Value & Honor by Forte (Forte1354@aol.com) Please see Chapter 1 for rating, summary, disclaimer, etc. ******************************************************************** - Chapter 5 - ******************************************************************** Georgetown Washington, DC Friday, 7:12 p.m. "MULDER!" No response. Scully frantically stabbed the "flash" button on her cordless phone, then speed-dialed Mulder's cell phone number again. "The cellular customer you are trying to reach is not avail --" "Flash" again, and then the speed-dial number for Mulder's home phone. Busy. She tried again. Busy. Scully grabbed her coat, keys, weapon, and cell phone, and bolted out the door of her apartment. ******************************************************************** 2630 Hegal Place Apartment 42 Friday, 7:18 p.m. Mulder groaned in response to the ache at the back of his head and the pressure on the left side of his face. Disoriented, he reached to the base of his skull with his right hand. For a dazed second he tried to make sense of the dampness he found there, then felt the throb of the gash. "Shhhhhhhhhhiiiiiit..." he breathed. Realization returned as the solidity under his face registered with the rest of his body. He took a deep breath, which only reinforced the throbbing in his head, and hissed in pain. He took in another breath, shallow this time, and attempted to figure out what the =hell= had happened to him by mentally retracing his steps. He slowly pushed himself up onto his side. Mulder suddenly realized he wasn't alone. Professional training and reflexes took over where his still-fuzzy brain left off. He jerked his weapon from its holster and trained it at the figure hovering near him. The intruder was barely visible in the glow of a streetlight that filtered through the room's window. "Don't shoot, Agent Mulder." The sight of the man before him, hands raised in obvious surrender, made Mulder gasp. "Kurt Crawford?" Mulder gawked at the younger man -- -- before him. In one raised hand, Crawford held a gun. In the other, he held an unsheathed gimlet, the kind Mulder had seen too many times before. Stunned, he leaned back on his left elbow, but kept his weapon pointed at the chest of his unexpected visitor. Mulder gestured at Crawford's raised hands with his SIG. "Put them on the floor, very slowly, then stand up with your hands on your head and take three steps backwards." Crawford complied. Mulder climbed to his feet, struggling against a wave of dizziness. After a moment's thought, he chose to leave the weapons on the floor. That seemed less of a risk than kneeling to retrieve them, when he might not be able to get up again. "Kurt Crawford -- long time no see. Not since..." Mulder trailed off, voice unsteady. At that moment, the pain in his head was eclipsed by the memories of an evening of funky poaching with the Lone Gunmen. That had been a far darker night, for reasons that had nothing to do with the lack of illumination. "Since the Lombard Research Facility, yes," Crawford finished, his voice low. "I was there, Agent Mulder. I remember it well." He paused. "I'm sorry about hitting you, Agent Mulder. I heard the fumbling at the door and thought you were... one of them." He paused again. "I couldn't be certain that I hadn't been followed. When you came in, with your back to me, I could see your neck and knew you weren't..." he trailed off again. "But I still wasn't sure if it was you." He shrugged and gestured with his chin to the gun on the floor. "Your hair is a lot shorter than it was the last time we met. But once I saw your face..." "So the dry cleaning didn't give it away?" Mulder asked. He waved his left hand toward the garments now in a heap on the floor but did not take his eyes off his visitor. Crawford just stared back. "What do you want?" Mulder asked, still wary and now much more alert. "Why are you here? Where the hell have you been for the past year and a half? What happened to everyone and everything that I saw at Lombard?" "I can explain everything, Agent Mulder -- " "That's good, because I want to hear everything. Why don't you start at the beginning?" Crawford squared his shoulders and looked Mulder in the eye. "I'm here because we need your help. We believe we know where Dr. Scanlon is working." Mulder's jaw twitched. "Where?" he demanded. The hybrid swallowed and shifted his weight as though embarrassed. "We don't know the precise location yet, just the city. And in any case, that's not important right now." He took a slow breath. "Even as I stand here, Agent Mulder, there are women finding and removing chips from their necks. Those women will develop brain cancer and die within a year. Dr. Scanlon's new research may help us find a cure. Please believe me -- we're still trying to save these women." Mulder choked out a laugh. "I can't tell you how warm and fuzzy I feel right