sexual habits of your former associate," Mulder said.

One of the Smoking Man's eyebrows raised a fraction.  "Moernicke?" he said.
"Moernicke was a pig."

"Not him--Knowlton," said the Well Manicured Man.

"You mean our Invisible Man?" asked the Smoking Man.

"Is that what you call him?" Mulder asked.

"People call him a lot of things," the Smoking Man said.  "Knowlton is *not*
one of them."  Mulder was aware that an exchange of looks passed between the
Smoking Man and the Well Manicured Man: disapproval; apathy; contempt.  He
glanced over at X but found the informant's expression blank.

Mulder decided that if he didn't grasp control of this situation then and
there, he was never going to get it.  "Look," he said, "I want to make
something clear right now.  I *might* be willing to help you investigate this
guy, but I'm *not* going to be used as a pawn in some operation I know nothing
about.  If I work with you on this, then I get treated as a partner.  I'm going
to need whatever information  you've got--times, places, dates. "

The well Manicured Man  looked at Mulder hard  for a moment, then said,  "Very
well.  Give me a list of what you think you will require."

Mulder had been gearing up for a fight, and this response took him a little
off-guard.  He dug through his pockets for a pen and paper.  X wordlessly
produced these items from the inner flap of his trench coat, and Mulder
wondered if he had an entire stationery store in there.   Mulder accepted the
items offered and began to write down the materials and information he would
need, just as he would have at the start of any investigation.  When he was
done, the entire front of the palm-sized paper was covered in his small,
angular writing.  He handed the paper to the Well Manicured Man, who raised his
eyebrows as he looked it over.

"Well, that certainly seems comprehensive," he said.  "Any more demands?"

Mulder ignored the hint of mockery in his voice.  "Other than that your people
refrain from sneaking up and shooting me during the night?  No," he said.

"I believe that can be arranged," said the Well Manicured Man.  "As it happens,
I asked my associate here to be present so that he might provide you with some
of the information you request.   He's spoken to Knowlton far more often than
I.  Why don't you explain some of Knowlton's . . . peculiarities to Mr.
Mulder?"  He asked the Smoking Man.

The Smoking Man shrugged.  He'd appeared rather bored throughout the
conversation, as if these matters hardly touched him.  Mulder didn't buy the
facade.  The Smoking Man reminded him of a snake, lazy-seeming until he struck
like lightning.  "Our Invisible Man doesn't show up on film," he said.

"What?" Mulder asked, startled.

"He doesn't show up on film,"  the Smoking Man  repeated. "You won't find
pictures of him, you won't find videotapes."

"How can that happen?" Mulder asked.  "How does he get all over the world
without a passport photo?"

The Smoking Man shrugged again.  "How should I know?  He has a strange effect
on all electrical things.  He tells me he can't wear a watch; he wears some
special wristband to use a computer.  Otherwise, he shorts everything out."

"Is this effect voluntary or involuntary?" Mulder asked.  This information was
ringing an alarm bell in his mind.  It made him think of Darin Oswald.

"Both, as far as I can tell," said the Smoking Man.

Mulder slowly released his breath and leaned back in his seat.  "He's
telekinetic?" he asked after a moment.

"I don't know what he is," said the Smoking Man.  "I doubt he knows.  He once
told me that he was fourteen when he discovered he was 'different from other
men.'  I didn't press him about what he meant by that.  I don't think I wanted
to know."

"Tell him the rest," said the Well Manicured Man.  "Tell him what he looks
like."

This got a low chuckle out of the Smoking Man.  "I haven't the faintest idea,"
he said.

"And how often have you met with him?" the Well Manicured Man asked.

"Dozens of times," said the Smoking Man.  "Good light--bad light, it doesn't
matter.  Nobody can give a good description of him."

Well, thought Mulder, that explained how the rapist had gotten through Scully's
door.  "You said he's done this once before?" he asked the Well Manicured Man.

The old man did not ask what 'this' was.  "To a young gentleman named
Christopher Harwood," the Well Manicured Man said.  "Harwood was a promising
Labour Party MP.  Some speculated that he might be Prime Minister one day, but
there was one significant hurdle.  He was a homosexual.  Since Knowlton was
familiar with that lifestyle, he was assigned to observe Harwood."

"You mean he was supposed to pick Harwood up, so that you could get
compromising photos.  You wanted to be able to blackmail the guy if he attained
some real power," Mulder said.

"What a vulgar thing to say," the old man said.

"What happened to him?"  Mulder asked.

"Mr. Harwood began to deteriorate, mentally," said the Well Manicured Man.  "He
was in the hospital quite a lot between . . . I believe 1986 and 1987.  He
finally checked himself into the psychiatric ward."

"Is he still there?" Mulder asked.

"No," said the Well Manicured Man.  "He was found dead in January of 1988.
He'd hanged himself, apparently."

"'Apparently?'" Mulder quoted.  "No one can say for sure?"

"The institution he was in is not known for its suicide rate," said the man.
"The best families send their troubled members there.  It's considered to be
quite secure."

"I see," said Mulder.

"I believe we're nearing your exit," said the Smoking Man.

Mulder thought, "Of course he'd know what my exit is."  He glanced around at
the other men in the passenger compartment and found their expressions blank.
"Take me home," Mulder said.

"Of course," said the Well Manicured Man, mildly.  Within minutes, they were at
the door of Mulder's apartment building.  The limo slid up to the curb and
Mulder heard the lock pop.  Hardly believing his luck, he got out and stepped
onto the sidewalk.  No one stopped him.

The Well Manicured Man started to shut the door, and Mulder called out, "What
if I need to contact you?"  The three men inside seemed to confer in low voices
behind the mostly-closed door.  At last, the Well Manicured Man opened it
again.  X leaned out, holding a folded piece of paper in his hand.

"For the duration of this investigation, I can be reached at this number," he
said.  Mulder accepted the paper, and the door shut once more.

He was uncertain whether he'd just pulled off a major coup or whether he'd been
the fall guy in the scam of the century.  He watched the limo's taillights
recede down the street, and felt a shudder go through his body.

