North of Zero - SlippinMickeys (2024)

Chapter 1: The Boy

Chapter Text

Without the churn of industry raising global temperatures, the earth slid back into the Holocene: the era when humans emerged from the Oldivai Gorge and took over the planet. Ironic, Scully thought.

The wind was howling and merciless, and cold permeated the bones. She had had a fruitless hunt and was tired and irritated, and she probably hadn’t been paying attention like she ought to have been. Replaying the scene in her head hours later, she tried to pinpoint the moment he caught up with her, but she couldn’t figure it out. But it was late, and she was tired. And it was so, so cold.

Scully had not seen the boy until he gasped in surprise -- the ice taking his feet out from under him. She’d been looking for game on the forested ridge the next valley over, and had been on her way back. Normally attuned to the woods around her, she had not known she was being followed. She whirled in surprise and watched him come down awkwardly on his ankle.

He was 13, maybe 14; on the raw edge of manhood, the pale wisp of whiskers just creeping out of wind-chapped skin. She already knew a bone had broken. It had wret the air with the same sound as a hound catching a treat mid-arc; wet and sucking, the carnassial snap of enamel meeting enamel. It would likely have to be set.

The boy whimpered from where he fell at the base of a large hemlock tree as she approached. He eyed her suspiciously as she whipped the cape from her back and settled it around his shoulders, settling onto her knees next to him. She heaved a sigh and gave him a quick visual assessment.

“I’m going to look at your ankle,” she told him. “What’s your name?” she asked, trying to distract him as she ran her hand slowly down his shin.

Mulder would be waiting in the rusted shack at the edge of the wood and he would worry if she came back after nightfall -- that was when the faceless men prowled, looking for survivors.

The boy winced and inhaled sharply as her fingers ran over the cleft where the fibula met the talus and she rocked back on her heels, eyeing the darkening horizon. Did he have people nearby? Could she leave him here without guilt? She didn’t really have the time or inclination to take on a project — she and Mulder had tried that before — banding together with other survivors, and it had always ended poorly. And boys his age, as few as she had seen, made her uncomfortable. Her subconscious would scan their features, looking for a genetic echo of the Scully-Mulder’s. Mulder would have to pull her aside and whisper “it’s not him,” and she didn’t have the space in her heart for the guilt. Even now she had to ignore the blue of his eyes and the way his gritted teeth had the same gnathic slant as the only man she’d ever loved.

“William,” he finally croaked, his adolescent voice like a bullfrog. “My name is William.” For a moment she thought it had only been in her head, but he was looking at her expectantly, a little warily.

“What did you say?”

“I said my name is William.”

Tunnel vision and tinnitus caught her like a noose around the neck — she might have passed out if she hadn’t already been on her knees.

The boy watched her closely. She took four deep breaths as her blood pressure regulated, and then looked around for something to splint his ankle with. She didn’t have time to lose it on a hopeful impossibility. She didn’t want him to know how knocked back she was. He couldn’t be her William. He could be dangerous. He could be a plant.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said, an old safeword. “I think your ankle is broken.”

He pressed his lips together, nodded.

“You shouldn’t put any weight at all on it, but I can probably splint it so you can limp along. Do you have far to go?”

He looked at her but didn’t say anything.

“Are you alone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Where are you headed?”

Again the boy was silent. His eyes blinked at her, the color of the sea. He seemed to be fair skinned, but the days’ light was waning and he had a stocking cap pulled low over his ears; the only skin showing was that on his face and his cheeks were ruddy from the cold.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” she asked, already knowing what his answer would be. She tried to calculate how fast they could travel back to where Mulder waited for her. The pass through the mountain wasn’t long, but it was steep. She looked to the sky -- she hadn’t seen a ship in five days. Maybe they could make it.

“No,” he said, looking away.

She had met enough survivors to know not to ask about his people. She heaved a sigh.

“Would you like to come with me?” she asked, half hoping he’d say no.

He nodded mutely and she nodded brusquely and then set about finding sturdy enough sticks to begin the splint. She had a length of rope in her pack that she could use to secure it, but she had to toe the line between constructing a good, sturdy splint William could walk on, and doing so quickly. She worked around his boot, packing his sock with snow— the ankle was swelling and if it did need setting, it would be harder to do the bigger it got.

They had come on a Tuesday afternoon.

She had arrived at their house in a spray of gravel, twin dents in her fenders, low on gas. She’d tried to get to her mother’s, but the interstates were bumper to bumper, no one knowing what to do or where to go, just knowing they needed to get away -- and that was before the bombs fell. Three explosions in southern Maryland had sent her careening down the backroads of Virginia and straight home. She’d tried getting in touch with her mother, her brothers, but cellular service was dead and it was impossible to find a phone booth, if her brothers even still had landlines.

The door to the unremarkable house banged open, the screen door slamming into the siding. Mulder tore down the stairs and practically lifted her off of her feet.

“Thank God,” he’d said, embracing her, “Thank God.”

Chapter 2: The Pass

Chapter Text

The boy was young and limber, and managed to find a rhythmic pace with the crutch she'd cobbled together with a long branch that ended in a Y on one end.

"Where do you come from?" she asked him again as they crested the rise of the pass.

Sweat had broken out over his brow and she'd spent the last hour with his arm over her shoulders, helping him over the unsteady shale that littered the top of the trail like gritty, slippery playing cards. Scully found the grassy funk of preteen underarm not as offensive as she would have thought.

The boy had been relatively silent, emitting the occasional grunt or sigh as they moved, but he hadn't once complained, for which Scully was grateful and even a touch impressed.

"Out west," he said, and she put a hand under his forearm as the crutch slipped a few inches on the trail.

“Easy,” she said quickly.

The path going downhill was easier going than up had been, and they would soon pass into the tree line. No ships had gone overhead while they were out in the open, and though the moon was new and the darkness had covered them, Scully would feel far better when they were under the ceiling of evergreens.

"How long have you been on your own?" she asked him. He narrowed his eyes at her and blew out a breath. The vapor rose over their heads, slowly dissipating.

"Since before," he finally said, and took another step. "My family died just before the invasion. I was on the move when it started."

Scully let his answer sit in the air.

"And where are you headed?" she finally asked.

"I'll know when I get there," he said.

For a civilization that had taken several millennia to build, its destruction happened in the blink of an eye. The riots and looting were done within a week, the mass deaths within a month.

Mulder and Scully made their way north on foot, avoiding populated areas. They slept in the woods or the occasional empty farmhouse and avoided people whenever possible, though occasionally Mulder would slip into a town and trade information on what areas hadn’t yet been looted or for the scouting pattern of the alien ships.

For a reason they had never really discussed, they continued moving north.

Chapter 3: The Campfire

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"How long have you been following me?" Scully asked him as she helped him past a boulder that had bordered the path.

William glanced at her then kept his eyes downcast.

"About five days," he said, and she paused for a moment, taken aback.

She and Mulder were normally very aware of their surroundings. They'd left their cabin a week ago to do some trading and hunting. There weren't many survivors in this part of the country, though one did have to be careful of the faceless men. And the apex predator populations, no longer in competition with humans, had come roaring back. There was a lot to watch out for.

"The man that's with you," he went on, "is he your husband?"

Scully chuffed a small laugh. "Something like that," she said.

"Did you know each other?" he asked. "Before?"

Scully nodded. "We've been together a long time."

The boy nodded at this, as if digesting.

"He calls you 'Scully,'" he said. "Is that your name?"

"It's one of them," she said.

"I haven't met many couples," William said, getting more talkative. "Amongst the survivors."

It was summer and they made love by the moonlight. Scully was on her back, the wash of stars in the firmament above them an even backdrop to Mulder's face, his eyes closed, the sheen of sweat on his brow a bronzed orange in the light of their campfire. Scully was just coming down off a lazy, blossoming org*sm, and Mulder was on the brink of his, the snap of his hips increasing in speed and pressure, his breath hitching and quick. He lowered his head to her shoulder and moaned her name and she could feel him pulse inside of her, a reassuring warmth.

She trailed slow figures on his back as his breathing slowed, her fingertips lightly connecting the moles that speckled along the plane of his back into the shape of the constellations above them. First Ursa Major, then Minor, then Orion.

The snap of a twig nearby hit like a slap, and Mulder slid out of Scully and leapt to his feet, his hand already wrapped around the rifle that they always kept close by.

Scully rolled to her knees and self consciously grabbed the blanket they'd been laying on, pulling it up to cover herself, puritan impulses still thick in the brain. It had been nine months since the invasion.

Standing in the edge of the firelight was a man in a red flannel shirt, his pants grimy and soiled and beyond recognizable as an old pair of blue jeans. He had a bandage wrapped around his head, still bright with blood and covering one of his eyes. The other eye was nearly swollen shut. He took one more step toward them, more of a limp than a step, and Scully noted that he looked emaciated and lean.

"Is someone there?" his scratchy voice called out, "I smell woodsmoke. I can’t see.”

Mulder connected eyes with Scully and she gave him a nod.

"Yes," Mulder said, donning a pair of pants, and pulling a soiled henley quickly over his head. "There's a fire ten paces in front of you. Are you armed?"

"No," the man said, staggering forward, pulling back only when he got so close to the fire that Scully was afraid his next step would be into it. He fell to his knees.

Scully quickly dressed and scanned the edge of the firelight.

"Are you alone?" she asked, and the man's head snapped at the sound of her voice.

"Yes," he said gruffly.

"Are you injured?" she then asked. Their medical supplies were meager, having lost a majority of them when Jones absconded with them in the night after the disaster in Toronto.

"Do you have food?" the man rasped.

"A little," Scully said. Then repeated "Are you injured?"

He held up his hands as if in supplication, and Scully looked closer. There was blood oozing out of several tears in his shirt, the red blending into the fabric.

Mulder moved to their packs and pulled out a protein bar, and Scully watched as he approached the man cautiously, the man licking his lips like Pavlov's dog at the sound of the crinkling wrapper.

"Here," Mulder said, and pressed the protein bar into one of his raised hands, wrapping the man's fingers around it before stepping away.

Chapter 4: The Shack

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The shack was only a weigh station, a stopover. An outpost at which to rest and restock. Recalibrate, perhaps escape. Their true home, if you could call it that, having settled there the year before, was a cabin on the shore of an inland lake, fifteen miles further north; three damp rooms with a sodden mossy roof hidden under a thick pelt of hemlock.

Mulder had kept the lamp going longer than he’d wanted to. Scully should have been back hours ago, and while it was their custom to keep the lighting low after dusk, so as not to attract attention, the shack where he waited could be hard to see in the dark and he wanted to give her something to walk toward.

She had been late before -- there were any number of things that could hold you up out there -- if she’d felled a deer, for example, it would take her time to dress and butcher the animal, and her pace would be slowed with the excess weight of meat in her pack.

Nevertheless, he worried. The dinner he’d prepared had cooled and was slowly congealing under the flipped plate he’d used to cover it. He moved from the narrow cot in the corner to the dusty, cobwebbed window, to the lone rickety chair pulled up to the piece of plywood they used as a table, then back to the window. An endless cycle of movement as the space wasn’t really big enough to pace.

He finally gave up and threw himself onto the cot, one arm thrown over his eyes, the scratchy fibers of the mackinaw blanket cool below him. He was just starting to doze when he heard Molly nicker from where she was hobbled alongside Pumpkin on the edge of the wood. The horse only ever did so when Scully was near.

He leapt to his feet and threw open the corrugated tin sheet that served as a door. From the shadows of the trees emerged two figures; Scully, and the slightly taller young man she was propping up, who limped along with the help of a long branch that split into a Y under his shoulder.

Mulder trotted out to meet them and they pulled up as he approached. Scully held his eyes for a long moment before she spoke.

“He’s got a broken ankle,” she said to him. The horses whinnied their greetings, stamping their feet, insulted that Scully hadn’t come over to say hello.

The man with Scully was more of a boy, Mulder realized as he studied him -- his face was pinched, his jaw -- just starting to broaden under peaked cheeks -- was clenched in pain. He was lean, coltish, not exactly emaciated, but that ropey lank of a preteen, in want of protein and ready to shoot up like a new growth of bamboo. Mulder put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“I’m going to carry you inside,” he said, and the boy nodded, slumping as Mulder grabbed him by the shoulders and swung him up with a grunt of effort, whatever reserves of energy the boy had had for the journey with Scully through the pass now utterly spent.

Mulder maneuvered him carefully through the slat of the doorway and deposited him gently on the cot, rising as Scully came up behind them. She put a hand on Mulder’s lower back.

“Mulder, this is William,” she said, and, when he snapped his eyes to her, gave him a significant look.

“I’m Mulder,” he said to the boy after a moment, holding out a hand. The boy gave him a surprisingly firm shake and a weak nod.

Scully edged past him and knelt next to the foot of the cot, and Mulder took a halting step backward bumping into the edge of the plywood table in the small space of the shack. Scully began untying the rope that was holding together the field splint around the boy’s boot.

“Mulder, will you get my med kit?” she asked quietly, concentrating on the task at hand.

In the first six months, there had been no resource scarcity. Grocery stores didn't have power, but most were still fully stocked, and there hadn't been enough survivors to really wipe them out. Sure, there wasn't a whole lot of meat or dairy, but canned franks and beans were plentiful, and there was always another corner store somewhere on the edge of a suburb that mostly hadn't been touched. Alcohol and cigarettes were rare, sure, but you could always find a Snickers or some cheddar Bugles or even the odd bag of Chex Mix under an overlooked shelf, and you could walk back into the trees sucking salt from your fingertips, your body happily processing soy isolate and lake blue number 5.

But eventually the cans became harder to find and they'd started to hunt.

A bullet from his FBI issued 9mm could only travel about 2300 yards before falling to the ground and in the woods it was less than a quarter of that. They'd hit a few sporting goods stores and Walmarts and found several decent rifles and enough ammunition to last them to Rapture (if it hadn't already come to pass).

In all his years at the FBI, he'd never hunted anything innocent, so when the deer wandered in front of his sights, he'd hesitated.

The doe stepped in front of him and froze, her glistening nose bobbing in the air, and the animal hadn't done a thing wrong but exist and wander into a space where he existed at the same time, hungry and hard-up for protein. Her glinting eyes were round and dark and her tan hide seemed so flawless and pure that he thought about a bullet piercing it and ruining her faultless lines and he dithered. By the time he squeezed the trigger she was two steps past center mass and his bullet knocked into her backside and she was off like a shot, crashing through the undergrowth like a creature possessed.

It took him three hours to find her. There didn't seem to be much blood -- at least not enough to leave a traceable trail, and the only thing that helped was the occasional footprint, cloven tracks like daggers in the dirt -- one or two of them every two hundred or three hundred feet like a magical Tumnus toying with him in a wood.

When he finally found her, she was laying at the bottom of a gulch, mouth open unnaturally, sides heaving, her rump a wash of hematic copper. She had the decency to look him in the eye when finally he pulled the trigger a second time, and she slumped to the ground slowly, like bubbles running down a freshly shaved leg.

They ate well for weeks, but Mulder preferred rabbits for the rest of that winter like the fox that he was.

Chapter 5: The Overpass

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The ankle hadn’t needed setting, which Scully couldn’t quite figure out — she’d heard the sound it made when the boy fell — but these days, she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and so she was quietly grateful. She splinted and taped it and gave the boy some anti-inflammatories and pain killers and a tin cup of water. He’d said he wasn’t hungry.

Mulder watched them silently from the bedroll he’d set up several feet away, his eyes wary and watchful.

Scully got the boy comfortable and wrapped the wool mackinaw blanket around him. He was still wearing the cape she'd pulled from around her own shoulders, and she shivered in the chill of the shack. From the bed, the boy sighed and reached up to pull off the big wool hat that had been pulled low over his head. The glint of his copper locks shone off the lantern sitting in the corner of the small room and Scully could hear Mulder inhale. When she connected eyes with him, he mouthed one word to her:

"William?"

Scully could only hold his gaze and try to breathe evenly. Since the attempted colonization of the planet, their roles had reversed; these days it was Scully who wanted to believe. They would have to talk with William in the morning, and she was dying to discuss everything with Mulder out of earshot of the boy, but that wasn’t possible in the tiny space of the shelter. She turned off the lantern.

The boy sighed and settled into the cot, and she shrugged out of the bulky fleece she was wearing, kicking off her boots and sliding under the covers of the bedroll into Mulder’s solid, warm side. Even now, everytime she settled beside him, she felt as though they were two puzzle pieces cut with a machine. There was an ease that came over her when they were like this, a comfortable downshift. William’s eyes followed her curiously, and she blinked at the boy once and then eased herself more firmly into Mulder’s side. Mulder looped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. Sleep overtook her like fog settling into a valley.

Xx

You could always feel it first -- that was one thing they'd discovered. A deep vibration from the earth under you preceded the ships by roughly fifteen seconds, just enough time -- if you survived long enough to notice the pattern -- to take cover. The ships, like the faceless men who flew them, seemed only able to sense the heat of a person -- a thermal scan like that of old police helicopters, and only human shaped blobs of heat at that -- the horses seemed a disregarded afterthought.

It was the low vibration that woke her. She elbowed Mulder and shot to her feet, scanning for the heavy lead blanket they traveled with as Mulder came slowly to consciousness beside her.

"Mulder, a ship!" she hissed, and she could see the glow of the scan rippling through the trees outside the shack's window.

Mulder was on his feet seconds later, the lead blanket in his hands, his face set in a blank panic. He looked to the boy on the cot who was sitting up on his elbows gazing at the shack's single small window.

"Scully, it's not big enough to cover the three of us!" Mulder hissed. The blanket was barely a twin, but anything bigger would be impossible to travel with -- impossible to lift.

Her stomach dropping, Scully looked to the cot.

"Maybe if we get on top of him?" she said, adrenaline like quicksilver through her veins.

William turned to them both and said with calm dignity, "Cover yourselves, it can't see me." The scanning light was practically on top of them now, and Mulder threw the blanket over her and coiled himself around her back, pulling them both to the floor.

There was a pulsing, rhythmic hum and Mulder squeezed Scully with his body, trying to make their shape as small as possible under the heavy blanket. Mulder wasn’t sure that they were going to get out of this -- didn't know what it would be like when the faceless men came to take them and the boy that might be their son (was he their son? was he just a boy in the wrong place at the wrong time with an unfortunate name?) Mulder had seen the scanning light approaching the window and had dived on top of Scully without a second thought to the boy after he'd calmly told them not to worry about him. What kind of father did that make him? Even if the boy wasn't his, what kind of man did that make him? He tried not to contemplate it as the light passed over them and the small, rusty shack.

The horses outside whinnied noisily. Mulder could hear Pumpkin, normally the most docile of any animal he'd ever met, stamping his feet and calling to his mate. Molly had a sixth sense about the faceless men's ships -- something they'd used in the past to escape -- and had likely hidden under the treeline, as far away as her halter would allow her.

Scully’s breathing was fast, quick little puffs of warm humidity into the skin of his neck, her hand clutched vice-like around the fabric of the sheepskin fleece he’d worn to bed.

The sound of the passing ship was muffled from where they lay under the lead blanket, and after a long minute, the trembling of the earth under them eased and the night settled slowly back into silence around them. Normally they would have waited several minutes more just to be safe, but Scully threw the blanket back in a wild thrash, the heavy cover slamming into the plywood table and knocking it on its side. Neither of them really noticed.

Scully was on her knees instantly, her hands shooting out toward the lumped mound on the shack’s cot, the boy’s body as still as a grave.

“Mulder, the lantern,” she said urgently, and against his better judgment, Mulder flicked the light on, the little kerosene wick hissing in the silence. In its feeble light, they could see the boy’s prone form laying stock still on the camp bed, his eyes closed and his hands at rest in an X over his heart like Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

“William?” Scully said, her voice containing a multitude of emotions to Mulder’s trained ears; fear, shock, exhilaration.

The boy’s eyelids fluttered at her voice, and then slowly opened, his eyes nothing but white until his pupils and irises rolled slowly back into the frame of his open lids. He blinked several times and then took a slow inhale and came back to consciousness.

“Is it gone?” the boy asked weakly, and then gave a barely perceptible smile when they assured him that the ships had gone by and that they’d remained undetected. He then feebly asked for water.

Scully had to hold the tin cup to the boy’s lips, and after a whispered thank you, he succumbed to his exhaustion.

They met up with a young mother and daughter about two months out.

They’d come across them under a freeway overpass in the driving rain in early October, the maples that lined I-290 outside of Buffalo just turning red. The pair was huddled together midway up the curved slant of pavement on the side of the road that banked up into the roadway above, and Mulder and Scully had been so desperate to get out of the rain that they didn’t see them at first and neglected to safety-check the area as they normally would have. The woman and her daughter startled when they stumbled through the sheet of rain and into the cold, damp space, and the agents pulled up short.

“Whoa,” Mulder said, his breath wafting up in front of him in a vaporized mist, “sorry to startle you.”

The woman and child, who looked to be about eight years old, her wrists and hands sticking out of a too-small blue puffer jacket that was brown with grit at the elbows, looked alarmed, but didn’t rise, silently eying Mulder and Scully with fear.

“We won’t hurt you,” Scully said reassuringly, raising a gentle hand.

A brief stalemate of silence ensued, in which the two couples looked at each other warily, and Mulder took a step forward past Scully, swinging his pack to the ground. He was about to ask if they were hungry when he heard the sharp click of a pistol being co*cked. He froze and felt Scully tense to the side and slightly behind him.

“That’s far enough,” came a gruff voice from the darkness above them, a form coalescing into the hunched shape of a man from atop the macadam where the ramp of concrete met the bottom of the roadway above them. “They’re mine.”

Mulder’s gaze darted to the mother, who stared back, giving him a slight shake of the head. Then she mouthed very clearly “help us.”

The gunman slipped a few inches on the steep incline, the arm holding his weapon wavering a bit as he tried to catch his balance. Mulder briefly considered unslinging the rifle from his other shoulder and drawing on the man, but was pulled up short by the crack of the pistol firing, a divot of asphalt splintering the ground less than a foot from where he and Scully stood.

“Don’t,” the man said, sniffing and rubbing the back of a grimy hand over his nose. “Slide the rifle here,” he said, coming to the bottom of the ramp where the concrete met the roadway.

The man was thin, rangy, with greasy, stringy hair and a full dark beard, the whites of his eyes a shock at the top of his shadowy face.

What the man didn’t know was that Mulder had a glock tucked into a holster in the back of his pants. As Mulder raised his free arm, he felt Scully reach out and unsnap the top of it, her movement as subtle as a breath.

She had also seen the young mother mouth help — and he knew what she had planned.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Mulder said, taking a slight step further in front of her.

“The rifle,” the man said, shoving the gun forward in space menacingly. “Now.”

“Okay,” Mulder said, slowly pulling the rifle from his shoulder. “Okay.”

It only took a second.

Mulder bent over and placed the rifle on the ground and then shoved it toward the man — it clacked loudly across the pavement. At the same moment that he bent over, Scully drew the handgun from Mulder’s holster and raised it, quick as a whip, firing a shot through the eye of the gunman, the echoing boom punctuated by the dying clatter of the rifle as it settled at the man’s feet, who crumpled a split second later, hitting the pavement with a wet, round thud.

The mother and daughter’s names were Rebecca and Jordan, and they would travel with Mulder and Scully for the next eight weeks, until they were caught in the beam of the faceless men’s ship on a hillside in southern Ontario, never to be seen again.

Chapter 6: The Farm

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William was still asleep the next morning when she felt Mulder uncurl from around her, and they rose silently from the bedroll and made their way outside, the horses snickering their greetings in the hazy pre-dawn light.

“What happened last night?” Mulder asked her, adjusting the blanket over the back of Pumpkin and getting his pants gently nipped for the trouble. “How’d you find him?”

Scully gave each horse a handful of frozen apples, remembering the boy’s grunt and the sickening sound of his ankle wrenching. She ran her fingers through the stiff hair of Molly’s mane as the mare nosed at her pockets for more fruit.

“He found me,” Scully said. Mulder paused what he was doing and gave her a significant look. “He had been following us. He slipped and fell on ice at the top of the ridge. Until that moment, I didn’t even know he was there.”

“How long had he been following us?” Mulder asked.

“Since Trout Creek.”

“Jesus.”

“Do you think it’s-“

This was the part where Mulder would tell her it wasn’t their son. Above her the sunrise slowly lowered itself onto the tops of the trees, turning them a reddish orange.

“I think it’s got to be.”

“But-” she started, not really sure what she was going to say.

Right then the corrugated metal that served as the shack’s door creaked and the boy stepped out, leaning heavily on the makeshift crutch.

“Good morning,” Mulder said, his voice sounding loud in the quiet of the dawn.

“‘Morning,” said William.

“You shouldn’t be on that ankle,” Scully said, and the boy looked sheepish.

“I have to-” he said, and gestured vaguely toward the treeline.

“Right,” Scully said, and she and Mulder ducked into the shack to give him some privacy. He hobbled back into the small space a minute later.

“Take the cot,” Mulder said to him, rummaging around in his pack. He pulled out a large ziplock bag white with age and use, and pulled out a few pieces of jerky, handing them over to William, who accepted them gratefully, tearing into the largest piece with gusto.

“Can I take a look at your ankle?” Scully asked him, and he nodded, his mouth full.

She carefully undid the splint and eased the wool sock down over the joint. The swelling had gone down to her immense surprise, and while there was a purplish bruise and the area was still tender when she palpated it, it was in remarkable shape for the damage that had been done to it only the evening before.

“Well,” she said, rising, “you’ll still need to stay off of it, but it’s… well, it’s not nearly as bad as it should be.”

The boy gave a self-conscious shrug. “I’ve always been a fast healer,” he mumbled.

Mulder pulled up the bedroll from the floor and fastened it to his pack, giving William a long, thoughtful look.

“So, kiddo… How did you find us?” he finally asked.

Mulder must have assumed, as she did, that the boy had come looking for them.

The boy tore off another hunk of jerky and shrugged.

“I didn’t mean to. I just… I knew I had to come north.”

“How do you mean?” Scully asked, trying to understand.

“I didn’t mean to find you. It’s just, this thing in my head stopped when I did.”

Mulder looked confused. “‘Thing in your head?’” he asked.

William rubbed at his temple in frustration.

“I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a… it’s like a homing beacon in my head. It's like this overwhelming feeling. Like an urge or something. I’ve had it since... I couldn’t take it anymore, so I followed it. And… I don’t know. I saw you two down in Trout Creek and the second I did, it like, stopped. It felt like something inside of me unclenched.”

Scully traded a look with Mulder. She felt her equilibrium slant, her viscera turning to slurry.

“I’m sorry,” the boy went on, watching them closely, clearly sensing Scully’s unease, “I didn’t know what else to do, so I followed you.”

“It’s okay, son,” Mulder said gently, and on the word ‘son,’ Scully felt like she’d taken a blow to the solar plexus.

She excused herself, rushed out the opening of the shack, and, leaning against the rough bark of a scotch pine, vomited what little she had in her stomach.

XxXxXxXxXxX

They could hear Scully retching from inside, and the boy looked to Mulder, concerned.

Mulder gave Scully a moment and then nodded at the kid, ducking out of the shack to find her, leaning against a pine about ten yards from the horses.

“Scully?” he said, his voice all concern.

She spit and then stood, her face a sheen of sweat despite the temperature. He reached out to rub her back and she tensed under his hand.

“I’m fine,” she said, “I just need a minute. You should,” she paused to spit again, “you should go talk to him.”

Mulder looked at her skeptically but ducked back into the shack and tried to give William a reassuring smile.

“Is she okay?” the boy asked him.

“She’ll be fine,” Mulder said, trying to sound as convincing as he could. Would Scully be okay? He’d felt his system go into shock the second the ship had flown over them last night and not picked up or sensed William. He gave the boy a long look. “Do you know who we are, William?”

“No,” the boy said, seeming to sag with relief at being asked. “Who are you?” he went on, “and why does everything I am compel me to find you?”

Mulder scraped a hand along the growth on his jaw. This was an unexpected turn. He had figured the boy had come specifically looking for his birth parents, but nothing that had happened in the last twelve hours made any kind of sense. He gave a mirthless chuckle. How do you tell a kid you’re his dad?

“What’s your birthday?” Mulder asked.

“May 20th.”

”2001?”

”…yeah.”

Mulder closed his eyes, couldn’t help a small smile.

“In that case,” Mulder said, “I’m fairly certain, we’re – Scully and I – I think we’re your parents.”

The boy’s mouth dropped open. “But… my parents are dead.”

Mulder hadn’t quite been expecting that. “Were you… Did anyone ever tell you…”

“That I was adopted?” William asked. “Yes, but… My birth parents are dead, too. I saw the paperwork.”

Scully came back into the shack then, looking a little more steady. She took a deep breath.

“That was for your protection,” she said, looking at William.

“My protection?” the boy asked.

“The ship last night,” Scully said gesturing at the roof, “your ankle… it’s healing, isn’t it? Rapidly… On its own?”

William hesitated, but then nodded.

“You have gifts, William. Unexplainable gifts. You’ve had them your whole life. And we tried, we tried so hard to keep you safe when you were a baby, but we couldn’t.” They all sat in silence for a moment, letting everything settle. “The adoption paperwork, everything was set up so that they couldn’t find you. So that they couldn’t find us.”

William sat back on the cot, clearly processing what Scully had just told them.

“This homing beacon,” Mulder said, “this feeling in your head. Have you always had it?”

The boy shook his head. “No,” he said, “not until…”

“Not until…?” Scully said, peering at him.

“...before the invasion. Just before. I could feel them coming. And I could feel that I needed to… find you, I guess.”

“Do you know why?” Mulder asked.

“No,” William said, and then looked at him hopefully, “Do you?”

Mulder looked to Scully and then shook his head sadly.

“Are you with the resistance?” the boy asked.

“The resistance?” Scully asked, confused.

William thunked his head back against the boards of the shack behind him.

“I feel like there’s… God, this is so weird,” the boy remarked, shaking his head.

“Listen,” Mulder said, making his way over to the cot and sitting on the edge of it, “you’ve been following your instincts, and they’ve gotten you this far. Let’s just… keep doing that. Any idea what we should be doing next?”

William shook his head slowly.

“Then let’s say you let us take the lead for a while.”

The profound relief that showed on the boy’s face shook Mulder to his core. He reached out and laid a tentative hand on William’s shoulder.

“Can I ask you one last thing?” the boy said, swallowing audibly.

“Anything,” Mulder replied.

“Did you want me? You say you tried to keep me safe but couldn’t. Does that mean you wanted me when I was a baby?”

Mulder could see the tears forming in Scully’s eyes. “More than anything,” she said, her voice tremulous.

Mulder squeezed the boy’s arm. “You were our miracle,” he said. “It looks like you still are.”

They found the horses in an enclosure on a windswept farm in the lee of the mountains, thin to the point of emaciation. The grass within the paddock where they were kept had been eaten to the dirt, as had the grass within reaching distance around the perimeter of the enclosure. The wood of the fence had been chewed on every surface. The animals were starving.

Inside the farm house they found the remains of two people, dead for weeks judging by the state of decay, and by their own hand if the firearms next to the bodies were any indication.

Mulder pushed the creaking barn door open and both horses followed him in, eagerly sniffing the air. In the loft above them were bales upon bales of hay, the sweet smelling grass as pungent and strong as a punch to the nose. Mulder couldn’t imagine being so close to a food source you could smell yet not being able to get to it. He climbed to the loft and cut the baling string with a pocket knife and dropped several bales of it to the floor below where the two horses fell upon it with unbridled enthusiasm. He walked through the rest of the barn, taking stock.

When he finished, he met Scully outside, where she was walking through what was left of a small garden — rabbits and deer hadn’t left much.

“Hey,” she said, surveying the sky, a new tic.

“Hey,” he said, “there’s quite a bit of hay in the loft for the horses. You find anything?”

“Some root vegetables. A little more ammo. Medical supplies and a lot of canned food in the basem*nt. Not sure how much we can carry.”

“There’s tack hanging in the barn,” Mulder said, “we could carry a lot more on horseback. It would make trading far easier.”

He watched her do the arithmetic.

“Our cabin does have a fenced in area where they could graze,” she said thoughtfully, “and we could convert the garage to a barn…”

“Marlo could keep us in hay for the winter… and we’d be able to range a lot further out.”

Scully considered this.

“See if you can find any equine or veterinary texts in the house,” she finally said. “I want to be able to care for them properly.”

Mulder nodded and trotted up the stairs to the house. Inside he found medical records on the two horses; Molly, a middle aged mare, and Pumpkin, a four year old colt.

Chapter 7: The Cabin

Chapter Text

"Have you ever ridden a horse?" Mulder asked the boy as he limped on the crutch to where Molly and Pumpkin were hobbled. Scully was in the shack packing up the last of their few odds and ends. Both horses were sniffing the air, bobbing their noses in the direction of the new arrival.

"A little," William said, his eyes intent on the two big animals. He reached out and they each took turns nosing his hand, running their big soft lips over his palm and up his wrist, looking for treats. Molly nickered at the boy gently and nosed his chest. He cracked the first smile Mulder had seen from him. He couldn’t believe how much the kid looked like Scully. "A family friend had a farm that I used to go to when I was little. They had a Red Roan Appaloosa named Robin. She used to let me hop on her back from the fence and ride her around the paddock."

"It's like riding a bike," Mulder said, smiling at the boy.

"If you say so," William said back.

"I know Scully wants you to keep that ankle elevated, but we need to leave here. It'll be a lot easier going if you're mounted."

"It'll be all right," the boy said, and Mulder felt reassured. William was an old soul.

"You can ride Pumpkin, here," Mulder said, thumping the animal's flank. "He's naughty, but he's sweet, and he's pretty steady."

"Where are we headed?" the boy asked.

"Home," Mulder said, referring to the rumpled cabin that he and Scully had shared for a little over a year. The word still felt odd on the tongue.

"So north, then?" the boy asked. Mulder nodded, wondering how the kid knew. "That's good," the boy said, running a hand over Pumpkin's ear and then down his long nose. "North is good."

“Up you get,” Mulder said, gingerly helping the boy into the saddle and carefully helping his injured leg into the stirrup. “Feel okay?”

William nodded. Scully ducked out the corrugated door and approached them, handing the last supply bag to Mulder.

“Scully will ride with you,” Mulder went on, securing the bag to Molly’s flank. “Pumpkin knows the way. Let us know if you need to stop.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

It had been slow going — they didn't want to push the horses now that they were carrying extra weight — so it was an hours-long, butt-aching plod. They had talked for the first hour or so, trying to piece together William’s life since he’d been on the move. Scully marveled at how a boy his age had managed to survive and her heart broke at all he’d seen and endured. His adoptive parents and family, gone. The world as he’d known it, gone. Scrounging, back-breaking survival, all in the service of some unknown calling. She would have wept if she’d had tears left to give.

She heard Mulder make a low horsey sound to Molly from behind them, and the solid sound of him patting the mare’s neck. Molly tended to be impatient and Pumpkin’s gait was slow. She registered her displeasure by occasionally reaching out and snagging a mouthful of vegetation bordering the trail, causing Mulder to tip forward until the horse righted her neck to chew. Scully had nothing to do with the time but look at her son.

William rode high atop Pumpkin, his head even with Scully’s, but his long rangy legs hanging down lower than hers. She couldn’t help but take in everything little detail; the cedar-shavings smell of his coat, the tufts of wiry red hair sticking out of his stocking cap. He had excellent posture, something she found tall people sometimes lacked. He would be as tall if not taller than Mulder, which pleased her. The boy needed a haircut.

Something akin to a pall had settled over her that morning, a long-forgotten guilt that had come roaring back to settle heavily in her bones; an echo of the gut-wrenching despair she had felt handing over the only child she would ever bore to a stranger’s indifferent arms.

She unconsciously tightened her grip around the boy’s waist and he turned his head to look at her over his shoulder, giving her a sheepish but kind grin.

She took in his profile; the perfect seashell curve of his ear, the blue irises of his eyes, his strong nose, the faultless mechanical grip of his slender fingers. She had wrought that. She had crafted it within her. Everything the boy was had been because of the fusion of DNA from her, from Mulder; a double helix of shared traits all melded together in the shelter of her womb. How do you make something that perfect and walk away from it, she wondered, how do you both survive?

She wanted to believe in forgiveness. She wanted to believe in fate. But those were both sentiments from a world that no longer existed, and the one they were living in now cared not for either, as far as she could tell.

They came over the rise of the hill that banked steeply into the wooded shoreline of Green Lake on which their small cabin perched at the southern end. Molly and Pumpkin, knowing they were close to home, broke into a canter as they hit the cedar tree line that skirted the western shore and they let the horses have their head, knowing rest was in the cards for all of them.

The cabin was a welcome sight as they made their way around the small point and it came into view. The hemlocks that grew up tall around it were wreathed in snow and it looked picturesque and cozy. Green Lake itself had frozen, and the ice was dark in places, snow blown in swirling camouflage-like patches. Mulder would be able to ice fish soon, filling out their stores and smoking the rest for trading. They’d built a smokehouse on the back edge of the property, and its racks were ready and waiting for a new catch.

Mulder dismounted first and came around to help William down, handing him his crutch.

“Do you need any help with the horses?” the boy asked hopefully, but Scully cut off Mulder before he could take him up on the offer.

“The first thing you’re going to do,” she said, swinging herself down off Pumpkin’s back, “is elevate and ice that ankle.”

“It’s feeling a lot better,” William offered optimistically.

“Elevate and ice,” Scully reiterated.

“It’s no use fighting her,” Mulder mumbled at his son while he pulled off Pumpkin’s saddlebags and the blanket beneath them.“Best to learn that now.”

“I’m standing right here, Mulder,” she said, hands on her hips.

“And looking very pretty while doing it,” he smiled, leaning down to plant a light kiss on her forehead. “Why don’t you get William settled, I’ll rub down the horses.”

She nodded and turned toward the cabin, William following her obediently.

There was snow built up against the door that she had to clear away before putting a shoulder to the sticky wood — the door gave up the ghost on the second shove and they stumbled inside, treading wet snow on the worn floorboards.

“Do you want me to take my boots off?” he asked politely, and she smiled and almost laughed, but instead said:

“Why don’t you keep them on until I get the stove going.”

There was a potbellied wood-burning stove that sat in a corner of the kitchen, which heated the entirety of the small dwelling admirably. The kitchen itself was painted a warm yellow and had soft, frilly curtains hanging over the windows above a wide porcelain farmhouse sink. There was a small living area off the kitchen with large bay windows facing the lake, which had a long, low-lying davenport in the middle which smelled a bit of mildew but was very comfortable. On either end of the couch were two Amish made wingback chairs with yellowing doilies over the back and arms. There were two small bedrooms on the other end of the cottage with a recently refurbished bathroom in between. Mulder and Scully had taken over the room with the slightly larger bed, and had been using the smaller bedroom for storage.

“There’s a bedroom back here you can use,” she went on, pointing towards it, “we just have a few things in there we’ll need to pull out and store in the barn. Do you want me to clean off the bed or would you like me to get you set up on the couch?”

“Um, the couch, I guess,” William said, pulling the knit cap off his head and letting the small knapsack he’d been traveling with slide off his shoulder.

“Come on,” she smiled at him, and piled up a few pillows on either end of the sofa for his head and ankle.

He sat down gingerly, dropping the knapsack on the floor and hesitated, giving Scully a look.

“Listen,” she said, reaching out and giving his hair a tousle — something she’d been longing to do. “Don’t worry about putting your boots on the pillows, okay? If they get wet it’s not the end of the world — we’ve already been through that.”

