"Please, Dr. Pirsig." The plea fell into the silence of the room and died there. Dr. Pirsig leaned back in his padded leather chair and steepled his long, slender fingers, his face lost in a mixture of disgust and scientific curiosity. Michael looked up at him, watching the pale eyes, searching for any hint of acknowledgement. There was none.

The doctor sighed. "Michael, I cannot simply let you disappear from the world." A slight crinkle appeared between his brows, as if only then he realized the inherent truth in his statement. "You have a wife, a family."

Michael shook his head and hunched closer into the hard oak of his chair. "No."

"Yes. They do not deserve this...abandonment." The voice, soft and dry, eased over the words, testing them, tasting them. Grey eyes glinted behind wire-rim glasses.

"It's not--" Michael stopped, his mouth working, licked dry lips, and began again. "They don't need me. Don't want me." He lifted a pale hand to push back hair too short to benefit from the gesture. The blond spikes were sweat darkened, and he dried his hands on his thighs. He shook his head again, looked down at his white fingers clutching his jeans, whispered. "Please."

"That was well done."

Pirsig looked up from the splash of incandescence on his desk top. "It was done. Well enough, I suppose." His visitor was lost in shadow, save where the tip of his cigarette glowed. In the darkness, the ember was a tear in the fabric of reality, a window into hell. Pirsig shook away such imaginings and pushed himself back from the desk.

"You have proven your technique, Dr. Pirsig. Wasn't that the point of this little exercise?"

A flash of hot anger went through him. Frustration. Ignorance. "I don't know."

"For fifty years you've been begging me to get you a human subject." Breath rumbled deep in the man's chest as he inhaled deeply. "Is this your gratitude?"

"But Michael..." Pirsig trailed off. His mind shivered away from the name. Subject One, he thought. "He has a family. They will miss him. And they may go to the police."

There was a soft chuckle from the darkness, and the sickly-sweet aroma of tobacco filled the air. "Oh, it's not every day that the husband of the Chairwoman for the IPC Subcommittee disappears. I imagine they will go much higher than the police."

Dust motes danced in the warm sunlight that was making its belated appearance through the narrow window of the basement office. The light straggled across piles of file folders and official case reports, slowly inching across the tops of open file cabinets, pausing as though to peruse the contents. At last, it came to rest on a patch of burnished copper, raging like fire for an instant before continuing its meandering way across the office. Scully looked up for a moment, feeling the warmth of the new day caressing her hair. She smiled, uninhibited in the empty office. It was unusual to be here so late in the morning that the sun could find its way past the walls of gray cement that surrounded them. Today, however, was different. Skinner had asked that she and Mulder meet with the Subcommittee Chair that morning. Mulder, chafing against timetables, was predictably late.

Scully sat back at Mulder's desk, mentally shaking her head. Over six years and she still didn't have a place in the office to call her own. She picked up a file folder, absently threading her way through its pages, idly speculating. She looked up as Mulder entered the office. He looked even taller from where she sat, and she leaned back to enjoy his approach. The dark suit he wore was a bit rumpled, and his tie was hanging loose around his neck. Scully felt a smile bubbling up inside her, but resisted the urge to share it. Mulder looked like a boy playing at seriousness, his normal exuberance hidden in the soft fall of hair over his forehead and the shadow of a grin that pulled at his full lips.

"So, Scully, do you suppose Skinner's trying to please us or punish us?" Mulder tossed his coat towards the rack, hooking it neatly as always. Basketball player's luck, he'd told her once.

She watched as he tightened his tie and shoved files aside to sit on the edge of the desk. "Well, it's not a case we'd normally be taking..." She shrugged.

"No mutants? No aliens?"

"Disappointing, I know." This time, she let a hint of her smile show. "But it's no punishment. In fact, it's a very prestigious assignment. The Chairwoman for the Subcommittee on Investigative Prosecution of Cultism is very influential."

A slight frown marred his expression. "That's not what I've heard..."

"Then you've heard correctly." A new voice interrupted. They looked to the door as the chairwoman stepped over the threshold. Mulder stood quickly and turned to greet her. She walked forward, and Scully was surprised to note she nearly matched Mulder in height. Her dark hair flowed softly over the blue silk of her blouse. "Sheryl Townsend," she offered, proffering her hand. Mulder shook her hand, saying, "I'm Agent Mulder, and this is Agent Scully." Scully stood as well, taking the chairwoman's hand in her own and peering closely at her face. Under the professional makeup, Scully could see that the woman's eyes were red and swollen. She hides it well, she thought.

Mulder hooked out a second chair and offered it to her. With a brief smile of thanks, she sat down. Scully took the seat at the desk, allowing Mulder to lean against the wall. She looked up at him and met his eyes. Her slight nod was enough to tell him that he should begin the interview.

"What did you mean, Mrs. Townsend, when you said I'd heard correctly?" he asked.

"I assume that you've heard that my influence on the Subcommittee is not what it once was," she replied, her lips thin though her voice was even. "I've heard that rumour myself, so I suppose everyone else has as well."

Mulder nodded. "It's been said that your zeal is not appropriate on a board that is, essentially, a sinecure. No offense meant."

"None taken. It was always my hope to be effective at eradicating the cults that steal so many lives from this country." She sighed. "I didn't realize that no one wanted to hear about my preventative measures."

"It's been said that dedication is never appreciated before the storm." Mulder glanced at Scully, evoking memories with a lifted brow. Saving the world was right up there on his list of priorities, and no one had thanked him for it yet.

"No one will pay any attention until another Heaven's Gate hits the papers. Then, of course, they'll blame us for not preventing it." Sheryl brushed away the issue with an impatient gesture.

"But that is not why I've come to you." She looked towards the window, taking a deep breath. "It's my husband. Michael. He disappeared nearly two weeks ago, and I have no idea where he's gone." She looked at them, her dark eyes bright with unshed tears. "I want to mount a search for him."

Scully leaned forward across the desk. "Why didn't you come to us immediately? Two weeks is a long time."

Sheryl shrugged. "He's been gone before. Sometimes as long as a week. But never this long. He always calls, or sends something..." She turned away again.

Mulder folded his arms and frowned. Scully could almost hear the wheels churning behind his mask of impersonal politeness. There was nothing paranormal here. "Mrs. Townsend, the FBI is well-equipped to search for your husband, but you must know that Agent Scully and I aren't exactly the first choice for assignments like this."

"Mr. Skinner believed you would be the best people to talk to."

Scully glanced up at Mulder, watching his frown deepen. He thought this was another jerk-off assignment, another dirty-work detail. But she wasn't so sure. "Why is that, Mrs. Townsend?"

"Because of Michael's previous disappearances." She frowned, more to herself than them. "I hope you will be keeping this confidential."

Scully leaned forward to meet Sheryl's eyes. "Of course, Mrs. Townsend."

Michael was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He leaves when the depression hits; and he's always come back the next day. But about three months ago, he stayed away for three nights. It was the first time he'd ever been gone so long. When he came back..."

Mulder walked forward, abandoning his indolent post by the wall. "Something was different, Mrs. Townsend?" Scully watched as a light came into his eyes--an eager gleam he reserved for mutants, aliens, and sometimes...sometimes, for her. She pushed that thought away and concentrated on Sheryl's reply.

"Yes. We had gone to bed, and when he rolled over, that's when I saw it. On the back of his neck, there was a small scar. It was red and inflamed, and he kept scratching at it. It was almost like he couldn't keep his hands off it."

Mulder crouched down in front of Sheryl and looked up into her face. Her cheeks were pale behind the shadow of her hair, and her hands were balled tightly in her lap. "Was there anything else unusual about Michael's behavior after that night?" he asked, his voice catching on an edge of expectation.

"After that, he began to leave more often, and for longer. He became nervous. He couldn't sit still to write, although he said his newest novel was going to be the best he'd ever done. He didn't have any patience with the girls anymore..." Sheryl shook her head and dropped her hands to her sides, hopeless.

Scully left the desk and came to Sheryl's side, laying a hesitant hand on her shoulder as though doubting herself its power to comfort. "Mrs. Townsend," she started gently, "did your husband ever take medication for his bipolar disorder?"

Sheryl pulled herself together and shrugged away Scully's hand. "Yes. Not that it ever did him much good. He said his writing suffered when he took it."

Mulder shifted slightly. Scully could feel his impatience radiating like heat from his body, and she knew he ached to bury himself in the mystery, attacking it from within until he could weave a tapestry of truth from its threads. She backed away, allowing him to guide the interview, respecting his judgment enough to know that he would not hurt Sheryl Townsend with his questions.

"Mrs. Townsend, do you know anything about where your husband went when he left before?"

Sheryl tilted her head. "Sometimes he'd wind up at my father's apartment. But I've called there, several times. He hasn't been there."

"Is your husband close to your father?"

She smiled. "Oh, yes. My father was a bit unhappy about how we met, but he's always been supportive. He and Michael have become good friends over the years."

"How did you meet?"

A flush rose to color Sheryl's white skin. "It was many years ago. In all honesty, it's imperative that you keep this to yourselves." She frowned. "Michael and I met in a rehabilitation center. For alcoholism. He'd been depressed, of course..."

"So you knew even then?"

"It wasn't a disease back then, Agent Mulder. It was seen as a character flaw, and I'm afraid that's how my father saw it. But things have changed since then."

"And you have daughters?"

"Yes, two of them. Michael was always a wonderful father, until these last two or three months."

"Did you ask your husband about the scar?"

"I did. But he wouldn't answer my questions. He said he didn't remember how he got it, but I think he was lying. He knew."

Mulder stood and made his way to a filing cabinet, searching for a particular folder among the mess of papers and photos. "I'm going to show you a picture of a scar that may be similar to your husband's. If you could identify it, it could be most helpful to the investigation."

Scully watched as he brought out the folder. With icy shock, she saw her own name written on the cover. She forced herself to breathe against the cold anger that threatened her self-control. Mulder was in wild pursuit, ignoring the fact that she still could not move past the three months that had been stolen from her life, even after all these years. He shot a look at her as Sheryl flipped through the photographs, and his dark eyes sent a mute apology. Scully dragged her gaze down to the pictures, seeing her own neck, white and vulnerable, and the angry red scar that marred her skin.

But when Sheryl looked up, there was no recognition in her eyes. "No," she said slowly, "Michael's scar was bigger. It looked as though someone had stuck a needle into his neck."

Slowly, Mulder closed the cover, hiding its contents once more. He replaced it in its proper spot among the careless drift of folders, tamping it down so that its edges lined up precisely with the others. He kept his eyes on it as he pushed the drawer shut. Scully wondered at his concentration, seeing in him her desire for the truth mirrored a hundredfold.

Sheryl watched silently. "Agent Mulder, I think I know why Mr. Skinner sent me to you. Michael's recent disappearances...well, there must be more to them than simple depression. I think..."

Mulder turned back to her, but did not answer. Scully glanced at him, then prompted, "Yes, Mrs. Townsend?"

"I think Michael may have joined a cult. He's shown all the signs. Gradually withdrawing from us, the distraction, the nervousness...the abrupt disappearance..." She faltered, then continued. "I know that you have had to deal with such people before. Mr. Skinner told me of your case in Dudley, Arkansas, among others."

Mulder nodded, expressionless. Still hoping for aliens, Scully mused. But Sheryl's explanation seemed reasonable. A cult could easily entice depressed people with promises of happiness. She met Mulder's eyes over Sheryl's head and shrugged. There seemed nothing more to ask for now; they could always go to her if they needed more information.

"Mrs. Townsend, you can be assured that Agent Mulder and I will do everything we can to find your husband," she said.

Sheryl nodded and stood. Mulder took a step forward and led her from the office. "We'll contact you as soon as we know anything helpful, or if we need to ask you some more questions," he said.

"All right. And thank you." Sheryl made her way to the elevator and watched them until the doors hid her from view.

Mulder came back into the office and sat in Sheryl's recently vacated chair. "There is something going on here, Scully," he said. "The story about her husband's scar is not just a coincidence."

Scully stared. "You think Skinner is setting us up?"