now, Kurt. You break into my apartment, try to re-arrange my skull, and expect me to trust you on nothing more than a vague sob story? I don't even know if you're really who you appear to be." Crawford gave him a look that Mulder could only classify as beseeching. "Agent Mulder, we... showed you where the ova were kept. Told you that those women are our mothers. You took one of the vials. How would I know that if I hadn't been there? We couldn't disclose that information to anyone without risking the destruction of our work to try to save these women. And if the work were already destroyed, what point would there be in my being here as an impostor? So I =must= be telling you the truth." Mulder's stony face softened as the validity of the words sunk in. "And part of that truth is that I need you and Agent Scully to come with me." At the mention of his partner's name, Mulder's entire body tensed. How scrambled were his brains that he'd forgotten he'd been talking to her on the phone? ******************************************************************** On the road between Georgetown and Alexandria 7:26 p.m. Scully held the steering wheel in a death grip as she drove toward Mulder's apartment, breaking every driving law she could in her haste. She'd made several more unsuccessful attempts at reaching her partner, both at his cell phone (still unavailable) and his home phone (still busy). Gritting her teeth, she punched <0> on her cell phone and waited for what felt like a decade for the operator. "This is Special Agent Dana Scully with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have an emergency situation and need you to break in on a line in use." She spit out Mulder's home phone number and her own badge number. Although she knew the latter to be unnecessary, it gave her a comforting sense of control to use it. Seconds later electronic sounds crackled through the earpiece. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but that line appears to be in use by a modem." Scully thought. She ended the call to the operator without a "thank you" or "goodbye". She hit another speed dial on her cell phone and said a silent prayer. "Lone Gunmen." "Turn off the tape," she snapped, sounding more angry than she'd wanted to. "I need your help. Put me on speaker." A few *clicks* and a muffled "Hey, get over here -- it's Scully" told her that the bearded Gunman had complied with her request. Frohike's voice, sounding distant through the speaker phone, wafted to her ears. "Agent Scully, what a pleasant sur-- " "Save it," Scully interrupted. "I'm on my way over to Mulder's. I was talking to him when his cell went dead. His home phone is busy, and the operator thinks it's hooked up to a modem. I need you to verify that for me, tell me if the person using the modem is Mulder, and tell me what number that modem dialed up. =Now.=" There was a stunned silence for a moment, and then Langly spoke up. "Uh, sure -- just give us a couple minutes." "Don't worry, Agent Scully," Frohike added, clearly nervous at Scully's demanding tone. "Our kung fu can do." "It better," she muttered. She continued speeding towards Alexandria, growing more impatient and anxious with each passing second. She could hear typing, and the Gunmen talking to each other, but nothing to indicate that any of them were approaching the phone again. "I'm running out of time, guys," she asserted, raising her voice so they would hear her at their distance from the speaker phone. "Got something!" Scully heard, followed by the sounds of someone approaching the phone. "Mulder's phone is definitely in use by a modem," Byers reported, almost breathless. "But he's not logged on -- at least not under any of the names that we know him to use." "So who's using his phone line?" Scully knew she was yelling, but didn't care. Returning her attention to the road, she was startled to realize that she was only two blocks from Mulder's apartment. "Still working on that," came Langly's voice from the background. "I'm nearly there, but keep looking," she commanded. This time she remembered to breathe "we'llbeintouch" before thumbing off the phone. She watched in amazement and relief as a car pulled away from the curb on the opposite side of the street, almost directly in front of Mulder's building. Another car was waiting to back into the space, but Scully spun the steering wheel and U-turned into the spot, stopping at an odd angle to the curb. She scrambled out of her car, flashing her badge at the enraged driver whose parking spot she'd stolen, and sprinted into Mulder's apartment building. ******************************************************************** 2630 Hegal Place Apartment 42 7:35 p.m. "Damn it," Mulder muttered. "Scully..." Mulder moved backwards toward his desk, keeping his SIG aimed at Crawford, stepping carefully to avoid the spilled mail, food, dry cleaning, and