He grinned at her and leaned back with a small groan and she grabbed an extra blanket from a basket in the corner and draped it over him, watching him fondly for a moment before turning her attention to the pot bellied stove.

Mulder came tromping in covered in a dusting of snow not long after she’d gotten a roaring fire going, scattering droplets of water everywhere and grousing about the weather. Scully put a kettle of water on the stove to boil and sent him back out to bring in firewood. He was appeased when he came back in ten minutes later with a full firewood tote and Scully took it off his hands, handing him a steaming cup of the cedar and mint tisane she’d perfected the winter before.

She rounded the corner of the davenport and handed a mug to William as well, who looked at it skeptically but gave it a polite sip. The mug she’d handed him was old and heavy, the glazing on the ceramic cracked and stained brown with decades worth of coffee or tea. On the side it said Antique Flywheelers Club.

“It’s good,” he said, coughing in counterpoint and having the decency to blush.

“It’s not,” she said, smiling at him, “but it’s good for reducing inflammation. Try to finish it if you can.”

“Your mother was a doctor,” Mulder said, lifting a chin at Scully.

“Is a doctor,” Scully corrected, “and I could still make your death look like an accident.”

“And what were you?” William asked Mulder, curious.

“I was a pain in the ass,” his father answered.

“Are a pain in the ass,” Scully corrected again, making William smile a wide toothy grin for the second time that day.

It was clear something had gone very wrong with the invasion. Mulder had never been able to make much sense of the different factions at play, but the virus, long thought to be the aliens' endgame, had fizzled out or never come to pass, or perhaps was not even yet deployed and whatever plan remained all came down long after December 2012 had come and gone.

Ships came, hovering menacingly over the inhabitants of Earth, and then other ships came down— the faceless men, as best Mulder could tell— dropping bombs on the original ships. Russia, North Korea and India had deployed nukes and after that the power grid humanity relied upon to disseminate information on the state of what remained had withered and died. What information could be gathered was passed on with rumor and innuendo, garbled and misconstrued as from a game of Operator. Mulder had heard some seriously weird sh*t — from wildly conflated talk of government-sanctioned underground utopias, to fire and brimstone preachers who collected the traumatized and dispossessed for passage directly to heaven.

In any event, most of humanity was gone and those that remained considered themselves either very lucky or very unlucky, and all of them, to a one, were living in the wind.

Chapter 8: The Valley

Chapter Text

Scully slipped out from under Mulder’s heavy arm, the sound of his breathing deep and even. The grey of early morning was glowing up from the snow outside, only just lighting the dim world — promising another overcast, gloomy day.

The cabin had gone cold, and she threw a crocheted blanket over her shoulders and shuffled out of their bedroom and across the cold floor to add more wood to the glowing embers of the stove, cursing herself for not slipping on shoes or at the very least, socks. She normally slept in a twice-darned, too-big wool pair she’d found in a drawer in the old cabin, but she and Mulder had made warm, quiet love the night before, and the most she’d had the energy for after was slipping on a pair of long johns and Mulder’s dusty blue Henley that smelled of musk and horse.

She was making her way back to bed after feeding the stove when she saw it out the big bay window — a hunched, dark shape upon the snow near the icy shore. A dump of adrenaline hit her bloodstream before she recognized what she was seeing. Moving closer to the window, she squinted and made out the outline of her son.

William was outside, kneeling at the shore of the frozen lake, one ungloved hand hovering over the ground as if gauging the tenor of the earth. She watched him for a long minute until his posture changed, like he knew he was being watched, and he rose to standing, glancing over his shoulder to where she stood at the cabin’s window.

She remained where she was, knowing he probably couldn’t see her in the dark, and the boy turned on his heel and made his way back toward the cottage, limping only slightly through the thick pelt of snow.

He came through the door silently and shrugged off his coat, then mumbled a quiet “good morning” to her, clearly unsurprised to see her dusky shape by the dim light through the window.

“Good morning,” she replied keeping her voice low, making her way over to close the bedroom door on a still-sleeping Mulder. “Is it pretty cold out there?”

“Not bad,” he said, and lowered himself into one of the kitchen chairs.

“How’s the ankle?”

“Better,” he said sheepishly, and she smiled at him and moved to refill the kettle that she’d left on the stovetop.

“Can I make you something to eat?” she asked.

“That would be nice,” he said. He was quiet and thoughtful and she watched him as she slipped into a pair of moccasins that were sitting by the door.

“Is oatmeal okay? We don’t have sugar but we may have some frozen goat's milk…”

“Plain is fine, thanks,” he said, “I haven’t had oatmeal in forever.”

Scully went to the pantry where they kept their dry staples in tightly sealed plastic tubs.

“We’re able to trade for some special things,” she explained, pulling the oatmeal down, “we’re part of a small cooperative network of traders. We supply them with fish and some meats and get a little bit of everything else from the other members. One of them is particularly good at finding dry goods and things in formerly populated areas.”

He looked mildly intrigued but didn’t say much other than to make a few polite sounds to let her know he was listening.

“What have you been eating, William?” she asked him, genuinely wanting to know. “What kinds of things did you find on the road?”

He sat up a bit in the chair and gave her a small chagrined smile. “Junk food, mostly,” he said, gesturing to his small knapsack, “stuff that wouldn’t go bad that I could carry around.”

She walked up to him. “Show me your teeth,” she said, putting a finger under his chin. He flashed her a wide smile. “You’re lucky you don’t have scurvy,” she went on after a quick look in his mouth. She gently patted his cheek. “I’m adding some dried fruit to your oatmeal.”

“What’s this about oatmeal?” came Mulder’s voice from the bedroom.

He stood in the bedroom doorway, yawning and stretching, a strip of skin on his stomach showing from where his shirt pulled up.

“This child is undernourished and I’m planning to fix it,” Scully said, turning to Mulder as he shuffled into the kitchen.

“Careful,” Mulder said, shooting a look to William before bending down to press a kiss to Scully’s cheek. “You’re about to become one of her Projects.”

“You haven’t had so much as a sniffle in the last year and a half, Mulder,” she said, swatting at him as he scooted to get out of the way, “I don’t hear you complaining.”

“Fit as a fiddle and regular as a sunrise,” Mulder said cheerfully, absently scratching his chest. “Speaking of… I might take a quick shower if no one needs the bathroom?”

Scully made a ‘help yourself’ gesture and William perked up.

“You have hot water?” he asked in an astonished voice.

Scully nodded. “Not a lot. Mulder jury-rigged a solar-powered pump for the well water and I figured out a way to run and divert some of it past the stove and into the shower.” She gestured to a pipe that ran into the wall behind the stove and hugged the corners of the room, disappearing into a hole drilled into the knotty pine above the bathroom. “You only get a few minutes worth and it can sometimes be scorching, but it works.”

“She’s a genius.” Mulder said in all seriousness, “we won’t be able to rebuild society without her.”

William looked at her, impressed.

“You want the first shower?” Mulder asked him, hooking a thumb toward the bathroom.

Scully smiled at him encouragingly. “Breakfast should be ready when you get out.”

“Yeah, okay,” the boy said, standing and looking at Mulder. “Can you show me how it works?”

“‘Course,” he said. “Let me grab you a towel.”

When Mulder came back into the kitchen, he looked at Scully, who was pouring boiling water over oats in three thick bowls, the edges chipped and worn.

“How’d he sleep?” he asked, toeing off the shoes he’d slipped on when he got out of bed. The stove was starting to pump out a decent amount of heat. He had long, elegant feet. Scully wondered if William’s looked anything like Mulder’s.

“Not sure,” she answered, “he was awake when I got up. He was, uh, out in front of the lake.”

“Yeah?” Mulder looked as confused as she had been. “Any idea why?”

Scully shook her head. “He’s quiet this morning. Thoughtful.” She felt herself deflate a bit, oddly compelled to the edge of tears. “I don’t know him well enough to guess what’s going on.”

Mulder pulled her into a hug. “Hey now,” he said, “none of that.”

She wrapped an arm around his middle and squeezed him close, burying her nose into his warm chest.

“What are we going to do with him, Mulder?” she asked, her voice muffled by his shirt. “How did he find us? And why?”

Mulder rubbed a comforting hand up and down her back.

“We’ll guide him. We’ll take care of him. Like every other parent out there, we’ll do the best we can for him.” He lowered his cheek to the top of her head and sighed into her hair. “I don’t know the hows or the whys. But we’ll figure it out. We always do.”

They stood embracing each other until they heard the water in the bathroom shut off.

William emerged a few minutes later, dressed, with wet hair and smelling sweetly of the bulk Kirkland shampoo they’d traded for that summer. Scully was just stirring some dried apples and cherries into his bowl and then handed it over with a smile.

He tucked into the food happily, and Mulder and Scully joined him at the small table, all of them eating quickly but quietly. Eventually William scraped his bowl one last time and leaned back in his chair, regarding them pensively.

“It feels different here,” he finally said, a bit cryptically. “How did you find this place?”

“It feels different, how?” Mulder asked, collecting the boy’s bowl and stacking it under his own. He was genuinely curious.

William pulled his lips into his mouth and sat for a pensive moment.

“There’s something in the ground here,” he said. “I could feel it when we crossed over into the valley with the horses yesterday. It’s all over. But especially here, around the lake.”

“What does it feel like?” Scully asked. Something told her to keep her tone steady, one of polite interest.

William shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked at each of them nervously. “Like a shield, I guess?” he said.

“This feeling,” Mulder said, looking at his son in open curiosity, “it’s one of your gifts.”

William nodded at him. “Did you know to come here?” the boy asked. “Do you feel it too?” There was a hopeful edge to his voice that broke Scully’s heart.

“Well,” Mulder said, leaning back casually. “I don’t know that we chose this place on purpose. We sort of stumbled across it, and,” at this he looked to Scully and reached across to grab her hand, “it felt like the place to be.”

“But I guess you could call that a feeling, couldn’t you?” Scully said, tilting her head kindly at William.

“Yeah,” Mulder said, squeezing her hand. “You could.” William looked at them gratefully.

“Do you…” he said after a long moment, looking between them as if building up courage, “Do either of you have gifts too? Powers, like me?”

Mulder and Scully traded a look.

“I don’t think-” Mulder started and then sighed. “Not like you, no.”

William, looking crestfallen, leaned back in the creaking wooden chair, his hair beginning to curl around his face as it dried.

Scully stumbled away from the ship, eyes streaming. She’d gone through tear gas training at Quantico, and the raw burn through her nose and throat felt like it had then, but her eyes – god, her eyes – she could barely see. Nevertheless, she ran, half-blind. Away from the ship that had crashed onto Bloor street, looking like a ghastly addition to the Royal Ontario Museum. Smith had jokingly called it the ‘Post Modern Wing.’

Her hip slammed into the fender of a car that had been abandoned in the middle of the street, and she bounced off of it, gasping, but kept running, the blur of her vision blotchy masses of grey, black and red.

“Scullaaaay!” she heard Mulder shout from behind her, and she could hear the slap of his feet running on the pavement, but she didn’t, wouldn’t stop, blindly running. Away, just away.

Then her feet hit something in front of her and she flew forward, the heels of her hands scraping along the rough roadway as she tried to catch herself.

“Scully!” Mulder shouted again, closer this time, and she finally stayed down where she had fallen, her hands and knees burning from road rash, her eyes and throat on fire.

She could hear him running up to where she lay, skidding to a halt just beside her.

“Scully,” he breathed, his voice a harsh gasp, “Jesus.”

His hand was on her shoulder, then her arm, then he pulled away and she could hear the metallic tinker of him unscrewing his canteen and a few seconds later she gasped as a cold douse of water splashed across her face and eyes.

“Hold still,” he mumbled when she jerked her head away, “Scully, stop.” He grabbed her roughly by the chin and poured more water into her eyes and face, and he finally let go when she coughed and sputtered for breath.

She felt the fight leaving her all at once and she sagged against him, spitting once onto the pavement near his knee, then again.

“Where’s MacDougal?” she coughed, her voice a harsh rasp, “Where’s Smith?”

“Dead,” Mulder said poisonously, then she felt him gently grab her wrist. “Jesus, look at your hands.”

“I’m fine,” she said, though she could feel him tenderly picking rocky bits of pavement out of the shredded skin of her palm.

“You’re not fine,” he said, “none of this is f*cking fine.”

Her vision was starting to clear and she put a hand to Mulder’s shoulder and he helped her to stand up. Back toward the area of the ship, she could start to hear movement – quiet shuffling followed by a loud clang.

“Can you see?” Mulder said, his voice low in her ear. She nodded. “Come on,” he went on, grabbing her by the elbow, “we gotta go.”

Chapter 9: The Lake

Chapter Text

"Have you been ice fishing before?" Mulder asked the boy, who shook his head. "I'm self taught, myself" Mulder mumbled, "But it seems to work okay."

The clouds hung low, the temperature well below freezing. The day was grey and nutant, like it was hovering between worlds. Scully had offered to stay at the cabin, with plans of fiddling with the solar panels — she wanted to use them to run a generator in addition to the well, and it would take some serious technological finagling — she would need peace and quiet to figure it out.

“Come on,” Mulder said, handing the boy the long, pendulous auger, “time to make the donuts.” He picked up the two five-gallon buckets that held the tip-ups and net. He had requisitioned a large slotted spoon from the kitchen of the cabin to use to scoop ice crystals from the holes, and the spoon rattled around the bottom of one of the buckets as they made their way out onto the lake.

The ice itself was solid and milky white, run through with massive crack fissures that froze clear. The ice looked to be about ten inches thick -- thick enough to not worry if they got any days above 40 degrees, which could happen as spring blew in, something Mulder had to admit he was looking forward to.

Mulder had tried fishing in various locations around the lake and had found two spots that seemed to hold the highest concentration of fish. He led the way to the closest one. The boy had only the slightest limp left from his broken ankle, though Scully had been adamant that they both be careful while on the lake -- any fall or slip, she warned, and the barely healed break could be reinjured worse. She insisted they both wrap fat rubber bands around the ball of their boots -- an old crime scene trick that they found helped keep shoes from slipping on the frozen lake.

"Here's good," Mulder said, lining himself up with the landmarks he used to orient himself to the fishing hole. He set down the buckets and William stood holding the auger awkwardly.

"You want to make the hole?" Mulder asked.

"Sure," the boy said, showing a hint of enthusiasm. "Where should I do it?"

"Anywhere you like," Mulder said, gesturing widely to the ice in front of them. The boy nodded.

"So what do I do?" William asked.

Mulder reached out and removed the cover from the blade of the manual auger and tapped it into the top of the ice.

"One hand here," he said, grabbing onto the handle of the spinning mechanism, "and one here." He grabbed the top of the instrument. "A little downward pressure here," he went on, "and then you just spin it like so." He gave the handle one spin around which chipped up an impressive amount of ice, and stopped, tilting it toward the boy who gave the mechanism one long look before he tried it himself, smiling at the loud scrape as it tunneled efficiently down into the ice.

"You're a natural," Mulder said kindly.

After about a minute, the auger broke through and water gushed up through the hole, surprising William, who took a quick step back.

"Cool," he said, looking down at the perfectly circular hole they'd made. "What's next?"

"I don't suppose talking to fish is one of your gifts?" Mulder asked him. William shook his head. "Then we'd better set the tip-ups."

Mulder scooped the ice out of the top of the hole with the slotted spoon and pulled one of the tip-ups out of the bucket, showing William how the mechanism worked and how to set it up over the hole. He pulled off his gloves and baited the hook with earthworms he kept in a dirt bucket in the cabin's cellar, and dropped it down into the hole.

"There," Mulder said, hoping he'd set the depth correctly, "if a fish hits the bait, the flag goes up and we run over and reel up our dinner."

William smiled, a sight that pulled at something behind Mulder's sternum.

"Cool," the boy said again.

"Very," Mulder said, pulling his hat down further over his ears. "Want to dig a couple more holes and set up the other two tip-ups?"

William nodded enthusiastically and they walked about twenty feet east. Mulder let William dig the hole and try his hand at setting the tip-up (though William had Mulder bait the hook), showing him what he'd done wrong and letting the boy try again. By the time they got the third hole dug out, William was able to set it up himself.

"Now what do we do?"

"Now we wait," Mulder said, and pulled the second bucket he'd had nesting inside the first out and flipping it over. "Have a seat." Mulder slid the slotted spoon into his pocket and flipped over the other bucket to sit on, rubbing his hands together before sliding his gloves back on.

The day was windy but not wretched, for which Mulder was thankful. He'd spent many a miserably cold afternoon on the lake before Scully suggested they try to find an ice shanty, which they had so far not been able to find.

“So,” Mulder said, looking at the boy curiously, “tell me about your powers.”

William looked down at his feet, a little bashful. “They’re hard to describe,” he said.

“The trick with the ship was pretty cool,” Mulder said, and the boy grinned.

“Yeah.”

“What does it feel like?”

“I go to a place inside myself. They can’t find me there.”

Mulder nodded, beginning to understand.“And your ankle?”

“Healing fast like that has come in handy.”

“I would imagine.” The wind picked up a bit, and it was trying to bite through the many layers of their clothes. Mulder pulled his hood up and over his hat. “What else can you do?”

William threw him a wary look.

“You sure you want to know?” the boy said, his voice clipped.

“Of course I do, William,” he said, wanting to reach out and touch the boy.

After a moment, his son took a deep breath, and then held up his mittened hand. The slotted spoon, which had been sticking out of the top of the pocket in Mulder’s snow pants, flew up as quick as lighting and the boy caught it easily.

“Holy sh*t,” Mulder said, standing up so quickly he knocked aside the overturned bucket. He could see the muscles in William’s jaw jump beneath the skin as the boy gritted his teeth.

“That is so cool,” Mulder finally said. The boy’s eyes whipped to his.

“Cool?”

“Very.”

William narrowed his eyes at his father.

“You mean… it didn’t scare you? You’re not afraid of me?”

“It did scare me,” Mulder clarified, flipping the bucket back over before it could catch a gust of wind and blow away. He sat again and looked at the boy seriously. “But I’m not afraid of you. In awe of you, maybe. But certainly not afraid.”

William blinked at him several times and then looked up and off to the right, taking a deep breath.

“My parents were afraid of me,” he said, his voice so quiet Mulder had trouble hearing him over the wind. “My adoptive parents, I mean. The longer it all went on… They could barely look at me.”

Mulder felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.

“They-” Mulder started to say, and had to clear his throat before continuing. “They probably didn’t-”

The boy gave a long sniff and Mulder rose and dropped to a knee next to his son.

“None of this is your fault. And it wasn’t theirs either. This is… Everything that’s happened to you, everything you are… That’s on us.” He glanced at the cabin, sitting low and dark on the edge of the lake. “If I’d been able to protect you like I should have…” He grabbed the boy’s face gently in his gloved hands and forced him to look into his eyes. “You do not scare me, William. You do not scare Scully. You are a goddamn f*cking miracle.”

At this, William’s eyes slammed closed, tears dropping down onto his cheeks and he threw himself at Mulder, knocking him half back on the ice, the boy’s arms around his shoulders and neck, clinging to him as though he were a lifeline. Mulder returned his embrace and thumped him roughly on the back, whispering nonsense words until the boy loosened his grip and eased back, running his mittened hand over his eyes to dry them.

Mulder stayed where he was, keeping a hand on the boy's shoulder. William eased himself back onto the overturned bucket, gave one long sniff and then squinted his eyes at something over Mulder's head.

"Did that... is that flag up?" he said, sniffing one more time and pointing toward the second tip-up they'd set.

"Yes!" Mulder yelped and was up like a shot, running toward the hole before the fish could work itself off the hook.

William panted up next to him as he skidded to his knees, using the spoon to break the crust that had formed over the hole and then reeling madly. The fish on the other end fought hard and then shot across the water under the hole, a yellow-green flash. It fought for another twenty seconds before Mulder got its long nose through the top of the hole and flung it onto the ice at their feet where it flopped madly. Mulder saw the angry ridge of teeth and sighed, pulling his gloves on tighter.

"It's a northern pike," Mulder said as he grabbed the fish over its dorsal fin and held tight. "Gotta be careful of the teeth when you take out the hook. You got a leatherman or anything?" he asked the boy. "It helps to have a tool."

William nodded and reached in a pocket, expertly flipping out the tool until he had the plier mechanism engaged and handed it over to Mulder, who got the hook out with relative ease, not even having to take off his gloves.

"Check it out," Mulder said, holding up the hook which still had a bit of worm on it, "even saved the bait."

William wasn't looking at the hook, though, his eyes were trained over Mulder's left shoulder. Mulder turned to see what he was looking at and saw the flag on the first tip-up they'd set high in the air.

"Fish on!" Mulder laughed, "Go!"

William hobble-ran over to the hole excitedly and began reeling.

Mulder gave the pike one more look and decided to keep it, tossing it onto the ice about five feet from the hole. Pike weren't the best eating, but they needed to rebuild their trading stores, had another mouth to feed, and beggars couldn't be choosers.

By the time he got to the hole, William had pulled an impressive walleye up through the ice and was holding it by the fishing line, his face full of excitement.

"What do I do?!" he laughed. Mulder laughed with him.

"Grab him firmly by the back and work the hook out with your other hand. That one doesn't have scary teeth, should be pretty easy."

After a bit of fumbling, William was able to work the hook out and he kept a death grip on the impressively sized fish, which was still thrashing in his hands, its round mouth pulsing open and closed in the frigid air. He held it up to Mulder, beaming.

"I caught a fish!" he said, and Mulder couldn't help but beam back.

"You did! Well done."

"Now what do I do with it?" William laughed.

"Set it on the ice a few feet from the hole so it can't get back into the water -- I learned that one that hard way -- and leave it. It'll freeze before it drowns," he reassured the boy when his face fell a bit at the word 'drown.' "It's a pretty quick, painless way to go," he finished, putting his hand back on the boy's shoulder.

William set the walleye gently down on the ice and watched its movements slow. Then he perked up and excitedly pointed to their third tip-up.

"Fish on!" the boy said joyously, already trotting toward the flag.

It was a muggy evening, the air thick with the hazy gold of sunset and the occasional flash of a lightning bug. They had found the cabin that afternoon, a sturdy building on the edge of a bright green lake, its knotty pine interior faded from years of sunsets, the walls covered in pink and green drunkards path quilts. They had not seen another human nor ship in three straight weeks.

The air inside the house smelled stale and mildewy but everything was dry and just cool enough to be comfortable. They opened up the windows to air the place out – the buzz of katydids in the treetops coming in through the old gauzy screens. A blue jay called raucously from the fencing around the back yard. The side of the property was dotted with poplars, whose leaves flipped back and forth in the light breeze off the lake, fluttering various shades of green in a calming psithurism.

There was a simple pine bookshelf that took up an entire wall on one side of the living room, old paperbacks shoved cheek by jowl onto the shelves, the outer pages yellowed with age and worn soft by use. The Shining, Vonnegut’sJailbird,a whole line of The Cat Who … Scully walked slowly along beside it, running her fingers over the spines, and looking as if she were pursuing a well-loved shelf in a bright, dusty library. His heart felt close to bursting. They’d been tired, so, so tired, and the little cabin on the lake felt like it existed in another place and time.

He walked up slowly behind her and put a gentle hand on her hip, lowering his lips to the side of her bare neck. She tasted like dust and salt and he nipped at her and then laved his tongue back over her skin. She leaned back into his chest, her arm coming up to loop over his shoulder and around his neck. She sighed happily and his groin tightened.

“The back bedroom has a queen,” he mumbled into her, nosing his way to the skin beneath her ear.

“Mmm,” she hummed, digging her fingernails lightly into his scalp. He felt a thrilled rush all the way down to his toes. “Take me there,” she finally said, turning in his arms so that her face was to his chest. She leaned forward and scraped her teeth over his nipple through the thin ratty tee shirt he wore. “Make me forget.”

A bumblebee buzzed up to the window. A loon called to his mate from the lake. For a little while, they remembered to forget.

Chapter 10: The Song

Chapter Text

Sometimes a song would get stuck in his head, something old and obtuse; The Beatles, Tears for Fears, Fleetwood Mac. It would hang on like an ear worm for days until he exorcised the musical demon, humming and singing it and getting it stuck in Scully’s head, too. Eventually they would both start singing in their off-key, slightly off-beat way, working out the lyrics as best they could remember, parrying them back and forth until they worked them out and could live in the past, in that old world with music and frivolous joy, if only for a few minutes.

Today it was Eric Clapton, that song from the mid-80’s that started like a gunshot, lyrics from the first note, all synthesizers and electric guitar, a brass section playing a repeating refrain.

He started humming it while cleaning the rifle, the weapon disassembled on the small kitchen table, the smell of carbon scoring and Ballistol thick in his nose.

William was in one of the other chairs, replacing the laces of his boots with leather cording that Scully had traded for the autumn before, and he looked up when he heard the first few hummed notes, looking at Mulder curiously.

Scully, on her hands and knees with a flashlight, had pulled the baseboards in the kitchen off, and was trying to pinpoint where a mouse had gotten in. They had found droppings, but the rodent hadn’t yet gotten into their stores, and she was determined that it wouldn’t. She gave a sigh at the opening musical salvo, but sat back on her heels and sang the second verse softly:

“It comes and it goes…”

Mulder smiled and kept humming the through line and Scully stood, leaning against the counter, wearing a look of begrudged amusem*nt. Finally, she started singing again, quietly:

“Nobody's right until somebody's wrong… Nobody's weak until somebody's strong.”

Mulder took over, nodding and singing with a little more gusto:

“No one gets lucky until luck comes along.”

And then, surprising them both, William sang, in a clear bright voice:

“Nobody's lonely until somebody's gone.”

“ Yes !” Mulder shouted, delighted. “Will knows rock-n-roll!”

He stood and grabbed Scully by the waist, pulling her into a reluctant little dance in the middle of the scuffed linoleum, and all three of them sang the chorus — loudly, joyously, out of key:

“It’s in the way that you use it! It comes and it goes… It's in the way that you use it!

Boy don't you know.”

It felt, for a fleeting few moments, like the before time. They felt, for a fleeting few moments, carefree. Like a family.

They were on a ridge overlooking a town, a pair of powerful binoculars liberated from an army surplus store held to Mulder's eyes. He passed them to Scully.

"What do they want with the bodies?" he asked her, though he didn't really expect a response.

Below them in the city center, faceless men were collecting the bodies of the dead and loading them into a ship. Their group had arrived after whatever had gone down in the town, and they were trying to piece it all together.

After what had happened to Rebecca and Jordan, Scully didn’t love the idea of community, but they had hit a stretch of resource scarcity, and sometimes survival took a village.

Scully gave one more glimpse through the binocs and eased back, army crawling her way backwards until she was out of sight from the town below. Mulder did the same and they rose together, trotting back down to where Smith and Wheaton waited for them in the tree line. Mulder called them "Smith and Wesson" because they had armed themselves like Seal Team Six, though Scully often wondered if either of them really knew how to use half the firepower they were carrying around; their trigger discipline was terrible. It was only a matter of time before one of them screwed up and called Wheaton by the wrong name.

"What did you see?" Wheaton asked, hands in the utility belt he kept slung too low on his hips (he'd never be able to quick draw if he needed to).

"They're collecting bodies," Mulder said.

"Which bodies?" Smith asked.

"All of them," Scully said.

"Why?" Wheaton wanted to know. So did Scully.

"I doubt they're trying to make the town look nice for the next county fair," Mulder said, leaning down to re-tie his boot. He’d been complaining that the pair he was currently wearing had lousy laces that wouldn't hold a knot.

Wheaton ran a hand over his face, antsy. "We should go," he said, and Mulder and Scully couldn't help but agree.

The bodies. Why did they need the bodies? It was a question Mulder and Scully hadn't been able to answer, even now, several years later. Smith and MacDougal were dead, Rebecca and Jordan gone, and after Toronto, their merry band of survivors had dissipated like dandelion fluff in the wind.

Chapter 11: The Trader

Chapter Text

Winter gave way to spring. Snow still clung to the earth in shady patches, but all around them brown was losing the battle to green; weeds coming up from the wet ground in tender shoots, shaggy leaves unfurling from newly awoken trees.

Their cache of stores for the winter had been thoroughly depleted, William eating everything in sight. Like the awakening of spring, the boy was blossoming, too.

She had noticed in the last few weeks that his wrists were beginning to peek out from his cuffs and he’d already begun wearing an old pair of Mulder’s boots, having outgrown the ones he arrived in. His chest was filling out, becoming broader, and she’d passed by the bathroom last week and found William and Mulder crowded around the tiny pedestal sink, Mulder showing the boy how to shave with a straight razor.

The boy seemed content, coming out of his shell and talking and joking around with Mulder, helping around the house, slowly revealing more and more of himself to the two people who’d given him life. He was still reticent to use his powers in front of them, which Scully understood after Mulder had told her about what William had revealed on the ice, but she tried to be reassuring and confident around him, and every now and then he would reveal some of the more supernatural things he could do. Especially when Mulder was around.

The boy wasn't as easy with her, but then she wasn’t as easy with him. Her youth had been John Hughes movies and different navy bases. Singing along to hair bands with her sister in a rusty car with a missing cigarette lighter and rattly speakers. She stole cigarettes from her mother's purse and passed notes in history class.

William had been fending for himself in an increasing wilderness in a post apocalyptic world. There was no music (other than their poor attempts at singing), no school — no cigarettes— she wondered if he could remember a single movie. How do you raise a child in a world you barely understand? How do you raise a child whose experience is so much different than your own? While the sight of him always warmed something within her, at times she still felt like she could barely call him hers.

They had done well with fish and game over the winter, and it was time to unload their haul and replenish their supplies. They had set off two days prior for Jericho’s Keep, where a portly woman named Marlo Edgerton ran a farm that also served as their cooperative’s trading post. Will had been excited but tentative, and had told Mulder the night before, as they camped on the edge of the Green Lake watershed that he was reluctant to leave their valley.

Nevertheless, they were nearly out of food, and had packed up early, mounting the heavily-laden horses for the last leg of their journey to the Keep. The day was bright and dry and they’d made great time.

They crested the rise over the farm and Pumpkin bellowed out a neigh. After a moment they heard an echoing call from Gypsy, Marlo’s chestnut bay who was trotting around the small paddock outside of Marlo's barn, throwing his head back in excitement. The horses both began an eager canter in Gypsy's direction. Scully watched as William grabbed at the pommel on his saddle to keep his balance. He was getting better, but he was not a horseman yet.

Marlo emerged from the farm house swinging a tea towel over her shoulder and putting a hand up to shield her eyes from the day's glare. After a moment she waved, recognizing them, and headed for the dusty driveway adjacent to the paddock. She approached just as Mulder was swinging down out of the saddle. He shook Marlo's hand, nodding and saying her name once in greeting before holding out a hand to help Scully off the horse. It wasn’t necessary, but it was sweet.

"You found someone," Marlo said, nodding at William, who stayed in the saddle, fidgeting a bit, as she shook Scully's hand.

"Marlo, this is William," Scully said, smiling at William encouragingly. The boy jumped down smoothly. "William, this is Marlo Edgerton, she trades in dairy and eggs and some produce, and runs the cooperative."

"I trade in the stuff that's hard to kill," Marlo said, leaning back with her hands on her substantial hips and giving William a warm smile. "I'm good with animals, but I've got a brown thumb."

"Hello," said William shyly. Marlo looked at William assessingly, and then looked curiously at Mulder and Scully. Scully wondered if she was picking up on the resemblance. After a moment she huffed out a quiet "huh," and turned on her heel, leaving the others to follow her.

"You see anything on your way through?" Marlo asked as they all made their way toward the farm house. "Last trader that came here from the south said that there was significantly more ship activity in that vector."

"Maybe one or two more than usual," Scully said, shooting a look to William.

"Hmm," said Marlo thoughtfully.

Tisdale, Marlo's big, black Newfoundland mix came woofing up to the group with his tail wagging, sticking his nose into hands and crotches and making himself a general nuisance. Scully scratched the dog behind the ears and gave his big block of a head a gentle push.

William seemed to come alive a bit from the dog's attention, a smile cracking his face as he thumped Tisdale's flank. The dog leaned into his legs in bliss.

"Go on then, Tizzy," Marlo said, pointing off toward the barn. The dog barked joyfully once and then trotted off toward the south pasture. William watched him wistfully.

"He's not very bright, but he gets the job done," Marlo said. She narrowed her eyes at William. "You want to go with him? He'd love the company."

William nodded happily and followed the dog, who doubled back to lean into the boy’s legs again before they both took off cheerfully for the pasture.

Marlo watched, charmed, and then started up the steps to her house. "Where'd you find him?"

"He found us," Mulder said.

Marlo paused on the top step and turned to them.

"Ain't that something," she said. Scully was definitely picking up an undertone, but Marlo breezed through it and threw open the farmhouse door. "Come on in, then."

She saw them seated at the table in her kitchen and then leaned back and gave them a sly smile.

"Y'all want coffee?" she asked.

Mulder blanched. "You have coffee ?" he asked.

Marlo's smile grew. "Got it last week. Roasted up nice. You catch any extra fish out there at that cabin of yours?"

"I've got ten pounds of smoked walleye with your name on it," Mulder said.

Marlo slapped her hands together and stood.

"Either of you take cream?"

XxXxXxXxXxX

They shuffled into Marlo's cellar slowly, Mulder careful not to bang his head into the low ceiling. The space held the pungent tang of a dirt floor and goats milk, and always reminded Mulder, oddly, of a village pub he used to frequent outside of Oxford.

"I take it you'll be needing more than usual," Marlo said, zipping up the old Carhart jacket she kept on a hook by the door. The cellar was always colder than Mulder remembered. "Got that extra mouth to feed. And a teenaged one at that."

Scully nodded.

"We can bring you more game, more fish."

"I know you're good for it," Marlo said, "I'll spot you."

Mulder swung the pack of smoked meat and fish from his shoulders.

"You say he found you ?" Marlo asked, eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” Scully said, instantly closed off and on the edge of impolite.

Marlo looked at Scully for a long moment.

“I don’t mean nothing by it,” she finally said, “being inquisitive. But I trade just as much in information as I do in cheese and eggs.” At this she looked to Mulder. “I’ve heard some things,” she said, swinging her eyes to Scully.

“Marlo,” Mulder said, his voice just shy of a growl.

“None of that,” Marlo said sharply, as if she were disciplining a headstrong colt, “I hope you know me well enough by now. I trade. I don’t threaten.” Mulder gave her a micro nod, and she took a long minute before she went on, pulling down several cheeses from a shelf. She put them in a burlap sack and handed them over. “I’ve had some religious types come to trade lately…”

“How religious?” Scully asked.

“Which religious?” Mulder immediately followed.

“…the new kind,” said Marlo quite seriously. Mulder and Scully exchanged a look. “They say they been seeing things in the stars. Horsesh*t, mostly. Crazy talk. But they’re talking about working with the aliens, you see. Saying they been sent by God.”

“When was this?”

“Few weeks back. But it wasn’t just the one, Mulder. Arlo Meier says the same thing to me just last week. Met a whole band of ‘em traveling up from Beulah. Arlo said they weren’t right in the eyes.”

“How did he mean?” Scully asked, her voice low and clipped. She was worried. “What about their eyes?”

“He didn’t say. I assumed he meant they were-“ at this, Marlo made a ‘crazy’ gesture with her finger. “They were all headstrong talking about a prophecy.”

Mulder felt a pang of worry. “What was the prophecy?”

“Rapture-type sh*t,” Marlo said, “Someone who could either save the world or destroy it. They’re looking for people.”

“Who are they looking for?” Scully asked, her tone indicating she already knew.

Marlo looked at her for a moment, then answered, quoting: “A boy who followed a star. A man who grew crops in a barren field. A mother immortal.”

Mulder tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone dry.

“Now I never much believed in the virgin birth,” Marlo went on, “I knew too many Mary’s who pledged a vow of chastity out one side of her mouth and gave Horatio fellati* with the other.”

Mulder had to hold in a nervous snort.

“But it don’t matter what I believe, does it? These people are nuts. Carrying on about the new Holy Trinity.”

“How’s that?” Scully asked, her voice husky and dry.

“The Father,” Marlo went on, boring holes into Mulder with her eyes. “The Son,” with this, she popped her chin up to gesture at the open cellar door and then turned her intense gaze to Scully. “And the Holy Spirit.”

There was a tense silence and then a shadow fell across the doorway of the cellar. Mulder looked up to see William standing there. He couldn't see the boy's face, backlit as it was by the spring sun, but his posture was tense, and Mulder could hear Tisdale off in the distance, his barks echoing with an unfriendly tenor alerting danger.

"Will-" Mulder started to say when the boy ran down the steps and into the cold of the cellar itself.

"They're coming!" the boy said hoarsely, his voice cracking on the last word.

"Who's coming?" said Marlo, her voice and face all confusion.

"Ships," William said, "lots of them."

"Damn it!" Scully hissed from Mulder's elbow, "the blanket is out with the horses."

Mulder felt the sharp drop of adrenaline into his system. Rarely did ships come during the day, and they were nearly always alone -- scouting ships out on routine patrol. The low rumble started then, ten times more powerful than he'd ever felt, shaking the floor beneath them like a California temblor.

Marlo trotted up the steps of the cellar faster than her substantial figure should have allowed and pulled the rope that swung the cellar door shut, the door slamming just as one of the horses screamed in the field, its terrified whinny cut short with the slam of wood on wood.

"No time for it," Marlo said, and shuffled back down the steps, moving quickly to the back of the cellar where she had little rounds of goat cheese stacked on wooden shelves that went all the way up to the ceiling. "Come on," she said, pulling open a door that Mulder had never seen before, cut into the side of the wall next to the spare tin barrels in which she collected milk. "In here. Quickly!"

Mulder ushered Scully and William into the small, dark space and then followed himself, pulling the door closed behind him -- the door itself was heavy and cumbersome -- it felt like pulling closed a bank vault. The ground below them still shook, but the sound was more subdued in the space, and even their breathing -- quick and frightened -- had an insulated quality to it.

Mulder heard the sound of light metal meeting metal, and then a dull glow emerged from his left -- Marlo had lit a kerosene lamp and had it turned all the way down.

Scully, standing close next to him, craned her neck to look around the room, and he followed suit.

The room was stacked -- even the door to the space itself -- from floor to ceiling with old phone books and yellow pages, most of them turned sepia with age. The ceiling of the room was soft and metallic with what looked like aluminum foil, but upon closer inspection revealed itself to be reflective-foil-wrapped fiberglass duct insulation, which Mulder could see ran from the ceiling itself down the walls and to the floor, and wrapped the whole of the room into a cocoon-like swaddling.

He swung a look toward Marlo, who shrugged.

"My husband was the paranoid type," she said, "and a good thing, too."

Scully put a hand to the wall, her face still a mask of concern.

"It's always worked for me," Marlo said, though her confidence sounded as though it may be waning.

Mulder looked to William, who was standing very still, his arms at his side, his hands curled into light fists, eyes closed.

"Can everyone be quiet, please," the boy said.

After a moment he cracked his eye and looked at Marlo. “Can you… not breathe so loud?” Marlo nodded mutely and pulled an albuterol inhaler from the pocket of her apron, shaking it twice and taking a shallow puff, her eyes never once leaving the young man before her.

Mulder could see William’s irises roll back into his head as his eyelids fluttered closed and he felt it the moment the vibration under their feet took on a new frequency. After a moment a high whine joined the low rumble and the hairs on the back of Mulder’s neck stood on end.

