Part 7
 

I think it started with driving
More speed, more deals,
More sky, more wheels,
More things to leave behind.
     ~Dar Williams, "Traveling Again"
 

Illinois Highway 62
8:55 PM

"I still don't see why you wouldn't let me drive," Mulder groused good-naturedly.

Scully shook her head.  "This is *my* rental, you lost yours, remember?"  She hid a wry smile by glancing out the side window.  "What are you complaining about?  You got what you wanted.  We're off to check out this institute of yours.  In the middle of the night.  In the middle of nowhere."

"It's not the middle of the night.  It's only--"  he checked the clock on the rental car, "--8:55."

"It feels like the middle of the night, and it certainly looks like it out here."  The moon was a faint, thin crescent behind swiftly moving clouds.  There were few stars visible.  Even with the high beams on, Scully had to concentrate harder than usual on the poorly marked two-lane road.  "Besides," she added with a wicked grin that even the darkness couldn't quite conceal, "Your ankle is sprained.  Your *right* ankle.  I don't think your big swollen feet can control the pedals."

Mulder winced.  "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"Probably not."

"I didn't mean it, Scully."  He was trying to pout, but there were suspicious crinkles around his eyes.  "I was under the influence of a nasty planetary alignment."

"Not to mention Detective White's hormones," Scully shot back.

"Thuck." Mulder placed one hand over his heart.  "You got me."

Scully chuckled, then gave it a rest and shifted her focus back to the road.  She hadn't told her partner about Gary Hobson's warning.  If Mulder could keep secrets, so could she.  Actually, she was still trying to work out how Hobson figured into this equation, but she didn't want Mulder to think she agreed with him.  Let him stew, see how *he* liked it.  All the same--how had Hobson known they'd be out here tonight, before even she herself had?  On the other hand, if he was part of the conspiracy, why had he warned her?

Checking the rearview mirror, Scully spotted two other cars on the highway, about half a mile behind her own.  As she watched, the first turned off onto one of the many gravel roads that led to farms and homes and who knew what else.  The second stayed behind them for another couple of minutes, then turned at the entrance to a manufacturing plant.  She relaxed and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"What?"  Mulder asked, instantly back on guard.  Perhaps it was more accurate to say that he'd never let it drop at all.

"Nothing."

"Are we being followed?" He twisted his lanky frame around to peer out the rear window.

"No, Mulder.  I wouldn't let that happen.  Tell me, just what do you plan to do once we get there?  Flash our credentials?  Climb a fence?  You know, if they spotted you this morning they must have some heavy-duty surveillance in a wide perimeter around that facility."

"Which means they have something to hide.  I'm not planning on breaking in right now.  I just want to know the lay of the land, who comes and goes and when, what the patterns are."

"Mulder, we aren't going to drive up and down these roads all night, and I'm not sitting around in some corn field after what happened this morning."

"Do you have a better plan?"

"What about a search warrant?" Scully responded.  Mulder started to answer, but she held up a hand to forestall him.  "I know you think it's an outdated, overly conventional tool of law enforcement, but according to what Byers told me, these doctors were under investigation for unethical practices once before.  It wouldn't be hard to talk a judge into a warrant if we told one what we know."

"Oh, sure, and while we're at it, we'll sell tickets to the event."  Mulder shifted in his seat, becoming more animated.  "C'mon, Scully, this is Chicago we're talking about here.  Half the judges in town are probably in *somebody's* pocket.  You don't think the people Scanlon works for are above bribing federal judges to keep other people's noses out of their business, do you?  Besides, I hardly think any judge is going to grant a warrant based on my eyewitness testimony."

"What about assault charges?  You did identify yourself as a federal agent, didn't you?"

"Yeah, right after I kicked Thing One in the knee and ran and right before Thing Two pulled out his gun and started firing."

"Mulder--"  Another pair of headlights was closing in from behind, but it was still quite a distance from them.  She decided it wasn't anything to worry about.  Yet.

Mulder still going full force.  "Do you want Scanlon, or not?  Because if you do, we're going to have to get unconventional.  For right now, let's just see what the security detail is like at night.  Maybe between the two of us we can find a weak spot."

She stared out the window for a few minutes before speaking.  A car headed east, back toward the city, zoomed by in the opposite lane.  Scully wasn't even sure why she'd agreed to this trip in the first place, except that she knew that if she didn't stick with Mulder he was likely to take off on his own again.  He'd been circumspect with details and she had a feeling that he was keeping something from her.  Despite their casual conversation, she still harbored a great deal of suspicion about Mulder's--well, it wasn't his motives that were the problem, it was the direction in which they were taking him, and the fact that he didn't seem to think there was room for her on that road, nor that she would have the strength to walk it.

"All right.  We'll check it out--from a distance.  No break-ins tonight.  You'd slow me down with that ankle of yours."

"Not too much of a distance, though.  We do need to see what's going on."

"That shouldn't be a problem.  I have infrared binoculars in my case."

Mulder blinked, impressed.  "What'd you have to promise Frohike to get those?  Or have you two been hiding your torrid little affair from me all along?"

She lobbed it right back to him.  "I just gave him the key to your apartment.  I hope for your sake that he'll rewind when he's finished with your video collection.  There--is that it?"  She pointed at the lights of a parking lot up ahead.

"Yeah.  Slow down, but keep driving past it.  I want to see if my rental car's still in that field."

"It won't be."

"And I want to look for my gun."

"Out here?  In the dark?"

"You never know what we might stumble across.  Pure dumb luck seems to be going around.  Maybe this time we got the *right* planetary alignment."

Scully slowed as they passed the turn to the Andrews Institute on the right.  The car behind them was gaining quickly.  Damn.  "Mulder," she began, "I think we're being--"

Warning her partner about the car behind them took her full attention from the road for just a split second.  It was enough to distract her from the third car, the one approaching in the oncoming lane.  When she turned her eyes back to the road, there it was, bearing down on them at an alarming speed.

In their lane.

Bright lights heading right for them.  Blinding her.

Bright lights blinding her again.

Mulder shouting her name.

The car behind them honked frantically once, and then swerved off to the right.  The car coming at them slowed for a fraction of an instant, and Scully instinctively steered to the left.  Their car went airborne for what felt like an eternity, and she realized they were headed over the highway's shoulder and into a field.

The last time she'd been run off the road--

There was a tree--

The airbag exploded in her face, and she wondered whose closet she'd wake up in this time.

* * * * *

"Gary, we've been driving up and down this road for an hour now.  Nobody's out here."  Chuck's fingers were tapping a staccato in time to the radio.  'Life in the Fast Lane.'  Perfect.  He pulled into a farm drive several miles west of the Andrews Institute and turned the car back toward the city again.  "Up and down, back and forth--"

"The headline hasn't changed," Gary said simply.

"God, you are so stubborn sometimes.  How many times are we gonna do this?  You didn't let me fill up on gas before we left the city."

"You never said anything about being low on gas.  Didn't your 'guy' take care of that?"  Gary couldn't believe the way Chuck was obsessing over this car.  People's lives were at stake.  He continued his constant scan of the road ahead, behind, the shoulder, the farms and fields and factories that he could barely make out in the winter dark.

"Hey, he can't do everything.  Did I tell you he found corn husks in my engine?"  They passed the research facility again.

"Only about five times," Gary snapped.

"Oh, like the five times we've been by here tonight?"  Chuck was getting peevish as well.

"Look, I said I was sorry; I said I would pay for it--"

"Gary, what if the accident already happened?" Marissa interrupted from the back seat, forestalling another incarnation of the debate that had been going on all night.  "What if the car's off the road somewhere?"

"I thought about that," he said, cupping his hands to the window and peering out in a vain attempt to make out something, anything, in the darkened fields as they flashed by.   No luck.  "The paper put the time of the accident at about 9:15.  They have to be on the highway somewhere right about now."

"Whoever they are," Chuck finished, persistent to the end.

"Them."  Gary's voice was suddenly urgent; he pointed at the headlights of an oncoming car.

"Huh?"  Chuck looked at Gary instead of out the window.

"There!"

"Where?"

"Right ahead of you, coming toward us."  Gary nodded at the set of headlights that were approaching on the other side of the road.  "Headed *west*.  Toward the medical lab."

"And you know it's them."

"It's the first car we've seen out here all night."

Chuck shrugged.  "All right, Cisco, now what?"

"I don't know--turn around."

"Here?"

"Turn around and follow them!" Gary insisted.

"Alllll righty then..." Chuck slammed on the brakes and flipped an abrupt U-turn in the middle of the highway.  Gary grabbed the dash and hung on for dear life as the tires squealed in protest.  He could hear Spike's paws scrabbling as the dog slid across the leather seat.

"Geez, Chuck--Marissa, you okay?"

"Yeah, I think," she said, a little breathlessly.  "What was that all about?"

Chuck cackled maniacally.  "I've always wanted to do that."

"Yeah, well, I think you watched too much 'Starsky and Hutch' as a kid," Gary muttered.  He hadn't loosened his grip on the dashboard; Marissa had grabbed a handful of his coat when she'd been thrown foreword and had effectively pinned his shoulder to the seat back.

"Actually, I was more of a 'C.H.I.P.S.' man myself.  Ponch and Jon, out on the open road..." Chuck reminisced fondly.

"Uh-huh.  Look, Mr. Open Road, just be careful that you don't become the cause of the accident," cautioned Marissa, loosening her grip on Gary's shoulder so that she could settle Spike down.

Chuck was closing the ground between their car and the one ahead of them.  The plastics plant flashed by again, then the medical facility.

"Slow down, Chuck, we're getting too close," Gary warned.

"Maybe we should honk, or pull up alongside them," Chuck proposed, easing off on the gas just a little.

"Or maybe that's what causes the accident," said Marissa.

"Yeah, except we wouldn't commit a hit and run," Gary said pensively.  He glanced at his watch.  "We gotta do something soon, or--"

Spike barked right in his ear, and Gary nearly jumped out of his seat belt.

From that point, everything happened in flashes.

The headlights coming toward them over the rise of the next hill.

In the wrong lane.  Their lane.

The car ahead of them rocketing straight into the blinding high beams.

Chuck laying on the horn, trying to warn both the other cars.

The cat in the middle of the road.

Between their car and the others.

Mr. Snow's cat.

Chuck yelling something.

Marissa yelling something.

Spike barking.

There was no time to think.  Gary grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it towards himself.  The car careened across the pavement, the gravel shoulder,  the dip alongside the road, the muddy field.

Bounce, jolt, thump.

His head hit the ceiling.

Jolt.

Splash.

Bounce.

The car twisted, spun, and slammed to a halt facing the highway, its rear end buried in a hay stack.

A few pieces of straw drifted past the windshield as everything went very, very quiet--except for the radio.

"Life in the fast lane; surely make you lose your mind..."
 

Part 8
 

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
                    Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
     ~Carl Sandburg, "Choose"
 

Gary blinked, unable for the moment to move anything but his eyes.  He looked down and over to see his hands still gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white.  Strange, he couldn't feel the wheel.  Glancing at Chuck, Gary saw that his friend was staring at him, mouth agape.

Marissa broke the silence as she attempted to disentangle herself from her seat belt and Spike's harness.  "My God--You guys okay?  Spike?"  The German Shepherd wagged his tail and nuzzled her hand.  "Chuck?  Gary?  What happened?"

"The cat was on the road," Gary began in a hoarse whisper, finally prying his fingers off the steering wheel.

Without taking breaking eye contact, Chuck reached over and turned off the radio.  "The *cat*," he repeated, narrowing his eyes.

"Yeah." Gary tried to calm his breathing.  Tried to breathe, period.  "Didn't you see it?"

"No, genius, my attention was pretty much on the accident that was about to happen in front of us."

"How'd it get out here?"  Gary shook his head in disbelief, turned to the back seat.  "Marissa? You all right?"  She nodded.