parts of his cell phone. When he felt himself bump into his desk chair, he reached for the phone on the corner of the desk. The receiver greeted him with the unmistakable screech of a line in use by a modem. He then noticed the laptop computer sitting on the corner of the desk. "What are you doing, Kurt?" he demanded. "Uploading or downloading? What are you connected to?" Crawford paled. "You'll break the connection -- put the phone down, Agent Mul -- " "ANSWER ME!" As though in response to Mulder's outburst, the door of his apartment flew open. In the ensuing blur of action, too quick for Mulder's dulled reflexes, Crawford scooped up both his gun and the gimlet and pointed the gun at the new entrant. And suddenly he and Scully were pointing their guns at each other, and Mulder's was on Crawford, the phone receiver forgotten on the desk. "Drop your weapon!" Scully commanded, her eyes never leaving Crawford, but flicking to take in the gimlet in his left hand. "Both of them!" Mulder took three steps toward the hybrid. "Kurt, what the hell are you doing?" Crawford addressed Scully, still clutching his gun tightly. "Come into the light, slowly." "I said, what the =hell= are you doing?" Mulder repeated, louder, and moved even closer, until he was within six feet of both Crawford and Scully, each now a point of their human triangle. All three stood motionless for several tense seconds. Mulder had a sudden sense of deja vu, recalling a similar standoff between Scully, him, and Skinner when he'd returned from New Mexico -- and the dead -- years earlier. The silence was finally broken by Crawford. "If you're Agent Scully, then you know you can't shoot me. You'd find my blood to be quite disagreeable to you if you did." "What do you mean, =if= she's Scully?" Mulder asked, his jaw clenching. Crawford ignored him. "Come. Into. The. Light," he repeated. "I need to know that you're not one of them." Mulder started to consider the possibility that Crawford had brought up: perhaps it =wasn't= really Scully that stood before them. He tried to remember how long it had been since he'd been speaking with her. Could she have gotten from her apartment to his so quickly? Could this be one of... ? Scully interrupted his thoughts. "How do I know you're not one of the shape shifters?" she asked Crawford, then nodded towards Mulder. "How do you know =he= isn't?" Mulder wondered. While he struggled with those thoughts, Crawford responded to her. "That's why I want to see you in the light. I already know he isn't." Mulder considered his alternatives, then took a step towards Crawford. "Give it to me," he ordered, holding out his left hand, gesturing toward the gimlet in Crawford's left. It took a moment for a stunned Crawford to find his voice. His eyes darted to Mulder quickly before returning to Scully. "=What?=" "You just said you know I'm not one of them. Show me you trust me and give me the damn thing. If that's not really Scully, I know what to do with it." Scully's jaw dropped open, then shut again before she echoed Mulder's earlier words. "Mulder, what the hell are you doing?" Mulder kept his gun trained on Crawford, but directed his words to the one he hoped and prayed was his partner. "Trust me, Scully." Scully glanced down at the floor, at the scattered mail, the broken bits of cell phone, the small dark smear of -- -- on the floor, and started having her own doubts. Was the man before her Mulder? Or was her partner really hidden from her view, perhaps lying injured in his bedroom? She remembered a Mulder who once came to her motel room who turned out to not really be Mulder, and winced inwardly at the recollection of crashing through a glass-topped table. She kept Crawford in her peripheral vision, ready to shoot if he moved a muscle, and peered back over at the one who =looked= like her partner. He'd shifted his eyes toward her, and in those eyes she saw the spark of realization -- he understood her apprehension. He reached behind his head to the gash where Crawford had struck him, and came back with blood-dampened fingers. He held his hand out to her. In the dim light, the dark red color made it look like he'd dipped his fingers in thin chocolate syrup -- her memory supplied, unbidden. She swallowed back the sour taste that rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. "It's me, Scully," he pleaded. Eyes locked on his, she nodded. Crawford shifted his eyes from Scully, to Mulder, and back to Scully again. Finally, grudgingly, he offered the unsheathed weapon to Mulder, who switched his gun to his left hand and took the gimlet with his right. Mulder kept his eye on the hybrid but addressed his next comments to Scully. "Put your gun down, Scully. If he's one of them, I've got him covered --" Crawford tensed; Mulder hastened to add for his benefit, "-- and if =she's= one of them, I've got =her= covered." Scully looked