Then – a monstrous groan of metal followed by a concussive reverb that ground up through the floor, a tremor that started in Mulder’s feet and shot up through his ankles, legs and then through the top of his head. A two second pause and then the same cataclysmic reverberation. Then another. And another.

And then silence.

William inhaled and seemed to come to himself as though he’d been in a trance. He took a breath and looked to his parents.

“They’ll be airborne again in a few hours,” he said, “we should go.”

The lead blanket idea had come from Rebecca, who had been a dental hygienist before the invasion. They had broken into several dental offices and taken the lead-lined aprons that they draped across patient’s laps for use during X-Rays and she had skillfully begun sewing them together when she and Jordan had been taken by the light.

Scully had finished the job — suturing the last few pieces into a covering that would save her and Mulder many times, and would have saved Rebecca and her daughter if only they’d had it finished.

They met Smith before the abduction, in an outdoor store outside of Hamilton. He was thrashing his way through the skiing gear when they entered, startling him. Mulder, Scully and Rebecca had been on a mission to find a new jacket for Jordan, and hadn’t seen another soul for a week. Smith was armed for bear and had raised a weapon at them, but lowered it the second he’d seen the eight year old girl. They found out later that he’d had a daughter who’d been lost during the initial invasion.

“Oh,” he’d said in a baffled voice, seeing the girl, like he’d forgotten children were a thing that could still exist.

Mulder and Scully had lowered their weapons and they’d entered into a quick detente.

A ship had come over the horizon as they were about to walk out of the store, each of them a little better outfitted than they’d been when they walked in. Avoiding the crafts were a new experience for them at the time – after dropping bombs on the initial ships of the invasion, the newcomers – the faceless men – had moved south en masse.

“Come on!” Smith had said, leading them back into the dark cave of the store. He flew down an aisle littered with a scattered display of Nalgene bottles and microbial filters, kicking them aside as the foursome followed him blindly. He turned toward an area of the store set up like a campsite.

“Grab a sleeping bag and get in ‘em. Quick! There,” he said, pointing, “the big warm ones! Go!”

They’d all done as they were told as the rumbling of the ship started shaking the ground under them. Mulder could see the scanning light running over the parking lot outside and moving toward the store, and ducked his head into his bag, Scully next to him doing the same.

“Mom?!” Jordan whimpered from Mulder’s other side.

“It’s okay, kid!” Smith said, “It’ll be okay!”

The light went by them and then away, the rumbling stopping a minute or two later. Smith was the first to emerge out of his bag.

“Phew,” he said, and then Mulder, Scully and Rebecca tentatively poked their heads out of their own sleeping bags. “It worked. Discovered it by accident when I pitched a tent outside Mississauga last week. Held my breath, ducked into my sleeping bag and the damn thing went right by. Probably helped that I was under some thick vegetation. Damn near sh*t my pants.” He glanced at Jordan. “Oops, sorry about my language, kid.”

Jordan smiled shyly at him, her hair a staticky mess from being in the sleeping bag. “It’s okay,” the girl said. “I don’t mind.”

The sleeping bag trick would prove to be a combination of simple coverage and dumb luck, but the idea it had sparked would save countless lives. Smith was utterly devoted to Jordan after the incident, however. He was never quite the same after she was taken.

Chapter 12: The Escape

Chapter Text

They were hustling up the steps of the cellar when Marlo called out to them.

“Wait!”

She’d grabbed the bag of the smoked fish and meats they’d brought, their entire share from the last half year in the cooperative, and held it out to them.

“Take this!” she said.

“That’s our-“

“Take it!” Marlo said harshly, then grabbed another sack and quickly filled it with various provisions she had on hand — most of them belonging to other traders. “This too.”

“We can’t-“ Scully started to say.

“You can and you will,” Marlo said, “and take Gypsy, too. Load these up and I’ll get him saddled.” She held up a hand when Mulder began to protest.

“Go!” she said.

When they got to the top of the steps the sunshine was blinding and William stumbled. Scully grabbed his arm.

“You okay?” she asked, and when he looked over at her, her stomach dropped. There were trickles of blood coming from his nose and ears. His eyes were half-lidded and he swayed on his feet.

“William? Sweetie? Mulder! ”

Mulder spun around and his eyes widened as he looked at his son.

“Take him!” Scully said. The boy was leaning on her more and more and was getting too heavy to prop up.

“Jesus!” Mulder said, rushing to her side and sliding the boy’s arm over his shoulder.

They made their way to the horses as quickly as they could – they had removed the saddles but left them propped up over the top of the fences — they could make quick work of getting the horses ready. Mulder lowered William to sit on the ground, his back propped up against a fence post, his face clammy and grey. Molly came when Scully called her, but Pumpkin and Gypsy were upset, shying away from Mulder when he reached out to grab their bridles. Mulder finally got a hand through Pumpkin’s cheekpiece and pulled him over, making low, calming noises. The horse threw his head once but then calmed, letting Mulder saddle him up.

“I’ll take William on Pumpkin,” Mulder said to Scully. “You ride Molly and pull Gypsy behind you – he can carry the packs.”

Marlo overheard, and managed to get her horse calmed down enough to saddle him, tightening the girth before loading him up with the various bags of their provisions.

Mulder leaned down and helped William up and into the saddle, grabbing onto the boy’s shoulder when he started slumping over. He managed to keep him upright while he climbed on behind him. Scully swung into the saddle and Marlo threw her Gypsy’s reins then trotted over to open the paddock gate.

Pumpkin needed no further encouragement and trotted quickly out of the paddock, Molly and Gypsy fast on his heels.

“Thank you!” Mulder called to Marlo as they passed her, “We’ll bring Gypsy back when we can!”

“Are you kidding?!” Marlo called as the horses took them further and further away and she pointed out to the south fields. Mulder finally turned to look.

There were four crashed spaceships in various states of distress spanning at least an acre and a half of what had once been corn fields. Tisdale was running between them, barking madly. Mulder thought he saw movement in the ship nearest them and wasted no more time, spurring Pumpkin into a gallup, holding his limp son close to his chest.

“I think we should board it,” Wheaton said, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly.

They had made their way to the top of a building on Yonge Street in Toronto and were looking through their binoculars at a ship that had crashed onto Bloor, just outside of the Royal Museum.

“That ship is new. It wasn’t there when I was here this summer,” Wheaton went on, “it wasn’t part of the original invasion.”

“And what do you hope to accomplish?” Scully asked testily. She didn’t like being in the cities – too much could go wrong.

“Reconnaissance,” Wheaton answered, “maybe we can learn something.”

Scully highly doubted the man could so much as spell reconnaissance, but kept the thought to herself.

“He might be right,” Smith said. He’d gotten close to Wheaton since they’d picked the man up the month before, when he’d supplied them with ammunition and some valuable dry goods. Smith was still having a hard time with the loss of Rebecca and Jordan and he’d channeled his grief into weaponry and aggression. He and Wheaton took turns trying to out-macho each other, strapping on more and more firepower and unnecessary machismo.

MacDougal shrugged from where he sat, leaning against the lip of the building’s roof, not even bothering to look at the ship on the street below. He was an older gentleman, in his mid-50’s and quiet, wide around the midsection. Steady as a rock. He gave and kept good counsel.

“What do you think, Agent Mulder?” he asked.

“I think if we do it, we’ll need a good plan,” Mulder said.

And that was the beginning of the end of their confederacy.

Chapter 13: The Prophet

Chapter Text

They rode hard for twenty minutes, until Mulder felt William’s diaphragm spasming under his hand, and he pulled up hard on the reins. Pumpkin skidded to halt on a loose bit of scree, snorting dust from his nose and half rearing back. Mulder could hear Scully pull up Molly and Gypsy behind him, the horses blowing and chomping their bits. He pulled William off the big colt’s back and onto the ground. The boy began heaving, drool pooling on his lip.

“Will?” The boy’s head lolled dangerously. “Scully!” Mulder shouted, and she was by his side in a flash, gently moving him out of the way and taking William by the shoulders, turning him onto his side. Just as she did so – his head held tenderly in her hands – he spewed vomit in an impressive arc, splashing rocks and bushes that were five feet away.

Scully made shushing sounds as he dry heaved, rubbing the boy’s back. Mulder knelt behind them feeling useless and unable to help. The boy coughed once and groaned, laying prone for a moment before attempting to sit up, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

“Easy,” Scully murmured, running a hand through the boy’s thick locks, “take it easy. You’re okay.”

Molly whinnied behind them and Mulder stood up, alertly scanning the skies.

“They’re not coming,” William winced, sitting up fully, “not yet.”

“How long do we have?”

William rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, smearing the blood that had begun to dry there. “Thirty minutes, maybe? Longer if we’re lucky.”

Mulder knelt back down and put a hand on Scully’s shoulder, getting her attention.

“Where should we go?” he asked her in a low murmur.

Scully opened her mouth, but it was William who answered.

“The valley,” he said, his head hanging low, “we need to go back home.”

Scully glanced at Mulder, but didn’t say anything.

“That’s a two day ride,” Mulder said, “maybe one if we really push the horses. We’ll never make it.”

“If we get close enough-” William said, then paused to burp. “-we might.”

“Then we’d better get going,” Mulder said. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” the boy said, wincing again and reaching out to both of them for help getting up.

Scully looked concerned.

“Has this ever happened to you before?” she asked him, putting an arm under his elbow when he wobbled.

“No,” he shook his head, “but I’ve never done that to that many ships at the same time.”

Mulder, still more concerned than anything, was nevertheless taken aback once again by his son’s powers. Scully turned to him unhappily.

“He needs rest, Mulder,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “And… God, I don’t know, a hospital, tests. Whatever he did taxed his body to the limit. We need to stop.”

“We can’t,” Will said weakly, glancing at Scully. “I can keep going.”

She glared at Mulder, having nowhere else to lay blame. “I don’t like this.”

“You’re going to like it a lot less if those ships come back,” he said, pulling their son along and helping him back into the saddle.

She gave him a long dissatisfied look but turned toward Gypsy and Molly, speaking to them in low tones as she gathered both sets of reins. A piece of hair had worked its way loose from her ponytail and fluttered in the wind as it picked up from the north.

XxX

It had been ninety minutes since William had been sick and they had made decent time though the boy was clearly miserable. The both of them smelled like horse and fear-sweat, maybe vomit, and his son’s head would occasionally bump back into his shoulder, each time resting there for a little bit longer.

“It’s okay to sleep on me, Will,” he said into the boy’s ear, “your mom does it all the time.”

Seconds later his heavy head thunked back onto Mulder’s shoulder and stayed there, the boy relaxing against his chest.

Two hilltops and several aspen groves later, Molly flicked her head and gave a low whinny from behind them. Mulder turned and looked back at Scully who was leaning forward, patting the horse’s neck and returning Mulder’s concerned look.

“We’d better stop,” Scully called up to them when Molly flicked her head back again, her ears swiveling like a satellite trying to find a signal. Mulder thought back to the times that Molly had known the ships were coming well before they did, and he thanked the universe for their small extrasensory fellowship.

Mulder directed Pumpkin to the edge of a cedar grove and pulled up.

“Will,” he whispered, “buddy, I need you to wake up.”

William groaned but roused himself.

“They coming?” he asked breathily.

“We think so. Come on.” Mulder helped him get down, but he fell to his knees, not able to stand. A low ball of worry was sitting low in Mulder’s belly, spreading an anxious panic. William took a deep breath and closed his eyes, but they fluttered open a moment later.

“Mulder, I can’t hide myself,” he said weakly, his eyes wide with fright. “I’m too weak.”

“Scully?” Mulder called over, trying to keep the thin edge of hysteria out of his voice. She was tying the reins of the other two horses to the trunk of one of the cedars. When she looked at him, her pupils were wreathed in white. The earth below them began to tremble.

XxXxXxXxXxX

From half a hillside up and behind an old slide of boulders, Ezekiel Barrow sat calmly on his prayer mat with his legs crossed in front of him and watched the three horses and the burdens they carried.

The adolescent boy seemed to be sick or having some kind of trouble and he briefly considered approaching the travelers and offering his help or his prayers. The two adults seemed harried and out of sorts, concerned over the state of their child, which the boy obviously was. Ezekiel knew, as did the other followers of the Ascendant Faith of Above, that the Gods would take care of all humans, either in this life or the next, and worrying over that life - or death - did no one any good. Perhaps the small family lacked faith.

Ezekiel had not always been so devoted. Before the End Times, he’d been base and simple, had had no time or inclination to devote himself to the Gods’ glorious purpose. But the Gods had spared him and as he watched the small family of travelers, he felt a calm settle over him. He offered the sky a small doxology.

From below them, the earth, as if in answer to Ezekiel’s prayers, began the low vibration of approaching heavenly vessels. He smiled. The low rumbling meant the Gods were coming, and Ezekial prepared himself, as he always did, for ascension.

He had been in the presence of the ships before, but had yet to be called. The rumbling increased in scope and breadth, and Ezekiel looked to the skies and rejoiced. Four ships approached. Four! In daylight, no less!

The voices of the travelers carried to him on the wind, the panic in their voices evident.

“If he tries holding off those ships again, Mulder, it’ll kill him!” the small woman shouted.

The tall man uttered a foul swear word and dragged the boy back against the base of the nearest tree.

“Then we’re going to have to do it for him,” the man then said, “get the blanket, Scully!”

Did they not realize the holy miracle they beheld? Ascension was imminent! The glow of the God’s love poured down from the ships and Ezekiel cleared his mind and braced for the warmth.

He watched as the woman dragged a heavy-looking parcel from the chestnut horse’s back and handed it with some difficulty to the man, tucking herself up tightly next to her son.

The man unfurled it and pressed himself up to the boy’s other side, trying to drape the covering over the three of them. It wasn’t quite big enough. Ezekiel realized they were hiding.

He glanced up at the ships, who had come from the same direction as the travelers, and the ships performed some kind of choreographed maneuver, fanning out so that their light scans covered a wide area, moving back and forth, as if searching. He had never seen the like.

The man made a harsh comment, turning himself so that he was half covering the woman and boy. The Gods were looking for them and they didn’t want to be found. How curious and heretical. Ezekiel watched, marveled.

It had worked! The ships were moving on and once again Ezekiel fought off a small pang of regret. His time would come.

He thought back to the small service he had attended in Arch Rock the month before. Ezekiel had thought the preacher there was mistaken, preaching about the New Holy Trinity — their only hope for salvation. He thought the man a charlatan, a tool of the devil and of man, but something about the tableau before him struck a chord and he thought about the preacher’s sermon, his call to action.

Perhaps the preacher was right. Was this the New Holy Trinity before him? Set before him as if in answer to his prayers? Were the Gods finally showing him his divine purpose?

Ezekial eased himself back amongst the rocks and pressed his palm to the odd crucefix around his neck, whispering a thankful prayer aloft to the heavens, to the ships.

William had never before skipped school. Never. Just the thought of it gave him butterflies in his stomach and he pictured himself in the principal’s office, sitting in that big red chair, his legs swinging down, his feet not touching the floor.

He’d been called to Mr. Haughman’s office once before — when Elliot Angelo had purposely thrown a dodgeball at his head so hard that he’d seen stars. The PE teacher Ms. Darling hadn’t seen it (of course she hadn’t, just like she hadn’t seen Logan T tripping him right in front of her). He’d been so mad he’d picked up the ball and thrown it back at Elliot, but he didn’t just use his arm — he’d used his mind, too, and the resulting smack when it connected with Elliot’s forehead had been so loud the entire class had stopped what they were doing to watch as Elliot crumpled to the ground, unconscious. He had hated sitting in that red chair, his feet unable to touch the ground like some elementary school baby. When his parents picked him up after talking with Mr. Haughman, they wouldn’t look at him — his father so mad that that vein on his forehead pulsed. Of course, they never really looked at him anymore. Not really. Not with love. Not with affection. Only with fear and mistrust.

His mother tried, she did, but as he’d heard her praying one night, when he ghosted by her room as silent as death, she admitted that she wasn’t God’s strongest soldier. Not strong enough to raise him anyway, or at least that's what she’d told God.

The butterflies didn’t scare him, though. The big red chair in Mr. Haughman’s office didn’t scare him. Nor did Elliot Angelo or Logan T or the rough loop of his father’s leather belt. The only thing that scared him now was the other feeling he had, the one that had grown within him the last few days, the one that couldn’t be ignored.

He ducked into the trees that lined the road by the bus stop, doubling back toward his house through the woods after the big yellow bus went by. He’d stashed his knapsack in the tree in the backyard the night before; had filled it with extra clothes and some food, a water bottle, a knife from the kitchen, a couple of comic books, his father’s Leatherman.

He didn’t worry much about his mother — she was not the most observant person and all it would take would be for him to knock something to the floor to distract her. He could do that from 50 yards away and in his sleep. His father was the problem. He didn’t leave for work until 8:30, and if he caught him skipping school, he’d tan his hide. William would have to wait until after his father was gone to grab the knapsack and begin making his way north. He was nervous about the journey, but something inside of him — something loud and increasingly insistent — was telling him to go.

William knew he would miss the comfort and relative safety of home, but when he thought of leaving his parents, felt more relieved than sad. He thought maybe they would feel the same way.

He settled into the long grass in the field across from his house and waited, laying back and looking up at the sky. He was lightly dozing when a feeling came over him like a cold splash of water. The hairs on his arm stood on end. He sat up quickly and heard the crunch of gravel. Several cars had pulled into the long driveway and were parked at an angle near the house. They were all SUVs; black, with tinted windows and big motors – he could hear the low rumble from all the way over in the field where he crouched. No one exited the cars, they simply sat idling, until William heard the clack of the screen door hitting the siding of the house, and he saw his father emerge to stand on the porch. At this, a man got out of the passenger side of the first car and walked toward him.

The man himself was fairly average looking, but the moment William saw him, a shaky feeling came over him and his heart started beating hard in his chest. The man, wearing sunglasses and a suit, paused on his way to the house just long enough to glance in the direction of the field where William sat. The hairs on his arm stood on end once again.

He heard the sharp bark of his father’s voice and the man turned back to him, replying something that William couldn’t overhear. His father barked and grumbled some more and he and the man began speaking back and forth. After a minute, William saw his mother come out of the house and onto the porch as well, nervously wrigning a dish towel between her hands, as was her wont.

The man in the suit said something else. And then he pulled out a gun and shot both of William’s parents point blank. They crumpled to the boards of the porch like ragdolls dropped from a child’s hand. He could hear the sharp crack of the bullets ripping through the air, could see the spray of blood on the wall behind where his parents had been standing a moment before. William was so shocked he froze, the scream that was on the tip of his tongue dying on a quiet exhalation of breath.

More men streamed out of the SUVs then, several going into the house and a few more making their way to the barn. The man who had shot his parents re-holstered his gun and took a long look at the field where William still hid. After a long moment, he too went up the steps and into the old farmhouse.

William, after a moment’s hesitation, stood and ran all out to the old oak in the backyard, grabbed his knapsack from between the V of two branches where he’d hidden it the night before and then ran as fast as his legs would carry him into the lower forty and on through the woods behind them.

It was a Monday and William Van de Kamp was twelve years old. The next day the ships had come, but he was already making his way north.

Chapter 14: The Orange

Chapter Text

“So what do you want for your birthday?” Mulder asked, and as he hoped, William chuckled from the bedroll they’d set up on top of a fragrant patch of pine needles five miles from their valley.

Scully was poking a stick at the campfire that wasn’t burning quite as well as she wanted it to, and she watched as Mulder, sitting near where their son lay resting on the other side of the fire, actually got the boy to smile.

“A new car?” William said, his tired eyes looking jokingly hopeful.

“Not until you get your license,” Mulder said, “but nice try, junior.”

“What did you get for your fifteenth birthday, Mulder?” Scully asked, genuinely curious.

“Joint custody,” he said easily, “my parents divorce went through two days before I turned fifteen.”

Scully looked away sadly, but William took Mulder’s comment in stride.

“Were you guys ever married?” he asked curiously.

“Not in the widely understood definition of that term,” Mulder answered, repeating a line he’d said to someone else in a different lifetime.

“My birth certificate,” William said, “the one I saw. Those weren’t your real names. So what was mine? When I was born, what was mine?”

“William Scully,” Scully said, and William’s eyes flicked to his father.

“The circ*mstances of your conception and birth,” Mulder said, “and of the events surrounding it, were…”

“Complicated,” Scully finished for him.

William looked over the fire at her and she could still feel the stare of the super soldiers standing witness.

“Complicated how? Were you not together?”Mulder and Scully looked at each other over the crackling firelight. The last person to have just come right out and asked had been her mother. “Was I a… test tube baby? Is that why I’m like this? Some kind of freak experiment?” He started to sit up.

”No,” Scully said quickly, “no, you were… made the old fashioned way.” He relaxed.

”Have you had that talk or do you still need it?” Mulder said, and Scully imagined William’s cheeks turned roughly the same color as her own. It was hard to tell in the firelight.

”I’m familiar with the mechanics,” William said, looking at his lap. “But they don’t seem… complicated, was it? You guys love each other,” he said.

Scully nodded, watched the firelight flicker over her son’s red hair. “I don’t think I’ve ever really loved anyone else.”

With that, she looked at Mulder, whose eyes bore into hers, not looking away.

“William, if you ever find a woman like that,” with this, he pointed at Scully, “you don’t ever let her go. There’s no going back after that.”

Scully wondered if her son would ever find love in the hellscape of their scorched earth. But then she thought of their little cabin on Green Lake, of whispered promises and soft sighs. There could still be safety and comfort, even in the darkest of times.

“How are you feeling?” Scully asked him, standing from the fire and making her way over to him. There was a time to tell him about the circ*mstances surrounding his birth, but now wasn’t it.

“Like I got hit by a spaceship.”

“Do all of your powers drain you?” Scully asked.

“No,” he shook his head, “not like this.”

Scully sat down next to him, mulling over his answer, concerned. She pulled out an old handkerchief and poured some water from her canteen on it, offering it up to him. He took it and began blindly rubbing at the dried blood under his nose. He stopped after a moment and held it back out to her.

“Will you?” he asked quietly.

She nodded and took the old rag, gently wiping away the dust and blood from under his nose, and then paying the same careful attention to the shell of his ears.

“Can you hear okay?” she asked him.

He nodded.

“Good.”

She got the last few streaks, William sitting patiently still under her attention and she could have sworn for a moment that she could smell the heady smell of him when he’d been a baby; the sour/sweet/sawdust mix science had never been able to recreate. Then she looked self-consciously over her shoulder at Mulder watching her and pulled her hand back.

“There,” she said.

“Thanks,” William gave her a small smile and lightly thunked his head back down onto the bedroll. He looked utterly wrung out, completely devoid of energy.

“Do you think you could eat something?”

“I can try.”

Mulder stood and walked over to the bags that Marlo had hastily thrown together and began to rifle through one of them, pulling out a sleeve of crackers, mostly broken, which he tossed over to Scully, and then a long rope of Slim Jims.

“Those’ll be hell on his stomach,” Scully pointed out, and Mulder shoved them back in the bag, rummaging in deeper. Then, with a quiet exclamation, he pulled his arm up slowly out of the bag, and in his hand was an orange. The color was bright and sunny, even in the light of the fire, and he held it up and peered at it like Hamlet considering the skull.

“An orange,” he said, with the appropriate amount of gravity. It had been two years since they’d so much as seen one.

He carried it back to Scully and William and sat down, handing it over to his son, who held it gingerly. Scully could see that its skin was beginning to wrinkle near the stem, and it was on the small side, nevertheless her mouth flooded with saliva just looking at it.

“I can’t,” William said, trying to hand it back to Mulder.

“Go on,” Scully said, “it’s okay.”

He looked at it for a moment. “How about we split it?”

He handed it to her, the fruit heavy in her hand, its pebbled surface like a touch from a different time.

“Will you peel it?” he asked, “I always make a mess of it.”

She ran her thumb over it once and then sunk her thumbnail through the surface of the peel, the sharp smell of citrus oil permeating the cold nighttime air like spice through an exotic market. She made quick work of the job, shucking the peel away in nearly one piece, leaving most of the pith. She peeled apart three sections, handing the largest to William. Mulder took his and held it briefly to his nose, his eyes closed. Then he went to peel off some of the white.

“The pith is high in vitamin C,” she said, “eat it.”

They all did so, trying to enjoy it, trying not to eat too fast. It was a bit dry — there would be no juice running down anyone’s chin — but it was sweet and nostalgic and heady as a first kiss. Scully had never tasted anything so good.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The campfire the travelers sat around looked small from where Ezekiel sat and watched, a flickering speck through a screen of scrub pine and larch. It was cold where he perched, the ground under him frigid and hard. He thought of his task, of the glory it would bring, and was warmed by the fire of his faith.

For the first time in his life, he experimented with his powers. Really experimented. Without thought or worry that he would be caught and punished or worse – treated with fear – he experimented with what he could do and how he could do it.

When he was little, he had no control over his gifts. They would come out when he was upset or angry or sometimes when he was calm and inside himself. He hadn’t thought he was doing anything different or unusual until he was four years old and laying in bed one night and he used his mind to lift five or six different stuffed animals into the air and made them do an intricate weaving dance. He’d only been able to mentally lift one at a time before that and had been able to do so since before he could remember, but the new skill was so exciting that he’d called his parents in to see it.

After that, anytime he used his gifts it was always accompanied by a feeling of guilt or shame. The freedom to explore himself and what he could do almost made up for the fact that the world around him was ending.

XxX

He was walking along an old freeway that had been cut through a mountainside. The sheer rock face on his right had crumbled a bit into the roadway, a largish boulder having cheekily knocked aside a yellow road sign that said “Watch Out For Falling Rock.” He had just sidestepped around an abandoned old Datsun when the feeling came over him.

He’d felt it before, but at the time he was too young to make sense of what it meant. He’d been standing on the beach of an ocean or a really big lake. He was five or six years old, on vacation with his parents back when they did things like that, and the beach underfoot was mealy with sand. But something about the sand had been different. He remembered thinking it wasn’t the right color, swirled as it was with black grit. And he felt odd somehow — he felt a kind of summoning. Now, as he stood before the low ledge of rock, he had the same feeling as he had on that beach. He put his hand out and touched the escarpment — there was a layer of strata within it that seemed to… it was hard to explain, but he could feel it shiver, responding to him. He put a finger to it, the darkest line in the rock, like the dark swirls of grit on that beach, and it — the whole thin layer of the earth — moved, as if it were drifting toward him.

He took a step back, then a few more, an idea forming in his mind. He put his hand up, like he did when he was calling an object toward himself or like when he used to make his stuffies dance in the air above his bed, and then — he called to it. He summoned that single layer of bedrock from the cliffside, and it came to him. It shot out of the falaise, the whole hillside shivering in its wake, and stopped in front of his hand, a near metric ton of black earth swirling like plasma in the air, as obediently at his command as the most well trained hound. And then, just to see if he could, he sent it back from whence it came, back into the cliffside strata, where it resettled like Excalibur returned to the rock, the only thing left behind a hazy layer of dust which settled back onto the earth, lightly, gently.

The boy walked on.

Chapter 15: The Visitor

Chapter Text

He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped thinking of them as strangers. It was a slow, incremental process, he suspected. And now, slowly, weirdly, he’d begun thinking of them — just to himself, in his own head — as “my parents.” And again, it felt weird, but good.

What didn’t feel good was everything else. When they’d gotten back to the cabin – the sweet relief of crossing the ridge and heading down into the valley was magnitudinal – but he’d needed Mulder’s help just getting into the house, and he’d proceeded to sleep for fourteen hours straight.

Now, he felt a little more human, but weak. Really weak. He’d gotten mono in third grade and had been laid up in bed for two straight weeks and had had only half-days of school for the month after that. His powers had suffered then, too, and that was what this felt like. When he woke up, he tried using his mind to open up the bedroom door – normally a simple, easy thing – and it wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t so much as tilt the door handle.

And so he used his hand like a normal person and shuffled into the kitchen, dropping heavily into one of the kitchen chairs. The room was warm and brightly cheerful – Scully had managed to rig up a small additional solar panel that could run the lights for a couple hours, or the oven for twenty minutes. They hadn’t had much use for the oven – though that might change now that they’d resupplied – but walking into a room with electric lights on had the artificial and probably psychological effect of making everything seem okay. At least for a bit.

“Good morning,” Scully said, her voice coming from the direction of the living area. She was sitting in one of the chairs, sewing closed a tear in one of the horse blankets. When he sat, she set down the sewing and rose, coming into the kitchen and giving him an assessing look.

“How are you feeling?”

“A little better,” he said – not a total lie.

She sighed and reached out a hand as if to touch him, hesitated for a moment and then pressed her hand to his forehead to check for a fever. Then she proceeded to thread her fingers through the overgrown hair that flopped onto his forehead. He sighed himself, and felt like leaning into her touch, like that farm dog Tisdale, overly eager for human contact. He closed his eyes instead and tried to enjoy it.

“You need a haircut,” she said after a few moments, letting her hand drop. He felt a pang of loss and looked up at her.

“Do you want to cut it for me?” he tried not to sound too eager.

She laughed, a bright sound that half delighted him.

“You know I cut Mulder’s, right?” she said, “if you think you can stomach it looking like his, I’d be happy to give you a trim.”

“Where is Mulder?” William asked, realizing that he hadn’t seen him.

“He took Molly out to check out the other side of the valley. She’s like you, she seems to sense the ships before they come. He wanted to be sure those scouting ships that came to Marlo’s weren’t lurking anywhere nearby.”

“Oh,” William said, not realizing they didn’t know, “the ships won’t come here. They can’t.”

Scully looked at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

William co*cked his head to the side, trying to figure out how to explain it to her.

“Have you ever seen ships here?”

“Come to think of it,” she said, her head going back in realization, “no.”

“Do you know why?”

“I think you’re about to tell me it’s not dumb luck.”

“It’s not,” he went on. “You know how I told you that this valley, and especially this area around the lake feels ‘shielded?’”

She nodded.

“There’s something in the ground – I don’t know what it’s called – but the ships, and some of the aliens – won’t come near it.”

Scully lowered herself slowly into one of the other chairs.

“Something in the ground?” she asked.

He nodded at her, and she sat for a moment thinking.

“Is it a kind of rock?”

He nodded again, impressed at her ability to make connections.

“How do you know the ships, and some of these aliens – you say just some?” Another nod. “How do you know they won’t come near it?”

“I’ve seen it,” he answered, “and I – I can control it.”

“You can control the rock?”

“It’s one of my gifts. It’s… it’s almost like it’s a part of me. I can feel it when I’m around it. And the ships, and some of the aliens – the ones who look like us – they won’t come near it. I’ve… I’ve killed one of them before. With the rock.”

Scully reached out and grabbed his hand, a maternal, comforting gesture. She squeezed it.

“Magnetite,” she said.

“What?”

“The rock. It’s called magnetite.”

He blinked. It was weird finally putting a name to it.

“You know it?” he asked, sitting up, feeling eager.

“I know of it,” she said, “Mulder and I encountered it years ago… We’ve seen what it can do. You can control it?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. She actually smiled at him when they were talking about his powers. She seemed pleased. “William, that’s incredible.”

He smiled back, feeling lighter than air.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” he said.

She squeezed his hand. “Can I make you some breakfast?”

“Breakfast and then a haircut?” he hedged.

She smiled at him again. “Deal.”

XxX

She shook out an old sheet, a palimpsest for a salon apron, and set it on his shoulders, around his neck, securing it there with an old chip clip. He’d taken a shower and felt better for it, less wobbly and infirm. After so long on the road by himself it felt self-indulgent to be fussed over, but he still let himself enjoy it.

“How short do you want it?” she asked. She herself had her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, wisps of it framing her delicate face. Sometimes she didn’t look old enough to be his mom.

“Short,” he said, then turned to look up at her, “I mean, I still want hair when you’re done, but… short on the sides and longer on the top?”

“High and tight?”

“I guess.”

She leaned back, giving him an assessing look.

“I can do that.”

They had pulled one of the chairs a little bit away from the kitchen table, directly under the shining light bulb. She had a plastic comb and an old pair of shears they’d found in the barn and had sharpened with a whet stone.

She moved behind him and began combing his hair slowly, gently working out some small tangles. It felt blissful. Finally, she began cutting, playing the part of a hairdresser, asking him about himself, his childhood, his favorite music and movies.

It was easier to talk to her this way, her moving around behind him, him looking vacantly at the floor as pieces of red hair drifted down around his feet to the floor — not that she was hard to talk to – but Mulder made it easy, like a friend or a big brother… maybe like a dad.

The contact, even just of her hands on his head or brushing hair off of his neck was a balm to his soul. She was finishing up, combing out the last bits and looking closely at her work when there was a knock at the cabin door.

Both he and Scully momentarily startled, then relaxed. Mulder would more than occasionally knock on the door when coming in from being out with the horses. He likely had killed some game while out with Molly and was attempting to bring it in with his hands full, or was a mess from skinning and gutting it – Scully would usually swing the door open for him and he’d breeze in, heading straight for the shower.

“That must be your dad,” Scully said, setting down the shears and comb and running her fingers through the hair on either side of his ears to make sure they were even. She nodded at her handiwork, and William was eager to take a look in the little bathroom mirror. He’d cut his own hair on the road and it had always looked awful.

“He could probably use a trim too,” she said, rubbing her hands together to try to get the hair off and moving towards the door. She swung it open distractedly and was turning back toward William when a strange voice said:

“Greetings. I have come to bring you tidings of great joy.”

Scully whirled around where she stood and stared at the little man who stood in the doorway in shock. William felt a dump of adrenaline hit his bloodstream.

His mother cast about instantly for a weapon – they usually kept the rifle by the door, but Mulder must have taken it when he went out that morning. William knew there was a handgun in the nightstand in Mulder and Scully’s bedroom, and he watched as Scully eyed the bedroom doorway, no doubt calculating how quickly she could get to it. Then the man produced a gun of his own, holding it steadily only a few feet from Scully’s sternum.

“May I come in?” the gunman asked politely.

Scully took a step back and the man stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him. He was small and wiry, with thick dark hair that sat above wide brown eyes. His nose was long and crooked and he was dressed in various layers of coarse brown fabric (like a Jedi, William thought), with an odd necklace hanging on a silver chain which had a thick triangle soldered to the back of a crucifix – the tiny worn Jesus upon it looking as thin and haggard as the man himself. He smiled at them even while he had a weapon trained on them, dream-like and serene. William wasn’t sure if he had ever seen anything so frightening.

“As I mentioned, I bring you tidings of great joy.”

“We’re stocked up on joy,” Scully said glibly, edging her way toward the countertop to her right. They kept the knives in the drawer closest to her.

The man raised the gun incrementally higher.

“I ask that you stop moving, ma’am,” he said, “if you would please take a seat at the table next to your son? A fine looking young man,” he finished, swinging his gaze toward William.

William had moved his hand up slowly under the sheet that was still wrapped around his neck, which fortunately had the effect of shielding what he was doing, though he paused when the man looked at him. The second the man turned his attention back to Scully, William sent a quick burst of instruction through the air and summoned the man’s gun with his mind.

Nothing happened. A twinge of nausea nestled itself in William’s stomach.

Resigned, Scully moved toward the kitchen table, careful not to make any sudden moves. She lowered herself down in the seat next to William.

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice like solid ice.

“I’ve come to help guide the three of you to Ascension. Tell me, where is the Father?”

“Not here.”

“That’s obvious,” the man said, “when will he return?”

“It’s difficult to say,” Scully said, her voice as clipped as a neatly trimmed sail.

“Well,” the man said, “we have all the time in the world to wait for him, don’t we?”

At this he moved into the room, leaving the cabin door open. He kept the gun trained on Scully.

“May I sit?” he asked.

She made a silently sarcastic ‘help yourself’ gesture.

With practiced dignity, the man smoothed out his robes and sat at the third seat, tilting his body so that he could watch both Scully and William as well as the door.

William looked at him, his gaunt frame and odd clothes. He was a curious man and though he was frightening, he made William curious too.

“What’s your name?” he asked him.

“Ezekiel,” the man said, his smile widening. “And what’s yours?”

“William,” he said, darting his eyes to his mother, who was watching the conversation between them with intent concern.

“Ah, a fine name. Not biblical, but ancient. It means ‘with gilded helmet.’ Did you know?”

William shook his head.

Ezekiel leaned back comfortably. “Yes. ‘With gilded helmet.’ Like a warrior. Are you a warrior, son?”

William remained silent.

“Would you like to be? Once you Ascend, you could be one of the Gods’ greatest warriors.”

“Enough!” Scully said, slamming her hand on the table.

Ezekiel remained calm and steady, turning his gaze slowly toward her.

“Peace, Mother,” he said, for the first time a slight warning note in his voice.

William could tell that Scully didn’t want him to engage with the man, but he couldn’t help his curiosity.

“What’s ‘Ascension?’”

“Ah,” Ezekiel said, smiling once again, “it’s when we’re called to Heaven by the Gods. Brought up into the ships to serve our divine purpose.”

“And what do you think our divine purpose is?” Scully said, her cheeks red with barely concealed rage. William could feel it coming off of her in waves.

“Only the Gods really know,” Ezekiel said calmly, “Mine is but to see to your Ascension, so that I might Ascend myself.”

“Why us?”

“Why not you? All should endeavor to Ascension. It’s how we’ll all be saved.”

Scully stared daggers at the man, refusing to answer his question. Finally Ezekiel tilted his head to the side. “Are you familiar with the New Holy Trinity?”

William watched as Scully swallowed with difficulty.

“I’m familiar with the old Holy Trinity,” she said, a slight waver in her voice.

“Ah,” the man said happily. “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are the same, but for a new time. A new world.”

“We’re not what you’re looking for,” Scully said, “and we have no desire to Ascend,” the last word she said laced with derision. “Leave.”

“I’m afraid that’s not for you or me to decide. Only the Gods can do that. And I shall take you to them. Do not be afraid, Mother. Be joyful.”

At that moment, William heard a quiet scuff just outside the cabin through the open door. Both Ezekiel and Scully whipped their heads around to look in that direction, and Ezekiel stood, raising his weapon.

Mulder’s shadow filled the doorway. “Scully?” he said, his voice all questioning concern.

Scully moved like a flash. Faster even than William could have summoned something from across the room, Scully lashed out at Ezekiel, bringing her hand down hard on the arm that held the gun. The man grunted and the gun clattered to the floor. William launched himself at it just as Mulder stepped into the cabin, the old, big rifle already raised up over his head. He sent it crashing down onto Ezekiel’s skull, and the man crumpled to the floor with a sickening thud.

William stood, breathing hard, holding onto the man’s pistol. Scully turned to him and held out her hand.

“Hand it here, Will,” she said, and he passed it over without a word.

“Looks like I missed some excitement,” Mulder said, turning and setting the rifle on top of the counter before kneeling down to get a better look at the man he’d clobbered.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

“Ezekiel. He came to the door,” William said dumbly, a post adrenaline haze making him feel a little shaky.

“This is what I get for putting off hanging up that No Solicitors sign,” Mulder said, “he trying to sell us insurance?”

Scully huffed a laugh that was half a sigh and then stumbled forward and fell into Mulder’s arms, the look of relief on her face so acute that William’s stomach did a little flip. He swallowed thickly, watching them. And then, after a second’s hesitation, he moved forward as well, stepping over Ezekiel’s body and tucked himself into Mulder’s other side. He felt his father’s hand come around his shoulders and pull him in tight.