Mulder shrugged. "No matter how out of favor she is, no Subcommittee chair is going to be sent down here. If this were a simple disappearance, we never would have heard of this case."

Scully nodded and leaned back against the desk. "But if this were a set-up, why would she say that her husband's scar was different?"

"It might look a little too good if the scars matched." Mulder frowned, thoughtful. "The scar is a hook. They're trying to rope us into doing their dirty work." He stretched out his legs and folded his hands behind his head, the green of his eyes light and speculative.

"'They'?" Scully folded her arms in an exaggerated show of skepticism. "And who are 'they', exactly?"

"I don't know." He grinned suddenly, a flash of boyishness. "We could find out."

Scully couldn't help returning his smile with a tolerant look. "I'm not sure, Mulder. Her description of a cult sounded accurate. If her husband had stopped taking his medication...The scar could be some sort of devotional offering. Ritual body scarring is practiced by many cults. It would also explain why he was so reluctant to talk about it."

"Yes, but Townsend said her husband's behavior didn't change until after the scar appeared. Usually cultists must be devoted members before they are fully inducted."

Scully sighed. "So I suppose the next step is for you to suggest alien abduction," she said lightly. She watched the play of emotion over his strong features, able to read him clearly after more than six years spent mainly in his company. Excited, but hurt by her disbelief. As always. And underneath, appreciation for her teasing. But it was best not to look too deeply, she thought. That way led to a truth even Mulder was reluctant to unearth.

For now, though, the case was uppermost in his mind. "Alien abduction, Scully? But we have no proof of that." He returned her barb with one of his own, a gentle jab that nevertheless showed respect for her beliefs. "No. The next step is for us to visit Sheryl Townsend's father."

Michael drifted. His new world slowly came into focus around him. A face swam into view above him. Dark hair hung over her shoulders as she leaned over him, and large black eyes studied his every breath.

"Sheryl?" he asked.

"No." A whisper of sound, her voice was a rich contralto, silence spun into music.

"That's right." He sighed softly. "Not Sheryl anymore." He reached up to touch her skin, just where it was thinnest over the pulse of her lifeblood. Her hair brushed against the back of his hand, silken as a raincloud, full of promise.

"You were going to write today, Michael. Your novel is nearly finished." Somehow, her words sounded in his mind, and her full red lips curved in a smile. "The publisher has sent you an advance. He says no one writes as well as you. Fresh. New. Exciting."

"Yes." Michael turned his head and saw the computer, its screen sending a bluish glow over the woman's body. She wore only a diaphanous white robe, ghostly in the dim light. He smiled. He would finish the novel today. The publisher would be pleased. And then... He sighed again, studying the woman's features, so well known, and yet so strange. Not Sheryl. For an instant, a hint of a frown creased his brow, but she smoothed it away. Her hands were cool against his flesh, and he forgot about Sheryl...about writing...about the world he'd left behind.

"Hello? Who's this?" The voice was gruff and unwelcoming through the intercom.

"Mr. McKerness?" Mulder spoke over the hum of traffic from the busy street behind him. "This is Agent Mulder and Agent Scully. We're here about your son-in-law, Michael Townsend."

"Eh? All right, then, I guess you'd better come up." The buzzer sounded, and Mulder pulled the door open, holding it for Scully. She ducked under his arm and led the way to the elevator.

"Doesn't exactly sound like a good friend," she commented as the elevator ascended. "Not eager to let us in."

"No. But perhaps there's more to this than meets the eye."

Scully looked up at him. The gleam was back. "Isn't there always?" she replied.

They made their way to Benjamin McKerness' apartment. The building was old, but the hallway was clean and seemed well maintained. The afternoon sun, reflected through the window at the far end, reddened the dark carpet to the colour of blood. Mulder knocked at the door, and soon they heard the chain being pulled back.

The door opened to reveal a tall, slender man with iron gray hair. He glanced at them through narrow, ice blue eyes, then motioned them into the apartment with a curt gesture. The apartment was small but comfortable, with a single room divided into kitchen and living room. The walls were covered in framed photographs, mostly black and white. A picture of Sheryl, Michael, and their daughters sat on the television. McKerness indicated the couch with a nod, then took a seat in a hard-backed oak chair.

"So you've come about Michael," he said. "That boy..." He stopped.

"What about him, Mr. McKerness?" Mulder sat down on the edge of the sofa, resisting its give beneath his weight.

"I always thought he wasn't right in the head. And I guess I've been proved right." He gave a sharp nod, confirming his own thoughts.

Scully gave him a concerned look. "Mr. McKerness, your daughter told us that you and Michael were quite close. Good friends, in fact."

"My daughter told you, huh. Well, she knows I was against her marrying a man she met in rehab. I told her he'd backslide. And it seems he has. Disappearing like this. And the girls still just kids."

Mulder frowned. "Isn't it true that Michael used to come here during his bouts of depression? If you felt like this, why did you take him in?"

McKerness snorted. "You think I wouldn't take in my own son-in-law? He loves Sheryl. Given me grandkids. I'd rather he was here than in some bar getting drunk, maybe cheating on my daughter."

"And you're sure Sheryl knows how you feel? That she was lying to us about your friendship with Michael?"

"Mr. Mulder, it's easier to make nice when the kids come over for dinner. Which is damn seldom, I can tell you."

"And you haven't seen him recently?"

"No, not for two months at least. Now, maybe I can get some answers. What kind of time frame are you two looking at for this investigation? What kind of search parameters are you setting up?"

Scully smiled at the old man sitting stiff-backed in the hard chair. He reminded her of her father, whom she'd affectionately called Ahab for his military bearing. "Were you in the Navy, Mr. McKerness?" she found herself asking.

McKerness' sharp glance fell on her once more, searching deeper than his first evaluation. "Yes, I was. Marine corps. Five years." He jutted his chin to the pictures on the wall. "Mostly in the Pacific during World War Two."

Scully stood and, with a glance at McKerness for permission, studied the old photographs. Some had faded into sepia tones, but others were sharp and clear. They showed a much younger McKerness, still recognizable by his aquiline nose and strong chin. Near the edge, next to an empty stretch of white wall, there was a picture of McKerness in uniform. He was grinning, one arm slung around another man's shoulders and the other waving to the camera. The other man was a civilian by his clothes. His face was longer, his eyes swimming myopically behind wire-rim glasses, and his smile softer, though just as happy. In the background, the swells of the ocean rolled up over the white sands of the beach. A sign could just be discerned, reading, "Restricted Area: Naval Base 617."

Scully smiled at the show of camaraderie. Mulder joined her in studying the photographs. She felt his warmth as he leaned closer to feel the wood of the frame with sensitive fingers, aware of his body brushing against hers. Suddenly, she could feel him tense quickly, spasmodically. He raised his eyes to hers, sleepy-lidded hazel narrowed against the sunlight from the kitchen window. He had seen something.

Scully moved away from the wall of photographs and turned back to McKerness. "What did you do after your discharge, Mr. McKerness?"

The old man looked away from Mulder, who was still searching intently among the scenes of his youth. "I joined the police force here in Washington," he said. "But I left after they stuck me behind a desk. Too old for the beat, they said."

Scully walked to the television set and picked up the family portrait. "So these are your granddaughters? How old are they?"

"Michelle's ten. Andrea is eight." McKerness stood and joined her, staring into the happy faces.

Nodding, Scully kept her eyes on the picture. Michael was slightly shorter than his wife and somewhat plump. His blond hair was tousled as though it had won every battle to make it lie straight. The girls sat in the foreground, dark-haired like their mother, but their eyes the same shining blue as their father's. The elder was full-lipped and serious, the younger grinning impishly into the camera. "They're beautiful," she said, feeling a spasm of regret. The unobtainable lay there in her hands, something as simple as family portraits, that brought home the realization of a life she would never have.

"Mr. McKerness, do you have a recent picture of Michael that we could take with us?" she asked, setting the photo back in its place.

"Sure. I'll go and get it." He left them and walked down the short passage to the bedroom. Mulder turned to Scully and tilted his head, inquiring with his eyes. He'd heard the sorrow in her voice, attuned as he was to every nuance of expression. She shook her head at him, and her traditional words hung in the air between them, unspoken. "I'm fine, Mulder." A half-truth that he'd learned to see through long before.

McKerness rejoined them, carrying a wallet-sized photo with him. "This is about as new as I've got--last month, or thereabout." He handed the picture to Scully, and she felt her eyes widen at the changes wrought in the man who smiled so easily from the portrait on the television. Where once he was thickset, he was now thin, too thin for his bones. The unkempt hair had been shaven to within an inch of his skull, the pale spikes barely hiding his scalp. The shining blue of his eyes had dulled to a roiling gray, like a calm lake shadowed by storm clouds. The smile was tense, frozen. Mulder took the photo from her and examined it, frowning. "Thank you for your time, Mr. McKerness," he said, looking up. "We'll be sure to let you know how things turn out."

The old man nodded, sharp and sure. He showed them out and watched as they made their way to the elevator, then closed the door with a soft click that echoed in the empty hall.

In the elevator, Scully turned to Mulder. "Well, what is it?" she asked. "I know you saw something."

Mulder's half-smile was reward enough for guessing correctly. "The photo of McKerness with that other man," he said. "The civilian. Notice anything unusual about it?"

"The sign in the background?" Scully leaned against the back wall of the elevator and frowned in concentration. "Naval Base 617, wasn't it?"

"Exactly. It was a restricted area, but it's been long suspected that biogenics research was done there during the war."

"And you believe that's significant to this case? How?"

Mulder shrugged. Another intuition, Scully thought. He looked as though he were about to say "Elementary, my dear Scully." She sighed and waited for it, but as they left the building, he was silent.

"Well?" she finally prompted as he pulled their car into traffic.

Mulder kept his eyes on the road, lips pursed. "Something about that other man. Familiar."

Scully searched back, mentally studying the photograph. "Of course," she said. Mulder glanced over at her, surprised. She sat up straighter and turned to him as far as the seatbelt would allow. "We've got to go to the Lone Gunmen."

The hallway was dank. Vague shafts of late afternoon light shifted through unseen openings to illuminate patches of oil and garbage strewn over the cement. The dark steel of the door was interrupted by the brief sign saying "Offices of the Lone Gunmen". The camera swiveled toward them as Mulder leaned on the buzzer.

"Hey, Mulder," came a gruff voice, and they heard the multitude of locks opening and dead bolts sliding back. The door opened and Frohike looked up at them, peering through his glasses as though uncertain whether to trust the camera's projections. He had reason to do so; Mulder was not always the man he seemed to be.

"Frohike, you ass, let us in," Mulder said, pushing past. "You're never going to forgive me for calling you Melvin, and it wasn't even me."

"Huh," Frohike grunted, and led the way past file cabinets and tables piled high with half-assembled electronic gadgetry. Langly and Byers were sitting further back among a morass of computers, which were in varying stages of assembly. "Hey," Langly tossed over his shoulder, still intent on his computer screen. Byers stood and smoothed his charcoal suit to greet them. "Mulder, Scully," he said. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

Scully looked up at him, concerned. "Byers, this may be difficult for you. It's about Suzanne."

"Oh." Byers slowly sat again, his blue eyes stark, reaching a hand up to rub his neat beard. "I see."

Langly swiveled his chair around and leaned forward, pushing the thick lenses of his glasses up his nose. Frohike raised his eyebrows and silently reached for the cabinet where they stored a half-full bottle of Wild Turkey, but Byers waved him away when he offered it. "What about her?"

Mulder was frowning now. "Suzanne? From ten years ago? The same woman?"

"Yes." Scully looked up at him, seeing the confusion in the gold-flecked green of his eyes. "When these guys tricked me into meeting them in Los Vegas--" She paused to glare at the trio. Langly and Byers looked penitent, but Frohike grinned, in memory of a glorious ass-kicking. "They introduced me to Suzanne Modeski. After she was taken ten years ago, she was sent to White Sands, in New Mexico, where she worked on chemical engineering. Developing a truth serum."

Byers nodded and picked up the story. "She was trying to escape, with evidence of the government's perfidy. I don't know where she is now, though." He looked down at his hands, twisting a plain gold band around on his ring finger. "What do you want to know about her?" He searched Scully's face, looking for a hint as to her purpose.