at her partner, but his eyes were again focused on Crawford. She closed her eyes for an instant. Knowing Mulder could see her movements in the corner of his eye, she slowly knelt, placed her gun on the floor, and straightened again. And then they stood, motionless, soundless, for what seemed an eternity. Finally Crawford spoke again, his voice low. "Now come into the light, Agent Scully." Mulder backed up two steps, giving his blessing. Scully advanced two cautious steps of her own into the dim light cast by the streetlamps behind Mulder's building. Almost immediately, Crawford let out a sigh and held up his left hand in a submissive gesture. "My apologies, Agent Scully. I had to be sure it was you." "Give her the gun," Mulder ordered. Crawford relaxed, consciously avoiding any sudden movement, then extended and turned his hand to offer the grip of the gun to Scully. Still without taking her eyes from his, she took the weapon, flicked on the safety, and tucked it in the back waistband of her jeans. She knelt to retrieve her own weapon, eyes narrowing as she continued to watch Crawford, then stood and holstered the SIG. She backed towards the entry door, shut and locked it, and gave silent thanks that the neighbors had apparently chosen to ignore their loud exchange. "All right, what the hell is going on?" Scully asked, advancing back into the room. Mulder finally holstered his own gun and slipped the sheathed gimlet into his pocket. "Mulder, are you all right?" She stopped an arm's length away from him. Mulder nodded, then winced, his fingers flying to the back of his head. "Yeah. Mostly." He looked at her, watching him, and suddenly realized that she was dressed casually: jeans and a soft-looking blue scoop-neck sweater. "Scully," he said, staring, as though he were having an epiphany, "you're wearing jeans." Scully stared back at him, and Mulder got the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that that had been an inappropriate comment. he considered, dropping his hand back down to his side and wiping it absently on his own jeans. And then Scully was at his side, steering him to a seated position on his couch. As she passed Crawford, she gave him an annoyed look that told him "I'll deal with you next." Scully examined her partner for head trauma with one gentle, skilled hand while the other cradled his chin. "What happened, Mulder?" she asked softly. "The Welcome Wagon played a little rough." "I'm sorry," Crawford spoke up. "I didn't mean to -- " Mulder waved a hand, cutting him off. "Forget it. You did what you had to do." He winced again as Scully continued to palpate his skull, looking for signs of injury beyond the obvious gash. "I'll be okay, Scully." Scully leaned closer to check his pupils. "Looks all right," she murmured, nodding her agreement with him. She smoothed the hair on the uninjured side of his head, then straightened, moving her hands to her hips. Mulder missed their heat, but settled for the warmth of her eyes as she looked down, still regarding him with concern. Scully had maneuvered herself so that her back was to Crawford, and the hybrid could see neither her nor Mulder's face. She mouthed to her partner: *You're sure it's him?* *Yeah* he mouthed back. She gave a tiny nod before speaking again. "Let me get you some ice for the back of your head." "It's okay, Scully, I can wait --" She started to turn toward the kitchen, unwilling to accept an argument. "Mulder, you need --" Mulder grabbed her wrist. "=Scully=." She gave him a don't-mess-with-me look, but he cut her off before she could say anything. "He thinks they've found Scanlon." Scully's mouth dropped, then snapped shut. Mulder released her wrist. She turned sharply to Crawford. "Where is he?" "We're not certain of his exact location. We're narrowed it down to a certain city." "=Where=?" The hybrid cleared his throat. "I'd rather not be specific, just yet. But I need to bring you both there." "Why?" she pressed. "Why should we go with you if you won't tell us where it is? Why should we trust you?" Crawford paused, as though deciding how much to reveal. "We have sources," he said finally. "Anonymous. In the research world. A month ago we received verification from one of our sources about Dr. Scanlon. That information led us to re-establish ourselves -- our research -- in a certain city. Scanlon is one of the keys to saving the women who have not yet succumbed to the cancer, and we need to stay as close to him as we can." "And you believe this anonymous source?" Scully asked, frowning. "It's provided us with reliable information in the past," Crawford replied. He waved his hand toward his laptop on Mulder's desk. "I've been downloading information from various sites on the Internet," he continued. "Supplementing our own research from what we can find from other... established organizations. Other researchers, including