Future Horizons

by XmagicalX (Xparrot)

Summary:

Terry Guss is the newest agent assigned to the X-files division, where he will encounter whole new truths and mysteries, and where the biggest enigma of all is the division's director, Fox Mulder.

Notes:

Originally posted on alt.tv.x-files.creative.

---

DISCLAIMER: The X-files, Mulder, Scully, Skinner, and anyone else you've seen on the show that I've forgotten to mention are the property of Chris Carter, 10-13, and FOX. I'm borrowing them for fun, no cash involved. However, Guss, Pender, and the rest of the X-files team belong exclusively to ME, (I'm not opposed to lending them out if anyone wants them for some reason, but you gotta get my permission first). The story too is mine mine mine, (c) 1997.

This is dedicated to my younger sister (who has yet to be abducted; guess she got too old! :) Thanx greatly, J--, for getting me hooked on this dang show, and for encouraging this fanfic with elaborate threats!

Now (at last!) The Story:

Special Agent Terry Guss took a deep breath and knocked on the door of his new office. His new assignment. The beginning of a whole new life, a whole new career. A whole new existence.

He was telling himself not to be so dramatic when a baritone voice called out from inside, "Enter of your own free will."

Forcing himself to relax, Guss pushed open the door.

Five heads looked up; five pairs of eyes locked onto him. He gave them all a cursory glance and picked out the pair he most recognized, more from reputation than from actual encounters. "Agent Pender?"

The man straightened up from where he had been hunched over a desk with the other four agents and strode over to the newcomer. He stood at the same height, maybe even a little shorter, but he gave the impression that he was towering over Guss. "May I help you?"

Guss stuck out his hand. "Agent Terry Guss--" he began.

"--newly assigned to the X-files," Pender completed the sentence for him.

"Graduate of Pennsylvania State University, magna cum laud," picked up one of the two women, a tall brunette.

"Degrees in biology and chemistry, specializing in molecular genetics," added the black man next to her.

"Entered the academy straight out of college," continued the blond man on the other side of the desk they were gathered around.

"And only graduated from that a year ago, making you the youngest agent assigned here, lucky boy," concluded the small Asian woman to the other's right.

Guss stared hard at each of them in turn and managed somehow to keep his expression calm. "Seems you all have me at a bit of a disadvantage."

"Seems so," Pender replied, countenance just as blank. But Guss thought he saw a few discreet smiles on the other faces. "You see, Guss, one thing that binds us all here is a desire to know. If you belong here, and I think you might, you'll understand what we want to know."

"Everything," said Guss. His reward was five sharp nods, one from each of the other agents. With that slim confidence, he added, "I don't mind being called Terry."

Something that might have been a grin if it hadn't disappeared so fast moved across Pender's face. "I hope you don't mind being called Guss, Guss."

"No..." Guss began. He trailed off, looked around the office. Anywhere but at Pender, whose eyes were doing a good job of boring through his skull.

It was cluttered, only a step away from being called messy. The three desks were arranged haphazardly, so that they created a virtual maze through the office. The walls and desks both were covered with papers, photographs, charts. One of the wastebaskets had a miniature basketball hoop, and one of the desks was painted on the side with a florescent flying saucer.

Pender noticed the direction of his gaze. "Gibbons' work," he commented, gesturing with one hand in the direction of the brown- haired woman. She smiled at him, barely, and gave a little wave in return.

"Not exactly bureau policy," Guss said slowly.

He regretted it when they glared in return. Not only because their combined silent killing looks were more than a bit spooky, but because he was already feeling as if he might be able to fit here, and he didn't want to jeopardize his chances.

He was the fourth agent assigned to this section in the last six months; the rest had all transferred out or been reassigned as soon as possible. Not a good record. Not that the Bureau could do much about it; the X-files was a necessary section. If one believed the media nowadays, it was the most vital section of the entire FBI. That didn't mean that it was large. Or that it was easy to get along with. On the contrary, it seemed. The agents here understood their lofty position, and therefore knew that they could do as they pleased and face less than severe consequences.

But something didn't fit right. All rumors had it that the X- files section director was quite a taskmaster, a tough man to work for or even to get along with. So how did Pender and the rest get away with everything?

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it had gotten Terry Guss this far at least. "Do you have any problems with our director? Over the painting or anything else?"

"Worried about your career's future?" Pender asked in return. They all were still watching him like hawks about to tear into a rabbit.

"No," said Guss honestly. "I like the painting. I like this office, personally. Career or not, I have this urge to be an individual and maybe I can actually be that here. I'm just wondering how you get away with it."

There was a long pause. Then the others looked away, returned to studying the papers on the desk together. And Pender leaned over to Guss and asked, in a low voice, not an explanation but another question, "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?"

Guss paused, caught off guard by the non sequitur. Pender's expression was unreadable; behind the intensity in his blue eyes lurked a hint of humor. At least, Guss thought he saw it. For lack of a better response he took the question at face value. "I believe that extraterrestrials have been proven to exist, Agent Pender. The Smithsonian still is displaying the Granite Ridge wreckage, it's been there for three years now. In fact, it was the work of the X-files section that brought it into the open. Your work, actually--"

"Not mine," Pender corrected him. "I was just baggage when we cracked that conspiracy--so was Gibbons. That honor goes all to the boss--not that he'd take any credit."

Guss frowned. "Baggage?"

Again, the almost-smile flitted on and off Pender's face. "Don't worry, Guss, we aren't for show. Every agent here puts in about ten times the effort as in the other sections. We're a team. It's your choice whether you can join that team."

"What about the 'boss'?" asked Guss. "Is he part of it?"

"It wouldn't exist without him," said Pender seriously.

"The X-files would never have been opened if it wasn't for him," remarked Gibbons from behind him.

"We wouldn't be here without him," asserted the black man next to her. Dubzinski, Guss found out later.

And then the door of the office opened.

Even if Guss hadn't heard it, he would have known someone had entered by the way every agent straightened up. They made no effort to neaten papers or even adjust their ties, but Guss still got the impression that they were suddenly all business.

"Agent Guss," said a voice from his side. Guss turned to face it. Pender next to him was cooler than ever, yet his expression was the closest it had come yet to truly smiling.

The eyes before him were level with Guss's own. Very dark eyes, and they didn't waver in their gaze. There was nothing in the face that was particularly noteworthy, except for its lack of expression. And the intensity burning in the eyes. Somehow they gave an impression of age, an impression heightened by the respect the other agents projected now. Yet Guss knew the director was only around forty. The lines on his face weren't deep and the brown hair was only speckled with grey.

"Welcome to the X-files, Agent Guss," he said.

"Thank you, sir," Guss answered hurriedly. He stuck out his hand and was mildly surprised to have it taken, shaken firmly and then dropped. "I'm...I was glad to be assigned here."

"I requested you," said the director. "Only a certain type of agent can work here, and we needed a new one. I read your senior thesis on radioactive mutation and possible human subtypes. Quite thorough and well written."

"Thank you," Guss said again. "Some of my professors thought it was a little...weird. Too extreme."

"In this section, extreme hypotheses are an asset more than a problem," he was told.

Pender surprised him by speaking. "As long as they're properly supported."

If Guss hadn't been watching closely he would have missed the quick look the director threw at Pender. A mere shift of the eyes to the other agent and then back to Guss. It didn't seem angry. More like approving. Then the director was speaking again. "Go with your ideas, but don't let them carry you away," he was saying. "You seemed to be able to do that in your writing. If you can apply that to your work, you'll fit in well here."

"And he's open to possibilities," said a voice Guss recognized as Gibbons.

The director nodded. "That might help. Guss, you are as of this moment part of the X-files section. You'll be partnered with Pender; he'll teach you what you need to know, assign you duties, show you where we've hidden the pencil sharpener. He'll report on your progress to me; in a month if you want out or if we want you out you'll get a chance to be re-assigned. Until then, try to keep up with everyone." And with that he pushed past them and went through the door on the opposite wall leading to his own office.

Guss stared at the door as it closed, trying to process the last few minutes. His first meeting with the director of the X-files. A man he had heard about all through his time at the academy, the brilliant agent who had broken open multiple conspiracies, uncovered truths people didn't know existed and released them for the world to view. He hadn't been the only one at the academy who had been interested in the director's work, but he was probably the most obsessed. And the director had not only read but had liked his thesis!

Pender reigned him in verbally. "Okay, you've met him. I'm not going to ask what you think, I can see it quite clearly in your eyes."

"What do you mean?" Guss demanded.

Pender smirked, very slightly. "He tends to affect everyone strongly. Sometimes negatively. Some people get a little edgy when he stares them in the eye and talks in a monotone. But you were so impressed I doubt you even noticed that."

"It didn't seem important." Thinking back, he realized Pender was right; the quiet, even tone had been perfectly level for every word uttered.

Pender was also apparently gifted with the talent of reading minds, or at least reading expressions. "None of you new ones notice any oddities. You've all been taught through the Academy that he's brilliant, and important, and great."

Gibbons cut in. "Which he is." Looking around, Guss saw that the others were listening to them intently. And occasionally whispering comments to their fellow agents in voices too low to be heard by Guss.

"Of course he is," Pender said suddenly. "It's just a little different from when I went through, and that wasn't so long ago."

"What's different?" Guss asked.

Pender actually laughed. Or snorted at least. "Guss, when I was at the academy, so many years before--"

"Oh, yes, must have been an entire ten years ago," commented one of the others, the Asian woman called Wong.

"When I was there, we also heard about the director. And we did hear that he was brilliant. Also that he was a little cracked, which wasn't too far off base. But he wasn't great; he wasn't a director, he was an agent who barely held onto his job. And he had a nickname, too, because he insisted on believing in what everyone was sure wasn't there. They called him Spooky Mulder and they all thought he was crazy."

Guss blinked at him. "The same Mulder?"

"The exact same. A lot has happened since then." Pender looked away, toward the wall. Guss, following his line of sight, saw a poster, half-covered by the papers and newspaper clippings surrounding it. A UFO, probably faked, flying over hills, and underneath in plain block lettering "I WANT TO BELIEVE." An older poster. Anyone who wanted to believe now could do so with impunity.

Whatever revery Pender was in, he soon shook himself out of it. "C'mon, we've work to do. Burnett, surmise the situation for our new acquaintance."

The blond man stood up from his chair. "It started out as a possible abduction case, three disappearances in a small town in one night at approximately the same time. Several witnesses swear to seeing bright lights at the time. But Pender checked it out, and he thinks we're dealing with a hoax--and the director agrees. So either we have a kidnapping or a practical joke, but either way, someone's trying to perpetuate the alien myth. What's not helping matters is that a true abduction may have occurred in the same place over three months prior, but was never reported. That's at least what we were currently discussing when you came in, Guss. There's three other cases in the works right now."

"One at a time," Pender admonished him, "let's not scare off our rookie immediately. Shall we look at the evidence, partner?"

Apparently, however, "not scaring off the rookie" meant "do not all talk at once." Within half an hour Guss had heard all four cases in detail, as well as listened to about ten times as many theories involving causes. Pender shot half of them down without a second thought. But Guss noted that the other agents didn't necessarily agree with his judgement, though they respected it. Two of the wildest theories were vigorously defended by their creators, and Pender eventually gave in to the verbal onslaught both times. "Fine then. Investigate it. When you find the truth don't hide it from me out of embarrassment for being wrong."

"I won't hide it; I'll shove the fact that I'm right into your face," Dubzinski assured him.

The entire feel was an odd mix of informal professionalism. Guss had worked with agents who were devoted to their job, but few of them exuded the passion that the X-files agents did. To an agent, they were dedicated to their work. Not to their career; Gibbons and Dubzinski, appropriately partners, both talked and acted as if rules and policies were obstacles of which the point was to avoid or break. They'd probably start a private business if--or rather when--they were fired. Pender, on the other hand, would most likely come to work daily even if he was handed a pink slip and the office was turned into a darkroom. No, it wasn't their career that mattered to these people.

It was their work, their search, their relentless pursuit of the truth. The worst crime to any of them was a lie; the worst pain they could feel was that of ignorance. Guss discovered soon enough that keeping quiet was not a great deal more acceptable than outright falsehood. Listening to Pender systematically destroy one theory, he opened his mouth to speak, then decided against it.

Pender noticed it and broke off mid-sentence. "You were about to say something, Guss?"

"No sir, nothing really."

"Sir?" Pender stared at him hard. "Excuse me?"

Guss noticed all the others discreetly turning away to examine the floor, ceiling, or dust bunnies under the desks. "I didn't really have any idea. Just a dumb thought."

"Please elucidate. And remember I'm not a sir to you--we're equal in rank."

"Pender, it was idiotic."

"We like that here. Guss, I doubt anything you can say could top some stories I've heard in this room. And some of those stories in the end have turned out to be the truth. Even if it's dumb, even if it's hopelessly stupid and completely inaccurate, it might give one of us an idea. In here, we're all listening close, we won't laugh, and we want to hear whatever you have to say. The one rule we have is that any ideas you have are the property and right of the team--and we treat them all as such."

"Which doesn't mean that if you're right, you can't boast about it all you want for weeks afterwards," added Dubzinski. So Guss said his theory, they discussed it, ripped it apart, and finally threw it away.

There were other rules, or traditions, or habits, that Guss soon learned. Such as the X-files lunch-break, which he got a taste of the first day.

Before they all left around noon in search of a meal, Pender knocked on the door, the door leading to the other office. He opened it before there was any acknowledgement from inside. "Sir? What would you like for lunch?"

"I'm not hungry," came the reply. "Take care of your own meals."

Pender closed the door, then frowned at the others. Guss saw similar expressions on all the agents' faces. "What do you bet that he hasn't eaten all morning?" Pender asked.

"I'll buy a BigMac or something; if we shove it into his mouth he should swallow it," Gibbons offered.

Pender nodded. "Do it."

"Is this common?" Guss asked in an undertone. "Sounds like you've done this before."

Pender groaned quietly. "Like, every day. If it wasn't for us he'd probably have starved to death by now."

"Doubt it," Dubzinski commented. "He probably doesn't need to eat. Not like he does anything else human."

"No eating," Gibbons agreed, "No sleeping."

"No emotions," Burnett said flatly.

Guss saw the other agents nod their heads in silent agreement. "What do you mean, exactly?"

Pender sighed. "I've been with him the longest. We were partners before he became director, I've seen him in all kinds of tight spaces. He doesn't get scared. He doesn't get angry, and if he's ever nervous it sure doesn't show."

"He doesn't laugh, he doesn't cry," Gibbons recited. "And if he smiles it's probably in the dark when no one can see. Hey, you know, we could probably turn this into a song--"

"Yeah, the Spooky-Spock melody," Dubzinski muttered. Then he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's just--he really does give me the creeps, sometimes. Seriously, is he human? Pender, have you ever seen any sign?"

Pender glared at him. "Watch it," Gibbons warned. "Lee, we know he's your friend, I'd like to think we're all his friends--"

"He's odd," Pender said flatly.

"There's more to it than that," Wong murmured.

And suddenly they were all looking at Guss again. He was suddenly very conscious that he was still something of an outsider. Yet he had the feeling that everything they had said had been for his benefit. Like they were warning him. The boss is weird, we all know it, if you can't handle it then leave.

---

Guss confronted Pender with this at the end of third day, when the other agents were leaving. He marched over to his partner's desk (now his desk too, he supposed) and said in a low voice, "Can I ask something?"

"Go right ahead," Pender said, equally softly.

"What is with our 'boss'?"

Pender raised his eyebrows. "Well, you certainly are curious, aren't you?"

"You made it very clear from the start that something's up with him. And that you know what it is. If I'm working here I think I need to know."

"You're right. Precisely correct."

After a pause Guss pressed, "Well? What's the secret?"

Pender waved as Gibbons, the last agent remaining, left the office for home. Then he turned and eyed his partner. "The secret is mine to know and yours to find out."

"Excuse me? What happened to the team, Pender? We tell each other everything?"

"And you're part of that team after three days?"

Guss looked away. "I thought I was," he mumbled.

He was surprised when Pender patted him on the shoulder. "I think you might be too, Guss. What little I've seen I like. This question of yours, it's an initiation rite, sort of. Everyone asks it eventually. And it's the one question everyone learns the answer to on their own. Consider it an unofficial-- but not informal--assignment. Find out what the deal is with our wayward commander, and you're part of the team. If you still want to be."

"What if what I find is different from what you know?"

Pender smiled. "That would be wonderful, frankly. Every piece of the puzzle will be much appreciated--particularly new ones." He turned to his computer. "Guss, before you begin, there's a few details you should know. Most of what you find will be classified. For various reasons, mostly because Mulder's gotten tangled with so many conspiracies, cover-ups, and covert operations that he probably should be dead. So keep quiet about what you learn, and try not to get caught learning it."

Guss nodded slowly. The only reason he wasn't entirely shocked was because he had heard such things for three days. His own partner, telling him to seek out data that the government had declared out of his reach. No wonder this section lost agents-- most members of the Bureau were not fond of law-breaking. But Pender and the rest believed that the truth was more important than the law, and Guss agreed with them. "Alright. So I just try to dig up whatever I can, carefully? On my own time, I take it?"

"Yes," Pender affirmed. "But before you start, I have a clue for you. The same clue I got, five years ago. Guss, five years ago most of what would help you was purged. Either classified or deleted. Like I said, some of the story is tangled up with things the government would like to keep quiet and hidden. I found something that they missed. I stored it. Then I deleted it, so no one would ever know I had found it. So now the only copy of this is in my possession--and the only people that know about it are in the X-files section. Where they're smart enough not to tell."

"What is it?" Guss asked, half-expecting Pender not to answer.

But he did. "A tape. That's all. I never even made a transcript. It's a voice record from about six years ago, when the X-files were just a little heap of cases, barely a real section." He reached into his desk drawer, pulled out an unlabelled cassette tape. "You have a tape player at home, right? This doesn't fit in a CD player."

Guss nodded. "Recording CDs cost too much for me."

"Good. Take it. Listen to it. Do not make a copy, though. And return it to me in a week. Got it?"

Again, Guss nodded. "So that's it?"

"That's it." Pender stood up. "I'll see you tomorrow." Then he went to the office door, knocked and opened it. "Good night, sir."

"Good night, sir," Guss echoed.

"Good night, Guss, Pender," came the director's voice from inside.

The two agents turned out the lights and left. On the way to the parking lot Guss asked, "When does he leave? It's already seven o'clock."

Pender shrugged. "Some people swear he doesn't. He's got an apartment. And he goes there on weekends, at least. Late. Always late."

"Why? What does he do in there?"

"Well, he's got another exit. We don't see him go out for meetings and the like. And he's on the computer a lot. He has a network of people who feed him information. He's very good at piecing things together for them. And us."

"He just stays in there all the time surfing the Web?"

Pender smiled very slightly. "Not when we're out on cases; he joins us sometimes. Randomly; I've had him meet me in California without mentioning it previously that he had a ticket. Because he heard of something interesting in the case I was on. And then other times..."

Guss was learning fast. Every time Pender trailed off, it was because of something odd. Something most likely to do with the big mystery surrounding the head of the X-files. "What?"

"He's disappeared more than once."

"Disappeared?"

"Happened several times when he was my partner. He just wouldn't be at work, no explanation given. Sometimes for a week. Then he'd just come back and pick up like he'd never been gone. I got pretty pissed, because I'd be left covering his ass. But no matter how much I complained, he never got punished. And he wouldn't tell me a damn thing." Pender's expression showed only the faintest hint of remembered annoyance. "He appeared in the hospital a couple of times. Came to work with a broken leg and second degree burns on his face once or twice. I stopped asking around then. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. It doesn't happen so much anymore. Last time was oh, maybe five months ago. For six days. And I still haven't figured out exactly what he does. The only pattern I know is that when there's a large number of sightings, or when lots of possible abductions occur at one time, it's best to keep an eye on the boss--and be prepared to cover when he's gone."

With that, Pender bade his new partner good-bye and drove off, leaving Guss to return home and mull over the events of the last few days. And to listen to the only clue of his first "assignment."

That was his first activity after microwaving dinner. He popped the tape in the player and listened to its entirety, which wasn't that long. He listened again while he ate, and then he played it continuously before sleeping, trying to memorize it, and understand it.