"I don't believe this," Chuck growled.

"It was right there on the highway," Gary told Marissa.

"*Your* cat?" she asked.  "Figures."

"Yeah," Chuck said.  "Yeah, you know, it does."  He opened his door and got out, standing and looking first at his car and then up at the sky, arms spread out as if in supplication.  "I don't believe this.  I don't BELIEVE this!"

Gary exited the car as well.  "Chuck, look I'm sorry, but there wasn't any choice," he began as he pulled the front seat forward and helped Marissa step out.  Chuck faced Gary across the hood of the car.

"Twice, Gar.  Twice in ONE day!"

"What are you talking about?"

"My CAR, Gary.  My car, my baby in the middle of a cornfield.  Stuck in a hay bale.  AGAIN!"  Pausing in his inspection of the damage, Chuck threw his hands up in the air.  "For a cat, Gar.  A CAT!"

"Now--now Chuck, just hold on a minute--"

"I knew that thing was out to get me," Chuck said, pointing at the paper Gary still clutched in his right hand.  "It's had it in for me since day one.  But you, Gary, I thought you were my friend--"

"But Chuck--"

"Look at this, Gar!"  Chuck thrust a broken antenna toward him.  "Just look at it!  The tires are three inches deep in the mud.  There's--there's stuff all over it.  Farm stuff.  Field stuff."  He lifted up one shoe, wrinkling his nose at the manure on the sole of his loafer.  "Cow stuff.  I tell you, my guy is *not* gonna be happy."

"Hey, Chuck?"  Gary, realizing that the other member of their trio had been unusually quiet, looked around with growing concern.

"Not happy at *all*."

"Chuck!  Where's Marissa?"

"Huh?"

Haphazardly stuffing the paper into the back pocket of his jeans, Gary scanned the area illuminated by the Lexus's headlights.  There was no sign of Marissa, nor was Spike anywhere to be seen.

"Oh, no.  Marissa?"  Gary thought about the ditch he'd managed to fall into earlier in the day, and the thugs who'd made such light work of Agent Mulder.  Chuck had come around to the passenger side of the car.  "Do you see her?" Gary asked.  Chuck shook his head.

"Marissa?"  Gary called, a little louder.

"Over here," she finally answered faintly.  Gary took off towards the sound of her voice.  She was farther from the car than he would have thought she could have gone in such a short time.  The moon was hidden behind scudding clouds, and his eyes were taking a while to adjust.

"Here, Gary," Marissa called again, and he shifted direction and finally saw her outline, barely visible in the faint starlight.

"What are you doing?  It's not--"  Gary broke off when he got close enough to see that Spike, tail wagging calmly, was sniffing a smaller form.  Crouching down, peering through the darkness, Gary saw that it was a ginger cat, one he knew well; its eyes gave off a gleam that he knew even here.  It let out a "meow" so familiar that he half-expected to hear the thump of the morning paper hitting the ground.

"Is that your cat?" Marissa asked.

"It's not my cat," Gary answered from force of habit, then, realizing how Marissa might interpret his response, he added, "But, yeah."  He lifted the cat, feeling its legs, its torso, making sure it hadn't been hurt.  As the tabby purred contentedly, Gary ascertained that everything seemed to be in working order.

"Snow's cat, then.  Is it all right?"

"Looks to be," Gary muttered, more relieved than he would have predicted or admitted he'd be.  "How the hell did it get out here?"  He held the cat up and they stared at each other, nose to nose.  Gary blinked first.

Marissa gave a wry chuckle.  "With that cat, who knows?  If it was on the road in front of our car, though, there must have been a reason..."  She trailed off, a pensive frown on her face.

"The other cars."  Gary remembered the high beams in his eyes.  "We could have collided with them if we hadn't gone off into the field."

"So the cat--your cat--saved our lives, Gary."

Gary looked from the cat to Marissa and back.  How was any of this possible?  Shrugging, he shook the disconcerting thought away.  There was a reason he'd been here in the first place.  "We have to find out what happened to those people."  He tucked the cat under one arm and offered his elbow to Marissa, and they started back toward Chuck's car.  Stumbling over a small rise, Gary nearly dropped the cat, but Marissa steadied him.  "Sorry," he muttered, "I can't see worth a darn out here--"  He stopped, sheepish, and Marissa laughed.

"Stick with Spike and me, Gary, we'll do just fine," she assured him.

"Uhh...Gar?  Marissa?  You guys might want to get over here."  As they approached the car, Gary saw Chuck staring toward the highway.  "Somebody's coming."  Chuck reached inside the Lexus and turned off the headlights.

A car was slowly approaching from the east--very slowly, as if the driver was looking for something.  Gary was suddenly grateful that they'd come to a stop so far off the road, and for the cover of darkness.  It was three hundred feet to the highway at least.

"Guys, I think you'd better stay back here."  Gary motioned them behind the car and dumped Snow's cat into the back seat through the open window on the passenger's side.

"I got a bad feeling about this," Chuck said warily.

"Gary, I don't think--" Marissa began.

"There were two other cars.  The paper said there was an accident."  Gary watched the vehicle prowl past them.  "I'm gonna go check it out."

"Let us go with you."  Marissa was already ahead of him, following Spike's lead."I don't think that's a good idea," Gary grabbed her arm and stopped her, his eyes fixed on the road.  "Oh no."

"What is it?"

The car made an abrupt U-turn and came to a stop on the opposite shoulder, the south side of the road.  Two men got out.  There was something vaguely familiar about their outlines, Gary thought.  He jogged up closer to the highway to get a better look, ignoring Chuck and Marissa's insistent questions about what was happening.

The men stood in the glow of their own headlights, and Gary could see them pointing into the trees that bordered the field on the west, with something in their hands.  Flashlights, and something else.

Guns.

It hadn't been an accident after all.  They took off at a slow trot in the direction their flashlights had been pointing.

"Wait here," Gary called over his shoulder, and ran for the highway.  Random thoughts fluttered through his mind.  What am I doing?  Why didn't the paper say anything about this?  Did we do something that changed the original accident to *this*?

Crossing the highway, Gary came around their parked car as silently as he could and jumped over the narrow ditch that separated the field from the road.  About fifty feet into the field, he stopped.  The men were several hundred feet in front of him, headed for a small stand of cottonwoods.  In the bobbing circles created by their flashlights, where he would have expected to see a crumpled wreck, was a car that had, indeed, plowed into a tree, but aside from the front end being folded up against the trunk a few times, the damage didn't appear to be catastrophic.  He didn't, however, see any signs of movement from the car, and the men were approaching it, guns at the ready.   What the hell were they going to do?

Two guesses, Gar, he thought, and one doesn't count.

Gary took a deep breath, his mind searching frantically for a way to get the men away from the car and its occupants.  A distraction, that's what he needed.  What would stop them?  Hoping it would be enough, he bellowed straight from his gut, "Police!  Stop or I'll shoot!"

Oh, good one, Gary thought as he instinctively threw himself to the ground.  You just let them know you're alone, and in about two seconds they're going to realize that you're not firing at them.  It was less than that.  The men before him wheeled, aimed, fired, and started running his way, darker shapes in dark shadows, alternately checking back over their shoulders toward the ruined car near the trees and scanning the field ahead for the new intruder.

Gary rolled to one side, wondering how long it would take them to get a bead on him again.  Hoping the trees would offer him some cover, he got up and sprinted in that direction.  He thought he could hear their breathing; maybe it was his own.  Another shot rang out behind him and he ducked, still running.

He was plunging through the taller grass near the trees when a new sound caused him to turn.  A car was coming straight across the highway, horn blaring, shining its headlamps over the field as it pulled in front of the thugs' car and squealed to a stop.

Chuck.  Marissa.  Oh, no...

Gary heard Spike barking frantically, not his usual informative, here's-something-you-need-to-pay-attention-to bark, but a warning of danger.  The dog was out of the car and headed in Gary's direction.

The men who'd been chasing Gary turned toward the commotion, giving him enough time to duck into the trees.  But when they started for Chuck's car, pure instinct took over.  He wasn't going to let them get near his friends.  Not knowing what to do next, he took off running towards the Lexus, praying he'd think of something before--

"Freeze!  Federal Agents!  Drop your weapons NOW!!"  The command in the voice that came from behind him was unmistakable.  Gary immediately froze and put his hands in the air while Spike slid to a halt beside him.  The gunmen stopped for a split second, but then ran again, barely pausing when the next shot rang out, straight up into the air from the sound of it.  Gary turned to see Agent Scully, feet planted and arms straight out, lowering her gun and pointing it at the thugs, who, changing directions yet again, were now headed back for their own car.

Agent Mulder was hobbling behind her, flashlight in hand, but he couldn't keep up.  Agent Scully ran past Gary, trying to make it to the car before their assailants got away.  She got off two shots, but before she could do any more, they were in their car and off down the road.  Gary saw her shoulders heave in a sigh of frustration before she turned to watch her partner limping in her direction.

"Damn!" she muttered at the disappearing taillights.  "Mulder, are you all right?"

Gary dropped weakly to the ground, putting an arm around Spike's neck and rubbing his back.  "Good dog, Spike," he sighed in relief.  "Good boy.  It's okay now."  Spike gave Gary's face an affectionate lick.

"Hobson?"  Agent Mulder was approaching, squinting into the glare cast by Chuck's headlights.  "Is that you?  What the--"
 

"Gary!  Gar, you okay?"  Chuck called.  The FBI agents turned to see Chuck guiding Marissa to where Gary stood.  Gary started to nod, then realized Marissa wouldn't be able to hear that.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"We heard shots--" Marissa began.

"Yeah, well...Nobody got hurt; looks like the bad guys got away again," Gary told her.  "I'm okay," he added, noticing Chuck's dubious stare.  Some of the tension went out of his friend's posture, but Gary had a feeling he'd catch hell later.

Mulder frowned as he stepped closer, the headlight's of Chuck's car giving them all a better view of each other than his flashlight could.  "Well, Hobson, we meet again."  He flashed an indecipherable look in Agent Scully's direction.  "How did you find us?"

"More to the point," Agent Scully said, joining the little circle, "what are you doing here at all?"  She was rubbing the back of her neck, her hair was in disarray and her coat had slipped off one shoulder, but even so she was clearly in command of herself and the situation.

"Looks like he's saving your life--again," Chuck said pointedly, addressing his remark to Mulder.

"Who are these people, anyway?" Mulder asked Gary, indicating Chuck and Marissa with a sweep of his hand.  "You brought civilians out here?"

"Mulder, they're all civilians," Agent Scully said, impatiently pulling a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes and tucking them behind her ear.  "At least," she continued, turning her gaze full on Gary, "that's what he appears to be.  Mr. Hobson, would you care to tell us what's going on?"

"I--I had a feeling something was going to happen," Gary reminded her, "so I came out here to try and stop it."

"You knew we were going to be run off the road and into a tree?  You knew those men were going to come after us?"  Arms crossed, Agent Scully regarded Gary with suspicion and disbelief.

"Well, I--"  He was treading on dangerous ground now.  "I guessed about the accident.  I didn't know about the guys with the guns."

"*How* did you guess?" she insisted.

"Well, sometimes, I...that is, I just get..." Gary trailed off, shifting uncomfortably under her stare.

"He KNOWS stuff.  He just DOES."  Chuck said impatiently, as if that would explain everything.

"So you're a psychic, then?" Agent Mulder asked in a tone that was almost conspiratorial.

"I--no--no, I'm not a psychic.  I just get--" he looked over at Chuck, who shrugged, and Marissa, who almost managed to hide a small smile.  "I get these feelings about stuff."

"Can you see into the future?" Agent Mulder pressed.  He was the nearer of the two agents to Gary and he leaned even closer, his eyes searching Gary's face as if there were answers written there for him to read.  Agent Scully rolled her eyes.