“It’s okay,” Mulder whispered after a moment, “we’re okay.”

XxX

“I wish we had cuffs,” Mulder said, dragging the man’s prone feet through the cabin’s doorway and out into the weed-filled yard. Ezekiel’s head thumped loudly on the rough-hewn step that separated the cabin from the grass, and Scully hissed.

“Mulder, watch his head,” she scolded.

William came to stand in the doorway, watching.

“Forgive me, but I’m not terribly concerned about his well being, Scully.” Mulder responded, giving the man’s legs one more yank and then dropping them, his limp body coming to rest dotted on either side by the bright heads of the season’s first dandelion.

Scully looked at the wiry man assessingly. “We’ve got rope,” she finally said.

“Rope it is,” Mulder said, and turned toward the barn to go get it.

When he came back, he co*cked his head to look at Ezekiel, shifting the rope back and forth between his hands.

“I’m trying to remember my knots,” he said.

“Give it here,” said Scully, and he handed it over without a word. “Flip him for me.”

Mulder obliged and Scully set about tying the man’s hands and feet together. She looked at her work with a critical eye and then, seemingly satisfied, took a step back.

“Should we bring him inside?” Mulder asked, to which Scully shuddered. William felt the same way.

“Hell no,” Scully said and then looked up at the darkening sky. “Let’s move him into the barn, though. It’s going to get cold tonight.” Mulder looked like he was about to protest, but said nothing, stepping forward and grabbing the man under the shoulders.

William stepped forward. “Do you want me to help?” he asked.

“No,” Scully said emphatically, “I want you to save your strength. Go inside. Maybe you can start boiling some water for the cedar tisane?”

He nodded, happy to have a job, and ducked back into the cabin. He swept up his shorn locks, finally pulling the sheet up and off of his shoulders. His parents came in a few minutes later, and Mulder shut the door behind them. He started to step away, and then, as though thinking better of it, turned back to the door and threw the lock.

William poured them each a tisane and they all sat down around the kitchen table, quietly sipping for a few long minutes. William noticed a spot of blood on the linoleum by Mulder’s shoe. It smeared grotesquely when he moved his foot.

“What did he want?” Mulder finally asked. “Did he say? Was he after food? Shelter? Did he try to… hurt you?”

Scully shook her head.

“The robes,” she said, “did you see them? He was one of those new religious types. Worshiping the aliens as Gods. Said he wanted to help us ‘Ascend.’”

“Ascend?” Mulder asked.

“I think he meant getting pulled up into the ships,” William offered. He’d seen it happen several times while he journeyed north.

“Jesus,” Mulder said, “why?”

“ Jesus ,” Scully said pointedly, in explanation. “It sounded like he wanted the aliens to ascertain whether we were the New Holy Trinity.”

Mulder looked at Scully a long minute, and William could tell that unspoken communication was happening between them, but couldn’t tell what it was. Eventually Mulder simply said:

“sh*t.”

“Yeah,” Scully said, agreeing, “sh*t.”

Mulder leaned back and ran a hand over his face, the scrape of his stubble sounding loud in the quiet of the little kitchen.

“Well,” he sighed, “we should probably go try to wake him up. Talk to him.”

Scully nodded and stood, and they moved for the door. After a moment’s hesitation, William stood and followed them out, not keen on being left in the house alone.

The barn out in back of the cabin had clearly once been used as a combination garage/storage shed, probably big enough to house the boat that sat on a trailer underneath a shredded, tatty blue tarp, pulled off under one of the big hemlocks. They’d done a good job converting it to a barn, considering the limited equipment they had, William thought. The horses had a sizeable fenced in paddock on the western side of the building, and once you went inside, they’d installed an upper loft on which they kept bales and bales of hay for the winter. There wasn’t much left this time of year, but the horses were fed and happy.

Mulder opened the creaking side door, pushing his way into the dark, musty space. He pulled up short, Scully and William filing in closely behind him. Scully made a small, shocked sound. About ten feet away at the base of one of the support poles, sat two unbound lengths of rope, sheared straight through in two places.

Ezekiel was gone.

They made their way quietly down the empty street, perpendicular to where the craft rested on Bloor. The block, the entire goddamn city, Scully thought, was shrouded in an eerie haze of kenopsia, and their quiet footsteps seemed to clatter booming echoes off the surrounding buildings.

She felt a bit too much like Princess Leia even thinking it, but: she had a bad feeling about this. She still wasn’t entirely sure why Mulder had agreed to it, why he’d helped to concoct the plan. But even after he’d discovered what happened to his sister, she knew a small part of him was always searching, and the loss of Rebecca and Jordan had hit him hard.

They were almost to the intersection when Wheaton pulled up, quietly beckoning them all to come closer. They pulled in like a sports team huddling up. Delilah, Jones and Terrence had stayed back at where they’d run surveillance the day before, too nervous to be part of the expedition.

“Everyone clear on the plan?” Wheaton said, bouncing on his toes, entirely too eager for Scully’s comfort. Beside him, Smith nodded intensely, MacDougal on his other side, shooting a look to Mulder before saying a quiet “Yes.”

“Agents Mulder and Scully in first. Smith and I will help them clear each room.”

“We don’t know that there will even be rooms,” Scully mumbled, but Wheaton kept talking.

“MacDougal outside with the rifle. You’re serving as backup and should fire twice in the air to signal if anyone is coming in behind us. Once we’re inside and the rooms are all clear, we start looking around.”

“What are we looking for? You think there will be spy plans written in English just sitting around an alien spacecraft?” Mulder shot her a look, but she was nervous and testy.

“Anything. Maybe we’ll find people,” Wheaton said, unnecessarily co*cking one of his pistols. Christ, the guy was a self-inflicted gunshot waiting to happen. “People they’ve abducted. I’ve lost people to these ships. Have you?”

Scully looked to the side, for the first time feeling a little chagrined.

“Yeah,” Smith said, suddenly getting more keyed up, “maybe we can find our people. Liberate ‘em!”

“Exactly,” Wheaton said. “This ship right here is an amazing opportunity. We can’t waste it.”

Everyone but Scully nodded.

“All right,” Wheaton said, “MacDougal, you want to set up over there by that tree? Cover us on the way in?” MacDougal nodded and trotted off to where Wheaton had indicated. Once he was in position, Wheaton co*cked his weapon. Again. “Let’s roll,” he said. Wheaton nodded at Mulder, who, on a final reluctant nod from Scully, led the way, his Sig out in front of him.

They had had the ship under surveillance for more than twenty four hours and hadn’t noticed the slightest bit of activity. Nevertheless, as they approached the opening on the underside of the craft, Scully couldn’t help but miss the feeling of Kevlar and body armor, the feeling of fellow highly-trained agents having her six as they executed a well choreographed maneuver they’d all run so many times at Quantico that it felt like second nature. As it was, the only person she felt she could really rely on was Mulder, the two men behind her playacting as Rambo, more liabilities than anything else.

Mulder got to the opening and silently called for halt, crouching down and peering into the dark murk as best he could. He pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket and shined it inside. Scully followed the beam with her eyes – it barely cut through the dark. Mulder turned to her and she gave him a nod, putting a hand on his shoulder with her Sig held at low ready. They entered.

The ship itself was quiet, the entrance more of a corridor than anything else, the ceiling, walls and floors made of a kind of soft metal that seemed to absorb sound and light. She swept the area clear and could hear Smith and Wesson (Wheaton, she had to remind herself) coming in behind them, breathing hard and loud. Mulder held up another hand and then indicated to Scully where he was planning to go next.

Though the ship didn’t hum with any kind of power, once they passed a small rounded corner there seemed to be a low-grade glow that lit the area just enough to see. They turned the corner into another area and found what looked like a dental chair in one corner of the room and a flat table on the other, crossed with patterns that made no sense to a human eye. She saw Mulder give an involuntary shudder. He took a breath and they cleared the room, rounding another corner into a different area. Here there was a raised dais with what might have been a console across the top, the metal of the console darker than other parts of the ship. Both ends of the console ran into the floor, and they had to peer around both to make sure the area was empty. They cleared this room as well.

The corridor seemed to always be rounding off and to the right, and they slowly and quietly cleared room after room until they found themselves back at the craft’s opening, the grungy sunlight warming the asphalt of Bloor Street.

Mulder lowered his weapon. “I think we’re clear,” he said. Then he crouched down through the opening and signaled to MacDougal. He turned back to the group. “Well?” he asked, “what’s next?”

Wheaton holstered his weapon. “I want to go look around. Smith, you coming?”

Smith nodded, but kept his gun in his hand, tapping it in a light rhythm against the side of his leg.

“I guess it can’t hurt,” Mulder said, and she reluctantly agreed, following Mulder, who went in the opposite direction of Smith and Wesson (Wheaton).

“The ship seems pretty spartan,” she said as they cautiously walked through the space, “do you think they stripped it?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder said, stopping at the entrance to the room with the dental-like chair and table. He gave it a long look and kept walking. They found themselves in the console room, and Mulder stepped up onto the dais, running his hands along the dark metal.

And then, muffled quieter than she ever would have expected, two shots rang out, the timing further apart than would be normal for a handgun – they were the warning blasts from MacDougal. Both Mulder and Scully whipped their guns up and spun, hustling out the room and into the corridor where they nearly collided with a Faceless alien, who stood, tall and silent, ‘looking’ at them through skin-covered and sutured sightless eyes. Mulder had his gun drawn on the alien in a flash.

“Scully get behind me,” he hissed.

“Like hell,” she said, moving to his flank.

“Smith!” Mulder yelled out, not taking his eyes off the alien in front of them, who still stood, totally unmoving. “Wheaton!”

There was no answering call from their two compatriots, and Scully took another step to the side so she’d be better able to cover Mulder.

Then, a gunshot rang out from behind the Faceless alien, and the back of his neck exploded, which sent him forward on a jolt, crumpling to the floor in front of them. The back of his neck hissed with a violent green bubbling, and Scully reached out to grab Mulder, but nothing happened – no sting of toxicity, no agonizing pain. She had to struggle to remember if she knew that the Faceless men’s blood was not corrosive, not like their shape-shifting counterparts.

“Hey!” called out a voice from where the shot had come, and Wheaton shuffled into view, his pistol held out in front of him at a surprisingly appropriate and safe at-ready angle. “You guys okay?”

Mulder turned from the pile of goo that had once been a Faceless man and looked over at Wheaton.

“Where’s Smith?” Mulder asked.

“We got separated,” Wheaton said, looking down at the noxious-looking puddle. “Jesus.”

“We need to find him,” Mulder said, raising his weapon again, “there may be more of them.”

“Right,” said Wheaton, “I’ll be right behind Scully.”

As a unit, they moved back the way they’d come, guns at the ready, hearts pounding. Scully could smell the cortisol sweat wafting from all of them, muscles tense as a tight drum. When they got to the dental chair room, Mulder swept it and was about to move on, when Scully noticed something just behind the big table opposite the chair.

“Mulder, wait,” she said, and moved into the room, actually relieved to feel Wheaton tight on her heels.

“On me,” Scully said, and she felt Wheaton put his hand on her shoulder, just like they’d showed him.

They moved at a slow half crouch until Scully saw the object that had caught her eye from the doorway, the upturned sole of someone’s boot. She moved wide and out and finally was able to get a look at the person lying prone on the floor behind the table. Not prone, she found, but dead, a gaping hole in his forehead. It was Wheaton.

With a feeling like spiders crawling over the whole of her skin, she turned slowly to the man who still had a hand on her shoulder, a gun in his hand. Wheaton stared back, giving her a slow smile.

“MULDER!” she shouted, just as the shape-shifting alien who wore Wheaton’s face grabbed her and knocked the Sig from her hands, spinning her until he had her in a headlock, his weapon pointed at Mulder who had moved into the room on Scully’s desperate shout.

“Mulder, it’s a shapeshifter,” she husked out, as the alien’s grip tightened around her neck.

His eyes wide, Mulder didn’t hesitate, firing two rounds directly over her shoulder and into the shape-shifter's neck. Noxious green blood flew out, spattering into the wall behind her, and she instantly felt the fumes, toxic and choking. She gasped for breath. Her eyes burned, and she dove away from the alien and pushed Mulder out into the corridor.

“Scully!” he gasped, but she proceeded to rush past him blindly, tearing around the corner of the ship toward where she thought the entrance was, desperate to get away, scared senseless. She heard a shout and blew past MacDougal, then heard another shout and several gunshots. Her eyes swelling shut, she saw a blaze of sunshine before her and tore out of the ship and on down the street.

She wouldn’t have looked back if she could.

Chapter 16: The Void

Chapter Text

Mulder moved forward and picked up the rope, holding up one of the sheared ends. He swore harshly.

“He cut it,” he said, dropping the rope to the floor and standing, and then making his way quickly for the door. William stepped out of his way and Scully was right on his heels, scanning the trees once they were outside for any sign of the zealot. The sun was getting low, it would be dark soon. She felt the cold edge of dread.

“sh*t,” she said, and William ducked out from the dark of the barn, looking nervous and unsure. His haircut made him look older, but his posture was that of a scared kid. She walked over to him and rubbed her hand up and down his upper arm. From the paddock, the three horses made tense noises and Gypsy trotted along the fenceline, agitated. She connected eyes with Mulder.

“Where do you think he went?” Mulder asked her.

“For reinforcements,” she said, knowing as soon as the words were out of her mouth that she was right.

Mulder clenched his jaw and spun around again slowly – night was already falling between the trees.

“Come on,” Scully said, rubbing William’s arm again briskly, “let’s get inside.”

They trudged back to the house, looking over their shoulders uncomfortably. Usually the yard and surrounding trees were calm and welcoming, but now they looked sinister, the shadows flickering with malice and dark intent.

When they walked in and closed the door, the lights above them flickered and died. Scully heard William inhale sharply.

“It’s okay,” she said, “it’s just the solar running out.”

Mulder shuffled around the kitchen and a moment later he had a kerosene lamp lit and hissing. He looked to the kitchen table where Ezekiel himself had sat and then turned off toward the living room, setting the lamp on the coffee table and lowering himself into one of the wingback chairs. Will sat on the couch and Scully sat next to him. She could tell he was jittery and ill at ease – he still looked weak and spent. He would never recover at all if he didn’t get some decent, stress-free rest.

Mulder huffed out a sigh, leaning back, running a hand over his eyes.

“We’re going to have to leave here,” he said, looking tense and resigned to the idea.

“Leave?” William said.

“Yes,” Mulder said, looking around the room with a look of melancholy. “They’re coming for us, Will. It’s only a matter of time.”

William swallowed audibly.

“A matter of some time,” Scully said, reaching out to touch her son reassuringly. “Even if Ezekiel has a horse nearby, it’ll take him a while to get out of the valley and find backup.”

“You mean if backup isn’t already out there just beyond the tree line?” Mulder said testily.

William closed his eyes and breathed out a breath slowly.

“There’s no one out there,” he said after a moment. “Not close.”

“Are your powers coming back?” Scully asked.

William held up a hand and the kerosene lamp slid a couple of inches toward where he sat on the couch before it petered out, tilting drunkenly to the side before gravity righted it still. His hand fell and he bent his head, looking winded.

“Barely,” he said.

“You need rest,” she said, and put a hand on his knee. She turned to Mulder. “He needs rest, Mulder. Good rest. He’s not going to recover on the road.”

Mulder pressed his lips together.

“How much time do you think?”

Scully rubbed William’s back. She couldn’t keep her hands to herself, but William didn’t seem to mind. He was sagging on the couch, leaning towards her.

“Let’s see how we’re all doing in the morning,” she said confidently, acting as though they had all the time in the world. “Why don’t you go to bed, William,” she said, “we’ll secure the house and do a little prep.”

William nodded groggily, acquiescing. He shuffled off to the bathroom and closed himself inside.

“How much time, Scully?” Mulder asked as soon as the door was closed, his voice quiet and tense.

“They didn’t cover depletion of supernatural powers in med school Mulder, I don’t know,” she hissed.

“The sooner we get on the road, the better.”

“The sooner he’s back on his feet the better, Mulder. I don’t even know what’s wrong with him!”

Mulder pointed to the lantern. “It looks like his powers are coming back, at least a little,” he said hopefully.

Scully sighed. She felt like she’d only just gotten her son back, had felt like they’d finally given him a home, fourteen years too late.

Mulder stood and paused as he passed her, reaching out to put a large, warm hand on her shoulder.

“I’m going to start pulling some things together. Clothes and stuff. The moment he's in shape enough to travel, we’ll need to go.”

Scully reached up and touched his hand, silently nodded.

Outside, the wail of a loon swept across the lake and into the room, and for the first time since she arrived at the cabin, she remembered that loon calls were used in horror movies and thrillers, the sound evocative of loneliness and fear in the cultural zeitgeist.

She shivered and rose to lock the door.

Her name was Danielle, she'd said, but nobody called her that.

It was thirteen months out from the invasion and he met her on a freeway overpass one morning as the sun was just cresting the horizon. She had red hair, like him, and was carrying a large backpack and a baseball bat. And like him, she was alone. She was three years his elder and five inches taller and she'd wanted to be a marine biologist before the whole alien invasion thing went down. She liked comic books, but not the same ones as him and had a couple of dogeared romance novels shoved in the bottom of her pack. She'd asked him where he was going, and he'd said simply "north." She'd turned and started walking north too, right next to him, and that was how it started.

XxX

"Are there any Pringles left, Dan?" William asked her.

She nodded, light from the campfire turning her face and hair carmine, like a reveler in a crowd at Holi. She had a mouth full of something that she was chewing and her finger curled over the spine of a novel, holding her place. She tossed him the can of BBQ chips without even looking up and went back to reading.

They'd been traveling together for weeks, and he found that he made much better time with her than he had before without her. Her legs were longer and she walked with purpose and she didn't get distracted like he did.

He had his legs stretched out in front of him, his head resting on his knapsack. He kept trying to put the chips in his mouth back to back so that their curved surface would form a duck's beak, but every time he got them situated just-so, one of the chips would break and crumble onto his chest. They were getting a little stale. He finally just put a stack in his mouth and chewed, shaking the empty cardboard can so that the last few crumby bits inside made it sound like a maraca. When he tired of that, he laid back and looked up at the sky. He still marveled at the wash of stars. Without light pollution the sky looked like a VanGogh painting.

"Can I ask you a question?" Dan eventually said after William had drifted off into a kind of contemplative doze. He turned his head to look at her, licking a bit of salt and MSG from the skin above his lip.

"Sure."

She looked pensive in the firelight and had the book she was reading closed, holding it in between her palms like she was pressing her hands together in prayer.

"Where are we going?"

He thought he'd answered that.

"North."

"No, I know. That's what you said when we met. But you never said where. Or why."

William wasn't sure if he knew. It was just one of those feelings he got, an instinct that was overpowering, that wouldn't quiet in his head until he followed it. But Dan wouldn't understand that, he didn't think. He never used his powers in front of her, except when she wasn't looking or wasn't paying attention. He didn't know what to tell her. He thought about his answer for so long, she spoke again.

"Do you not know?"

He sighed. He didn't know how to answer in a way that would make sense to her, but he did know that he didn't want to lose her. It was lonely on the road and she was a good companion. She knew where to find food, places he never would have thought to look, like the bottom drawers of desks in office buildings or a closed up little stand in the middle of a pinwheel of baseball diamonds. And she wanted to avoid other people, like he did. They'd hide if they saw so much as a dot of movement a mile away. "I don't like men," she said to him once, quick and testy, and something inside of him told him not to ask her why. They never talked about their past or families, either of them. It was their only unwritten rule.

"It's okay if you don't know, Will, I'm not mad."

"Okay," he said.

"It's just that you always seem to know exactly where to go and I've never seen you look at a map. Not once."

He shrugged, feeling nervous.

"Are you one of those weird savants like... like Rain Man?" she asked. "Not that you're weird," she hastened to add.

"Who's Rain Man?" he asked her.

"Never mind," she said after a moment, shaking her head and reopening her book.

Halfway through that night, he was jostled awake by her pressing her back into his own, shoving him a little way off the blanket he was laying on. He looked up at her, startled and confused.

"The fire is out and I'm freezing," she said by way of explanation, and threw her blanket over the top of his, covering them both and balling up a sweatshirt next to his pack to use as a pillow. It was getting colder the further they traveled, and the nights had gotten downright frigid. "If you try to steal the covers, I'm going to kick you really hard," she finished.

They slept together that way from them on, back to back, and Will started to wonder what falling in love felt like, though he never really figured it out.

XxX

He'd rarely been snuck up on. It could happen, but didn’t happen often. He could always kind of sense where people were. He knew if his mom was in the kitchen or the living room when he was closed up in his room. He knew if another student was in the hallway outside of his classroom in the middle of instruction and he knew which student it was. He'd known there was someone walking on the overpass the day he first met Dan, even though his opening salvo was "Oh sorry, I didn't see anybody."

So when the man stepped into the light of their campfire one night, he got one of the biggest frights of his life. They were camping about a mile from an old highway, in a copse of trees with a little clearing just big enough for their fire. The moon was full — so full and bright that everything had shadows, even in the dark. So for a split second he thought he was seeing things. When he tried to sense the man, it was like feeling a void in space. He would eventually learn to perceive those voids, but not until it was far too late.

They had laid down to sleep only a few minutes before, and he felt Dan's body tense behind him, all over, like a human turned to stone. He rolled half over and looked and there was a man standing there in the firelight looking at them both curiously. He was tall, with big shoulders, wearing clothes that didn't make sense -- a business suit, William thought, or an outfit old men wore to church.

The dump of adrenaline he felt at seeing him was paltry compared to the one he got when the man spoke:

"Is your name William? We've been looking for you." Calm and slow, a little quiet, like when you talked to someone in a library.

After her initial bit of frozen shock, Dan leapt to her feet like a shot.

"Who the f*ck are you?" she spat, the words flying out of her mouth so fast they sounded all crammed and garbled together like whothef*ckareyou .

The man completely ignored her, his focus solely on William, who sat up, frightened and unsure what to do.

"His name is Steven motherf*cker, and you need to leave us alone!" Dan said, edging her way to the left, to where her baseball bat was strapped to her backpack. "Dad!" she called out over her shoulder, as though they were at a family campout and their father and just gone out into the woods to pee. "Dad, there's some weird guy at our campfire! Come quick! Bring your gun !"

The Void, as William started thinking of him, continued to stare at him. Not moving, just staring.

Dan was getting steadily closer to her knapsack and baseball bat, and William's synapses began firing, the shock wearing off. He started to slowly get up, figuring he could draw the Void's attention away from her.

"My name is Steven," William said, "like she said." The man's head tilted to the side, like a confused puppy, though he looked anything but soft. Dan had reached her pack and was slowly kneeling down. "Steven DiGornio. You know, like the pizza."

He kept his eyes on the Void, but out of his peripheral vision he saw Dan rise, a glint of firelight shining off the bat for a second like a flashlight winking on and off. She had her eyes trained on the strange man and moved back out of the firelight a bit, creeping incrementally toward him.

"Actually, we might have some pizza. Or something else to eat," Will said, feeling supremely creeped out by it, but now trying to hold the man's attention. "Are you hungry?"

Nothing from the void.

"Here, I'll tell you what," Will said, bending down to reach for his knapsack, "I've got this package of-" at that exact moment, Dan whipped the bat up in the air and ran at the Void full-tilt, screaming like a banshee. Her face was contorted, angry, focused, terrible and beautiful all at once -- she looked like an artist's rendering of Boudica that he'd once seen in a National Geographic.

She brought the bat down viciously on the Void's shoulder, harder than a big league slugger, and William could hear the impact, but when the bat made contact, it bounced off him like it had hit a sequoia. He didn't so much as flinch. What he did do, for the first time, was turn his attention to Dan, who had fallen backwards onto the ground, the clanging reverb of the bat, which had fallen out of Dan's hand, still spiraling out into the air.

The Void, his eyes now trained on Dan, who looked up at him, suddenly small and terrified, bent down and picked up the bat.

And William made a decision. He raised up his hand and called to the bat and it came flying out of the Void's grasp and into his own, so fast that it was a blur until it was clutched securely in his hand. He felt Dan's terrified gaze slide over to him, but he didn't take his eyes off of the Void, who was now looking at him, his lips slowly rising into a ghastly smile.

"William," the Void said, "it is you."

His viscera turned to liquid, and he looked over at Dan.

"Danielle," he said, trying to sound calm and steady, " run !"

Dan didn't need any more encouragement than that, and she turned from the fire and took off, tearing ass off to the east.

"What do you want?" William said, his voice sounding tremulous and scared, like a baby's.

"You," the Void said.

Without knowing what else to do, William looked at the bat in his hand and then tore off after Dan, running as fast as he ever had in his life.

XxX

He caught up with her after probably a mile, when he found her leaning over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. He skidded to a halt next to her. She jumped in fright, and then was instantly relieved when she saw it was him.

"Jesus!" she said, and then scanned the woods behind him. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," he said, quite winded himself. Nevertheless, he stood and grabbed her hand.

"Come on, we've got to keep going."

They ran off through an open grove of trees and then half-slid down a steep embankment, the leaf strata slippery under their feet. Once they regained their balance, they stopped for a moment, listening for the steps of a pursuer. The moonlight through the trees around them was filtered, but still bright, and William could see Dan's face, her eyes looking at him warily.

The woods around them were silent.

"Will what was that? With the baseball bat. How did you do that?"

He felt his insides wither. "I'm sorry," he said, ashamed. "It's something I can... I'm sorry. Please don't be scared of me." He dropped her hand and looked away, feeling tears creeping into the corners of his eyes, but she grabbed his arm and made him look at her.

"No," she said, "I am scared. I'm scared of that guy, and I'm scared of... Everything scares me," she said. "Everything. But not you." After a brief hesitation, she leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek.

He was dizzy with relief, but then they heard a noise from the hill above them. Dan's hand shot out and grabbed his own. Then William felt a pull behind his sternum.

"This way," he said, recognizing the feel of the rending force, and he pulled her after him, turning southwest. They shot out of the line of trees and onto the crumbling pavement of an old rest stop, which was wreathed on two sides by the woods they had come out of and bordered on another by a rocky escarpment. The building sat low to the ground, dim. A small kiosk outside its entrance still held faded tourism pamphlets which rustled in the light breeze.

"Should we try to hide inside?" Dan whispered, her breathing quick and shallow.

"No," he said, "but maybe we can hide from him on the far side of the building." He pulled her along, heading for the side of the rest stop that was closest to the rocky ridge. When they got alongside the building, they flattened themselves to the wall and tried to listen to the night around them, the roar of blood through their ears making it difficult to hear.

The night was quiet.

After a few minutes, Dan turned her head incrementally to look at him.

"Do you know him?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

William shook his head.

"How did he know you?"

He just looked at her silently, still trying to listen to the night.

"Is it about the bat thing?" she asked.

"Dan," he whispered, more loudly than he intended, but he was scared and annoyed by her questions and he was just trying to listen. He reached out with his mind, trying to focus on the void-feeling of the man, but he couldn't get a handle on it. Then they heard a branch snap from their left.

"sh*t," he whispered, and hedged himself toward the corner of the building and peaked around the side, squeezing the bat that was still in his hand. He wasn't sure if it would do any good considering what had happened when Dan hit the guy, but it was the only weapon they had. He didn't see anything. He squinted hard in the dark, but there was nothing.

He turned back to his friend.

"I don't think-" he started to whisper, but Dan wasn't there. He wheeled around, and then… there -- backing slowly away from the building stood the Void, pulling Dan along backward with him, his arm tightly around her neck. She had both her hands up around his arm near her chin, pulling desperately down, her feet fighting for purchase on the ground, sneakers slipping through the wet, weedy grass. The moon shone on them full and Will could see the whites of her eyes, terrified and pleading.

"Stop!" he called out.

The Void stopped moving backwards, but didn't loosen his grip on Dan at all.

"What do you want?" William’s voice cracked, and Dan's feet still churned against the slick ground, trying impotently to get away. The Void pulled up harder on her neck and her feet lifted half off the ground and William could hear a choking sound coming from her.

"You," the Void said. "I need you to come with me."

William felt a dull pulse in his chest, a tingling in his fingers. The rock of the ridge was calling to him, whispering something only he could hear. The Void winced, his expression changing for the first time, and he glanced over his shoulder at the escarpment.

"Okay," William said, getting an idea. The rock had an idea, too. He started to move off away from the building, and the Void turned with him. He took slow, small steps, trying to get the Void directly between him and the rocky ledge. "Okay, but you have to let my friend go."

"We don't need her," the Void said, and Dan made another desperate choking sound.

"Wait!" William called out, putting up the hand not holding onto the bat, desperate, "Stop! You're hurting her."

"We don't need her," the Void said again. Another wince, and another look behind him at the stony ledge.

"I'll come with you,” William said, quickly, still holding out his arm straight out, "if you let her go, I'll come with you."

The Void seemed to consider that for a moment, and that's when William struck. He called to the rock that was in the ridge now directly behind the Void, and it flew out in a thunderous fulmination, sharp shards of dark rock careening through the air and into the back of the Void, who surged up with a shocked expression. William heard a snap and screamed, running forward, and as he ran he watched as the Void -- the whole of him -- turned to a silvery human-shaped statue and then burst -- every atom of the man -- into dust. Dan slumped limply to the ground.

William skidded to his knees next to her.

"Dan!" he shouted, "Dan!"

He turned her over. Her head was tilted at an unnatural angle. The Void had snapped her neck. Dan was dead.

Chapter 17: The Friend

Chapter Text

“We were too comfortable, weren’t we?” Scully said into the skin of his chest. Her head was resting on him, the top of her shoulder tucked into his armpit, drawing lazy circles through the hair of his chest. “We got our son back and we started to feel-“ she took a deep shaky breath, and Mulder pulled her in closer to him, their legs scissored together under the blankets. “This always happens to us,” she went on, “An ounce of happiness and the sky falls.”

He shushed her as he would a child, running his nose through the softness of her hair.

“Hey,” he said, pulling his head back to look at her face. “None of that. We’ve got to be optimistic, or at the very least, pragmatic.” He sighed, pulling her in close and leaning down to press a long kiss to her hairline so she didn’t think he was scolding her. “We still have our son. We have supplies, means of transport, our health-“

She flicked her eyes to his dubiously. “Do we?”

“He’s getting his strength back,” he said, “you saw the lantern.”

“I’m scared for him, Mulder. Physiologically, emotionally… you saw what he did to those ships and in turn what it did to him… my god.”

“As long as we’re not scared of him, we can work through the rest.”

They were silent for several long minutes, and Mulder could hear the soft snores of their son through the knotty pine walls. A gaggle of geese flew over the cabin, their honks getting louder as they approached the lake. He had packed up saddle bags as evenly as he could before coming to bed. He wanted to be able to leave at a moment’s notice though they still didn’t know where they’d go. The honking of the geese settled outside and then Mulder heard the distant howl of a wolf that was joined by the rest of the pack.

He would miss this place — safe and tucked away amongst the wilderness. He’d miss the cabin, with its sticky built-in furniture and the lake — the way it smelled in the summer — fresh and ripe and sweet as freshly shucked corn.

Scully sighed heavily.

“What do you make of these religious zealots, Mulder?”

“People will turn to faith in times like these. The harder it gets, the more they want to believe.” Ironic for him to say, he knew. He was being purposely evasive.

“You know what I’m talking about. The ‘New Holy Trinity.’ What Marlo said about the boy who followed a star…”

“Comparative mythology is littered with tales of the monomyth, Scully. Lord Raglan, Otto Rank, Joseph Campbell. Every culture has at least one tale of the hero’s journey. Who's to say one wouldn’t matriculate from the new post-apocalyptic culture? Especially with communication being what it is now? We’re back to purely oral traditions and the pass-it-on-isms of rumor and information, all being conflated by fear and deprivation. It’s a global game of Operator. People are desperate and looking for something to believe in. It’s all co*ckamamie.”

“Whether or not you and I believe it is irrelevant, Mulder. They believe it. And they are very clearly dangerous.”

“Agreed. And that’s why we’re leaving. As soon as goddamn possible. But I’d bet you every settlement has a trio who fit the bill of the ‘New Holy Trinity.’”

“A boy who followed a star. A man who grew crops in a barren field. A… a mother immortal,” she repeated to him. She was still relatively dubious about Bruckman’s prediction, about the thing in New York, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t considered it.

The skin where they were touching was getting hot and sticky, but he didn’t want to move, didn’t want to treat the conversation with anything more than polite disdain. If he pretended that he didn’t think there was anything to it, maybe that could become their reality. That and he didn’t want to stress or scare Scully more than she already was. The fact of the matter was ever since the words from ‘the prophecy’ had come out of Marlo Edgerton’s mouth, he’d been scared sh*tless.

“Vague and open to wild interpretation,” he said, “Like a psychic throwing predictions at the wall to see what sticks.”

“Mulder, I can’t believe you of all people are trying to Scully me,” she said, and he had to laugh, despite his nerves.

“If we worry about it, will the worrying help?” he asked her, pulling his arm away from her and leaning on his elbow to look her in the eye. “Yes, we fit the bill in a creepy way. And if that kook who was here thinks we’re it, then other people are going to, too. But all we can do is leave and not make it easy for them to find us. They’ll move on eventually. Find a new myth, a new story. And in the meantime, I’m not going to waste my energy putting any extra credence into the ramblings of a sect of religious nuts.” He reached out and ran his hand along her cheek. “I will worry about myself, my son, and you. Everyone else can go hang.”

Scully searched his eyes and then surged up and kissed him, the fervor of her concern quickly turning into energy of a different kind. His body responded, and they made hushed and desperate love – perhaps the last in a long while – while the echoes of creatures big and small bounced off the surface of their little protected lake.

When she collapsed, gasping and spent onto the pillows next to him, he ran the back of his hand along his gummy chin and laid down next to her, breathing hard into the skin of her cheek. He hoped William was better in the morning. Fit enough to travel at least.

“Where are we going to go, Mulder?” she asked, panting, the back of her hand resting on her forehead. “Where the hell are we going to go?”

He licked his lips, the briny taste of her still on his tongue.

“Zero,” he breathed into her skin. “Maybe we should try to find Zero.”

The wind sounded like a freight train. If it had been ten degrees cooler, it would have been a blizzard, but as it was, the cold rain was driving hard and it made being outside nothing short of miserable. Mulder was happily whiling away the day inside the house.

From his vantage, reclined on the kelly green couch, he had noticed something in the water, even through the sheets of the blasting downpour. He moved closer to the window and watched.

At first he thought it was a duck, but as it approached, he knew that wasn't quite right. As it got closer to the shore, he recognized it for what it was. A deer. A small buck -- a two pointer, barely worth the rack, but definitely worth the meat.

It was rutting season and the young buck had likely been chased into the lake by a competing male and been forced to swim to the other shore.

Mulder moved into the kitchen and grabbed the rifle from the rack next to the door, checking the mechanism to make sure it was loaded. He cracked the small window above the sink that overlooked the shoreline just as the deer emerged from the lake, water pouring off the beast’s flanks. It gave itself a shake and staggered a few feet over the shore rocks and up onto the overgrown lawn of the cabin, it's sides heaving. It paused there, its head up and alert, its satellite dish ears swiveling. Mulder sighted, then fired. The animal crumpled.

The crack of the rifle was like Hiroshima in the small space, and Scully came staggering out of the bedroom, pulling up a pair of pants, a sidearm in one hand, her ice eyes like wildfire.

Mulder held up a hand.

"There was a buck in the yard," he explained, and she glared at him but lowered her weapon, breathing hard.

"You better have hit it," she said, and he gave her a gesture like the Fonz, at which he could tell she was only mildly amused.

Scully grabbed her pair of Carhartt’s that were hanging near the gun rack and followed Mulder outside. She was in charge of butchering.

They squelched through the overgrown yard and approached the animal cautiously -- once in the early days of survival Mulder had almost been gored by the antlers of an elk that wasn't as dead as they'd thought. Luckily this one had been a clean hit through the skull -- the animal was dead and there would be no buckshot marring any of the precious meat.

Mulder began putting together a makeshift skinning rack from a nearby tree while Scully began the dirty work of field dressing. By the time he turned back to her, she had half the deer's guts out, the bladder and anus tied off and carefully removed so as not to taint the meat. She proceeded to cut the diaphragm away from the deer's chest cavity, then she reached up until she was practically shoulder deep in the animal to grab the esophagus. With her other hand, she carefully slid the knife into the deer's torso and worked her way up into the chest to cut the esophagus just above her other hand. After that cut, she simply pulled the heart and lungs out and with it came the rest of the intestines.

She looked to Mulder. He moved over and grabbed the animal by the back legs and dragged it to his makeshift game rack. Once he'd hoisted it up, the messy business of bleeding it was taken care of by gravity. The rain was wretched, and their jackets were already soaked through.

Scully was at the outdoor hand cranked water pump washing off blood and hair from her arms and hands when he turned to find her.

"How much ice do we have?" she asked.

They cut blocks of ice off the lake when it froze and stored them in the crawl space below the cabin — if the crawl space didn’t flood in the spring, the ice would keep almost all the way through summer and into autumn.

"Not much," he answered.

She made a face.

"We'll have to butcher it tonight, then," she said.

"Yes." It would be a miserable prospect, what with the weather.

From behind the cabin, there came the back-to-back whinnying of both horses, followed by a more distant nails-on-a-chalkboard braying of a mule.

Mulder whipped around to look at Scully.

“Peter, do you think?” he asked her, smiling.

She policed her features, but Mulder could see the ghost of a smile on her cheek. She reached for the rifle and turned toward the path that led toward the cabin from the east.

“Let’s hope,” she said.

It was Peter, Mulder was delighted to see. Picking its way through the overgrown brambles of the path came a percheron, a dappled gray draft horse, almost twenty hands high. Perched atop the massive beast was a man who matched the horse in size if not strength. Peter Carmichael was a trader in Marlo’s cooperative, and the only man Mulder had ever seen lift the woman off her feet like she weighed nothing at all. He reminded Mulder distinctly of Yukon Cornelius from the old claymation Christmas movie, and next to Scully, he looked like a giant, and she a child. He was also the most jovial, kind, generous man Mulder had ever met. An unexpected visit from Peter was a gift.

“Hallo the house!” Peter called when he broke through the clearing. Behind the percheron were two mules on a lead rope, both heavily laden with packs and various implements.

“Hallo the horse!” Mulder called back, and then he trotted out to help Peter with his creatures, swinging open the paddock gate so they could all file in. Pumpkin and Molly whinnied excitedly and one of the mules let out a long, loud bray.

“You’re traveling heavy, friend,” Mulder said as Peter swung his considerable girth off the gray horse’s back.

“I’m packed for new adventures!” Peter said, thumping Mulder on the back so hard that he nearly fell over.

“You look to be packed for a new life,” Scully said, approaching them through the gate and then swinging it closed once all the beasts were inside.

“More right than you know, Dr. Scully,” Peter said, leaning down to drop a fuzzy, fully-bearded kiss onto Scully’s delicate cheek.

Mulder looked at the man curiously as he helped him unload the mules and pull Peter’s baggage into the dry of the barn.

“I’m leaving the cooperative,” Peter said, and both Mulder and Scully looked at him in surprise.

“You’re kidding,” Scully said, running her hands along the percheron’s flank so she could loosen the girth to remove the beast’s saddle. Her head barely reached the horse’s back.