It was immediately obvious that it was a fragment of a larger conversation. The speakers, the location, and the circumstances were left unidentified. There were two voices only; a male, which he recognized immediately as none other than section director Mulder, and a female voice he had never heard. She was definitely not Gibbons or Wong, but what she said indicated that she was an X-files agent. Except the tape came from before the time that the X-files were a full section...

"--think he's telling the truth?" The recording began mid- sentence; the speaker was the woman.

"That's what the test shows. Anyway, why would he lie?" The answer was clearly the director's voice.

"He could have thought he was telling the truth. Hallucinations. Confabulation."

"Look at his records. No known drug-use. And never diagnosed with any sort of psychological disorder. A fine, upstanding citizen."

"Of fourteen years of age, Mulder." The voice confirmed the identity of the other...agent? The way they spoke, they could both be agents, working on an X-file. "Maybe just an active imagination."

Guss wondered if it was his imagination. The voice that answered was clearly Mulder's, but he heard anger in it. Still even, but harsher, somehow. From a man who never displayed emotion? "His imagination didn't make his brother disappear. He saw something."

Reconciliation was evident in the reply. "I don't deny that. The only question was what it was he actually saw." She hesitated for a moment, then added, "Whatever it was, the important thing is that we find him. That's our main object. We're looking for the truth, but the most important search is for the boy."

There was a long pause. Then Mulder spoke quietly. "If we don't find the truth," he said, "we may never find that boy, either." He took a breath deep enough that it was audible on the tape. "And I need to find him."

"I know. I know you do, Mulder," said the other voice. There was another pause, and then she spoke again. Very softly, so Guss had to turn up the volume nearly all the way to make out the words. "And you need to find Sam."

If Mulder had a response, it was lost to history. The tape fuzzed out entirely and Guss could not make out another word on it for the fifteen minutes it took until it reached the end.

He marvelled for a few moments that Pender had been able to piece together any sort of story from that small fragment. Certainly it raised plenty of questions, but it didn't offer the slightest hint of answering any of them. Who was Sam? Who was the woman who talked to Mulder like a colleague, or even a friend? And what was the case they were on?

Guss started the real search the next day. He first went to Pender, who only smiled a tiny, smug smile and didn't say a word when Guss asked his questions. Obviously he was on his own.

He first checked past cases, closed X-files. And he discovered quite quickly that there were gaps. Large gaps. Cases that had been stamped closed and then incinerated, it seemed, leaving only vague references in shadowy computer directories. Other cases had been censored; parts were there, sections were gone.

There were a few names that turned up several times. One name he couldn't track; it was as if all information concerning her had been deleted. No birth or death certificate, no records of marriage, moving, bank accounts--nothing. The person might have never existed, except that she was referenced in several x-files. Sometimes as the pathologist of an autopsy, sometimes as the author of the final report closing a case. Only a name, nothing more.

Another name appeared a couple of times, and Guss had a much easier time tracking that one. No agent would have had much difficulty. It was a little harder to arrange an appointment with the man, but he managed.

Guss couldn't help but be a little nervous when the time for the interview came. A conference with the Director--not the director of the X-files section, but the Director of the entire Bureau. It was somewhat intimidating.

And Director Skinner himself looked just as intimidating as his position. Guss wondered if he had made a mistake to come. What could he tell the Director, anyway? "Hi, I'm here on unofficial business because I'm nosy about my boss, and I've only worked with him for six days now?"

Fortunately he didn't have to say anything. "Agent Guss. Come in," said Skinner as soon as the secretary announced him. "Take a seat. Now, before you say anything, I'll tell you that I know this is about your new assignment to the X-files."

"Yes sir," said Guss. "At least, in a way--"

"I'm not finished, Agent Guss. You're here to ask me about your section director."

"Yes," Guss agreed, surprised. "How did you know, sir?"

Skinner's expression changed very slightly, to something resembling resignation. "You're the sixth agent to come to me about that. The rest are all part of the X-files section. Pender will be very pleased with you, if you've made it this far in so little time.

"Before you ask me anything, I'll tell you now--I won't be able to answer most of your questions. Even if I know the answers, most of them are classified. I could do more than lose my job if I told you everything I know."

"Does that mean you can't tell me who Dana Scully is? Or what relation the name Sam has to director Mulder?"

"Unfortunately," Skinner said with a sigh, "that's exactly what I mean."

Guss regarded the Director thoughtfully. It definitely sounded as if he knew the answers he needed. In fact, it sounded as if he would like to tell them. But that he wasn't going to.

So instead of pushing, Guss asked another question, one that had been bothering him for the last few days, ever since his assignment. "Sir, why are the X-files agents allowed to do as they please?"

Skinner's eyebrows shot up. "Are you criticizing your section, Agent Guss?"

"No sir," Guss said firmly. "But I'm curious."

"As long as they X-files have been open, they've been unorthodox in their methods. That was a trend started by your director when he worked alone, before the X-files were considered a complete section. I disapproved initially, but the truth is, they got results."

Guss noted the "they" but said nothing. He doubted he'd get an answer. He listened intently as Skinner continued, "For five years now the X-files have been considered an important, necessary section of the FBI. They do what they like because they know they're needed. They know the rest of the Bureau can't do without them. I couldn't shut them down if I wanted to, but frankly, I don't want to. I've re-opened that section twice. Both times with opposition. I'm content--it makes my job easier- -to have it in its current, untouchable condition. I like it there." He looked away momentarily. "There was a time," he said, in a quieter, more reflective voice, "that your director would have liked it, too."

Guss cleared his throat. "Sir, may I ask another question?"

"Go ahead," Skinner nodded.

"Is it true that director Mulder sometimes...disappears?"

"It's true. And before you ask it, I don't know where he goes usually, though I try to find out. Sometimes I've been able to send people to pull him out of tight spots. I can tell you this much--he's been doing this for a long time. And I don't reprimand him any more. It's not worth it. I can't fire him; the Bureau needs him. I can't punish him; there's nothing I can do that would change him in the slightest."

"Would you do it if you could?"

Skinner looked at him for a time, without saying anything. Guss was hard-pressed not to squirm under that gaze; it was almost as penetrating as the X-files director's. At last the Director spoke. "No. I wouldn't. Is that all, Agent Guss?"

"Yes. I guess, sir. Thank you--thank you for answering what you could, sir." Guss stood, was about to open the door when Skinner rapped out, "You forgot a question."

Guss turned back. "What?"

"You forgot to ask why I put up with you and your questions."

Guss hesitated, then decided that speaking his mind more couldn't hurt much. "I think the question is why you put up with Pender and his questions and the puzzles he gives agents."

"Very perceptive, Agent Guss. Do you know the answer?"

"Not really, sir." He added as an afterthought, "Can you give it to me?"

Skinner frowned. "Not the full answer. But I'll tell you something that might mean nothing. To you, at least. When the X-files were re-opened for the second time, over five years ago, Agent Pender was assigned to them for the first time. He was assigned as partner to Agent Mulder, who had had four years previous experience. Agent Mulder didn't want a partner. He got one for two reasons. The first was because Agent Pender had asked for the assignment. He wanted to work on the X-files. I still don't know exactly why.

"The reason I gave him the assignment, though, was not because of his wishes. It was because I didn't want Agent Mulder working alone. The Bureau needed Mulder on the X-files. They wouldn't let him resign. But I wouldn't have done it if Pender hadn't been put with them too."

"Why not?" Guss asked, when Skinner paused.

Skinner pinned him with a sharp look. "Because," he said clearly, "I didn't want Mulder alone every day, with a gun and a pile of cases and nothing else. Agent Pender understands this. And I know that he won't let anyone into the X-files who doesn't also understand."

And that was the end of the interview.

Guss moved beyond the cases. He examined past records, certificates, anything with the name "Fox Mulder" on it. There was pitifully little. Whatever leads he found he pursued, through phone calls, e-mail, anything.

A week passed. Another went by, and Guss found himself working with the team, found himself becoming part of the team. He knew that he was a member of it when he called Pender at one o'clock in the morning with a sudden insight into one of their current cases. Pender sounded asleep, then excited as he listened. He was not in the least annoyed. The truth couldn't wait for any of them to wake up. They all knew that. Guss was hardly surprised when he came in early the next morning and found everyone discussing his theory, already well-versed in it. Apparently Pender had called them all the moment he had heard.

The acceptance of his theory, on what the purpose of the faked abductions was, was a triumph. But Guss had an even larger accomplishment in store. He waited until the end of the day to present it. When the other agents left, he approached Pender's desk.

"Partner," he said, "I got the story."

Pender knew, with that instinctual, almost telepathic ability, exactly what Guss meant. He leaned back in his seat. "I'm listening," was all he said.

Guss didn't expect anything more. He launched into the tale. "Okay, here's what I've found. Agent Fox Mulder was an academy boy-genius, an Oxford grad, majoring in psychology, with a talent for profiling serial killers. He should have sky-rocketed to the head of the bureau except that somewhere during his career he became fascinated with the X-files."

Pender was nodding slowly, with a bored expression clearly plastered on his features.

"Yes," Guss addressed this, "I know this is all accessible knowledge. It was what I started with. Anyhow, I figured out pretty fast that the explanation probably lay in why he got interested in the X-files. It's taken me this long to piece out why, but I think I have it.

"When Fox Mulder was a boy, he was traumatized severely. This trauma lead to his obsession with the strange, the unexplainable, and particularly with extraterrestrials--before he proved they existed, when 'believer' was thought to equal 'screwball.' This trauma occurred when he was twelve, and it affected him enough that he was hospitalized for it for several weeks. And though it doesn't say so in any records I could find, part of those weeks were in a psychiatric ward."

Pender sat up abruptly. "Oh?" he said. "If there are no records, where is your proof?"

Guss suppressed a smug smile. "I called around. I found the names of employees of various such institutions in Massachusetts, where Director Mulder grew up. I was playing a hunch, and I found one talkative old lady who was a nurse some years ago. She had clear memories of 'a nice young boy named Fox.' Who apparently was catatonic at least part of the time due to stress. Now, there are no written or electronic records of any Fox staying at the institute she worked at. But it's a rare name, and the boy she recalls was the same age our director would have been at the time, thirty or so years ago."

Pender pursed his lips and whistled very softly. "I admit it, Guss, I'm impressed. You've dug up another piece, and I thought I'd found all the ones out there."

"It's not that big a thing."

"No," Pender agreed, "and I don't see that it means much of anything, but the mere fact that you found something new says a lot. Like, that you're smarter than me, maybe. Who knows who'll be running this section in forty years?"

"Forty years?"

"Doubt the director will quit before then. Go on," and he waved at his partner to continue. "Tell me about his trauma."

Guss pushed ahead with a certain eagerness. He was positive Pender knew everything that he was going to say. But he was elated that at least one fact, however minuscule, had been first discovered by himself. "The trauma," he said, "was the loss of his younger sibling, Sam. Who was, as far as I can tell, completely erased from record some time ago. I couldn't even find out why. Most of what I know is what little scraps I gleaned from your tape, Pender. In other words, nothing. He had a little brother named Sam who disappeared in an alien abduction. And the director's devoted his life to finding him. Made it his absolute obsession, his raison d'etre. I got a little more, a very little more, from some older agents. But they tend to clam up too. Everyone does. My story's incomplete, I know. But I searched everywhere, and I couldn't find the conclusion. If it ever existed, it doesn't now, Pender."

"You may be right," Pender said slowly. "It might not exist. But you aren't going to make director, I'm afraid. I still have quite an advantage of knowledge over you."

Out of the blue Guss was furious. He managed to keep his voice level with an act of will strong enough that the words shook-- which defeated the purpose. At least he wasn't shouting. Yet. "I searched every record I could find. There's a huge hole, and it swallowed up just about everything that could help me. There is no hard knowledge, no computer files, they've all been erased, deleted, burned. I found evidence of that at least. Now the only place that information exists now, as far as I can tell, is in the minds of the X-files team. And that's one place I can't access. I'd like to. I want to be part of the team. Not just to know their secrets...though that's part of it. But I have no way of letting myself in. It's hopeless."

"Nothing's hopeless," Pender said, before Guss could go on. "And you're already in. You were in when you told me the story, as far as you could go with it.

"And because you're one of us, because you need access to our secrets the way all of us need the truth, I'll give you everything you don't know. Everything the team knows, at least."

Guss couldn't help but stare at him. "You will?" he whispered, only vaguely aware of how idiotically grateful he sounded.

Pender said nothing of this, only nodded sharply. "I'll begin by telling you that you were wrong about certain details."

"Which details?" Guss demanded.

Pender, in what Guss had learned by now was his fashion, answered the question with another. "What is the name of the only proven abductee? One who knew details about the universe before any scientists did, who swore even under hypnosis that she had spent decades travelling through it, visiting planets our telescopes are only just discovering, right where she said they'd be?"

He was only asking for the name of one of the most well-known people on the planet. Not exactly a tricky question. "One of the few factors that have convinced people at last that life is out there? Pender, that's hardly a Trivial Pursuit question. More like a test for brain-damage."

"Just say her name, Guss."

"Samantha Miller."

"Bzzz--incorrect, agent. That's her name now. The earliest articles, if you'd bothered to search for hard copies, call her 'Samantha Muller.'"

"And?" Guss tried to make sense of this. Pender watched him, then gave up. "Think, Guss. I thought you were bright. They changed the name. They could have changed it originally...they did change it originally. And altered it again because they decided even the first change was too small. They covered up her true identity."

And Guss got it all. In one blinding flash he understood. "To Miller from Muller from Mulder."

"Not a little brother. A little sister. Sam wasn't Samuel; Sam was..."

Guss's head was whirling. He tried to make it add up but it wouldn't. "But...but Samantha was ancient!" he cried.

"Quiet!" Pender ordered, his low tone brooking no contradictions. His gaze shifted to the door of the inner office and back again. "There's sound-proofing, but don't risk it. He hasn't gone home yet."

"Samantha," Guss said, keeping his voice quiet, "was over a hundred. She died of old age! She couldn't possibly have been the younger sister of the director!"

Pender was shaking his head slowly. "Don't believe all you're told. Never accept facts at face value. Samantha Mulder appeared to be around one hundred and ten. But I was interested in such things when she first showed up, and I did some research through the FBI that most people couldn't duplicate. I found out some things that were covered up so deep that if they knew I knew them, I probably would be dead.

"And lots of that information is interviews and examinations of Samantha Mulder. One such fact--she insisted, repeatedly, that she had been gone for less than a decade. And that at the time of her abduction she was under ten years old.

"Now, she didn't remember the exact abduction. She lost time, not the few minutes or hours some abductees report, but apparently almost a year. Then...she says that it was them, the extraterrestrials, the aliens, that were responsible for the rest. They aged her. They needed her as an adult so they made her one. And something went wrong with their treatments; they meant to make her in her prime, but she didn't stop aging, until she died of it.

"That's what she said. Maybe she was fooled, you could say. Delusional, thought she was a young girl. Or she lost a lot more time than she knew. But she never showed signs of schizophrenia. That's one reason her whole story is believed by the majority. And...

"The doctors' reports--there were plenty of tests performed on her--the reports are fascinating. For instance, she seemed to age some five years physically in the six months between her 'return' and her death. Also, her age was deeply in question. Certain physical signs, obvious ones, put her over one hundred.

"But when they did the autopsy (and this was some of the hardest data to find), analysis of bone marrow, growth, other factors-- she was only twenty according to the deeper tests. And if that's not complicated enough...at her death, Samantha Mulder was, by her birth certificate, thirty-three years old."

Guss felt like a fish; his mouth seemed to be locked into a permanent "O" shape. At last he regained control of his tongue, if not his vocal cords. His voice was a hoarse whisper. "But...but how? I don't...I can't see how all that's possible. She can't, she couldn't be the director's sister. Not if there's all that conflict...it's too fantastic!"

"If she isn't," Pender said, "then there are a few facts to be explained. One, why was a certain Fox Mulder involved with almost every aspect of Samantha's life--he signed documents for her, authorized tests, apparently blocked quite a few more tests, and generally was with her more than any other person. And two-- why did the X-files close less than a week after Samantha's return?"

"They did?" Guss asked faintly.

"Check the records. Second time they closed. First time due to outside-Bureau forces...second time, Agent Mulder shut them down personally. And they weren't re-opened until after she died. Guss, does that make any sense? Go back. Look at the records. Some of them at least are obvious. There are sixty X-files from the exact time of Samantha's appearance. It didn't come without a price, apparently. Something along the lines of five dozen people vanished when she appeared. And they've never re- appeared."

Guss found an anchor. "None of them?"

"Not one."

"Can't be."

Pender, instead of replying, turned to his computer and typed so fast Guss could barely follow it. The files from that time appeared. All were flagged yellow--still open, though not currently under investigation.

Guss looked the directory over. "There's only thirty-eight here. You said sixty."

Pender folded his arms across his chest. "At one time there were sixty. When I joined the X-files officially, it had been cut down to those. The others had vanished. Swept under the rug."

"Any theories on that?" They might be getting off track. Guss couldn't tell. By this point he had lost the thread of the conversation and was only picking up random facts.

"Most of these files have a common trait. The people in them had a 'history' of claiming they were abductees. None were taken seriously. None of them had ever been reported missing. But that doesn't make them liars.

"I think the others had a similar history, with one difference. They had gone missing. They had disappeared for a time, and it was proven."

"So they were all double abductees?" Guss said slowly.

Pender nodded. "Almost definitely. And here's another fact. All those missing files, I saw them once, before they were erased. And I remember a couple of the names. Guss, those names don't exist anymore. No records remain of their births or their deaths or marriages or bank accounts or anything. They're gone. All erased."

"Why?"

"Want my theory?" Pender asked. "Or do you want time to process everything and come up with your own?" He didn't need to wait for Guss to answer that. "The government erased those files. Nothing else could have done it so thoroughly. And it explains why those cases were classified and then wiped. Why so much is classified.

"Guss, the government sanctioned human tests. I have no proof. I have no proof of anything. Everything I've found has been erased or destroyed somehow. I keep quiet so the same thing doesn't happen to me. But I know the truth. The government tested people. Abducted people. And then..."

Guss felt his brain come alive, sluggishly. "They were abducted for real. By aliens. But why? How?"

"I don't know." Pender shook his head. "I don't know. But it explains it all. It even explains why Samantha lost a year. A year erased, not by little grey men, but by her own people. The EBEs let her keep her memories. Humans didn't."

Guss had been sitting on the edge of the desk. Now he slid down to the floor and crouched there for a long time. It was dark outside. Lights blocked the stars that he should be able to see out the window. Human lights blocked the extraterrestrial ones. Human crimes blocked any alien ones.

No wonder the director was the way he was. He must know all this. The entire X-files team must know. How... Guss cleared his throat. "How come...how come you all aren't like him? If you know all this, and can't do anything..."

"We do what we can," Pender's voice came to him quietly. "It wasn't truth, or knowledge, that made the director who he is."

Childhood trauma. It had seemed so plausible. Even more so now, he guessed. That on top of knowing this. Or underneath it. It was the director's devotion to his cause that had lead to these discoveries, Guss was sure. "He knows it all, doesn't he?"

"Mulder?" Pender says. "Yeah. Of course. He knows more than I do. It wasn't that knowledge that makes him who he is. I told you. It was...I can't be sure. I say I am but I'm not. All I have is theories. About everything. No proven truths, just plausible knowledge."

"It was..." Guss murmured. "It was losing Samantha again. Wasn't it? Having her return, and then losing her..."

"Grief can do strange things to one's soul," Pender said. "I think that's what it was. That's the only explanation I can come up with. And yet..."

"There are loose ends," Guss remarked.

"Lots of them," his partner agreed.

Guss tried to remember what they were. Only one small thing came into his head. "Like why Samantha was physically only twenty when she should have been thirty."

Pender laughed. At least that's what Guss thought the dry wheeze was. "That's one thing Gibbons figured out. She thinks. Science fiction to me, but so were aliens, five years ago. She says that relativity, scooting around the galaxy at light speed, slowed down Samantha's clock. Which the aliens sped up as it was. It's that whole Einstein theory with the twins--a twin in a spaceship, and one on earth--"

"The one in the ship, moving at near-light velocities, will come back much younger." Guss nodded. "I understand."

"Good," said Pender shortly. "I don't."

Guss couldn't summon up the energy to explain. "What...what other loose ends are there?" he asked instead.

"The biggest," Pender answered, tapping his fingers together, "is where he goes when he vanishes. Where he goes, and why."

Guss mulled this over. "There's something else, too," he said suddenly. "The tape you gave me--the woman speaking with the director..."