"The future?  Well, sort of, I mean..." Gary realized what he was about to say and stopped, thankful the paper was out of sight.

"Logically, Mr. Hobson," Agent Scully cut in, "the only way you could have known about this incident before it happened is if you had some connection to the people who perpetrated it.  Is that the case?"
Gary took refuge in the part of the truth he *could* tell her.  "Look, I'm not one of those guys, and I don't have any special powers, all right?  I'm just an out-of-work-ex-stockbroker.  I was just trying to help."

"And how does an out-of-work-ex-stockbroker get by in Chicago these days?" Agent Mulder asked.  "Maybe you pick up a little extra cash on the side, running interference with the FBI?"
 

"Interfer--they were going to kill you!"  Having to defend himself was getting old fast.

"Gary," Marissa whispered, warning him to calm down.

He took a deep breath, but he was still angry at the accusation he read in the agents' questions.  "You know, I risked getting shot to get them away from your car because I thought they were going to kill you.  Doesn't that count for anything?"

"At the risk of repeating myself," Agent Mulder countered, "How *exactly* did you come across this particular accident on this particular night?  Did you just stumble across this the way you stumbled across my wallet?  More pure dumb luck?"

"I guess my luck's not so dumb after all."

"Or maybe it's not so pure."

"You got this all wrong," Chuck broke in, attempting to ease the escalating tension.  "It wasn't Gary, not exactly anyway.  It was the cat."

Agent Mulder's gaze swiveled to Chuck.  "The cat?"

Chuck nodded.  "Yeah, the cat that was on the road.  Gary pulled us off into the field on the other side so we wouldn't hit it."

Agent Mulder turned back to Gary.  "You were driving?"

"No, Chuck was."

"But he said--"  The agent's jaw tightened in frustration.

"I grabbed the wheel.  I didn't want to hit the cat."

"Well, aren't you the humanitarian?"  Agent Mulder's tone was getting edgier by the minute.

"You have no idea," Chuck said cryptically.

"Unbelievable," Gary heard Agent Scully mutter under her breath.

Gary gave up on Agent Mulder and turned to his partner, hoping he could convince her that he wasn't one of the bad guys.  But he lost whatever he was going to say.  In the headlight's illumination, he saw a dark liquid trickling down towards her lip.

"Uh, Agent Scully?  You have a nosebleed, you're--uh--here--" He fished in the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a handkerchief, and handed it to her.  She took it without a word and turned away from the little group.

"Scully."  Agent Mulder's tone had changed utterly; it was now one of complete concern and, Gary thought, sadness.  "C'mon, Scully, you need--" he touched her shoulder, but she shrugged his hand away.

"I'm *fine*, Mulder."

"But--"

"It was just the impact from the airbag.  I'm FINE," she repeated.

The conversation had the air of a scene that was both intense and familiar.  Agent Mulder's reaction was completely out of proportion to a simple bloody nose.  Gary wondered what *exactly* he had stumbled into this time.

"Look, you keep talking to Mr. Hobson and his friends here," Agent Scully told her partner.   She sniffed and wiped her nose again.  "I'm going to call for a tow truck.  God knows if we'll be able to get another rental, after today."

Agent Mulder watched her walk off a few paces and pull a cell phone from her trench coat, then turned back to Gary.  He suddenly looked very weary.  "All right, Hobson.  Anything more you want to tell me?  Or are we just going to leave it at 'a guess'?"
 

"I can't tell you any more than that, because there isn't any more to tell.  I just--I felt responsible for you, you know, after this morning, and I--I wanted to help.  That's all."

"It was a logical deduction," Marissa added in the dubious silence that followed.  "Gary saw that you were a persistent person.  He figured that whatever you were looking for, you hadn't found it this morning, so you'd be back out here.  He was worried that there might be more trouble.  So we just came out to see what we could see.  Then the cat appeared on the road, and, well--you know the rest."

Mulder looked from Gary to Marissa and back again.  Then he glanced over in the direction Scully had gone.  He watched for a moment while she spoke into her phone, then turned to Gary.  "For now, you can go.  But don't go far.  I--we--may want to talk with you again."

"Well, uh, don't you need a ride back or something?  I'm not sure it's a good idea to be out here--" Gary gestured back at the road in the direction the assailants had gone.

"We'll be okay," Agent Mulder said as his partner joined them again.

"The tow truck should be here in ten minutes," she informed him.

"What about those guys?  What if they come back?"  Out of the corner of his eye, Gary could see Chuck backing away, pulling Marissa with him and frantically shaking his head no.  As in, no, don't get in any deeper than you already are.

"Unless you know something we don't--" Mulder paused and gave Gary a meaningful look, but he just shook his head.  "Well, then, I think we'll be, uh--" he looked at his partner.  "Fine.  Absolutely fine."

Gary shrugged and started to join Chuck and Marissa, who were walking carefully through the half-frozen mud back to the car, but it didn't feel right.  He turned back one more time.  "Are you sure you don't--"

"Goodnight, Mr. Hobson," Agent Scully said firmly.

He finally nodded, nothing left to say, and caught up with his friends.  "What is it, Gary?" Marissa asked as they piled into Chuck's car.

"I don't know," he murmured, half to himself.  "The paper, it's--it left out some important details."

"You mean, details like guys with guns?" Chuck asked dryly as he started the car.

"Well, yeah, but it's more than that.  There wasn't a word in there this morning about Agent Mulder getting beaten up before he was left to die of exposure, and then tonight, it said they'd die from the car crash, not from being shot.  Those are kind of major details to leave out."  Nothing, it seemed, was as it seemed.  Twisting in his seat, Gary stared out the rear window, trying to make out the agents where they'd left them in the field.
 

Marissa put a hand on his shoulder.  "Check the paper.  There's not anything in there now, is there?"

"Oh...uh..." he extracted it from his pocket and fumbled to turn on the map light with one hand while he turned pages with the other.  Chuck kept the car idling, glancing nervously out towards the field every few seconds and drumming his fingers on the wheel.

"No," Gary finally told them.  "Nothing."  He let out a long breath, still frowning.
 

Chuck pulled out onto the highway and headed back toward the city.  "There damn well shouldn't be.  You saved their butts out there, not to mention you've been shot at twice today.  Don't you think you've done enough?"

"I hope so," Gary muttered, but in his gut he knew there was more to this than met the eye.  Past experiences with the paper had taught him that discrepancies tended to resolve themselves sooner or later, and however the thing worked, it did nothing without a reason.

He just hoped that he--that all of them--could live with the resolution of this particular situation, whatever it turned out to be.
 

Part 9
 
 

There are those of little faith it seems
And they beg for truth like charity
And I see them on every street corner....
Sometimes someone drifts by
And our nets get entwined in the sea
     ~Shawn Colvin, "Kill the Messenger"
 

11:45 PM
Downtown Chicago

Their next move, as it turned out, was to new lodgings.  Mulder had been staying at something called the Stop 'n' Snooze Motel, notable only for its proximity to the medical research institute he'd been investigating.  Scully pointed out that it would be better to be in town, seeing as anyone who'd traced the registration on his original rental car might also be able to learn where Mulder had been staying.  She couldn't help but add that she, personally, preferred not to stay in a place where the weeds in front of the office were taller than she was.  Besides, she'd told Mulder, a downtown location would put them close to the local FBI offices and offer some modicum of anonymity.

So they had retrieved their bags from the ruined second rental car and taken a cab back to the city and the hotel of her choice.  After checking in she'd grabbed both bags, despite Mulder's protests, and led him, still hobbling, onto the elevator and up to their rooms.  She tried to ignore the faces Mulder was making at her as they took in the faded glory of the Congress Hotel.

In the aftermath of the accident and their run-in with Gary Hobson and his friends, Scully had managed to fend off Mulder's concern over the nosebleed, but at the moment she would have gladly gone back to that state of affairs.  Anything would have been preferable to the gloating he was doing right now.  She dropped his bag unceremoniously on the worn carpet, next to the single, threadbare upholstered chair that was the room's sole concession to actual comfort.

"Stop smirking, Mulder.  Lie down and get that ankle propped up," Scully commanded as he tossed his coat on the chair and started rummaging about for a remote control.  She tried to ignore the sly glances he cast in her direction, the way his eyes twinkled, the tiniest bit of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Oh, come on, Scully, even you have to admit this is pretty funny."

No, she didn't.

After everything he'd been through, though, Mulder was feeling his oats.  "Got it!" he crowed, discovering the remote in a drawer with a Gideon Bible and some hotel stationery that was yellowing around the edges.  "I mean, here we are in downtown Chicago, home to some of the classiest hotels in the country; I let you select--"

"*Let*?  Mulder, after one look at that roach palace you called home for the past two nights there was no way I was going to let you play travel agent."  She wished she could just get a chalkboard eraser and wipe the self-satisfied grin off his face.

"Well," Mulder continued, finally plopping down on the bed, which gave out an ominous creak or two, "at any rate, *you* picked this one.  The Congress Hotel, you said.  Old world charm, you said.  Former stopping place of presidents, you said."  He spread out his arms in a sweeping gesture that took in the dimly-lit, just-this-side-of-shabby room.  "I've got to hand it to you, Scully.  This really is quaint, old-fashioned luxury at its finest."

"I didn't say those things, the taxi driver did," she sighed.  "At least it's clean, and close to the Federal Center.  Actually, though," she added, moving to the window and pulling back the faded purple curtains, "this used to be a nice place.  The view's good.  You can see Buckingham Fountain from your room."  She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, suddenly weary.  The whole day was catching up with her.

"You've been here before?" Mulder asked.  "Without me?  Scully, I thought I was your guide to all things dilapidated and out of date."

She turned from the window, letting the curtain drop, and flashed him a faint, wry smile.  "I've been a lot of places, Mulder, I'm a navy brat, remember?"  She leaned back against the windowsill.  "It's been a long time, though.  Ahab was stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Base when I was a kid, and we used to come here for dinner when Mom needed a night on the town."  Enough about the past, Scully thought.  She was tired and wanted to go to her own room and crash.  "So, what are we going to do?"

"About Gary Hobson?"

Her jaw dropped.  "You know perfectly well that isn't what I meant."

"Well, maybe it should be."  Arms folded across his chest, Mulder tilted his chin in the air as he spoke.  With his face bruised, his tie askew, and one foot propped on a pillow, the effect he created was something less than imperious.

"Oh, come on Mulder," Scully brushed a stray lock of hair back over her ear.  "Gary Hobson is just a--a kook with a hero complex.  He's nothing to worry about."

"Scully, you can't seriously believe that was a coincidence.  The odds would be astronomical."

"I don't suppose it was, Mulder, but that doesn't mean he's involved in whatever's happening at that institute."  Now was a fine time for Mulder to adopt a skeptical world view.

"He must know something.  The question is, how?  And who is he working for?"  Mulder frowned at the forecast being displayed on the Weather Channel, as if it held the answers.

"Right, Mulder.  He's part of an evil conspiracy to save your life every twelve hours or so.  You want evidence?"  Scully started ticking items off on her fingers.  "He pulled your butt out of the proverbial sling in that cornfield this morning, he made sure the local office called me, he stuck around to make sure you were okay in the hospital, he tried to warn me--"  Uh-oh.

Mulder sat up straighter, frowning.  "Warn you?  About what?"

Sighing, Scully sat on the foot of the bed.  "In the hospital, before I went in to see you, he was trying to tell me something would happen tonight.  He went on and on about icy roads, but I think that was just a cover story or something.  He really did believe that something was going to happen."

"So you admit that he could be one of them."

"I admit no such thing, Mulder.  It's like his friend said, he was just being...protective of you.  More than a little, yes, but if he really did want to make sure you were all right, he could easily have extrapolated from what he did know and deduce where we would be."

"I still think this whole thing is suspicious."