those in academia." A tiny, triumphant smile flashed over his face. "Not that they necessarily realize that they're sharing." His face returned to its serious cast. "Dr. Scanlon appears to have developed a new gene therapy technique that controls the development of cancerous cells." He gestured toward Scully with his chin. "This technique may be an evolution of the chip in your neck, Agent Scully. The information that I'm downloading may corroborate what we believe he's accomplished." He picked up the phone receiver and returned it to its cradle. "Well, I =was= downloading," he corrected ruefully. "From one of your more prestigious medical journals." "So if you've found Scanlon and established yourself in this new area," Mulder asked, "why did you come to DC to see us?" "Seeing is believing?" Crawford shrugged. "How should I have contacted you, Agent Mulder? Would you have believed that it was one of us if you couldn't see for yourself?" Mulder nodded to indicate his agreement with Crawford's logic. "But you can't tell us exactly where this location is?" Scully persisted, exasperation clear in her voice. The anger she'd kept contained for so long -- years -- was rapidly coming to the surface again. Was it just that afternoon that she'd been wrestling with those demons? Crawford ran his hand over the phone receiver. "Think of us as an island unto ourselves. We have our facility, our equipment, our supplies. Where we are at any given point in time is wherever we need to be." "Enough with this oblique crap!" Scully snapped. "You still haven't told us what you want." Did she really care what he wanted? What about what =she= wanted? Someone owed her answers. About weeks missing from her memory. The damned chip. The cancer. Emily. "I started to tell Agent Mulder before you arrived, Agent Scully," Crawford responded. He stood across from Mulder and Scully on the opposite side of the coffee table and lowered his voice so that it was just above a whisper. "I said Scanlon is one of the keys, Agent Scully. You are another. Although you're the only one left from the group in Allentown, there =are= more women like you. There are MUFON chapters in Europe; women from those groups have been taken and given chips too. Women who haven't had their chips removed yet. And some who have. We can't let them all die. We just =can't=," he said grimly. "Can't let them die? Why should I believe that? Where were you when I was in a hospital, dying?" Scully's voice shook with fury. "Where the hell have you been for the past year and a half?" "Scully..." Mulder murmured. "Where were you when they put this =thing= in my neck in the first place?" she shouted. "Where were you when they created Emily?" Crawford stood mute. "ANSWER ME, DAMMIT!" "Agent Scully," he said quietly, "we didn't =exist= when the child was created, nor..." he gave her a meaningful look, "when the chip was put in your neck." Scully stared back at him, dumbfounded. After a minute of silence had passed, she found her voice. "What exactly are you telling me?" The hybrid said nothing. Scully recalled Mulder's words in her brother's home, after Emily's custody hearing. <"... children were being created"> Oh God. Kurt Crawford was created, too. Trembling, Scully turned to face her partner. "You knew about this?" He winced at her faltering voice. "When I met... all of the Kurts at the Lombard facility, I was told that the abducted women were their mothers. They didn't mention specific names." He met her hurt gaze with a pained one. "I won't tell you I never considered it. But how could I tell you something like that when it was pure speculation?" Scully sat next to Mulder with a dull *thud* and buried her face in her hands, resting her elbows on her knees. Mulder and Crawford both watched her anxiously until she lifted her head to face Crawford again. "What is it you want?" she whispered. Mulder laid a gentle hand on her back. "Come to our lab," Crawford implored. "See our work with your own eyes. Help us help them." "Help you with your research?" "Yes, but not as a scientist," he replied. "We need -- " "You're not using her as some fucking guinea pig!" Mulder exploded. He leapt up, but almost immediately fell back down onto the couch again, head spinning. "We don't want to experiment on her," Crawford assured them both. "Just draw some blood and perform tests on that. Agent Scully, you are the only one so far who has gone into remission. We want to try to chemically replicate whatever caused that remission to save the other women. Between an analysis of Dr. Scanlon's new research and a study of your blood chemistry -- " "I've had numerous blood tests since I went into remission," Scully interrupted. "Nothing unusual has turned up." "We have the ability to conduct more sophisticated, thorough testing than any hospital or laboratory you could visit." Scully realized that she