"Yes?" Pender said sharply.

"I identified her as Dana Scully. She's listed in several older X-files, closed ones. She was his partner, a while ago. I think."

"You're right," Pender verified.

"What happened to her?"

"Gone." Pender spread his hands wide. Open, empty. "Vanished. I can't prove it, but I think she's one of the missing files. The lost abductions."

"Could..." Guss hadn't thought of this before, but maybe... "Could he be looking for her?"

"Maybe." Pender's shrug indicated it was unlikely. "After five years, though?"

"He kept looking for his sister, you said."

"You said it to me, I believe."

"We both said." Guss frowned. "If I'm part of the team, does it matter?"

"No," Pender stated plainly. "But your new hypothesis doesn't hold. I didn't know either of them. But I was working here during their partnership, and from what I heard, they didn't always get along. Apparently she was a scientist, a logical sort who didn't hold with any of his wild theories. And rumors had it that she was on the X-files to de-bunk it--that was why they were shut down at first, because she had reported all sorts of non- policy procedures. Then when they were re-opened, she was kept on them as punishment for failing to keep them closed."

Guss sighed, not happy to have his theory shot down so quickly. "Well, was she pretty? Maybe they had some sort of non-career- related relationship..."

Pender snorted. "As I heard it Dana Scully wasn't anywhere near ugly, or even plain, but she also was plenty career-centered. Enough that she wouldn't risk her job on an affair with a partner. "

"Particularly with a partner she didn't like," Guss agreed. "If not her, though, then who? Because I bet it's someone."

Pender nodded. "Maybe. Could be anyone, though probably one of the abductees. I suspect the only way to find out would be to ask our director directly..."

"I'm not going to," Guss said immediately.

"Nor I," Pender responded. "For different reasons, maybe. But I won't ask. It's personal."

Guss regarded his partner narrowly. "That didn't stop you finding the rest of the stuff."

"The rest," Pender explained, "didn't require me asking him questions to his face."

"Pender," Guss said slowly, "do you know something that I don't?"

Pender gazed at him innocently. "At this point, you know what the team knows. Welcome aboard."

"Thank you," Guss said, almost automatically. He noted to himself that Pender had side-stepped the question. He also knew that asking directly was not the way to find the answer, that Pender would simply dodge in another direction. And he knew that he was tired. Drained, even. Everything he had heard was pressing on his mind, his heart.

Pender of course noticed. "You're tired, Guss," he said quietly. "Go home, get some sleep. Think over everything you've heard. It'll seem brighter at dawn, I guarantee it. Oh, and about that theory you worked out today? Concerning the false abductions?"

"Yes?"

"Keep with it. It sounds likely to me."

Guss recalled it with effort. His idea was that they were in truth kidnap victims, maybe of some mob ring, maybe something even darker, and that the families that had received ransom demands were keeping quiet out of fear for their lost ones. That it was darker was indicated by the levels of subterfuge they were keeping up, faking abductions.

After what he had heard from Pender, about what the government had done to its own citizens, his theory felt more accurate than ever.

Pender watched Guss leave. His partner was definitely in need of a good night's sleep. As a matter of fact, so was Pender, but he could live on only a few hours without difficulty. And his naivete hadn't just been crushed. Guss would build up a healthy little wall of cynicism, and then he'd be okay. Pender had seen just about every X-files agent go through this. Part of the process of joining the team, the baptismal rites of passage.

He had gone through something similar himself, only it hadn't been as easy for him. There hadn't been any support from inside. His innocence had been shattered before even joining the X-files; he supposed the scarring from Carol's death when they were both teens was one of the things that had drawn him to Fox Mulder. Finding his pain in the other man, only magnified.

The X-files had interested him from the moment he heard of them, of course. Pender had always had a fascination with the unnatural, the paranormal. He wasn't a believer; he didn't buy most of it. But he was interested in it. If he had lived in the last century he would have been one of those guys who went around de-bunking soothsayers and seances, hoping to find the real thing but always expecting a fake.

But when the X-files were re-opened, it wasn't the paranormal that drew him so much as the opportunity to work with "Spooky" Mulder. Supposedly one of the most brilliant agents on the FBI. A genius crack-pot, who had been proved to be not so cracked as everyone had thought. In fact, he had suddenly been elevated to the status of Hero, the revealer of the deep secrets of the universe. One of several who proved We Are Not Alone.

It didn't mean everyone was clamoring to work with him, though.

Pender had met Fox Mulder only once before when he had requested the assignment. He had seen him multiple times, passed him in the halls, but had only talked to him once. And he doubted that Mulder even remembered.

---

It was at least three, maybe four years before Pender joined the X-files, during the time of their first closure. He was the new guy, the latest in a series of bright, green agents learning their way around the halls of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Maybe a little more determined than most to do his part, but they all were usually raring to go.

It was around noon. Half the agents in the building, or so it seemed, were gathered around in the halls, loitering, about to go on their lunch breaks. Pender was chatting with several of his new friends, also young agents, all discussing their ambitions.

The door of Skinner's office opened. At the time he was only an Assistant Director; still, there was a slight lull, as everyone straightened up a bit, lowered their voices, in general tried to act like respectable, busy agents. More or less.

And then the conversations simply came to a halt. Or at least dropped into whispers. Pender and his companions all turned to see what the event was.

A man was leaving the office. It wasn't AD Skinner. A younger man, an agent. Pender recognized him from reputation if nothing else: "Spooky" Fox Mulder.

But it wasn't for that reputation that everyone had gone quiet. It was for his expression. For the way he looked. Everyone had been telling Pender that Mulder was a little bit crazy, particularly since the X-files had been shut down; but Pender had yet to meet a completely sane agent. Now, looking at him, he understood what they were talking about. And "a little bit" had been underrating it.

Mulder looked like he hadn't shaved in about two days. His suit looked fresh, but still, something about it screamed "unkempt;" like he had just thrown it on. His hair was a mess. But that wasn't what stood out.

What caught the other agents, what made them stop in their tracks, was his face, his expression, his eyes. Too thin, too pale, unhealthy, and his eyes burned very dark. He looked sick, like he had some deathly fever, actually.

Pender was close enough to see his look clearly, and what he saw there was worse than illness. Rage, fear, and grief were all over-written by an emptiness that burned cold like dry ice. The sort of consuming emptiness that turns people into hollow shells.

Pender recognized the look. He had seen it in the mirror several years ago. The abyss, looking into you when you look into it. It had taken the combined efforts of his family and his closest friends to pull him away from it. How many different times had he come this close to joining Carol? Too many, much too many. He was grateful that was over now, that he still grieved, but memories of her made him smile, too.

But this man... Even the people who didn't understand exactly what they were seeing saw it. Pender heard whispers around him, low enough that the agent now making his way slowly down the hall didn't hear. "What happened--?"

There was worry in the whispers the answered. Not only because there was something terrible in his visage, like he was a real spook, a haunting soul, not a living person. Worry because, though they may not personally like Spooky, he was one of their own. And the news they spoke of was part of that unity, too. It shook them all. "She was taken." "Scully's kidnapped." "Abducted." "His partner's missing." "Agent Scully's been lost."

Maybe one phrase reached the other's ear. Maybe he just reached some unseen barrier.

Whatever it was, he stumbled then, caught himself on the wall and leaned against it, eyes closed.

Pender couldn't stand by and do nothing. It wasn't in himself to merely watch as others took falls he himself had experienced. He stepped forward. "Agent Mulder?"

The agent straightened up and looked at, or rather through, Pender. "I'm fine. I'm just tired."

Pender looked closer and saw that bags under the eyes would be an understatement in his case. "How long has it been since you slept?" he asked, worry mingled with curiosity.

The other agent blinked in his general direction with a small frown. The answer came fast enough, though. "Three nights."

Pender was good at arithmetic. "96 hours?" He managed to contain his next question, which would have been 'You're still standing?' Instead, he said, "You should get some sleep." He looked at the other agents, standing there in the hall, watching them. They stared back, torn between their dislike of the agent in question and a more general sympathy. He read encouragement in their faces. They wouldn't help but they were glad he would. Thanks a lot, people. "Do you want some help home?"

"I'm fine," Mulder repeated, denying all physical evidence to the contrary. Paying more attention to the condition than to the words, Pender found himself almost guiding the other agent down the rest of the hall, all the way to the parking lot. He didn't offer any physical support and guessed that if he had it would have been ignored. Still, he would catch Mulder if he did happen to topple over, as he appeared on the verge of doing.

When they got to the lot, he wondered if he should drive Mulder to his house. The other agent assured him that he could manage on his own.

Pender nodded uncertainly. "You're sure?"

He was told it wasn't far. By a man who looked as if standing straight up was a major effort. Pender hoped he wouldn't get pulled over for driving under the influence. Of sleep- deprivation, in this case.

And something worse. That frightening pain, even clouded as it was now, still burning in the eyes. Pender wanted to say something, address it some way. But he didn't know how. "I'm sorry," he settled for saying.

Mulder looked at him bleakly. "For what," he asked hoarsely. "Nothing anyone could do. Except for me. And I failed."

Pender met his gaze steadily, but couldn't find a response.

"They gave me back the X-files," Mulder went on. Rambling, from exhaustion. "Skinner opened them, for me. Re-opened them. Like it could do something, like there's something to accomplish in there. If he had before this, maybe we would have been together then, maybe I could have done something more..."

Pender knew that that guilt had to be ended. He wasn't the one to do it, but still, he had to try. He said the only thing that came into his mind. "You will find her."

Mulder's expression knocked him back with the tangible feeling of loss. "But I never found her," he said, and then he climbed into his car and drove away.

Pender didn't even see Mulder for a long time after that. He would have liked to. He wanted to do something more; he also wanted to know what the agent had meant by his cryptic last statement. But in a week he was assigned to a temporary position in the Chicago branch, and he was so busy before that that he didn't get a chance to drop into the basement offices.

By the time he returned to DC, there was no need for him to do anything. He asked one of his acquaintances what had ever happened with Agent Scully's disappearance and got a blank look, than a start. "Oh, that! Nearly forgot; it's been resolved for over a month, you know."

"It has?"

"Yeah. Thought you would have heard, you like that crazy stuff. Not like you're Spooky or anything, but--"

"Well, what happened? Since I do like it?"

The other agent shrugged. "Nothing big," he said. "She came back. Returned by whoever, dropped in a hospital. I heard for a bit that she was dying, but she's been back at work for a month now, still down in the basement, sadly. So I guess it was just rumor. Have you heard about their latest case? Something to do with graverobbers, I hear..."

Pender couldn't come up with any reason to descend into the basement. But he did see "Spooky" occasionally, though he never spoke to him. He was surprised by the change in the man, the one long look he got. Mulder was with his partner at lunch, and Pender had happened to be at the same restaurant with a friend. They came in and his friend sighed.

"Look at that," the agent said. "Spooky & the Mrs. It's such a pity she's always down below."

Pender turned his head a bit, looked surreptitiously at the partners. "Guess she's not bad," he admitted. "Are they...involved?"

His friend snorted into his coffee. "Not from everything I've heard. Except that they're always together, it seems. Can't date a woman who's tied at the waist to another man...even if they aren't actually 'involved' as you say."

Pender watched them. His friend was right; they didn't seem to be involved. No kissing or hugging or hand-holding or physical contact at all. But they talked throughout lunch. They had papers with them, so Pender assumed at least part of their discussion concerned a case. However, it must have strayed at least a few times to judge by the way they smiled and laughed. Both of them. Pender would almost have said that the agent he had helped to his car some months ago was incapable of laughter, but here he was, smirking at something his partner was saying.

Mulder abruptly looked up and straight at him; Pender ducked his head. When he dared peak back he was met with two pairs of eyes, Mulder and Scully together staring directly at him. He looked away hastily, glad that he didn't blush easily. Suspects must go through hell being interrogated by those two, he decided. Her look could freeze nitrogen and his look...Well, it was healthier than it had been. A balance of curiosity and annoyance. None of the fury or loss Pender had seen before, though he thought he saw something dark, grieving, deep inside. But veiled, and not overwhelming.

By this time he was well on his way to figuring out what that something was. Pender's curiosity as well as his compassion had been peaked by his first encounter with Fox Mulder, and at least part of his stay in Chicago had been devoted to appeasing that curiosity. His mild interest in the paranormal had already pointed the way to the X-files, and he had delved deeper now.

Samantha was only a name to him then, but by the time she was actually returned Pender knew the entire story. Knew it well enough that he knew that telling it might have dire consequences. So he kept quiet, and tried not to appear too understanding when the X-files were closed and Fox Mulder took an extended leave from the Bureau. Even though the halls buzzed with questions-- "Quitting? Spooky's gone and left us?"--Pender made no attempt to answer, and asked a few of his own for camouflage.

For a time Dana Scully's disappearance was linked with her partner's leaving. It took nearly a month before those questions started up--"Where did Agent Scully go? I thought she quit with Spooky! No? Maybe she was abducted again"--that was a joke. Very few people knew how accurate it was.

Pender of course was one of them. He saw the file, opened by Fox Mulder with all the others. But not many people were accustomed to examining the X-files, and they noticed nothing when half the new cases, unexamined since the X-files were closed, simply dropped off the face of the earth. Along with the names of the people in them and the people themselves.

It started to be passed along the grapevine that the X-files were to be re-opened. Pender acted quickly; he went straight to the former supervisor. "Assistant Director Skinner, I would like to request assignment to the X-files."

Skinner looked at him through his wire-frame glasses. "That division has been closed."

"Scuttlebutt has it that it's about to be re-opened, sir. With all the new findings about Identified flying objects..."

"Rumor is not always correct, Agent Pender."

But it was, in this case. Not for a few months. Pender was about to start a private campaign for re-opening when two things happened simultaneously: Samantha Miller passed away, and rumor solidified into hard fact; the X-files were to be investigated once more. Pender visited Skinner a second time.

"Agent Pender," said Skinner, "Are you aware that Special Agent Fox Mulder is the chosen agent for those cases?"

"Yes, sir," Pender replied. "I believe he doesn't have a partner now, sir."

Skinner's gaze flickered away and back briefly. Pender thought he saw an expression of sorrow in the AD's eyes, which was fast replaced by his more ordinary stern look. "If you were assigned to the X-files, you would be the junior partner under Agent Mulder."

"I am aware of that, sir. Would that be a problem?"

"Possibly." Skinner regarded the agent thoughtfully. "I am aware that Agent Mulder has something of a reputation around the Bureau, Agent Pender. I assume you've heard the stories." He waited for Pender's nod before continuing. "I am warning you, not slandering him, when I tell you that most of what you've heard is probably accurate. He is a brilliant agent, that is undeniable. But he can be a difficult man to work with. Particularly now."

"Why would that be, sir?" Pender asked innocently. He thought he knew. He was almost positive he knew, in fact. But he wondered if the AD was aware of the reasons, and also if he would tell them to another agent who had no relations to Mulder.

"Agent Mulder," Skinner explained, "has specifically requested no partner or other agents. He wishes to pursue the cases his own way. I know from experience that although Mulder's methods are unorthodox, they get the job done. I was considering letting him have his way."

Pender grabbed onto his wording. "Considering, sir? So you haven't decided?" He didn't need to wait for Skinner's reply. "Sir, I am more than willing to work under Agent Mulder, and to follow his lead on everything. I realize I'm less experienced than him, and not as good an agent. I'd willingly work under him, not with him, from everything I've heard about him."

Skinner looked unconvinced. Pender considered his options and decided to take a chance. "Sir, I'm asking to be assigned to the X-files. I'm not asking to be made Agent Mulder's partner. I think that may be too big a job for me, to be his full partner. Junior partner perhaps. But full..?" He paused again, then finally said, "I understand that Agent Mulder doesn't want another partner."

He said the last sentence quietly, clearly but low-voiced. A slight accent on the 'another' to verify to Skinner that he knew of the first partner. I'm not out to replace her, sir. But maybe help in my own small way.

He could tell that Skinner understood, by the cool manner in which he was regarded. Then the AD looked at his desk. "Your request has been accepted, Agent Pender. In one week you'll be partnered to Agent Mulder and can begin work on the X-files." He glanced up at Pender again. "You will be dealing with cases of a rather unusual nature. I've seen your records. You are a good agent, and you've dealt with some pretty tricky matters. I think you can handle the X-files. I just hope you understand what you've gotten yourself into."

"I do, sir," was all Pender said. He knew that the AD wasn't talking about the case files. And he saw that Skinner understood his response fully.

In a week he was down in the basement, actually meeting Agent Fox Mulder for the first time. A real meeting, in which both parties gave each other's names out and shook hands to seal the bargain.

Pender could tell right off that Mulder was far from happy to have a partner. Even a self-described junior partner. He wasn't exactly rude, but he was cool as hell and far from talkative. He also spoke over Pender multiple times--like every instance Pender tried to say a word about himself. After a phrase Mulder would finish the sentence for him, making it completely clear that he knew Pender's entire history already and was not particularly interested in hearing it again.

Mulder never mentioned Carol. Pender didn't know if it was because he himself never quite mentioned the name or if his so- called partner (Pender early on started thinking of him as a superior) didn't know that passage from Pender's life story. He suspected the former.

Mulder also never mentioned Dana Scully. Pender didn't bring up the topic himself. It wasn't one spoken of anywhere, actually. Hush-up. Pender knew it had to be. Everyone who had known her had been warned. She didn't exist anymore, according to most certificates. Except for a few references in the X-files.

And in Mulder's memories. Even if he never mentioned her aloud. Pender saw that, clear as glass. Clear as Mulder's eyes, with their dark pain. Clear as his icy expression, which never changed.

He cracked jokes sometimes. Random sarcastic comments, some amusing, some more biting. He never smiled at them, though Pender might. Pender remembered hearing him laugh at the restaurant those few years ago but most of the time couldn't quite make himself believe that that had been the same man as his current partner.

He wasn't the same man whom Pender had seen stumble out of Skinner's office, either. Somehow he was even darker than that. More focused, and with none of the weakness that man had shown. None of the vulnerabilities.

They stopped calling him "Spooky" around the Bureau. Mulder had gone beyond that now; he wasn't a laughingstock. He wasn't a nutcase anymore, he had been proven right, and now the nation depended on him to find more truths, an encore performance. Pender wondered if he was even aware of his own worth. He wasn't impressed by it, certainly.

Pender found it ironic that the nickname had been dropped. Maybe because now it was a little too appropriate. Mulder wasn't merely spooky. He was downright frightening sometimes.

Like the way he figured things out. That frightened Pender. Not terribly, not in a skin-crawling horror-inducing sort of way. But still, it was shocking, the way he read a case. Then re-read it. And sometimes he would sit totally still for an hour, staring at a picture in it or a paragraph or rifling through some research book, and then scribble something down and practically flee from the room. Often enough Pender would have to literally run to keep up with him. Or mentally race, trying to deduce what Mulder had already figured out because his partner refused to tell him anything.

Pender ended up in Skinner's office about a month later. He was called in because of some detail or another on their last report. Which Pender had written with practically no explanation because he had none to give; he didn't even know what the conclusion was, only that the most likely suspect had been apprehended.

Skinner asked him a question, Pender tried to respond civilly, then ended up exploding. "Dammit, it's not my fault, I don't know, I'm a goddamn chauffeur, not an FBI agent!"

The assistant director's stare would have felled a charging elephant. Pender dropped more than sat back into his chair. "Sorry, I'm sorry sir," he choked out.

"Agent Pender," said Skinner quietly, "please calm yourself, and then explain what you meant exactly by that."

Pender took three very deep breaths and concentrated on the neutral carpet. At last he looked up. "I'm sorry, sir," he said carefully. "I didn't mean to shout. I think I'm a little stressed, sir."

"Apparently." Pender was surprised to see a very slight hint of amusement on the AD's face. "At least you only verbally decked me. Now, if you would explain this stress to me."

"Sir." Agent Pender rubbed his face. "You did warn me. I just wasn't quite as well prepared as I had thought. It's my partner, sir. As I think you've guessed." Skinner's grim look verified this. "I'm not requesting a transfer. I want to work in the X- files still. But...Agent Mulder can be...difficult to work with. He is definitely good at what he does, but he won't let me do a damn thing. Except drive us places. And that's only when he has something to work on, or else he drives and I move fast to make sure I'm in the car when he takes off."

"What do you want me to do?" Skinner asked.

"Sir, I sort of doubt you can do anything."