Jefferson Memorial
Next Evening

Dana stood at the edge of the Memorial's cement plaza, gazing across the tidal
pool toward the Potomac.  Mulder had called about an hour ago and asked her to
meet him here.  He was a little overdue, but she waited.

At least there was a breeze off the river, she thought.  It stirred her
sweat-soaked hair and mitigated some of the heat.  Even in May, Washington's
temperatures could easily hit the high eighties.  She thought about the time,
more than 200 years ago, when this was wild country, covered in cool, dense
forest.  Dana sighed.  Her scratchy navy suit made her long for those days.

"'This, too, was once one of the dark places of the earth,'" quoted a familiar
voice.  Dana startled, looked up, and found Mulder standing next to her.  He
was wearing running shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers, and carried an
incongruous-looking briefcase.

"Oh, my gosh," she said, "I didn't even hear you come up."

"I always told you I was good," he said.

"Yeah, I just never figured out at what," she teased him.  "How are you?"

He shrugged.  "I've been worse," he said.  He started a leisurely walk toward
the river and she accompanied him.

"How did the appointment with Werber go?" she asked.

"We did the hypnosis," he said.

"Were you able to remember the things you wanted to remember?" she asked, and
he nodded.  Dana felt her heart sink.  She hadn't wanted him to put himself
through that horror a second time.  "Was it worth it?" she asked.

"I think so," he said.  He lapsed into silence until they entered the stand of
trees just off the plaza.  Once in the grove's relative solitude, he began,
"The guy who attacked me's got a name.  Knowlton--or at least that's one of his
names.  And he did speak to me.  I knew he did."

"What did he say?" she asked.

"Most of it's not anything I'd want to repeat," Mulder said.  "Some rapists
have kind of a script they recite.  They get into their head-trip and they
don't really respond to anything their victim says or does.  That was what
Knowlton was like.  He was talking to me as if -- I dunno, as if he expected me
to like what he was doing.  That's one of the hallmarks of the kind of rapist
who recontacts people."

"Oh, God," Scully said.  Her first instinct was to hold him, but she restrained
herself.  Unwanted touching was about the last thing Mulder needed.  "And you
saw Janet after that?" she asked.   Dr. Janet Graham was the M.D. she'd
referred him to.  Graham volunteered time with recent rape victims, admittedly
female ones at a women's shelter, but Scully felt she would be gentle and
understanding with Mulder.

She didn't even like to think about what that exam would be like after a
therapy session like he'd described.

"Yeah," he said.

"You could have put it off, said you weren't ready," she said.  "She would have
understood."

"No, I wanted to see her," he said.  "I practically had my insides ripped out,
Scully.  I wanted somebody to see if I was healing all right.  The not knowing
would have been worse."

"Was she able to reassure you?" Scully asked.

He nodded.  "She says that if I can keep from getting infected, I should be
fine.  The VD battery they did in Cincinnati came back negative."

Scully allowed herself a sigh of relief.  "Good," she said.  "You really will
be all right," she told him.  They'd reached the bridge that separated the
tidal pool from the river, and he stopped.  He looked down at her, seeming sad
and unconvinced.

"Werber wants me to see a psychiatrist," he said.  "Somebody who'll give me
medication for the anxiety and the depression.  You know . . . even yesterday I
would have told him to forget it.  Drugs are a real last resort with me.  But
man, Scully," he said, shaking his head, "I can't take feeling like this much
longer.  I was always paranoid, but now I'm terrified all the time, and I cry
over any little thing.  When I can't find my shoes . . . when the knob fell off
my dishwasher . . . it's just stupid.  I've got to stay at least marginally
functional, or Knowlton will take me out.  He hounded his last rape victim to
death."

"How do you know that?" she asked, more sharply than she'd meant to.  She
hadn't wanted Mulder to be involved in his own rape investigation, and after
what he'd said about Knowlton, she liked the idea even less.

"My informant contacted me last night," he said.  "Apparently, Knowlton bumped
off the wrong guy in Berlin the other day."  He explained to her what he'd
learned from the Syndicate members the previous night, which horrified Scully.

"You can't seriously be thinking about working with these people," she said.

"What alternative do I have?" he asked.  "The guy doesn't show up on film, so I
can't exactly put his picture on a milk carton next to the words, 'Have you
seen me?'"

"How do you know anything this informant told you is true?" she countered.
"He's lied to you before."

"His bosses seem too worried for it to be a lie," Mulder said.  "That old
British guy didn't come all the way out here just to show me his fancy car.
Besides," he said, resting his briefcase on the ground and snapping open the
latches, "This afternoon I got these."  He opened the case and removed a stack
of papers.  Some were covered in text, others displayed what looked like
grainy, re-copied photographs.  He handed them to her and she took a good look.

Rorsach-like, the images made no sense until they suddenly snapped into focus
for her.  "Oh, my God," she said.  They were crime scene photos.  A slightly
overweight white male sprawled dead in the corner of a shower, with what
appeared to be four bullet-holes in his upper chest.  "This was the last rape
victim?"

"No," said Mulder.  "His name was Josef Moernicke, a former Stasi boss, from
what I gather.  This is the guy Knowlton killed in Berlin.  I suspect that
Moernicke was some kind of former patron or lover, although I can't get much
out of the police reports.  They're all in German."

Mulder knew Scully could read German.  "I'm beginning to see why you called
me," she said.  She could not quite keep the irritation out of her voice.  She
didn't want Mulder to work this investigation, and she felt he'd put her in an
awkward position by implicitly asking her to help him with it.

"I called you for moral support, too," he said.  She glanced up at him
suspiciously, and he insisted, "I did.  You've been really good to me through
this whole thing, and I appreciate that.  A lot of people would have refused to
get involved in my problems."

He seemed sincere, and she began to relent a little.  "You want me to translate
this," she said, holding up the stack of papers.

"Ideally, yes," he said, "but if you feel you can't, I'll find someone else to
do it.  It's more important to me that you be my friend.  I need all the
friends I can get, right now."