"Mulder, did you see who he was with?  A blind woman and a...a..."

"Fish."

"What?"  There had been a dog and talk of a cat, but--

"That's his name.  The other guy.  Chuck Fishman."

"Oh.  Well, neither of them--none of them, actually--looked like they have anything to do with the kind of people we're after."

"That's the point though, Scully.  They don't look suspicious; we don't suspect them.  They lead us along for a while and then--Bam!  They get the drop on us."

"The drop?  Those three?"  Scully snorted.  "I'd be more likely to lay money on the imaginary cat."
 

"Well, that's another thing--"

"No, Mulder.  No.  We are not having this conversation again.  Forget Gary Hobson and his--his friends.  We need to go over what you know, what I know, and what we are going to do about Scanlon and whatever is going on at that institute."

And so they did.  The basics she already knew, the rest had been filled in by Byers, mostly.  The Samuel J. Andrews Medical Research Institute specialized in oncology and genetic markers for cancer.  Well, she had to give them points for originality on that--at least it wasn't another fertility clinic.  The institute had been part of the Human Genome Project up until last November, when all their government research grants had been pulled pending investigation of their practices for garnering consent from their human subjects.   Apparently, not all those involved in several of the institute's research studies had completed informed consent forms.

If it didn't make her sick to her stomach, it would have made Scully laugh.  *She* certainly couldn't remember filling out any kind of consent form in the fall of 1994.  Being bound hand and foot in the trunk of Duane Barry's car had made such niceties difficult in the extreme.

She didn't say that to Mulder.  She didn't have to. The look he gave her when he handed her the file containing the list of discrepancies was enough to tell her that he was thinking exactly the same thing.

Shoddy record keeping had been blamed for the mismatches between the number of subjects reported in final reports and the actual number of informed consent forms that had been filed.  A written reprimand had been issued, and the institute had been pulled from the Human Genome Project.  Then, without explanation, its government funding had resumed in late January, which, Mulder pointed out, coincided with Scanlon's disappearance from the hospital in Allentown.

The last time Mulder and Scully had talked to the Lone Gunmen, they'd been looking for medical doctors, males, who'd been recently hired by fertility clinics, cancer treatment centers, and medical research laboratories throughout the country.  It was a long list, but several factors had helped them narrow down the search.  The Andrews Institute's recent troubles, along with its focus on genetic markers for cervical, ovarian, and breast cancers had sounded all kinds of alarms, and when the Gunmen hacked into its personnel records they'd found a new hire the week after Scanlon's disappearance.  The suspect was a medical researcher and practicing oncologist, a male, forty-eight years old, whose credentials didn't hold up when the Gunmen started checking them more carefully.  It was the best luck they'd had in the month or so that had passed since Penny Northern's death, and when they'd told Mulder, he'd sworn them to secrecy and taken the next plane to O'Hare.

Scully didn't even go into the whys and wherefores of that particular move.  It was too late and she knew what she'd hear.  She also knew it wouldn't be the whole truth, but right now she didn't have the energy to weasel the details of the revelations he'd found at Lombard out of her partner.

"So," she said pensively when Mulder had finished outlining the information, "chances are that there are women here in Chicago who believe they are abductees, who have some connection to this institute, or to Scanlon."

"Nelson," Mulder amended.  "That's the name he's going by now.  Dr. Keith Nelson."

"Original," Scully murmured, not really thinking of the name.  She had been sitting on the edge of Mulder's bed, one leg tucked under her, elbow on her knee and chin cupped in her hand.  Now she sighed and straightened up.  "You were right earlier, Mulder.  We should get more evidence before we go after him and the others.   The thing to do now is to find those women, see if any of them have had experiences similar to those of the MUFON members in Allentown.  We can go to the local bureau in the morning and set up the investigation there.  From the way Skinner reacted when I called him this afternoon, I'm pretty sure he'll back us up."

"And contact the local MUFON chapter."  Mulder was starting to droop.  It hadn't exactly been an easy day for either of them, Scully reminded herself.  She stood and stretched.  "Get some rest, Mulder.  Did you take the pain meds?"

He shrugged, not meeting her eyes.

"Take them.  Nothing more is going to happen tonight."  She tossed his travel bag onto the bed where he could reach it and then picked up her own.  "See you in the morning," she added as she made for the door.
 

"Scully?"  She turned to find her partner regarding her with willful intensity.  "We'll find him.  I know how important this is to you.  I just--I just didn't want you to get hurt."

"I know, Mulder."  She rubbed the back of her neck, still knotted from the jolt she'd taken when their car had hit the tree.  "And we'll do more than find him."   Scully thought of Penny Northern, and her jaw tightened.  "We'll stop him."

Mulder nodded solemnly, his gaze never leaving her face.

"Goodnight, Mulder."  She pulled the door open and stepped across the hall into her own room.

* * * * *

Thursday, February 18
11:45 AM
Blackstone Grille

Gary bought lunch for Chuck the next day as a way of apologizing for the abuse his friend's car had suffered.  Arriving just ahead of the lunchtime crowds, they found a free booth in the diner in Gary's hotel.  It was a familiar haunt, and the waitress had their coffee poured  and their orders taken before they finished taking off their coats.  Gary found himself wondering what she thought of this pair who came in a couple of times a week, one in jeans or sweats and the other in a business suit, and sat discussing and debating news articles in hushed voices.

"So, what'cha got this afternoon, Gar?" Chuck asked in clipped tones, peering over the rim of his coffee cup.

"Nothing much," Gary muttered vaguely as he unfolded the Sun-Times and began paging through it.  "There was a purse snatcher over in Lincoln Park this morning, and this afternoon there's a...uh...a guy who's gonna try to hijack an El train with a can opener, vandalism at the museum, stuff like that."

"A can opener?  What a loony tune."

"Yeah..." Gary mumbled, wondering, as he had every time he'd looked at the paper in the past few hours, why he wasn't seeing what he expected.

"You gonna need any help?"

"Um...no, no..." Gary trailed off distractedly, still scanning page after page of the paper for something, anything, about--

"Says on the back here that Elvis is gonna score thirty points to help the Bulls win tonight."

"That's great, but don't read the sports scores, Chuck, you know it only gets you into trouble," Gary responded automatically.  This was so strange.  He would have bet money that there would be *something*.

"Gar?  Hello?"  Chuck set his coffee cup back on its saucer, reached across the table and snapped his fingers in Gary's face.  Gary finally looked up, blinking.

"What?"

"You really think you're gonna find somebody who needs rescuing in the used car section of the want ads?" asked Chuck, indicating the page he'd been scrutinizing.

"I--uh...no, no, it's just--" Gary moved the paper out of the way as the waitress brought their meals and refilled Chuck's coffee.  "Something doesn't feel right."

"Another feeling?"  Chuck sighed.  "C'mon buddy, lighten up.  Sounds like you have a relatively easy day today.  Why don't you just enjoy it?"

Gary turned to the front of the paper and started through it again.  Maybe he'd missed it, maybe it was part of a small story and wasn't even in the headline.

"Yo, Gar!"  Chuck was poking at the paper with his fork.  "What *is* it?"

"You're getting dressing all over the paper," Gary snapped, finally folding the Sun-Times and setting it on the seat beside him.  He picked up his own spoon and started in on his chili.

"Well, at least I got your attention.  You wanna tell me what's going on?" Chuck asked around a mouthful of lettuce.

Gary glanced around the diner to make sure no one was listening to them.  "Those FBI agents from last night, they're not in there," he whispered.

"Well, good!  Your work with them is done."  Gary started to shake his head, and Chuck dropped his fork in exasperation.  "Gary, you saved their lives--saved his twice.  What more could they want?  What more do *you* want?"

"I'm not sure.  It just doesn't feel right.  You know how sometimes the paper keeps sending me to the same people?  This feels like one of those times, except they aren't in here."  Gary paused, then leaned in closer.  "You know how the cat acts when it wants me to pay attention to something?  This morning it wouldn't leave me alone, wound around my legs the whole time I was looking through the paper, but I don't see anything special in here, nothing at all."  Finished, he sat back, absently opening a package of crackers and crumbling them into the chili.

Chuck leaned his head to one side, raising an eyebrow.  "All right, buddy, you know what?  I think you need to take a break before you fall into the deep end, here."

Gary paused, a spoonful of chili midway to his mouth.  "Meaning what?"

"Meaning that you're taking this way too seriously, way too personally.  You did what you had to do, now you're done.  Do you really WANT to be involved with those people?  Do you want the kind of trouble they landed in yesterday to land on you?"

"Well, no, but--" Gary set the spoon back down without eating its contents.

"No buts is right."  Elbows on the table, Chuck held one finger in his friend's direction to make sure Gary didn't miss his point.  "There are no two ways about it.  This stuff is way outta your ballpark, and if the paper is telling you to stay away, then I think you should listen to it."

"*You* think I should listen to the paper?"  Gary's brow furrowed.

"In this case, yes.  You do not need FBI-level trouble, Big Guy."

No doubt Chuck was right.  Whatever was going on with those two, it wasn't any of Gary's business.  Agent Scully had made that perfectly clear.  If the paper wasn't going to put him in their path, then he supposed it meant there wasn't anything for him to do.  Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that the whole affair wasn't over, that something had been set in motion that was going to have to be corrected.

He checked his watch, tossed a couple of bills onto the table.  "Yeah, well, look, Chuck, I gotta go.  That whole El-train thing..."

"Yeah, yeah, run off and desert me.  Lucky for you I've got someone to keep me company, right Lucy?"  Chuck leaned back in his seat and smiled at their waitress as she passed.  She rolled her eyes and kept right on going.  Unfazed, Chuck turned his attention back to Gary.  "You're not gonna do anything stupid, right?  Stay away from trouble, or at least, stay away from trouble you don't have tossed in your lap."

"Yeah, okay," Gary was pulling on his coat and gloves, fishing in his pocket for an El token.

"You still gonna meet Marissa and me after work?"

"Um...yeah, but I might be a little late, okay?  This purse snatching thing is--" he checked the paper "--it's at 4:40.  So, after that, at five.  You tell Marissa, okay?"

"What do I look like, a secretary?"
 

"Chuck--" Gary began in a warning tone.

"All right.  Go on, save our streets, McGruff.  See ya later."  Chuck waved him off and Gary headed out into the bright, cold afternoon.
 

Part 10
 

Blue, silent hue, comforting me all the time.
Forever more, never more now.
     ~Robert Shannon Meitus, "Blue"
 

Federal Center
FBI Field Office
3:10 PM

Files and files and files and files...

Scully pushed the latest pile over to the side and rested her elbows on the desk, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples with her thumbs.

Her head was going to explode.  She just knew it.

It wasn't the tumor.  It was the pressure of the building revelations, the pieces that were slowly but surely clicking into place; the bits of the truth that were, for once, adding up to something that resembled the Truth for which Mulder had been questing throughout their partnership.

They had spent the morning and early afternoon ensconced in the bullpen of the FBI's Chicago field office, sorting through medical records, insurance information, and faxes from the local MUFON chapter.  Comparing, cross-checking--trying to find something, anything, that would link events, and maybe people, in Chicago with those in Allentown.  It was good old-fashioned detective work, and Mulder had plunged into it with enthusiastic determination.

Scully's determination was more grim, because they were obviously on the right track.  There were several women listed in the Chicago-area MUFON chapter who had connections to either the Andrews Institute or the hospital where Scanlon/Nelson practiced.

Connections, hell.  They were research subjects.  They believed they had been abducted by aliens.  Furthermore, there was no doubt in Scully's mind that some of these women, if not all of them, were cancer victims.  She could even predict the kind of cancer and the prognosis.

Reaching for the bottle of Motrin sitting open on the borrowed desk, Scully took two and downed them with cold coffee, ignoring the protest from her otherwise empty stomach.  The niggling dread that had been there for weeks had grown to an insistent gnawing when she'd learned that Scanlon was here--when she'd allowed herself to realize that there were more.