"You may underestimate me somewhat, Agent Pender. I've known Mulder for five years now. I have some influence with him."

Pender put his head in his hands. "I don't know what to do. Tell him I'm on his side! That's what I want him to understand! Tell him he can trust me! But I have this feeling that that will take some convincing."

Skinner sighed. "At least you understand some of what's going on. I can talk to him. I don't know how much good it will do. I do understand that you don't want a transfer, though?"

Pender shook his head quickly. "No, sir. I want to stay with the X-files. I even want to stay with Mulder as my partner. I just want him to accept me as his partner." He hesitated. "May I ask a question, sir?"

The AD's sigh was more pronounced than before. "Yes, agent."

"Who the hell is Krycek?"

Skinner stood up and pinned him with a glare. "Where did you hear that name?"

"From Mulder. Muttered in my general direction multiple times. Never aloud. Took me a while to figure out what he was saying, and I was only guessing it was a name."

Skinner rubbed the bridge of his nose. "He's been calling you that? Dammit." Frowning more than ever he studied Pender. "Alright, I'll talk with your partner. I might be able to help some. If I can convince him that you aren't Krycek re-incarnated you might have a better chance."

"Sir, who was Kry--"

"Don't ask, Agent Pender. Just understand that you are not him and be glad of that fact. Or I'd be kicking you out through the window right about now."

Pender wondered how the AD could be so sure that he wasn't like Krycek. He also figured out that he was probably never going to learn who Krycek actually was; he had already tried every possible spelling of the name in every database in the FBI and had drawn a total blank. He had wondered if Krycek was another of the "missing" abductees (such that he called them in his mind; so far he had never mentioned them aloud to anyone, not even to Mulder). Judging from Skinner's reaction, probably not...though the AD and probably Mulder would have been perfectly content if he was.

Whoever Krycek was, and whatever Skinner said to Mulder, there was a definite improvement in the working relationship of the X- files agents. Mulder actually would speak to his junior partner, actually started telling him at least a portion of his theories. He began to give Pender tasks to do on his own while Mulder pursued other avenues of investigation. And eventually he would actually listen when Pender pointed out a flaw in reasoning...or even came up with an independent theory.

Six months went by, and Pender went from being an ostracized agent to a partner in the X-files division. Not exactly a full- fledged partner, of course. Mulder was still definitely senior to him. But Pender had an important role, and if he wasn't as well-known as his partner, he had the satisfaction of knowing that some cases were solved because of him. And that he had somehow become, if not best friends, at least more than casual acquaintances with Fox Mulder.

Some of that stemmed from concerns very much like the one which had first lead him to Mulder. From the beginning, Pender found that it was almost entirely his responsibility to see that his partner ate and went home at least once in a while. He soon got in the habit of buying a lunch and practically forcing it onto his partner; Mulder always paid him back, usually with a tip, so Pender lived with being a waiter. Going home was another idea that never seemed to enter Mulder's mind. Pender usually suggested it rather forcefully every Friday, or else Mulder would simply stay in the office the whole weekend. At least Pender thought that might happen. He had visions of coming in Monday morning and learning that his partner had starved to death while working on a case, locked in the basement.

He didn't even mention sleep; he didn't have an MD and therefore couldn't prescribe the drugs he imagined were required to actually get Mulder to lie down. Let alone sleep.

It was six months after the X-files were re-opened when Pender came in to find his partner sitting at his desk. Simply sitting. Not looking at a case, just staring ahead.

Not into space, as Pender first thought. Staring at the desk calendar. Apparently he had ripped off the sheet from the day before and then froze; yesterday's date was still in his hands.

"Mulder?" Pender said cautiously. "Are you alright? Are you there?"

"I'm here." His voice was very low, hoarse. A whisper. And he looked away from the calendar, but not up at Pender. His eyes dropped to the desktop, and he swallowed, not loudly, but the room was totally quiet and Pender heard.

Pender wanted to ask what was wrong, but not outright. Not just a straight question; he wanted to know what it was without asking, he should know what it was without asking. He thought quickly. The date. What was it about the date...Yesterday, he recalled. Yesterday, alien enthusiasts holding parties, celebrations. The date Samantha Miller fell from the sky. So today...

He didn't have to ask. Mulder answered the question unknowingly. "A year," he whispered. "A year and she hasn't come back. She's not going to come back and I can't find her and I need her..." Pender didn't strain to hear, he shouldn't have been able to but somehow he caught all the almost inaudible words all the same.

And he didn't look closely, but somehow he still saw the shimmer of water around Mulder's half-closed eyes. And he didn't really know what to do, but he had to do something.

Mulder was called into Assistant Director Skinner's office later that day. Skinner frowned, decidedly displeased when Pender entered instead. "Agent Pender, I need to speak with your partner, not you."

"I'm sorry, sir," Pender said smoothly. "He's not here now."

"Where is he?" Skinner demanded.

"At home." Pender had called to check on this. He actually was there. Wonder of wonders.

"Why is he there? Is he sick? I wasn't told he was absent when I asked to see him."

"He's not officially gone, sir," Pender said.

Skinner regarded Pender suspiciously. "Agent Pender," he said, "Stop avoiding my questions. Why is your partner at his apartment instead of at his desk like he's supposed to be?"

"Because," Pender decided it wasn't safe to avoid anymore, "I told him to go home."

"You told him to. Why in hell did he listen to you?"

"Because," Pender explained, "I told him it was your order."

Skinner's eyes bored into him. In a patient tone he said, "So, Agent Pender, I am to understand that you dismissed your senior partner from work by lying and invoking an assistant director's name."

"Yes, sir."

"You realize that this could be grounds for dismissal. At the very least there will be consequences, possible suspension of duty without pay until this is cleared up."

Pender frankly thought that it sounded somewhat severe, but he understood how seriously the chain of command was taken. All he replied was, "Yes, sir."

The AD adjusted his glasses, glaring at his agent behind their lenses. "Pender," he said, "why did you do this?"

Looking straight at Skinner, Pender told him, "Because of what day it is."

Skinner glanced at his desk calendar and then back at Pender. The agent saw instant comprehension flare in his superior's eyes. All Skinner said aloud was, "I see, Agent Pender." He took a deep breath. "Lee..."

Pender started. Hearing his first name at the Bureau had become a shock, ever since he started working in the X-files.

Skinner observed this reaction without a smile, but some amusement glimmered in his eyes. "Pender, I am hereby ordering your senior partner to take today off for personal reasons. Please tell him he's relieved."

"Yes, sir!"

"And agent," Skinner added, "next time you make an 'executive decision' please inform me of it. As soon as you can. It may avoid problems in the future."

"Give us a chance to corroborate our stories?" Pender didn't even know where the thought came from; it just slipped out of his mouth before he could censor it.

But the AD almost smiled. Almost. "If I were you, agent, I would be grateful that Agent Mulder didn't have a more pressing appointment today, or you might have had some more explaining to do."

"I would have worked out a better explanation in that case, sir," Pender said. And knew that Skinner would understand--I don't care who he had to see, I would have made him go anyway. But I wouldn't tell just anyone the truth about it. Not unless I knew that they'd understand.

The following day Mulder was back at his desk, and the agents were back on the trail of a new case. But the two weren't on it for very long.

Because their numbers were raised to three. Pressure from a variety of sources had convinced Skinner to add to the section. He sent several agents to Mulder and Pender, giving them the authority to choose but making it clear that "none of them" was not an option.

Pender protested loudly; Mulder was not so verbal but Pender was sure that his partner made his displeasure known to those who counted. All to no avail--Mulder's influence didn't reach quite far enough. It was quite clear that the X-files section was over-extending itself, and therefore they needed assistance. Never mind that the section had been over-extended since long before Pender joined it. Before it didn't matter if the cases went unsolved or even unopened; now it was imperative that as many cases as possible were closed, what with all the attention the public was giving them.

So they dealt with the new agents as best they could--doing their damndest to scare them off. Agent Gibbons proved to be the most persistent by far, and with great reluctance she was officially moved to the X-files.

Pender gave up when she was added. He didn't want her there, but he also didn't want to put her through the same annoying purgatory that he had experienced. With some effort he included her in what they did, at first finding it necessary to "translate" Mulder's actions for her. She caught on quickly.

It didn't hurt matters that she also believed, with almost the same intensity if not with the same obsession that Mulder had. Aliens and government cover-ups; before Samantha became a house- hold name she had been searching for evidence. Samantha had been a triumph, the confirmation of Gibbon's faith. And Mulder had been a personal hero--in the academy Gibbons had even earned the name of "Little Miss Spooky" from certain rivals. She took the alias as a compliment rather than the intended insult.

Her acceptance of Mulder and his theories helped a lot in his eventual acceptance of her. In a surprisingly small span of time--little more than a month--the threesome were a team. Mulder had the duo role of team member and coach; it was to him that the other two reported, but at the same time he worked alongside them. All three cased crime scenes, theorized, tracked suspects and clues, and often charged in together for the kill.

It was the beginning of the next stage of the X-files. No longer a partnership of two stuck down in the basement, but a section, with an office on the second floor big enough for all three of them to have desks. And in the office, the team.

It didn't take very long for Gibbons to come to Pender with questions. By the end of the first week she cornered him after hours. "Okay, Pender. What's the deal with our boss?"

Pender for once was floored. "Huh?"

"Our fellow agent? Mulder? The spooky one? You were partners with him for half a year, surely you know something. Like why he's giving me the cold shoulder."

"He didn't want another agent. He'll get over it." Which of course he did, but right then he had been rather silent to Gibbons.

"I get the feeling that it goes a little deeper. Like, why does he occasionally get that look?"

"What look?" Pender inquired.

Gibbons eyed him. "I don't know, maybe you haven't noticed it. I've only caught it twice and maybe it's a female thing--" Pender had heard Gibbons remark on this more than once; he didn't see what exactly she found so attractive in Mulder but she definitely saw something there and wasn't afraid to admit it, at least not to Pender "--but I swear it looked like the bottom just fell out of his world. This total lost expression. Not hangdog; just sad. Very sad, we're talking far beyond depression. Most guys with looks like that end up with guns to their heads...but he doesn't look like that all the time. Only when nobody's watching.

"And I think there's some reason for it. And maybe you know what it might be?" and she cocked her head curiously at Pender.

Pender said it sort of as a joke. "Maybe. But I think it's something you should find out on your own."

Except Gibbons didn't quite take it humorously. She gave him quite an odd look herself and dropped the topic.

And returned to it a week later, with a big smirk and no questions. Only answers. She had found Samantha's secret; it hadn't been fully covered up yet. Being Gibbons, she had been extraordinarily closed-mouth about the research as well, and nobody found out anything from her.

But she hadn't found out anything concerning Dana Scully. She knew that Agent Scully had at one time been assigned to the X- files, and she knew that the woman was vanished, gone, maybe abducted. But everything Gibbons had heard from other agents included facts such as Mulder and Scully's fairly frequent arguments, their lack of faith in each other's theories, and the absence of any romantic attachments between them.

So when she told Pender her version of Mulder's story, Dana Scully was little more than a footnote in his life. And Pender nodded and agreed with what she said about Samantha and abductions and obsessions...

...and didn't say a word about Mulder's other X-files partner.

He didn't mean to hide anything from Gibbons. Even that early on he had the concept of team in mind, the idea of a group trusting and confiding completely in one another. But when Pender opened his mouth to tell Gibbons that she was missing a significant aspect, the words just wouldn't come.

It wasn't just that he couldn't say them. It was that they weren't there to be said. For some reason he couldn't think of a single way to tell her what little bits he knew.

He never quite figured out exactly why his mind froze then. Maybe it was because he thought it was personal. Maybe because Gibbons wasn't asking questions; she was telling him everything but making no inquiries. Only getting verification from him, not answers. Maybe it was because of Carol, in his memories and his dreams still. Because he, Pender, kept that secret in himself, and what secrets he knew of Mulder's were kept so close to his own that talking of one would somehow betray the other.

Whatever happened, something was started then. Even though he found a way to say it later on, it was too late then. What was he supposed to say? "Gibbons, you were partly wrong, Mulder's not simply mourning the loss of his sister, his life's obsession?" There wasn't any way to even bring the topic up.

It became even trickier several months later. They were told again that there was to be an expansion. The news still came from Skinner's office, but it had a lot more weight behind it this time, because he had just been promoted up to Director of the entire FBI. And Mulder was promoted as well, to director of the X-files. Which didn't mean that he stopped cracking cases with Pender, Gibbons, and the new Agent Burnett; but he stayed behind more often and figured them out behind his desk. And he had a lot more paperwork to handle too, for which Pender didn't envy him in the least.

When Wong was added the year after that, the section was split into two sets of partners plus the director. Despite this, it still functioned as a team, Pender saw to that. And the team had started to have traditions, the biggest of all being the "study" of the director. Burnett didn't ask questions; he merely investigated on the side silently, and Pender didn't even find out that Gibbons was secretly encouraging and hinting to him until he already had the story. Or at least the story as far as Gibbons knew it, the story that the team knew. No one really guessed that Pender had more left untold.

By the time Wong asked her first questions Pender confidently told her to seek and find on her own. He had tried the trick with three others. One of them had flat-out refused to bother if the story was right there with the rest of the team; the other two simply didn't look hard enough. It confirmed the good impression he had of Wong that she found it; it had practically become a test.

Dubzinski somehow wormed his way into the X-files much the way Pender had, by bothering people about it until he was assigned. He was inquisitive and determined enough that he found the story in record time; with his brazen attitude and total lack of reluctance to spout out the most outrageous theories to anyone who would listen, he also ingratiated himself with the team in record time. He was the one who informed Pender that Skinner could tell what agents were due to become permanent members of the X-files simply by how many visits they paid the Director.

Dubzinski also partnered with Gibbons like they were made for each other. Both had casual relationships with other people; Pender knew they weren't involved with one another, but they worked together most of the time like they were the perfect match. Whenever Gibbons got mad, Dubzinski could tease her out of it; whenever Dubzinski got too caught up in craziness Gibbons could make him see logic (or what passed for logic among them; another reason they got along so famously was they had well- deserved reputations as the wildest theorizers of the X-files agents).

Burnett and Wong's partnership took longer to work out. Both were quieter, calmer agents, with a penchant for logical reasoning. But Burnett had an odd streak running right down his center; he would once in a while have intuitions straight out of the blue, completely bizarre notions that invariably proved to be correct. However, he lack faith in his own instincts, and had a habit of not saying whatever came to him until he had proof...which, more than once, was after a case was closed. Wong somehow (Pender couldn't quite figure out her technique, but it worked) managed to draw him out. He would at least tell her what went through his mind at times, and she always seemed to know, with the same sort of intuition, how to act on what he said.

With two near-perfect partnerships on the team, Pender was more often than not the odd agent out. Mulder, his one-time partner, had too much to do to handle fieldwork with him most of the time, though occasionally he would, as Pender had told Guss, simply pop up on a case to offer assistance. Pender generally either worked on a solo project or helped one of the pairs with their cases. Sometimes of course the whole team worked together, and then he was in the center of things.

Pender was in fact always considered to be in the center from the other teammates' perspectives. Mulder was their director, their boss; but Pender was their coach and advisor. He helped keep the two teams in touch on cases. The director assigned them the cases, but unless it was something big Pender coordinated their efforts, told them when to pursue leads and what to let slide. He made sure that they buttoned their coats in cold weather and saw to it that none of them got trapped in some place really tight; if a section agent was in danger then Pender was there. In truly bad situations, so was Mulder, of course. "Protecting our own" was the only thing as highly regarded as finding the truth to the X-files agents.

Despite this, Pender couldn't help but feel somewhat left out. Particularly as he had the rather unpleasant task of chaperoning a rapidly-growing pile of rejected agents through the X-files. The last year had seen nine green agents in and out; half of them had been screaming for release, the other half were simply not appropriate. Pender had been partnered with them all. Most of them had been more than competent, several would someday be damn fine agents; but they weren't X-files material. None had pursued Mulder's story, for instance. They had either not chosen to or had been stone-walled and given up.

Not that that was the final test or anything. If one of them had simply respected their director's privacy but had still had that burning desire for the truth, the drive to devote as much as was necessary to the X-files, the will strong enough to accept what lay outside their realm of experience...Pender would have accepted such an agent in an instant, but the truth was, none of them had what he knew was required.

Except Terry Guss. Pender had known that from day three, when Guss asked his question about the director; the rest of the section had seen it too. He had told Skinner that Guss was to be permanently assigned to the X-files (the Director had already signed the papers by that time; one interview had been enough to convince him). Pender had also decided that unless they got a new agent, and that wasn't likely, at least not for a year or two, Guss was to stay as his partner. They worked well together, he saw that clearly. Guss was more open than Pender when it came to extreme possibilities; Pender was more open when it came to human nature and what people could do to each other. Of course Guss was learning; still, Pender hoped that not all of his beliefs had been shattered by their conversation, by Mulder's and Samantha's stories.

Whatever happened, Guss was his partner, and Pender was pleased to have him as one.

Guss was also not there that Monday.

Bye ten o'clock he hadn't come in; nor had he called to say he was going to be late or out for whatever reason. All the agents happened to be in the office, but none had heard from him all weekend.

No matter what people said sometimes, Pender wasn't psychic. He could read peoples' expressions, but not their minds. And he certainly wasn't clairvoyant or prescient or any of that; he didn't believe in any such abilities, in fact.

Nevertheless, when Guss didn't appear by ten thirty Pender had a very bad sinking feeling in his stomach and a rather ill premonition that he knew what was going on.

Stop it, he told himself, don't give yourself an ulcer over nothing. Casually he called Guss's home number, got the answering machine and no one there screening calls. He also inquired around to see if Guss was visiting another section for whatever reasons. No luck. So he called Guss's celphone.

The staccato beeping told him that Guss had his phone, but the ringer was off. The main time an FBI agent turns the ringer off is when they're in a sneaky situation, one in which ringing noises cause problems such as getting captured. Pender's premonition started to get louder and clearer in his mind.

And it came to a head a few minutes before eleven, when his phone beeped loudly. He answered it in a hurry. "Pender here."

At eleven o'clock Pender came charging into the Director's office. Not Mulder's office, but where Mulder was at the time, in a meeting with Director Skinner and several other important FBI officials.

Pender didn't even look embarrassed as five people, all of whom could fire him with a simple signature, stared at him. Behind him Skinner's secretary was waving frantically. "Sir, I'm sorry, sir, will you please wait for the meeting's end--" she was alternately saying to Skinner and to Pender.

Mulder had stood the moment his agent entered. "Excuse me," he addressed his colleagues first, "I think my agent has something to report," and then turned to his agent, "Pender, what's this about?"

"Sir," Pender said, very coolly, "We have a situation."

Mulder's expression as good as screamed 'I can see that' but all he said aloud was, "What?"

Momentarily Pender's eyes flicked to the Director and the other three seated at the table. Not the best impression we X-files agents can make, he supposed, and then he focused on Mulder. "Sir, Guss has gone on sort of a private crusade, and if we don't move real fast my partner's going to be in some boiling hot water."

Mulder nodded once sharply and turned to Skinner. "Sir," he began, "if I may--"

Skinner waved him away with one hand. "We'll finish without you, director Mulder. Go take care of this. But I want a full report tomorrow..." He trailed off; Pender mentally filled in the next sentence...'If it's something you can actually report.'

Pender filled the director in on the details while they hurried back to the X-files office. "Guss is in Minnesota of all places- -"

"Those false abduction cases." Statement, not question.

"Yes. Did you read his report on his theory?"

"Kidnappings. Covered up for unknown reasons by making them look like alien abductions."

"Well, Guss did a little more theorizing over the weekend. He put together a whole slew of facts and came up with the notion that a company there may have been behind it, possibly backed by a larger interest..." No need to say conspiracy, government or otherwise. Mulder could fill in those blanks just fine. "And moreover, he changed his mind about something. His original theory had it that the families were hushing up ransom demands; now he thinks that there weren't any. The kidnapping was for other reasons...possibly related to the fact that a real abduction, by aliens as far as we can tell, occurred a few months prior to all this."

"Wasn't this theory already covered?" Mulder asked. Of course it was; it was one of the most standard ones of all.

"We checked that out first, sir, of course. But it didn't have any of the earmarks of a 'standard' fake abduction."

"Guss's explanation for this?"

"It wasn't a 'standard' abduction. Rather it was performed by an outside source who didn't know the techniques of faking an abduction..."