She shook her head.  "The master manipulator," she said.

"Scully, I'm serious," he protested.

She looked up at him and saw he seemed truly upset at her accusation.  She
sighed.  "I do care about you, you know," she said.  "You're suffering already,
and I don't want to help set you up for more.  I don't like seeing you hurt."

As she spoke, his expression took on a far-away look.  He nodded and turned his
gaze from her.  "Okay," he said softly.

Scully could tell his eyes had flooded.  "Hey," she said, "Hey, don't.  I'm
sorry." She put her hand on his arm, looked up into his averted eyes and saw a
tear spill.  He pulled her close.

She soothed him as best she could, but felt sure she was doing everything
wrong.  If she treated him as if he were fragile, it made him furious.  If she
treated him as if he were as tough as he pretended to be, it made him cry.  His
misery made her miserable and she did not know what to do.

A lone bicyclist came whizzing through the trees but politely pretended to take
no notice of them.   Mulder released her then, probably feeling embarrassed.
He used the sleeves of his T-shirt to wipe his eyes.  "Sorry," he said, "I told
you I cried over stupid things."

She dug a tissue from her purse and handed it to him.  "I don't think it's
stupid," she said.  "Most people would cry if they'd been through what you
have."

He blew his nose and asked, "Do we have to stand here?  Can we go sit
someplace?"

"Yeah, sure, come on," she said, and led the way over to a bench by the bridge.
 Maple trees provided welcome shade.  Scully thought that Mulder still looked a
little uncomfortable sitting, but she wasn't about to comment on something that
personal.   If he felt like standing up again, he would.

"The other thing I wanted to ask you about is Darin Oswald," Mulder said.  He
still hadn't quite recovered his composure, and the sudden transition took
Scully off guard.

"What about him?" she asked.

"He had that -- that electricity thing, too, didn't he?  He could turn traffic
lights on and off, call lightning . . ."

"Well, *he* thinks he causes those effects, but he's a few fries short of a
Happy Meal," she said.

The expression got a smile out of Mulder.  "Maybe so," he conceded, "but did
you ever come up with a better explanation?"

"No," she had to admit.

"Oswald showed up on film, didn't he?" Mulder asked.

Scully thought about it.  "I never thought to ask," she said.  "My guess is
that if the police had been unable to get  a mug shot we'd have heard about
it."

"I was thinking of contacting that teacher of his -- Mrs.  Kiveat," Mulder
said.  "I'd try to talk to Oswald himself, but he's always been completely
uncooperative.  That, and as you said, he's a few fries short of a Happy Meal."

"What do you think the teacher could tell you?" she asked.

"Whether Darin showed up in his school yearbook photo, for one thing, and how
much human biology he knew."

"Well . . . if you believe what he says, he knows enough biology to restart Mr.
Kiveat's heart with electricity," Scully said.

"Yeah, because he saw them do that on 'Rescue, 911.'  He might not have known
that the brain works on electrical impulses, too."

Scully was silent a moment, considering what he'd said.  "You think that
Knowlton does what -- he causes seizures?"

"You can have seizures like that, can't you?  Where there are no visible
convulsions, but a person gets disoriented, or his mind goes blank for a few
seconds?"

"Yes," she said slowly, " you can.  Actually, that's a common form of seizure
activity, especially in children."

"Could that explain how someone came to your door in the middle of the night
and it hardly registered with you that he was there?" Mulder asked.

"Mulder . . . even if it were possible for Knowlton to somehow cause seizures,
the best neurologist in the world couldn't predict exactly what location in a
specific brain to target in order to produce the result he wanted.  Everyone's
brain is organized a little differently, just like everyone's fingerprints are
unique."

"I'm not sure he 'targets' any area in particular.  Cancer Man told me that he
thought some of Knowlton's effect on electrical systems was involuntary.  Maybe
he can only cause one type of seizure.  Maybe he couldn't turn the effect off
if he tried."

"Okay," Scully said, trying once again to follow her partner's unusual sense of
logic, "even if what you say is true, what do we do about it?

"That's . . . a good question," he said.  "For what it's worth, I disconnected
my door boobytrap."

"Good," she said.

"I was trying to think, what kind of non-electric boobytraps can you use in an
apartment?"

"Mulder . . ."

"Pungee sticks were the first thing that came to mind, but I don't think my
neighbor downstairs would let me dig a pit through his ceiling."

"Seriously, Mulder, what are you going to do?  Whether this guy can control
electricity or not, he's dangerous.  And you're afraid," she added.

Mulder didn't deny it.  "I've been giving it some thought," he said, "although
my plan of action would be clearer if you could decipher that crime scene
report for me.  One of the Syndicate members told me that Knowlton formally
broke his contract with his employers after Moernicke's death.  He's a
freelancer, now, semi-retired, or whatever else you want to call it.  What do
guys do when they make a name for themselves at something and then go out on
their own?  They specialize, they focus on doing the stuff they're really good
at, the stuff they like.  I didn't point this out to the Syndicate, but the
more I think about it, the more I think the hit on Moernicke was a one-time
deal.  I'm pretty sure that there was some kind of tie between them, some
arrangement that Knowlton found inconvenient.  Moernicke needed to be dead
before Knowlton could walk away.  I doubt he has any feelings one way or the
other about Moernicke's 'associates,' and so long as they don't bother him,
he'll leave them alone.  What Knowlton's going to want to do is a lot more of
-- of what he did to me.  That's where he gets his satisfaction.  I don't think
staking out any of the Consortium members would be effective or even necessary.
 He doesn't want to see the old farts again.  But if I found a way to contact
him, if I tried to sound . . . I dunno, interested, I guess, I might be able to
draw him out so we could nab him."

"God, Mulder, that sounds so dangerous," she said.

"You know what my informant told me last night?  He said, 'Life is a series of
calculated risks.'"

"Calculated for him or for you?" she asked.

That got a sardonic smile.  "Calculated against everybody, as far as I can
tell," he said.

"Please be careful," she said.