More Penny Northerns.  More Betsy Hagopians.  More victims who had been used, against their wills, in experiments and tests designed to facilitate God alone knew what--or whose--ends.

More Dana Scullys.

That's what it boiled down to.  There were more women like her.  Meeting the first few had sparked flashes of memory.  What would meeting more do to her?  Would she remember everything?
 

Did she want to?

Did she want to remember something so horrible that her own vaunted logic and reason were protecting her from it completely, even when it might provide a clue to a cure?  Did she want to remember what had happened, when Mulder, truth's champion, couldn't bring himself to tell her what he had learned at Lombard?

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

I'll take Door Number Three, Monty.

Lifting her head from her hands, Scully took another file from the pile, and stared at the contents for a few long minutes without absorbing a word.  The pounding of her heart was too distracting.

She clenched one fist around a pen and resolutely started reading the first page again.  She had to know.  She had to face this.  She'd made a promise, and she couldn't bring the men responsible to justice if she didn't face the truth.

But what if she couldn't face the truth?  What if the truth held despair, rather than hope?  What then?

Cross that bridge when you come to it, Scully told herself, as she had been telling herself all along.  Problem was, she thought with a barely-suppressed shudder, she could reach that bridge at any moment.

And that scared the living shit out of her.  What if Scanlon slipped away from them again?  What if the abductees being treated for cancer could be spoken to, convinced to stop treatment with him, what then?  What did she have to offer these women but a death sentence just like her own?

What did they have to offer her but more flimsy evidence that was hardly worth the name, more flashbacks that she wasn't sure she could trust, and more truths that she wasn't ready to face?

She certainly couldn't face those truths right now; not in the next couple of minutes, not surrounded by strangers in a hot, overcrowded office, not with Mulder surreptitiously watching her every move as if she were a pot about to boil over.

What she needed was a place where she could pull herself together, someplace private and quiet.  Special Agent Dana Scully would *not* fall apart in front of her colleagues.  She drew a deep breath, rubbing the back of her neck, and turned to stare out the window at the traffic whizzing along Dearborn Street.

Of course.  This was Chicago; she knew *exactly* where to go.

Now, if she could get there alone.  The last thing she needed right now was Mulder's hovering concern.  Actually, he was probably thinking the same thing after all the medical attention she'd been dispensing of late, Scully thought wryly.  She gathered her coat and walked over to where he sat, his left hand on the phone, the fingers of his right drumming aimlessly on the desk.  He stared off into nothing, but that didn't mean that nothing was happening.  Sometimes she swore she could hear the click and whir of gears when he was busy thinking a problem through.

Tapping his shoulder, she transferred her coat from one arm to the other.  "Mulder?"

"Scully."  He turned smoothly, graceful as a cat, as though he'd expected her to be there.  Maybe he had.  "I just spoke with the director of the local MUFON chapter.  They're meeting tonight and--"

"That's...that's good," she said, as dispassionately as she could, interrupting him before he got to the part where they crashed the party and started looking for implants.  She couldn't deal with that right now.  "Look, I have a headache.  I think I need some fresh air."

He started to struggle to his feet, but she gently pushed him back down, one hand on his shoulder.   "Are you all right?" he asked, his brow suddenly furrowed, his intensity now turned full on her.

Scully shifted from one foot to the other.  One of these days, she was going to explain to him just how stupid that question sounded to someone with a terminal illness.  Nothing was ever going to be all right again.  For now, though, she managed a tight smile.  "It's nothing serious, Mulder.  I just didn't get much sleep last night and it's pretty stuffy in here.  I'll go take a walk.  Do you want something to eat?"  They'd missed lunch completely.

He hesitated, searching her eyes for some clue as to what was really going on, and for a few horrible seconds, she was afraid he was going to call her bluff, was about to touch her arm or her hair in that solicitous way he had, was going to tell her that he was sorry, or fearful, or angry, too.  God, not that.  She really would fly apart at the seams if he started the supportive friend stuff now.  She couldn't do it.  Not here.

Mulder either didn't see what she was trying so desperately to hide, or sensed the edge of the precipice that she had come to and decided to let her back away from it on her own.  He nodded slowly.  "Okay, Scully.  Sounds good."  He blinked, and the sad, abiding concern was gone, replaced for the moment by the easy, teasing familiarity that had been the first foundation of their partnership.  Something inside Scully eased just a little.  She nodded back and sidestepped the second chair where he'd propped up his ankle.

"Scully?"

She turned back, eyebrow raised.  Just the right angle, that's it, hold on for a few more seconds...

"I want one of those polish sausage things they have here.  With lots of onions."

"Bratwurst, Mulder.  They're called brats," she corrected automatically, making a face at the thought of the greasy sandwich.

"Yeah, and sauerkraut.  Onions, hot mustard and kraut."

She shook her head.  "Fine.  Just don't expect me to get within ten feet of you this evening."

"Damn," he joked, "another perfectly good seduction ruined by the temptations of ethnic cuisine."

"Seduction, Mulder?  In your dreams."

She held it together in the hallway, when someone tried to hand her yet another fax.  She just pointed them toward Mulder.

She held it together in the elevator, even when it stopped five times in the course of seven floors.

She held it together, and then when she got outside she stood under the towering arch of Picasso's sculpture in the plaza, blew it out in long, deep breaths that came from her toes, through her diaphragm, and took nearly every scrap of air out of her lungs.  Sucking in the clean, cold lake air and blowing out the frustration and fear, Scully started walking.

She covered the half mile to the Art Institute quickly, taking deep draughts of the brisk winter air and exhaling it in crystalline puffs.  She swung her arms a bit to get the oxygen circulating faster in her bloodstream; looked up and watched the El train as it rattled over the loop when she crossed Wabash Street.  All of it helped--the noise, the wind, the bustling crowds, the city smells of restaurants and exhaust fumes that mingled with the fresh scent of water off the lake.   The energy out here gave her pent-up anxiety somewhere to go, something on which to focus.  The vibrations of the city resonated with her own, and she could feel the knot between her shoulders start to untie itself, and her hands unclench from the fists they had been curled into for the past few hours.

At noon the sky had been overcast and grey, but a stiff wind had blown up out of the west, dissipating the clouds into random puffs of white against an azure sky.  Even better.  The light would be just right.

Scully had been surprised last night when she'd realized that she'd never told Mulder she'd lived here--if she had, Mulder would have remembered.  She had lived in so many different places, and Chicago had been one of the briefer stints.  Still, the city had had an impact on her.   Hell, she thought, when you're twelve *everything* has an impact.

There was St. Anastasia's Catholic School, run by nuns with strangely masculinized names like Sister Johneen and Sister Davida, and there was the girl who had been her best friend for a whole four months, Amy Clemmons.   Amy had shown her how to roll up the waistline of her uniform skirt at recess, when the teachers weren't looking, so that her knees and part of her thighs showed.  Not only did it get the boys' attention, it distracted them so much that the girls' team almost always won at kickball.  Scully hadn't corresponded with Amy in years; she wondered if she was still in Chicago, if she was married and had daughters of her own.
 

In the life of a Navy brat, people came and went.  Scully had learned to deal with that.  Her partnership with Mulder was one of the longest-lasting relationships she'd ever had outside of her own family.  People, friendships, ties--those were ephemeral, but some things lasted.  Some places were imprinted on her heart because of the excitement and peace and the comfort she had found.  The sea was one, but there were others.  In every city she'd ever lived in Dana Scully had managed to find a safe harbor.
 

She crossed Michigan Avenue with the light and moved quickly past the derelicts and small knots of art students who milled around near the bottom of the Art Institute's outside staircase.  Groups of schoolchildren climbed the stone steps, chattering excitedly, swirling and bouncing off each other like gas molecules in a closed system.  One pair of girls broke off from their class to run and touch one of the bronze lions that stood guard over the entrance.  Scully felt something constrict in her chest, and resisted the urge to run her own fingers over the polished metal.  Almost there.

She paid for her ticket and navigated her way through the polished wood and marble entryway.  There had been a few changes in the years since she'd last been here, but the basic layout of the museum was still the same, she saw from the map the ticket-taker handed her.  Up the facing staircases were the paintings, including the Van Goghs her sister Melissa had loved.
 

She went past the stairs and into the long hall that led to the annex, past the glass cases of religious reliquary on the right and of armor and weaponry on the left.  Her brothers had always lingered here, comparing the shapes, metals, and effectiveness of the various swords.  Bill would tell Charlie tall tales and they'd speculate about  being knights and fighting for justice, chivalry, and treasure--mostly treasure.

Scully came around the final case, like a salmon swimming upstream against the flow of visitors who'd come in the back door, and there it was; an oasis of blue light that swam and dazzled and suffused the room that marked the intersection of two hallways, of the old and new galleries, of east and west.

The Chagall windows.

The wide bench tucked under the ramp that led from the medieval hallway to the annex was unoccupied.  Scully negotiated the ramp and planted herself on the bench, spreading out her trench coat so that no one would get too close.  She closed her eyes for a moment, focusing, concentrating, blocking out the movement and noise around and within her, then opened them.

The light was still there; the sun was streaming in from the courtyard.   Symbols of the arts, white and yellow and magenta, were scattered over the expanse of the three large windows, but it was the blue that mattered, the blue glass that was more like the ocean she cherished and pined for than Lake Michigan could ever be.  Sitting in this space was like being in the ocean, diving in a coral reef; it was submersion, relinquishment, contentment.  It was peace.  It was a day when she was twelve and Melissa had wandered off among the Impressionist rooms and the boys were exploring arms and armor and for a rare moment she'd had her mother all to herself and they had found this juncture in the maze of galleries.

There were so many shades of blue, pulling light through the odd, angular polygons of glass and transforming it into a miracle of color.  She had stood there dazed with wonder, her mother at her side, suddenly not nearly as old as her twelve years usually felt.  "There's so much blue, Mom!"

"Blue like the ocean," said her mother, pointing to one trapezoid of glass.  "Blue like the sky."

"Blue like Dad's uniform," she replied, indicating a corner square; then another, much lighter--"Blue like the lake."

"Blue like my baby's eyes," her mom had murmured, looking not at the windows at all, but at the daughter who was growing and changing faster by the day.  And for once, for one small moment in time, she hadn't cringed or pulled away or been too cool.  She had smiled, and her mother had reached out to touch her hair, maybe to pull her close--

--and Bill and Charlie had come charging down the ramp, begging their mother to come and see the horse armor in the hallway, breaking the spell.   She had pulled away almost imperceptibly from her mother's touch and they had gone to join the others.
 

Obviously, though, the spell wasn't entirely broken.  Scully was still drawn to this place of light, and though she could count the times she'd been to Chicago since they'd moved some twenty years ago on her fingers, she thought of it as her place.  It was a pilgrimage she always made when she was in the city.

Blue like the ocean, where her father rested.

Blue like his uniform, his badge of honor.

Blue like the sky, the sky Melissa had taught her to play with when she was only a toddler..."Lie on your back Dana, and spread out your arms, and fall into the sky..."

Blue like her own eyes, which had seen so much since the last time she'd been here.

A cloud must have passed over the sun; the colors dimmed for a moment, casting new, duller shades across the room before the cloud moved on and the brighter hues reasserted themselves.  She shook herself out of the memories and walked closer to the windows, wanting to be in that blue, to be part of it for a time.

One last time.

This wasn't like the any other visit.  Before, she had known that no matter how long she might be away, she'd eventually return.  This time was different--this time, she was here to say good-bye.  Not just so long, or until next time, but good-bye.  Good-bye to fragile peace and whispering memories; good-bye to the little girl she had been and the woman she could have become.   Good-bye to the past and the future; there was only the present now, and there was precious little color in that.