didn't doubt it. "Remission doesn't just happen by magic, Agent Scully," Crawford said. "Surely you know that better than anyone. There was some biological reason for your cancer's progress being stopped so suddenly. We need to find out what that factor was, and how Dr. Scanlon has learned to manipulate it, so we can duplicate it." "I don't know what exactly caused my remission," Scully said quietly. "The new chip, the treatment I was undergoing at the time, or..." She trailed off without finishing, unable to speak words mentioning her prayer to this particular audience. Mulder placed his hand on her back again; she could feel him watching her with concern. "Nevertheless, some process took place that we want to be able to replicate," Crawford said firmly. "Before it's too late for the others. Before it's too late for you." Scully had not yet absorbed Crawford's last remark when Mulder roared, "What do you mean, before it's too late for her?" The hybrid looked from Mulder's enraged face to Scully's frightened one. "We know that you were... injured... at Ruskin Dam. Tell me, Agent Scully, which is worse -- having cancer, or not knowing when you might be called away against your will again?" He leaned closer to her. "Don't you see? If we can save them by finding a cure for the cancer, we can save you. We can save you from that chip in your neck." Scully stiffened as she pictured other women suffering from the cancer as she had. Dying, like Penny Northern and the other Allentown women had. She tried without success to push Penny's deathbed face from her mind. But then it morphed into her own face, the face that sometimes visited her in nightmares, the near-death face of the Dana Scully that would have been had her cancer not gone into remission. The Dana Scully that could still be, if she ever removed the chip. She was sick, so sick of hospitals and medications and tests... "What if I say no?" "We're not going to force you, Agent Scully," Crawford said quietly. "We want you to do this of your own free will." He smiled sadly. "Ironic, isn't it? You were forced into your current medical state quite against your own free will. As were the other women we are still trying to help." He paused. "I know you value your own life, Agent Scully. Do you value theirs?" She blanched. "Of course I do." "Then come with me. Both of you. Agent Mulder, you've seen our lab. Did you tell Agent Scully about it?" Scully answered for her partner. "He told me about all of you. He told me about the tanks. He told me about the ova being kept in cold storage." Suddenly her eyes opened wide. "Oh my God," she exhaled. "Do you still have them?" She waited a breathless eternity before Crawford shook his head. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "After the incident at Lombard, we were forced to abandon virtually everything in our haste to leave." Scully stared back at the hybrid, stunned, unable to move. She felt Mulder's warm hand moving in small circles on her back, but otherwise was devoid of sensation. Crawford took three steps backwards. "I'll be back in touch tomorrow morning." While Scully continued to stare at him, he packed up his laptop, then retrieved a bundled-up raincoat from a chair in the corner. As he lifted it, it unrolled, and a few thin streams of water cascaded off of it onto the floor. "Sorry," he shrugged. "Where are you going?" Mulder asked. "I can't stay here any longer, Agent Mulder," Crawford replied. "If they've determined that I've come to Washington, this is the first place they'll look for me. It will be safer for all of us if I leave now." He paused. "I'll need my... belongings back." Mulder ceased the motion of his hand on his partner's back and looked over at her. She blinked twice before turning her pale, expressionless face to meet his gaze. After a few moments she cleared her throat, sat up straighter. In silent agreement, they returned Crawford's weapons. He pocketed the gun and gimlet, nodding his acknowledgment of their trust, and repeated, "I'll be in touch tomorrow morning." And then he was gone. ******************************************************************** Crawford left through the building's back door, the same way as he had entered. As he walked away, his eyes darted back and forth, watching for any vehicles that might follow him. There were none. None that followed him. But two figures in a dark sedan watched him retreat into the night. ******************************************************************** - end Chapter 5 - ******************************************************************** Feedback is cherished at Forte1354@aol.com or bjm1352@aol.com. AUTHOR'S NOTE: Have I mentioned lately how wonderful my beta reader is? I haven't? Shame on me. This story is infinitely (gasp! adverb! ) better than it would have been without her influence. Take a bow, Jintian. You deserve it. :)