"She gave you a picture of the men she'd been working with before she left," Scully said gently. "Today, I think I recognized one of those men in a photograph. I want to know everything you can find out about him."

Byers stood and eased past a rickety table to a file cabinet. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it, then opened the drawer. In stark contrast to the rest of the large room, the contents of the drawer were stacked neatly and divided by subject. Scully sent an ironic glance at Mulder and he grinned back. He could certainly learn from Byers when it came to stacking his reports; unfortunately, his style was influenced more by the other two Lone Gunmen.

Byers brought over a file folder, smoothing its edges with reverent fingers. "Here," he said, turning to the proper page. The photo was protected by a laminated cover, and the faces were clearly visible. Several people were standing around a lab bench, the product of their work, the truth serum, sitting in an Erlenmeyer flask among the apparatus. Suzanne stood to one side, held close by a tall, fleshy man with medium brown hair. Near the middle of the picture was the man Scully recognized, his slight smile directed beyond the camera, his pale eyes distant. In one hand he held a pair of wire rim glasses. His gray hair was thinning at the temples, and deep grooves on his forehead and around his mouth gave him an air of perpetual worry.

"Him," she said, pointing. "He may have worked at Naval Base 617 during the World War Two. I want to know what they did there."

Mulder reached into the inner pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a small digital camera. "Maybe this will help," he said, glancing sidelong at Scully. While she had talked to McKerness about the family picture, Mulder had been carefully photographing the pictures on the walls. Langly quickly hooked the digital camera up to his laptop and brought up the image.

"According to what Suzanne told me," Byers said, his soft voice tripping over the name, "that's Dr. Thomas Pirsig. He was a very gifted organic chemist. When she and the others had no idea how to proceed with a synthesis, he could just step in and instantly correct the problem."

"And here, you can see the base," said Langly, focusing on the lower right hand portion of the picture. He zoomed in and cleared up the fuzzy image until they could all discern the rough concrete structures in the far background. "Doesn't look like any military base I've ever seen," he said.

"Yeah," added Frohike, squinting at the screen. "No obvious gun embankments. And if that's an airstrip--" he indicated a portion of the picture with a leather-gloved hand, "it sure isn't big enough even for some of the smaller bombers." He looked up at Byers and nodded.

"This is probably the best evidence we have that our government is lying about what really went on at Base 617," Byers said slowly. "They claimed it was a major stopover point, several hundred miles south of Midway. But there's no way these few buildings could be such a huge supply facility."

"Nope. Just an undercover biogenics factory," Frohike said dryly.

"So if this Pirsig worked both there and at White Sands, it could be he was the guy who first stumbled on the basis for the truth serum Suzanne made," said Langly. "Pretty deep into it, I'd say." He shrugged. "So what're you two investigating? Conspiracy to brainwash the American people?"

"No," Scully said quietly. "Just a missing person case." She looked at Mulder. He was staring thoughtfully at the computer screen, biting his lower lip. Feeling her gaze on him, he met her eyes, and she saw his thoughts in his face. There was something here. Bigger than Michael Townsend. She touched the back of her neck, feeling the rough skin of her scar. Mulder's gaze shifted to watch, and she slowly let her hand fall.

"Aliens and mutants and conspiracies," he said, turning back to the Lone Gunmen, who were staring up at him expectantly from around the computer.

Scully felt a chill at his words. Aliens and mutants and conspiracies, she thought. Oh my.

The basement office was dim when they returned. The seeking sun had disappeared, and the room was bathed in shadowy light reflected from street lamps. Scully led the way, pausing to flick on the overhead lights as she passed through the door. Mulder followed her to the desk, massaging the kinks out of his neck with one hand.

"There's a connection here, Scully," he said. "I'm sure we were meant to take this case. Skinner doesn't just toss these things our way."

"What do you suppose it is?" she asked. She watched him rub his neck and the thought came unbidden of his strong hands easing the tension out of her own shoulders. She closed her eyes and pushed the thought away. She was overtired; she'd been up since six and it was now nearly midnight. They'd spent some time with the Lone Gunmen, searching for more information on White Sands or Base 617, but they ran into the same brick walls that had frustrated Byers for years. There was simply no way to access data so sensitive that it almost didn't exist, save for the pictures of Pirsig and Susanne's here-again gone-again appearance.

"The connection...It's Benjamin McKerness. Somehow. His son-in-law, and his assignment to Base 617. He knew Pirsig. We should have asked him who the man was when we were there." Mulder paused ruefully. "Not that he would have told us, if he was involved."

"It's still possible he's innocent, Mulder," Scully said. "After all, the picture of him and Pirsig was right out in the open. And what about Sheryl Townsend's idea that Michael had joined a cult?"

Mulder shook his head, a slight frown creasing his brows. "As chair of the IPC, she works all day to eradicate cults. She told us how no one listens to her, no one appreciates her efforts. What was it she said--that no one will pay attention until another Heaven's Gate?"

"So she and her father set this up between themselves to further her political career?" Scully's voice was full of doubt. She took the chair that Sheryl had sat in earlier to face Mulder across the desk.

"Well, if even a Subcommittee member's husband can be taken, then no one is safe. The public would have to pay attention then."

"Her father certainly wouldn't mind getting Michael out of the way, from what he said this afternoon. But how would that tie in to Pirsig? What would he have to do with such a plot? And besides, surely the police would realize what happened when they found Michael."

Mulder shook his head. "But she didn't go to the police, she came to us. As for Pirsig, it must have something to do with the truth serum...Something he developed during the war, when he knew McKerness."

"No, I don't believe that Sheryl Townsend had an ulterior motive." Scully frowned in remembrance. "She went to a lot of effort to hide the fact she'd been crying. Wouldn't a sob story go better with some sobs? She wasn't lying to us." She looked up at Mulder. "No. But Benjamin McKerness was. Where's that photo he gave us of Michael?"

Mulder reached into his pocket and brought out the picture. Scully took it from him and examined the back. "Look," she said. "There's a date stamp from when this was developed. It's only a month old."

"You asked for a recent picture," Mulder said, frowning as he followed her logic.

"Yes. But McKerness told you that he hadn't seen Michael for over two months. And look here." She brought the photo around the desk and leaned closer to him, pointing to a spot on the picture. Mulder glanced up at her as she stared intently at the photograph, aware of her light touch against his arm and the scent of the cool night air from her hair. Turning away, he studied the picture. Behind Michael, the background was mostly empty white, but in the top left corner, something black intruded. Something square. Something like...

"McKerness' photograph of himself and Pirsig," he said. "This was taken in his apartment."

"He was lying about when Michael last came to him. Sheryl said he'd often go there when he was depressed, so what was different about this time? I think he did go to McKerness. The question is--"

"Where did he go next?" finished Mulder. "And was it voluntary?"

Scully nodded. "I think tomorrow we should call on Mr. McKerness again."

The sun was peeking through the spaces between the buildings to the east when Scully and Mulder parked outside Benjamin McKerness' apartment once more. As they entered the small vestibule, Mulder brought out a small metal device that he set against the lock of the inner doors. "Present from Frohike," he said, grinning, as they heard a brief hum and the lock opened beneath his hands.

They made their way to the elevator and rose to the fifth floor. They stepped out quietly and walked down the hall, but they were only halfway there when Mulder said, "Dammit."

The door to McKerness' apartment was sitting open, and as they entered, they could see that the immaculate apartment of the day before had been turned upside down. Clothes were strewn across the floor, and papers covered the small kitchen table. On the far wall, every photograph had been ripped from its frame. The portrait from the television set was gone.

Scully turned to Mulder. "I'll check the bedroom." She walked along the short corridor. The bathroom was on the left and the bedroom at the end. Inside were more signs of a hurried search, more clothes and personal papers. She picked one up, but it was only an electricity bill. Mulder entered behind her, leaning against the doorjamb. She turned to him, shaking her head. "I don't think we'll find anything here," she said. He nodded, disappointment evident beneath his expression of detachment.

"Do you think he left, or was taken?" she asked.

Mulder looked up. "What do you mean?" he asked. "He wouldn't have left the door open if he'd chosen to leave."

Scully sighed. None of it made sense. She thought she should have gotten used to it by now, but instead, all she felt was a dull irritation at the evidence for being contradictory. "Kidnappers don't leave doors open either. And I think only McKerness would take that family portrait. The other pictures may have been dangerous because they showed Base 617, but not that one. What value would it have to an abductor?"

Mulder shook his head. "We know he lied to us. I think someone is making sure we don't hear the truth."

"More conspiracies, Mulder?" Scully left the bedroom and returned to the living room. The walls looked naked without their weight of photos, and she trailed a hand along, noticing the cleaner space behind the tilted frames. Mulder looked at her from the hallway, his lips taut.

"Yes," he said, "a conspiracy, but not a new one. This has been going on for fifty years at least, ever since Pirsig and McKerness met at Base 617."

"Pirsig may have developed that truth serum, and who knows what else," Scully replied, "but I still don't see his connection to this place, this disappearance. We may know that McKerness lied, but there's no evidence that he has even been in contact with Pirsig since the war."

"This is the evidence!" Mulder nearly shouted. He brought his fist hard against the empty frame where Pirsig's picture had been. The glass shattered beneath the blow. Mulder swore and brought his hand to his mouth.

Scully rushed to his side and took his hand in hers. Blood seeped through his fingers, and she carefully checked to see if any glass had gotten into the cut. "Come on," she said. "I'll clean you up." She led him by the hand she held, loath to let go of that fleeting touch. His blood was warm and sticky against her skin, but his strong fingers clamped tightly around hers. In the bathroom, she had him hold his hand beneath the cold water tap. She opened the medicine cabinet, looking for band aids, but then the thought of Mulder's cut went strait out of her head.

"Look!" she whispered. The medicine cabinet was empty save for a blue pill bottle. On the label was written "Michael Townsend. Lithium carbonate. Take one capsule (350 mg) daily."

"This shouldn't be here," she said.

"Of course not," said Mulder, awkwardly trying to wrap his hand with his handkerchief. "It should be at the Townsends'--or with Michael."

"No, I mean it shouldn't be in the bathroom." She brushed Mulder's hand away and examined his cut more closely. The wound was deep, and still bleeding freely. "Lithium reacts with water," she explained as she wrapped the kerchief around his hand with deft movements. "The moisture from the shower would make these pills completely ineffective." She frowned up at him. "You need stitches."

Mulder looked down at his hand, still trapped between hers. A smile curved his lips. She followed his gaze and abruptly let go, taking a step back. "We should get you to a hospital. It won't take long."

As they made their way through the living room, Mulder turned back, taking in the drift of clothes and papers once more. "It just doesn't make any sense, Scully," he said. He shook his head and made his way to the wall where the frame hung, empty and broken. Crouching down, he carefully picked up a sliver of glass. "It looks as though McKerness left, tearing up his own apartment and leaving the door open. He takes the photographs, but leaves Michael Townsend's medication." He twisted around, his forehead creased in a puzzled frown as he glanced up at her.

Scully came back and crouched beside him. "I don't know, Mulder. I think we should sent a crime scene unit down here, but first I want to get your hand looked at."

Mulder nodded and raised his hand. Blood was seeping through the thin material of the handkerchief. He stood up and took the frame in his uninjured hand. He frowned and leaned forward. "Scully, look at this!" he said. She stepped beside him, disregarding the crunch of glass beneath her heels. Without the protection of the glass, she could see that someone had written on the frame's backing, tracing over its beige with faint pencil. An address was scribbled there, and just above it, in a different hand, was scrawled a single word: "Tom".

Mulder winced and looked away as the doctor began sewing up his cut. Scully entered the room, a folder tucked under one arm, amused by his plaintive expression. "How's the hand, Mulder?"

"Like a piece of meat." He grinned up at her. "Do you think you could convince them to give me a lollipop?"

Scully smiled. His blue shirt was speckled with blood, and the right sleeve was pushed up, exposing the tanned skin and dusting of dark hairs. "Only if you're a big boy and let the nice doctor finish those sutures."