Odds were there wouldn't be any reason to come back to Chicago once they had learned what they could, and then, in a few months...

Good thing Mulder wasn't here.  He wouldn't tolerate this kind of thinking, this lack of hope.  Mulder never did deal very well with anyone's version of reality except his own, and in his own, there was no room for doubt; there was a cure.  She wished she could exist in that reality for long enough to get a handle on what he believed, and why.  Maybe then she could believe it, too.

Of course, existing in Mulder's reality meant knowing everything he knew, and she wasn't there yet, not by a long shot.  She could not, however, go around angry at him for not telling her everything, not when she had yet to find the courage to come right out and ask.  It wasn't the questions she was afraid of, and it wasn't Mulder.  It was the answers from which he was protecting her.  The results of what had been done to her might extend past whatever life she had left, and she would be powerless to stop the evil in which she might have had a hand in creating, however small her role and however involuntary it may have been.  There were worse things than dying.

Sighing, Scully held out her hand and watching the play of light along her spread fingers; blue, mauve, white, blue.  She knew part of the reason Mulder believed so fiercely, or at least *wanted* so fiercely to believe, in cures and physical salvation.  He was afraid of what it would mean to him when she left.  The two of them were like water and wine, very different substances, each with its own taste, but once combined inextricable and indistinguishable.  What would happen when she had to pull herself out of the mixture?

Mulder would keep going.  He had to.  She needed to be strong enough to make him see that.  Penny Northern had died alone, without family or friends; the only one with her had been a stranger.  Before Penny had died, Dana Scully had made her a promise.  She intended to do everything in her power to keep that promise, even if it meant making sure that Mulder kept it for her if her own attempts fell short.

She clenched her fist around a handful of azure, then opened her hand, palm down, and let it go.

Time to go back.  She could handle this now.  For the sake of the promise she'd made, Scully would find a way to keep going, beyond her own doubts and fears.  She would find a way to give meaning back to the lives of the women who'd been used and discarded, and she would do it by bringing the men responsible to justice.

She started back to the main hall, but turned for one last look.  Figures danced and trumpeted, a hand conducted, blue swirled.  She squared her shoulders resolutely and turned away.

She had work to do, criminals to pursue, lives to redeem.

She had brats to buy.
 

Part 11
 

Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray
By which he reigns; next him high arbiter
Chance governs all.
     ~John Milton, Paradise Lost
 

Art Institute of Chicago
3:55 PM

Out of breath from his hurried dash up the stairs and through the galleries, Gary paused at the entrance to the room.  He checked his watch and then the newspaper again.  "VANDALISM DESTROYS MASTERPIECE", the headline read.

"Ms. Kara Levington, an outpatient at Columbia General's psychiatric treatment facility, was arrested today after defacing one of the Art Institute of Chicago's treasured paintings..."

Gary looked up from the article and matched the accompanying photo to a petite woman who stood with her back to him, short brown curls trembling just a bit as she cocked her head.  Her hands were deep in the pockets of a beige trench coat, and as he sidled up to stand near her, Gary could see that she was frowning at the painting with fierce intensity.

"Hi," Gary began, looking quickly at the woman, then back at the painting.  Neptune or some other sea god was rising out of a swirling ocean, while mermaids swam and splashed around him.  None of the figures was actually clothed, and Gary found himself with nowhere to turn his gaze--nowhere comfortable, at any rate.

"Hi," the woman replied tersely.  She would have been pretty if her expression hadn't been distorted by hostility.
 

"Nice painting," Gary tried.

That got her attention.  She turned on him and stared, brown eyes narrowed but never still.  They flitted back and forth like gnats.  There was definitely something wrong with this woman.  "What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, the uh...execution and the, uh...the lines and the quality of...uh...the quality of the light is, you know, it's, it's good, is what I'm saying," Gary finished feebly, trying in vain to remember the one and only art appreciation class he'd taken in college.

"Pervert," she snarled.

"Excuse me?"  Taken aback, Gary took a step away from the woman, trying to put himself between her and the painting as he did so.
 

"You heard me.  You probably read _Playboy_, too."

"Oh, no, no ma'am, I don't.  This is a--it's a priceless work of art, and I was admiring the way the painter, the uh, artist, handled his um, paint."  He gestured to the painting, which was now behind him.  "And brush."

"Exploitation," she spat.  "Filth.  Naked women, rolling around in the waves like animals--"  She started to pull something out of her pocket.

"Ma'am, uh, Ms. Levington, you don't want to do this," Gary told her.  She stopped cold.

"How do you know my name?" she hissed.

"Well, I, I know a lot of things, and I know if you do what you're planning to do, you're going to be in a lot of trouble and you're going to destroy a very valuable work of art."  Gary put on his very best sincere believable guy face, not sure that it would work with a crazy woman.

"Get away from me!" she snarled, her voice rising in volume and edging ever closer to hysteria.

"I can't do that ma'am.  Look, why don't we just walk away from the painting, since it seems to be bothering you so much?"
Her face set in an angry, defiant mask, the woman advanced toward Gary and the painting, her right hand slipping out of her pocket to reveal a can of hot pink spray paint.

"It's a perversion.  It's an insult to women.  It's pornographic!  There are little school children walking around this building, and I will not let their minds be tainted by such filth!"  Her voice was louder than ever, and a dangerous glint in her eye told Gary that if he didn't get out of her path, she'd find a way through him to get at the painting.

"Hey, what--" a heavyset guard had entered the gallery, alerted by the yelling.  His presence distracted the woman long enough to give Gary an opening.  He made a diving tackle and grabbed her lower legs, sending them both to the floor as her finger depressed the spray button.  The paint can sailed out of her hand and landed next to Gary, but not before he felt something wet and sticky hit the side of his face.

As soon as he released her legs, the woman struggled to her feet, pointing an accusing finger at Gary while he reached for the can.  "He pushed me down!  He attacked me!" she cried hysterically.

More guards were entering the gallery, along with interested onlookers.  Gary looked from Kara Levington, to the guard, to the can in his hand, and back to the guard, who had one hand on the distraught woman's arm and the other held out to Gary.

"All right, buddy, just give me the can, and nobody gets hurt."

Struggling to his feet, Gary tried to explain.  "Well, no, nobody's gonna get hurt, I'm not--I mean, she was gonna mess up that painting."  He handed the can to the guard.

The guard--Larry, according to his name tag--set his lips together and gave Gary a dubious glare.  "That true?" he asked the woman.

"I was just--I--and--and he pushed me down!" she wailed.

Gary gaped at her in disbelief, then at the guard in supplication.  "I didn't--" he began, but a murmur in the crowd at the doorway of the gallery caused the guard to turn away before Gary could explain.  Gary, too, craned his neck to see what was responsible for the giggles and exclamations.  He was trying to see around Larry when he heard a sound that was both familiar and totally unexpected.

Meow.

Oh, no.  Not here.  Not now.  This was all he needed.

Unless--

As the tabby cat strolled smugly through the crowd, it left an opening in its wake; a perfect escape route.  For once, knowing that he could be here for hours while the security officers sorted out the situation, Gary didn't hesitate.  He ducked behind the guard's back and took off after the cat.

He pushed his way through the crowd, disregarding the bodies he bumped into and the hands that reached out to detain him.
The cat ran in front of him, just out of his reach, making a beeline for the main stairway.  Gary could hear footsteps behind him as other guards joined in the chase, but he managed to make it to the grand hall, and taking the marble steps two at a time, put distance between himself and his pursuers.

The cat stopped suddenly on the first floor landing, and Gary bent to scoop it up.  He started to rise, hastily, and was in the process of tucking cat and paper under his arm when he bumped into someone as he rounded the corner to the lobby.

"Excuse me," he muttered automatically, reaching out a hand to help the unsteady form in front of him.  His momentum carried him towards the lobby, but a sharp intake of breath stopped him in his tracks.  Turning back, Gary found himself staring right into the clear blue eyes of Agent Scully, FBI.

He gulped; could have sworn he felt thunder pulse through his brain.  She looked just as stunned as he felt.

"Mr. Hobson?"  She frowned in confusion.  "What--"

"I--" he started, but then he heard the clattering of hurried footsteps coming down the stairs.  There was no time for words, but he found a few anyway.  "I didn't do it," he gasped, then spun and darted through the lobby, whirling out the revolving doors before the guards were even at the bottom of the stairs.

"What the hell was that about?" Gary asked the cat as he stopped across the street to catch his breath, then strode back toward the Blackstone, wiping pink paint off his left temple, and out of his hair.  "What are you trying to do to me?"

There was, of course, no reply.

* * * * *

It reminded her of the way she felt when one dream morphed into another, and suddenly instead of riding an elephant down the broad expanse of the Capital Mall, she'd be chasing Mulder across the frozen tundra.

Same thing here.  One minute, Scully was absentmindedly making her way to the front entrance of the museum, her head still buzzing with memories and musings, and the next she was looking into the totally confused--and, on the left side, anyway-- grotesquely pink face of Gary Hobson.  He had a cat tucked under his arm.  What the hell?

Before she could react, before she could really register what was happening, he was gone, sputtering that he hadn't done something and tearing through the lobby and out the front doors. Scully would have followed him, but the commotion that trailed in his wake--guards clambering down the stairs and shouting, hysterical screams from somewhere on the second floor, crowds appearing out of nowhere, confused but eager for action--caught her attention instead.

Without missing a beat, she reached for her badge as four uniformed security guards charged down the stairs.  "What's going on here?" she asked, placing herself between the guards and the exit to the lobby, flashing her ID.

"Did a guy and a cat come through here?" queried one of the guards, trying to catch his breath.

"He just went out the front door," Scully told him, and by the time she had finished the sentence he was in the lobby, racing past the gift shop to the revolving doors.  There was no chance, however, that this guy was going to catch Hobson.  She turned her attention to the other guards.  "Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI," she snapped.  "What just happened?"

It didn't matter that she had no jurisdiction, that she was at the museum as a guest.  Scully had the bearing of authority and a badge that ranked her higher on the law enforcement ladder than any of the security personnel, and they responded automatically.  They tried to explain, something about a can of spray paint and a man knocking a woman down and a cat in the museum, God forbid.

Before Scully could make sense of the story or reconcile what they were implying to her two previous encounters with Hobson, two more guards came down the stairs, each holding the arm of a woman who was raging about perverted artwork at the top of her lungs.  After that, the pieces of the story fell together fairly quickly.  The guard who had chased Hobson out the door returned, crestfallen, to say that he had disappeared in the crowds.

"Um...Agent Scully, what is the Bureau's interest in this?" one of the guards finally managed to ask.

"Nonexistent, actually," Scully admitted.  "I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, I guess."  It sounded weak, even to her.  After making sure that no permanent damage had been done, and assuring the guards that, as far as she knew, neither Hobson nor the woman in question was part of any ring of art thieves, she excused herself, leaving the guards to deal with the self-righteous bit of insanity who, Scully thought, was obviously the one who had started the whole situation.  That still begged the question of how Hobson had become involved.

Maybe he really *had* just been in the right place at the right time, as the look on his face had clearly implied.

But the Art Institute?

At the same time as she?

With a cat?  Was that the cat he'd mentioned last night?

She stepped out into the brisk, sunny air, marching determinedly past the bronze lions.  Dreamy, reflective Dana was gone.  Agent Scully had taken her place.

And Agent Scully was deeply, intrinsically, suspicious of this latest turn of events.

Pausing at the bottom of the steps, Scully extracted her cell phone from her pocket and hit the first speed dial button.  She scanned the crowds for a familiar face, but saw no sign of Gary Hobson on the steps or the sidewalks.

"Mulder."

"Mulder, it's me."  Scully pulled her trench coat around herself and tucked the phone under her chin so she could button up.  The sun was quickly sinking from its zenith and the wind off the lake had picked up.