“Let’s get into the dry of the cabin and I’ll tell you all about it, huh?” Peter said, insisting on rubbing down all three of his creatures before he would join them in the house. Scully climbed up into the hay loft to drop down a few more bales for their guests, and Mulder brought in a few more buckets worth of water from the outdoor pump. It would be a tight fit in the barn, but more bodies would warm up the space considerably.

“It is good to see you both,” Peter said as they finally walked toward the cabin, pulling them each into the sides of him in a rough, enthusiastic — if rain-damp — hug. “It has been too long!”

They tumbled into the cabin spraying bits of water everywhere and Mulder threw a few more logs into the stove before they all retired briefly to change into dry clothes. When he emerged from the bedroom, Peter was pulled up close to the stove to warm himself in one of their kitchen chairs, looking like an adult sitting at a child’s desk. Scully was pouring him a hefty mug of her cedar tisane.

“Now what’s this about leaving the cooperative?” Mulder asked, accepting a warm mug from Scully with a silent smile. He sat at the table and Scully joined him, both of them looking at Peter with concern.

“Ah,” said Peter, leaning back in the chair, which gave a concerning creak, “I’ve been feeling antsy for months. It is time for a new adventure. And my contributions to the cooperative are not helping as many people as perhaps yours do.”

Peter was a talented finder, a collector of random things – batteries, kerosene. He’d once found a wheel of parmesan reggiano cheese the size of a kindergartner.

“Peter, you're one of the most valuable traders in the cooperative,” Scully said, looking to Mulder for backup.

“She’s right,” Mulder said shortly, taking a long drink of the tisane – the feeling was coming back into his fingers as they warmed and the burning, tingling sensation was unpleasant.

“That was maybe true once,” Peter said, sighing, “but the pickings are getting slimmer out there, and these days I seem to be contributing less than I take.”

“Where will you go?” Scully asked, the worry in her voice evident.

“Ah,” said Peter, leaning forward eagerly as if he had a secret. “I have heard of a place. North of here. Where a man like me might do well.”

Mulder co*cked his head to the side inquiringly.

“It is said there is a town,” Peter went on, “called Zero, where they are finding new uses for old technology. Did you know I was an engineer? Before?”

Scully shook her head.

“I’d like to go to Zero,” Peter said, sitting back and nodding now more to himself than to Mulder and Scully. “I’d like to see what they’re doing there. It’s said that they’re progressive, democratic and secular. That they have maybe harnessed alien technology as well as some of our own. I would do well in a place like this. I’d like to be able to help.”

Mulder feared that the place Peter was talking of didn’t exist. They’d heard numerous rumors of Xanadu-like places in the years since the invasion, and most of them turned out to be nothing more than hopeful speculation. Not what people had built up in their minds if the places even existed at all.

“What if you stayed here?” Scully said, “and helped us hunt and fish?”

“Ha!” Peter laughed, “you do not need a third wheel here in this little cabin of yours. Certainly not one that would fit a tractor!” He slapped his knee at his own joke and Mulder could feel the impact in his chest.

“Well what can we do for you?” Mulder asked. “We’ll be sorry to see you go. Did you stop here just to say goodbye, or is there something we can help you with?”

“Ah, there is!” Peter said, his grin widening. “I have something for you. And I was hoping Dr. Scully would look over Apollo, Castor and Pollux, make sure they are fit to travel. And me as well,” he added, looking, for the first time Mulder could ever remember, a little embarrassed. “I have a, uh, complaint.”

Scully sat up straight. “I’d be happy to help you,” she said, “and your animals.”

“Wonderful!” Peter said, clapping his paws together, and standing. “I am prepared to bend over and cough!”

Scully’s cheeks colored, but she maintained her composure, standing and putting on a mask of professionalism. “There’s no time like the present,” she said, “Mulder, why don’t you gather some of the veterinary equipment out in the barn while I give Peter a… physical.”

Mulder nodded, happy to have an excuse not to stick around and grabbed a dry coat, heading through the rain to the barn.

XxX

Twenty minutes later, Peter and Scully found him shoveling sh*t out from the stalls. He straightened himself and leaned against the pick.

“All okay?” Mulder asked.

“Peter is cleared for travel,” Scully said with dignity, and Peter reached out to once again slap Mulder on the back.

“The most delicate hands I’ve ever had in delicate places,” Peter laughed. “You are a lucky man, Mr. Mulder.”

Scully looked to the floor of the barn, trying not to laugh, and Peter moved to his baggage.

“In payment, I would like to give you this,” he said, and rummaged around for a moment before pulling out several flat metallic disks, wiring, and a fat plastic case that looked heavy.

“Is that… is that solar equipment?” Scully said, amazed.

“It is,” Peter said, “and I’d be happy to show you how it works. My payment to you for your services and friendship.” Scully looked speechless. “I’ll also help you butcher that buck if you don’t mind sharing some of the meat?”

“God, of course,” Mulder said, reaching forward to shake the big man’s hand. “Thank you, Peter. Thank you.”

Peter leaned back and hooked his thumbs through his big, black suspenders.

“You’re welcome,” he said, “and should you ever need anything – anything at all – I hope you will come see me in Zero.”

Chapter 18: The Church

Chapter Text

Mulder ducked through the copse of trees to where Scully and William were huddled together waiting for him.

“They don’t know where Zero is,” he said, by way of greeting, “but they’d heard of it.”

“Well that’s something,” Scully said.

The horses were dozing under a big fir tree a couple of paces off. Scully glanced toward them and looked to Mulder.

“Should we try to camp here tonight or keep moving?”

Mulder looked over his shoulder at the way he’d come.

“We should keep moving,” he finally said. “They offered me food and shelter, but they think I’m traveling alone.”

Scully nodded and William moved to get up.

They had left the cabin five days before, heading for a series of small settlements to the north and east of Green Lake. Mulder and Scully had been to a couple of them a handful of times, but they weren’t overly familiar with any of the settlers. They had only known them as occasional providers through other traders of the cooperative. Mulder and Scully had no idea where exactly Zero was, and were going to have to depend on asking strangers in order to find their way. They also had no way of knowing which way Ezekiel went – they could only hope it was south. So far there was no sign that they’d been followed.

They got the horses ready and climbed on, asses and backs already complaining about the long days in the saddle. It was going to be an arduous and uncomfortable ride to Zero – a place they weren’t even sure existed. The whole endeavor made Scully nervous.

Emerging from the treeline and into a wide green valley dotted with the spring’s first wildflowers, Scully let Pumpkin slow to a walk so that the horse could grab mouthfuls of the tender grasses as they made their way. She heard Mulder make a horsey snicking sound from behind her, encouraging Gypsy up until he was riding side by side with Scully, William on Molly plodding along several horse lengths behind them.

“How’s he doing?” Mulder asked in a low tone.

“Good I think,” Scully answered, turning to steal a look at their son who sat slumped a bit in the worn brown saddle, looking more bored than anything. He’d recovered his strength, though was still a little hesitant to use his powers.

Mulder nodded. “I have an idea,” he said.

“Okay,” Scully said, hoping she’d like the sound of it.

“We go to the end of the valley today and stop. Let the horses graze here tonight and through the morning. We can all rest up a little bit. Then tomorrow afternoon, we go through the next pass and swing west. Toward Arch Rock.”

“Arch Rock?” Scully said, raising her eyebrows.

“I think we need to hit one of the larger settlements,” Mulder went on. “A big town like that will have a lot of people. Someone there might know Zero, and how to get there. Plus it’s further north. We’ve gotta head that direction anyway if what Peter told us is remotely accurate.”

Scully blew out a breath. People were the problem. She didn’t like the idea of being around anyone after what had happened with the strange little man at their cabin. People were stupid and easily swayed – especially in large numbers – and as far as she was concerned the further they stayed away from them the better. But Mulder was right. They’d never find Zero without a little help.

“I suppose we could trade for a few more supplies, too,” she said reluctantly.

“That’s the spirit,” Mulder smiled at her.

Scully smiled back and urged Pumpkin into a canter. The sooner they set up camp, the sooner she was out of the saddle for the day. It felt good to have a plan, even if it was one she didn't particularly like.

XxXxXxXxXxX

They sat around the fire that night, quiet and contemplative. They’d set up their camp where the valley met the wood, the horses tied to trees on long, long leads so that they could graze in the sweet grasses to their heart’s content. The sky was clear and the evening almost warm, the firmament above the valley stippled with vibrant stars, the paintbrush smear of the Milky Way almost dazzling. Mulder had sat down against a tree, his feet to the fire, and Scully had plonked down right in front of him, leaning back against him and tucking her head under his chin. The smell of wildflowers filtered toward them on the breeze and Mulder let himself feel a brief, quiet contentment.

The last few days, when the sun filtered through the trees just-so, when they were ambling along with gentle clop clop clops and the sun would hit the shaggy autumn heads of Scully and William, Mulder would daydream about what they could have had. He would imagine himself pressing a goblet of wine into Scully’s hand as she sat at the dining room table of an unnamed house, helping William with new math. She would smile up at him with her bespectacled face canted into warm lamplight, and purse her lips, fishing for a kiss. He would imagine sitting in sun-drenched bleachers watching a coach-pitched little league game, watching as his son ran through first, just like he’d showed him. He imagined handing a cup of Cheerios to a toddler and pushing a stroller through the Georgetown farmers market. He would suggest they buy flowers for mom and the boy would point at yellow tulips and say “dat!” Then the horse under him would stumble, or Molly would appear the least bit agitated, and he’d rocket back into the present and finger the safety on his gun.

He sighed. What life could have been like…

Mulder tipped his nose into the fragrant head of Scully’s hair and took a deep pull. It mostly smelled like her with a hint left of the tea tree oil shampoo she’d managed to make last with a little creative chemistry.

He gave William a long look over the fire and then spoke.

“What do you miss most?” Mulder asked, and the boy’s head bobbed up and smiled at him, looking wistful. Mulder was fully expecting William to answer along the lines of “my mom and dad” and was not quite prepared to hear it, but they didn’t get to talk much while riding and he liked to equate campfire discussions to dinner table conversation.

“TV,” Will answered instead, “video games. Cookies fresh out of the oven. I miss riding around in cars.” One of the horses made a low, indignant, well-timed sound.

They all chuckled.

“I miss coffee,” Scully said, “and restaurants.” Her head fell back against Mulder’s chest with a heavy thunk. “A good Cobb salad. I miss DEET.” She swatted at a mosquito — the insects were starting to emerge into the spring.

“I miss baseball,” Mulder said without taking his eyes off the fire, “and central air conditioning. Rueben sandwiches. From Tony’s, not Good Harbor. They didn’t use the right bread.”

Scully held up a finger, nodding, agreeing with him.

William sat up, wrapping an arm around his knee, getting interested. “Where’s Tony’s?” he asked.

“Washington DC,” Mulder answered, tightening his arms around Scully, pulling her in close. He missed her, too, he missed the years they’d shared before she left. The smells of her beauty products in the bathroom, the anticipation of her arriving home from work.

“Is that where I was born?”

Scully sat up and Mulder’s arms loosened around her.

“No,” she said, “you were born in a place called Democrat Hot Springs in Georgia.”

“Have you lived there too?” William asked.

Scully turned to exchange a look with Mulder. He gave her the smallest of nods. It was time to tell him.

“No,” she said, “we haven’t.”

William got a look about him, a head tilt and an eyebrow raise, something that reminded Mulder so much of Scully that he felt a pang of something both despairing and joyful behind his chest.

“Do you,” Mulder started, “remember us telling you that the events surrounding your birth were-”

“Complicated?” William helpfully finished for him.

Mulder and Scully both nodded at him.

“When your mom went into labor, we were being pursued,” Mulder said.

“Pursued?” William looked confused.

Scully cleared her throat. “Let’s go back a little bit,” she said, and she proceeded to explain to William some of the things that she and Mulder had encountered in their time with the FBI, everything they knew about the alien conspiracy with the men of the Syndicate, about the super soldiers and the magnetite, and how a group of them had gathered to bear witness to his birth, disappearing into the ether once Monica Reyes had placed William gently on Scully’s chest.

“Why did they leave?” William asked.

“We never knew,” said Mulder.

“Because they’re after me now,” William said.

Scully sat up. “What do you mean they’re after you? You’ve seen them? How do you know?”

William cracked his knuckles and stared into the fire.

“I told you I killed one once? With magnetite?”

Scully nodded and Mulder leaned forward to listen, too.

“It was a night like this,” William said, “and I had made a friend on the road. Dan. She was a little older than me, but she was nice. Really cool. She helped me find food.” The firelight played off his hair and Mulder thought, for a moment, that his son looked really far away. “A man came to the fire. Surprised us. I didn’t feel him coming. I know how the super soldiers feel now, but then I didn’t. Anyway, like I said, he surprised us. Told me they’d been looking for me.”

“You specifically?” Scully asked

“Me specifically,” William clarified. “We ran, tried to get away, but he found us. He told me he needed me to come with him.”

The boy sat for a moment, silently. Then he looked up at both of his parents.

“He killed Dan. And I killed him.”

Scully made a hesitant move to get up, paused, and then rose, making her way around the fire to William’s side where she sat next to him, not touching him, but offering him her support.

“William, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for your friend. I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to endure. And I’m more sorry than you know that you’ve had to do so much of it alone. I know you’re looking for answers and that we don’t have many to give, but I promise you we will. I don’t know why the three of us were burdened with the weight of these imponderable things. If your father and I could have spared you any of it, we would have. But…” She looked over at Mulder, and he gave her an encouraging nod. “I will spend the rest of my life – we will spend the rest of our lives – helping you carry the load and trying to figure out why you. Why us.”

William nodded slowly and then sniffed. After a moment he leaned toward Scully and rested his head on her shoulder. Meeting Mulder’s eyes over the fire, she wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulder and pulled him in toward her.

The fire crackled and popped. In the woods behind them an owl gave a long, low hoot.

He felt like all they ever did now was look at each other over the top of a campfire. Look over their shoulder from the back of a horse.

“What don’t you miss?” he asked after a long silence, needing to feel better about their lot in life.

“Leaf blowers at eight AM,” Scully said definitively.

“Waking up and going to school,” William sniffed, lifting his head from Scully’s shoulder.

“I don’t miss taxes,” said Mulder, “and I don’t miss wishing I could watch my son grow up. I won’t miss that feeling at all.”

William tucked his chin to his chest, blushing and looking pleased. He looked just like his mother.

“Five ball, corner pocket.”

It was going to be the easiest twenty bucks Ezekiel had ever made. Dwight Monroe could never make a bank shot. Pool, basketball, didn’t matter. He’d failed geometry and he would fail this. He couldn’t make this shot. Not if his life depended on it. Especially then. Dwight had blown it at the freethrow line more times than Ez could count in high school, even though it was only JV – the guy didn’t know a hypotenuse from a vertice and he couldn’t handle pressure. Ez decided to toy with him a little, just for fun.

“I’m thinking I’d like to collect in fives,” he said, taking a long pull from his pint of Bud Light.

“Get f*cked,” said Dwight, leaning down to line up his shot.

The bar was smoky, but that was nothing new. Despite the fact that the new state law about smoking in restaurants had gone into effect two months before, a caustic haze hung about the dim lights that hung over the pool table.

“I might,” said Ezekiel, “your girlfriend gave me her number last week.”

Dwight straightened. “You’re ruining my concentration, Ez. Go get me a beer or shut the f*ck up.”

Ezekiel laughed. “Next round’s on you when you miss this shot, Dwight. I ain’t going anywhere.”

Dwight glared at him, but bent back over the table, concentrating hard. A deep breath, and then he pulled back and crack! the cue ball clacked into the five and sent it sideways. It was going to be inches off. Just as it was about to hit the side of the table and win Ez twenty dollars, a low rumble shook the floor hard under Ezekiel’s feet, jolting the whole of the bar. The five ball jumped sideways and down it went into the corner pocket.

Dwight gave a shout of celebration, holding the cue stick up in the smoky air.

“Hey, that don’t count!” Ezekiel said, barely noticing that the low rumbling was still vibrating through the floor.

“Like hell it don’t!” Dwight shouted, his face turning querulous.

“Boys!” shouted Kelly from behind the bar. Ezekiel turned to promise her that they wouldn’t fight, but she was staring at the TV above the bar, her mouth dropped wide open in a shocked expression.

“That’s twenty bucks, Ez!” Dwight called from across the table, but Ezekiel ignored him, and wandered closer to the bar to try to see what had caught Kelly’s attention. She had the remote in her hand and was turning the volume up as loud as it would go.

There was a live report from CNN airing, and the camera was focusing on a field reporter, illuminated only by the high beam light behind the camera. The reporter had one hand held over his ear, and the other was holding a microphone.

“...it showed up in the sky over Washington about fifteen minutes ago, Linda, and I’m hearing from other sources that there are other ships in the air above both southern Maryland and northern Virginia. In fact… yes… I’m hearing from my producer that there are confirmed sightings of these ships up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and… what’s that Eric? Yes, reports from the west coast are reporting ships there as well. Now we don’t know who they belong to or what they want, but the White House did release a statement…”

The reporter kept droning on, but the camera had swung up to focus on what appeared to be a flying saucer hanging dully in the air above the National Mall, and right then Ezekiel stopped listening.

“Holy sh*t,” said Kelly, who tossed down the remote on the bar and ducked out under it, grabbing her purse and trotting out the side door and into the parking lot. Ez watched her go.

Then the low vibration in the floor of the bar increased in power and Ez exchanged one look with Dwight and both of them ran out the same side door, Dwight still holding his cue stick.

The night was chilly and damp and Kelly’s old green Saturn’s tires chirped as she peeled out of the bar parking lot and onto Westchester. Ezekiel watched her taillights heading east, and that’s when he saw it, moving low along MLK. A ship – an actual little-green-men-goddamn-flying-saucer just like the ones from the CNN report in Washington, this one more than halfway across the country, was moving slowly toward the intersection of MLK and Westchester and right toward Ezekiel Barrow and his dumbass friend Dwight Monroe.

“What the f*ck, Ez?” Dwight said.

“I don’t know, man,” Ezekiel said. The ground was still vibrating under them, and then the ship stopped. Right at the intersection with the bar on one side and a Sunoco and a Baptist church on the other, it stopped. And the vibration under their feet stopped at the same time.

Dwight took a few steps toward it, his head tilted in curiosity.

“Dwight don’t,” Ez said, his stomach a mass of nerves and cheap beer. He felt like he might throw up. He was frozen in fear.

“Hey Ez, look,” Dwight said a moment later, and he was pointing toward the pavement under the ship, which didn’t look quite right. It was shimmery and dark and the moon shone off it like they’d had a hard rain, even though the radio said they were still in the middle of an historic drought.

“What is it?” Ezekiel said, squinting his eyes and trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Dwight took another few steps forward.

The wet of the pavement was moving toward them. Ez took a step back.

When the wetness or whatever it was reached Dwight, he looked down at it curiously then lifted his right foot up. The substance stuck to his shoe like slick muck, the kind you’d lose a boot to in a marsh.

“Dwight?” Ezekiel called out.

Dwight slowly lowered his foot back to the earth and a moment later the pool cue fell from his hand and clattered to the pavement. The slick dark muck was pooled around Dwight’s feet, but some was still headed toward Ezekiel. Ez took a step back but he couldn’t take his eyes off his friend.

“Dwight?” he called out again, and Dwight turned to him slowly. When he blinked at Ez, it looked like his eyes were entirely black.

Ezekiel shouted and stumbled backwards, slamming his hip into a parked Ford. He bounced off of it and started running when another low rumbling began beneath his feet and a second ship materialized in the sky directly above the one from which the dark muck had come. A moment later there was a blinding flash and the side of the dark muck ship exploded in a plume of fire and sound. The ship listed momentarily in the air and then crashed to the earth with an apocalyptic boom, sending chunks of asphalt up and into the sky. The impact sent Ezekiel flying roughly twenty yards, and his shoulder slammed into the ground hard, knocking the wind out of him.

When he felt like he could sit up a few moments later, his ears ringing loudly, he slowly took stock of his body. His entire right side was sore, but it didn’t seem like anything was broken. The saucer was lying where it had crashed on MLK, one side of it ablaze in a bright conflagration.

Ezekiel pushed himself to his knees and then up slowly to his feet, stumbling. He must have hit his head, he thought for a second, his balance was off. His right foot hit pavement, but his left foot squished into something. He looked down. It was the substance from the ship, but it wasn’t like mud after all, but more like oil – slick and black as the night. It began crawling up his shoe unnaturally and he took off running again, crossing Westchester without even looking. A red pickup truck honked liberally and flew past him and Ezekiel barely noticed. There was a weird feeling under his skin, making its way up his left leg, faster and faster until it felt like there were ants crawling under the whole of his skin. He screamed and stumbled up the steps of the building in front of him, crashing through the door blindly, stumbling forward. He could no longer see, his vision a swirling mass of black and colored light, and every time he blinked it made the effect worse. He fell to the ground.

Then, almost at once, the ant-crawling feeling stopped and his entire body tensed. He felt, for a moment, as strong and powerful as a colossus – a spirited, bright feeling like a surge of sunlight was coursing through his hands and feet and out through his fingers and toes and then–

Pain. Gut-wrenching pain. He doubled over, his stomach heaving, his eyes watering, but it wasn’t tears coming forth, but that thick mucus-like oil streaming from his eyes and down his face. He vomited forcefully, a bubble-like spew, a wash of the caustic oil coming up from inside of him, burning his throat and scorching his mouth. He vomited and vomited and all at once it was over and he fell sideways onto the floor, a pool of flaccid, sickly goop lying inert at his knees.

Ezekiel laid there for several minutes, struggling for breath at first, his lungs and eyes on fire. He coughed, spit, coughed again. When he seemed to be getting a little air, he sat up and wiped at his eyes uselessly. He blinked, trying to get the gunk out of them, feeling weak and ragged, the noxious smell of the oil in front of him making him gag.

Finally, he sat back on his heels, coughed one more time and wiped his gummy eyes clear. When they finally fluttered open, the first thing he saw, in a bright shaft of overhead light, was a towering crucifix. Nailed to it, crying what almost looked like real tears for the suffering that Ezekiel had just endured, was the heavenly face and holy body of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 19: The Town

Chapter Text

It was the first truly warm day they’d experienced in months and Mulder remembered briefly why he’d preferred the cold.

The sun was baking the back of his neck, sweat running in little rivulets down his spine. And the insects, god they were unrelenting, midges buzzing into ears and flying up noses and being a constant bane to the horses, whose skin shuddered under their saddles, the poor beasts lashing their tails uselessly.

The only good thing was that they were less than an hour from Arch Rock.

They clopped down the abandoned highway in a state of misery, the road under them stony and pocked. The yellow and white reflective lines were merely splotches of color now, worn down by wind and rain and snow. The asphalt reflected the day’s heat with a kind of punitive relentlessness, and Mulder felt terrible for Scully and William, whose complexions didn’t deal nearly so well with the sun as his own. Another whining buzz in his ear and he turned in his saddle.

“You got any bug repellent powers we don’t know about, Will?”

“No!” snapped William irritably, then immediately smacked his neck.

Scully shot Mulder a dirty look and William spurred Molly into a canter, which Pumpkin and Gypsy matched without being told. Mulder figured there was no use in trying to spare the animals any energy, and so he let them trot, hoping the speed might displace some of the bugs.

Every here and there the horses had to swerve around an abandoned car, most with their innards stripped out, the hoods and windshields covered in a thick coating of dust. Mulder was surprised not to have seen any people at this point – Arch Rock was a well known trading post – unlike their cooperative, anyone could come here and deal in anything. It lay in the middle of an area of the country where mines had been omnipresent and people used the old tunnels to their advantage to avoid any alien entanglements. There were parts of the town you definitely wanted to avoid, where the trading dealt in items that were not exactly necessary to survival; booze and drugs and dark enclaves where if you had to or wanted to, you could even sell yourself. But despite the dark corners, it was usually a vibrant, engaging place – the only one like it for hundreds of miles, its buildings lined in lead and stone, with a pinwheel of roads leading out of it. There were normally at least a handful of people either coming or going from it.

Mulder randomly hoped there hadn’t been some kind of plague.

They were approaching the jackknifed tractor trailer that was wedged in the embankment where you turned off the old highway to head to the town. Mulder saw the familiar spray painted scrawl of “ARCH ROCK →” on the side of the trailer and pulled Gypsy off the road and down the well trod trail that led to the town from the east. The trail dipped into a ditch and then banked, and Gypsy decided to jump over it in a short burst of energy.

“Mulder,” he heard Scully say from behind him, her voice low.

He turned to look at her. She was pointing to the back of the semi.

“Gene Motor Freight” still shone from the rear gate, but in the middle of the big black M of “Motor” someone had painted a small white cross with a yellow triangle behind it – the same symbol that had been on the necklace of the man who had called himself Ezekiel.

Mulder whispered a quiet curse. That was not exactly the most auspicious omen to see considering the reason they found themselves on the road. However, they had rationed out enough food and supplies for the trip to Arch Rock, but not a whole lot more. They had counted on resupplying here. There was no choice but to go on.

He gave Scully a long look and pulled out his Glock, checking to make sure the clip was full. Scully, being the better marksman, had the rifle slung around her back in addition to the Sig Sauer at her waist. They had given William an extra pistol with days worth of safety instruction, but he carried it around in his knapsack rather than on his person. Mulder was tempted to tell the kid to pull it out.

Gypsy stumbled for a moment, pulling Mulder’s focus back to the road ahead of them. They were in the treeline now, the sun less severe and the temperature at least ten degrees cooler. The breeze carried toward them from the settlement and Mulder was surprised not to catch a whiff of roasting meat – there was nearly always a vendor just on the outskirts of the town roasting various spits of meat over an old oil drum – Mulder had sold a few of them racks of venison and elk in the past.

When they crested the rise that led into the town proper there was a bright fire burning in the old drum, but no one tending to it. There should have been people milling about, but there weren’t. Mulder pulled up Gypsy and stayed mounted, William and Scully riding up to him on either side.

“Where are the people?” Scully asked, her eyes scanning the few low buildings ahead.

“Will, are there-”

William was looking ahead too, a look of concentration on his face.

“There are people here,” he said, “But I don’t…” He shook his head, as though trying to figure something out. “They’re up ahead,” he finished, finally looking over at Mulder.

Mulder nodded at his son and then finally dismounted, pulling Gypsy over to a hitching rail on the edge of the wood.

“Grab your packs,” Mulder said as William and Scully slid down off of their horses, “but let’s leave them saddled. I’m not sure we’re going to want to stay here tonight.”

Scully and William grabbed their things and the three of them walked slowly into the settlement, their heads on swivels. Arch Rock looked like an old west town, or at least Hollywood’s facsimile of one — wooden buildings of various sizes packed cheek by jowl along a wide dirt avenue, hitching posts out front and the occasional trough of water.

Finally after turning a corner, they saw two men up ahead of them, leaning on the old planked fencing that surrounded an area of green near what had become known as the town square. Usually there was livestock in the enclosure, and an auctioneer did a brisk business, but today there was only a single skinny brown cow inside, thoughtfully chewing her cud, her udders sagging low, limp and without milk.

One of the men turned when he heard them, but he only watched them pass silently, giving one quick nod to acknowledge their existence.

“Mulder, I don’t like this,” Scully said, her voice just above a whisper.

“Let’s just get to the general store. We’ll trade for what we need and ask about Zero.”

Scully didn’t answer, but nodded. Mulder threw a quick glance at her face and noticed her nostrils were flared, her pupils half-blown. She was as tense as he’d ever seen her.

“Where’s the general store?” William asked, and Mulder turned his attention forward.

“Up ahead,” Mulder pointed, “the building with the slanted roof.”

Up ahead there was a two story building with narrow windows and a sharply inclined corrugated roof.

William nodded. “There’s people there,” he said.

“Anyone we need to be worried about?” Mulder asked.

“No super soldiers,” William said, “and I think… I don’t know, it’s weird, here.”

“A lot of the buildings have lead-lined roofs in case of flyovers,” Mulder pointed out, keeping his eyes on the door to the establishment.

William grunted.

They trotted up the steps of the general store, and Mulder went in first, his eyes scanning the low rows of supplies. There were no other patrons, but the proprietor and her husband, who Mulder had seen before, were standing at the back counter, their faces wearing looks of barely concealed suspicion.

“Hello,” Mulder said to the pair, and ushered Scully and William inside. Scully stayed by the door, ostensibly looking at a rack of horse tack, but Mulder knew she was keeping an eye on their tail. William stuck to Mulder’s side as he walked to the back counter.

“How can we help you?” the woman said, her tone flat and bordering on unfriendly.

“We’d like to trade for a few supplies,” Mulder said, setting his pack carefully on the counter.

The woman nodded. “We’re low on inventory,” she said, “but could maybe do a couple things.”

Mulder smiled at her and opened up the pack to let her rummage through it.

“What do you need?” she asked. The cable-knit sweater she wore had holes at the elbows and neck. Her ectomorphic husband stood several paces behind her, squinting as though he needed glasses. She leaned forward, looking through what Mulder had to trade.

“Some food,” Mulder said, “iodine tablets.”

She nodded and pulled several things out of his bag, then bent low behind the counter to pull up some prepackaged foods and a box of water-cleaning tablets. She lined them up and then looked up at Mulder.

“Fair?” she asked.

“Fair,” he said, scanning the items without much of a thought to haggling, and she nodded, putting everything away quickly.

Mulder took more time and care putting their new supplies into his own pack.

“Question for you,” he said, keeping his voice as friendly as he could.

The woman cleared her throat, and her husband, who still had not said a word, shuffled on his feet uncomfortably. Mulder plowed ahead anyway.

“We have a friend. Moved up here a year or two back. Pretty close to Arch Rock, I think.”

The woman continued to stare at him blankly.

“He invited us to come stay so that’s where we’re headed. Hoping maybe you can help lead us in the right direction?”

Mulder put the last of their goods into his pack and zipped it closed.

“Town by the name of Zero?”

The woman’s eyes flitted to where Scully was still standing by the door. William sniffed at his elbow, looking at the woman curiously.

“If you want to find your friend, you should go,” the woman said, “Now.”

“We don’t know the way,” Mulder said.

“I can’t help you. We’re closing in a few minutes, you need to leave.”

“Mulder?” Scully called to him from the entrance and he turned to look at her. Her eyes bore into his and he instantly grabbed his pack and murmured a quick thank you, making his way to Scully quickly.

“What is it?” he asked as he and William approached.

Scully opened the door and led the way out. “Look at the window of the building across from us,” she said in a low tone, looking in a completely different direction.

Mulder’s eyes rove to the building she’d indicated. Spray painted in yellow across the whole of it were the words “THE NEW TRINITY LIVES.”

His stomach flipped and he turned on his heel to head back toward where they’d left their horses. “Let’s go,” he said quietly. He started looking at the other buildings in earnest and saw smaller symbols hidden here and there; the cross with the triangle, side alley graffiti that said things like “PRAY FOR ASCENSION.”

He quickened his pace and felt Scully and William quicken theirs behind him.

They passed the green square where the two men still stood, this time eyeing them with interest. Twenty more paces and they’d turn down the lane that led to where they’d left the horses. When he got to the corner, Mulder blew out a long breath of relief.

Then he heard a loud thud, a quiet grunt and a scuffle from behind him. He drew his glock and whirled around. William was on the ground clutching at his head, and Scully had her hands in the air, a pistol held by a short bearded man held three inches from her forehead. Another man stepped out from a doorway right by where William had fallen, a long wooden club in his hand.

“Your weapons,” the man said. “You will hand them over.”

Mulder began to question every decision he’d ever made, furious with himself.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the gun in front of Scully’s face, Mulder slowly lowered his Glock to the ground. When he rose, he took a good long look at the two men in front of him. Each were wearing long brown robes, and crucifix necklaces affixed to golden triangles.

“Welcome,” the larger man said, reaching down to help William up. Mulder noticed that he kept his hands just above the boy’s elbow and wrist. It would take him less than a moment to break the boy’s arm. The man smiled, a performative, ghastly look. “Prepare yourselves,” the man went on, “For glorious ascension.”

XxX

They were sitting, hands tied uncomfortably behind their backs, in the first row of pews in what probably used to be a small warehouse. The building had obviously been repurposed into a church, a large crucifix bolted to the back wall with a triangle of yellow painted wood hung up behind it. Light filtered in through high windows that had recently been cut into the high reaches of the structure. No glass had been put in, so birds flitted in and out, and Mulder could occasionally get a whiff of fresh air as it wafted through the lofted space.

They were being guarded on either side by the men who’d brought them here, one tall, one short, each of them stealing looks, mainly at William, surreptitiously. Armed with pistol’s of their own, they stood silent, waiting for whatever was about to happen. There was an expectant, waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling in the air. Mulder and Scully’s various weaponry had disappeared.

There was a long line of blood that had dribbled down onto Will’s face from his hairline, and it ran along his cheek to pool gummily at his chin. He kept lifting up his shoulder to wipe it away, wincing.

“You okay?” Mulder whispered. Will had been dragged woozily along into the converted church, and had really only come back to himself in the last few minutes.

William nodded. Scully eyed him from their other side, clearly concerned.

One of their guards watched them, but said nothing, so Mulder figured maybe they had permission to speak.

“Do you think you could…” he gestured with his chin toward the men.

“Maybe…” William whispered doubtfully, “but I don’t have as much control without my hands.”

“Quiet,” one of the men said, and then a door opened from the side of the building and a tall blond man in jeans and a loose chambray shirt – a cape of brown, burlap-like fabric draped over his shoulders – entered, smiling at them as he approached. Another man was shuffling in behind him, his identity hidden behind the man’s bulk.

“Greetings,” the blond said, holding his hands out in welcome.

Mulder felt William tense beside him.

“I apologize for the way in which our deacons brought you here.” At this he turned to one of the guards. “Can we get a clean cloth to wipe the boy’s face, Deacon Adam?”

Adam, the shorter of the two guards, nodded curtly and hustled off in the direction of the door the blond had come through.

“Do you need water? Food?” The man asked felicitously, as if the three bound people in front of him weren’t at his utter mercy.

“I wouldn’t mind the use of my hands,” Mulder said, the keen edge of anger slicing into his nervous concern. “My crotch itches like a sonofabitch.”

The blond man gave him a placating smile. “I’m afraid you may find yourself in a continued state of discomfort,” he said. “Until we can confirm your identities.”

The man Adam came back in through the door and rushed to the blond man’s side.

“Here, Preacher,” he said, handing over a white cloth.

The man called Preacher took it, thanking Adam with a kind smile, before turning back to Mulder and Scully, holding the cloth in his hand.

“What are your names?” he asked them.

“You can call me Bob,” Mulder said. William and Scully stayed silent, the latter glaring at the Preacher with a ball-withering stare that Mulder had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of a few times. It seemed to have no effect on the man.

“And you, son?” the Preacher said, turning to William. The man calling his boy ‘son’ made Mulder want to rip his hands from their tethers and slap him in the mouth.

Will stayed silent, looking at the man blankly.

“Let me see if I can help you,” the Preacher went on, and leaned forward, gently wiping at the blood on William’s face. When he stood back up, he raised the cloth to his mouth and licked at the blood that was upon it. Mulder saw Scully give a disturbed twitch, and he felt his own stomach begin to roil in fear and revulsion.

“Ah,” the Preacher said, a look of enlightenment coming over him. He beamed, unnaturally. “William. At last.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

It wasn’t until Scully had gotten over her shock at hearing her son’s name come out of the odd Preacher’s mouth that she even glanced at the man who had walked in behind him, still standing meekly at the man’s elbow.

“Ezekiel,” the Preacher said, turning to him now, “You’ve done well.”

The odd little man’s face cracked into a smile.

“Thank you, Preacher.”

The Preacher turned to the other guard, whose name Scully didn’t know. “Collect the parishioners, will you? I’d like them to meet the New Holy Trinity. We shall have a service tonight, and a feast!” He turned to Adam, “Take them to the chambers,” he said, “and prepare them for Ascension.”

XxX

Adam led them into a dark room with two low cots built into the wall, a single lamp burning dully in the corner. There was nothing else. Not even a window.

“Wait here,” the man said. “I’ll bring you water to wash. You’ll bathe and take communion.” With that he closed the door.

William turned immediately to them.

“He’s an alien, the Preacher.”

Mulder swore and Scully peered at her son closely.

“What about this Adam and the others?”

William shook his head. “All human.”

“Any super soldiers?”

The boy closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them. “None,” he said. “Though there’s magnetite nearby. Lots of it.”

“Do you think you can get these bindings off of us?” Scully asked.

William looked skeptical. “I can try. Stand behind me. Where my hands are.”

Scully moved herself behind him and turned herself around so that her bound wrists were in front of his hands. She could feel a tug on the ropes, then a stronger one, so strong she lost her balance and stumbled backward a bit. William made a frustrated sound.

“I can pull on the ropes, but the knots are too tight. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Mulder said, and the door opened back up. Adam came through it carrying a tray. Light flooded in from the hallway behind him.

On the tray was a large bowl filled with steaming water, several white cloths, a small plate with what looked like some kind of crackers on them, and three small waxy Dixie cups that were filled with a dark liquid. He set the tray on one of the cots.

“Come,” he said, picking up the bowl of steaming liquid,“lower your hands into the water. I shall clean your faces. Then we will take communion.”

They did as they were told, and Scully had to admit that dipping her hands in the warm water felt heavenly after so many days on the trail, washing and bathing out of glacial-fed streams. When Adam turned to them with a cloth in his hand to wash their faces, he did so very gently, paying special attention to the line of now-dried blood on William’s face. Then he threw the soiled washcloths into the bowl of water and leaned down to pick up the tray.

“Sit,” he said, and Scully lowered herself onto one of the cots, William sitting down next to her. Mulder sat on the other one, looking at Adam warily.

Adam set the tray on the floor and picked up a plate with the wafers and moved himself in front of William. He held up a wafer before him.

“May this nourish your soul as well as your body.” He lowered it to the boy’s mouth. William looked at him for a moment and then hesitatingly opened his mouth. Adam set the wafer on his tongue and moved to Scully. She could hear William crunching as Adam performed the same ritual with her. She glanced briefly at William, who seemed to bear no ill effects from the small cracker and opened her mouth as well. She munched on it as Adam moved on to Mulder. It was stale and tasted vaguely of sesame. Still, she half wished she could have another; they hadn’t eaten since morning.

Next came the small cups of dark liquid. Adam made a ritualistic comment about enlightenment and then held the cup to William’s mouth. Will took a small sip and made a disgusted face, backing his head away. Scully thought it must be wine.

“Drink all of it, please,” Adam said and reheld the cup up to William’s mouth. He tipped his head back and Scully watched as his throat bobbed, taking the rest of the wine in one mouthful.

Adam approached her, holding the waxy cup to her lip. She took a breath and followed her son’s lead, tipping her head all of the way back so that Adam could pour the contents into her mouth. She swallowed quickly and then coughed, the taste in her mouth sickly sweet. The wine was maybe port or some kind of thick sherry. When Mulder had had his, Adam picked up the tray and headed for the door. Once he reached it, he turned to them slowly.

“Thank you,” he said, “It… it was a blessing to have served people so holy as you. I hope to see you in the Gods’ Kingdom.” With that he nodded once and left, closing the door behind him.

“I’m going to wait a minute and then try the door,” Mulder said.

A moment later, Will made a strange grunting sound, and she turned to see him shift uncomfortably next to her. He turned to her.

“Scully?” he said, “I don’t feel good.”