"So ended up doing one all the more realistic," Mulder finished the thought grimly. "Where's Guss now?"

"Minneapolis. Checking out the company firsthand."

They had reached the office by now. The other agents immediately took up orbit around their director, and he took the head position willingly, issuing orders immediately, sending Pender, Gibbons, and Dubzinski to the airport and to the scene, calling the Minneapolis police for some requests for backup, and ordering Wong and Burnett back to their own case. "If you're needed, we'll get you, but other than that you'll do more good at your assigned post."

They all congregated momentarily outside the office. Gibbons grabbed Pender's arm and drew him off to the side, though somehow the others managed to get pulled along as well.

"Pender," Gibbons hissed, "listen to me."

Pender stared down at her. "Listening," he reported.

"You are not," she told him, enunciating every word, "not going to blame yourself for this."

It was an effort not to squirm, but Pender managed. "I'm not," he said, "but I can't deny the fact that this whole part of his theory was a direct result of what we talked about Friday night-"

"--And that he's run off to set wrongs right just because you told him just how many wrongs are out there, and besides which you were the one who put Hitler in power," Gibbons snapped. "Lee, I am not going to let you wallow in remorse about this. Whatever happens to that boy is his own damn fault. And whatever happens, this division does not need two agents completely wrapped up in pointless guilt."

"Do I look wrapped up in guilt?" Pender demanded.

Well, maybe it didn't show on his face, but something must have been there if it inspired Burnett of all people to speak. "You know you don't let expressions show unless you put them there deliberately. It doesn't mean you aren't feeling anything anymore than the director's look means he's emotionally dead."

Wong nodded, backing her partner up. Dubzinski had that solid, unmovable stance which indicated clearer than words that he was behind his own partner about five hundred percent.

"I'm not wrapped up in it," Pender growled. "I'm fine. Let's catch the plane, people, before I actually have something to feel guilty about." And he took off down the hall before his fellow agents could say something else to make him feel completely naked in their eyes.

---

Okay, so maybe it wasn't the brightest thing he'd ever done.

Guss peered around the corner hesitantly. The two company guards hadn't moved. Their straight-backed postures indicated that they weren't planning on doing so for quite some time. Nor did they appear at all sleepy.

He doubted--no, he knew--that he couldn't handle them both. One, now that he might have attempted. His gun in its holster rested lightly on his hip. If there was only one guard he would have had it against the man's head by now.

Not exactly Bureau policy, of course. But neither was breaking an entering and spying on private property. Not without a warrant. If there had been a chance to get a warrant Guss would have gotten one in a flash. But the evidence was all circumstantial. For a private citizen he might have trumped up drug charges or something, but a private company tended to have private lawyers with large paychecks who knew how to block warrants indefinitely. Particularly private companies hiding things behind their walls. Illegal things. Like kidnapped victims.

Guss had known for certain that the Browning Co. was hiding just that in its main warehouse. He had had his suspicions for a week; but over the weekend he had followed every lead he had, and every clue pointed at Browning. All three of those kidnapped had been visited the day before by a sales representative from Browning, for instance. Of course, so had a lot of other people, but it was one connection. Then there was the fact that Browning, like many companies, had several largish trucks in their possession. Just the sort to idle on streets and carry off kidnapped victims unseen in the middle of the night.

There was more, but the clincher was the money in Browning's bank account. A very large sum of money, and on the tricky side to trace, especially because it was a private account and Guss shouldn't have been able to examine it without some sort of permission, at least from the bank. Oh well; electronic espionage was minor sin compared to his current crime.

What he had found in the account justified it--that money was nothing less than a government grant! Oh, it was worded oddly enough and came from several sources, but the fact was that the government had paid Browning Co. for something and they didn't say what.

Guss might not have thought much of it, but after speaking with Pender...it was so possible, suddenly. The government, paying for a kidnapping, paying for examinations of three people in a town where an abduction might have occurred.

In fact, it went beyond possible--Guss was convinced it was so. Trouble was, his chances of convincing others were slim at best. Even the X-files team...they would believe him, he was sure. They would believe him, but it would take a little time to act, to get moving, and the legalities would be tricky to work through...

And the people had been gone for almost a month. Who knows what kind of tests were being performed? We all do what we can, Pender had said it. So Guss did what he could.

He hoped that he was an official X-files agent by now, because he was going to need their immunity to save his career after this fiasco.

But he had the proof! The real proof; he had seen them, the victims of this nightmare. Locked in a little room and drugged but they were still alive. So this wasn't a failure.

The only problem now was getting out to tell everyone. And Guss had no idea how to manage that trick. Getting in had been tricky. Actually it had depended almost entirely on luck, he realized, looking back. Unfortunately it was one-way luck. There might have been a convenient fire escape on the other side, but from inside that window was a good six feet above his head and there wasn't anything to stand on. Out of reach. And besides, the alarm was on the outside. Easy to get at and deactivate from there. Sort of impossible from here even if he could reach the window. Apparently they were much more concerned with people getting out than with those sneaking in. Guss sort of wished he had known that before sneaking in to begin with. He would have done it anyhow, but maybe he could have composed a better plan.

Or maybe Pender could have. Maybe he should have stayed on a little longer and told Pender more than what state he was in. It hadn't exactly been his choice to hang up, but the approaching footsteps of some man or another who would not be happy to see Guss had convinced the agent that silence was better than communication. The only reason he had called at all was so that if he didn't make it out, the X-files team would know where to go to crack the case. And Guss didn't want to risk trying again. For all he could guess they might have some electronic surveillance equipment and had picked up the call. They might even have traced him already, maybe they were even watching him now...

Dammit, all he wanted to do was get out! Pressing himself even deeper into the shadows behind the door, Guss watched the two guards. They wore uniforms like any regular company watchman's. They also wore holsters with big, visible guns. Really nice guns, the sort with laser sights that never missed. The sort that could be loaded with either the new humane tranquilizer/ stunners or real bullets. Guss had no desire to find out what was in their weapons. Either way it would be rather unpleasant.

Particularly, he realized, because the people on this project showed a singular lack of sympathy concerning human life. So what would they do with a lone FBI agent, invading their privacy and secrets without permission? An agent who quite obviously was not obeying laws and who very likely was there without anybody knowing about it? An agent who could be shot and left anywhere and there wouldn't be a single way to trace the body back to Browning?

Guss couldn't say what they would do for sure, of course, but he could say with certainty that he had no wish to find out.

He could also say with similar certainty that he had no idea what to do now. He had the proof, he had even reported it, now all he wanted was to escape. As soon as possible. Unfortunately the only exit in reach was guarded by two alert, gun-holding guards who probably had orders to shoot on sight, and Guss had only one gun himself. His mind chased itself around in little circles. If there was only one guard...two, Guss, there's two. If there were another exit...lots, but none that you can reach. If he could think with certainty that nobody knew he was here and he could just hide out until an opening presented itself...except you made that call. Bright move, Guss. Very smart.

He wondered if he could be expelled from the X-files on the basis of sheer stupidity. Unorthodox methods and semi-legal actions were one thing, but he had to admit to just being dumb here. So you want to be a hero, Agent. Anyone ever explain to you that in most cases, courage equals idiocy?

The fact that he hadn't really more than dozed the entire weekend might have had something to do with his distinct lack of judgement. And if he (correctly) blamed the sleep deprivation on Pender's story, then this whole mess was really Pender's fault.

Now if only Pender would get him out of it...

Guss might have continued along that train of thought indefinitely, except he heard footsteps behind him. He froze, knowing that his best chances were to rely on his black clothes and motionless-ness to keep him hidden in the shadows.

He wasn't hidden enough. His mind gave him that one flash of thought between the second that the gun-butt impacted his skull and the second he fell to the floor unconscious.

Guss awoke with a pounding headache and the sincere hope that he didn't have a too terrible concussion. Any FBI agent knows that whacking a person on the head can do more damage than just knocking them out for a while; he wished that his captors had been more solicitous.

As soon as his vision cleared he realized he had some more pressing concerns. The principle ones were the two guns, pointed barrel first now, aimed straight at his head.

The secondary concerns involved two men shouting at each other close by. At first Guss just wanted them to shut up because their annoyance wasn't helping his headache any.

Then he started listening to their words and found a much larger topic of worry.

"You're telling us to kill him and throw him in the street?"

"He won't be traced. They can't know he's here."

"FBI, doc. He's probably just the first agent sent in. The others will be coming anytime now."

"FBI, exactly. CIA maybe would do something like that. The Bureau? They follow procedure, they would've come with a warrant and twenty cops. They wouldn't have sent a single agent wearing all black to infiltrate a warehouse."

"Well...maybe it's an accident."

"What, he got lost?"

"Or something. Do we know he saw anything?"

"He certainly wasn't coming in to buy carpet cleaner! And he was near the exit. He saw. He was trying to get out to report us."

"You said he made a call--"

"Saying he was in Minnesota. We heard the whole conversation. He didn't specify us, he spoke for one minute, and he didn't even request back-up. They don't know he's here. Get rid of him."

Guss decided he didn't care for the bored monotone of that voice in the least. He couldn't see the man's (doctor's?) face because he was turned away, but he could see the guard he was talking to.

The guard didn't look happy. Because he didn't want to shoot Guss?

"You're sure nobody knows?" Or because he was worried about his criminal record. Didn't anyone give a damn that they were discussing murder here?

"No one, I assure you. If he gets out we'll all be caught. You'll go down as fast as me, guaranteed. Faster, even. We've got to take precautions right away."

"And..." the guard said hesitantly, "why can't you use your drugs and whatnot, erase his memories too, like you're doing with the subjects?"

Guss definitely didn't like the annoyed tone of the doctor's voice. "Bullets are a helluva lot cheaper than those chemicals and heavy hypnosis sessions." Great, he was going to be done in because murder was more cost-effective? "Take care of it, this is your job."

Guss definitely didn't like anything about that doctor. He'd dealt with a few psychotics and serial murderers personally, but he'd never heard anyone sound so cold-blooded.

From his horizontal position on the floor he saw the doctor's retreating feet and back. The guard looked down at him, frowning. Seeing Guss's eyes were open, he turned on the two men guarding him. "I told you to keep him out!"

Without giving them a chance to respond he shrugged, muttering, "Guess it doesn't hurt things any."

Then he pulled his gun from its holster, aimed it square at Guss's head. And the agent knew that there weren't tranquilizers loaded in it.

Guss struggled to sit up. His hands were tied tight behind his back but he wasn't bonded in any other way, though his pounding skull would probably make escape a bit tricky. And even in his best condition out-running a bullet was slightly beyond his abilities. So he defended himself the only way he could, with words. Nothing too dramatic, particularly with his throat croaking the way it was. "They know I'm here."

"Shut up," said the guard, and kicked him in the stomach.

Guss coughed and curled into a ball. He glared up at his tormentor, and then at the two other guards. "You'll be accomplices to murder," he gasped to them.

"No, you won't," snapped their commander. His gun was still pointing in the wrong direction from Guss's point of view, that is, right at his temple; but he hadn't pulled the trigger. Killing a man in cold blood wasn't his style, apparently.

But he was still going to try. Guss watched him take a deep breath and a few steps backwards. Distancing himself. The other two guards also moved away, lowering their own weapons, finally figuring out that he wasn't going anywhere.

Guss took a breath of his own and pulled himself into a kneeling position. Why, he wasn't sure; but something in him had an urge to take death like a man. Or something like that.

Death. I'm going to die. Guss is going to die. Special Agent Terry Guss, shot at twenty-six because of his own stupidity...

No matter how he worded it it didn't sound real.

"Wait," he croaked. His throat had never been so dry.

The guard's gun didn't waver. Guss could see him swallow, though. "Wait, you really shouldn't do this--" They taught you things at the Academy; Guss was sure someone had taught him what you say when a man is under orders to kill you and is preparing to do it, but he couldn't remember what it was. Probably something a lot more intelligent than pleading for your life.

And the guard closed his eyes, and so did Guss, cowardly as it was, because he knew that the guard was hiding his eyes from the actual murder and he didn't want to see him pull the trigger and see the bullet coming at him and he didn't want to see himself die because he couldn't die, he couldn't possibly--

"FREEZE!"

Guss opened his eyes.

Agent Pender was at the exit of the warehouse and his gun was out and aimed right at the guard.

Looking quickly to either side Guss saw the other two guards were also covered, one by Gibbons and the other by Dubzinski.

"Drop your weapon and put your hands behind your head," Pender ordered.

When the guard didn't move immediately Pender repeated the command. His volume didn't increase a hair but his voice brooked no contradictions.

The guard slowly began to lower his gun, and then he lunged forward and pressed the barrel against Guss's skull. "No," he said flatly. "Drop your own." With a twist he had his arm around Guss's throat, the gun still at his temple, and the agent between the guard and his partner's line of fire.

Guss considered kicking him as payback and also as distraction, but the guard was shaking slightly and he didn't trust him not to have a hair-trigger.

At least he had lost that frozen feeling of terror. Something was happening now; death wasn't inevitable anymore.

"Drop it!" shouted the guard. Guss winced a little; his headache increased a couple of notches.

Pender dropped it. The gun sounded almost like a shot when it hit the cement floor. Guss and the guard both jumped. Pender was still as a rock.

"Now," the guard's voice even was shaking, "Get your agents out of here. And tell them not to come back."

With one nod of Pender's head Dubzinski and Gibbons began to move out. They took the other guards with them; Guss couldn't even tell who was holding who. The agents. It better be the agents who had control. Neither Pender nor the guard protested.

"Hands behind your head," the guard ordered, and Pender obeyed. His glare should've killed the man on the spot but he didn't have much of a choice, not with Guss in that position. Guss wanted to tell Pender to shoot the guy. Well, no, he didn't want to do that; but if he was going to die there was no reason Pender should, too. Which is what is was looking like right now; Guss could see it in the guard's eye. Shoot them both and run like hell. Well, maybe it wouldn't be fatal...

At least not to Pender. But the gun was touching Guss's head! "Wait," he tried again, fought back deja vu. "It's more dangerous than ever now. You won't get away."

He was speaking to the guard alone but Pender either heard or was thinking along the same lines. "Shooting a federal agent is a major offense," he said. "Kill one and you'll be lucky to get out of here alive. I've called in the police, and they don't take kindly to dead officers. No matter what their agency is."

"You're lying," spat the guard. "You're here on your own."

Well, talking was much better than shooting. "If you put down the gun and enter custody willingly they'll go a lot easier on you."

But Guss could hear the sheer desperation in the response. "You don't know what they'd try me for."

That's right. Kidnapping at least, not to mention assaulting a federal agent. And maybe more. Guss wondered if murder was in fact a new thing to this man. He didn't hear any madness in the guard's voice, but the fear was palpable. Fear could be worse than insanity. It was even harder to reason with.

And fear was telling this man to pull the trigger on both of them and make a break for it. "Listen, man, just stay cool, think out what you're doing--"

Pender tried too. "Just drop the gun and I promise you it'll work out alright." His voice wasn't suited to being soothing but he did his best.

Too late. "NO," said the guard, and Guss saw his finger tighten on the trigger--

He closed his eyes at the gunshot and felt nothing.

Except for the guard's arm being torn away from him and the cool metal barrel of the gun move off his temple.

Guss opened his eyes. The guard was thrown against the floor, bright red flowing from the side of his chest.

"Call an ambulance," he heard Pender shout.

He looked to his right, to where he had heard the shot. Someone was climbing through the window, that damn one-way window that he hadn't been able to leave from. A man, entering the same way he had, pushing through and dropping quietly to the floor.

Section Director Mulder.

Guss stared, mouth slightly open, as the director strode over and stood before him.

"Agent Guss," and Guss flinched at his tone; it was the verbal equivalent a bath in liquid nitrogen, "you are not to put the team in similar danger again. If you do, then you will no longer be part of that team."

"Yes, sir," Guss said hoarsely, but the director was already moving away, standing over Gibbons, watching as she applied first aid to the man he had just shot.

Jesus, he's a cold bastard, was Guss's first thought.

His second was: Jesus, he just saved my life!

Pender came over. "You okay?" he asked casually as he cut through the ropes around Guss's wrists with his pocket knife.

"Fine." Guss's headache or concussion or whatever it was got the upper hand then, and to prevent himself from falling over he leaned against the wall. At Pender's expression he excused himself, "Just a bit dizzy."

"You're sure you're alright?" Pender repeated.

Rubbing his wrists, Guss assured him, "Completely."

"Good. If you ever do something like that again I'll shoot you personally," Pender said.

"Didn't know you cared so much," Guss muttered.

"The director hit it on the head," Pender explained. "You put the whole team at potential risk. Not to mention possibly taking us away from where we might be needed."

"I'm sorry," Guss hissed, and was surprised to find that he honestly meant it. "Really. I--I don't know exactly why I just went and did this..."

"Care to try to explain?"

No. "I was trying to do something. I don't know, be a hero, something dumb like that. Accomplish something. And, it just seemed important that I did it right away. No delays, rescue them right now--" He shoved himself away from the wall. "Pender! The--I had a reason, the kidnapped people, they're here--"

"We found them." Wasn't Pender answering, it was the director. "We took care of them before we even found you here. Wong and Burnett are with the doctors and the false abductees are at the hospital now."

"There was a doctor here--"

"We got him the moment he walked out of here," Pender informed him smugly.

"Good," Guss said, with more emotion than perhaps was needed. He would have liked to have seen that monster's face when he was grabbed, right after telling the guard that there was no way Guss had back-up. "How's the guard?" he added as an afterthought.

"If he's lucky, he'll live," the director reported emotionlessly as ever.

Guss heard sirens then, and a paramedics team rushed in with a stretcher, rushed out with the wounded man and Gibbon's accompanying medical report. She wasn't a doctor but she knew enough first aid to help them.

The three agents watched the affair in silence. Guss looked closely, but he couldn't detect a modicum of guilt in the director's face. Guss knew that if he had shot someone he'd be in some sort of state now but the director never seemed to show anything. Guss wondered if he simply hid it all or if he honestly never felt anything. Even after what he knew of Samantha, even though he knew the story, Guss couldn't help but shiver internally at the director's coldness.

He didn't have time for more speculation because Pender chose that moment to round on him again. "Even though you did accomplish something, don't be expecting to run off like this another time and get away with it. And if you do don't expect that we'll be there to drop our guns and save your ass at the same time again."

The director only gave him a long, hard look and walked away, toward the door. Pender stayed. "This really was a perfect example of stupidity," he said, "illustrates exactly why agents are told to work as partners and call for backup and not to work solo." He watched Guss watch the director's progression out the door. "And just because it seems to be a standard act of just about every X-files agent," he added, "doesn't mean it's a bright thing to do."

Guss regarded Pender with a tiny hint of meekness. "I am sorry," he offered, "and I admit it was pretty damn dumb."

Maybe the oath convinced him; whatever it was, Pender nodded. Then he mentioned in a low voice, "If you find something out that just can't wait, not even for the X-files, just do one thing, okay? Give me a call. Drag your partner along with you."

"Even if I'm heading straight out of the FBI?" Guss asked, thinking of the jeopardy his career should have been in now, except he was an X-files agent.

"Then I'll head out with you," Pender assured him cheerfully. "What else are partners for?" He slapped Guss lightly on the back. "C'mon, let's get back to the others--we have some interrogations to perform."

They had lots of interrogations, as a matter of fact. Even divided up among three groups--the partners; the director moved around between them--it took over two days before the agents had asked the bulk of their questions.

Part of the problem was that getting straight answers turned out to be near-impossible in several cases. It soon developed that only four people knew exactly what was going on, the four doctors in charge of the project. And they were closed-mouthed to the extreme.

One of them was the wonderful man Guss had already encountered. He was icy as ever in an interrogation room. Guss let Pender ask the questions while he stood back and watched and tried to keep from fingering his gun. The doctor--Lapier was his name--denied all knowledge of anything; his favorite response was "No comment." After three hours Pender sent him back to the jail cell. "We're not getting anything from him."

Guss sighed agreement. "Well, maybe the others have something."

His partner shook his head. "Those four docs, they're the key. The other doctors didn't know it was a kidnapping; the only things we can catch them on are malpractice and violating certain medical standards. Fines, suspend their licenses to practice, but not a prison sentence."

"What about the guards?" Guss demanded, thinking of the one who had nearly shot him. He certainly had known he was up to something illegal.

