Value & Honor by Forte (Forte1354@aol.com) Please see Chapter 1 for rating, summary, disclaimer, etc. ******************************************************************** - Chapter 7 - ******************************************************************** On the road between Alexandria and Georgetown Friday, 10:38 p.m. Scully pulled one hand from the steering wheel to cover her escaping yawn. As she returned her hand to the wheel, she glanced at her watch. Home in ten minutes, in bed by eleven. Good. "Tired," she sighed, then huffed in amusement when she realized she'd said it out loud. <"I know you're tired."> Scully's memory returned to Mulder's earlier words. He knew she was tired of chasing, of being chased, of frustration and lies. But could he grasp everything, every nuance? She certainly couldn't pretend to know every facet of his emotions regarding his sister's disappearance. Just as he could never know, never understand, every anguish she felt over Emily. She knew he cared, even though he didn't always show it well. But it was simply impossible for him to have that depth of knowledge without first-hand experience. And in this case, Mulder couldn't understand every painful sensation that Kurt Crawford's reappearance had dredged up in her. Multiple levels of fear, and rage, and guilt. Yes, guilt. Scully's rational side knew that she had "survivor's guilt"; she'd been tormented by -- and still battled -- that hell after Melissa's murder. But =knowing= she felt guilty couldn't stop the guilt from wringing knots in her stomach. So many women who'd had chips in their necks were dead. She was alive. Dozens of families had buried wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters who had succumbed to the cancer. Her family had not. At times, the weight of that realization was crushing. Exhausting. Yes, she was tired. But when her time to leave this life finally came, and she moved on to whatever came next, how could she face all those women? How could she tell them that she had been too tired to fight back? <"I've got things to finish, to prove to myself, to my family... but for my own reasons."> She'd spoken those words in a hospital in Pennsylvania the night Penny Northern had died. Perhaps conscience really was the dead speaking to us from beyond the grave. And the dead had spoken to her, demanding justice, as she'd sat in Mulder's apartment. It was then that she had made her decision. Well, it wasn't really a decision. There was no decision to make. She had simply realized anew what she had to do. "I just need a good night's sleep, Mulder," she'd told him. "Then I'll be ready to go God knows where again." And then Mulder said something about her being amazing, and caressed her back. The corners of her lips curled up at the memory of the soothing sensation. <"Could he really not know?"> Although the context was different, the question she'd asked herself at lunch came back to her. So did her reply. <"For God's sakes, tell him!"> Tell him. There were a lot of things she could tell him. A lot of things she =should=. She'd been doing a lot of thinking about their partnership since the most recent events involving Gibson Praise. In a moment of quiet clarity, Scully had realized that she and Mulder were sometimes so committed to their own mindsets -- the rational and scientific vs. the paranormal and unexplainable -- that they painted themselves into their own corners, with no way to reach each other without destroying the ground between them. Why did their theories have to be mutually exclusive? Scully recalled something her high school biology teacher had told the class on the first day of school: "Half of everything I teach you this year will be wrong. We just don't know it's wrong yet." And so, perhaps, she and Mulder could be wrong about many things. Would she be shocked if someday the existence of Mulder's aliens, vampires, and mothmen could be proven by a strict analysis of facts? Would Mulder be disappointed if everything they ever investigated could be explained by her science? She hoped not. She hoped they would rejoice in such truths. Maybe that day was coming. But in the meantime, she would settle for a few answers from Kurt Crawford that both Mulder the believer and Scully the skeptic would be comfortable with. And for some reason, she believed that they would get such answers. Scully's meditations ended as she reached her apartment building and parked. As she climbed out of the car, the trunk release handle caught her eye. When she'd arrived home earlier that evening she'd forgotten to bring in what she had picked up during her lunchtime errand. She retrieved it from the trunk and brought it inside with her. The autopsy files were in disarray on her coffee table, just as she'd left them. Had her phone call to Mulder been only three and a half hours earlier? She resisted the urge to tidy them. Instead, she took care of the item she had carried in from the car. Then she went to her bedroom, set her alarm for 7 a.m., and prepared for the good night's sleep that she so desperately needed. ******************************************************************** Georgetown Washington, DC Saturday, 5:53 a.m. At first, the sound