A moment later, she felt it herself. A queasy clutching in her stomach. She felt dizzy, nauseous. Her vision blurred. Just before she lost consciousness, the last thing she thought was… we’ve been drugged.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder came to in cold, clammy, night air, the smell of it pungent and full and wet. At first he thought he was suffering from the high whine of pulsatile tinnitus, but after a moment he realized it was the air itself, suffused with insect chirps and the roaring of frogs. He opened his eyes slowly, his head rolling around on his neck limp as a ragdoll. He couldn’t lift his arms or legs. With an alarming rush of adrenaline, he realized he’d been drugged.

He swung his head as best he could to his right and then to his left, where he saw William and Scully sitting prone next to him, their wrists no longer bound. Neither seemed to have regained consciousness yet.

“Peace, brothers and sisters!” called out a loud voice he recognized as belonging to the Preacher. From behind him, Mulder could make out the low hum of voices. A crowd had gathered.

He began to take in his surroundings as more of his faculties returned to him, though he was still not able to move his arms or legs, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth. They were sitting in a wide green valley, and there was a fire burning in front of them, behind which stood the Preacher with his hands held up as if to calm a crowd. Behind the preacher rose up long, tall grasses and cattails. It was marshy, wherever they were, which explained the sound of frogs.

He seemed to be getting more control of his neck muscles, and he was able to lift his head and hold it there.

“The Father has returned to us!” the Preacher shouted, and Mulder could hear the crowd of people behind him make excited sounding murmurs.

“Ah, yes, and now the Son!”

Mulder turned to look and saw William’s eyelids fluttering open, his head lolling on his shoulders.

The Preacher stepped up to Mulder and made a show of making the sign of the cross over him. Under his breath, he said: “What you’ve been given is an inorganic paralyzing agent. If you try to talk before the effect completely wears off, you’ll swallow your own tongue. I’ve been told it’s an agonizing death.”

The man made his way over to William, who seemed to be coming back to himself, and made the same show. Mulder could just hear him repeating the same warning to the boy. Then he moved to Scully, who at first appeared still totally prone and unresponsive. Mulder swallowed thickly, worried, wanting to call out her name.

“Ah!” the Preacher said a moment later, and Mulder was relieved to see her eyelids begin to flutter, “and the Mother! Our Holy Spirit!” The Preacher made a slow sign of the cross and spoke lowly to Scully as well.

Then the man backed up until he was once again standing behind the fire, the light throwing up ghastly shadows onto his face. He raised up his hands.

“I have the need of one man, and one woman of the utmost faith! Who will help escort the New Holy Trinity to the gates of the Gods’ Kingdom? The time for Ascension is upon us!”

At this, the low rumbling of an approaching ship began sending tremors up through the soles of Mulder’s feet. Cheers and shouts rose up behind them, and gooseflesh began creeping up the back of his neck.

The rumbling grew louder, and from behind the alien Preacher Mulder could see the scanning light from a ship approaching. The crowd behind him began screaming and crying, shouting to the Preacher, begging to be selected.

The ship slowed and stopped, hovering about 20 yards above the ground roughly the same distance from the Preacher. The vibration stopped as well.

“Ezekiel Barrow, step forward!” the Preacher called, and the little man who had terrorized them in their cabin walked into the firelight, his head held high. “You shall escort the Father.” Ezekiel smiled serenely.

“You,” the Preacher said, pointing into the crowd. A woman stumbled forward and into the firelight, her eyes containing a crazed joy. “What’s your name, sister?”

“Elaine Drake,” she said, her voice shaky.

“You shall escort the Mother,” the Preacher said, and the woman began weeping with joy.

“Peace brothers and sisters! Peace!” he shouted, trying to calm the crowd. “Your time is coming!” He then instructed Ezekiel to stand next to Mulder, and the woman Elaine to stand next to Scully. He himself moved to stand behind William, and he reached down and squeezed the boy’s shoulders, hard.

“Ascension!” he cried then, and the ship rumbled forward. A moment later Mulder was blinded by its light and he felt his body rise up through the air. Slowly, peacefully, as though he was made only of spirit.

“I didn’t think this was supposed to happen, Mulder!” she shouted shrilly, though Mulder was sitting right next to her. She had held it together long enough to go into Mulder’s house and help him pack up what they could – she still had clothes there, taped up in boxes in the spare room that he’d had every intention of taking over to her new place. He’d never been able to go through with it, though. If the last of her stuff was gone, that meant that she was gone. Permanently. For good. Which is what she’d told him when she left.

An hour before – right after she’d peeled into his driveway and he’d launched himself toward her in relief – they saw a ship hovering several miles off from the unremarkable house, from the porch, and had been watching in real time when another ship had come down practically on top of it and fired something at it. The original ship exploded and they’d careened into the house, throwing together whatever they could, whatever they thought they might need.

They’d thrown the haul into the trunk of Mulder’s car (his had more gas) and he’d torn off down a country road in the opposite direction from the downed ship, flashing his lights and honking at any car that approached and was heading towards it.

Thirty minutes later, he peeled onto a seasonal dirt road heading northwest, truly in the boonies now, and Scully was starting to shake. Scully was starting to lose it.

“December 2012 has come and gone, Mulder!” her voice was an octave higher than normal. “What the hell is going on? What the hell is happening?”

“I don’t know!” he hissed back. The car hit a rut in the road and they lurched to the right, the top of the car sweeping a low hanging branch, which scratched and squeaked along the roof. If they lost a tire now it would be disastrous and fear and panic shot through Mulder’s chest. “I don’t f*cking KNOW!” he practically shouted.

On the radio, DJ’s were losing their collective sh*t; some talking endlessly and needlessly into their microphones, some playing music, and some had clearly abandoned their posts, leaving nothing on their respective stations but the low hiss of static. Mulder punched the radio off harder than he should have.

Scully took a deep breath, calming herself down.

“Where are we going, Mulder?” she asked him, having regained most of her composure. The shaky way she was drawing breath the only clue that Dana Scully was well and truly stressed.

“I don’t…” he started, and then pressed his foot hard into the accelerator, gunning the car forward on the dusty, gravely road. “I don’t know that, either.”

XxX

They’d used up the last of the gas the night before. They had only been able to refuel the tank twice before sh*t started getting crazy. A man got shot through the chest in front of them at a backroads Marathon station and after that they gave up on vehicular travel, and also on humanity.

They slept in the car, which they’d managed to push behind a large billboard. Mulder came to consciousness slowly, his body sore from sleeping in an awkward position in the driver’s seat, and the first thing he heard were quiet sniffs from a couple of feet next to him.

He opened his eyes and saw Scully awake, her seat back in the upright position, her face turned to the window. Her phone was clutched tightly in her hand.

“Scully?” he said, his voice scratchy from disuse.

“My mom is gone isn’t she,” Scully said, staring out the window at the low gray dawn, her voice not belaying any emotion.

“You don’t know that,” Mulder said, putting his seat back up.

She didn’t seem to hear him. “I don’t even remember the last thing I said to my brothers.”

“Hey,” he said, reaching over the console and touching her shoulder.

“And Matthew — God!” At that, she turned to him, her face crumpling. Mulder squeezed her shoulder, feeling helpless. He wasn’t sure how to respond. He had no one left to lose except her.

They left the car that afternoon after putting whatever they could carry into a couple of backpacks. When Mulder turned around to make sure they’d gotten everything, he saw Scully’s phone sitting in the sunshine on the dashboard. She walked determinedly ahead of him that day. She never did look back.

XxX

The farmhouse they were squatting in was hot and the air wouldn’t move no matter how many windows they propped open. Scully was in a tee shirt and a pair of shorts, the skin above her lip glossy with sweat. She sat down next to him on the garishly flowered sofa and handed him a stale glass of water. He murmured his thanks.

“I found some peanut butter and crackers if you want them,” she said, and he grunted. It was too hot to eat.

“I never should have left you,” she said then, and he rolled his head along the back of the couch to look at her.

“Yes, you should have,” he finally said. “Nothing would have changed if you hadn’t. Nothing good. I learned…”

“What did you learn?” she asked.

“What you meant to me. What you mean to me.”

“I think I learned that, too.”

Mulder nodded at her.

“So yes, I should have left. But… I also should have come back. Before all this. I should have come back and I didn’t.”

Mulder let that sit in the air for a moment. Held it close.

“You’re here, now,” he said.

“I’m here, now.”

He took a sip of the water and then handed the glass to her. She took a sip as well, then ran the back of her hand along her mouth, wiping the sweat away. She looked as lovely as the day he’d met her. As lovely as the day she’d left.

“Scully, I wouldn’t want to spend the apocalypse with anybody but you.”

She heaved out a breath, smiled reluctantly. Then she tucked herself into his side, and he didn’t even care about the heat anymore, about being sticky and sweaty – he wouldn’t have moved if a walk-in freezer had appeared suddenly across the room. He wouldn’t have moved for anything.

“Are you with me, Scully?” he asked.

“I’m with you, Mulder,” she said, “I’m with you.”

Chapter 20: The Ship

Chapter Text

As soon as William felt the firmness of a floor under him, the all encompassing brightness that surrounded them cut out and they were plunged into darkness. He blinked hard several times until his eyes began to adjust to the dim glow of ambient light on the ship. The pins and needles feeling that began when he’d been sitting in the chair in front of the fire with the Preacher standing over him was fading and the feeling and control of his arms and legs started to come back to him. He glanced to his side and saw both of his parents sitting up, blinking hard. Mulder’s arm slipped as he tried to get up. William thought perhaps he himself was recovering more quickly from whatever the Preacher had used to drug them.

The woman Elaine and the wiry little man Ezekiel who had accompanied them on the ship were standing near Scully, looking around themselves at the ship in awe.

The room they were in was made entirely of a soft kind of metal that gave off a dull glow. It looked like they were standing just off to the side of the bridge of the ship – at the front of the room stood a long console that came up out of the floor and was a darker material than the rest.

Standing at the console were three people – voids, William thought immediately – super soldiers – one of whom stepped away and turned to look at the new arrivals. Each of the super soldiers was dressed differently – the man who turned to look at them was bald, in jeans and a plain black tee shirt. The other man – tall, with a shaggy black beard, was in grubby cargo pants and a gray Patagonia fleece. The last void was a thin, young woman with blonde hair in a messy bun, and was dressed in black leggings with a pink zip-up athletic shirt. Her shoes, bright white sneakers with hot pink laces, were splattered with a dark brown stain that William thought was probably blood.

The bald super soldier who turned took a step forward toward them. The Preacher alien, no longer wearing a false beatific smile, came around to stand in front of the soldier.

“Head for the rendezvous point,” the Preacher said.

The soldier turned back to the console, and William could feel the centrifugal force of the ship turning in the sky.

Beside William, Scully groaned and shook out her hands as if they had water on them. On his other side, Mulder got woozily to his feet. William stood too, and put a steadying hand on Mulder’s shoulder until he was sure his father wasn’t going to fall over and then William turned and helped Scully to stand. She winced and William looked at her in concern.

“Pins and needles,” she explained, and lifted one foot to rotate her ankle.

Elaine, standing on Scully’s other side, reached out kindly to steady her.

“Is this…” the woman said meekly, “is this the way to the Gods’ Kingdom?”

Scully opened her mouth and gave her head a little shake, unsure of what to say.

The bald super soldier turned away from the console again and looked to the Preacher.

“What would you like us to do with the abductees?” he asked, moving to stand in front of them. Elaine, whom he was closest to, took a small step back.

The Preacher alien turned to look at them.

“Lock these three up,” he said, pointing at Scully, Mulder and William. “The boy needs to be incapacitated. The parents we need to study.”

“Dissection protocol?” the soldier asked.

“Everything,” said the Preacher.

William felt his insides go liquid with fear.

“What about the others?” the soldier asked, pointing to Ezekiel and Elaine.

“Kill them,” the Preacher said, turning away, “they can be turned.”

There was a blur of motion. Before William could compose another thought, he looked up and the super soldier's arm was wrist deep in Ezekiel’s stomach, a flower of blood blossoming on the man’s shirt around the soldier’s hand. Ezekiel looked down at himself in shock, opened his mouth as if to say something and then the soldier pulled his hand back, covered in pulpy blood, and Ezekiel crumpled to the floor, dead.

Then the soldier turned to the woman Elaine, who, looking terrified, took a stumbling step backward.

“Wait-” Mulder said, at the same time that Scully shouted “NO!” and as quickly as it had happened with Ezekiel, now time seemed to slow to a honeyed drip.

The soldier pulled back his bloody arm, his dripping fingers extended, his hand stiff as a blade, and then it shot forward. At the same time, Scully – the word “no” still on her tongue, made a clumsy move to either block Elaine or move her out of the way – and William watched as the soldier’s knife-like hand plunged itself deep in the side of his mother’s torso.

Time skipped forward and caught up to itself.

Scully slumped to the floor of the ship. Mulder, screaming her name, scrambled toward her side.

William, watching it all play out in horror, felt a rage bubble up inside of him so overwhelming and intense that he felt almost incandescent with it. Then the rage itself vectored within his chest, giving birth to a feeling of power so acute that he could feel it vibrating inside of him and crackling like electricity along the whole of his skin. He took a deep breath, balled his hands into half-fisted claws, and let it loose.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder, screaming her name, dove to Scully’s side. Blood was pouring from a hole in her flank, and, not knowing what else to do, Mulder held both hands to it, trying to stem the flow.

“Scully?” he said, desperately.

The ship shivered under him, and he looked up. William was standing a few feet away, feet braced, head low, hands in front of himself like he was holding a big box, but there was an energy sizzling through him which Mulder could feel from where he kneeled. When he looked to William’s eyes, the boy’s pupils were blown, the whole of his eyes almost black.

The super soldier who had just killed Ezekiel and probably Scully too, went flying through the air, end over end until he hit the side of the ship with a gross thud. He stayed, upside-down, pinned to the wall, eyes wide. When the other two soldiers turned to look at their compatriot, they went flying as well.

The Preacher alien turned on his heels and watched, a look of curious amazement on his face. Until William turned his gaze to him.

“You,” William hissed, his voice low and menacing. And then he shot out his hand and the Preacher went flying backwards, hitting the wall of the ship with a sickening thud. He too stayed pinned to it, but something odd was happening to the Preacher, Mulder could see it. He was pushed to the wall as if riding the Gravitron spinner at a county fair, but he was being pressed into the metal so hard that his skin started migrating toward the wall too, like candle wax dripping onto the table beneath it. He looked as though he were melting, his eyes bulging, the shape of his head taking on a curious triangle quality.

The ship shivered again, harder, making a groaning sound and Mulder could hear the woman Elaine whimpering from behind him. The ship pitched sideways, and William’s other hand shot out and Mulder felt an odd sense of weightlessness.

A high whine started buzzing through the air, getting louder and lower until William screamed, an ear-splitting, soul-shaking sound, and the ship under them began shaking, rattling, the terrible groans of metal being ripped apart tore through the air, and all the while, Mulder, his hot, blood-wet hands still pressed to Scully’s body, felt nothing.

He looked through the turbulent air and saw the three super soldiers turn the color of lead and then burst into dust before his eyes. The metal behind the melting vizage of the Preacher peeled back until daylight wret through the opening and the alien was sucked out the hole where he atomized into a green mist and then was gone.

A moment of shaking, bone-rattling turbulence, and then the ship hit the earth. A massive concussive reverb shook the ship around them, but Mulder felt none of it. Scully, laying prone beneath him, didn’t move. William stood before him, breathing hard, his body still tense and strumming with energy, as steady as a rock. And then there was nothing but dust and silence.

William stood up straight and shook his head as if coming out of a trance.

Beneath Mulder’s hands, Scully made a strangled sound, and his attention whipped back to her. Her mouth was open, and he instantly knew that she was struggling to breathe. Her throat gurgling, she coughed once and blood came spewing out of her mouth.

William whirled around, his eyes widening at the sight of Scully on the floor of the fallen ship. He lurched forward and slid to his knees at her other side. He gave a long, scanning look over the length of her and then took a deep, calming breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he reached out and gently touched her shoulder.

“Scully,” William said calmly, and Mulder, for only a moment, pulled his eyes away from the love of his life to look once more at their son, his hands still clamped over her torso where he could feel the slight pull from a sucking chest wound. “Scully, look at me,” William called to her again.

Scully, gasping for breath like one of the fish they had pulled up out of Green Lake, the choking sound from her throat a gurgling, bubbling mess, could only stare up at the ceiling of the ship, one of her hands reaching blindly out to the side to slap into Mulder’s arm.

“Mom?” William said then, his voice filled with such tenderness that passing angels would have stopped to listen to him. “Mom, I need you to look at me.”

Scully turned her head slowly toward her son.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered to her.

Scully’s bloodshot eyes fluttered shut and Mulder could feel tears come to his own. William reached out and gently placed the finger and thumb of his right hand across her eyes to rest on her temples. Mulder felt something break apart in his chest. It looked like the boy was administering last rites.

“Be with me,” the boy said, his own eyes sliding closed. The blood seeping around Mulder’s fingers began to slow. “Be with me,” he whispered again.

Beneath Mulder’s hands, the suction of her wound loosened. He felt a pang of agony he’d not felt in close to twenty years — at her bedside when she was dying of cancer and he didn’t think she’d last the night.

“Be with me, Mom.”

Time slowed. The angels held their breath. Mulder could feel every cell in his body call out to a God he didn’t believe in. Scully’s God. Ezekiel’s. Any God who would listen.

And then something miraculous happened. Something was going on under Mulder’s gummy, bloody fingers. He pulled his hands back from her and watched, transfixed, as the gaping wound began to close. The spilled blood creeped back into her body, tissue reformed slowly before his eyes, slashed ribbons of skin reached toward each other and melded back into perfect smoothness.

“You’re with me,” William said, slowly opening his eyes, smiling, his hand still on her forehead. “I have you.”

Life knit itself back together before Mulder’s eyes.

Scully’s back lifted up off the ground and she took a massive inhalation, the wretched gurgling sound gone from her breathing, replaced by clear, regular breaths. William removed his hand from her temples and she turned her head to look at Mulder, her eyes bright, full of life. He launched himself at her, clutching her to his chest.

“Scully! God!”

After a moment he looked up, watched as William watched them, a small smile on his face. Not letting go of Scully, Mulder reached out and gripped the boy’s shoulder hard, pulling him into their embrace.

“The Mother Immortal!” came a shaky whisper from behind them and Mulder turned his head to see Elaine, whom he’d completely forgotten about, on her knees, looking at them worshipfully.

He eventually learned to avoid the carrion birds.

A kettle of vultures, a murder of crows; nothing good could be found where they landed, and he’d seen darkness enough.

He awoke one morning to raucous cawing from the trees above. The sun had been up for a while but his blanket was stiff with frost and he’d dreamt he was drowning in a dark, viscous lake, slippery frigid hands pulling him under. He was cold, stiff with ague and not looking forward to the turkey jerky that awaited him for breakfast, the bulk package long since expired and as flavorless as hardtack.

Ravens hopped from one branch to another above him, eying him with intrigue, and he groaned, stretching.

“Shut up!” he called to the birds, rolling to his knees on the hard ground. “I’m not dead yet,” he mumbled, mostly to himself. He had yet to shake off the slippery darkness of his dream.

The night before, on the highway, he’d encountered a wolf pack of abandoned cars, doors open like the passengers had only just stepped out and odd black pools of the substance he’d started thinking of as anti-matter sitting scattered about the highway amongst the ghostly carapaces of the vehicles. He’d come upon the pools before, with Dan, who avoided them like the plague but couldn’t tell William why. The pools were always inert, dead. On the surface nothing he would normally associate with even being a biological entity. But the thing was, even sitting there, still as the concrete they sat on, he could sense their sinister intent. Or an echo of it. Dan used to take one look, turn to William, say “bad f*cking juju, dude,” and keep walking.

He groaned again and the ravens above him took off all at once, wingbeats fluttering the red and gold leaves of the autumn canopy.

He kicked dirt onto what remained of the glowing embers of his campfire and folded up his blankets to tie them to the bottom of his pack which he shouldered, pulling out a hunk of jerky to chew on while he walked. He stamped his boots into the ground to kick some feeling into his feet and headed north.

The area he was in now was flat country, pocked with overgrown fields of barley and soy, cut through by the highway he’d been traveling along the night before. He tuned in briefly to the homing beacon in his head, then adjusted course slightly, turning to crest a small rise – the sum total of the elevation in probably the whole county. He got to the top and looked down and was met with an unending line of the brown husks of corn that hadn’t been cut back for winter the year before, their wide flat leaves rattling in the breeze.

He hated corn fields. Hated the way the sharp leaves grabbed and sliced at you when you walked through them, hated the way you could get so easily turned around amongst the stalks. The worst thing – what he hated most – was how it always felt like someone was just beyond the next row, how anyone or anything could be hiding there in the impenetrable wall of green or brown. Even when he knew there wasn’t anyone there, when he opened up his senses and didn’t feel anyone near him, he still had to steel his nerves before stepping in amongst the stalks.

The field itself looked to be acres long and acres wide, and he stepped in and walked fast, longing for the journey to be over. Overhead, the ravens were back, wheeling through the air and looking at him with sharp eyes, flying up ahead and then riding the air currents back, keeping pace with him. It was unnerving, the sun glinting off their glossy feathers reminding him of his dream from the night before.

When he was certain he was getting to the end of the field, when he couldn’t stand walking anymore, he began to run, and the cutting, fibrous leaves clutched at him, pulling on his clothes and pack. Without any warning, he burst through the last line of maize, stumbling into the open, startling a rafter of turkeys that had been grazing on the field’s edge, and they fluttered off into the trees beyond the field voicing their displeasure.

Above him, the ravens settled into the tops of the trees. He glared at them uncomfortably and tightened the straps of his knapsack, pulling it tight to his shoulders as he set off into the woods.

He was about fifty yards in when he heard it; the unnerving out-of-place sound of someone quietly crying.

He closed his eyes and sensed the presence of a single person – human – a little way to the north and west. He stepped carefully through the leafy ground, trying not to make any sound when he walked. After about forty feet, he saw her.

There was a girl of nine or ten sitting on a log next to a game trail. She had on red leggings, dirty at the knees, a pair of boots that were several sizes too big for her, and a tatty pink and purple winter coat, torn at one elbow, white fibrous batting showing through the tear. She wiped her eyes and nose noisily and that’s when William saw what lay at her feet.

A small Irish setter, the same color as the layer of red/brown leaves that carpeted the floor of the forest was lying awkwardly on the ground, its front paw bent unnaturally where a large steel hunting trap had snapped around its leg. It whimpered and William involuntarily gasped.

The girl looked up and stood, frightened, poised to take off running. William could see the tracks of tears that cut through the dirt on her face.

He held up a hand. “I won’t hurt you,” he said.

The girl looked at him warily.

“What happened?” he asked.

The child’s face wilted.

“It’s my dog Jessie,” she said, starting to cry again, “she got caught in this trap and she’s really hurt!”

William stepped forward and the dog lifted its head weakly, sniffing at the air, leaves and burrs and bits of plant caught in the stringy fur of her ears.

“You can’t get it off?” he asked, approaching them cautiously.

The girl shook her head.

“I know I should go get my dad, but he’s going to say we have to put her down. Her leg is broke! Look!”

William got closer and walked around the pair, giving them a few feet of space. He looked at the big metal trap, which didn’t have teeth like the ones he’d seen in the movies, but the jaws of it were clamped tight and he could see a trickle of blood soaking into the poor dog’s fur. The leg was definitely broken.

He kneeled down on the girl’s other side to take a closer look. The dog turned toward him, whimpering a bit, the chain of the trap clinking when she moved.

“Maybe I can get it off her,” he said after a moment, looking at how the thing was made. He’d never be able to pry it loose using brute strength, but if he used his powers – subtly, so the girl didn’t see – he was pretty sure he could do it.

“Really?” the girl said, running the back of her hand under her nose, smearing mucus and dirt onto her cheek.

“Maybe,” William said, moving a little closer to the animal. “Her name’s Jessie?”

The girl nodded.

“What’s your name?” he asked, “I’m William.”

“Katie,” the girl said, sniffing again.

“Do you think Jessie will bite me if I get too close, Katie?”

“No!” Katie said, falling to her knees right next to the dog and petting her head. “She’s a really good dog!”

William wasn’t so sure – he was pretty sure he’d bite somebody if he found himself hurt and trapped like this, but he took Katie’s word for it and eased himself down onto his knees right in front of the trap.

“Katie, can you get me a stick? A thick one? Like about this big?” he pinched together his finger and thumb, showing her what to grab.

“Yes!” she said happily, and then stood and darted away, scouring the forest floor for the perfect tool.

William reached out and touched the dog’s head, who turned to look at him with watery, sad eyes. She gave a low short growl, which ended in a whimper and dropped her head back to the forest floor.

“Shh,” William said, “it’s okay.” He considered the trap in front of him, feeling it out with his mind. He pictured the two bars prying apart and gave them an experimental mental tug. The coiled force holding them together was very tight, but it gave a few centimeters. Jessie whimpered and tried to sit up.

“No, shh, stay,” William said quickly, and the dog settled back down.

“I got one!” Katie called out triumphantly and came running back up to them waving a thick stick in the air.

William put his hand out to receive it, but Katie was coming in fast and his angle was wrong and when he grabbed at it, the sharp end of the stick sunk into his palm. He cried out once and then shook out his hand – he could see a line of blood running over the base of his thumb.

“I’m sorry!” Katie said, horrified.

“No, it’s okay,” William assured her, giving her a tight smile. “It just poked me is all. Can you give it here?”

Katie handed the thick stick over and William turned back to the trap. He gave the mouth of it one more mental tug and he shoved the stick in between the bars and pretended to pry them with the stick, all the while yanking on them hard with his mind. A moment later the trap snapped open and Jessie pulled her leg limply out of it, rolling onto her side. William threw the trap uselessly away and Katie shouted in joy.

“You did it!” she said, impulsively hugging Will once around the neck before she turned back to her dog.

William looked down at his injured palm and sucked the blood away, then watched as his skin slowly knitted itself back together, good as new. Little injuries like that were easy – his body took care of them on its own, but bigger ones, like the time he’d gotten his finger closed in the car door at school drop-off – healing that took a bit of concentration. He’d zoned out for most of the first fifteen minutes of school that day, finding the place in his mind he thought of as The Healing Place and feeling what it was like to knit together tissue and mend a miniature fracture in bone.

Katie was kneeling by Jessie’s head, and she began to cry again.

“Oh my god,” she wailed, “look at her leg!”

William glanced over and winced – it was bent at an unnatural angle and looked heinously painful. He looked back at his hand and wondered…

He reached out and ran a hand along Jessie’s head, petting the dog gently, talking to her in a calm voice. With his mind, he reached out to feel inside of her, down her neck, around her shoulder, then there- he could feel what the dog’s body was trying to do.

“Hey Katie,” he said. The girl looked up. “This might not be so bad. Do you think you can go find a couple more sticks? Two or three of them, about the same thickness and length? Maybe I can splint it.”

Katie nodded and shot off into the woods, and William turned his full attention back to the dog. He reached inside with his mind. The dog, sensing something odd, again tried to get up, but William put his other hand on the dog’s side and held her firmly.

“It’s okay, Jessie,” he said, closing his eyes, “stay here with me, girl. Be with me.”

The dog calmed and her body stopped fighting him and began showing him what it wanted him to do. It took concentration and a few fits and starts, but then the healing began to flow between him and the dog and the process rushed ahead, increasing in pace as he got the hang of it — tissue mending itself, the bone calcifying itself back together.

After a while, he opened his eyes. The dog’s leg was healed, its fur still wet with blood, but whole and straight again. From above them came the indignant call of a raven. William looked up and saw dozens of them perched on the trees above. Then they burst into flight, disappearing into the sky above the canopy.

Jessie rolled up to a sitting position and sniffed at her fur, giving it a few licks, and then she stood, putting her weight on it. All at once, her tail started wagging madly and she jumped up and licked his face. He laughed and pushed her gently away, standing.

“Hey Katie!” he shouted, “don’t worry about the sticks! I think her leg is okay!”

Katie came crashing through the brush and rushed up to him, looking down at her dog, amazed, then fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around the animal’s neck, burying her face blissfully into the silky auburn fur.

When she turned to William, her face was shining with happiness.

“I can’t wait to tell my dad!” she said, standing up.

William gave her a small smile, a prickle of discomfort creeping up his neck.

“Come on! Come with us!” she said, taking a few steps west, Jessie happily bounding at her side. “We’ve got food and a camper!”

William swung his knapsack onto his back and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

“I need to go my way,” he told the girl, and then turned and headed north. Behind him, a single black feather – dark as night, glossy as oil – drifted to the earth where he’d stood.

Chapter 21: The Base

Chapter Text

Scully sat up, the coppery taste of blood on her tongue. She looked down at her shirt, which was still soaked red, a jagged slash where the super soldier’s hand pierced her torso. The previous few minutes were a blur of pain and confusion. She remembered trying to stop the soldier from the senseless killing of the cultist woman after they’d been brought aboard the ship, then pain, the cold knowledge of impending death, and then her son. He’d been with her in her mind, in her body and she-

“You healed me,” she said, pulling back from Mulder’s embrace and turning to William.

He gave her a small smile. “Yes.”

“How did-” she was at an utter loss for words.

“Hate to tell you this, doc,” said Mulder, rubbing a hand up and down her arm, “but you might be out of a job.”

Scully took a long, bracing breath and then looked around the wrecked bridge of the silent ship.

“We crashed?” she said, turning to Mulder.

He nodded, lifting his chin toward William.

“And the soldiers? The Preacher?”

Mulder looked significantly at their son and then ran his finger along his neck with a less than savory sound effect.

“He also managed to somehow keep us from being mangled to a pulp,” Mulder said, rising and putting a hand on William’s shoulder.

Scully looked at her son, marveling. The boy turned his gaze to the floor and then made a face – not quite a wince – bringing a hand to his temple.

“William?” she said, concerned, “Are you okay? Are you feeling weak? Did the-”

“No,” William said, shaking his head as if to clear it, “I feel stronger than I have in… Ever. It’s-” he made the odd face again. “It’s so strange. I feel… You know the homing beacon,” he tapped the side of his head, “that helped me find you?”

Scully nodded.

“It’s back on. I feel the strangest pull inside my head…”

Scully stole a glance at Mulder.

“Is it painful?” she asked William.

“No,” he said, taking a breath and standing. “It’s just… You’re here. Before, it stopped when I found you in Trout Creek. I never felt it again after that.”

“Well,” said Mulder, “maybe it’s time to follow it again.”

He reached down and offered Scully a hand. “You okay?” he asked. “Think you can stand?”

She gave her body a quick self-assessment. “Yeah,” she said, grabbing his hand and letting him hoist her up.

When she turned to look, the woman Elaine was kneeling on the floor near them, watching them with wide eyes. Scully wondered just what the hell they were going to do with her. First, however, they had to get off the ship.

“So how do we get out?” she asked, looking around.

She connected eyes with Mulder and knew instantly that they were having the same thought: the downed ship they’d been aboard on Bloor Street.

“Wasn’t it back this way?” Mulder said, and ducked into the hallway which skirted around the saucer. Scully and William followed him, Elaine trailing silently behind them like an odd D’Artagnan. Mulder stopped at the apogee of the saucer’s circle, and Scully closed her eyes briefly, thinking of the opening on the ship in Toronto – it would have been right there.

“Um,” Mulder said, looking at the unmarred wall. “Do you think there’s a button or…?”

Scully looked to William. “Can you… feel anything, William?” She hoped his connection to the ships might extend to knowing how they operated.

William looked at her and delivered with a perfect deadpan: “Look lady, I just crash ‘em.”

Mulder outright laughed and Scully reluctantly cracked a wan smile. William looked pleased.

“Honestly, though,” he said, sobering, “I messed the ship up pretty good. I’m not even sure what all I did. I- I kinda Hulked out for a minute.” He looked sheepishly away.

Scully was dying to ask Mulder what exactly she’d missed.

Mulder put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Bruce Banner,” he said, “we’ll figure it out. Just remind me not to try to ground you.”

The boy smiled.

“What if we climbed through the hole in the co*ckpit?” Scully asked, thinking of the daylight that was streaming in through the side of the ship on the bridge where they’d been brought in.

“Worth a try,” Mulder said.

They all shuffled back to the bridge. The ship had landed at an angle so that the hole through which the Preacher had been vaporized was tilted up toward the sky.

Mulder climbed his way up to it and peeked through. Scully came to his side and looked as well.

The ship had come down in a rocky area dotted with short, scrubby conifers. The hole wasn’t overly large — she and Elaine might fit through it, but it would be a tight squeeze for Mulder and William. The drop down was five or six feet, max. She was about to suggest she try to work her way through it when she heard something outside the ship. Mulder froze next to her, then wheeled around, holding up a finger to his mouth, motioning for William and Elaine to be quiet. There were voices approaching, and the sound of boots on rock.

A woman rounded the ship and came into view, a slick looking automatic weapon held up and at the ready. She was tall, fit, dressed in dark tactical gear, and she looked, Scully thought, remarkably like Angela Bassett. The woman moved with military precision, aiming her weapon at all sectors before lowering it slowly and calling out:

“Position One, clear!”

Scully could hear various other voices, calling from nearby.

“Two, clear!”

“Three, clear!”

“Four, clear!”

“Five, clear!”

Angela Bassett – for lack of something else to call her – straightened and slung her weapon behind her back.

“On me!” she called out, and a moment later the other soldiers came into view, all wearing the same dark gear, all carrying the same sleek weapons.

“Nichol!” the woman said, and a tall thick-necked man with a tightly cropped blond crew cut came to stand next to her.

“What do you think, boss?” he said.

“This ship isn’t one of ours, it’s one of theirs,” said Bassett.

“Then where the hell did it come from?” Nichol said. “Their pilots can’t get near here.”

“How the hell should I know? Maybe that’s why it crashed.”

“Looks like it had a little trouble,” said one of the other soldiers, a shorter woman with dark curly hair pulled back into a low ponytail. She pointed up toward the hole where Mulder and Scully stood silently listening. Scully pulled her head back so as not to be seen.

“Scan it. See what’s on board.”

A skinny looking kid fresh out of his teens stepped forward with a small handheld device.

“That can’t be right,” the kid said after a minute, squinting at the gadget.

“What is it?” Angela Bassett said, stepping up to him.

“Four aboard,” the kid said, turning the device so that she could see the read-out. “All human.”

“No Metallics?” Bassett asked. “No Shifters?”

“No ma’am,” the kid said. “Four humans.”

“Alive?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Nichol, get me Base,” Bassett ordered.

Nichol pulled a radio from his belt.

“Base Zero, this is Team Six, over.” Nichol handed the radio over to Bassett.

Scully shot a look up at Mulder and mouthed the word Zero? Mulder bit his lip, listening.

“ Team Six, this is Base Zero. Go ahead. Over .”

“Base Zero, we have a bit of a situation two clicks southwest of base. We found the bogey you picked up on radar. We have a downed enemy ship here with humans aboard. Over.”

“ Team Six, say again. Over .”

“Base Zero we have a downed enemy ship with four humans aboard. Alive. Over.”

“ Team Six, stand by .”

The soldiers shuffled uncomfortably. One of them pulled out the ammo clip and checked his weapon.

“ Team Six, do you have eyes on the human combatants? Over. ”

Scully traded another look with Mulder.

“Base Zero, that’s a negative. They’re still onboard the ship. Over.”

“ Team Six, you’re ordered to remove the combatants from the ship and identify. Over. ”

“Base Zero, roger that. We’ll be in touch. Over and out.”

Angela Bassett handed the radio back to Nichol.

“You heard ‘em, Team Six,” she said, “Murphy, crack it open, we’re going in.”

The skinny kid, Murphy, did something to the device in his hand and Scully heard a mechanical whirring sound from the other end of the ship. The soldiers all swung their weapons up and they swept out of view of the hole in formation.

Scully turned and trotted quickly back down to where William and Elaine stood waiting, Mulder right on her heels. Her pulse was thrumming.

“Soldiers,” Mulder said quickly, “Humans, I think.”

He looked to William, who nodded.

“They’re coming aboard,” Scully said. “They’re carrying serious weaponry.”

William looked at her. “Do you want me to disarm them?” he asked.

“No,” Mulder said quickly, earning a look. “Not yet. I think they’re from Zero.”

William’s eyebrows shot up. Scully could feel a slight vibration of the soldier’s footsteps through the floor.

“Spread out,” she said, “a couple of feet apart. Put your hands up and don’t. Move. An. Inch.”

Mulder and William complied, standing on either side of her and facing the hallway of the ship, putting their hands high above their heads. Elaine looked lost from a few feet away.

“Elaine!” Scully hissed, “hands!”

The woman raised her arms slowly just as the soldiers came rounding the hallway and into the entrance to the bridge.

“Hands up!” Angela Bassett shouted, the first one through the door, “Keep ‘em up! Keep ‘em up!”

Elaine shrieked but held steady, and the soldiers came in behind their commander, weapons at the ready, all moving with tactical precision.

Scully watched as Angela Bassett swept her eyes over the four of them, her gaze coming to land on Elaine, who was dressed in the brown robes of the zealots, the triangle cross of her religion still swinging heavily from her neck.

“Identify yourselves!” Bassett barked.

Mulder took a half step forward and two guns swung in his direction.

“My name is Mulder,” he said, then nodded to Scully and William. “This is my wife and son.”

Bassett swung her gun to Elaine. “You!”

“I- I’m Elaine Drake.”

“Are you with the Ascendant Faith of Above?” Bassett asked, eyeing all four of them.

“Yes-” Elaine said at the same time that Mulder said “No.”

Bassett huffed a long-suffering sigh. She looked to Scully, focusing on the blood on her shirt.

“Ma’am, do you require medical attention?”

“No,” Scully said, throwing a quick look to Mulder.

“Check them for weapons,” Bassett ordered, “and bring them out.”

She kept her gun trained on them while Murphy and the short female soldier stepped forward, giving them each a thorough search.

“They’re clean,” the female soldier said.

Bassett lowered her weapon and turned to leave the ship.

The other soldiers, guns trained on the four of them, ordered them to lock their hands behind their heads and marched them off the ship.

The daylight was blinding after the soft low light of the spacecraft, and Scully blinked hard, breathing in the rich outside air. Despite their current predicament, it felt good to be off the ship.

Murphy, the female soldier and the fifth soldier, an unremarkable looking brown-haired man, kept their guns trained on them while Nichol lowered his and walked up to Bassett.

“What do you think?” he asked her in a low voice.

“That this is weird as sh*t,” Bassett said, matching his quiet tone.

“Should we call it in?” Nichol asked.

Bassett shook her head. “I want to know more first. Drake is obviously AFA. I think we need to assume the other three are as well.”

“What would the AFA be doing on the ships?”

“New strategy, maybe,” Bassett said, “The shifters have been radicalizing as many people as they can – all the sh*t with their New Holy Trinity – trying to find Bravo, Charlie and Delta. Probably got them to fly the ship here hoping to infiltrate, since the Metallics can’t get close.”

“So should we bring them in?” Nichol asked, “Repopulation protocol calls for deprogramming.”

“Honestly? I’d rather shoot them. If their mission is to infiltrate we shouldn’t do their work for them. I only give half a sh*t what the pencil pushers at Base think is best.”

“Yeah, but then we have to carry their bodies back so the shifters don’t get a hold of them. You feel like carrying 70 kilos back to base? I don’t.”

“We could march them back to base and shoot them there,” Bassett said, sighing, and Scully was relieved to hear her tone shift. Maybe they weren’t about to eat bullets after all.