"Scully, where are you?  You didn't get lost, did you?" he teased.  That was a good sign; it meant he hadn't been fretting over her while she'd been gone.

"I told you, Mulder, I used to live here.  It hasn't changed that much.  Mulder, you won't--"

"Scully, you won't believe the luck we're having today."

She raised an eyebrow at that, while he continued, "One of the MUFON members who claims to be an abductee recently started undergoing experimental treatment for cancer with Dr. Nelson.  We need to be at that meeting, Scully."

"I agree, Mulder, but--" she looked at her watch; it was just after four.  She'd spent longer than she'd intended at the museum.

"The meeting's at seven.  Just bring the food back here and we'll call it dinner; I want to show you these files."

"And I want to see them, Mulder, but first, there's someone I think I should talk to."

"Scully, what's going on?  I thought you just went for a walk."  *Now* he sounded concerned.

She sighed, wondering how to condense the whole story and avoid the inevitable "I told you so".

"Mulder, I went into the Art Institute to just...get my head together for a minute, and as I was leaving I ran into Gary Hobson."
 

There was a split second of silence, then, "You must be joking."

"Well, technically, he ran into me.  He was being chased by some guards and he had a cat under his arm.  From what I could discern he had just prevented a woman from defacing a painting."

"The guy gets around, doesn't he?" Mulder asked sarcastically.

"I don't think he was following me.  He was in a completely different part of the museum.  We met near the exit; he seemed just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, but still..."

"Too much coincidence for you, Dr. Scully?"

"Something like that, yes."  She braced herself for a gloat, but it never came.

"What was he doing with a cat?" Mulder asked instead.

"How the hell should I know?"  She was nearly jostled off the bottom step by a woman chasing a toddler, and decided to move.  She headed south on Michigan Avenue.  "Look, Mulder, I'd like to check this out, since we have a few hours.  What was the name of the police detective who had all the contact with him--do you still have that file handy?"

There was a pause and a shuffling of papers, then Mulder said, "Yeah, got it.  Marion Z. Crumb is the guy's name.  CPD, Violent Crimes, he's at the downtown office, 1121 South State.  You think you need to go talk to him?"

"I want to see if he knows anything that wasn't in the files the Bureau dug up."  She sighed.  "Look, Mulder, you know this probably *is* just a coincidence, but it wouldn't hurt to have more information, as long as you don't need me right now."

"I think tonight's going to be the key, Scully, so go ahead.  I'd come myself, but Donner here promised to give me all the files on the curse of the Cubs."  She could almost hear his lopsided grin.  "Might be another X-file for us in there."

"Right," she snorted.  "Stay off your ankle.  I'll bring food when I'm done talking to Detective Crumb."  She flipped her phone closed and deposited it back in her pocket.  It was a good thing she had worn her most comfortable, low-heeled pumps, she thought as she waited to cross Michigan Avenue.  There was no way she'd get a taxi this time of day.

* * * * *

The officer at the front desk barely looked up from the form he was filling out when he asked if he could help her, but he snapped to when she flashed her ID and said, "Agent Scully, FBI.  I'm looking for Detective Crumb."

He pointed with his pen across the crowded room, where officers at a dozen desks sat taking statements from witnesses and suspects.  "His office is over there, I'll tell him you're on the way."  He picked up a phone as Scully threaded her way through the desks to the private office the young man had indicated--semi-private, if you counted the glass that separated the room from the rest of the second floor.  The distinct odor of new wood and fresh paint hovered in the air, as if this particular room had just been remodeled.

She paused outside the open door for a moment; heard a gruff voice say, "Thanks a lot, just send the FBI waltzing into my office, that's great, that's just what I need."  Scully waited until she heard him hang up the phone before she knocked on the door frame and took a half step into the room, again holding up her badge.

"Detective Crumb?  I'd like to speak to you for a moment."

Crumb was in his late fifties, she guessed, with white receding hair and a bulk that added to the intimidation factor of his brusque manner.  His office was only marginally quieter than the bustling station reception area, and his desk reminded her of Mulder's--piles everywhere that no doubt made some kind of sense to the owner but which seemed a haphazard jumble of paper to anyone else.  A map of Chicago, adorned with push pins in strategic locations, covered the wall behind his desk.

"So, Agent--Scully is it?" Crumb asked.  He didn't get up from his chair, but he motioned her to sit in one across the desk from himself.  "What can I do for you?"

Scully had the distinct impression that he didn't want to do *anything* for her.  Still, she kept her professional demeanor, handing him her card as she took her seat.  Leaving out the reasons for her presence in Chicago, she described the encounters she and her partner had had with Gary Hobson.  The omissions didn't escape Crumb's notice.  He frowned when she first brought up Hobson's name, but he didn't seem surprised.

"So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about him, and whether you have any idea how he could have been in the same places we were so many times," she finished.

"Look, Agent Scully," he said, leaning forward, forearms on the desk.  "I don't know what you're here for, and obviously you aren't gonna tell me, but if you're looking to pin something on Gary Hobson, you're barkin' up the wrong tree.  The guy is a hero--a certifiable nutcase, yeah, but a hero to boot.  He's been pullin' these stunts since September, but he has yet to do anything wrong.  Now, just what is this--uh--this X-Files Division?"  He tapped her card on his desk and pronounced the name as if it was a piece of pepperoni that didn't sit quite right in his mouth.

"We investigate paranormal phenomena and unsolved cases," Scully told him smoothly.

"What, like Robert Stack?  I've never seen you on TV before."  Crumb grimaced at his own joke.

Scully ignored it.  "We're here on a sensitive case that's a matter of national security.  I can't divulge any more information than that.  I'm sure you understand."

"Actually, no, I don't."  Crumb told her, straightening and glowering.  His Chicago accent thickened perceptibly.  "If something is going down in my jurisdiction, I wanna know about it.  Especially after what happened the last time a fed showed up and started yapping about national security and asking questions about Hobson."  He jabbed one finger on his desk top for emphasis.

"And what was that, exactly?"  Scully frowned.  There hadn't been any record of a connection between Hobson and the FBI or any other federal agency law enforcement agency in the files she'd read.

Crumb considered her for a moment, as if trying to decide if she was pulling one over on him.  She met his stare with a level gaze of her own.  Finally he broke contact, looked out the window for a moment, then turned back to her.

"Okay.  All right, few weeks ago, this guy shows up, says he's from the Secret Service, some kind of *special assignment*--" the emphasis was directed right at Scully, "--and he wants to talk to Hobson about a matter of national security.  Long story short, this guy isn't who he says he is, and he causes a whole bunch of trouble in my precinct."

"Mr. Hobson?"

"No, the Secret Service guy, who turns out not to really be part of the Secret Service, he's some kind of a renegade.  All of a sudden, everything goes nuts.  A prominent citizen ends up dead, my office is blown to bits, and if it weren't for Hobson and his friends, I can practically guarantee you wouldn't be sitting in my office right now asking about him, because you and your partner and every agent in the whole stinkin' Bureau would be out investigating the latest Crime of the Century.  And *I'm* not at liberty to divulge any more information than that."

He leaned back with a self-satisfied grunt.  "So I'm sure you'll understand that I'm not particularly thrilled to have anyone here pulling this whole schtick again.  I'm startin' to like Hobson, even if the kid's a complete wacko.  He's not so bad, as wackos go, but I'd rather take a break from him, if you know what I mean.  Stuff happens when he's around."  He gestured at the outer office, palm up.  "We've got enough stuff here as it is."

Renegade Secret Service agents?  Sounded like something right up Mulder's alley.  "I can assure you, Detective, I'm not trying to add to your work load.  All I want to do is clear up some confusion.  Is there any more information that you can give me about Mr. Hobson?"

He shook his head emphatically.  "What was in the file I sent over to the Bureau yesterday is all I can tell you."

Can, or will? Scully wondered.  She decided to try another tack.  "Detective Crumb, you've made several references to Mr. Hobson's mental state.  What can you tell me about that?"

"Nothin'.  All I know is, he comes in here every once in a while spouting off about some problem or catastrophe or another, and no matter how unbelievable it sounds, he usually turns out to be right.  It sounds spooky, but he--he knows stuff, he just does.  But he won't tell me how and he swears up and down he isn't a psychic."  Crumb threw his hands up in the air.  "You're the expert on the paranormal.  Your guess is as good as mine."

Scully was starting to get frustrated.  She told herself to shake it off.  She'd come here on a whim.  She should have known not to expect too much.

"All right," she said, rising.  "Thank you for your time."  She held out her hand, and this time Crumb rose to shake it.

"Look, Agent Scully," he said, looking her right in the eye,  "I meant what I said.  Whatever you're here to do, Hobson's not the bad guy.  There's nothing, on or off the record, that proves he's anything other than a regular shmoe with some kind of hero complex.  How he knows, I have no idea.  The kid might have gotten in your way, but he was just trying to help.  Cut him some slack, okay?"

Scully nodded, but barely.  She didn't want to agree to anything she'd regret later.  "Thank you, Detective.  We'll be in touch if we need more information."

"Huh," he huffed.  "That day couldn't come too late for me.  No offense intended, of course."

"None taken," said Scully coolly as she headed through the throng of humanity in the front office.
 

Part 12
 

Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves.
     ~A. S. J. Tessimond
 

Scully started back to the Federal Center, keeping an eye out for a promising spot to get some take-out.  At this rate she and her partner would just have time for scanning files over dinner before they had to go to the library.

She should have known better than to follow a flimsy lead.  It was almost as if someone was *trying* to take her off track.

Well, Dana, she told herself sternly, nobody forced you to take this little detour.  You're avoiding the real issue, the real truth.

Yes, well, old habits were hard to break.

It wasn't just denial and avoidance, she rationalized, but curiosity.  There really was something strange about Gary Hobson having shown up three times in the past day and a half--the odds against that happening in a city the size of Chicago were incredible.  From the little Detective Crumb had told her, there was more to Hobson's appearances than just being in the right place at the right time.  Crime of the Century, indeed.  If Crumb knew the things she knew...

If only she knew the things she was *supposed* to know...

There would be time enough for that tonight.  Scully waited with the other pedestrians until the one-way cross street was clear of traffic, and was about to start across when she nearly tripped over something small and furry.  She heard a plaintive "meow" as she stepped away from the curb to avoid falling onto the sewer grate.

Regaining her balance, she turned, looked down, and saw a small orange-striped cat staring up at her reproachfully.  "Oh--" she bit her lip and resisted the urge to apologize to an animal.  The cat hurried off into the crowds, bent on its own business, she supposed.   What was it with this city and cats, anyway?  And hadn't Hobson's cat been--

Her stomach growled, and she shook her head.  You're losing it, Dana, she thought wryly.  Better get that blood sugar level back up before you start seeing little grey men.

There was a thought:  perhaps Mulder's propensity for seeing aliens and conspirators had something to do with his godawful dietary habits.  Brats with kraut were enough to induce hallucinations in the most rational of minds.  On the other hand, Scully was so hungry that she was willing to take a chance if she could just find the stuff.

Scanning the block, she spotted a sign for a Greek restaurant a few doors up.  The thought of gyros, olives, and feta cheese made her mouth water, and it was all she could do to stop at the red light that stood between her and the restaurant.

Waiting on the curb, she felt something brush her ankle.  She glanced at the other nearby pedestrians.  A dour man in a grey suit next to her was absorbed in his newspaper, and no one else was close enough...Scully looked down.  There was the cat again.  At least, she thought it was the same cat.  It had the same orange stripes, and it was gazing at her in the same way--maybe not reproachful after all.  Maybe it was trying to get her to pay attention to--

Jostled by the crowds around her as the light changed to green, Scully lost sight of the cat.

It wasn't the same cat, she told herself as she made her way through the intersection.  Why would it have been?  There were probably hundreds of stray tabbies running around Chicago.