Pender replied negatively, "We can lock most of 'em up, sure, but they don't know who hired them beyond the doctors. That's the trouble, Guss, we aren't going to be able to find the ones really responsible. It won't be done."

Guss protested. "The government! Some organization in the government--"

"Which is going to sit back and let us throw cuffs on it?"

Guss described the evidence, the government grant.

Pender raised his eyebrows at his partner. "You really think that that'll still be there? The only reason you found anything is it's pretty evident Browning hadn't had much experience with illicit activities. By now whoever's behind it knows that; they'll have covered their tracks quite thoroughly by now. Our only link is the good doctors, but I'm sure that's a dead end."

A deader end than Guss guessed, at any rate. Pender seemed less than surprised when they were informed the next morning that Lapier and the other three doctors had been removed over night. Not a break-out; a prisoner transference. To a non-accessible facility, and all records of their existence had been wiped.

"Dammit!" Gibbons snarled, when the team met to discuss their options. Guss echoed her oath but didn't imitate her punch to the wall. It left a small dent.

"Easy, partner; the plaster's innocent," Dubzinski murmured. Grimacing, Gibbons apologized to the others, pinking very slightly when it occurred to her that the director had seen her loss of control.

"With your permission, sir," Pender said, "I think we should stay here and nose around a bit more. If we can't find out who was responsible maybe we can at least find out what they were after."

The director gave the project his blessings, then suggested their first move, the obvious one. They interviewed the abductees.

All three were in the hospital still. Their memories of the actual kidnapping were clear--a man had rung the doorbell sometime around ten o'clock at night. He had been wearing an official uniform; from photographs they identified three of the guards at Browning. When they answered, they had been grabbed and a needle had been stuck in their arm. They had vague memories of being lead to a van outside and then nothing.

Their memories of their incarcerations were cloudier. For much of the time they had been drugged to unconsciousness. It also became clear that the memory treatments had already begun; they remembered hypnotism sessions, slow voices leading them into trances.

None of the three had any idea at first why they had been the ones kidnapped. But two of them had had therapy in the past; when the agents delved into this they found the key.

"Previous abductees," Guss reported to the rest of the team. Since he had lead them all here, he was arbitrarily the leader. Not a position he was overjoyed to have, but fortunately the director made most of the decisions, leaving him to feed data to the rest.

"When Pender and I checked out their psychiatric evaluations it became pretty clear that they were both suffering from what's been termed 'Post-Abduction Syndrome.' One of the therapists identified it as such, the other one wasn't positive but the symptoms match. 'Missing time', nightmares, inexplicable phobic reactions to darkness, bizarre feelings of deja vu--"

"We all know the symptoms," Pender murmured. To stop the list, but also to tell him that the team agreed with the diagnosis.

"Anyway," Guss continued, "as far as can be known, one of them was abducted in her early twenties, about fifteen years ago; and the other was taken about five years after that, when he was nineteen. From what their therapists know, these were real abductions--alien ones."

There was a small silence as the X-files team absorbed this. Then Wong asked, "What about the third abductee?"

"Well," Guss answered, "she hasn't undergone therapy. But she does show minor signs of PAS. And I took the liberty of talking with her family. When she was seven years old she went missing for two days; they found her in the backyard, badly frightened and unaware that anything had happened since she had been tucked in bed two nights before. They attributed it to sleep-walking, but for two days..?"

They all nodded slowly. Then Pender sighed. "This is all interesting," he said, "but it doesn't help us much. We've seen this pattern before--a real abduction, then a false one. Someone out there is keeping tabs on abductees, why we don't know. There's not much we can do about it--"

"We got them back," said Dubzinski. "That's not bad. No matter what methods you use to manage it," and he grinned at Guss.

Burnett spoke then, and they all turned to him. Anything he had to say was well-worth listening to, Guss had already learned. "You're all forgetting something. These aren't the only abductees from their hometown."

"Mary-Ann Lane," Wong added to her partner's comment.

They all remembered the name; it was one of the complicating aspects of the case. Four months ago Lane had vanished; three months ago she had been returned. And everything about her, including her own self, had said that she was an actual, genuine alien abductee.

It hadn't seemed like she had much to do with the current case, but maybe she was what had drawn the government's--or whoever's-- attention to the little Minneapolis suburb. Attention that had lead to three abductions.

"Gibbons, Dubzinski, Burnett" the director said, and those addressed were immediately at attention, "you speak with the three abductees more. Find out whatever more they can tell you of either of their experiences. Wong, Guss, Pender, you'll come with me." Without another word he was out the door.

The three agents scrambled after him. Before they raced out Guss grabbed Pender's arm. "Are we going to interview Mary-Ann Lane?"

Pender shrugged, a grin threatening to curve the edges of his mouth. "Maybe. Makes sense if we are. We'll find out when we get there--where ever we're going."

Guss decided that getting there was not half the fun when your driver was Director Mulder. Getting there alive would be a real treat. The director drove with the same passionless expression as always; he also kept his foot on the gas and Guss thought he could count the times he used the brake on one hand--two fingers. Once when pulling out of the hospital parking lot and twice when pulling into Mary-Ann Lane's driveway, twenty miles away.

He didn't even ask for directions or look at a map. Either he knew the area or he had already checked the directions. Guss wouldn't put it past him to simply know the way to the house of every abductee in the nation.

By now Guss would put almost nothing past Director Mulder's abilities.

Lane had a nice little ranch house with a carefully tended yard and tasteful lawn ornaments, so much as lawn ornaments can justifiably be called tasteful. They climbed the porch steps quietly and the director rang the doorbell, Wong beside him and Pender and Guss behind them, doing their best to look inconspicuous. Four FBI agents standing on one's porch tended to make people nervous.

Lane opened the door and peered through the screen. She was a small woman of anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five years. Her light auburn hair had grey streaks and makeup hid most of her slight wrinkles.

"Ms. Lane," the director said, showing her his badge, "we're from the FBI."

The woman peered at the identification. "Yes..?"

"We just want to talk to you, Ms. Lane. You aren't in any sort of trouble, but if it's possible we would like to ask you some questions about your abduction." Guss was surprised at how calm the director's voice was. Calm, but not in the least bit cold--a relaxing, gentle tone, despite its lack of emotion.

Ms. Lane frowned up at him. "That was over with months ago, I told the police that it wasn't a crime."

"We know that, Ms. Lane. As I said, there are no suspicions around it--we only want to talk," the director assured her.

"Well..." She looked them all over, then shrugged with one shoulder. "Alright then," and opened the screen door.

As they all filed in she glanced at each in turn. "Can I get you anything, tea, coffee?"

They all politely refused, though the director told her she was welcome to make some for herself. She refused--"Don't drink anything hot myself, just offer it to company." Then she stood against the wall, watching them. "Could you call me Mary Ann when we talk? And what should I tell you about?"

Mulder and Wong both seated themselves on the sofa, and the director gestured for her to sit down too. Guss would have found a chair but Pender shook his head slightly, motioning for him to stay in the background.

"I have some basic facts," the director began, still speaking in that gentle voice and looking her in the eyes. "It happened three months ago, right?"

Mulder told her what he knew of the case already, and she verified it all. After making sure that she had indeed been taken from her bed, and learning that the backyard had been scorched by this event, he looked to Pender and Guss. "Mary Ann, would you mind if they examined your room and garden? They won't touch anything, they'd just look around."

Mary Ann shook her head. "Go--go right ahead." Her hands fluttered nervously in her lap; this interview was obviously upsetting her at least a bit.

As they entered the bedroom Guss could hear Mulder continue the questioning. He was shaking his head when Pender closed the door. "He's actually good at it!"

"What?" Pender asked quietly. "The director? Yeah, he may be ice when interrogating, but when just discussing things with witnesses--they open up to him in a flash."

"That's why he kicked us out?"

"Oh, you noticed that?" Pender smiled. "Makes 'em nervous, all standing over them like that. But we do have a job to do, or he would have just left us behind, too."

"What do we look for?" Guss queried.

"Signs," Pender said cryptically. Then watched the confusion appear on Guss's face and be suppressed. "Nothing major. Just evidence to support her story. Also, checking other possibilities."

"Kidnapping," Guss stated grimly.

"Yes. After three months, evidence may be scanty, but..."

They searched. The room had two windows. Being only a one-story house, they were easily accessible from the ground outside. They had locks, though, and they found the windows locked from the inside. Pender flipped the latch, opened one window. It slid aside almost silently, and Pender climbed out.

"Hey! Better watch for the garden," Guss said.

"No flowers out here, just grass," his partner replied. "Hmm..." He bent down and examined the ground. Guss leaned out to watch as he sifted the dirt through his fingers. "New sod here, it's maybe only a few weeks old. And look at this--" He held out a handful of black dirt.

"Looks like good soil," Guss said.

"Well, it's got nutrients at least. I've seen it before--it's ash, Guss. Or fertilizer and ash mixed." He rubbed his hands together and climbed back through the window. "No burglar alarm, either."

"Wouldn't that make a kidnapping easier?" Guss actually thought that she was telling the truth, that she had been abducted, but playing the devil's advocate was part of his job, he supposed. It was wrong to rule out possibilities simply because of personal opinion.

Pender was disagreeing, though. "Actually it supports her story. It's been three months, remember. A woman living alone who's been kidnapped is likely to be on the cautious side."

"Not an abductee, though?"

"Most abductees tend to doubt the effectiveness of burglar alarms, at least against alien visits."

Guss, recalling accounts of power drains and electronics going haywire in the wake of a UFO, nodded. "So should we believe her?" He decided to announce his true position. "I mean, why would she lie?"

Pender switched sides right in sync. "Just because there isn't an obvious reason doesn't mean there isn't one. Maybe she's been threatened not to say. Or maybe they changed her memories. They were going to do it to the other abductees."

"'They' in this case is human, not alien. But they were going to erase the abductees memories. Lane says that she remembers being on a ship. An alien ship. That's not erasure."

"Shh, keep it down, Guss," Pender whispered. "And keep cool. I believe her too. But one of us should argue the other side, and if you took that position than I automatically took the other..."

"Is that the way partners always work?"

Pender smiled a little. "In the X-files, anyhow."

"I think we've found everything in here. Should we go tell the director?"

Pender silently crept to the door and listened at the crack. Then he shook his head. "We should wait a bit longer."

"Why?" Guss joined him by the door, feeling like a child a week before Christmas. Don't let the parents hear you listen to them talk...

They weren't discussing presents, of course. Guss heard Wong's voice speaking quietly; he couldn't make out the words. "What's she talking about?" he whispered.

Pender's response was equally soft. "Hypnosis. Wong's a psychologist, that's why the director brought her along--he must have convinced Lane to agree. I've seen it before, in their own home Wong can get most people into a trance pretty fast if they're willing. Not standard procedure of course--" He didn't bother to add the obligatory 'but nothing is, in our section.'

They waited until Pender nodded, then they returned to the living room. Wong put a finger to her lips when she saw them; they both nodded and imitated the gesture.

Mary Ann Lane sat composed in her arm-chair, hands folded still in her lap and eyes closed. Across from her the director was literally on the edge of his seat, staring into her face. His tense posture was belied by his still-calm voice.

"So, Mary Ann," he was saying, "you are in the ship, in a big room--"

"...big space..." she echoed. Her voice was faint and furry.

"What do you see in the space? Is it empty?"

"No...there's people..."

"Is there anything on the walls or floor?"

"Metal floors...they're smooth. Nothing....just people."

"What do the people look like, Mary Ann?" asked the director patiently.

"They're like me...there's a few others..."

"Others?"

"Little...short aliens. Like movies...white heads and black eyes..."

"What are they doing?"

"They're....they're only moving around...around the people...The humans."

Wong had stood and quietly made her way over to Pender and Guss. Now she explained what they were watching, practically subvocalizing. Guss had to strain to hear her.

"She remembers parts of her experience. The director asked her if she was willing to undergo hypnotic regression to see if she remembered more, and she was. She wanted to do it; I think she doesn't like forgetting it. As far as I can tell, the whole experience wasn't as frightening for her as many abductees find it. Scary and strange, perhaps, but not terrifying."

"Any reason why?" Pender asked in a near-silent whisper.

Wong shrugged, then smiled tinily. "I think partly that she's a science fiction fan--this was probably something she subconsciously desired. But the director may have found another reason..."

Mulder had asked Mary Ann about the humans. "There's a lot of them...lots of people like me. The aliens...the aliens walk around them...they talk to them..."

"Do they talk to you?"

"Yes..."

"What do they say?" Mulder asked slowly.

"They...they don't say aloud...it's...there's a voice and it's inside me...but it's not my thoughts...I'm not crazy!" Guss was startled by the force of that statement. Mary Ann's eyes were still closed, her body still relaxed, but she had almost shouted it.

"No," said the director calmingly. "You aren't crazy, Mary Ann. They're talking to your mind. What are they telling you?"

"They're telling me....they're saying that I don't have to be afraid...they're telling me not to be afraid..."

"What do you do?"

"I'm...I'm not afraid, I want to go back, I don't want to be here even if I'm not afraid..."

"And what do they tell you?"

"They...they tell me I'll go back...sometime soon...they say that they won't hurt me...they tell me they'll return me..."

"Do you believe them?"

Guss saw Pender jerk. He couldn't attest to it later, and when he looked at Pender he was still, watching with the same intensity as before. But he was sure that in the corner of his eye he had seen his partner react somehow, to what, Guss couldn't tell.

"...yes..." whispered Mary Ann.

"Why?" Mulder's voice was also a whisper. "Why do you believe them?"

"Because..." Her voice faded, then gained strength. "Because of the people...the human people...they tell me that they're telling the truth..."

"These people...How do they know?"

"They've...they've been there a while...they know the aliens. There's a lot of them, they've been there for a year...that's what they tell me. They tell me not to be afraid...they say that I'll go back soon..."

"What do these humans look like, Mary Ann? Do they all look alike?"

"No...they're all different...they're people. There's men and women...most of them are my age...no one old and no children...they know the aliens. They don't like the aliens...but they aren't scared of them..." She trailed off.

There was silence; the director didn't ask another question right away. Guss looked away from Mary Ann's calm blank sleeping expression to Mulder. He was equally still, holding himself in a crouched position before her, not touching his chair anymore.

Guss saw him lick his lips, a quick furtive gesture, and then he spoke. If Guss had even breathed he wouldn't have been able to hear the words. "There are women there?"

"...yes...women and men..."

"Mary Ann, do you see a woman, a woman who looks a little like you?" His next question was so low that Guss couldn't make it out, only heard though low hiss of a whisper.

"...red hair... The lights are bright. And then they're off and it's dark and I can't see...There's a lot of people...there's a woman with red hair like mine...all our hair looks so odd in this light..." She giggled nervously. Guss jumped at the sound.

Mary Ann's next words sounded like she was speaking to someone, someone in her memory. "Yours looks green...and mine looks even worse. There's another woman with my hair--vomitus shade...I don't like these lights, I don't want to be here..."

She sobbed suddenly, one sob and then she was calm. Guss could see a tear making its way down her face, though her eyes otherwise were dry.

"It's alright," the director murmured. "You're not there, you're here, in your home, where it's safe. You're safe here. They

brought you back."

"I'm here, I'm here," echoed Mary Ann faintly. Then she said, "They were telling me the truth...they said they'd bring me back...good-bye..." Sadness in her tone, and then she sounded almost happy. "They...they said that they would come back too, they said they were going to be brought back...after me...they were going to be returned soon, finally..."

This time Guss heard Pender take a short breath and hold it. He was watching the director, though. Mulder had frozen, not even breathing anymore, unblinking eyes focused entirely on Mary Ann.

Wong stepped forward, touched Mary Ann's hands. The woman started. "Mary Ann," the agent said quietly, "When I count to five you will rise off your pillow and climb those stairs again, until you're looking out of your own eyes. One...two...three... four...five."

Mary Ann opened her eyes. In the same instant the director leaned back into his chair and Guss heard Pender exhale softly.

"How do you feel?" Wong asked.

Mary Ann blinked. "Fine. Well-rested. How long was I...under?"

"How long do you think?"

"A couple of minutes...I remember you saying to walk down the stairs and lie down and then I heard you counting me back out again. But I figure it was longer?" She glanced at her watch. "Oh my god. Three-quarters of an hour? Did I tell you anything interesting?"

"Yes," the director said. "Mary Ann, do you remember being in a large room on the ship? Or perhaps on another ship?"

Mary Ann closed her eyes. "Oh," she said. "Well...I don't remember it exactly. But lately...I've had a lot of dreams, when I'm in a large, enclosed space, and there are other people with me. Human and alien people." She lifted her eyelids. "No. I can't call up a clear picture. Just little flashes."

"Apparently, you were in a room with other abductees, who were there already. Both they and the aliens told you not to be afraid and that you were to be returned soon, and you trusted them."

"I guess." Mary Ann looked down at her hands. "I wish I could remember. Why can't I?"

"You might someday," the director comforted her. "Many abductees regain their memories slowly."

"Why did I forget?"

"I can't say for certain," she was told, "but some people, abductees among them, think it has something to do with the way the aliens communicate. Through telepathy--"

Mary Ann squeezed her eyes tight momentarily. "I remember that," she said. "Voices in my head..."

"Those voices might, either on purpose or accidently simply by how they work, affect your mind. Cause you to forget."

"They told me not to be afraid..." Her voice sounded almost as soft as it had when she was hypnotized. "I remember that. They told me and I wasn't. Though," and she glanced around at all of them, "I was right. I was right to trust them, because they did bring me back, just like they said."

"You were right," agreed the director. "Do you have any questions you'd like to ask us?"

"No..." Mary Ann shook her head. "I think...Thank you for hypnotizing me, Agent Wong. It's something I've always wanted to experience."

Wong smiled and nodded. "We'll leave you now," the director said, standing, Wong immediately following suit. They all departed. Guss could tell that Mary Ann was not particularly unhappy to see them leave, though before they were out the door she caught his eye and asked, "Did you find anything in my bedroom?"

"Only evidence to corroborate your story, ma'am," Pender answered her, smiling. Guss, watching him, bet odds to evens that the smile was faked, though with Pender it could be hard to tell. But his partner's eyes weren't looking at Mary Ann Lane; they were on Director Mulder, watching as he shook hands good-bye and strode out to the car. The agents took off after him.

The drive back was spent in speculation. "Didn't help this case any," Pender grumbled. "Not that I think there's something else we could have done."

Wong sighed. "I think this case is closed, Pender."

"I know it is," Pender told her. "It doesn't mean I'm happy about it." He turned to Guss. "Well, this is it, the end of the first case that's truly yours."

"We got the kidnapped victims back at least," Guss said.

"Yes," Wong agreed. "Good job there, no matter how you did it." She twisted around in the front seat to face the back. "Remember, oh newest agent, don't get yourself shot if you can help it. But other than that, good work!"

Pender nodded emphatically. "Keep it up and you'll go far..."

"...As far as one can go in the X-files," Guss completed. "Don't you ever get tired of putting yourselves down?"

"Nope," Pender told him cheerily. "You're a fast learner."

"So," said Guss, "now what? How do we close this case?"

Pender grinned at him. "You are lucky enough to be our leader on this one, so you get to write up the report yourself. Two hints: try to be as concise as possible when you can be, and try to find a way of recording what you did that makes it sound nice and legal and as if you had full permission to do so." He glanced ahead of him at the back of the driver's seat. "Sir, I presume that Agent Guss had full support of the team in his actions?"

After a pause the director replied, "Of course you did, Agent Guss."

"Thank you, sir," Guss said, uncertain of what else to say. A swift peak at his partner neither confirmed or denied his response. Pender was frowning at the back of the director's head; if Guss could read him correctly, he was concerned about something for whatever reasons. "Is anything wrong, Pender?" he asked in an undertone.

Pender shook his head rapidly. Then he returned to giving Guss advice about his report, punctuated by Wong's occasional--and generally more helpful--comments.

Guss found he could use all the help he could get when he actually started to write the report. He wasn't sure what was worse--the incredibly convoluted logic he used to justify what he had done (when he hadn't quite justified it to himself yet); or the fact that the conclusion wasn't really a conclusion at all, just sort of an ending that trailed off uneasily into nothing. Yes, they had found the false abductees, no they didn't know exactly why they were taken, yes they had a theory, no they couldn't prove it, yes they had caught the actual kidnappers, no they didn't know who had hired them...it went on and on. Yes, we interviewed a real abductee, but no, she couldn't tell us anything.