that filtered through was like the carillon of a far-off church. Then it became louder and more shrill until Scully reached full consciousness on the fifth ring. She blinked open her eyes and reached for the bedside phone, noting the early hour. "Hello?" she said, groggy. But all she heard was a dial tone. Confused, she replaced the receiver and sat up in bed. The phone rang again. She threw the blankets off her legs, flicked on the light on the nightstand, and stumbled to her dresser where her cell phone waited. "Scully." Her voice now held its usual authority. "Hey, Scully, it's me. Sorry to wake you." "Are you okay, Mulder? Why did you call my cell phone?" "I'm okay, Scully. I called your cell because you're going to need your land line. Check your e-mail -- I'm willing to bet that you have a message from an anonymous mailer. I just got a very interesting piece of mail myself, which I forwarded to you. Three guesses who it's from." "I don't think I need three," she said, reaching for her robe. "What does it say?" "Well, that's still a bit of a mystery. It's encrypted." "Great," she muttered. "Hold on a minute, Mulder." Scully shrugged on the robe and headed towards her living room. She scooped her eyeglasses off of the coffee table, being careful to not let her eyes linger on the files there. "What makes you think I've got a message, too?" "Intuition?" "Hmmm." Scully booted up the computer on her desk and slipped on her glasses. "How's your head?" "It feels like somebody's been using it for field goal practice. Got anything yet?" If he was joking about his injury, he was okay, so Scully didn't push. "Just a second." She logged on and opened her e-mail. "You have mail," the PC told her. "That sounds familiar," Mulder remarked. Did she detect some tension in his voice? "What have you got?" "Two new pieces of mail. One from you." She clicked on 'read'. "Yes, that does appear to be encrypted," she murmured, more to herself than to her partner. "Nothing gets past you, Scully." She ignored his joke and returned to her mailbox. "The other -- no subject line, unfamiliar return address." She clicked on 'read' again. "This one's encrypted too. Great," she repeated. "At least it's not Navajo," Mulder quipped. Scully didn't laugh. Instead she stared at the message on the screen, lost in thought, chewing her bottom lip. "No, it's not. It's different from the message that you received, but it looks like the same kind of encryption. The type of encryption doesn't look familiar, though, like the Navajo did." She suppressed a shudder at the memory of the information on the digital tape. Her name. "Merchandise." She shook off the feeling of dread welling inside of her, and became aware of Mulder clicking and typing. "What are you doing?" "Checking a couple other screen names I use." While she waited for her partner, Scully studied the odd-looking message on her screen. It was a very long string of letters, long enough to take up an entire printed page. Some of the characters were upper case, some lower case. There were no spaces or punctuation, and the letters didn't spell anything. She looked for patterns in the characters but could discern none. In fact, it looked as though someone had typed out letters completely at random. What was that saying about monkeys at typewriters pounding out Shakespeare...? After a minute Mulder spoke again. "Nothing else." "So now we just have to break the encryption. Gunmen?" "Scully, you read my mind." The tone of his voice told her he was grinning. "Let's forward these messages to them and head over there. Let's bring printouts, too." "All right, I'll meet you there..." she glanced over at the clock, "in an hour." She moved to disconnect the call, but Mulder's voice stopped her. "Scully?" "Yeah?" He paused. "Are you still tired?" "No, in spite of your early wake-up call. I slept pretty well. Why?" "That's not what I meant, Scully." "Oh." How could she explain to him all that she had thought about in the past twenty-four hours? But then, who was she kidding? Most of these thoughts were not new. Just not very well examined. "Mulder, I made a decision last night about this... this situation with Kurt Crawford." And other decisions before that, too, she mused. "This isn't just about me and the chip in my neck, Mulder. I owe something to Penny Northern, and Betsy Hagopian, and the other women who died. And the ones who haven't yet. The truth is out there, somewhere, and I need to find out what it is." She paused, collecting her thoughts. "Mulder, do you remember when I told you I had the strength of your beliefs?" She could almost hear Mulder nodding, solemn. His voice over the phone was hushed. "I could never forget that, Scully." She nodded in return, imagining that he could sense it too. "I still have that strength, Mulder. Some days... some days it gets a little drained, but it's always there." She took another breath. "Mulder, you told me that the truth would save the both of us. I think it will save them, too. I owe it to them to try." "We both owe it to them," Mulder acknowledged, voice still low. "I'll see you in an hour." A soft *click* disconnected the call. ******************************************************************** Forty-five