The doctor rolled his eyes. "There you go, Mr. Mulder," he said. "Three stitches." He applied a bandage and left the room.

Mulder stood and rolled down his sleeve, then reached for the suit jacket draped over his chair. "So, what did you find?"

"The pill bottle is from the pharmacy here, and they do have a record of Michael Townsend." She handed him the folder as they made their way to the parking level. "His prescription is for lithium carbonate, to control the severity of his bipolar disorder. There are sixty pills to a bottle, and it should be refilled every two months."

Mulder nodded, paging through the records. "When was it last filled?"

"Nearly four months ago."

Mulder turned to face her. "The bottle we found was half empty. That would mean he stopped taking them right around the time Sheryl said he disappeared for three days."

"Right. But Mulder, it wouldn't have mattered if he kept on taking them. I had one analyzed, and it was inactive."

"Could you tell how long the bottle had been in the bathroom?"

Scully looked up at him, eyebrows raised. He was still peering intently at the folder's contents. "No." She stopped and he looked back at her. "Mulder, I'm shocked. Have I actually found a case without paranormal overtones that has piqued your interest?"

Mulder walked back and put his hand on her back, leaning down to speak into her ear. "Mmm, Scully, I'm not conceding that there's nothing paranormal here." His voice was a warm breath in her ear. "There's still the matter of Michael's scar. Not to mention..."

"What?"

"This." He pulled out the piece of frame he'd taken from McKerness' apartment and placed it side by side with the signature on Michael's medical record. The address and the signature were scrawled in the same spidery hand. "Michael Townsend may have had another place to be than his father-in-law's."

The afternoon was well advanced when Scully drew the car up in front of an old warehouse. The gray walls frowned down on them, broken windows like empty eyes, staring out over the nearby river, hopeless. The day's early sun was hidden by masses of storm clouds that threatened angry rain, and Scully drew her trench coat tight against the rough wind that insinuated itself past layers of clothing.

Mulder climbed out of the passenger side and stretched. "I can't believe you'd do that to me, Scully," he said, easing the kinks out. "One cut hand and you make me sit with my chin on my knees."

Scully arched an eyebrow. "Doctor's orders, Mulder."

"Sure. Yours." Mulder joined her at the chain link fence that surrounded the lonely building. A no-trespassing sign hung by a single corner, its message obscured by the grime and soot that the wind whipped against it. The gates were chained together, and the links clanked, loud in the wind-blown silence, when Mulder pushed them open. When the chain grew taut, a space wide enough to walk through had been created.

"Come on, Scully, let's see who's home." Mulder led the way over the gravel driveway to the main entrance of the warehouse. As they drew closer, they could see that a single light bulb held the stormy darkness at bay, glowing feeble yellow in the doorway. The first raindrops were splattering against the cracked cement when they made their way under the eaves of the vestibule. There was a padlock on the small door beside the massive entryway, but it hung on the jamb, open. Mulder held it up, raising his eyebrows at Scully. She responded by pulling her gun from beneath her coat, checking it quickly to be sure it was in working order. Mulder did the same. He pushed against the door lightly, and it gave beneath his hand with no screeching of hinges to indicate it had lain here, untended, as long as the building itself.

Silently, they eased their way past the first hallway, checking doors. At the end, a stairwell showed the way to the second level. Bright light streamed down, and faint stirrings could be heard from above.

Mulder climbed up the stairs, Scully close on his heels. At the top, another door stood ajar, fluorescent light seeping around its edges. With a nod, Mulder indicated that he would enter the room first. Scully stood back against the wall, ready to cover him with her weapon. Quickly, he shoved the door wide open and burst into the room, eyes darting, turning to peer into shadowy corners. Scully followed him, watching for any movement.

There was none. The room was empty. The light splashed from a desk lamp in the corner, falling over a few scattered papers and a leather office chair. The walls were bare, but freshly painted, and the floor tiles showed no signs of the wear that festered in the rest of the building. Farther back, a second door led into another well-furnished room. Scully could see tables covered in computer equipment through the opening.

"Someone was here," she said, pointing. One of the computers had just switched on a screen saver.

Mulder nodded, moving silently over the tiles, pausing briefly to open the desk drawers. "Nothing," he muttered, and walked towards the threshold. The feeling of a presence was strong: whoever it was, they were still here. She glanced at Mulder, bent over a computer terminal, to tell him...

There was a brief flash of cold pain at the nape of her neck. "Mulder--" she gasped, her gun clattering to the floor from suddenly nerveless fingers. A rough body brushed past her. A gray haze settled over her vision, washing the room with nausea. Dizziness flowed through her, hot and thick in her limbs. The floor rose up to meet her, cold tile against heated flesh, and with a final thought for Mulder, the darkness took her.

Dreams and visions melded into cold reality, a color-swimming darkness that resolved itself into a taut face above her. Mulder.

"Dana--"

Dana? Scully struggled with words, tongue clumsy. "What...?"

"You're awake." Relief and something stronger than relief rippled through his voice. Hazel eyes were darkened by concern, soft in the harsh light of the computers. Emotions like fluid ghosts shivered beneath the surface of his expression, hiding behind worry. His hands were tender as he raised her head from the cold tile of the floor, strong beneath her shoulders as he lifted her towards him. Scully buried her face in his chest, listening to the fear-quick thudding of his heart against her ear. Slowly, his arms crept around her, pulling her closer. His breath ruffled her hair as he rested his chin on her head.

"I thought--I thought you were dead," he said, pushing words out slowly, fighting for calm. "There was no pulse...no..." He stopped, and Scully burrowed closer, proof of life, but more than that. To feel his body pressed against her, his scent, cologne and perspiration, warm in her nostrils. The cold floor, the stillness of the empty room, faded from her thoughts, the nightmare conquered by the awakening.

But there was something...Scully let the tension drain from her muscles, feeling Mulder relax as well. A thought came, springing to life within her mind. The attack. The man's body rushing past her, grappling with Mulder. But that was someone else's life, long ago...wasn't it?

"What happened?" she asked at last. His arms tensed again, but this time to ease her away, holding her upper arms. Scully felt the space between them like an chasm, the gentle hands on her shoulders a tenuous connection to reality.

"I don't know." Mulder's eyes searched hers, finding within her a greater source of truth than the world around him had ever been. "You called out, but before I could turn around, someone injected me...I think." He raised a hand to his neck.

"Let me see." Scully got to her knees behind him, and leaned forward to inspect him. Slowly, she tracing her fingers along the nape of his neck, felt the jump of his pulse in the hollow under his chin. Saw, with a surprise not entirely surprising, the small hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention beneath the warm caress of her breath.

"I don't see anything," she said, but continued her search, her fingertips trailing through the dark waves of his hair, textures shivering through her senses. "Nothing," she repeated, drawing away reluctantly, her hands still warm from the heat of his flesh.

"There was a pain--like a needle," he said. "We were drugged."

Scully nodded, her face pale in the ghostly glow of computer terminals. "He's long gone by now." She leaned on Mulder and stood, feeling his strength osmose through the fabric of his coat, a shield against the rain-swept chill of the room. She glanced at her watch. Nearly two hours had passed since they had arrived at the warehouse.

Mulder guided her to the banks of computers and urged her down into the padded seat. "I wonder what these are for. Why they're here. They look pretty complex." He looked down at her as she manipulated the files.

"It's a medical databank," she said, pointing out the subsystems. "This was made to monitor vital signs."

Mulder nodded, but surreptitiously watched her face, the blue glass of her eyes intent on the screen, the soft line of her jaw disappearing into the fine copper strands of her hair. The light touch of her fingers still burned a trail across his skin, feeding a strange fire within. When he had awoken and seen her body, a broken porcelain doll, the flames had flickered, threatening extinction. Now, they raged more fiercely in memory of that fleeting pressure, fighting against the cage he imposed on them. Something had passed between them then, a contact more intimate than the gestures implied. Her lithe body in his arms, trembling with chill and a remembered fear. She was dead. Had been dead. Hadn't she?

His attention was drawn back to the screen as she said, "There's more to this than medical programs, but it's mostly encrypted."

"We can get Chuck Burkes to take a look," he said. "But after what's happened here, I'd like to talk to Skinner."

Scully turned to him. The muscles of his jaw were taut, and his profile showed his face set in anger. "The set-up," she said, certain. He could chase monsters, both human and more-than-human all day and not weary of the danger, but she knew her safety was uppermost in his mind. Once, she would have resented it, as though he doubted she could take care of herself. No longer. He knew her strengths, as she knew his. Warmth suffused through her veins at the knowledge, sweet with some unnamed emotion, and she hid her smile with difficulty. She took her hand from the mouse and covered his. He looked at her, his face easing into a smile, his eyes almost sad. For a moment and longer than a moment, his gaze held hers. Lightning outside flickered over his features, and with a blink the instant slipped away. Scully shook herself and drew her hand back.

Mulder reached out and switched off the computer. "We've never had a case this high-profile tossed our way," he continued, and turned to the door. Scully matched his pace, allowing her shoulder to brush his arm, as though by accident, as they walked. "From the beginning, we've been thrown just enough information to keep moving forward. I'm sure Chuck could extract another scrap from these computers, but frankly, I'd like to get to the bottom of this rather than just paddle around the surface."

When they reached the gates, they found the chain hanging limp from the fence, unlocked. Shoe prints painted in fresh mud intersected tire tracks and did not continue past them. Their car, rain-darkened and mud-splattered, was untouched. The grey, troubled sky was a dreamscape of lightning strikes and green-gold after-images.

Mulder pleaded with a look and Scully tossed him the car keys, willing to give him leg room despite her worry over his cut. Only three stitches, she reminded herself, and sat back in the passenger seat. The soft hiss of rainwater under their tires and streetlight reflections traveling over their faces accompanied them back to the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

Scully found herself stealing glances of Mulder's profile, watching his eyes flick over the road, meet hers, and flick back. A grin's ghost haunted his face, curving his full lips. Idle notions danced around her mind, stranger-thoughts that remembered the softness of those lips against hers one midnight so long ago it should be forgotten, but instead ached with its immediacy. Fingertips tingled with memory, soft hair and skin raspy as a kitten's tongue where stubble darkened it.

Came a flash, lightning splitting open the deepening night, and Scully sat up straight. The man--knocking her to the floor--his hands on Mulder's neck--a flash, like lightning...They had been drugged. Why was there no mark on Mulder's neck? She had seen...or had she? The memory was vague, washed in ether, grey.

Mulder looked over at her, concern written on his face. "All right?"

"I'm fine." The ritual words sounded hollow even to her ears.

He took a hand from the steering wheel and brushed back the fall of Irish fire over her forehead. "We'll go to the hospital...get bloodwork done. We'll find out what happened."

Scully nodded, not even wondering that he knew what was bothering her. To be drugged, to face that loss of control. Two hours missing from their lives, just as those three months had been stolen from her, along with so much more. She felt as though something else were missing: some connection. She shifted in her seat, feeling somehow other than herself, as though her feelings weren't her own: like the alien giddyness when she looked at Mulder. It was as though they'd woken up in a different world, an alternate reality, parallel to their own and yet suffused with charged emotion. She worried over it, seeing no concrete change and yet feeling it. She let it go as they reached the FBI headquarters. Skinner would answer their questions; and doubtless, the disquieting sense of strangeness she felt was due to whatever drug they had been hit with. It, too, would fade.

A look of fear came into the secretary's eyes when they entered Skinner's outer office. "He's on the phone overseas," she said, a sense of futility undercutting her tone. She stood to give a token struggle at the Assistant Director's door, a fight she had lost many times before. And lost again; Mulder simply brushed past her. Scully smiled a brief apology but pushed past just as unrepentantly.

Agents," Skinner said, replacing the receiver in its cradle. "What can I do for you today?" The smooth bass of his voice was colored by more than a hint of annoyance, but they were so accustomed to that as to almost not hear it at all.

"The Townsend case," Mulder said, his eyes never leaving Skinner's face. "Why did you give it to us?"

"I thought it was particularly suited to your talents. But--" Skinner leaned back in his chair.

"Don't feed us that bullshit. This is just a missing persons case."