“I prefer not to be shot at all if it's all the same to you,” Mulder said loudly, and the brown-haired soldier standing nearest him whipped his gun back and punched the barrel of it into Mulder’s knee, sending him to the ground with a grunt.

Scully winced. Bassett shouted “Meijer! Stand down!” And William, to Scully’s half-horror and half-impressed-surprise, unclasped his hands from behind his head. The weapons – all five sleek-looking automatic rifles, several holstered sidearms and three commando knives that Scully hadn’t even seen – went flying through the air and stopped, hovering in front of William’s upstretched hands. A second later, they clattered to the ground in front of him.

“No one,” he said, his voice deadly and low, “touches my mom or dad again, do you understand me?”

The soldiers all stood frozen to the ground where they were, shocked looks on their faces. Murphy still had his hands in front of him as though he were still holding his weapon. A moment later, Angela Bassett slowly raised her hands up non threateningly and stepped forward.

“Okay kid,” she said, “Understood.” She looked to her team. “Team Six, stand down.”

The soldiers merely looked at her, but she nodded at William with a confident questioning look on her face, and he begrudgingly nodded back – a detente.

“Nichol, give me the radio,” she said.

Nichol took a long look at William and then slowly handed it to his commander.

“Base Zero, this is Team Six, come in, over.”

A crackle of static.

“ Team Six, this is Base Zero, go ahead. Over. ”

“Base Zero, we have Bravo,” Bassett said, looking at the people in front of her with a triumphant intensity. “I repeat, we have Bravo.”

Scully awoke from a dream that could have been a memory, their new little cabin silent around her but for a slight puff of wind that pushed into the old, gauzy screen and Mulder’s contented snores. The sun had already risen in the sky, pressing its way up through morning, and the day promised a bright, sweet-smelling heat.

In the dream, she had been sitting in front of an old computer screen at an internet cafe, back when they still had those. Beside her, William had been sitting in his stroller, contentedly guzzling on a frothy bottle of pumped breast milk. She heard the crying of a baby and looked up, confident that it wasn’t her own, and saw another baby in a similar stroller near the register that was beginning to fret, her little disgruntled huffs increasing in volume and intensity.

But dream-Scully was distracted by what was on the computer in front of her and her eyes were pulled back to the screen. Even awake as she was, she could feel the gut-wrenching loneliness from her dream-memory, the evocative words of Mulder’s communication slicing into her already aching heart. She sat up, the still-musty sheets falling away from her breast. Tears came to her eyes and she squeezed them away and reached for him.

He awoke with a long inhale and then swung his hand out for the gun he’d put on the bedside table the night before.

“No,” Scully said, and rolled on top of him.

He moved his hands to her hips and she could feel him stir to life under her.

“Are you-” he started to say, but she leaned down and captured his lips with hers, quickly pulling him from startled and sleepy to a state of eager excitement. She rocked her hips a few times, running her dewy center over the length of him and then reached down to help him slide home.

She focused on sensation and nothing else, letting the dream fade away, leaving the memory to exist in the past, where it belonged.

XxXxXxXxXxX

At the same time on a dusty county road in the west, William and Dan walked through a small abandoned town. The sun had just risen, and above and around them the air was crisp in the dull glow of the orange sherbet sky.

“Look,” said Dan, pointing at a low white building with a light box marquee out front, “tonight’s hamburger night at the F.O.E.”

“Don’t say hamburgers, Dan, it’s just mean.”

“Do you think that one is Fraternal Order of Eagles or Fraternal Order of Elk? I can’t keep them straight.”

“I don’t care,” said William, whining, “which one can I eat?”

Dan turned and regarded him thoughtfully.

“Let’s break in,” Dan said, swinging into the small gravel parking lot of the building. “My grandpa used to take me to the Rotary Club Friday Fish Fry. These places always have a bunch of those individual bags of chips that they slap on your plate next to the Sysco tartar sauce.”

William, forgetting himself for a moment, said “I love you, Dan.”

She looked at him and swung the bat up over her shoulder. “Don’t go getting sappy on me, Will,” she said, “it ruins your tough guy image.”

William laughed and fell into step beside her.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Far to the north, in almost a straight line from where William and Dan were attempting to scrounge up their breakfast, a man opened a colossal iron door that had been installed in the sheer rock wall of a distant mountain. Dust fell from the massive doorway and onto the sleeve of his uniform. He brushed it off and stepped inside, reaching blindly for the large switch that would turn on the lights. Finding it, he threw it up with a grunting effort, and overhead, lights clicked on, row upon row of them. On and on they flickered to life, disappearing into the distance of the mammoth, cavernous space.

Beside him, one of the faceless rebels, nodding his approval, stepped inside and began walking, his steps making dull clicks on the rocky floor.

The man turned to the people waiting outside.

“Come on in,” he said, and they began to file in by twos and threes. Dozens of people, hundreds, many carrying bags and suitcases, some carrying nothing at all, filed their way into the mountainside.

Finally, when the last two people approached, flanked by the man’s best guards — hand-selected by him personally — they paused in the doorway. The girl, 12 years old with eyes of the clearest brown, clutched her mother’s hand tightly and eyed the lighted expanse before her, wreathed in cobwebs and covered with dust.

“What is this place, Mom?” she asked.

“Home,” her mom said, squeezing her hand gently, “it’s home, now.”

Chapter 22: The Other

Chapter Text

They sat at a conference table, the three of them, in a cramped room with a low ceiling and bedrock as one of the walls. It was odd to sit in full electric light.

“I don’t why, I keep expecting Skinner to walk through the door,” Mulder said, and William watched as a sad smile washed over his mother’s features.

“Who’s Skinner?” he asked.

“He was our old boss at the Bureau,” Mulder explained.

“He helped protect you when you were a baby,” Scully said, looking far away.

Angela Bassett, whose name turned out to be Humphries, had been fairly close-lipped while she and the rest of Team Six escorted them to Zero, only assuring them that they were friendly, were working with what was left of a North American governmental alliance against the aliens and – what had ensured their cooperation in the short term – were already sending a small team to Arch Rock to retrieve Molly, Pumpkin and Gypsy.

When they’d approached the large iron door that led into the mountain that housed Base Zero, Mulder had leaned down and whispered in his son’s ear: “How’s the homing beacon, kiddo?”

“Whatever it is, we’re really close,” William had replied, and that sealed it for the trio, who agreed to enter the base and await whatever fate had in store.

Elaine had been taken away to another portion of the base when they were led inside, and Humphries had taken them directly (through what felt like miles of offshoot tunnels) to this conference room and promised that someone would be with them shortly with answers to every one of their questions.

The person that entered the room first was not in fact Walter Skinner, but rather a faceless alien, and Mulder shot out of his chair and was halfway across the room with a war-like look on his face when another man entered behind the alien and held up his enormous hands with a pleading command:

“Wait! Mulder, please!”

William watched his father pull up short and look at the second man who had entered the room with a startled expression. He was the largest person that William had ever seen. He had a full head of dark auburn hair and a matching bushy beard, and he had to duck under the lintel to walk into the room, which he did with a pronounced limp, a gray metal cane held in one of the hands he’d raised to implore Mulder to stop his attack of the faceless alien.

“Peter?” Mulder said with wonder, and the large man, Peter, smiled and lowered his bear-like arms.

“Imagine my surprise to hear there was a man named Mulder who entered the base with his wife and son,” Peter said.

Mulder glanced over at Scully and Peter’s eyes swung to William. The faceless alien also turned his head toward him and William experienced an odd feeling behind his eyes.

“I’ll be honest,” Peter went on, “I was expecting an infant.”

“Peter,” said Scully, rising from her chair and walking around the opposite end of the conference table to embrace the man warmly. Mulder was still standing several feet from the faceless alien on the other side of the table, looking confused and unsure.

Peter hugged Scully back, lifting her a little ways off the ground.

“Wife!” Peter said, setting her down. “Did you two make it official?”

“I figure we’re common law, now,” quipped Mulder, though he hadn’t taken his eyes off the alien, and his expression was wary.

“It is good to see you, Dr. Scully,” the big man said, his eyes crinkling with affection as he looked down on her.

“Peter,” Mulder said with an escalating sense of urgency.

“Please,” Peter said, turning serious and gesturing to the chairs pulled up to the conference table. “Sit. I’ll explain.”

“I’ll sit when you tell me why there’s a faceless man here,” Mulder started.

“We’re working with them,” Peter said simply, sinking slowly into one of the chairs and resting both hands on the top of his cane, “or they with us. I don’t know. I was not here when it all started. Either way, they’re friends. Allies.”

Scully had walked back to the chair she had been sitting in, but didn’t sit down, looking at Peter earnestly.

“Peter, these aliens have destroyed our entire civilization, they-”

Peter held up a hand and interrupted her. “They have not,” he said.

“But we’ve seen-”

“You have seen only scant pieces of the whole, Scully.”

“Mulder and I have witnessed these men abducting people – friends of ours – we’ve witnessed them taking human bodies and loading them onto their ships,” Scully said, pointing an accusatory finger at the alien who stood, silent and still near where Peter was now seated.

“Yes,” Peter said, “you have. But they were not responsible for the invasion. In fact they tried to stop it, the only way they were able. Their own last resort.”

“They bombed the ships,” Mulder said quietly, almost to himself, “after the initial invasion, they came down in their own ships and bombed the invaders.”

Peter nodded. “They have been trying to subvert the invasion for over twenty years. Amongst many other acts of rebellion, including those you mentioned, Scully, they inoculated the world’s population against a virus that would have made us all incubators to the invader’s next generation of conquerors.”

“The black oil?” Mulder asked, “The alien virus?”

Peter once again nodded. “A vaccine was introduced, added to existing inoculations – the flu shot, MMR, yellow fever, measles, meningitis, malaria. They were even able to synthesize it and spread it through the air to the whole of the planet, with the contrails of commercial aircraft.”

Scully looked like she was about to short circuit, when Mulder spoke again.

“They were able to inoculate the entire planet?”

“Quite successfully,” Peter said. “If a person encountered the oil, their immune system would attack it, kill it, and eject it. I’m sure you, like me, encountered the remnants on occasion.”

William thought of those he had come across with Dan. Bad f*cking juju.

“Then what happened ?” Scully finally spoke.

“The invaders improvised,” Peter said. “They began taking out vast swaths of the population. And the people they killed, they took. Scully, you said you and Mulder watched as our faceless friends abducted people. As they loaded bodies.”

Scully nodded.

“If it was the faceless men, they brought them all here. Not to kill or to conquer, but to save. We house thousands upon thousands of survivors here and in other safe spaces throughout the world. And those bodies? They collected them so that they could be safely interred here amongst the magnetite fields of Zero. So that they wouldn’t be turned.”

“Turned?” Scully asked.

“Super soldiers,” William spoke, his voice soft when he finally spoke, the realization coming as the words left his mouth. “The invading aliens are taking people and the bodies of the dead and turning them into super soldiers on their ships.”

Peter closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said, on a deep breath. “Yes. They have no hope of bringing about the next generation of their kind here on Earth, not after the failure of the alien virus, and so instead, they are raising an army.”

“For what?” Mulder finally lowered himself into a chair and Scully followed suit.

“Eventually they plan to rape the Earth of her resources and take the army they’ve built to other places, other planets, other societies which do not have immunity to their deadly method of reproduction.”

“So some of the ships are the invading aliens, and some are the faceless rebels?” Scully asked. “Why didn’t they communicate that? The people that are left are terrified!”

“It’s complicated,” Peter said. “And there are far more of the invading aliens and their ships than there are of our faceless friends’. It’s best if the remaining population of Earth keeps their distance. The rebels save who they can find. But the invading aliens, those who can alter their appearance to look like your wife, your friend, your neighbor… it’s good that people are afraid. They should be.”

“You’re housing survivors here?” Mulder asked.

“Thousands,” said Peter. “And there are other bases throughout the world doing the same thing. Places like this, rich in magnetite. Places their super soldier army can never enter.”

“So humanity lives on,” Scully said, “stuck in the bowels of the earth?”

“Not for long,” Peter said, a confident smile spreading across his face. “The super soldiers we will have to deal with, but the places they are made, the ships the invaders live on, where they cultivate the human dead for their evil purpose, where they house their technology… we have a plan to bring them down.”

“This is-” Scully started.

“A lot to take in,” Peter said, “I understand. I am so pleased you have come, my friends. And my goodness… you have brought us Bravo! How wonderfully unexpected!” He looked at William. “So many of our prayers have been answered! Had I but known you were Charlie and Delta…”

“Bravo,” Scully said, “Charlie, Delta… You have us at a loss, Peter.”

“Code names,” he said, “for your protection. As the shape shifting aliens are after you. We didn’t know your identities until you arrived here. And this… This boy,” Peter said, gesturing to William. “Is Bravo. One of our saviors.” William felt his insides go liquid. “We’ve known of his existence, but not who he was. He has been hiding from us.”

“His name is William,” Scully said, prickly.

“William,” Peter said, nodding kindly and deferentially. “It is an honor to meet you, William. I am Peter, an old friend of your parents.”

William looked at the man for a long moment, trying to process all he was hearing. “It’s nice to meet you, too,” he finally answered.

Peter turned to Scully, his eyes softening.

“I had no idea you had a child,” he said, so kindly and with such empathy that William decided then that he liked the man, even if every word out of his mouth was more confusing and terrifying than the last.

“We lost him a very long time ago,” Scully said, reaching out and taking William’s hand. “But he recently found his way back to us.”

Peter nodded at this. “Remarkable,” he said. “It was wise of you to hide yourself, William. We were not the only ones looking for you.”

“I know,” William said, lowering his head.

“The invading aliens,” Peter went on, looking back to Mulder and Scully, “and their soldiers. They know your boy and know of his powers. They’ve been doing everything they can to keep him from getting here to Zero. Going so far as to radicalize weak people of faith to do their hunting for them.”

“We’ve discovered that for ourselves,” Mulder said, “what I want to know is, why?”

“Because your son’s powers will help us defeat them.”

William suddenly slammed his hand down on the table so hard it hurt. Scully flinched. “Stop!” he said. “Stop talking about me like I’m not in the room. Stop talking about me like I’m some kind of savior! You didn’t even know who I was, you said it yourself! You don’t know anything about me!”

Peter looked at him kindly. “But we do, William,” he said.

“How?!”

“Because you’re not the only one with gifts,” Peter said gently. William felt like he was going to faint.

“Wh… what?” he said.

Peter smiled and rose slowly, then limped to the door. He cracked it and said in a low voice, “Murphy if you would, can you bring Alpha here, please?” Then he turned and came back into the room.

“I know we’ve barely scratched the surface here and that you are all tired and overwhelmed. I’m sure you have more questions and I promise you I have more answers. There is so much more to discuss. But first, I’d like you to meet someone.”

The next moment, there was a soft knock on the door. Peter opened it to reveal a teenaged girl, about the same age as William. She was pretty, with long dark hair, a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones and small pointed nose. Her eyes were large and brown, like the richest mahogany. One look at them and William lost the ability to speak.

“Hi,” the girl said somewhat shyly.

“Alpha,” Peter said to her, then looked to William, “This is Bravo.”

She moved forward and stepped up to where William was sitting, offering him her hand.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you,” she said. He reached out and tentatively took her hand. As soon as he touched her, CLICK! the flailing, searching sensation in his head, whose needle had been swinging wildly, fell into place as if it were a compass finding true north.

“I-” he fumbled, and then shook her hand, “I’m William,” he said.

“Hi William,” she said, “I’m Joy.”

God, he was tired. Weary of body, of mind, of spirit. He kept moving more out of momentum than anything else, the pull he felt in his mind a dogged, neverending ache. Had there really ever been a time when he hadn’t felt it? Had there really ever been a time when he hadn’t done this – the plodding, constant traveling – shielding himself from ships, avoiding people, dodging voids? He put food in his mouth and boots on his feet and one step at a time, in a state of ceaseless lassitude, William sojourned north.

When it happened, he almost wasn’t ready for it.

He was refilling his bottle, pumping water from a small rock pool through his microbial filter when two things happened at the same time: The first thing was his senses picking up on two people approaching him from the northwest. He hadn’t seen anyone for days, and hadn’t expected to. He didn’t even really purposely reach out with his mind to feel them there like he normally would have – he got a prickly feeling up his back and there they were. The second thing – the most unexpected thing after so long – was a strange, almost righteous CLICK in the innermost lamellae of his mind, and the homing beacon, the loadstar he’d been following for months, years, millenia, it felt like – locked into place and shut itself off, as a key slides into a lock and shuffles all the tumblers into their grooves.

He saw them a moment later, as he ducked behind a tree, a man and a woman – he, tall and she, short, he, dark and she, light – and William felt the oddest sense of being the switch that closed a circuit, as though the man was of the earth and the woman was of the sky, and William was the horizon that held them both together. He felt more alive in that moment than he had since he could last remember.

They were improbably – being that they were walking along an estuary of a wild river in the middle of nowhere – holding hands. The man carried a small waterproof pack which he swung off his shoulder when he and the woman reached the pool where William had been filling his bottle. The man dropped the woman’s hand and she crossed her arms to watch him.

“I’m just saying, Scully,” the man said, “I could do it.”

The woman sighed, long-suffering but patient. “I’m not saying you couldn’t, I’m just saying maybe you shouldn’t.”

He took a knee on the cold earth and opened up the top of the pack, pulling out a couple of small tools. He smiled up at her, adoringly.

“You know I always appreciate you looking out for me.” He stood then and leaned down to press a soft kiss to the end of the woman’s nose. “But I still think I could. And should.”

The woman gave a short bark of laughter. “Well, far be it from me to undermine your confidence, Mulder.”

It was the man’s turn to laugh. Then he grabbed one of the tools and leaned over the pool. A moment later he pulled up a small gill net absolutely full of large, silver fish. The man gave a quick shout of triumph.

“It worked!” he said.

The woman smiled and touched his back, then stepped forward to help him work the fish out and load them into a smaller pack she had folded into the belt at her waist. When they were finished, they each mumbled something to the other that William couldn’t hear and kissed – it was long and lingering, and after a moment, William looked away, embarrassed.

When he chanced a glance back, they were wending their way back up the small creek the same direction from which they’d come, and, feeling a kind of nervous surety, William followed them.

XxX

When they separated, William had to decide which of them to shadow. It had been five days and he’d made it a kind of game — stop when they stop, camp when they camp, sleep when they sleep. They were on horses, which actually made it easier – the horses were noisy and he had to make less of an effort to shield or hide himself, but when they arrived at a small corrugated tin shack at the base of a mountain pass, the man and the woman separated, and William had to choose.

It probably would have been easier to stay behind with the man – he simply hobbled the horses and went inside the shack. But the woman had intrigued him since he’d come across them, and there was something familiar about her that elicited in him a curiosity just intriguing enough that when she grabbed the rifle and started hiking up the pass, he pulled down his wool hat and decided to follow her.

It had gotten cold the last few days, freezing cold, and he had to avoid using the trail she was on because he didn’t want to leave tracks in the snow, which made the going slower and harder. It was clear she was hunting, but she’d had no luck, and he knew that she was giving up and heading back to the man, for which he felt an immense sense of relief. He was tired and could barely feel his feet from the cold. And that was when it happened. He was distracted by his exhaustion, a little clumsy from the cold, and he didn’t see ice that was sitting just off the trail until he stepped on it. His feet went out from under him, and he came down hard, landing squarely on the wrong side of his foot. He heard the snap in his ankle before he felt it.

The woman whirled around, the cape that hung around her shoulders snapping like a wing beat in the night. And as she approached him, William felt a kind of existential relief and welcomed her ingress and whatever it brought with her; his enlightenment or destruction, élan vital or doom – whatever came to pass, he was just glad the wait was finally over.

Chapter 23: The End

Chapter Text

“...Joy?” Scully said. “Did you… did you say your name was Joy?”

Mulder turned to look at Scully who was staring at the girl with a look of amazement.

“I did,” said the girl.

Scully’s mouth opened and closed once and then she said, “Is your mother’s name Patti, by any chance?”

Joy nodded.

“I met you,” Scully said, “When you were a baby. I was in a coffee shop with William and-”

Scully seemed to run out of words.

“When I was gone?” Mulder asked quietly.

She nodded.

Mulder looked at the girl curiously. Scully had told him about the encounter – it was the night he had almost come home and been forced to jump off a train and run into the quarry.

“Your father was NSA,” Mulder said.

“That’s right,” said Joy.

“You can do what William can do.”

Joy looked over at William, who was looking extremely overwhelmed.

“I think so,” the girl said.

“How?” Mulder asked.

“We don’t know for sure,” she said, “but before my father was an analyst, he was a courier. We think my mother came into contact with a piece of one of the ships when she was pregnant with me. It’s all we can piece together at this point.”

“These children are extraordinary,” Peter said. “What you and Joy will be able to do, William…”

At that moment, the faceless rebel leaned forward in his chair and William inhaled quickly, looking startled.

“What’s wrong?” Scully asked.

William pointed at the faceless rebel. “He’s talking to me,” he said, “in my head.”

Mulder whipped his head around to look at the alien and then William jumped up and ran from the room, running into Murphy who was on his way in. Scully stood to follow him, but Joy held up a hand.

“Let me go talk to him,” she said, and turned to go. Scully looked over at Mulder and he reached out and squeezed her hand. The kid probably needed space. Scully hesitantly retook her seat.

“Was it something I said?” Murphy asked.

Peter rubbed a hand over his face, sighing. “What is it, Murphy?” he asked.

Murphy held up an envelope. “ID badges and suite assignment for Bravo, Charlie and Delta.”

“That was fast,” said Peter, and waved him in.

Murphy dumped the envelope out on the table and pulled out three keycards.

“Here are your RFID badges. All the locks in the base operate on radio frequency near-field communication systems. We tried swipe cards for a while, but the magnetite wreaked havoc on the magnetized strips. You should have seen Humphries one time, she got locked in a–” Murphy seemed to realize that he was talking too much. “Ahem. Anyway, here are your cards. You’ve been granted pretty high level access, so make sure to take care of these and keep them on you at all times.”

Mulder and Scully slid the cards toward themselves, both of them distracted.

Murphy started talking about their suite assignment and how to get there.

Mulder tried to concentrate on what the soldier was saying but he only heard half of it, the whole time wondering – hoping that his son would be alright.

XxXxXxXxXxX

William ran from the conference room blindly, running into two soldiers just outside the door who made sounds of outrage, but he tripped on past them and kept running. It was all too much, too fast.

After making his way down a long corridor, he tried to feel his way toward somewhere without people, casting out a wide mental net, but there were beings everywhere – human and alien. It was useless. Finally, he rounded a corner into yet another hallway, and, finding it empty, he leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, covering his face with his hands.

A few minutes later he felt someone approach and stop in front of him.

He dropped his hands and looked up. Joy was standing there in jeans and a green tee shirt with a cartoon planet earth on it.

“You okay?” she asked.

He took a deep breath. “I guess.”

“Mind if I sit?” she asked, and he gestured to her to go ahead.

Joy settled herself down on the ground next to him, hugging her knees into her chest. She looked at him sympathetically for a minute and then finally spoke.

“It’s a lot,” she said, “When I used to get overwhelmed by it all, I would go and find a little corner or a closet and hide in it with a book. It isn’t easy being Alpha around here. Everyone looking at you like you’re some kind of chosen one.”

“No kidding.”

“I’m just saying… I get it. I’m probably the only one who does.”

They sat in silence for a few moments and William felt his equilibrium start to slant back to level.

“You came a long way to get here,” Joy said.

“I came a long way,” he said, nodding. “I didn’t know here was where I was going.”

“What’s it like out there?” she asked with an innocent curiosity.

William thought of the lonely days. The long nights on the cold ground.

“You don’t want to know,” he said.

“Roger that, Bravo.” She started picking at a small hole in the knee of her jeans, pulling at the little white fray.

“Look, I know it sucks,” she started, “but I’m here too. And you’re not alone anymore and neither am I and-“ she stopped when they heard voices coming down the corridor.

A couple of refugees walked by, staring at the both of them and whispering. William sat there sulkily.

“Anyway,” Joy said, standing up and wiping off the back of her pants. “I’ll leave you to it.” She turned to leave. William wanted to lash out. He felt like the dog Jessie, his leg stuck in a trap. And there Joy stood, reaching out a hand in comfort and friendship, trying to release him.

“You said you found a closet?” William finally said, looking up. “Is it nearby?”

Joy smiled at him. “Come on,” she said, reaching down.

He grabbed her hand and let her pull him up.

XxX

Joy swept her keycard in front of the lock on the unmarked door and the light on the mechanism turned green and clicked open.

“How many doors can you open with that thing?” William asked.

“Pretty much all of them,” Joy said, turning the handle and stepping inside. “Being Alpha does have its advantages.”

William followed her in. It wasn’t the broom closet he’d been expecting. The room was unadorned, but there was a small loveseat and an end table next to it. He raised his eyebrows at her.

“Peter talked them into letting me make it more comfortable. No one else knows to look here. It’s a safe space. You want to sit?”

William nodded and took the left side, leaving the right for Joy. She sat and turned to him.

“So…” she said.

“So…”

“Listen, I’m just going to ask,” Joy said in a rush, “I’m dying to know what all you can do. If your powers are the same as mine.”

William had been curious about that himself.

“Okay,” he said, “...moving things with your mind.”

“Easy,” she said. With a slight flick of her wrist, the end table next to the small sofa floated up into the air.

He smiled.

“The ships,” she said, “you can control them?”

He wrinkled his brow. “I can tune into them,” he said, “and bring them down. You?”

“I’ve never brought one down,” she said, “the only ones I’ve ever really had access to belong to the Rebels. But I can… what did you call it? Tuning into them? I can do that. I can fly them.”

“Have you ever done more than one?” he asked. “Does it make you weak?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “but that’s what the ConTech is for.”

“ConTech?”

“Our engineers,” she said, “used some of the technology that the rebels shared with us. It helps me connect with more than one without it taxing my strength. It’s how we’re going to destroy the invaders’ ships.”

“Cool,” he said, wondering what other kind of technology they had. “Can you hide from the ships, too?”

“Hide from them?”

“Yeah, like go inside yourself when you’re about to get scanned. They just pass right by.”

“I don’t know,” she said, pulling back a little bit. “I’ve never had the chance. I’ve never been scanned. I’ve never… they don’t really let me leave here.”

“What? Ever?”

“Not without an armed escort.”

William sat back for a moment. Being on the road by himself had been difficult, stressful, lonely. At times downright scary. But there was a freedom to it. An independence, an agency over his life and his own decisions that he wouldn’t trade for anything. Joy had been taken care of, looked after, hell, downright revered. And yet he felt a little bad for her.

“How about the super soldiers?” she asked him, cutting through his reverie. “You can sense them too, right? Like, how they feel different… empty. And other people? Like, you know where they are, even if you can’t see them.”

“Yes,” he said, tuning back into the conversation. “I can’t tell you how many times that saved my bacon.”

She laughed. “Your bacon ?”

He felt a little self conscious, but he wasn’t going to let her tease him without teasing her back.

“Yes, my bacon,” he said. “It’s rarefied bacon, Joy. Gifted bacon.”

“Savior bacon?” she laughed.

“Apparently.”

They both chuckled, and William felt more comfortable. His parents were amazing, but it was so nice being around someone his own age again. He thought briefly of Dan.

“How about the magnetite?” he asked.

“What about it?”

“You can control it, right? Move it around, call it. It… I don’t know… responds to you.”

Joy gave him a sideways glance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

William could feel his face fall.

“You can do all that?” she asked.

He nodded, feeling self conscious again.

“ That’s so cool .”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, and she smiled at him.

“ So I guess you can do this, too ,” she said, but he was looking at her, and her mouth didn’t move. She smiled at him, and he realized she was talking to him in his mind, like the faceless rebel had. He stood up fast.

“ Hey, it’s okay ,” she said in his head again. “ It takes some getting used to .”

He noticed he was breathing hard, and tried to calm himself down. He sat down gingerly, looking at Joy.

“ Try to say something back ,” she said.

He concentrated on where her voice was, hovering in the space above his ears. He focused his thoughts there and said, without opening his mouth:

“ Something back .”

Joy laughed, a short bark that cut through the air.

“See?” she said out loud, “you’re a natural. We should practice. See how far apart we can be in the base. Some of the Rebels? I can talk to them from miles away.”

“Do you like talking to them?” he asked. He’d been frightened by some of the things the faceless man had said to him about his role in the fight against the invaders.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “though they don’t say much, to be honest. They’re quiet. A little weird. But kind.”

A long silence stretched out in front of them, but it didn’t feel awkward. Finally William looked up at her.

“How about healing?” he asked.

“Yes!” she said, perking up. “That’s been so nice. Though honestly, the worst that ever happens to me around here is like, a paper cut.”

“Well it was handy on the road, I have to say,” William admitted, “And I was able to save my mom, too, which was…” it felt like a lifetime ago, and it had only been a matter of hours.

Joy looked at him, confused. “Your mom?”

“Yeah,” he said, “she got really hurt by one of the super soldiers. Like, verge of death. I saved her.”

Joy had a blank look on her face.

“Can’t you heal other people?” he asked her.

“I-” she said, looking dumbfounded, “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“You want me to go shove somebody down the stairs so you can give it a whirl?” he joked.

“Tempting,” she said, “but no.”

“Hmm…” he said looking at her. He had an idea.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“I should have maybe eased my way into that conversation,” Peter said.

“Honestly,” Mulder said, standing up, “if I was being counted on to save humanity, I think I might want the band-aid ripped off.”

“Should I go after him?” Scully asked. Her sense was to give him his space and let him come to them, but this was a particular parenting dilemma she hadn’t exactly anticipated.

Mulder put a hand on her arm. “Let’s give him some time,” he said. “Will he be safe here?” Mulder asked. “He doesn’t know his way around.”

“Joy does,” said Peter, grunting as he slowly rose from his own chair. “She’ll look after him.”

Scully glanced at Mulder, who gave her a reassuring smile.

She turned back to Peter. “What happened, Peter?” she asked. “Why the limp? The cane?”

“Ah,” said Peter, “a story for another time. Come, I have something to show you.”

He led them, limping slowly down a winding series of hallways and several doorways, using a keycard to get through locked doors. Through various openings they could see a large control room, banks of servers, various offices and a small bullpen.

“This is the command center,” he explained, “the hub of the resistance.” Several soldiers walked by them, in the same dark fatigues that Team Six had been wearing.

“Is it controlled by the military?” Mulder asked.

“We’re run by civilians,” Peter explained, “but have a military branch.”

“U.S.?” Scully asked.

“And Canada. Mexico, too. Think of us like NASA. A civilian agency with a military arm operating in the same domain.”

“You got an org chart?” Mulder asked.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Peter said. “This way,” he went on, opening another locked door that led to what looked like a freight elevator. Sure enough, he pushed a button on the wall, and the large doors opened. The three of them stepped on.

“How do you power the base?” Scully asked, curious how they managed to keep such a massive base running when the electrical grid was a thing of the past.

“You are a scientist, Dr. Scully,” Peter said, smiling down at her. “You are aware of how much energy it takes to quickly cross light years of space?”

“Massive amounts,” she said. “Incalculable amounts.”

“The rebels have afforded us use of one of the drives from their ships. It will keep the base running for the next ten thousand years.”

They rode the rest of the way down the elevator in a stunned silence. Finally, the elevator stopped. They stepped off and into another long hallway. To the right of the elevator was a computer terminal, and Peter typed a few things into it, staring at the screen intently. The interface was a touchscreen, and he scrolled through several screens before making a satisfied sound.

“Right, then,” he said, turning to walk down the hallway, “this way please.”

He led them down the hallway, a set of stairs and then another long hallway. Finally, he stopped in front of a door that was marked 817-12, and turned to them with a smile on his face, leaning on his cane.

“Would you like to knock, or should I?” he asked.

Scully, tilting her head at him in curiosity, reached out and gave two sharp raps to the door. A moment later, it opened up, and a woman looked out, her jaw dropping.

“Scully? Mulder!”

To Scully’s utter astonishment, Rebecca came flying out of the room and wrapped Scully up in an enormous hug. At the sound of voices, a girl came to the door, peering out into the hallway expectantly. Scully noticed her when Rebecca let her go so that she could launch herself with equal enthusiasm into Mulder’s arms.

“Jordan?” Scully said, peering in at the girl, “is that you?”

XxX

They sat for twenty minutes in Rebecca and Jordan’s small quarters catching up while sipping small cups of coffee (coffee!). Rebecca wanted to hear all about where they had been and what they had been up to since she and her daughter had been taken aboard a faceless men’s ship in Southern Ontario several years before.

Peter rose slowly from where he sat, and Scully could tell that he was loathe to interrupt, but he said very quietly:

“Pardon me, miss. But I need to take Mulder and Scully from you. There will be a lot of time for catching up in the next few days, I expect.”

Mulder and Scully said their goodbyes and followed Peter as he wordlessly led them down another few stairways and on to another level. He paused at another door.

“Courage, friends,” he said softly, and knocked.

A young man opened the door, looking at Peter curiously.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“Is your grandmother here?” Peter asked.

The young man nodded and called over his shoulder: “Grandma? There’s someone here to see you.”

After a moment, the door opened wider and Scully had to grab on to Mulder’s arm so that she didn’t pass out.

“Dana?” said the older woman as she came to the door, her voice tremulous with shock.

“Hi Mom,” Scully said tearfully, gripping onto Mulder so hard that she left marks.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“So how big is this place?” William asked.

“Big,” Joy said, stopping in front of a door. “This is you,” she said, lifting one side of her mouth in a smile. “Home sweet home.”

He would be staying with his parents, whom he’d been told were expecting him inside.

“When will I see you again?” William asked, lingering in the hallway.

“Oh I wouldn’t worry about that, William, they’ve got big plans for us.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “So I keep hearing.”

Joy tilted her head at him. “Tell you what,” she said, “this will be good practice. Find me tomorrow morning, in here.” At this she tapped the side of her head, where William had heard her telepathically. “Tell me where you want me to meet and I’ll be there.”

At that, she smiled at him, stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and turned away down the hallway, throwing one last look at him over her shoulder.

William rested his head against the door for a moment before going in.

XxXxXxXxXxX

It was impossible to know what time it was, buried as they were deep below the earth. Mulder hadn’t worn a watch in years, being that time was essentially irrelevant in the new world, where dawn and dusk were the only things you needed to keep track of.

He rolled over in the bed and wrapped an arm around Scully, who was still asleep.

She and William had both crashed hard early after the tumultuous, mentally and physically taxing events of the day before. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she slept until noon. Whenever the hell that would be.

Pressing a gentle kiss into the softness of her hair, he rolled out of bed and ambled into the bathroom of their two bedroom suite (one of the larger accommodations on base, reserved for higher ranking members of the alliance), brushed his teeth and washed his face, and marveled at the endless supply of hot water.

When he stepped into the living area of the suite, he was surprised to find William sitting on the couch, his eyes closed in concentration.

“Hey,” Mulder said softly, and William looked up at him.

“Morning,” William said.

“How long have you been up?”

“About an hour,” William said.

“You okay?” Mulder asked. He was concerned about his son. They hadn’t really had much of a chance to talk about what had happened on the ship, and the Bravo-savior bomb that Peter had dropped on them yesterday. Not to mention the fact that he had just met another person who seemed to have the same powers and gifts as he did. It was a lot for anyone, probably too much for someone simultaneously going through the turbulent trial of puberty, and 100% not the series of events he would ever want inflicted on his own child.

“I mean…” William started gesturing vaguely, and Mulder had to laugh, chuckling as he sat down next to him.

“Yeah,” Mulder said, “I wouldn’t be either. Listen, if you need or want to talk about it, your mom and I are both here.”

“I appreciate that,” William said. “My adoptive parents never really… I’m really glad I found you both.”

Mulder reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” William went on, “I’m going to deal with my current situation by ignoring it completely and attempting to flirt with a pretty girl.”

Mulder’s eyebrows shot up. “As a parent, I’m not sure I should endorse that particular plan of action, but as a… well, don’t tell Scully I said this, but… go get ‘em, tiger.”

William smiled, looking at the floor and Mulder stood, walking to the small kitchenette to open the few bare cupboards.

“You hungry?” he said, turning to the boy, “I think there’s a cafeteria… somewhere.”

“Yeah,” said William, “I just have to do something first.” With that, he closed his eyes once again and took a deep breath, appearing to slip into some kind of light meditative state.

Mulder watched him and after a moment, he saw the boy’s mouth quirk up in a smile. A second later he opened his eyes, the smile lingering on his face.

“Okay, I’m ready,” he said, standing. “Let’s go get some food, I’m starving.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Joy was waiting in the large cafeteria when they arrived. She was leaning against the wall by the door with her arms crossed, and shoved off when they walked in.

“You said you’d be here ten minutes ago,” she said, her tone more sass than annoyance.

“Sorry,” William said, throwing a quick look to Mulder, “we got lost.”

His father sucked his lips into his mouth for a second and then said, “I’ll leave you two to it,” and turned away, making a beeline for the coffee station.

Joy made her way over to the line for food – this particular cafeteria, like the suite their family was assigned – was for the higher ranking members of the alliance and the staff that worked at the command center nearby. William trailed her like a shadow.

“You woke me up,” she said, sliding a piece of dry toast on her plate, followed by a piece of bacon and then a scoop of scrambled eggs.

William took three of everything she did, and gave her a smartass smile.

“You told me to practice,” he said.

“Let’s make a deal that you don’t practice until after seven in the future, huh?” she said, sliding her tray further down the row and eyeing the massive pile of food on his plate.

“I had no idea what time it was,” he said, picking up a piece of sausage from his plate and tossing it into his mouth, and then continued with his mouth full: “Our suite doesn’t have a clock.”

“I’ll be sure to get one sent up,” she said, shaking her head.

Once they were at the end of the line, Joy grabbed silverware and a napkin and slid onto a bench at an empty table, where William slid in across from her.

She stared once again at his tray. “Are you seriously going to eat all that?” she asked.

William shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth. “A savior needs to keep up his strength,” he replied.

She took a dainty sip of water and looked prim. “You’re certainly in a better mood today.”

He took a snappy bite of bacon. “Well you know how I feel about bacon.”

“Savior bacon?”

“Permission granted.”

Joy finally snorted in laughter, and William felt ten feet tall. He chanced a look at his father who had settled at a table about twenty feet away and he had his nose buried in a large mug of coffee, but William could see the smile he was wearing in the crinkle of his eyes.

A large shadow appeared at the side of their table then, and they both turned to find Peter standing next to them, wearing a small smile and holding a tray in one hand and his cane in the other.

“Good morning,” he said, and they both mumbled quiet good mornings back.

“William, I feel as though I must apologize to you,” he went on. “My delight in seeing your parents again and in having you arrive here in time for humanity’s greatest triumph-” he stopped. “I’m doing it again,” he sighed, scrunching his face in ignominy. “William, I am sorry. Let me leave it at that.”

William felt his face color in embarrassment, but smiled up at the man, shooting a look to Joy.

“It’s okay, Peter,” he said, “I understand. And I have a way you can make it up to me…”

XxX

“Thank you all for coming,” Peter said, as Mulder, Scully and William walked back into the conference room where they had been debriefed the day before. Peter was already in the room, along with Joy, Humphries, a faceless rebel and an older man who looked like Paul Sorvino, who was dressed in the dark fatigues of the alliance’s military unit.