"Sure," he said.  Somewhat to her surprise, he put his arm lightly around her
shoulders as they walked back toward the Memorial.

Mulder's Apartment,
That Night

For the second night in a row, Mulder curled up in his bed.  He'd installed a
chain and a deadbolt on the bedroom door, as a second line of security in lieu
of the boobytrap.  The fact that the lock core had been loosened on his front
door did not make him happy, but until his landlord got around to replacing it,
that's the way it was.

Dana had once told him that she had self-comforting rituals she went through
when life got hard.  She wore flannel shirts that felt good against her skin;
she listened to the Indigo Girls; she read Danielle Steel novels in the
bathtub.  Fox had confessed, a little shyly, that he had self-comforting
rituals of his own.  They involved reading things like "`Salem's Lot" and going
to sleep listening to radio static.  She'd thought he was full of it, and had
told him so.  Actually, it was true.

Fox had been about ten when an older cousin let him borrow "'Murders in the Rue
Morgue' and Other Stories."  Fox's mother had not wanted him to read it.  He
did so anyway, under his bed covers by flashlight.  After that, tales of
horror, suspense and gore had been an escape for him.  Worrying about the fate
of some hapless wanderer, lost in the woods where It was lurking, utterly
absorbed his attention and let him forget his own problems for a while.

He'd also liked to listen to the Boston Red Sox games, which often ran past his
bedtime when he was small.  His parents let him keep a radio by his bedside,
however, so through all the summer nights of his boyhood, he dropped off to
sleep hearing the sound of stadium crowds and sports announcers, filtered
through the very poor radio reception of his island home.

At the moment, Fox was re-reading H.P. Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear."  His
clock-radio was purposely turned slightly off-station.  The Red Sox were not
playing that night, so he had to make do with the staticky murmurings of NPR.
He had a glass of water and a Smith & Wesson 9 mm by his bedside, in case he
needed them.  It was only 9:30, but he was beginning to feel sleepy.  Crying
and panic attacks took a lot out of a person.  That was all right, though,
because sleepy was a warm, comfortable feeling.  He let the book fall open onto
his chest and closed his eyes.  His bedside lamp was still on.  That was okay,
he told himself, even 35-year-old men were allowed to sleep with the light on,
if they wanted to.

He was half-asleep when the phone rang.  He startled and groped for it out of
habit.

"Yeah?" he mumbled into the receiver.  No response.  Awakening more fully, he
became aware of background noise on the other end of the line.  Voices, a dull
roaring -- a highway?  An airport or train station?  "Hello?" Mulder said, more
clearly.  Who would call him at 9:30 at night from a pay phone?  "Scully?" he
asked.  He heard the sound of the other phone being slowly replaced.

Wide-eyed now, he hung up, dialed *69, then hit the speed-dial button he'd
dedicated to his phone company's call tracing service.  The operator gave him
the answer he usually got--the call had been from "out of the area."  He
thanked her and hung up again.  Mulder's heart started hammering and he sensed
the beginning of a nasty panic attack.

"You will not die from fear," he told himself firmly.  He had to submit to
periodic physicals to prove he was fit enough to be a field agent, and he
hadn't flunked one yet.  He might *feel* as if he would have a heart attack if
his resting pulse hit 160, but he would not actually have one.

Unfortunately, Fox knew the drill.  He'd begun having panic attacks when he was
12, after his sister disappeared.  He ordered himself to breathe deeply and
evenly.  Hyperventilation would only make things worse.  He wrapped his arms
around his spare pillow, which had always provided a surprising amount of
comfort in the past.  In this case, however, it didn't help much.

"Why did that call scare you so much?" he asked himself.  "People call you and
hang up all the time.  What is it about *that* phone call that sets off warning
bells?"  These were the types of questions he'd been taught to ask in the ISU.
Mulder's former supervisor, Reggie Purdue, had once explained that the
distinction between a hunch and an analysis hinged upon a profiler's ability to
back up his gut feelings with facts.

"Most wrong numbers don't stay on the line that long," he thought, "they hear
the wrong voice and hang up.  Either that, or they start asking you if this is
such-and-such a number.  People who call you and then sit there not saying
anything are doing it to harass you."  He also found he didn't like the
rumbling, public noise he'd heard in the background.  People who called from
pay phones were on the move.  Whether or not it was true, Fox was probably
supposed to assume that the caller was considering a 'visit' and wanted to see
if Mulder was home.  And then there was just the creeping, gut feeling that it
had been Knowlton.

"What now?" he asked himself.  A little regretfully, he rolled out of bed and
grabbed his gun.  It was the inability to sleep, the inability to ever feel
relaxed and safe, that had triggered most of Mulder's rage and grief.  In a
way, that violation had been worse than the violation of his body.  He undid
the locks on his bedroom door and went over to his desk to fire up his
computer.

Although he'd received little information as yet about Christopher Harwood,
Knowlton's last rape victim, he was pretty sure he could get data on him over
the Internet.  Also, if he tied up the phone with an on-line connection, nobody
else could call him.

Most of the documents he found were devoted to Harwood's political career.
Apparently, Harwood had strongly encouraged Britain's membership in the
European Economic Community and had vigorously condemned the U.S.'s use of
Western Europe as a site to base nuclear arms fortifications.  However, a few
pages were tabloid articles with titles like, "MP Goes Mad -- Tries to Bite
Housekeeper!"  Or: "Acclaimed Psychic Says: Harwood Family Sins Come Home To
Roost!"

Between the politics and the mudslinging, Mulder got a sketchy profile of what
Christopher Harwood must have been like.  He'd been an intense young man,
considered brilliant by some and mentally unbalanced by others.  He'd
apparently had a difficult relationship with his father, who was also a
distinguished politician.

Mulder could see parallels between Harwood and himself.  It would appear that
Knowlton had a "type."

By 3 a.m., Mulder was in pain and far past exhaustion.  He had the bug-eyed,
frantic feeling that he associated with cross-country redeye flights.  In the
past, he'd made some of his stupidest decisions in this state.