Skinner cleared his throat. "If you'd hear me out, Agent Mulder, I could tell you that your talents are no longer needed on this case, as you will no doubt appreciate."

Scully frowned and settled into the seat in front of the desk. "What do you mean? Michael Townsend is still missing, and now it would appear that his father-in-law is complicit in the crime."

Skinner shook his head, confusion creasing his brow. "No, Agent Scully, Townsend is not missing. He returned to his home this afternoon. His wife called and told me. Don't you two carry your cell phones anymore?"

Scully sat back stunned, giving an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Mulder watched as she struggled with the information. "Something happened today when we were following a lead," he said. "We suspect that Benjamin McKerness--Townsend's father-in-law--lied about when Townsend came to him, and in fact was purposefully contaminating his medication so that he couldn't deal with the complications of his bipolar disorder."

"I don't know about that, Agents," said Skinner. "All I know is that the man is safely back with his family. This case is closed." He stood and indicated the door with an impatient hand.

Mulder started to leave, looking back over his shoulder with a puzzled frown. Skinner returned the look imperturbably, his dark eyes open and serious behind the lenses of his glasses.

"Come on, Mulder," Scully said, fatigue seeping into her voice. Somehow the logical, rational explanation wasn't enough--though it should have been--and that, more than anything, made her feel the day's events weighing her down. It wasn't right, it wasn't usual; it came with no sense of closure. She felt that Skinner was as eager to get them off the case as he had been to assign it to them. Which was unlike him...but the thought was hard to grasp, hard to quantify, and it drifted out of her reach.

Outside Skinner's office, Mulder turned to her. "Hey, Scully, I guess this means we've upped out solved-cases ratio nicely," he said, trying to be flippant. It fell flat. They hadn't solved the case; it had just faded away from them, like a ghost, or a dream. Unimportant as soon as you woke up into the real world. Mulder shook his head, wondering if this was the real world, after all. He wanted to reach out and catch Scully's hand in his, but aborted the gesture at the last second, placing his hand on her back as they walked down the hall.

Coward, he said to himself. Her expression was cool, distant, and he remembered again that half-smile she'd worn in the car. Open and secretive at the same time, as though she were laughing at her own thoughts but unable to shake them away. What he wouldn't give to have that smile directed at him...

"Scully, listen, do you want to grab a pizza?" The words came out of nowhere, without thought. The taste of them was strange in his mouth. The invitation hung in the air, empty and alone, and Mulder felt his courage desert him once more. "There's still the matter of McKerness' whereabouts." Silently, he cursed himself for adding that last bit. It felt out of place, somehow. As though dragging work into his invitation was the remnant of some other time, a different point in their relationship.

"You don't agree with Skinner?" She looked up at him, the weariness replaced by interest once more. "You still believe there's an X-file here?"

He shrugged, feeling his lips tighten when she didn't give an answer about his offer of dinner. Why? It was casual, wasn't it? "I want to believe," he joked.

"All right."

"What?"

"I said, all right. I'll be at your place in half an hour." Scully glanced at him, feeling her cheeks warm under the force of his gaze. She looked away and picked at her coat with nervous fingers. She could still feel his eyes on her, intense. "Half an hour," she said quietly, and entered the elevator.

The night was soft and warm on her skin as Scully made her way from her car to Mulder's apartment. She inhaled, extending her arms to the air, feeling the shiver of a breeze like a sensuous caress. The promised half-hour had slipped by long since, and still she hesitated, outside, alone, trembling. The officiousness of the folder she carried contrasted sharply with her casual pair of worn hip-hugger jeans and the pewter blouse that flowed over her shoulders in a waterfall of silk. She felt...different, was the word that came to mind. As the elevator climbed, a strange flutter in her belly made her realize she was nervous. She let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. She tried to think of a theory that would explain McKerness' absence, and Michael's abrupt return, but instead, she caught herself thinking of what awaited her at the end of the hall.

The door to number 42 opened at her knock, and she found her eyes level with soft gray cotton. She drew in a breath and glanced down, only to encounter tight, faded jeans. Looking up, she met Mulder's gaze, and that was more disconcerting than any appraisal of his long, lean body. Golden fire glittered deep in the green depths of his eyes.

"You're late."

The whispered words fell like pebbles into a still pool, sensuality rippling through his voice. Scully nodded an implicit apology, at a loss for words. Mulder drew her in and shut the door behind her, its soft click locking out the rest of the world. The aroma of the pizza wafted from the box on the coffee table, mingling with sandalwood from scented candles atop the television set. Mulder deftly opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. Ruby light glinted over his hands as he passed her one, raising his brows in inquiry. She accepted.

He inclined his head and toasted her, solemnity and playfulness in equal measure. He drank, then watched her over the rim as she brought the glass to her lips. The wine was dusky and full on her tongue, its sharp fragrance blending into warmth in her belly.

Mulder sat down on the couch and opened the pizza box. "Olives, green peppers, mushrooms," he said, then reached up and took the folder from her. "Dinner first, Scully. You've got to keep your strength up." He tossed it to his desk, sending up a whirlwind of loose-leaf papers.

Scully sat next to him, close enough to smell the fresh soap and shaving cream emanating from his skin. He eyed her sidelong, munching meditatively on a slice of pizza as he studied her. Her cheeks were bright with patches of hectic colour. The material of her blouse glimmered in the candlelight, outlining curves that her usual business suits left mostly to the imagination. But now, Mulder knew his imagination, overworked though it was, was no match for the reality. He smiled to himself. The anxiety he'd felt over the strangeness of his invitation, and of her acceptance, faded into a glow of contentment. Just to sit, ignoring work, ignoring mysteries, was a novel experience. Different. Unreal. Yet oddly pleasing.

Light rock flowed over them, Savage Garden declaring they loved truly, madly, deeply. Mulder never listened to this kind of music, the sappy-sweet lovers' ballads. And yet, this too fit with what was happening between them, the strange pleasure of behaving utterly out of character. They ate, not speaking, enjoying the communion that flowed between them, saying more with silence than most could say with an hour's speech. They sat looking ahead, playing the old game of who could watch the other unnoticed, small smiles and quick glances from the corners of their eyes, catching and being caught in turn. The pizza disappeared and the wine bottle was emptied, and still they sat. Scully spared a thought for the file on the desk, but she had no desire to interrupt this...this moment. This wild excitement that came from ignoring common sense, and following where desire led. She turned to Mulder, no pretense this time. He wouldn't scare easily, would he? One kiss, excused by holiday madness; a few hugs; comforting, not passionate. Until now.

He shifted slightly under her scrutiny, raising dark eyes to hers. His irises were eaten by the dark discs of his pupils, their colour changing with each passing thought. His perfectly carved lips curved in an infinitely gentle smile, almost as if he didn't wish to frighten her. She waited, not knowing, yet knowing what he would do, refusing to think of the implications. His expression was oddly detached, as though examining her for the first time, as though seeing her in the light of a new world.

He lifted a tentative hand, brushed her hair from her face. "Scully?" She gave a shake of her head, rejecting the question that filled both their minds.

(a sudden shift and)

(on the couch)

(the radio spits manic laughter into the room)

(they are oblivious)

His eyes were soft and he studied with wonder each part of her face, her hair, her shoulder, his fingers running where his eyes caressed. She reached her hand forward and touched his cheek, feeling the raspy skin, the straightness of his nose, the softness of his dark hair, ripples of astonished pleasure singing within her. She ran her palm down the solid muscles of his shoulder and arm, leaning closer. He took her face in his hands, and the distance between them vanished. He leaned his forehead against hers, eyes closed. She could feel the stillness of him, a stillness of mind and breath, as his body began to tremble slightly.

(and then--)

(he is kissing her)

Time dissolved in that instant, leaving them hanging on the brink, warm breath mingling, senses tuned to the highest pitch. Slowly, achingly slowly, he tipped his head back, bringing his lips to hers.

(is it a dream, this kiss?)

Fire poured through her at the whisper-soft touch, and she returned the kiss with equal gentleness. Her hands kneaded the muscles of his chest, his shoulders, climbing until she encircled his neck with her arms. He moved his lips, seeking her tongue with his. She kissed him back, wondering at herself. But with the sweetness of his touch, she pushed all thought from her mind.

(want, lust, hot, liquid)

(her face)

Heat flushed through Mulder as he let his hands flow over the silky softness of Scully's blouse, dipping in at her waist, feeling shivers shake her. The world disappeared, leaving only the fusion of their mouths, her hands slipping under his t-shirt, the desire coiling deep and low in his belly.

(touch)

(breath)

(eyes as slow as sleep, dark, desirous)

Their breathing quickened, sighs coming too fast to count, warm skin to warm skin. Scully pulled gray cotton over Mulder's head and dropped it, tracing his muscles with an anatomist's knowledge and a woman's love, watching the ripple and play of them beneath the smooth skin. He caressed the side of her body, feeling the swell of her breast, the dip of her waist, the smooth curve of her hip, the taut muscle of her thigh. She quivered under his touch, and a moan escaped her lips.

(and then--)

(Heat. Fingers, long, lean, tapered. Here, now, brushing clothes aside. A waterfall parting.)

Suddenly, his hands slipped under her, lifted her to his chest, and carried her to the bedroom. The waterbed gurgled beneath their combined weight.

(the bed like a rolling wave)

(she floats there her mind empties thoughts drain)

(a blind exploration, entirely new, uncertain)

(alien)

Making love seemed at once as natural as breathing and as new as the first taste of strawberries in spring. If she had imagined this moment, if she loved this man, would this moment be so strange, and yet so familiar? Every part of her body responded to his touch, climbing higher, and she arched in his arms. He groaned at the contact.

(there is only sensation)

(need)

(ache)

(pleasure)

She whispered his name, yearning, filling her eyes with the sight of him. Their clothes fell away, disregarded. He felt himself drawn in, and their cries mingled in strange harmony, an otherworldly music, then were silenced as he kissed her, deeply, melding together like liquid fire.

(circling, spiralling, here, him, now, hard, endless)

(and then--)

(oh--)

(god--)

For a long moment, only their breathing could be heard. They lay side by side, hot and panting and intertwined, still with the release that poured from their souls and left them floating and free.

(how long have they waited?)

(how have they made this dream their own?)

(have they forgotten--?)

(--what about--)

(the memory is lost)

(they sleep)

Mulder drifted. Slumber toyed with him, curling fatigue through his limbs, stranding him in the limbo between reality and imagination. There was no murmur of early morning talk shows on the television to lull him back to sleep, no familiar jab from a rebellious couch spring to push him into wakefulness. The slosh and gurgle under his ear and the quicksand-sucking viscosity that prevented movement told him where he was. He nearly groaned aloud, thinking he was late, he was missing a meeting, he needed to go to the bank, he's got a bomb, he's got a bomb...Mulder opened his eyes and the deja vu receded. And people wondered why he preferred to sleep on the sofa...and hadn't he gotten rid of the waterbed almost a year ago? Like its sudden appearance in his apartment, its continued presence was alien to him.

He looked up. There was another monstrosity--the mirror. He didn't know where it had come from, and he didn't want to know. He turned his head slightly and his breath was strangled in his throat. A wave of red hair spilled over the pillow, fire burning on snow. He allowed his gaze to follow the contours of shoulder, ribs, back, until the sheets interrupted his perusal. Memories came trickling back like grains of sand from a freshly turned hourglass. It was like waking into a new world, watching the impossible coalesce around him.

Scenes flashed through his mind, as physically arousing as they were mentally bewildering. He rolled to his feet, clutching the sheet around his waist. One bottle of wine, impulse-buy candles, the radio tuned to a light rock station he'd never tolerated before, and this was the result? A puzzled smile painted his face in the early light. How strange, to think that this could happen after more than seven years spent sharing a closeness that needed no gestures to confirm it. Yet it had seemed almost ordained, fated to happen last night. He didn't know what to do next...he'd thought about the moment for years, there was no denying it; but somehow those fantasies had never extended to polite breakfast conversation. Did he even have a carton of milk less than two weeks old?