minutes later Scully was on the road, driving towards the office of the Lone Gunmen. On the floor of the front seat sat her laptop and her briefcase, now stuffed with the autopsy files she'd been reviewing the previous night. Her plan was to meet with Mulder and the Gunmen briefly, then excuse herself to go into the office to finish... "Oh my God," she whispered. "The office." She pulled out her cell phone and punched the familiar speed dial number. "Mulder." "Mulder, it's me." By the background noise she could tell that he, too, was in his car. "I think we've forgotten something." "What's that?" "What about our FBI e-mail?" She heard a slight gasp, as though Mulder had realized he'd neglected something obvious. "Damn. You're right, Scully. We should stop at the office first." ******************************************************************** J. Edgar Hoover Building Washington, DC 7:22 a.m. When Scully walked into the bullpen, Mulder was already at his desk, sipping coffee. She recognized the sound of his computer starting up, and guessed that he had arrived only a few minutes before she had. At her own desk, a lidded cup and a small pastry bag greeted her. "Starbucks," Mulder said, lifting his head toward her for a moment. "No way was I going to drink the sludge that comes out of the coffee machines here. Not on a Saturday." Scully placed her laptop and briefcase on the desk behind hers, away from any potential coffee spills. She draped her coat over them and sat down in front of her breakfast. Removing the lid from her coffee cup, she inhaled deeply. "Mmmmm. Thanks, Mulder." She moved to switch on her PC, then realized that Mulder had already booted it up. While she waited for her log-in to complete, Scully opened the pastry bag and pulled out several napkins and a decadent-looking cheese danish. She took a bite, luxuriating in the taste and texture. At Mulder's triumphant exclamation of "Got one!" she stood and looked over his shoulder; another encrypted message commanded his attention. Glancing down, she saw that her own computer was ready. She took another bite of danish and wiped her hands clean before sitting again and opening her e-mail. She had cleaned out her mailbox just before leaving work the previous night; one new message greeted her. *Click* "I've got one too. Encrypted again." Mulder sprang from his chair and came around to her desk. He leaned down, resting one elbow on top of the desk and draping his other arm around the back of her chair. While he inspected the new message, his hand moved towards Scully's breakfast. He picked up the danish and took a huge bite, then held the remaining piece in front of her lips. She took it from him with her hand and popped it into her mouth. Mulder's eyes flicked away from the PC to look at her, then back again to the screen. He swallowed his mouthful of pastry. "Different message than all the others," he murmured. Scully swallowed her own bite and nodded in agreement. "Four messages. Why four?" "I think," Mulder replied, "that these four messages, in combination, will tell us where to go to meet Kurt." Scully turned her head to face her partner. "And he sent them to four different places as a precaution." This time Mulder nodded. "No one could solve the puzzle without all the pieces." He gestured toward the PC on his desk. "I just sent that one to the Gunmen. I hope they're up to a challenge." "Hmmm." Scully clicked 'print' and then 'forward', sending her message to the Lone Gunmen. "Something tells me Frohike would be willing to go the extra mile today." Mulder cracked a smile. Leveraging himself off of Scully's desk and chair, he stood and strode to the printer. He returned with both his and Scully's printouts and handed them to her with a flourish. Scully reached behind her to her coat and pulled two folded sheets of paper from the pocket. She laid them on the desk with the pages Mulder had handed her. "Definitely four different messages. No clear patterns." She shook her head. "Let's go visit the Gunmen." "I'd follow you anywhere, Scully." Mulder retrieved his jacket from the back of his chair as his partner folded the four sheets together and slipped them back into her coat pocket. "Your car or mine?" "Both." Mulder tilted his head; Scully recognized the "waiting for an explanation" expression. "I'm not going to stay long at the Gunmen's, Mulder. I still need to come back here and finish that report for Kersh. But I'd like to hear their initial impression of these messages. And," she gestured toward the laptop as she pulled on her coat, "I'd like to copy at least some of what they downloaded from those medical journals." "Okay, Scully. No problem." They shut down their PC's and gulped down their coffees. Mulder scooped up the laptop and handed Scully her briefcase. Perhaps she just imagined it, but as Mulder guided her out the door Scully thought that he held his hand at the small of her back for a moment longer than he usually did. ******************************************************************** - end Chapter 7 - ******************************************************************** Feedback is cherished at Forte1354@aol.com or bjm1352@aol.com.