It was merely coincidence, a random series of events--or rather, of cats.  Come to think of it, two didn't even make a series.

She could almost *see* the tendrils of heavenly, spice-scented steam beckoning her to the Greek restaurant.  Her hand was on the door latch when she heard it again.

Meow.

It had to be the same cat.  Odd.  It seemed so friendly, rubbing against her leg with a plaintive mew.  She could feel the warmth of its body through the leg of her slacks.

Against her better judgment, Scully bent down to scratch its head.  She didn't want to encourage the stray to follow her, but on the other hand it already seemed to be doing so without any prompting from her.  Poor homeless thing...

It allowed her three or four scratches, then moved away from her hand, turning to look back at her.  She took a few steps toward it, toward the next cross street.  It began a pattern she'd only seen in dogs--but then, she had never owned a cat--walking a few steps, then looking back to see if she was following, walking, looking back, taking two steps toward her, then looking ahead, then walking away again...

Torn between the demanding noises her stomach was making and her curiosity, Scully paused, resisting the urge to ask if Timmy had fallen down the well.  Why in the world would this cat want her to follow it?

The crowds of people hurried past, everyone bent on getting out of the twilight March cold as quickly as possible.  A few spared glances at the woman in the business suit and trench coat thoughtfully regarding a stray cat as if it were a mystery to be solved, but no one stopped to claim the animal.

Maybe the cat lived around here and didn't know how to get home.

C'mon, Dana, she told herself, shaking her head.  This is ridiculous; it's another stall tactic.  Get food, get back to the office, and talk to Mulder.

Me-OW!

The cat yowled as a middle-aged man in a green parka came around the corner and, absorbed in the contents of a bookstore window, stepped on the its tail.  Shaking his foot a little, the man continued on, but the cat jumped two feet in the air, landed, and dashed away in the only available direction--into the street.

"Damn," Scully breathed, half in consternation, half in amazement.  Coming to a dead stop dead in the middle of the bustling intersection, the cat turned back to stare at her, as if it was daring her to turn away and let it get hit.  The light on her side was yellow and blocks of cars were waiting to go through.  Scully dashed into the street, telling herself it wasn't the cat she was worried about, but the traffic jam that would ensue if even one kind-hearted motorist stopped to avoid hitting it.

Horns blared and taxi drivers leaned out their windows and shouted at her in languages she couldn't even identify.  She reached the center of the intersection, bent down to scoop up the cat--

--and it bolted to the opposite corner.

Her momentum carried her onto the sidewalk.  Frowning at the cat, Scully tried to ignore the horns, the curses, and now the laughter, from onlookers.  She caught her breath and started to give a dismissive wave at the cat when it turned down a side street, walked a few feet as primly as though it had never been the cause of any trouble at all, and stopped at a door, sitting on its haunches and turning to face Scully yet again.

Meow.

Shaking her head, Scully shivered in a gust of wind that must have come straight off the lake.  Was this supposed to be some kind of message?  Yeah, right.  Too bad Mulder wasn't here.  This would be right up his alley.  Right about now he'd be theorizing that the cat was an alien in disguise, or a human spirit trapped in the body of an animal by some bizarre occult ritual.

Well, if the cat wasn't going to leave her alone, maybe she could find the owners, or call the Humane Society.  She would do her good deed for the day, *then* get back to the rest of her life.

She figured that if the cat had stopped here, it might belong here.  Maybe it was the owner's.  She walked closer and read the window.  "McGinty's Bar and Grill."  Peering in, Scully saw brick walls, brass railings, and a gleaming wooden bar area.  It wasn't overly crowded; maybe they did take out orders.  If she didn't eat soon, Scully thought, the cat might even start to look a little tasty.

The cat rubbed its back against her leg again, and this time it let her pick it up.  That was progress.  She tucked it under her trench coat, pressing it close to her side with her arm.  Inwardly wincing at the health department regulations she was violating, but telling herself it was for a good cause, Scully opened the door.

The smell of onions, french fries, and hamburgers assailed her immediately upon entry.   Was this all an elaborate scheme to torture her?  If so, it was working.

There was no waiters' station at the entrance; apparently, customers were to seat themselves.  Scully wove her way through the tables to the bar, which seemed to serve as the hub of the place.

"Excuse me," she called, trying to get the bartender's attention.  He topped off two beers in glass steins and handed them to a waitress.   He finally saw Scully and walked down the length of the bar to stand in front of her, wiping a glass with a white towel.

"Yeah?" he said, eyeing the squirming mass under her coat.  He was built like a lumberjack, an effect enhanced by his red plaid shirt and short dark beard.

Scully pulled her coat open just a little so he could see what she held.  "This cat was wandering outside; it was nearly hit in traffic and it seemed to be trying to come in here.  I wonder if it belongs to anyone in your restaurant."

"Lady, you gotta be kidding me!" the bartender bellowed, jaw dropping.  Realizing people's heads were turning, he lowered his voice to a menacing growl.  "What are you trying to do, get me shut down?  I don't keep a cat in here!"

"Would you just ask and see if it belongs to any of your customers?"  It took more than a gruff bouncer to intimidate Dana Scully.  She might feel stupid doing this, but she was far too stubborn to let it show.

"Look, lady, I am not going to advertise the fact that you brought a stray cat into my restaurant.  Now get out of here before I--"

Scully was instinctively reaching for her credentials with her free hand when a female voice from behind interrupted the bartender.  "Wait a minute, Mike."

Scully turned and came face to face with a woman she'd seen once before.  And a dog--what the hell was this?

"Is it a smallish cat?  A tabby?" the woman continued.  "Kind of pushy, meows a lot?"

Still reeling from yet another coincidence, Scully managed to find her voice.  "Yes."

"It's all right, Mike, don't give her a hard time."

"But, Marissa," he protested, "she's got a *cat* in my restaurant.  I mean, Spike is okay, he's, uh, he's special, but--"

"This cat is special too," Marissa assured him smoothly.  She turned so that she was directly facing Scully.  "It's good to run into you again, Agent Scully.  Would you like to join me?"

Grateful that her rescuer couldn't see that she was staring with her mouth half-open, Scully ignored the still-suspicious bartender and answered, "Yes, thank you, that would be--yes."  Platitudes failed her.  "Lovely" didn't quite describe the situation in which she'd found herself.

"At least take a booth in the back, Marissa, okay?" the bartender, so gruff with Scully, seemed to be much more deferential to this woman.  "I don't need the rest of my customers thinking I'm running an animal shelter on the side."

"Sure," she told him.  "Come on, Spike."  She tugged on her guide dog's harness and together they made their way around the tables.  Still holding the cat, Scully followed her to a booth in the back of the bar.

"Sit, Spike."  Marissa took off her coat and slid into the booth, facing the front door.  Scully took the seat opposite her.  Wiggling out from under Scully's coat, the cat jumped down to the floor next to the German Shepherd, who sniffed it in greeting before the two of them curled up on the floor.

"They're friends.  They've gotten along since the beginning."  The woman held out her hand, and Scully took it.  "We didn't get a chance to introduce ourselves last night.  I'm Marissa Clark."
 

"Special Agent Dana Scully."  The handshake they exchanged was firm, definite.  "Thank you for--what happened just now.  I think."

"Yes, well..." Marissa's expression suddenly turned serious.  "Tell me, Agent Scully, what are you doing with Gary's cat?"

Scully frowned, her half-formed suspicion confirmed.  "That's Mr. Hobson's cat?"  Coincidence really was losing its grip.

"Well, it's more Gary's than it is anyone else's," Marissa told her, removing her beret to reveal a cascade of tiny black braids.  "How did you find it?"

"I didn't, actually.  I think it found me.  I nearly tripped over it a few blocks back, and then I chased it out of the street so it wouldn't get hit by a car, and it stopped here.  I thought it might belong to someone in the bar."

A waitress showed up with water for Scully and iced tea for Marissa, and took their orders.  Marissa ordered her salad by number; she must come here often.

"It was very strange that you and your friends happened to be in the right place at just the right time last night, wasn't it?"  Scully kept her voice casual, twisting a lemon slice into her ice water.

Marissa raised her eyebrows and nodded.  "I guess you could say that."

"How did you know?" Scully pressed.

"I didn't know," Marissa countered evenly.  "Gary did."
 

"All right," said Scully patiently, "How did he know?"

"Gary is--" Marissa hesitated, trying to find the right words.  "I know he seems a little strange if you don't know him, but if he tells you something is going to happen, you can believe him.  You *should* believe him."

Marissa wasn't comfortable with what she was saying, but she was being honest.  Scully was a terrible liar herself, but she could almost always tell when someone wasn't telling her the truth.

"He knows that things are going to happen before they happen?  Is that what you're trying to tell me?" Scully asked.  It wasn't as if she hadn't heard it before, and she didn't completely discount the possibility of foreknowledge of some kind, some acute sensitivity to detail that allowed certain people to make educated guesses about the future.  It was the sheer volume of psychic claims she'd been forced to deal with that actually messed with her world view.

"Look, Agent Scully," Marissa was clearly weighing every word, balancing her own honesty and integrity against loyalty to her friend.  "I can't tell you *why* Gary knows what he knows.  I don't know if he could even tell you that.  But he's a good person; he's trustworthy.  He wouldn't do anything to hurt anyone.  He's only used what he knows to help other people, always."

Scully latched onto what Marissa left unsaid.  "You can't tell me why he knows things," she repeated.  "Can you tell me *how*?  Are we talking about visions, dreams, crystal balls, horoscopes, tarot cards, what?"  Her mouth twisted into a wry smile as she adopted Mulder's litany of precognitive devices.

For once Marissa's calm facade broke just a little, and she fiddled with her staw, stirring her tea vigorously before shaking her head.  "I can't do that."

Scully tried another approach.  "I just spoke with a Detective Crumb at Chicago PD," she began, but paused at the clatter of silverware being dropped in the booth behind her.  Marissa stiffened at Scully's words, but made no reply.  They waited while the waitress brought their orders, a salad for Marissa and two large brown sacks filled with burgers, salads, and fries for Scully.  Mulder would be lucky if there was anything left by the time she got back to the office, she thought as she continued.

"Detective Crumb told me Mr. Hobson had done a number of good deeds in the past few months, that he'd been involved in some unusual incidents beginning in September of last year.  Ms. Clark, what happened last fall?  How did all this begin?"

Now Marissa was adament.  "No.  I can't tell you that.  Gary will have to tell you himself, if and when he decides to.  What's going on here--it isn't mine to tell."  She paused, leaning forward to drive her point home.  "I will tell you this, though:  Gary's never hurt anyone.  Never.  And as my grandmother used to say, results are more important than reasons.  So unless he's in some kind of trouble that I don't know about, I think I'd rather let Gary and his actions speak for themselves."

Scully tried to keep the smile out of her voice.  She liked this woman, her strength and her loyalty and her intelligence.  In another time and place, they might have been friends, and she felt a little guilty for grilling her over a subject that probably wasn't important in the grand scheme of her investigation, however curious it might be.  It was time to let Marissa off the hook; time for Scully to face the demons she'd been avoiding all afternoon; time to eat.   "Thank you, Ms. Clark."   She pulled bills out of her wallet and left them on the table.  "The cat--" she began as she rose.

"The cat knows its way home, wherever that may be," Marissa assured her.  "It will be fine."

Scully shrugged into her coat, then held out her hand, fingers brushing Marissa's that so that she was able to sense it and return the handshake.

"It was good to meet you, Agent Scully," Marissa said without any trace of dissemblance or sarcasm.  "I hope you find what you're looking for."

After a moment of hesitation, Scully decided something.  "If you think of anything else you'd like to tell me," she said, "We're at the Congress Hotel."  Scully turned and headed for the front door.  She was so focused on juggling the bags of food and checking her watch that she didn't sense the worried gaze that surreptitiously followed her out of the restaurant.

Continued....

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