He slipped into his boxers and tucked the sheets close around Scully. Even now, he could not resist combing her hair from her face. How had they come to this? Sheryl Townsend's account of Michael's tendency to vanish without warning, Benjamin McKerness' animosity towards his son-in-law. The Lone Gunmen and their tales of biogenics, truth serums, Suzanne Modeski's drug that destroyed inhibitions...he shook his head. No, that couldn't have anything to do with the matter in hand. There had been no evidence that drugs were the cause of Michael's disappearance. And, with another look of Scully, asleep in his bed, the missing link, the connection he couldn't quite place his finger on, faded into inconsequentiality.

Silence. It had once been a fluid entity, flowing over dangerous shoals of memory and emotion, melting away the abrupt boundaries that separated one shore from another, slipping past the tension and easing the inevitable friction points. Now, it sat uneasily between them, weighing them down. In the tiny confines of the car, it was as solid as a third person, breathing heavily down their necks, impossible to ignore. Every movement had become an object of scrutiny, every breath an unspoken confession.

Mulder drove, sucking morosely on a sunflower seed, and wondered how it had all gone to hell so quickly, after such a promising beginning. He reached back in memory, groping for the feelings that had overwhelmed them the night before, and found nothing--or worse than nothing, because he could not slip back into the old groove. The elasticity of their relationship had finally been pulled to the snapping point, leaving them dangling, broken ends and broken dreams.

Scully shifted beside him and again he wanted to turn to her. Absurdly, the words I take it back trembled on his tongue. But he couldn't say that; couldn't act on it if he did say it. The night seemed impossibly distant, like someone else's memory, or a love story he'd only read about...except this story didn't seem likely to end in happiness. There was only this uncanny absence that bordered on embarrassment but wasn't that either. It was confusion, painting the world in colors of uncertainty he hadn't seen in ages, not since the days of Phoebe Green. How to act, what to say, how to make it what it used to be...or, better yet, what it should have been, because this moment should have been beautiful but instead it was empty.

Whoever said silence is golden knew shit, he thought to himself, and reached for the radio dial. Anything to alleviate the wordless discomfort he'd never known in Scully's presence before. News, country, classical...he settled briefly on an oldies station, but Cher's voice lamenting the problems when lovers become strangers hit too close to home and he plunged them into silence once more.

And on top of it all, there was the case. A niggling itch started again in the back of his mind. Something was wrong...he couldn't think. He hadn't been thinking since before the warehouse, yesterday. They were supposed to go somewhere--the hospital? To run some tests? Neither of them had been injured. Why was he thinking that? He shook his head. Like writer's block, his inexhaustible font of absurd theories had dried up. They were on their way to the Townsends' home, but only as someplace to go, to be, anywhere but alone in a basement office with that gloating silence hanging over them. Michael was back, and, scar or no scar, it was tough to prove alien abduction without a victim. Mulder felt that if only he could come up with some clue to pounce on and twist into some ridiculous paranormal theory for Scully to shoot down, everything would go back to normal. Not this strange silence shared by self-conscious strangers. They could forget that last night had even happened and he would sell that goddamned waterbed the instant they got back...though hadn't he already sold it? after paying his landlord a ridiculous sum for water damage?

At last, he pulled the car to the curb in front of a modest brownstone. He pulled the keys from the ignition but did not immediately climb out of the car. Last chance, he thought. Last chance to say...what? "We're not who we are"?

"Here we are." Inane.

Scully nodded and climbed out. Mulder followed her up the walk and watched as she rang the bell. Silence again. The door was opened by a tall, slender woman. Her hair, as dark and long as a winter's night, coiled and curled over her simple white dress like a shadow over snow. Above high, delicate cheekbones, black eyes regarded them, revealing nothing.

"Sheryl Townsend?" Mulder asked, uncertain. She was like, yet unlike, the Subcommittee chair who had brought them this case. Taller, darker, more exotic. Flesh stretched tauter over her bones.

The woman hesitated, then said, "Yes," as though herself uncertain of her identity. Her voice left the word singing in the air. She paused, watching them; waiting for their next move. At length, she stepped back from the doorway, ducking her head as they entered. When she looked up, whether it was by some trick of the light or of expression, it was Sheryl Townsend who faced them once more, dark-haired and tall, but not inhumanly so. Mulder looked to Scully, to ask whether she had seen it, but he couldn't catch her eye.

"We've come to see your husband, Mrs. Townsend," Scully said.

The woman's face was expressionless and her eyes told them nothing. She nodded, said, "He's writing." Again, her voice resounded through the foyer, darkly musical. She led them down a hall to a small study. The polished oak of the wall panels gave way to a modern office. Yellow, artificial light was replaced by the clear brightness of a new spring day shining through the bay windows. Michael sat hunched over a computer, thin and pale, his fingers flying over the keys. His ungainly frame exuded an odd grace, a master pianist drawing words instead of music into being.

"Mr. Townsend." Michael did not look up, but the clacking keys escalated to a frantic pace. "Mr. Townsend, we need to ask you some questions regarding your whereabouts these last two weeks."

The fingers stilled for an instant, then resumed. "Have you ever written, Agent Mulder?" The words came, low and intense. Mulder shook his head and came to stand beside the desk, watching the words flow onto the screen. "Then you don't know what it is. The need. I have to get this right--"

"Michael has a deadline." Sheryl stood in the doorway, a smile playing about her lips, strange beneath her empty eyes.

"We must ask him about his disappearance. You asked us to search for him, and we'd like to close this case."

Scully turned to Sheryl. "If you could give us a moment, Mrs. Townsend?" The woman tilted her head, questioningly, the smile disappearing. She slipped from the room, closing the heavy door softly behind her.

"A lot of writers think they are the gods of the worlds they create." Michael's voice was hoarse. "It's not true. A writer doesn't control his characters--they control him. I once thought I could make them do anything, my words in their mouths. But you can't--" He stopped, his fingers limp, staring at the screen.

Scully stepped forward. "Mr. Townsend, could you tell us where you were for the last two weeks?"

"No." He ran a hand over his hair, nervous. "I can't. I haven't really been gone; I've just been in my own world. Listen, you must understand. My characters have stopped fighting me." He looked up at them, pleading.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Townsend, but I fail to see the connection."

"It's them, they control the plot. If you try to write something that's completely against a character's nature, he'll rebel. The writing's no good, then, don't you see? It's all about the characters. But mine have stopped fighting, and the writing's still good. I don't know what happened. I don't, I don't know." He rubbed the back of his neck with a bony hand.

Frowning, Scully leaned forward. The low collar of Michael's shirt showed his neck, sticky with sweat. Under a few blond hairs, the pink flesh was smooth, unbroken.

There was no scar.

"Mulder..." Mulder turned to her, eyebrows raised at hearing his name on her lips. "Look at this. There is nothing here. And scars don't just disappear."

Michael clamped a hand down on his neck and twisted his chair around, eyes wide. His breathing was harsh in the quiet room. "You know about that? About the scar?" His gaze flickered from face to face, and his tongue darted out to moisten dry lips. "Who are you?"

Mulder frowned. "What do you mean, who are we? You called me by name not two minutes ago."

Michael nodded, slowly, his eyes never leaving their faces. "You're real. You're stuck here, the same as me. He put you in here. In my world." The door grated open and he jerked back, watching, a rabbit frozen by headlights. "It's her."

"Your wife?"

"Yes--no." Michael turned back to the computer and resumed typing.

The woman glided into the room, navigating the small space with a sinuous elegance. She stood behind Michael, massaging his bony shoulders, smoothing the knotted muscles. The same strange smile was back, drifting over her features. Without looking back, she said, "You'll have to excuse Michael. The doctor is still working on adjusting his medication." The musical voice was punctuated by the rapid clicking on the keyboard, violin and timpani.

"Adjusting it?" Scully asked. "Does he know that the last bottle of pills was rendered ineffective by water damage? Surely all he needs is a refill on his current prescription."

The head tilt, the curious look. "I'm afraid I don't know about that."

Mulder shifted uneasily. "Your father, Mrs. Townsend, had the pills in his bathroom." There was a pause, a pregnant silence, and he added, "Do you know where your father is now?"

Raven brows lifted. "No, I'm afraid I don't. But then, I hardly keep track of his movements."

"You're aware that his apartment was ransacked?"

"It must have been a robbery attempt." The music became strident. "But perhaps it would be best if you returned at a later date. When Michael is feeling better."

Michael did not look up as the woman led them from the room. The door closed and he was lost to view. They were urged down the corridor, faster now, eager to escape the yellow dimness of the house for the daylight outside. At the stoop, Scully stopped, warding off the woman's insistence. "Mrs. Townsend, may I ask where your daughters are?"

Mulder turned back and saw the woman tense. A look of fear surfaced in the fathomless oceans of her eyes. Her gaze flickered in Michael's direction, as though he could still hear them through the walls. Again, that strange hesitation. "They're in school." She entered the house and shut the door firmly in their faces.

Mulder bit his lip. "Scully, something is wrong."

She glanced at him, then looked back at the house. "What do you think is going on?"

"That's just it. I don't know, and I can't think why. The way she threw us out. We should have done something..."

"Like a block. Like a connection you can't quite remember."

He stared at her. "Exactly."

A light wind sprang up, toying with her hair, hiding her face from him. "I've felt the same thing." She walked down the front steps, and he followed, reluctantly. "Ever since the warehouse," she continued, her voice analytical and impersonal, "I've felt like my actions weren't my own. Watching myself from the outside."

Mulder felt his heart contract, remembering in vivid details exactly what those actions included. "Last night..." he began.

"Agents!" They looked up. Michael stepped from the house, a light jacket thrown over his arm. He came down to the car, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. "I can tell you something more, if you'd like. I just couldn't say it in front of her..."

"Your wife? Why not?"

Michael shook his head. "She's not. Isn't Sheryl, not really. She's only a character here. My characters have stopped fighting me..."

"So you were saying. How does that make this woman...not your wife?"

"Take me with you. I can explain." He looked back again, and made a gesture towards the car. Mulder shrugged, caught Scully's eye, and felt better for it. The silent question passed between them, and they opened car doors simultaneously. He indicated Michael should take the back seat, and got in. He started the engine. The last thing he saw before driving away was Sheryl Townsend's face peering through a dormer window. Her hair surrounded her head like storm clouds, and midnight eyes flashed like lightning.

"There's an old warehouse, not far from here..."

"I think we know the place you mean." Mulder recited the address.

Michael slumped down in the back seat and looked out the window. "So you are real. You must be, if you've been there. But you probably don't even know it."

Scully was nonplussed by this evaluation of their reality. "Mr. Townsend," she said, "what do you mean that your wife isn't herself?"

"That's what I mean about my characters." He paused. "You see, a writer is not a god, he is a historian. He can record what happens, but he can't dictate. When he starts dictating, that's when the characters change. Start doing things they wouldn't ordinarily do." He met her glance in the rearview mirror. "Have you ever felt that way?"

Mulder watched Scully's reaction. Anyone who didn't know her as well as he did might have missed the slight flush that rose up her pale cheeks. She dropped her eyes. "I think everybody has felt that way at one time or another. As though events are outside their control."

Michael shrugged, a look of skeptical disappointment on his face. "Perhaps. But this is more than that. Sheryl has changed. Her face. Her personality. Normally she'd be at work today, but do you know it never even occurred to me to wonder why she wasn't? I think some Author God has taken it upon himself to change her." He sighed. "And I'm afraid that Author God was me."

"How?" Mulder's voice was neutral, prepared to accept what could not be proven, by faith alone. He could feel the mental block as a physical thing; it was like pushing against taut rubber and leaving no mark. The harder he tried to remember, the more his mind rejected him. But he believed Michael had the pin to tear open this bubble of unreality that encompassed them all.

Michael's lean frame was limp in the back seat, a stringless puppet. His gray eyes were fixed on the distance rushing past the windows. He asked Scully, "Have you ever heard of a drug called pseudothymin?"

"No."