He logged off his computer and reached for his phone.  He punched in the number
X had given him.  The phone rang, and Mulder counted the rings up to eight.

Finally, someone picked up.  "What?" X demanded.

Relieved that he hadn't been given the number for the County Morgue after all,
Mulder said, "I need to know about the relationship between Knowlton and
Moernicke."

"At 3 a.m.?" X asked.

"If I don't get to sleep, then you don't either.  Under any other
circumstances, I'd sue the Syndicate's ass for criminal negligence."

"I don't know anything about Knowlton and Moernicke," X said.

"Then tell me who does," Mulder said.  "I said at the beginning that I'd work
with your people as a partner or I wouldn't work with them at all.  Tell me
where I can get my information, or I walk."

Silence over the phone line.  Mulder wondered if X had hung up.  Finally, the
informant said, "Well, you've settled the question of whether you have more
balls or brains."

"Maybe I'm not at my most rational," Mulder conceded, "but I'm still packing a
9 mm semiautomatic with a 16 round magazine.  I'd be cooperative, if I were
you."

He heard a sound over the line that might actually have been a chuckle.  "Your
megalomania knows no bounds, does it?" X asked.

"Megalomania within bounds is a contradiction in terms."

Again, no response for some seconds.  At last, X said, "I can only repeat
rumors."

"Then I'll take the rumors," Mulder said.

"Very well.  Rumor has it that Knowlton was Moernicke's 'Liebling,' his
'Ganymed.'"  Mulder knew enough Greek mythology to interpret that.

"Then Knowlton started to grow up, and they argued," Mulder said.

"Correct," said X.  "He quickly made himself valuable to the Consortium and
thus was less dependent upon Moernicke.  He left the old man years ago."

"But Moernicke couldn't let him go," Mulder said.

"That is my understanding," said X.  "There were . . . unseemly tales of
Moernicke's pursuit of Knowlton, across many countries and several years.  Some
men only desire what they can never have."

The words struck a chord with Mulder, but he pretended indifference.  "Did
Moernicke keep tabs on the activities of his . . . Liebling?" he asked.

"I suppose he must have, to hound him the way he did," said X.

"That's probably why Knowlton killed him.  In order to disappear, he had to get
rid of the nosy old SOB.  Did the Berlin police come across any diaries
belonging to Moernicke?  Any notes that detailed where Knowlton might have hid
out?"

"I have no idea," X said.  "You've had the police report sent to you."

"Yeah, but it's in German," Mulder said.  "Even my translator wouldn't be able
to pick up what alias Knowlton went by, how Moernicke would have referred to
him."  He was careful not to mention Scully by name.  He didn't want her drawn
into this any further than necessary.

"What exactly do you intend to do with this information?" X asked.

"I want a way to contact Knowlton.  He went after Chris Harwood at least three
times, so it's pretty certain that he's planning to pay me another visit.  I'd
just as soon find him before he finds me."

"That may not be possible, since his entire career has been based upon his
ability not to be found.  However, I'll see what I can do," said X.

"Good," said Mulder.  "There's something else.  I think he called me, about
9:30, sounded like it was from a pay phone.  The operator couldn't trace the
call.  You might want to tell your bosses that he's been sniffing around."

"Why didn't you tell me that at once?" X snapped.  "Why did you wait six hours,
until the middle of the night?"

"Because I wanted to drive you nuts," Mulder said.  Actually, he'd been feeling
too emotionally fragile to deal with the informant at that time, but X didn't
need to know that.

"You are by far the most obnoxious individual I have ever had the misfortune to
run across," X said.

"I love you, too," said Mulder.  X hung up.

At 9 a.m., Mulder's phone started ringing.  He'd finally collapsed in bed and
succumbed to exhaustion at about four.  He startled awake at the sound of the
phone, then squinted at the clock and groaned.  After what had happened last
night he wasn't sure he wanted to answer.  He groped for the phone anyway,
hoping it was someone who had useful information.  "If this is a telemarketer,
somebody's going to die," he thought.

"What?" he said, into the receiver.

"Good morning, Agent Mulder," came X's falsely cheerful voice.  "Wakie-wakie."

"Shut up," Mulder said.  In his opinion, turnabout was not fair play.  "What do
you want?"

"Maybe I just wanted to drive you nuts," said X.

"God damn it--"

X cut Mulder's incipient tirade short by saying, "I have a suggestion for you."

"Which is what?"

"Have your translator check to see if Moernicke's wallet, cell phone and pager
were found in his house after his death.  Apparently, Knowlton was in the habit
of 'liberating' such objects from his recent victims.  He tended to use the
pagers and phones as temporary contact devices, until he could steal others.
He would also use his victims' credit cards until they were reported stolen.
For the next few days, at least, he may be trackable as Josef Moernicke."

"Ah, hell . . ." Mulder said, unable to believe he'd been stupid enough not to
think of that.  "Ok, great.  Have you got Moernicke's cell and pager number?"

X started to recite them, but Mulder had to ask him to wait while he found a
pen.  Much to his relief, X hadn't hung up by the time Mulder found his only
non-dry ball-point, which was wedged deep in the junk drawer of his desk.  He
wrote out the numbers X gave him on the back of the electricity bill.
"Terrific.  Thanks.  I take back everything I said about you," Mulder said.

"Including the part when you said you loved me?" X asked.

"Especially the part when I said I loved you."

"Excellent.  My day is improving already."  X hung up.

Scully's Apartment,
9:30 a.m.

Dana had not started life as a morning person. That had changed since she'd had
to be up by 6:30 a.m. every weekday.  Snoozing until 8 was a sinful luxury.  So
far this morning she'd done half her laundry and destroyed the kitchen making
waffles.

She always made too many waffles.  She'd learned to make them when there was a
Scully family of six to feed.  At the moment she sat at her kitchen table,
sipping her coffee and feeling glum.  She missed little Queequeg.  He'd have
polished off some waffles for her.