The case was considered closed, but Pender showed him the addition to an older, still open file. A huge list of abduction cases, all of returned abductees, not alien but human abductees, and all with unknown causes, unknown abductors. "If this gets large enough, maybe they'll put the entire Bureau onto it, and we'll have a chance of breaking it. Until then..."

Until then, it was a yellow-marked file--open, but not investigated currently. Guss agreed with Pender and the rest of the team--it wasn't enough, but what could they do? All they could--try to save those who were abducted by those unknown, Earth-based forces, try to find more evidence against them, and try to find the little branches they could cut on their own.

Browning Co. at least was under inspection; it would probably be closed down. A little company in a small city. Everything helps, but Guss still wished that there was more. He would definitely keep up this fight with the other agents. And he would watch out for dangerous situations, but he made no promises to himself about staying out of them...only told himself to look before he leaped next time, and to make sure that he could break out of the places he could break into.

And a week went by. Guss passed in his report. He wasn't called up for a conference with Skinner, so it must have been at least partly acceptable.

There were new cases. There always were new cases, he had figured that out already. Pender picked one that had nothing to do with abductions but did involve some rather gruesome murders in New York; the reason it had been made into an X-file had to do with the manner and time of deaths. Identical murders happening at precisely the same time in opposite parts of the city was too strange even for the NYPD to handle on their own.

They returned from the Big Apple six days later, mentally and physically exhausted, but triumphant. Taking Pender's advice, Guss went home and slept for twelve hours straight. He woke up in time to reach the X-files office by noon, slightly embarrassed, but Burnett and Wong treated it as if nothing was amiss and Pender had only stepped through the door forty minutes before and was therefore in no position to even comment.

The director had nothing to say. The director was in his office and had been there since the week before, according to Burnett and Wong, who had "minded the store" so-to-speak while the other two pairs did field work. He had left to see Skinner several times; he had also gone out midday for hours and returned in the evening when the two agents were leaving. Guss was no longer surprised by the precision of the reports. Pender was apparently annoyed with the lack thereof, in fact. "Where has he gone in the afternoon?"

"What, we were supposed to put a tail and a tracker on him too?" Wong asked.

"You could have asked. So you don't know?"

"No, so terribly sorry, Pender, I didn't get his boxer colors, either." At Pender's expression she relaxed. "Sorry. What's wrong?"

"I damn-sure hope nothing," Pender muttered in reply. "He wasn't driving out to us--have Dubzinski or Gibbons mentioned hearing from him?" They were on an alien-sighting-hoax case, no abductions but a possible homicide, suicide, or natural death-- which it was was what they were checking.

"No." Burnett answered. "There aren't any active alien cases at the moment, Pender. He's not likely to get involved. He has his own projects."

"I know," Pender said. "Well, okay. He can handle them. What does he want us to do?"

Paperwork, it turned out. The dreaded finale of any case. Guss had learned quite a lot of things in the last months. He liked knowledge usually, but he could have lived a full happy life without knowing how to write case reports.

Particularly when his partner was not doing his own fair share. Pender spent more time staring at the door to the director's office than at his computer monitor, where he was supposed to be looking.

Since he had missed lunch, he got dinner for Mulder instead. Guss at his desk watched Pender rap on the door and enter the office. He eavesdropped unashamedly; at their desk he saw Burnett and Wong doing the same.

"Here, I got an extra hamburger."

"I'm not really hungry now, but thank you."

"It's seven PM, eat the damn burger, Mulder." Guss caught Wong raising her eyebrows at her partner and at him.

"Since when do directors answer to agents?"

"Since six fifty-nine, when this agent invoked the partner's clause--once a partner, always a partner." After a pause Guss heard rustling of paper--Mulder, like most agents in any academy class before Guss's, preferred hard copies of files as opposed to just what was on a computer screen. "So what are you investigating now, sir?"

The director's voice was muffled; talking with his mouth full. "Agent Pender, my business is not your own."

"I beg to differ." Pender's voice was cooler than Mulder's usually was. "These are X-files; therefore they are the business of the X-files team."

"They aren't active cases now. I'm re-organizing them, Pender. Or would you like to have the incredibly rewarding task of re- classifying three dozen files and seeing to it that the computer actually saves them correctly?"

"Any reason why these cases, at this time, sir?"

"Because they are there. Thank you for the burger, Pender. I see your opinions on nutrition haven't changed a bit in the last few years."

"Nutrition? I think I dated her once..." Pender's voice answered, in a tone proper to the summoning of old jests.

"Now, if you want me to sleep at all tonight, I suggest you let me get back to work."

"Yes, sir." The three agents in the other office promptly returned to their work as well, only glancing up sneakily to check on Pender's expression.

What Guss saw he didn't like. The moment his partner stepped out of the office his half-smile fell into a dark, brooding frown. But of course, when asked, he only said that nothing was wrong, at least nothing he could pin down.

Gibbons and Dubzinski returned the next day. Pender filled them in on the director's current habits, and then Guss made an private addendum concerning his own partner's responses. An expression almost identical to Pender's dark worried look flitted across Gibbon's face when he told her about Pender, but she didn't talk about it any more than he had.

Guss came in the day after that bright and early (he had been making a special effort to atone for the noon appearance). Pender was already in, and his worried look had apparently become permanent. Gibbons and Burnett were there as well; Dubzinski and Wong walked in soon after.

Director Mulder did not.

About two minutes after noon, Director Skinner entered. Pender was on his feet in less than a second. "Where is he, sir?"

The Director eyed Pender darkly. "He's not at his apartment, I sent an agent over to check. Obviously he's not here. He did not call in today, or give any other sign that he was going to be absent. He hasn't bought any plane tickets under any of his known aliases."

"Like that's useful; we discover his aliases by finding where he's been and deducing from there," Pender snapped.

"Agent Pender," Skinner said in a warning tone.

Guss jumped in. "Director Mulder is missing?"

"Apparently," Skinner glanced sidelong at Pender, "yes, Agent Guss. Since no one has any clue of his current whereabouts."

"He's done this before, right? Is there any reason to be concerned?" Guss pressed.

"Yes, agent, this has happened before. And no, there is no real reason to be concerned," the Director said slowly. "He is fortunate to have a secured career. The reason I came down here was because to inform this section that since their director is absent, they are to report to me."

"Yes, sir, we all understand," Gibbons verified this, when it became clear that Pender wasn't going to do so.

"Good. I believe you have your assignments already, agents." The director nodded at them and departed.

Pender immediately pursued him; Guss, for lack of better options, followed. His partner cornered the Director in the hall. "Sir, hold on!"

Skinner's look was such that Guss was grateful it wasn't aimed at him. "Yes, agent?"

"It's a lot worse than you seem to think. This isn't going to be one of his two-day vacations."

Director Skinner pinned his agent with a glare. Pender didn't even seem to notice. "I told you in my report what that woman said. Mary Ann Lane. You know what he's looking for."

"What else is he ever looking for?" Skinner asked. It was clearly a rhetorical question.

Pender answered it anyway. "Clues. Usually he's just out to find some notion, some idea, something to support a theory. He's after the genuine item, this time. And if he can't find--"

"I know, Agent Pender." Resignation was obvious in the Director's tone. "I knew that this was coming as well as you did. But you've missed one detail--what can we do?"

"Find him. Find him before he gets himself killed or taken or something."

"Pender, I've sent out inquiries to every branch of the bureau. I can't officially put out an APB because with no evidence of foul play he can't be declared missing for forty-eight hours but I've done what I can. If you have your own sources, agent, I suggest you call on them."

"I will." Pender's jaw tightened momentarily. "Sir, I'm sorry."

"For what, agent?"

"For not giving you more warning. I should've known this was coming. I should've found some way to track him, or told you so you could--"

"Agent Pender," Skinner cut him off, "This has nothing to do with your actions. You were not assigned to the X-files to babysit."

"Sir, I--"

"No," the Director shook his head, "I am not going to accept excuses or recriminations. And you are not to blame yourself for any consequences of this." He stared Pender down. "Am I understood?" he asked quietly.

Pender looked him right back. "Yes, sir," he said in equally subdued tones.

"Good." The Director nodded and continued down the hall.

Pender glared after him. "Guss," he asked, "why the hell is everyone so damn concerned with me and guilt? Why is everyone convinced that I'm beating my head against some invisible wall every time something goes wrong?"

"I don't know," Guss told his partner. "Maybe if you didn't try to bear the weight of the world on your shoulders they wouldn't be."

Pender's glare turned on him. "C'mon," Guss said to escape it, "we've got work to do."

The rest of the team was already in action. Burnett and Wong departed shortly after some clue or another; Gibbons and Dubzinski were on their phones. Pender and Guss took to the electronic highway, chasing down sighting reports and also looking over the same files Mulder had been perusing.

Guss had already guessed what they were; his supposition was proven correct. The abductee files, those thirty-something abductions from the time of Samantha's return. Pender went through Mulder's office and emerged with an armload of the hard copies, throwing them onto their desk in front of Guss. "Look at these, Guss, he's got them here."

"What?"

Pender handed him one of the files. "Look for these in the database," he said grimly. "They aren't there. He had hard copies of all the files."

"You mean--" Guss glanced at the files. "These are the ones that were deleted?"

"Bingo. Almost all of them, as far as I can tell. I remember there were sixty."

Guss flipped through them. "Fifty-nine here. Wonder what one's missing?"

"He's got it with him," Pender said slowly. "I know what file it is and I'm willing to bet that he's always had it. I wish I'd known where he kept these--maybe there's more lost files that really still do exist." He frowned at the array on the desk. "I've been through all the ones in the database a thousand times. They don't have much in common."

"What elements are the same?" Guss asked. "We should compare them to the ones you haven't seen." He opened the new discoveries and laid them out as methodically as possible on the desk, the chairs, the filing cabinets behind them.

Pender circulated around them. "Okay. They've all experienced previous abductions. They all were adults, the oldest was just under fifty and the youngest was twenty-five." He stopped.

"What else?"

"They all were living in the main United States when taken. They were all considered middle class--no one below the poverty line, no one wealthy. Fairly low-profile people."

"And?"

"That's it." Pender folded his arms and stared grimly at his partner. "That's all the commonalities I found. Gender about half and half. Race basically evenly divided--somewhat more whites but that is the middle class majority in the US. And before you ask, as far as I know of the abductions were only in the US."

"Patriotic aliens?" Even to Guss the joke sounded flat but Pender half-smiled. "Get a little darker than that, Guss. You've heard this theory before--the aliens took government abductees. Apparently the government under suspicion is that of the United States."

"Some branch of it, at least. And we don't know why."

"No." Pender might have gone on but Dubzinski approached them then.

"Gibbons and I have talked with MUFON, NICAP, about six other smaller UFO-watching organizations."

"And?"

"Two things. One, our director's been in touch with them quite a lot lately--to the tune of three or four calls a day. Two, if he was looking for something specific in terms of flying saucers he might have found it right about now--UFO activity sky-rocketed upward this week. Apparently sightings have been increasing steadily in the last few months, but yesterday alone there were on the order of five thousand confirmed sightings."

Pender and Guss both stared at him. "Five thousand?" Guss asked. Ever since Samantha's return alien ships had been taken more seriously and usually a few were seen every night, but even with all the watchers eagerly gaping at the skies most ships went unnoticed by most people.

"Five thousand," Dubzinski repeated. "And those are confirmed-- they weren't clouds, weather balloons, human air craft. Lots of pictures snapped too. The papers are going to have a field day when this gets out."

"Where were the sightings?" Pender rapped out.

"That's the trouble. All over the place. In concentrations, usually, a hundred here, a hundred there. Total about twenty major sites. Gibbons's put pins in the map already but there isn't any pattern, at least none that we or NICAP can deduce."

"Any in the Minneapolis area?" Guss asked, thinking back to Mary Ann Lane. Pender obviously thought that her hypnotism was the starting-point of the director's behavior...

Dubzinski was shaking his head. "No luck there. A couple of random lights that maybe were UFOs but only about ten people reported them." He turned to Pender. "Should we call the areas, ask around?"

Pender nodded. "If we're lucky, he's contacted someone where ever he's gone, and we can get hold of them. NICAP and MUFON didn't have any word from him?

"No, but I've informed them of the situation and they're e- mailing their members--if he contacts anybody from any organization we'll know." Dubzinski tapped his fingers on the desk. "Pender, you know him. Why'd he run off without us again? It's not like we'd try to stop him if he told us he was going. You seem convinced he need our help, but why didn't he just ask us for it? He's got to know by now that we'd all willingly jump off a cliff for him--so why did he go and leap on his own?"

"Because he doesn't trust us," said Gibbons, coming up behind her partner. "Pender, don't give me that look. He doesn't. He thinks that he's the only one devoted enough to risk his life for something like this."

"He's an asshole," Dubzinski muttered. "I'd take a bullet or five for him but he's still an asshole. Sorry, Pender."

"I don't care what you call him," Pender said, "as long as you're on his side. And I know you are, Dubz."

"But where is he?" Guss demanded, cutting back to the root of the problem.

"We might know," called a voice from the door. Instantly every iota of attention was focused on Wong and Burnett. "We've just crashed the LG offices and they've been in touch with him. Not today but last night they recorded three transactions betwixt the boss and an airline ticket booth."

"Under an alias?" Pender demanded.

"A new one, David Dokuvni," Burnett reported, then let his partner pick up the telling again.

"He got three different tickets," Wong said, "One to Boston, one to Chicago, and one to LA. Unfortunately they lost track of him then; they can't say what plane he actually boarded."

"So he could be anywhere in the US," Gibbons muttered. "Simple connecting flight from any of those places to anywhere else."

"He must think he's being followed by someone more dangerous than just us," Dubzinski remarked.

"He doesn't just think so," Wong said. "He is. The LG knew what they were looking for--and they found it. Couple of known 'government officials' is what they said--I don't even want to know how they know. But these mysterious officials took the next flight to Chicago. And there's more--the army's being mobilized out in Wisconsin."

"Wisconsin--Bardton!" Gibbons exclaimed.

"Who? What?" Now they were all looking at her, except for Dubzinski who had dashed over to the map.

"Where. Bardton," he said, pointing. "It's one of the sites NICAP and MUFON and all were raving about--six hundred sightings last night. Little nothing town in the middle of the woods."

"No longer nothing," Pender said. "If what everyone knows adds up, then that place is going to be the UFO hotspot of the century sometime soon."

"Like, tonight," Gibbons added. "If the boss's instincts were right."

"Aren't they always?" said Pender.

"The plane leaves for Chicago in an hour and a half," Burnett spoke up suddenly. Wong specified, "We didn't know where we'd go from there, but we have the tickets already."

"Good work. With some luck, we'll be there before a toxic spill suddenly occurs," Pender said, and the other agents laughed shortly and then took off to grab what they had time to get.

Guss caught Pender before they left. "Sorry, I seem to need to be told this a lot, but what the hell is going on?"

"We're going to find the director. In Bardton, Wisconsin."

"Where'd this information come from? Why do we have to rush off so fast?"

Pender obviously used a great deal of effort to slow himself down enough to be intelligible. "Because the director took off so fast, did you hear Wong? He bought the tickets last night, though it would have been safer to buy them in advance and sit on them. Harder to trace."

"And who found out about the tickets?"

"One of those special sources Skinner referred to. Someday, when it's not an emergency, you'll meet them. Next question; make it snappy because we both have to move."

"How did the director and the army know where to go?"

"The army knows 'cause the director does. As for Mulder..." Pender trailed off. "I can't say. We'll have to ask him that, but first we better find him--" And he dragged Guss along to the parking lot.

Once on the plane the agents chatted and fidgeted. Guss could practically see Pender fighting the urge to hijack the 747 and force it somehow to fly faster. He himself was amazed at how fast they had moved already; it was the same day, for heaven's sake! Or night, as it was; they were flying right along the twilight line, actually. They left Washington at five and reached Chicago at eight, Illinois time.

The flight gave him plenty of time to press more questions on Pender and the others. The most major one was, "Why? Why do we have to hurry? What are you so worried about?"

Pender sighed. "Guss, remember you and a warehouse and a guard with a gun to your head?"

"Sort of a hard thing to forget, Pender."

"Well, those were just small fry. A minor operation. This is the big one, if what I think is correct."

"What do you think?"

"That the organization behind the original abductions is going to try their damndest to see that these abductees never come to light."

"What Mary Ann Lane said about being returned...the aliens are dropping off everyone they took five years ago?"

"That's what the director thinks, I'm convinced. That's what the organization thinks, consequently."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know. But Guss, whatever is true--he's going to be in deep trouble. Something is happening out there, and if he sees it, they aren't going to care how high-profile Fox Mulder may be- -they're going to see to it that no one finds out anything more from him. Ever."

"So it's him and us against the army and this organization..."

"And who knows what else. Cross your fingers on this one, Guss-- we're going to need all the luck we can get."

Guss didn't comment that, so far, his luck hadn't exactly been the sort that they were going to require.

The "fasten seatbelts" light went off then, and the plane angled down to the runway of O'Hare Airport. From there the agents rented two cars and drove out of the city and Illinois.

Bardton was over a hundred miles away. Pender and Gibbons at the wheels made the drive in well under two hours; fortunately the weeknight highways were on the empty side and there weren't any state troopers on the route. Not that FBI badges couldn't shield them from tickets but none of the agents would have taken the delay in good spirits.

Shortly before ten o'clock they pulled into the Bardton Police Station. Pender had already called ahead and explained that there was an emergency. The chief had come back for the night and was waiting for them in his office when they arrived.

"So what is the problem, agents?" he asked, surveying them all with a touch of nervousness. Local law generally wasn't fond of the Bureau and six suited agents flashing identification was enough to unnerve the chief. Particularly when they appeared with very little warning in the middle of the night.

"Sir," said Pender, trying hard to attain that calm, smooth tone that the director always had and nearly managing it, "we're going to need the assistance of your entire force on this. We," and he indicated the six of them, "are all assigned to the X-files division--"

"This is about all those flying saucer sightings?" the chief demanded. "I knew that was going to be trouble. I'd like to blame it all on some juvey prank--"

"It's not, sir, I can assure you of that," Pender said.

"I know. I saw the damn things myself."

In a quick, terse tone, Pender explained the situation to him, or at least the relevant parts. "It's possible that these UFOs are here to return abductees. That's only a hypothesis. What I can tell you for sure is that there are going to be a great many people around here from an organization that is not going to like anyone seeing those UFOs and may try to do something about it. I can also tell you..." He hesitated, then decided not to hide it, "one of our agents is here, somewhere. On his own looking for the UFOs and the abductees. It is imperative that we find him before these others do. And if there are abductees, we have to find them before they do, too."

"You lost one of your agents?" asked the chief incredulously.

"Our director, in fact," Pender affirmed grimly.

The chief blinked at all of them. "Damn, you people must be desperate. I've had one encounter with the Bureau before and they told me nothing. And you come in and spill the entire story out in about two minutes." He stood and went to the door, turned back to face them. "Don't just sit there!" he admonished. "From everything you've said, this is urgent!" And he got on the CB himself to contact his officers, ordering them all to keep a watch for someone of Mulder's description and also to report any lights, noises--UFO signals.

"So you don't know where this supposed return is going to be," he asked while awaiting confirmation.

Pender shook his head. "Almost definitely where the director is, but beyond that...where are the UFO sightings occurring?"

"Everywhere," the chief replied, shaking his head. "No help there. The entire town is surrounded, or at least that's what I'm being told from the desk sergeant--she's getting two calls a minute at this point. Nothing in the center, but the outskirts..."

"I bet there's UFO watchers out there," Gibbons said.

"You got that right. At least they don't call in--every hotel, inn, motel, campground in the area is full and I still saw people sleeping in their cars today."

"They'll know where the best places are," Pender said. "We should go out and talk with them. Call in a couple of cruisers, chief. We'll split up, every agent goes with an officer and report whatever you see, hear, sense, got that?"

---

Guss found himself with a policeman almost two decades older than him who obviously thought his chief was acting a little odd. "We're going to talk to those UFO freaks? Talk to them? We should be slapping the cuffs on 'em!"

"We need information from them," Guss said in his best FBI voice. "Have they committed any felonies?"

"Drunk 'n disorderly, disrupting the peace, trespassing on private property..." catalogued the officer in a mutter. "Misdemeanors should count for something...even if you need their help."