"Nor had I, until about three months ago. I was just starting research on my new novel, which was set during the second world war. I had gone to Ben to ask him some questions about the naval base where he'd been stationed--"

"That's it!" Mulder slammed on the brakes and turned around. Awareness rushed over him like the incoming tide. "That's what we forgot. Thomas Pirsig, from McKerness' picture. The man who worked with Susanne Modeski at White Sands." Implications tugged at him like a strong undertow, threatening to drown him with forgotten memories. "Scully, we were drugged in the warehouse that his picture led us to, but we never once suspected him! In fact, I never even thought of him again until now."

Scully nodded, her blue eyes set like sapphires in her pale face. "I remember..." Pain like dry ice on her skin. The man's body rushing past her, wispy gray hair above a white lab jacket. Pale hands, spider-thin, against the darker flesh of Mulder's neck. The flash of lightning reflected off the lenses of his glasses as he watched her slip into unconsciousness. The long face, the silvered eyes, the distant smile. "It was him." She looked into Mulder's eyes, the morning's discomfort forgotten. Green-flecked hazel soft with regret met glacier blue, feeling guilty once again for endangering her.

"You were drugged?" Michael's hoarse voice interrupted them, and Mulder turned to him.

"Yes, we were. You had written his address on the back of a picture, and we followed it to the warehouse. We found it abandoned, except for the second floor, where the computer equipment was set up. But this Pirsig was still there, and he knocked us out. When we came to, we learned you had already come home, so we didn't go back." He started the car again, tracing a path through the tangled city streets.

"And we never went to the hospital to get checked out, even though we knew we'd been drugged," Scully said. "Whatever it is could be still in our systems."

Michael gave an incredulous snort. "And you believe you're still pursuing this case?--But how did you learn of Ben's involvement at White Sands? He refused to tell me anything about that after he let the name slip."

"So your father-in-law did keep in touch with Dr. Pirsig after the war?"

"Yes. It was Ben who introduced me to Dr. Pirsig, about three months ago. He said he would help me with research for my novel if I would consent to be the test subject for this drug he'd synthesized. He called it pseudothymin."

"Without research approval for human experimentation? That's completely unethical," Scully said, her voice sharp. "That's a violation of the Geneva conventions. And you agreed? You had no idea what the consequences would be."

Michael shrugged. "I trusted Ben. Dr. Pirsig said he'd had success with rhesus macaques, but he needed a human subject who could describe the experience."

"What experience?" asked Mulder.

"Pseudothymin is based on a barbiturate. It's a hallucinogen," Michael said. "At Naval Base 617, Dr. Pirsig was primarily interested in developing a better truth serum with which to interrogate prisoners. But the discovery of the properties of pseudothymin was actually accidental."

"The Lone Gunmen were right, then," said Mulder. "It was a biogenics research facility. I remember now."

Michael nodded. He leaned forward, illustrating his story with animated hands. Eyes were bloodshot no longer; gray replaced by blue, storm clouds giving way to fall skies. "Dr. Pirsig described it to me as an externally controlled hallucination. Like other barbiturates, it could put a person in a state of extreme suggestibility. But more importantly, it could be used in conjunction with tiny shocks administered with electrodes in the brain, to simulate complete physical experiences."

"No wonder he couldn't get permission for human experimentation," Scully said. "That would involve some surgery, at least. The risks--I can't even begin to imagine the danger he placed you in, Mr. Townsend."

"Me? At least I consented. Not everyone is so lucky, I see that now." He studied her, eyes narrowed against sharp sunlight. She looked back expectantly, and he continued, "It was worth it, for my book. The chance of a life time, to describe something no one had ever experienced before."

"And you didn't tell your wife." Mulder shot him a look in the rearview mirror. "Afraid she'd take the risks a bit more seriously than you did?"

With a shrug, Michael gave a remorseful assent. "I had the surgery. Dr. Pirsig gave me a small dose of pseudothymin, injected me, just here." He rubbed the spot on his neck with a rueful hand. "While I was under, he inserted the electrodes. It was amazing..." His voice trailed off into memory. "Colors, scents, sensations...all jumbled together, no sense to it, no reason. Like a lucid dream, but even clearer..."

Michael's breathing quickened, and Scully watched as the dark pools of his pupils drowned the blue irises. He ran a hasty hand through his hair, leaving sweat-darkened spikes behind. She raised an eyebrow at Mulder, and he nodded, seeing the change. Quietly, she said, "The impulsiveness, the foolhardiness--it was mania, not depression, that caused him to leave that time."

"But depression that drove him back," Mulder said. "He stopped taking his pills right around then."

"Ah...the lithium." Michael's voice was thick as he focused on them once more. "Such an effort just to exist with that stuff. Can't write. And Dr. Pirsig said it was interacting with the pseudothymin. So I left the pills at Ben's place." He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "But you're right. I wanted to go back. Just to feel it again. He increased the dose, and he said the information he'd gathered the last time would make it easier. It was. I could see people, touch things, and do as I wanted. And it's real--just look around you. A different world, yet the same. I couldn't tell the difference...after a while, I didn't want to."

"And then you wanted to go back for longer, and more frequently, isn't that right, Mr. Townsend?" Mulder asked. "Was it worth it? You started ignoring your daughters. You couldn't concentrate on your novel. Pirsig trapped you. Offered to help you with research in exchange? I bet he never once answered your questions about Base 617. He'd found the perfect way to keep you quiet about a government conspiracy."

"So this pseudothymin is addictive," said Scully. "Almost immediate withdrawal symptoms. If it interacted with the lithium, it's probably mood altering--perhaps causing euphoria." She frowned. "But is it a physical addiction?"

Michael returned her frown. "What do you mean?"

"A physical addiction, as with nicotine, increases the body's tolerance for the toxin until it can no longer function normally without it. But in this case, Mr. Townsend, considering your bipolar disorder, the pseudothymin could cause a psychological dependence. You get hooked on the emotions created by the drug, but physically you are unharmed."

Mulder brought the car to a halt. The warehouse towered before them, its facade wreathed in shadow, blocking the early morning sun. Cracked earth still showed the imprints of tire tracks from the day before. The gate was unlocked, swinging on creaking hinges in the light wind. Dust danced in the courtyard before the doors, garbage swirling in updrafts. Mulder climbed from the car and leaned against it, squinting into the glare that masked the worn building in darkness. "No one has been here since we left," he said, indicating the lines of tracks in the dried mud.

"There may be other ways in," Scully said, joining him beside the marks. They watched as Michael scrambled from the car, his gait awkward. In an undertone, she asked, "Mulder, if you're right, and Pirsig was only doing this to prevent him from talking, then why was he back in his home? Why not stay 'lost'? He's told us everything. The pseudothymin hasn't protected the conspiracy from our questions." The wind carried the question to his ears alone.

Mulder chewed thoughtfully on his full lower lip, his eyes on Michael, who stood transfixed by the warehouse. "I don't know, Scully. He hasn't told us the whole story. I'm still missing something obvious. It's right in front of me, but I can't see it." He sat on his heels and skipped a piece of gravel across the driveway, sending up puffs of dust to be carried away by the breeze.

"If Pirsig went to the trouble to drug us to prevent us from finding Michael, why not finish the job?" She watched him, feeling the frustration that bound him. "We could be dead, but instead we've closed the case. Michael is free to write whatever he wants about the experiment. It's been too easy."

Mulder sighed and pushed himself upright. "I almost had it when he reminded us of Pirsig. It's all there, just...blocked." Anger colored his voice, and he added, "But I wonder why he wanted us to come here again. It doesn't look like we'll find anyone this time." He walked around the car to where Michael stood and grabbed his arm, twisting the smaller man around. "Why did you want to come here? Ready for another jolt from the good doctor?"

Michael shrugged off Mulder's hand, a sneer curling his lip. "Don't you get it yet, Agent Mulder? What does it take to make you understand? I don't need more pseudothymin. I'm already under the influence. And so are you." With that, he stalked off to the door, disappearing into the shade.

"Wait!" Mulder ran after him, Scully close on his heels. "What do you mean by that?"

"This is not reality, agents," Michael nearly spat the epithet. "I couldn't remember why I hadn't seen my kids for weeks. Why Sheryl wasn't working. Why she had changed. In these three months, Dr. Pirsig and I worked together to make the pseudothymin experience as real as possible. Every time, it's a little more realistic, but it's never exact. Part of that is the fact that it's so difficult to remember where you've come from--what's really going on. But more that that, the experience is altered by your own mind. Desires, memories, your very self shapes this world." He twisted the door handle and continued into the warehouse, heading for the staircase. "Didn't I say that it was I who changed Sheryl? This is some fantasy version of love. No kids--" He began climbing, heading for the refurbished rooms above, his angry voice echoing off the bare walls of the stairwell. "Casting myself as an Author God. Dictating. This isn't real--no wonder my characters weren't fighting anymore." He turned to them, staring down from the head of the stairs, his face flushed, his hands trembling on the banister. He tilted his head, considering them as though for the first time. Slowly, he came down towards them, watching them closely. "But you...you're real. I've never met you, yet I know your names. Who you are. And you know things about the real world." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Didn't see a scar, did you, Agent Scully?"

"No. But--"

"It's there. I had the surgery. It itches, always. The electrodes run under my skin to the foramen magnum, then to the fossae of the primary somatosensory cortex. I perceive the shocks as sensations. Believe it?"

"I know that it is possible to cause sensations in the manner you describe, but that requires open brain surgery. And the patient is awake during the procedure. But you yourself said it, Mr. Townsend. There is no scar there. And scars don't vanish."

"It hasn't vanished. This isn't real, don't you see? I have no doubt that you and Agent Mulder have the same scar, but you won't see it if you look for it now. We're trapped in an externally-directed hallucination." His voice dropped into uncertainty. "And it has never lasted this long." He opened the door at the head of the stairs, silhouetted by the light from the hallway. "I don't understand it. Why hasn't Dr. Pirsig ended this? Two weeks, you said. And I'm beginning to remember the outside world. In the beginning, I could remember--but it passed. And now I'm remembering again."

Scully turned to Mulder, wondering at his silence. He was staring up at Michael, his eyes shining in the dim stairwell. "Mulder..."

He glanced at her, the fervor of belief strong as he reached out to her. "Scully, this is it. This is the thing I couldn't remember. When we woke up here yesterday, you looked for a needle mark where I'd been drugged. And there was nothing there."

"Yes, but Mulder, there have been great advances in technology. Hyposprays that don't leave marks. Pirsig worked as a researcher for the government, and he would have access to such things."

"What about when I work up and found you beside me? Scully, you had no pulse," he whispered. "I checked, and there was nothing. But you woke up. That can't be reality."

Scully shook her head, remembering the cold fear of that awakening. "Mulder, I'm sorry, but you are not a doctor. You could have been mistaken." Her skepticism fell on deaf ears, as it so often did. Mulder merely frowned and looked after Michael. She hurried up the steps after him as he followed Michael into the office.

"Mr. Townsend, you asked if we felt like our actions were being directed from outside," he said. "Why?"

"Actions are a result of perception. But your perceptions are controlled by the drug and the electrodes. So, in effect, your actions aren't your own. The computers monitor your physical response and control what impulses you receive." Michael walked to the windows and looked out into the bright day. "But your memories and desires also affect the way you interpret those sensations. So there's a conflict, and that's why you feel---well, different." He smiled, a wide grin. "A hallucination with Dr. Pirsig as the Author God. We'd never realise that it was a hallucination if he just let us exist as ourselves. But when he starts dictating our actions, that's when the memories come back."

"What you're saying is that Mulder and I have been hallucinating ever since we woke up here yesterday? These computers are powerful enough and sophisticated enough to convince us that we're not actually---somewhere else, asleep and drugged?" Scully crossed her arms and walked to the center of the room, looking around as though searching for a trace of unreality.

"You're still here. In this warehouse. And so am I. And the computers don't need to be incredibly complex; mostly, it's the suggestibility promoted by the pseudothymin."

"Scully, it's well-documented that the human brain is unbelievably easy to fool. Dreams and hallucinations have been studied for most of history, whether for divine guidance or for science. And we still don't know why our brains give us these images. Is it so hard to believe that a drug exists with the properties that Mr. Townsend describes?" Mulder took her shoulder and steered her towards the wide windows. He threw an arm out, a sweeping gesture encompassing the whole view. "This is better than virtual reality! When we talk to Pirsig---"

"And how do you plan to do that, if we are trapped in a hallucination?" Scully asked. "Mr. Townsend, how did you overcome the pseudothymin in the past?"