Someone knocked at her door.  She was tempted to ignore it, since the local
Jehovah's Witnesses had been a bit over-zealous lately.  Then she realized she
could probably palm waffles off on them.  She opened her door and found Mulder
standing in her hall.  He wore jeans and a T-shirt that read, "The Meek Shall
Inherit the Earth, But the Rest of Us Are Going To the Stars."  His jaw was
unshaven and his hair stuck up in every direction.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"Uh . . . yeah, sure."  She stepped aside to let him in.  "Want a waffle?" she
asked, as he passed her into the living room.

He turned, as if surprised at the offer.  "What kind of waffle?" he asked.  She
thought he sounded a little skeptical.

"Well . . . they're supposed to be blueberry, but actually the mix comes with
these little purple pellets that contain 'natural and artificial flavors,'" she
admitted.

He appeared to think about this.  "Works for me," he said at last, and went
into the little kitchen to snatch a waffle from the warmer on the counter.  He
sat on her couch and began munching the waffle, holding it in his fingers as if
it were a piece of toast.  He finished it in a startlingly short period of
time.  It occurred to her that he must be very hungry.  "Have all you want,"
she said.  "If I eat any more I'll explode."

"Whoa," he said, "sewer-dwelling mutants are one thing, but that would be too
gross to watch." He started to get up, but she grabbed the whole waffle warmer,
which had cooled, and handed it to him.

"Do your best," she said.

He accepted it, and suddenly looked a little sad, as if he wasn't sure he
deserved a whole waffle warmer.  "What's going on?" she asked, gently.

"I got a couple of calls last night and this morning," he said.  He described
the anonymous hang-up call and the conversations he'd had with X.  "Did you
find anything like a cell phone or a pager listed among the objects at the
crime scene?" he asked.

"Well . . . no," she said.  She'd hesitantly agreed to take the German police
documents home, but had given them only the most cursory attention.

"Could you look?"  he pressed.

"Mulder . . . I really don't like this idea.  You've been through something
terrible.  The Cincinnati office used questionable judgement in allowing you to
do a behavioral analysis of this case.  Getting involved in some Syndicate
shadow-investigation is even worse.  Those men don't care about you.  They've
made it clear that they'd just as soon see you dead.  How do I know I'm not
putting a gun to your head by helping you get involved with them?"

"I may end up with a gun to my head if I *don't* work with them," Mulder said.
"At least this way I get to choose which gun."

Although she was unhappy about it, she could see his point.  "All right," she
said, "but it'll take me a while to find my German/English Dictionary."

"I've got all day," he said.

A little annoyed at the assumption that she had all day, too, she went into her
study and rummaged through the books.  Not all were on bookshelves.  Some were
packed in boxes and shoved in the closet.  She had a bad feeling that this was
what had happened to her German dictionary.

There turned out to be more boxed books than she'd thought.  By the time she'd
excavated half of them, she was watery-eyed from the dust and the study was
pretty well trashed.  "Hey . . . uh, Scully?"  came Mulder's voice.

Startled, she turned to find him leaning in the doorway of her study.  "What?"
she asked.

"Can I help you, or something?" he asked.

She was tempted to tell him to leave her alone.  This whole plan gave ger a
sick feeling, and she wasn't happy with him for talking her into it.  She
wasn't happy with herself for being unable to come up with anything better.
Scully sighed and told herself to forget those thoughts.  It was the rapist who
had turned both their lives upside-down.  She should save her anger for him.
"Sure," she said.  She scooted over to allow Mulder space on the floor near the
box.

Mulder turned out to be a natural box-searcher.  He'd scoop up an entire stack
of books, critically examine the spines, and then settle them back where they'd
come from.  The dust did not seem to bother him.  Every so often he'd comment,
"I've got this," - at the "Criminal and Civil Investigation Handbook,"
"Carrie," "The Once and Future King."  Within five minutes he'd located her
dictionary.

He curled up on her couch as she sat at the kitchen table, preparing her
translation. She knew he was going to fall asleep by the way his eyes kept
drooping shut.  He was dead to the world within a quarter of an hour, and she
got up to spread a quilt over him.  He stirred a little but did not seem to
wake.  Dana felt oddly protective as she watched him sleep.

Once Mulder was settled, Scully began to translate the report onto the pages of
a notebook.  As the unwieldy German words began to take shape into a narrative,
her resignation turned to interest.

Later

Mulder stretched--was surprised to feel a blanket over him.  He opened his eyes
and experienced a moment of disorientation.  Dana's apartment--the living room
in full sunlight.  As his mind cleared he recalled how he'd come there, that
she'd fed him waffles.

He looked over to find Dana herself sitting at the kitchen table, her glasses
perched on her nose. She'd changed from her pajamas into a loose T-shirt and
shorts.  She smiled at him -- a brilliant smile.  "Hey, sleepyhead," she said.

"Oh man," he said, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips.  "What time is it?"

"The crack of noon," she said.

"Shit," he said.  He rolled off the couch and got to his feet.  "You've been
working all this time, and I've been sleeping?  You should have woke me up."

"So you could do what?  Hover over my shoulder and ask, 'are you done yet?'"

He smiled a little sheepishly.  "I dunno.  So I could do something."

"Don't worry about it.  I haven't been working that hard.  I took time out to
shower and change."

"And I missed it.  What lousy luck," he said.  He pulled one of Scully's vacant
chairs out from under the table and plunked down into it.  He immediately
regretted this action.  The pain in his bowel had lessened from searing agony
to a general, dull ache, but he still had to avoid any activity that was too
sudden or vigorous.  The discomfort must have shown in his face because Scully
looked concerned and started to get up.

"Let me get you something," she began.

He waved her back into her chair.  "About the only thing I'd want is a fifth of
vodka, and that wouldn't mix well with my Tylenol-3."  She frowned, and he
said, more seriously,  "I'm just past due for my medication, is all."  In the
excitement of that morning he hadn't taken anything.  Actually, he realized
that he hadn't had any of his pain meds in more then 15 hours.  No wonder he
hurt.  He stood and dug a collection of pills from his jeans pocket.  The drugs
were there from laziness, rather than foresight -- he'd worn the same pants
yesterday.