Even if there's way too many of them to actually control, Guss thought, knowing that this was why nothing had actually been done. Beyond calling in the army or dropping tear gas on the lot the Bardton police would have to put up with them.

Anyhow, if Mulder and Pender were right the UFO activity would stop after tonight and the crowds would soon trickle away.

He could understand the policeman's trepidation, though, when they reached one of the UFO parties. Guss had been to a couple-- he had been in college at the time of Samantha's return and had attended a few campus-wide ones then. This one was a fair rival to those frat-hosted ones. Boisterous, bright, and big. There looked to be at least five hundred people crowded onto the small field, all talking and laughing and dancing to the loud music being pumped out of several enormous boom-boxes.

Guss was at a loss as to who to talk to. Rather than seem confused, he simply pushed into the crowd. Grumbling and glaring at the mass of people with their signs and t-shirts and everything else, the policeman followed. The two found a man at a booth selling baseball caps and beer, mostly. He looked as if he might have been set up for several nights already.

"So, I take it this is a good place to see things?" Guss asked him, raising his voice over the dance music.

"If you're on the look-out for flying saucers, ain't no place better!" the man hollered back cheerily. "I've been to lots of spots but the action these last two nights is unbeatable!"

"When does it start?" Guss questioned.

"Anytime now--around eleven, usually. Hovering, zipping around, it goes on for maybe a couple of hours. Gone long before dawn of course."

"How many?"

"Depends!" shouted the boothman. "Sometimes looks like about ten lights on one ship, but maybe they fly in formation!"

"Where are they?"

The man gestured widely. "All over! Though they tend to be brightest to the east--" and he pointed. "There's an old quarry, maybe there's nuclear waster buried or something! They like it over there, must be a reason!"

"Has anyone else asked you questions like this?"

"Tons of people!" Guss was assured.

"Anyone official-looking? You know, in a suit or something?"

"Like you?" He shook his head. "Nah."

Next to Guss the police officer spoke up. "You got a license to operate this booth?" he demanded.

Guss was about to round on him when the booth man leaned over to speak to them, rather than shouting. "Okay, there was a guy early today in a suit and trenchcoat just like yours, and he asked the same things. He told me not to tell anyone but since you guys are on the side of the law and all...he a spy or something?"

"Tall man, grey and brown hair?"

"Sounds right."

"He's not a spy. Thank you, you've been very helpful."

"Anything to assist a cop," the man said, tossing a mock salute and a vicious grin in the officer's direction. The policeman bristled and might have fined him on the spot but Guss pulled him away. "Sorry, we have bigger business."

As soon as they reached the cruiser Guss called Pender. "The director was at this site, and he was told the UFOs prefer an abandoned quarry in the area."

"The director," he was informed, "has been to every party. And has gotten a different site from every one. The quarry sounds more promising then aliens over the town hall at least. Check it out, report anything you find, got it?"

"Yes, sir! Or yes, Pender!"

The officer, knowing the area, drove. He also assured Guss that they were on a false lead, if one can actually have a lead when one is tracking down figments of overactive imaginations--aliens might be real, but why the hell would they hang out in a small Midwest town?

He went on in this vein for several minutes, and was telling Guss that the quarry was at the next turn when the CB went haywire, squealing static at its top volume. The regular radio turned itself on and tried to simultaneously broadcast every station in a ten second burst, the headlights flickered and went out, and the cruiser rolled to a stop as the engine went dead.

"What the hell!" shouted the officer.

Guss had opened the door and was out of the car before it was fully halted. "Call for backup!" he ordered through the window.

"I can't!" the policeman growled amidst louder oaths, "the radio's dead!"

"It should come back; when it does tell Pender that we've just had an X encounter and to get over here--this may be the place!" Without waiting for a response he took off, running down the road to the quarry.

The ground sloped downward; Guss wasn't aware of this until he realized he was in the quarry pit, looking up at manmade cliffs of sand. The moon was nearly full and bright enough that he could see where he was going without his flashlight. He quickly checked to make sure that he still had it as well as his gun. Then he visually searched his locale.

Small mountains of rock and sand surrounded him, throwing everything into pitch-black shadows. It was silent; too early in the spring for insects and birds must all be asleep. The mountains were even blocking the wind's howling, and between the light and dark patches of moonlight and shadow and the near-total quiet it was quite spooky.

Guss was tempted to shout, both to call the director if by chance he was here and to break the stillness. But he recalled too well that he was far from the only one looking for Mulder. As softly as possible he moved deeper into the quarry, turning on his flashlight to peer into the shadows.

He heard the hum before he saw the lights or the figure. Before he even heard the sound he felt it, a vibration in his eardrums, and even the ground itself seemed to quiver very little. The sensation grew more pronounced and it occurred to him that this was exactly what Pender had ordered him to report, only he hadn't any way to report it.

At last it was high enough in pitch that he could hear it, a low, omnipresent hum that filled his brain. Any louder and he would have a headache that would rival the one given to him by the guards back at Browning Co. He put his hands against his ears--

--And then Guss saw movement in a stripe of shadow and moonlight. With one hand he pulled his gun and with the other he aimed the flashlight.

Even from fifty feet away he recognized the figure silhouetted by the beam. "Director!" he called over the hum, heedless now of who might be listening.

The director, seeing the illumination on him, started to turn, but simultaneously the hum increased in pitch and volume and the manmade light was obliterated by a brightness of artificial--but not human--origins.

Guss cried out and threw his arms over his eyes, an autonomous response. He managed to keep his hold on both flashlight and weapon, at least. Slowly he forced his hands away, squinting against the brilliant white glare.

The director stood, back to Guss, facing the light, his arms at his side. As Guss watched he took a step forward, towards it.

"Sir!" Guss shouted at the top of his lungs. "Director Mulder!"

Far ahead the figure turned partly, so Guss could see his profile, then turned back. Took another step forward. Guss started running in the same direction, not precisely sure what his goal was, still shouting the director's name.

Somehow the light grew even brighter. It was so prevalent that Guss lost all orientation, could not tell up from down, much less forward from backwards. He forced his way ahead regardless. Somewhere in his field of vision, which was starting to flash in dark many-hued colors, he could make out a thin black stripe that he knew was the director. Even with his eyes closed he could see it, or at least its afterimage.

The hum had grown so loud that Guss couldn't hear his own shouts. He wasn't even sure that he was still shouting, or if he was still running for that matter; he couldn't think at all in the brightness and loudness and sheer power surrounding him.

But he felt it when the ground was ripped away from his feet and then slammed him in the back. At the same time the light burned hot across his face and then faded out entirely, and a thunderous boom rang through his ears.

Guss landed rolling; when he finally stopped he lay still for several seconds, gasping for breath. In a moment he realized that he could hear himself inhaling; his ears were ringing still but the hum had vanished. He forced his eyes open. All he could see were bright flashes of light but they were fading out into darkness and he hoped his eyes would adjust back to normal eventually.

He felt his holster and then remembered that he had been holding his gun as well as his flashlight. No longer; his hands were balled into fists but they didn't clutch anything.

After taking such swift inventories of his body and his possessions, Guss pushed himself onto his feet. He stood shakily but nothing seemed to be broken that he could feel. So he had other matters to worry about--"Director Mulder!" His voice still sounded pretty strong, at least. And his legs were willing to carry him forward, in the general direction he thought Mulder was at.

His vision returned fairly quickly, taking only a little longer to re-adjust to the night, and then he could see the black form lying on the dark ground. He ran toward it as well as he could, and then noticed the other figures beyond it--

Most of them were standing, a few were sitting or lying. Some of them moved around but most stayed in place. They were fairly tall, as tall as humans, and the dim silhouettes Guss could make out looked human as well.

A return. A drop-off. Could they possibly be the abductees--

No time for them now. Guss dropped down onto his knees by the director. Looked him over, took his pulse. He was breathing at least, short sharp pants. His heartbeat was also fast, even rhythm but going at about twice normal rate. Guss thought perhaps it was shock but he was not knowledgeable in first-aid. Have to change that, he thought to himself crazily. Pender's gonna kill me if the director goes and dies when I've found him...

His breathing seemed to be slowing, at least, and so was his pulse, Guss thought. Or maybe that was just hopefulness. He heard rustlings and looked up.

Slowly he was being surrounded by the people, tall shadows in the moonlight. Or not so tall; he was kneeling, after all. He could make out in the shadowed faces the gleams of wide eyes. They all seemed to be dressed in white, visible in the moonlight, simple white jumpsuits it appeared though of course it was hard to tell. And a lot of them were looking at him. Guss wished he could see their expressions.

He was aware of whispers, quiet, inaudible exchanges between the people. Then a voice, a whispered voice. "This...we're...this is Earth?"

"Yes," Guss answered. The voice sounded almost like it was speaking in a trance, the way Mary Ann Lane had when she was hypnotized. That was okay; Guss's dazed voice sounded the same. "This is Earth." He went out on a limb and added, "You're home."

The gasps, the whispered joy, came across very clearly. He heard questioning noises, throats being cleared as they prepared to speak louder, make themselves and their queries heard.

Feeling cruel but desperate, Guss cut them off. "I'm sorry, I can't talk to you right away, we're all in danger here and this man's hurt--" He paused, looked them over as well he could in the dimness. "Are any of you injured?" he thought to ask.

"We're all fine," came the whisper, or maybe it was a different voice; it was hard to tell. Then there was a rustling through the crowd, and someone either stepped or was pushed forward.

"I'm a doctor," the person said. The voice was obviously female, but what surprised Guss was that it wasn't a whisper, it was quiet but it actually used vocal cords. "I helped people on the ship. Let me look."

She knelt next to Guss; once she did he realized that she was not tall at all--she was quite a bit shorter than him in fact. She was also clearly a human woman, with pale skin and hair of some light shade. Guss relaxed slightly, then tensed, remembering that these were abductees, these were people gone from this Earth for five years, and that there were people out there who would rather they stayed gone.

Somehow she sensed his tension. As she took the director's pulse she looked at him. "What's wrong?" In a whisper this time, as if to prevent the others from hearing.

Guss was about to tell her, tell all of them, but the director moaned. The doctor immediately turned back to her patient, reached out one hand and laid it against his forehead, smoothed the hair back. And then she leaned forward, and even in the low light Guss could see her eyes grow huge.

As if she had been burned she leapt back onto her feet. Her eyes were focused entirely on the director, and Guss could hear her speaking, or at least try to speak. Only choked whispers left her throat.

"What's wrong?" he now asked her, and she turned her face, her whole body, towards him.

"How long?" Like it was forced from her lungs. "How long? What year is it?"

Guss told her.

"Five years." A gasp, a sob, not really a voice at all. "It's been five years they didn't tell us it would be they said time passed but I thought only a year for me it was only a year..." The words poured out, intelligible, incomprehensible. Guss stood, almost took a step in her direction but stopped himself. Couldn't threaten her or scare her. She had been through enough already.

Instead he spoke, calmingly. "It's alright. You're safe now," however untrue that may be, "you're back."

At least she looked at him and spoke normally. Calmly, even. "Are you with the FBI?"

Guss felt a massive rush of confusion, how come everyone in the universe seems to know more than me? But somehow he managed to answer sanely, "Yes, and so is he. I'm Agent Terry Guss, and that is Director--"

He didn't finish. The director was awake, his eyes had opened and he had even struggled into a half-sitting position.

And frozen there. His eyes were on the woman, the doctor.

She looked away from Guss, staring at him instead. Guss turned and saw the object of her vision. "Sir! You're alright--"

The agent heard a sound, like a moan or a sob only deeper, and he couldn't tell who it came from, the woman or the director. But he saw the director lunge forward, and the woman knelt or fell or crouched somehow so that she could catch him, or so he could catch her.

Somehow they were together, arms wrapped tightly around each other, her white garments shadowed by his dark coat. Their heads were on each other's shoulders and they were kneeling on the rocky ground.

Guss watched mutely, and so did the other silent figures. The agent thought the two might be whispering or maybe crying; he couldn't be sure they were making a sound at all. Both were shaking, or one was shaking and so the other was too, the sort of shaking one does when crying though Guss couldn't hear any sobs.

Light flashed. A murmured cry shifted through the crowd, exclamations of terror. But there wasn't a hum, only a loud beating sound; and wind started blowing dust everywhere. A helicopter, or several.

The Bardton police did not own a chopper. "Sir!" Guss shouted. "We're in trouble!"

They were caught in the beam of the copter's searchlights. The woman looked up; with the light Guss could see silvery tracks of tears running down her face. He wasn't particularly amazed; it surprised him more when she struggled up, supporting the director.

The director also raised his face skyward and after seeing the copter turned to Guss. The agent saw his face was streaked with water as well, shining in the light. But his voice was steady as always. "We have to get these people away from here, Guss."

No time to think. "Run!" Guss cried loudly to them all. He called on all his voice-projection training from high school drama club. "Run this way, get out of the searchlights!" Then he started to shove people in the correct direction. The director and the woman helped; soon everyone was moving, racing toward the quarry entrance.

Guss, at the end of the group with the director and the woman, hadn't run more than ten feet when he heard the sirens. Red and blue flickered in front of them; the crowd was blocked off by an arc of vehicles. Guss stopped in his tracks, his mind finally going dead, unable to cope. Go around them, he wanted to shout, but that would be too hard, he'd have a difficult time dodging the soldiers they were certainly sending and he doubted these newly-returned abductees had a chance in hell...

The car doors opened and men started climbing out and Guss stood there frozen until one of them began to wave. Several of them began to wave. "Hurry, get in here, we don't have much time!" shouted a voice that Guss thought was familiar.

Another voice he knew that he knew called, "Guss! Over here!" And a third voice, "Director! Mulder!"

The searchlights flashed into life around them, blinding Guss for a moment. Through them he saw police officers helping pile the abductees into cruisers. The chief was giving orders, again shouting for them to hurry. And five agents were waving and calling to Guss and the director.

"It's alright," he heard Mulder shout out. "They're on our side! We're safe!" Turning Guss saw him, saw the director talking to the woman, smiling widely. "We're safe!" he repeated. "Guss, go with Pender and the rest, we'll go with the chief." He shoved Guss in the general direction and ran toward one of the cruisers, the woman running with him. He hadn't let go of her hand yet, Guss noted.

Then he ran too, out of the searchlight into the rented car. He squeezed into the front seat, wedged between Pender at the wheel and Gibbons on the other side. In back Burnett, Dubzinski, and Wong vied for leg room.

Pender stepped on the gas the second the door was slammed shut and the car leapt onto the road. Surrounding them were the blue strobes of the police cruisers, making a midnight parade of vehicles. Guss soon saw they weren't heading back toward the center of town.

"Where are we going?" he gasped.

"Next town over's larger, has a hospital. Some of these folks might need medical help and besides, Bardton's probably not safe for them. It's overrun by army-types we've been told, all not sure where to go and waiting for people to come to them." Pender was grinning like a madman, hunched over the wheel and obviously relishing in pushing the car to its top speed along with the cruisers.

They were all grinning, Guss included. They shouldn't be, a sensible voice in his head was saying. They weren't away yet, they could still be pulled over--but being surrounded by police and knowing that everyone had made it inside, that they all were hurtling down a dark highway toward the same goal...it was electrifying. He had to speak, and not knowing what else to say he asked, "How'd you know to come?"

"You said come to the quarry--" Pender began.

"It was that crotchety old police codger--" Gibbons said.

"He may not believe in UFOs that much but when he sees bright white lights where an agent just ran he knew enough to call--" Wong clarified.

"As soon as he got the radio back," Burnett reminded her.

"'Course it didn't hurt that these backwoods cops'll take any chance they can get to actually switch on the sirens and put the pedal to the metal," Dubzinski added in a rush.

"Which is how we all showed up so fast," Pender completed the tale. "You did it again, partner--ran off without me!" He absolutely whined it, and Gibbons next to Guss snickered.

Guss couldn't help it. He started to laugh, tried to defend himself, and ended up choking and laughing even harder. Dubzinski did not help matters any be leaning forward and whacking him on the back. "Hey, give him the Heimlich, partner," he said, "I can't reach."

"He's Pender's partner," Gibbons protested.

"I'm driving!" Pender protested in return, just as Wong and Burnett at the same time cried, "Let him drive!" They were watching the road with some terror.

This was too much; every one of them started to giggle, with the exception of Pender who was driving ferociously after all and contented himself with an even wider, more insane smile.

Gibbons noticed his smile and sat up straight. "Did anyone else see it?" she asked.

General questioning tones filled the auto. "See Mulder?" she clarified. "I swear, when he first ran up, he was with you Guss, did you see it--"

"--He smiled!" Dubzinski completed the exclamation.

"Yes," Burnett agreed; "Exactly!" Wong chimed in.

"Except that he can't smile." Gibbons said this absolutely matter-of-factly. "I've worked with him for four years, the man does not smile."

"He doesn't laugh, he doesn't cry," recited her partner.

Guss said nothing. Pender too was silent. Guss looked at him, opened his mouth but couldn't quite figure out how to word what he wanted to ask.

"Something else, too," Wong said. "Did anyone else see who he smiled at? It wasn't us."

There was some debate about this. They had all seen the woman, red hair shining in the searchlight. Whether or not she was the object of his incredible unnatural cheer was called into question. "She was one of the abductees," Gibbons conceded. "He probably feels close to all of them, after Samantha."

"You're the one who's argued the 'lost love' theory," Dubzinski reminded her. "Are we jealously ignoring the truth now?"

"He didn't look like he was about to kiss her," Gibbons said. "I'm not ignoring anything. I just don't think that they're in love...sort of hard to start a love affair in five minutes, anyhow."

"They weren't in love," Burnett said quietly. "That was obvious from the two second view we got. But they knew each other already."

"They aren't in love. They know each other." Pender corrected, bringing everything into the present tense. Reminding them that she and the director both were still around and in the cruiser ahead of them.

They all peered ahead but couldn't see anything through the tinted glass of the leading vehicle. Then Gibbons changed her focus to back in the car. "Pender? Care to tell us what's going on?"

"I don't see why I'd understand it anymore than you."

Gibbons would have pressed him but Dubzinski spoke up. "Hey, Guss, how about you? You were there before, you see anything?"

Guss shook his head, not trusting his voice to keep his secret. The director's secret. He would have to confront Pender about this later. For now he was content to sit back and watch the highway flow under them.

Pender too was silent in the debate raging around them. Two patches of quiet and the rest of the car was filled with four X- files agents shouting at one another. Not quite loud enough to be heard by the other vehicles, maybe.

They weren't. In the cruiser ahead it was silent, except for the roar of the motor as it rolled them along the highway. In the back three abductees--former abductees--stared out of the windows, watching dark shadows of tree whip past. They'd never thought they'd see them again, sometimes. Only a year had passed for them, in the alien ship, but sometimes it had felt like a century and they had paid for it by losing five years back on Earth.

The chief, driving, was also quiet. Every once in a while he'd glance over to his right. Where the man, that lost agent, their director he had said, sat against the door. Pressed between them, touching because there wasn't much choice, was the woman. Both of them were silent, obviously lost in thought.

The chief wanted to ask them questions. He wanted to ask them all questions, what had happened to them, where had they come from...but he had too much sympathy for them, for that lost frightened look they all had.

Except for the woman, he had noted. And the agent too, though he wasn't an abductee. They had a different expression on their faces. It wasn't an absolutely contented look. Both of them had too much in their eyes for that, too much loss, anger, pain, etched into their faces for complete happiness.

But it was a satisfied look. As if no matter what the world did to them it couldn't quite touch what was deep inside. As if they both were protected, shielded, warm and safe somewhere, somehow.

Well, they were safe. They had almost reached the hospital; it was coming in sight now, and they couldn't be attacked in a town center, the chief was sure. No matter who would attack them--the army, his officers had said? These people would need that inner sanctum. Every one of the chief's instincts insisted that they were going to be in danger for quite a while after this and they would need all the assistance they could find.

Even barely touching as they were they supported each other, the chief thought. And their look...the entourage was slowing down now, so he could examine them slightly longer. No, not contentment, not happiness, not joy, not exactly. But vast satisfaction, as if sitting, hardly even in contact, was more than they had dreamed was possible. As if they had both found something they thought could never be found.

Nothing is lost forever, thought the chief. It almost looks as if they just figured that out.

And then they, followed by the rest of the cruisers and one rented car, pulled into the hospital parking lot. And they all were safe, at least for the moment, and they had been returned, and they were together again.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of the Horizons series »