Michael shook his head. "I didn't. Dr. Pirsig always woke me."

"It must be a matter of belief," Mulder said, exited. Scully began to object, but he forestalled her with a raised hand. "Think about it, Scully. What is belief but another chemical process in the brain? This pseudothymin works on the same principles."

Scully smiled slightly. "That's supposed to be my position," she said. "Like Descartes said, 'Disbelieve in everything you see, and all that can remain is the truth'."

Mulder's grin told her that he knew that quotation as well as she. He asked Michael, "Well, Mr. Townsend, have you ever tried to wake up on your own?"

"No." Michael came away from the window and joined them at the desk. "I suppose it's worth a try. Otherwise, there's nothing for us but the unreality."

Scully laid a hand on Mulder's sleeve, and he looked down at her. Her gaze, blue and sharp, caught him and held him fast. Her touch sent memories rushing through him. "Mulder, you want me to believe that everything that happened during the last day and a half was false?" she asked quietly. She watched his eyes, green-gold and tender. She nodded towards Michael, who was sitting at the desk, watching. "He said it was our memories and desires that shape this world. Disbelief won't change that."

"'April is the cruellest month...'" Michael's voice, soft. They turned to him, but he was staring out the window. "'Breeding lilacs out of the dead land, stirring memory and desire, mixing dull roots with spring rain.'" He looked up, meeting their eyes. "T.S. Elliot. The Wasteland." He paused, and the thin, dishevelled writer faded, leaving behind a hint of the man. Unruly blond hair, shining blue eyes, barrel-chested. The man who could spend endless hours reading to his daughters, who supported his wife's political ambitions, who laughed with his father-in-law over war stories. The man who was a shrewd observer of character. "I guess you know why it's so easy to return to this little bubble of unreality. The rules don't apply here. If it's only a hallucination..." He shrugged and ran a hand through his hair, the characteristic gesture showing them the writer once more, nervous and twitchy.

"It isn't right," Mulder said. "Pseudothymin can so easily be abused. You're putting yourself into someone's power every time you take it. I can't accept that. If disbelief is the only way to stop it, then I want to disbelieve." A faint grin shaped his lips at that remark, and Scully smiled up at him. This was right. The awkwardness was gone. Together, they would disbelieve; and together, they could continue to build something greater than any hallucination could be.

Bodies lay, draped in shadows. Under crisp sheets, the soft beds carried medical equipment like concealed weapons. Wrists and ankles were braceleted by wide bands of Velcro. Breath was a susurrus echoed by monitors, faint pulses chopping time into seconds.

Framed by light but cloaked in darkness, a man stood watching the faint shivers crawling over restrained flesh. Hands twitched, grasping at dreams. Eyes moved restlessly beneath closed lids, blind to reality. An eerie half-smile hovered over the man's features as he brought a cigarette to his lips. Dark eyes considered the blue-gray wisp of smoke that rose from its tip. The delicate grip of yellow-stained fingers seemed at once ready to cast the cigarette away and to draw it closer.

"It's been nearly thirty-six hours." Pirsig spoke from behind, his throat tense around the words. Hands were fisted in the pockets of his lab jacket.

He turned to Pirsig, indifference written in the lines that framed his face. "You've left it longer in the past."

"Never with three people in the interface. The computers are having difficulty dealing with their sensory data."

A raised eyebrow was the only response.

"And I believe that all three are interacting." He paused. "You know the interface was never designed to hold more than two people at a time, and then only if they weren't sharing the same environment."

Sparks flew as the cigarette was flicked to the ground. A blunt heel extinguished it. "Our end is nearly achieved. Have you done as I asked?"

Pirsig shoved wire rim glasses further up his nose and frowned. "It isn't as though I am some sort of spectator to this hallucination. I cannot report exactly what actions are taken."

Silence like a distant storm.

Pirsig cleared his throat and continued. "But, according to the physiological data on the monitors, the stimulation of the nerve centers at the same time did, ah, lead to the desired consequence."

"How euphemistic of you, Pirsig. Not at all scientific." The soft voice was mocking, contemptuous. He reached for a packet of Morleys and carefully selected one. Placing it between thin lips, he turned abruptly from the darkened room to usurp Pirsig's leather chair. Pirsig glanced in, then shut the door. He followed his visitor to the desk and sat in front of it, a supplicant in his own place.

"Have you completed all the arrangements?"

"Yes." Anger flared, hot and sudden, and Pirsig stood, leaning over the desk. "You know that all I wanted was a human subject to test the pseudothymin. Michael did well as that subject. There was no need to drug these FBI agents. Surely they will be missed? Won't it be suspicious that the investigators on a missing persons case disappear themselves?"

The anger washed over a gray wall of impassivity, leaving it untouched. "Quite suspicious. But necessary."

"Why necessary?" Pirsig asked. A slight shrug answered him, and he brought his fist down hard on the desk. "Damn you," he whispered, "it was no better than mind rape. Why necessary?"

Crow's feet tightened, making the pouches beneath black eyes heavier. The man looked suddenly old, and he quickly looked down to light the new cigarette. "I cannot have them come so close and then turn their backs on everything I've worked for these fifty years. In a few weeks, the timing will be right, and this--interlude--is an important precursor to that event."

Pirsig shook his head, mouth gaping, a landed sturgeon. "What if they wake up ready to turn their backs on everything they experienced instead?"

A smile crawled over the man's face. Pirsig stared, uncomfortable under that incongruous expression. "What they experienced was not real. Neither will accept it for what it was, though for different reasons. I know them well--almost too well." He chuckled, a raspy breath. "I was beginning to fear they'd fall into the trap of friendship. Hence all this. Dreams are a powerful force. The fact that the situation was artificial won't rob it of its power to seduce."

Pirsig's confused frown only caused the smile to widen. "This is the final tempatation that will cause the reality?"

"The story of my life," the man answered. The smile disappeared into a grimace, as though he had just bit down on some bitter, mint-filled chocolate. "You build something up for years, anticipating some sort of triumphant culmination, but when it finally happens, it's a hollow victory." His eyes drifted back to study the closed door.

"But why the pseudothymin? Why not let them discover it for themselves?"

"Circumstances have changed. The consequences of such an act will be...far reaching, to say the least."

"Consequences?"

"You know that I alone survived when all my colleagues are dead. So much was lost with them. There is only one way I may continue my work. Already I have set in motion certain eventualities, with the full cooperation of the only allies I have left." He turned to look up at Pirsig, his voice becoming unctuous. He stood to face the doctor across the desk, wreathed in smoke from the cigarette he held in his left hand. "And your help has been invaluable, Dr. Pirsig. But, I am afraid...your service is over." In one fluid motion, he drew a nine millimeter Baretta from a shoulder holster and fired. Pirsig reeled in astonishment, bringing a hand to the crimson stain on his white lab jacket. He slumped down to the chair across from the desk and his breath shuddered to a halt. A thin line of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

The cigarette was ground out on the desk's surface. The man took Pirsig's briefcase in hand, glanced over the room, gilded by late morning light. He chuckled into the silence, feeling a rumble of phlegm in his chest. The pain behind his sternum burned hot, and he knew that it would not be long now. Soon, he would call in certain favours...complete his life's work. The ignorant sleepers in the next room were still important to the plan, more so than they could ever know. If only they knew what the result of their union would be...

He tossed the butt onto Pirsig's still corpse and slipped easily from the room, already reaching for his packet of Morleys.

Lethargy was a weight on her chest when Scully opened her eyes. The ceiling was the same as it had been for that other fated awakening, but instead of cold tile, she lay on soft sheets. She tried to lift and arm, only to find it trapped by a Velcro band at the wrist. The other hand was free, and she quickly ripped open the restraints, sitting up to reach the ones around her ankles. She noticed, with a weariness that precluded surprise, that her clothes were the same ones she'd worn the day before when she and Mulder had come to the warehouse from the hospital. She looked to her right and saw Mulder sitting up in the next bed, and Michael beyond him. His blue shirt was flecked with spots of dried blood from his cut, and the bandage was loose over the stitches.

"Better than virtual reality," he said softly, and she nodded agreement. No twelve volt shocks slamming through Kevlar. No cyberchicks. Fatigue thrumming in time with her pulse, but no injuries. It was better.

Michael slid off his bed. "But I doubt it was your faith in disbelief that woke us up, Agent Mulder. Somebody undid one of the restraints for each of us. Maybe Dr. Pirsig is still here." He limped towards the door and looked out. "Agents!" he called. "Take a look at this."

Together, they made their way form the beds to the outer office. Pirsig was slumped in the visitor's chair, his gray eyes staring behind his glasses. Scully examined him quickly. "He hasn't been dead long--the body is still warm."

Mulder crouched down in front of the doctor. "Scully, look," he said, picking up the cigarette butt. "Remind you of anyone?"

"So it was a set-up all along," she said. She glanced at Michael, but his confusion was obvious. "Come on, Michael; we'll take you home."

"All of Dr. Pirsig's personal papers are gone," Michael said. "His desk is bare. And look there." He pointed into the room where the computers had been. The tables were empty, the equipment cleared away. "That's why we woke up. Without the computers to monitor us, the pseudothymin wasn't enough to keep us under." He turned around and laid a hand on his neck. "See anything there now, Agent Scully?" She leaned forward to look. The skin just above the nape of the neck was inflamed, showing white scar tissue in a circle about a quarter of an inch in diameter.

Mulder reached up and felt his neck. "I've got one, too," he said. Scully copied the gesture and felt the rough skin under her collar. "This is proof that biogenics research was conducted at White Sands and Naval Base 617," he added.

"Proof?" asked Scully wearily. "I doubt it, Mulder. There's proof that something happened, but do you still have that picture of McKerness and Pirsig? Do you have the address that led us here? How about Michael's bottle of water-damaged lithium pills?" Mulder felt the pockets of his coat, and she shook her head. "All we have is a memory of a hallucination." And memories were more than enough, she added silently. Some things were better left to the mind alone.

Darkness had invaded the basement office. Artificial suns, bright and abrupt, sent the shadow demons scampering for hidden recesses where no light came. Mulder sloughed his jacket and tossed it to the coat hook, watching dispassionately as it crumpled to the floor. Scully leaned against the doorframe, eyes closed, thinking of home and of bed.

Michael had been delivered to his home, to happy squeals from his daughters and tearful hugs from Sheryl. They had told her about her father's apartment, and she handed them the morning's paper. Benjamin McKerness, found dead, apparently by his own hand. She was contemptuous of their empty condolences and showed them to the door. Strange parallels. They had gone to McKerness' apartment, only to find it sealed, sterile, empty.

Mulder sat back in his chair and picked up his basketball, tracing its lines with his long, slender fingers. "Dreams are the answers to questions we have not yet figured out how to ask." Scully opened her eyes, watched him tossing the ball into the air.

"You think this pseudothymin works the same way?"

"It seems to open up faculties of the mind...allows us to ask those questions so much more clearly. And to see answers that we might not be ready for otherwise." He caught the ball and leaned over it, his dark eyes steady as he looked at her.

She walked into the office and sat down opposite him. The distance between them had melted somewhat, but that air of uncertainty remained. Michael's words came back to her--"The rules don't apply here...Action without consequence." She smiled. Last night, whether imagined or real, had been infinitely more than a simple hallucination; and at the same time, so much less. Dreams were not her reality. She reached out and caught Mulder's hand. "It's over, Mulder." She paused, then added, "I guess we've upped our solved-cases ratio nicely."

He smiled. It was enough. "Then I guess it's time to head home."

They left the office, heading out into the rain-cool night, soft with the scent of fresh blooming lilacs. When they parted ways, they let their hands drop. No words were needed; no goodbyes were ever spoken. The dream had faded into sunrise, as such dreams do. Scully watched as Mulder walked down the street, tall and dark under the streetlights. For now, this was enough, and more than enough; the silent comfort that passed between them, renewing strength and giving solace. But soon...soon, she would be dreaming again.

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Summer 2003