Mulder went to Scully's kitchen and ran the sink tap into his cupped hand.
"You *are* allowed to use a glass, you know," she said.

"You sure?  I broke all of mine," he said.  He tossed back his Tylenol-3.  That
left the antibiotic and the stool softener, neither of which he should have
waited on.  He hoped he hadn't condemned himself to misery by forgetting them.

After he took all his drugs, he settled himself cautiously onto Dana's kitchen
chair.  Her expression was compassionate, and he wasn't sure if he was touched
or humiliated.  He avoided the whole subject by asking, "So, are you done yet?"

That got a reserved smile.  "Mostly," she said. "You were right about Josef
Moernicke being a former Stasi boss.  In fact, he worked for a GDR agency
called 'Operative Personenkontrolle,' or Operational Person Control, between
1969 and 1989."

"That sounds ominous," Mulder said.

"Most of the Germans agree with you.  Apparently, Moernicke had a lot of
enemies.  He reported several threats against his life after 1990, and he had a
pretty impressive security set-up around his house.  Everything from motion
detectors to trained attack dogs."

"None of which worked," Mulder said.

"Right," she replied.

"Any neighbor statements?" Mulder asked.

Scully shook her head.  "Nobody saw anything," she said.

He nodded.  That was what he'd feared, and expected, to hear.  "That's
significant," he said.  "My experience of European cities is kind of limited,
but I remember them as being more community-centered than American ones.
Neighbors there usually know each other and aren't ashamed to pry.  What about
Moernicke's cell phone, wallet and pager?  Did you find any references to
those?"

"No," she said, "although he wouldn't have had those on him if he died in the
shower.  He also seems to have lived alone, so it's possible some thefts went
unreported."

"Okay, all right," Mulder said, running his fingers through his uncombed hair.
"Was Moernicke a man of regular habits?"

"Doesn't say," she said.

"Jesus, this is the former East Germany," Mulder said.  "The Stasi supposedly
turned one-third of the country into police informants.  Since when did they
all start minding their own business?"

"Mulder, the man died Thursday morning and his cleaning lady discovered the
body that afternoon.  You got a copy of this report yesterday.  This is a
record of an investigation that was less than 24 hours old," she said.

"You're right," he said, "you're right.  Getting impatient won't help.  Still,
the first thing *I'd* have done is canvass the neighbors."

"Well, you weren't there," she said.  "What if you focused on what you have,
instead of what you don't?"

He realized that he must sound ungrateful. "I'm sorry," he said.  "Sometimes I
forget to put the brakes on my mouth.  I've been pushing my luck with you,
haven't I?"

"No," she said.  "No.  You've been having a tough time, and I understand that."

"Uh-huh," Mulder said, unconvinced.  He thought to himself, "This is where you
say something sensitive and insightful and justify the amount of money you blew
on a psyche degree."  Unfortunately, nothing brilliant came to mind.  Not one
to let confusion keep him silent,  Mulder said, "Scully . . . I told you before
that what I needed was for you to be my friend.  If I ever ask you to do
something that jeopardizes that friendship, then tell me to go to hell.  I'd
rather be told 'no' than to have you resent me.  I need . . ." he faltered a
moment.  The words "I need" had always come hard for him.  He looked down and
picked at a hangnail on his thumb.  "I need you to care about me," he said at
last.  "You're one of the very, very few people I feel that way about.  Mostly,
I don't give damn what people think of me.  That's how I got where I am today:
a Supervisory Special Agent, working in the Hoover Building basement."  He
glanced up and flashed her a rueful smile.  She looked sad now, as if ashamed.
That wasn't the effect he'd intended to have.

He got up, his hands jammed in his pockets, and wandered over to the window.
>From her apartment, you could see the Severn River glinting through the
Annapolis skyline.  Mulder knew that had been a selling point with Scully.  A
Navy captain's daughter, she'd always loved living near the water.  "Um . . .
this may not seem relevant, but I dated this girl, once," he began.  The "girl"
had been Diana, whom he'd very nearly married.  "When we broke up, she said I
had a 'steamroller personality,' meaning I just ran over everything that got in
my way.  She said she couldn't live with anybody like that, and I don't blame
her."

"You do not have a 'steamroller personality,'" Scully said.

"If *I* don't, then who does?" he asked.  He looked back at her and saw she
appeared embarrassed, as if she couldn't answer that question with both tact
and honesty.  "See?" he said.  "Anyway, it's important to me that I don't
'steamroll' you.  If I bug you, then tell me.  I don't want to make you mad."

"Mulder . . . it's not like that," she said.  "I do get mad, but it's not at
you."  As she spoke the tension went out of her shoulders.  Suddenly she looked
small and vulnerable.  "I don't know who I'm mad at."  She seemed to be having
trouble expressing something, and Mulder decided to stay silent until she felt
like elaborating.  "When you were in the hospital, in that examining room, you
were holding my hands so tightly you almost crushed my fingers," she said.

"I'm sorry," Mulder said, embarrassed.

She shook her head and said, "It's all right.  You were so hurt, so scared . .
. and I felt like I could just kill somebody.  I'm afraid I was a witch to your
doctor."

"I thought you didn't go in for that witch doctor stuff," Mulder said.  It was
a lame joke, and it got only the ghost of a smile from her.

"Please don't take this the wrong way," Scully said, "I don't want to minimize
your experience.  But since this happened to you I don't sleep well, either.  I
was there.  I'm your friend.  This person could have done to me what he did to
you.  And I hate him for it, Mulder.  I hate him for hurting you, for making
you cry the way you did in the ER.  It just tore at me.  I wish . . . I wish
you wouldn't go putting yourself in any more danger.  I mean, I guess it's none
of my business.  This is your life.  You can do what you want.  I just . . . I
hate watching you suffer."

"Do you hate *me* when I do something dumb and get myself hurt?" he asked.  He
had not expected the force of her emotion, and he didn't want that anger
directed at him.

"As if I could ever hate you," she said.  She spoke so tenderly that it upset
him.  If she kept being kind he was going to cry again, and he was sick of
crying.

"Okay," he said, looking down at the scuffed toes of his sneakers.  "Okay, I'm
glad you feel that way.  Um, give me just a minute."  He went into her bathroom
and shut the door.  He turned on the sink tap and the fan, to cover the sounds
of sobbing, in case it came to that.  He bent his head, hands braced hard
against the sides of the sink, until the cruelest edge of his sorrow passed.

Once he felt calmer, he splashed cool water on his face.  It felt good in the
sore, swollen hollows of his eyes.  He hadn't shaved or brushed his hair that
morning, and when he glanced up into the mirror his image was frightening.
Embarrassed, Mulder cleaned himself up as much as he could, with the help of
Scully's hairbrush and soap dispenser.  Afterward he went back into the living
room and said, "My God, I'm amazed you let me into your apartment.  If someone
showed up at my door looking like me, I think I'd call Animal Control."

"As your personal physician, I knew that you'd had all your shots," Scully told
him.  He grinned and picked up some of the crime scene papers from her kitchen
table.  Still a little self-conscious over their unaccustomed display of strong
emotions, he quickly buried his nose in diagrams of the street outside
Moernicke's house.

"Aha," he said.  "Finally some evidence of the famed German thoroughness.
These circle things here are streetlights?"  He held up the paper so Scully
could see.

She squinted at it and said, "I think so."

"Did the file say what time they're turned off in the summer?"

"Ah . . . 7 a.m.," she said, examining some of her notes.

"Right within the probable time of death," he said.

"That's about right, yes."

"See, I'm curious about this electricity-controlling ability that Knowlton's
supposed to have.  Cancer Man said that the guy can't even wear a watch, but
then he goes and steals things like pagers and cell phones, which run on
electricity.  I wonder if Knowlton has a lot more control over this power of
his than he wanted his employers to know about."

"Sounds possible," Scully said.

"It really pisses me off that we don't have better neighbor statements, but I
guess I can work with what we've got.  Let's make the outrageous assumption
that Moernicke's neighbors found it significant that they lived next to a hated
former Stasi boss who sometimes received death threats.  If they weren't openly
nosy, they probably had a general awareness of what went on around his house,
especially if he had territorial dogs in his yard."

"Which didn't make a disturbance when their master's killer walked into the
house," Scully said.

"Some guard dogs," Mulder agreed.  "Nobody noticed anything odd about the
street lights, either.  There's one right out in front of Moernicke's gate.  If
Knowlton was using his amazing mental powers to short out the dogs' brains,
wouldn't the streetlight go out too?"

"I don't know," Scully said.  "It would depend on how good his aim was.  Darin
Oswald claimed to be able to telepathically change TV channels without shorting
out the overhead lights."

Mulder drummed his fingertips on the armrest of the couch, thinking.
"Moernicke didn't have a security cam set up in front of his house, did he?" he
asked.

"Actually, he did," Scully said, scanning one of her papers, "but it wasn't
working."

"Of course not.  Did they pop the tape out?"

"Yeah . . . when they played it back they found nothing unusual on it.  No,
wait--hang on," she said, glancing over her notes.

"What?" Mulder asked, sitting up straighter to try and peer over at what she
was doing.

"According to the time stamp on the tape, the camera stopped recording at just
after 7 a.m. on Thursday morning.  That coincides roughly with the time of
death."

"Also with the time the streetlights went out.  Maybe Knowlton doesn't have
such great aim.  Maybe he waited for the streetlights to go out so he wouldn't
call attention to himself by shorting one."

"Also, the periods around dawn and dusk, when it's just a little too bright out
to have the lights on, would be the times of minimum visibility for that area,"
Scully pointed out.

"What about those motion detectors?" he asked.

She shuffled through the documents and pulled one out.  She read from it:
"'Herr Wilhelm Ostkreuz informed police that he and his wife were often annoyed
by the floodlights that went on around Herr Moernicke's house, every time
someone walked past the front gate.  Herr Ostkreuz denied noticing any such
disturbance on the morning of 11 May, 1996.'"

"What happened when the police examined Moernicke's motion detector system?"
Mulder asked.

"It was turned off," she replied.

"'Ve-ry intereshting,'" Mulder said, giving her his best "Laugh-In" Kommandant
impression.

"'But schtoopid,'" she replied in kind.  He glanced up at her, grinned, and saw
her answering smile.  He looked away again, bashful and pleased as a schoolboy.

"You know . . . I was thinking," he said, becoming serious again,  "Let's say
Knowlton's powers act on any electrical object within a certain distance of
him.  That would explain his waiting for the street lights to go out, as well
as the simultaneous hit on the dogs and the motion detectors."

"All right," Scully said, sounding wary.  "If we accept that premise, then
what?"

"My informant said that Knowlton liked raiding his late victims' wallets for ID
and credit cards, but not whether he can use stolen ATM cards," Mulder
explained.  "There's always a security camera around ATM's.  Knowlton might not
be able to shut down a camera without shutting down the teller machine below
it.  It defies logic that he could get all over the world and never use an
automatic teller.  If God loves me, we can get a picture of him that way."

Scully smiled and said, "I'm sure God loves you, but I don't know about your
explanation of how Knowlton's power works.  A surge of electricity could
demagnetize the strips on any credit cards he was carrying, unless he wanders
around with a grounding wire hanging out of his wallet.  Besides, I'm pretty
sure that when I opened my hotel room door on Monday night the light was on in
the hall.  It seems to me the man in the doorway was backlit, which was why I
had so much trouble seeing him.  If Knowlton really does have power over
electricity, he has enough control to disable my door's lock and 'short out my
brain,' as you put it, without affecting the overhead lights."

"Oh," Mulder said, unhappy at this contradiction to his theory.  "Of course, we
never did establish that he used any special powers to get into your room.  A
smile and an official-looking badge might have gotten him a spare key at the
front desk, and as you said, you were half asleep when you o