Joy gave William a little finger wave as he slid into a chair in between his parents, but her face was grim.

“I’d like to introduce you to General Sidney,” said Peter, nodding at the military man. “While I’m one of the scientific leads here, the General is the head of operations on base.”

William followed his parents’ lead and nodded at the man.

“Welcome,” the General said. “When Captain Humphries told me who you were, I admit I almost fell out of my chair.”

Humphries gave a clipped smile and leaned back in her seat, her gaze resting uncomfortably on William, who shifted uneasily.

“I would like to give you all time to acclimate yourself to life here at Base Zero, and to reconnect with some of the friends and family you’ve been reunited with,” William heard his mother take a deep inhale from beside him. “But I’m afraid time isn’t something that’s on our side.”

The General rose to his feet and pressed a fob that he was holding in his hand. A large screen lit up on the wall opposite the wall of bedrock. Everyone turned their attention to it as a map of the world appeared, several large circles of red populating parts of the map intermittently.

“We’ve gotten reports from Bases Three, Seven and Twelve of large upticks in enemy ship activity in their sectors. Abductions, killings, you name it,” the General said. “There’s also rumors coming in from Bases Two and Nine of mass sweeps of some of the larger refugee camps and towns where people collect to trade.”

The mood in the room took on a bleak, tense energy.

“The enemy is on the move,” the General said, “and the time to act is now.” He turned to Humphries. “Captain.”

Captain Humphries stood and held onto the back of her chair.

“We know what Alpha is capable of,” she said, “but Bravo is an unknown quantity.”

William swallowed thickly, and could feel both of his parents shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

“We’d like to run him through a battery of tests-”

“No,” Scully said, interrupting her, “absolutely not.”

Humphries shot a look to Peter, who leaned forward.

“They would be harmless tests, Scully,” Peter said, his forehead crinkled in empathy, “just to see what William’s aptitudes are. I would run them myself. You and Mulder are of course welcome to sit in, if that would be agreeable to William.”

William thought nothing he’d heard in the last few minutes sounded the least bit agreeable, but he shot a look to Joy who gave him a tiny nod.

“ It’s okay, ” he heard her say in his head, “ I’ll be there, too .”

William cleared his throat when he realized all the eyes in the room were on him. Scully was looking at him intently and he knew what she was thinking – if he said no to anything, she’d go to war on his behalf.

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

Humphries inhaled and gave him a quick encouraging nod, when Mulder leaned forward.

“All right, so you test him,” his father said, “what then? I assume you have a plan in place and have since long before we arrived here. What is it?”

“That’s classified,” barked Humphries.

“Captain,” Peter said, an edge of scolding creeping into his voice.

Humphries looked to General Sidney, who sat down and leaned forward on the table, lacing his fingers together.

“We have a device,” the General said, “that will amplify Alpha’s powers over the ships. It will network all ships on the planet, and Alpha – and Bravo as well, if his powers are so inclined – will use their psychokinetic abilities to bring the ships down. All of them.”

“How many ships are we talking?” Mulder said.

“Hundreds,” Humphries said, her voice clipped.

“No,” Scully said again, “I’ve seen what bringing down just four of those ships did to my son. It almost killed him!”

“The device we’ve created with the Rebels mitigates much of the damage done-” Peter began, but Scully interrupted him.

“These are children . You cannot possibly expect them to-” she shook her head, worked up. “Where is Patti? Where is this girl’s mother?” Scully pointed at Joy. “There is no way she has consented to-”

“She’s dead,” said Joy in an even tone of voice. Everyone in the room stopped and looked at her. “And you’re right. She probably never would have let me put myself at risk like this. But she’s gone. And it’s my choice, now. These are my powers. I don’t know why I have them. I don’t know why William has them. But I’m going to use them to help people. That’s my decision. And I think it should be William’s, too.”

Everyone’s eyes shifted to him.

He took a breath and then nodded slowly.

“I’d be a pretty sh*t person if I let her stick her neck out for humanity and I just watched. Plus I can’t let her take all the credit for saving the world. ”

He saw the corner of Joy’s mouth twitch.

General Sidney held up a hand.

“Let’s run our battery of tests first. If William is what we all hope he is… then we’ll have to run a trial on the device. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves.”

Mulder sighed from beside him and William felt his father put his hand on his shoulder.

“Then let’s get ahead of ourselves even more,” Mulder said. “Let’s say you’re able to bring down all the aliens’ ships. What then? There are still how many super soldiers out there? Do you have a plan to get rid of them as well?”

“That’s trickier,” Peter said, “as you know how impervious the soldiers are. We’ve run some scenarios where we send out strike teams to hunt them down. We have a few prototypes for magnetite infused bullets and IEDs, but they’re as yet untested.”

“ Does Peter or any of the military personnel know about your gift with magnetite? ” Joy said in William’s head.

“ No ,” he replied.

“ Don’t tell them ,” she said, “ not yet .”

“Huh,” said Mulder, leaning back and rubbing his hand across his face.

“One thing at a time,” said the General, standing. “Carmichael, run a full battery on Bravo. Today. I’d like the results as soon as you have them.”

Peter nodded and General Sidney excused himself with Humphries on his heels. The faceless rebel stood silently and left the room too.

“Well,” said Peter after a moment of silence, “I suppose we should get started if everyone here is ready? Though,” he went on, turning to William, “I believe I owe you a favor first?”

William glanced at Joy and then looked back at Peter. “We can kill two birds with one stone,” he said, “My favor can be our first test.”

XxX

Peter laid back on the examination table in the small medic clinic within the command center, looking like an adult lounging on a toddler’s bed.

Mulder and Scully stood against the wall of the room, watching curiously.

“What happened, Peter?” Scully asked, as Joy and William stood on either side of their friend, ready to get started. “You never did tell us.”

“Pollux,” the big man said, “kicked me about a week out from the Base when I first traveled here. I assume he broke my leg. By the time I got here, the healing process had already started, and it didn’t heal right as I had to spend more than a week on a horse.”

Mulder winced from where he stood. “That must have been agony,” he said.

“And Pollux got to hear about it,” Peter said, “and he is still the last to get an apple.”

William looked up over the big man’s torso at Joy, who was looking a little nervous.

“ It’s okay, ” he said to her in his mind, “ I’ll walk you through it .”

“Are you ready?” he said to Peter.

Peter put a meaty paw on his arm. “I am ready, William.”

William nodded and moved behind the big man’s head. “Close your eyes,” he said, and put his two hands on Peter’s temples.

“I’m just going to see if I can feel what’s going on in there,” William said to Joy out loud, “then I want you to try.”

Joy nodded silently.

William reached inside. He felt along the pathways of Peter’s body to the knot of bone and the messy, complicated weaving of nerves in the man’s leg. He listened quietly for a moment, trying to suss out what Peter’s body wanted him to do. Then, he felt it.

“Okay,” he said. “Come here, Joy.”

She came up silently and stood next to him.

“Put your hands on him. The temples work best for me, but it might be different for you. You know that feeling inside of you, the healing place?” Her brow knotted. “Find it inside of you and then extend it into him.”

“Okay,” she said quietly, and reached out and put her hands on Peter’s head, closing her eyes. “Okay, I think I’m there,” she said after a moment.

William reached out and put his hand on Peter as well – he could feel Joy’s presence.

“Go inside,” he said. “Pull the healing place with you.”

William started to feel resistance. He looked over to Joy and her brow was creased.

“Peter, you’re fighting her,” William said. “Be with her. Be with her so she can help you.”

He felt the path smooth out. Felt Joy move along it.

“ I can feel it, ” she said, a little excited.

“ Tune into his body. It’ll tell you what it wants you to do .”

“ Okay… I’ve got it. I’ve got it! ”

“ Good !” William could feel Peter’s body working in conjunction with Joy. He pulled his hands away from the man and stood back, watching as Joy continued to work. The big man’s eyes were running back and forth under his closed lids like he was in a state of REM sleep. After a moment, Joy inhaled and opened her eyes, and she stepped back, her hands falling away from Peter’s head.

Peter’s own eyes fluttered open and he took a deep breath and then swung his legs over the side of the exam table, tentatively putting weight down on one and then the other. A moment later, he gave an experimental little hop and then a full on jump in the air. He shouted triumphantly and then whirled around, picking Joy up in his arms and twirling her easily. When he set her down, he turned to William and grabbed him by the face and planted an enormous kiss on William’s forehead. William nearly fell over backward.

“A wunderkind!” he said, his eyes alight with mirth. “Miracles, the both of you!”

William chanced a look to his parents who were looking on, both wearing small, proud smiles.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder and Scully watched the testing process through a glass partition.

“This is fascinating,” Mulder said, “Though it makes my Knicks T-shirt trick with Bruckman seem kinda stupid.”

Scully managed a smile but didn’t laugh, keeping her eyes on their son. The whole thing made her nervous. She’d known that the boy was special since he was an infant, and had always worried that his gifts would be found out and exploited. She just hadn’t counted on their being exploited to save humanity. Even if she could protect him from that, it didn’t seem right to try.

For his part, she knew that while Mulder was concerned for their son and more than a little worried about the impending showdown with the invading alien force, he was also impressed by the breadth and scope of the operation, giddy to be once again surrounded by the tedious enforced order of a lumbering bureaucracy. Scully, having fully experienced the freedom of fending for herself for the last several years, felt held down by its thumb, the full weight of the mountain that surrounded them pressing heavily on her psyche.

“What do you think about this ConTech?” she asked.

“I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion,” Mulder said, watching as William and Joy sat in front of a computer interface, the screens in front of them showing them objects at various distances within and without the base, testing to see how far their telekinetic powers reached. “Am I worried it won’t be able to protect them from the effects of the ships like at Marlo’s farm? Yes. But I’m also worried about the reports of the aliens escalating their attacks. There’s no question I want my son to survive this with his life, but I’d also like to be able to hand him a life worth living. A planet worth living on . I’ve said it to you before Scully, and I have to go on believing it: Maybe there’s hope.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

The tests had gone well, at least according to General Sidney. William seemed to be what they thought he was – what they needed him to be. They were planning to run a test of the ConTech first thing the next morning – just a quick test on the rebel ships to make sure the technology Peter and his team had developed would shield Joy and William from the worst effects of controlling them. The Rebels wouldn’t network their own ships with the invaders’ until the actual operation, thus ensuring the element of surprise. Once that initial test was run – in and out, the General assured them – they would plan their operation. And the sooner, the better.

“My only concern,” William said, feeling odd speaking up in front of an entire conference table full of adults and high ranked military officials, “is that in the past, when I’ve brought down the ships, it was only temporary. They were always able to get back up in the air an hour or two later. We need them to be completely disabled, don’t we?”

“Yes,” General Sidney said, “on the aptitude tests we ran today, it did appear that you had less control over the ships than Alpha. Her manipulation skills scored a lot higher.”

“What does that mean for your operation?” Mulder asked.

“It means that Alpha will have to take the lead,” the General said. “The simulations we’ve run have all worked. Before Bravo arrived. We’re only counting on him for backup and to perhaps give a boost to Alpha. If Joy thinks she can do this, we’re moving ahead with the operation.”

“I can do it, General,” Joy said, looking small from where she sat in between two full grown men.

Mulder leaned down into William’s space. “A boost?” he asked quietly.

William turned to him and spoke in a similarly low tone. “Today, during the tests, if Joy lifted something with her mind to a certain height, let’s say, I was able to come in and help her lift it higher. You know, like a boost.”

“You can network your powers?” Mulder asked, intrigued.

“Yeah,” William said, “so far.”

“If that’s all, Bravo?” the General said loudly.

William looked up and found the room staring at him. “Sorry, sir. Yeah.”

“Then we’re moving forward with the ship trial tomorrow at 0800. Everybody get some rest tonight.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Someone had been kind enough to send dinner up to their suite, and they sat at the small table in the kitchenette scraping around what remained on their plate.

“You didn’t eat much,” Mulder said to him. “You okay?”

William looked up to find both of his parents looking at him.

“A little nervous, I guess.”

“If it makes you feel better, I trust Peter implicitly,” Mulder said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“It’s okay to be nervous, though,” Scully said. “I’m nervous for you.”

William sat back and studied his fingernails.

“I miss the cabin,” he said after a minute. “It was quiet there. Peaceful. You can’t turn a corner here without running into somebody.”

“It’s certainly different,” Scully said, reaching forward to take a sip from the water glass in front of her. “But… it turns out there are people here that we know. Some from After. But some…”

William looked up at her.

“My mother is here,” she said, unable to keep a smile from her face. “And my nephew. Your grandmother and cousin. They’d like to see you. Would you… like to meet them? You won’t remember her, but your grandmother used to look after you.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said automatically. But there was what felt like a bubble inside of him, a churning, anxious feeling that was rising up in his chest and squeezing the air out of his lungs. He stood from the table.

“Is it okay if I go for a walk?” he said. “I’ve got some nervous energy and I need to-” he shook out his hands and Mulder nodded at him.

“Yeah,” his father said, grabbing onto Scully’s hand from where he sat, “of course.”

William grabbed a generic base sweatshirt someone had given him and his ID card.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and walked out.

XxX

Joy opened the door in pajama pants and a tank top, her hair in a messy bun on the top of her head.

“This is the second time you’ve woken me up,” she said. “At least when the Rebels talk to me in my head, they do it during business hours.”

“Grab a coat,” William said, trying not to look at the soft round skin of her shoulder or the way her clavicle arced toward her chest like Cupid’s bow.

“Why?”

“Just get a coat,” he said, “and, you know, shoes.”

She gave him a skeptical look, but grabbed a jacket that was hanging on a hook near the door and slipped her bare feet into a tatty pair of sneakers that sat on a mat underneath the hook. She stepped out into the hallway and closed her door, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her coat.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Out,” he said.

“What do you mean, out?”

William started walking, turning around and walking backwards for a moment while she stood there looking at him.

“You got that key card, Alpha?”

She narrowed her eyes at him as he walked. “Why?”

He turned around again. “You coming or what?” His voice was co*cksure and playful, but inside he was all nervous energy, hoping against hope that she’d follow him.

XxX

When they arrived at the large iron door that led to the outside, he turned to her in surprise.

“Wow,” he said, “I figured there’d be a guard or something.”

“What are we doing here, William?”

“You told me that they don’t really let you leave here. Without an armed escort.”

“Yeah.”

“So I’m taking you out.”

She took a half a step back. “I don’t know…”

“It’s safe,” he said. “You can feel as well as I can that there’s nobody out there. No threat.”

She licked her lips, but didn’t keep walking away, which he took as a good sign. “We shouldn’t.”

“I can’t take it in here anymore, Joy,” he said. “It’s so… loud. Don’t you just want to… I don’t know… breathe?”

He saw it the second he had her.

He ran his key card over the lock, but it beeped and turned red. He turned to her.

“Hand it over,” he said. “If we get caught you can tell them I made you.”

She stared at him for a second like she was about to tell him that no one would believe that, but then she reluctantly placed her key card in his outstretched hand. One swipe and the lock turned green and he could hear the mechanism detach from the big iron door.

“Being Alpha has its advantages,” he said, repeating the words she’d said to him the day before. She gave him a half smile.

“Come on,” he said, and led her out into the night.

XxX

It was one of those clear nights. The kind where the air feels lighter and brisker, where just one pull of it into your lungs makes you want to thump your chest and stomp your feet. The stars were out in force, pinpricks of brilliance in the giant purple dome of the heavens.

There was a small and steep rocky path up the sloping hillside just to the left of the base door and William began climbing it. About fifty yards up, it leveled out into a rocky outcropping that looked out over the valley that spread out below the mountainside, the vista lit up by a bright, waxing moon. William walked to the edge and looked over it and then sat, letting his feet hang down into space. Joy sat down tentatively next to him, peeking down below them. They could just see the edge of the big iron door.

“I’m not sure how I feel about heights,” she said.

“I’d recommend not looking down, then.”

“Noted,” she said, and then leaned back, resting her hands behind her. After a moment she let out a deep, cleansing breath.

“Wow,” she said, “it’s really beautiful out here. Especially without a quartet of nudgy himbos who smell like Ballistol and B.O.”

William snorted a laugh. “Himbos?”

“Not really,” she chuckled, “they’re actually pretty smart and cool. Except maybe Traverse. I don’t know how he made it this far, I think he ate paint chips as a kid.”

The night settled between them, and they sat, quiet and contemplative. Finally, he turned to her.

“So how’d you feel about today? The tests?”

She shrugged. “Seems like we work pretty well together.”

“Yeah,” he said, and the silence stretched for a bit longer. Then he noticed as her posture changed and her shoulders slumped.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and she took a minute before she answered.

“I’ve been thinking about the healing,” she said quietly, “and I’m wondering how many people I could have helped and didn’t. My mother died. A year ago. And I can’t help but think; what if I could have saved her?”

Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, its call low and forlorn.

“What did she die of?” William asked, flashing on the sight of his adoptive parents lying dead on their porch.

“They said it was an aneurysm.”

“Quick?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking away.

“Some people we can’t save, Joy,” he said, thinking of Dan. “We do the best we can and try to live life in spite of it.”

She turned to look at him, her gaze curious and intent. “How old are you, again?”

“Fifteen,” he answered.

She shook her head, smiling in spite of her mood.

“But an old fifteen,” he went on, and bumped his shoulder into hers companionably.

She chuffed a small laugh.

He looked at her a long minute.

“Can I ask you something?” he said. “When we were talking about our powers before, I didn’t… Peter said you knew I was out there.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I could feel you. Could you not feel me?”

“No,” he said, “well… Maybe?”

She lifted her shoulders up until they were just below her ears and then released them, the nylon of her jacket whispering a slick susurrus.

“It feels like… I don’t know, like a string connecting you and someone else. Like a string pulled tight. And the closer you get to it, the easier… the better it all feels.”

“I call it my ‘homing beacon,’” he said.

She laughed. “I suppose that’s as good a name as anything.”

“I only ever felt it with my parents, though,” he said, “until… until I brought that ship down near Zero. Then I felt it with you.” He looked up at her and she had a queer look in her eye.

“I think…” she started, “I think you only have it with someone you have a connection to. Someone you want to be with. Your parents probably wanted you to be with them, right? Well… I wanted to meet you. I… I wanted you to be with me.”

“Huh,” he said, thinking that maybe it made a weird kind of sense.

“You knew I was out there,” he said.

She nodded. “The rebels told me. Once I knew you were out there… all I wanted to do was meet you. Talk with you. It’s hard being different like this, even when it’s a good different. It’s hard being special.”

He thought about it for a moment. If he’d known there was someone else like himself out there, he knew he would have felt the same way.

“So you brought me here.”

“I guess I did.”

He looked over at her, at the way the moon shone on the dark of her hair, and suddenly felt the connection to her again. The homing beacon turning itself back on. She gazed up at him, a look of surprise on her face. He reached out and took her hand. She squeezed it, and he felt settled again. He felt home.

XxX

There was sweat on his lip, there were butterflies in his stomach, there were a bunch of tough looking men and women standing behind a partition twenty feet behind him. In front of him there was a small hand sized metallic ball the color of freshly mined coal and a large computer readout on a huge screen set into the wall at the front of the room. Next to him was Joy.

Peter was tinkering with something at a large console to their left, with a faceless rebel sitting next to him. General Sidney stood at his shoulder.

William stole a look behind him and found his parents standing off to the side of the room, huddled close together. His father looked stoic. His mother looked tense. Nevertheless, she gave him a small reassuring smile and his dad nodded at him once, you got this , it seemed to say. He nodded back and turned to the screen in front of him.

The readout on the large screen showed the rebel ships spread out across the globe. The goal of the morning’s exercise was to test the ConTech which Peter had assured them would, in theory, link all of the ships to one central point which Joy could control. Having her focus on essentially one ship should mitigate the drain on her powers, and also – if it worked – bring down the entire alien fleet in one go. William was on stand-by for support and the General hoped to learn exactly what was involved so that when they went forward with the actual operation, he would be able to assist.

“Okay!” said Peter, standing from the console. “The platform is up and operational. Can we get a system check, please?”

Various different people did a check-in from around the room, starting with the rebel sitting to the left of Peter, who merely nodded.

“Comms is a go.”

“Security is a go.”

“Sequencer is a go.”

“Matrix monitoring is a go.”

“Alpha is a go,” Joy said, and William, feeling awkward, followed up with:

“Bravo is a go.”

“All Systems go,” Peter said, looking up at General Sidney.

“Let’s roll,” said the General.

“Alpha, on you,” said Peter. “Take it away, Joy.”

Joy reached out and put her hand on the small metallic ball in front of her and William could feel a minor shift in the energy around them. He kept his eyes on the screen ahead.

“Okay,” said Joy, “I’m connected. Easy-peasy. I’m going to try to move the fleet first. I just want to get a feel for it.”

“Roger that,” said a man behind them.

Joy’s eyes fluttered shut. Up on the screen, William watched as the ships on the screen all moved to the east at the same time in a synchronized movement.

“Looking good,” came another voice.

“Alpha, how are you feeling?” asked Peter.

“Good,” said Joy, her eyes still shut, “really good.”

“Great,” said Peter, “see if you can get in sync with the ship’s systems. Bravo, can you walk her through how you would bring one down?”

William nodded. “Okay,” he said, “to me the ships felt like an interlocking system of… tubes or something, tunnels, does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” said Joy, “A series of conduits.”

“Right,” said William, “now find a hub. There should be a focal point where they all converge.”

“Got it.”

“Block the energy running through it. It’s just like putting your hand through a stream of water.”

“I see what you mean,” Joy said. “General, do you want me to try to-”

At that moment there was a loud beeping from the console behind the partition where most of the crew sat.

“Sir, we have a problem,” said one of the soldiers.

William looked up at the screen. All of the rebel ships, which appeared as green blips on the global readout, continued to move in synchronicity. But William saw several red blips appear on the screen as well, and then a few more. All of them were moving together with the greens. Shouts of alarm started from the various stations around the control room and men and women began talking over each other. William just looked up at the screen and faster than he could keep track of them, hundreds of red blips appeared.

“Enemy ships have entered the matrix!”

William glanced at Joy who swayed a bit in place, her hand still on the metallic grip.

“Rebel One, what’s happening?” shouted the General.

The room erupted into chaos. The invaders’ ships had somehow locked into the system, linking up with the rebel ships.

“There’s so many,” Joy said from next to him, her voice low and shaky.

“Can you focus on one?” William asked her. The room behind them was a loud murmur, and William tuned them all out. “Joy, pick one. Let the ConTech do the rest. Just focus on one.”

Her posture improved, though her brow was knit in concentration.

“Okay,” she said. “Yeah, okay, that’s better.”

“General!” shouted a voice above the chaos. “They’re doing something to our system!”

Peter stood from his console.

“Sir,” he said, “the matrix is showing signs of failure. If we’re ever going to do this, it has to be now.” William realized what they were saying. This was more than a trial run, now. If their plan to bring the ships down and stop the invading aliens permanently was to move forward, it was now or never. His stomach leapt.

The General stood. “Alpha,” he said.

Joy clenched her jaw and then answered. “Yes, sir?”

“This is no longer an exercise. It’s a full-on operation. We’ve discussed what this would look like. Do it, Alpha! Bring them down. All of them. Bring them all down now!”

“sh*t,” she murmured so that only William could hear her, and then said, loud and clear, “Yes, sir!”

William watched as she leaned a little forward in space, moving both hands to clench the metallic sphere in front of her. She was mentally bearing down, William could feel it. But something was off.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.

“What is it?”

“They won’t go down,” she said, and William could tell she was talking directly to him.

“Did you try the-”

“Yes,” she said, “Will they’re doing something. They’re fighting back somehow. I can’t figure out what’s happening!”

William reached out and grabbed the sphere in front of him, but all he felt was a garbled mess. When he looked back at Joy, one of her hands was flailing out in the air, reaching for him. He shot his hand out and grabbed on.

He was with her instantly and could feel the chaos. It was like turning on the radio and finding the volume had been turned all of the way up.

“ One, what do I do ?” He found Joy was in the middle of a telepathic exchange with one of the faceless rebels.

“ You know what to do, Joy, ” the man said calmly.

“ They won’t go down !”

William was with her, and could feel that she was in the hub of the ship’s conduit, but she was right, there was a resistance there. He sent a little bump of energy into it too and it seemed to push back even harder. He tried something else – tried going with the flow of the ship instead of against it. The energy gave way, rushing through the circuits of the ship.

“ Go up ,” he said.

“ What ?” Joy said.

“ If you can’t bring them down, send them up !” If she couldn’t interrupt the flow of the ships to bring them down, she could work with the flow and fly them – control them – and either way, take them out of the sky.

There was a pulsing blackness on the edge of his mind. Whatever the aliens were doing, he could feel the resistance growing.

“ You have to do it now, Joy ,” he said. “ Send them up !”

“ Up where ?!”

“ Into your solar system’s sun ,” the rebel said calmly. William realized then that if Joy destroyed the aliens’ ships, she would also be destroying— and killing—the rebel allies that were on their own ships. “ Initiate the hyperdrive. Your sun is 8.3 light years away. It will be over in moments .”

“ Wait !” William interjected.

“ It’s the only way,” the rebel insisted. “This was always a suicide mission for us, Joy. Listen to me. Do it now .”

William could feel Joy bear down. Felt the flow of energy from the ships, the flow of the energy from Joy. There was a singular point of contact with the ship through the technology in her hand, but it was flagging from where she was holding onto William, like a flag snapping in the wind.

Squeezing her hand, he reached out with his other one and grabbed the sphere in front of him and that was all it took – a potent volt of energy clicked between them and he felt a massive surge of power. The ship they had chosen, all the ships, rocketed upwards.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully watched as more and more of the red dots appeared on the large read out screen at the front of the control room. Alarms started going off. She pushed herself off the wall.

“Mulder, what’s happening?”

Mulder was moving forward next to her, his eyes locked onto the screen.

“The ships,” he said, “all the alien ships are entering the… the network.”

Scully’s eyes flew down to her son who was standing next to Joy staring up at the screen.

“Jesus,” Mulder whispered, watching it all unfold. There were shouts from every station. The General was barking orders and then Scully got a sense of what was going on.

“Oh my God, Mulder,” she said, “they’re going to do it now. They’re going to have to do it right now.”

“The rebel ships-” Mulder started.

“In order to network the ships with the ConTech,” said a voice from beside them – Scully looked over and Humphries was standing close, her eyes locked onto the screen – “we had to network all of the ships across the globe. So we’re not just disabling the shifters’ ships, but the faceless men’s too. If their ships aren’t also in the air, the linking system won’t be able to connect them all. It’s all or nothing.”

“And they have to do it now?”

“Yeah,” she said, squinting at the screen, “something’s wrong. They have to do it now.”

Scully watched as Joy seemed to struggle. Then her hand shot out and William took it. A moment later, William reached out and took the ConTech handle that was in front of him and she felt a slight tremor run through the floor. Then all of the ships, red and green, every single one, went flying off the screen.

A long moment later Joy and William both collapsed to the floor.

XxXxXxXxXxX

William came to consciousness with something tickling his nose. He reached up to scratch and found a tube – a cannula feeding him oxygen – resting on his face. Startled, he pulled it off his face and sat bolt upright.

“It’s okay! It’s okay,” said a voice from nearby. “Mulder!”

William looked around and found Scully sitting next to him. He was in a hospital bed, in a small room that looked like the infirmary room they had been in to heal Peter. His dad opened the door from the outside and looked startled to see him awake.

“Will!” he said, stepping quickly into the room.

William looked down at himself. He was in a hospital gown and covered with a light blanket.

“Where’s Joy?” he asked, feeling panicky. The last thing he remembered was-

“She’s in a room next door,” Scully said calmly, rising from her chair and reaching for his arm. She put a finger to the pulse on his wrist and looked up at a small clock on the wall opposite his bed.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s still out,” said Mulder, lifting up a calming hand.

“I gotta go see her,” William said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

His mother squeezed his wrist where she was holding it and spoke in the most authoritative voice he’d ever heard.

“You’ll do no such thing, William!” she said, standing up. “You have been unconscious for three hours.”

“Mom!” he said, indignant.

Mulder stood for a moment, his mouth open, his gaze shifting back and forth between them.

“Okay, that was amazing,” he said, “but I’m going to have to side with your mom on this one.”

“I feel fine,” William said, “I feel better than I ever have.” He meant it. He felt like he could chew carbon and spit diamonds.

Just then the door to the room opened and a small older woman took a step in, pulling on her earring nervously.

“Is this a bad time?” she asked.

His grandmother. He knew it instantly. The resemblance was remarkable. Her body type was the exact same as his mother’s, with the same face shape and blue eyes. Her nose pulled slightly more at the nostrils, but everything else about her was so surprisingly like Scully that he immediately pulled back his indignation and stared at the woman.

“Um, no,” he said, surprised to find he actually meant it, “it’s fine.”

The older woman smiled and turned to a kid who came in behind her, at least a foot and a half taller than her, but only, upon second glance, three or four years older than William himself.

“Hey,” the older kid said.

“Hey,” replied William, and, realizing that he had his bare legs hanging over the side of the bed, swung them back up and covered them with the blanket.

Scully looked at him for a moment and then turned to the two newcomers.

“Hi Mom,” she said, and walked forward to press a kiss into the older woman’s cheek. “William, this is your cousin Matthew and your Grandma Scully.”

“Hello,” he said. Neither of the Van de Kamps had had living parents, so he was surprised and more than a little pleased to actually have a grandmother.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you again, William,” she said, stepping forward. “And the fact that I’m meeting you as a grown person while you’re sitting in a hospital bed is a true testament to the fact that you are your parents’ child.” She laughed, and all the tension in the room instantly broke.

Matthew stepped forward and held out a hand.

“Matthew?” William said, shaking the kid’s hand. He had a strong grip and his hand was warm and dry.

“Matt,” he said.

“Will,” William said, nodding.

“So you’re the enigmatic Bravo,” Matt said, as Will released his hand.

Matt was tall with sandy hair, and had the same eyes as his grandmother and Scully, but there was a charming, rakish spark to them that put William instantly at ease.

“What, you didn’t get a cool code name?” Will asked. “I thought they just handed them out.”

“Well, on a scale of importance, I’d be Zulu, but I was recently promoted to KP duty, so you never know.”

William smiled.

“We won’t stay long,” his grandmother said. “We just wanted to check in and welcome you.”

“Well, this family has a long and grand tradition of hospital visits,” Mulder said from where he was leaning against the wall. “We couldn’t leave you out of the fold.”

His grandmother gave a rueful smile. “William,” she said, “when you’re on your feet again, we’d love to celebrate having you back and of course celebrate today’s accomplishment. How would you feel about coming and having dinner in our suite?”

“It’s more like a cell,” said Matt, and his grandmother swatted at him.

“We’re very lucky to have it,” she said. “Bring Alpha too, if you’d like – Joy, I mean – I bet I can get something special from the cafeteria. What’s your favorite food?”

“Lasagna,” William answered after a moment, committing himself to going.

“Perfect,” she said, and then stole a look at Scully, who had resettled at William’s bedside with a stern look on her face. “Well, we’ll let you get your rest.”

Matt reached out and gently pushed his shoulder. “Can you talk to somebody, Bravo?” he said quickly, “get us an upgrade?”

“Matthew!”

“Coming Grams,” Matt said, but then made a telephone sign with his hand and a big thumbs up as he backed out of the room.

Before the door had finished closing on their exit, Humphries stuck her head in.

“Alpha is awake,” she said to Scully. William yanked the leads off his chest, slid out of bed and was out of the room before his mother could protest, which she did – loudly – but he was already walking into the room next door.

Peter was standing at the end of the bed and beamed when he saw William, who had eyes only for Joy, who was sitting up, looking at him expectantly.

“Hey,” she said, “the hero of the hour.”

“You did all the work,” William said, suddenly feeling self conscious that he was wearing only a flimsy hospital gown.

After a quiet beat, Peter cleared his throat and excused himself. William lowered himself into the chair next to the bed. He could see his mother hovering outside in the hallway.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Weirdly good,” Joy answered, “you?”

“Same.”

“Peter told me that according to the doctors here… They think maybe our joint power overloaded our systems and that we should be fine.”

“Then can you tell that to my mom because she’s doing some serious helicopter doctoring. I think she’s worried I’m going to drop dead.”

“It’s nice that you have someone to worry about you.” Her voice sounded small.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine…” Joy sighed and then reached up and yanked the cannula out of her own nose, pulling it down so that it rested on her chest.

“So… What happened?” she asked, and he knew exactly what she was talking about. The alien ships appearing suddenly, their resistance to the two kids’ powers.

“I don’t know. Maybe after I brought them down a few times they figured out how I did it. How to stop me.”

“Well,” she said, pushing her head back against the pillows behind her, “we still did it.”

“Yeah, we did,” said Will, though it felt like a hollow victory.

“Something wasn’t right, though,” she said, giving voice to a feeling he hadn’t wanted to. “You know what I mean? What we did should feel like a win. Everybody else around here is celebrating. But something else is happening, and I don’t know what it is.”

Their safety felt perilous and teetering, like Hiawatha cresting the Tahquamenon.

William reached out and took her hand. “Yeah,” he said. “I feel it, too.”

XxXxXxXxXxXxX

The energy around the base for the next few days was jubilant, but William seemed distant and reluctant to accept the many congratulations he was offered. Joy, too, was a little remote, and William spent a majority of his time with her, either in their suite or off somewhere inside the base. Scully was concerned about what exactly they’d been through, though physically they both seemed to be fine. Talking with them, they explained as best they could what had happened when they destroyed the alien ships’ fleet, and all they could say was that before they’d passed out, they each felt a great surge of power. She’d run every test available to her at the base and could find nothing wrong with either of them. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but worry.

Tonight they were on their way to her mother’s small quarters for the dinner that she’d been excitedly planning since meeting William in the infirmary. It was wonderful to see her mother in a joyous flurry, and Scully suspected that she was thrilled to once again have a family to fuss over, and thought that Matthew too probably appreciated not being the sole object of her maternal attention.

William was fidgeting non-stop with the cuffs of his hoodie while they all made their way down, and Joy finally snapped when they stepped off the elevator.

“Will you knock that off, William?” she said, reaching forward and yanking one of his sleeves out of his hands and up his forearm. “God, you’re making me twitchy.”

“Seriously kid,” Mulder said, as he trailed behind the three of them, “are you okay?”

William cracked his neck as they walked. “Sorry,” he said, “just restless, I guess.”

Scully pulled up in front of her mother’s door. “Well,” she said, “let’s all just try to relax and enjoy ourselves, all right? I’m pretty sure my mom has pulled out all the stops for tonight.”

William took a deep breath, and suddenly the hood of his sweatshirt went flying up over his head and the strings were yanked tight by invisible hands. He made a sound of surprise and pulled the hood off, shooting a look of amused irritation at Joy.

“Alright, alright,” he said, and Scully glanced at Joy who was standing innocently with her hands behind her back looking prim and satisfied.

Scully shook her head and knocked on the door.

It swung wide open an instant later to reveal Matthew who stared at them and impishly said “Thank god you’re here, she’s out of control.”

He was lightly shoved out of the way a second later by Margaret Scully who was beaming and dressed in a light blouse that Scully vaguely recognized. Her mother pressed a kiss to her cheek and ushered them all inside.

It was a tight fit in the small space, most of the room having been taken up by a large table and chairs that looked like they had been brought in from one of the cafeterias. The rest of the furniture – a small sofa and two chairs – had been pushed back against the walls.

“Wow, Mrs. Scully,” said Mulder, and Scully turned to see what he was looking at. The table was set beautifully, with actual china and a tablecloth and a smattering of small votive candles that sizzled and guttered when she swung closed the door.

“Now, Fox,” she said, chiding him a little, “I think we’re pretty far past the formality of ‘Mrs. Scully,’ aren’t we?” Mulder gave her a muggy smile. “And yes,” she went on, looking at the table proudly, “I wanted to make it nice.”

“Mags here called in every favor owed her on fifteen levels,” Matthew said, pulling out a chair at the far end of the table and gesturing for Scully to sit. “Please,” he said, “have a seat or one small sneeze is going to knock us all over like bowling pins.”

Everyone squeezed in guts and shuffled around as her mother got her guests all situated and seated where she wanted them, and then Maggie took a step into the kitchenette and reached into the tiny refrigerator to reveal a bottle of champagne with a flourish, the glass a heavy green chunk in her hands. The foil on the top reflected off the candlelight in a dull glow. Scully hadn’t seen one in years.

Mulder, who was sitting at the head of the table, stared for a moment before his mouth dropped open. “How on earth did you manage that?”

Her mother demurely turned her head away and began removing the foil with practiced care. “I may have run into General Sidney in the infirmary when we visited you,” she said, “and explained who I was and what I was planning.”

“She flirted,” Matthew translated, “shamelessly.”

“Oh stop it,” she said, affectionately shoving him in the shoulder. “Now open this for me while I get the glasses.”

“I’m just saying,” Matt went on, twisting off the muselet on top of the bottle, “Grandma has a way with military men. She says ‘jump’ and they say ‘yes, ma’am.’”

Margaret ignored him and began setting down small rocks glasses in front of every place setting. “It’s okay for them to have a little, right?” she asked Scully as she placed glasses in front of William and Joy, “we’re celebrating.”

Scully nodded and looked at the two teens who were seated next to each other, both looking silently hopeful.

“It’s fine, Mom,” she said, and her approval was punctuated with a loud pop! as Matthew finally worked the cork out. Once he had poured everyone a small portion, Margaret raised her glass and everyone else followed suit.

“Now,” she said, still standing, “a proper toast.” Scully watched as her mother pressed her hand to the base of her throat, where, in the days before the invasion, she would have been wearing a string of pearls for an occasion such as this. “To being reunited with family thought lost,” she started, “to the memory of those who are no longer with us,” with this she put her hand on Matthew’s shoulder, “and to two brave, extraordinary people, who have given us all hope.” She looked intently at William and Joy, who both looked a little uncomfortable with the attention. “To Joy and William.”

“To Joy and William,” Matt, Mulder and Scully all repeated, and then everyone took a relieved sip. Joy gave a little cough and Matthew held out a hand and said, “Giggle juice can be a bit much. I’ll happily finish it for you.”

Everyone laughed and the tension was eased and Scully’s mother immediately launched into serving everyone heaping plates from the impressive spread on the table. Steaming lasagna with oozing, stringy cheese, garlic bread, a crisp green salad. Everyone marveled and complimented her on the food, but she deferred to her eldest grandson.

“The food was all Matthew’s doing,” she said proudly. “He’s working in one of the cafeterias and was really able to pull some strings.”

“You don’t want to know what I had to pull to get this spread,” he said, passing the platter of garlic bread over to William, “but it wasn’t just strings.”

Once everyone was settled with their plate, Margaret reached her hands out to either side of her.

“Grace,” she said in a matronly way, and everyone joined hands. William, who was sitting next to Scully, had cold fingers, but a warm palm, and Scully squeezed once and gave him a smile when he looked up at her.

“Lord, thank you for all of your blessings lately for which we are eternally grateful,” Margaret said, “and please bless this food to our use, and us to thy service. Amen.”

Amens were mumbled all around and then the air was filled with the silence of eating and silverware clinking on china. Scully couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat around a table with family and shared a hot meal with actual cuisine. After her final bite, she took a sip of champagne and let the bubbles fizz and zip along her tongue, and when she swallowed the warmth that spread through her belly seemed to extend all of the way to her soul. This was everything she missed, and when she looked up, Mulder was looking at her with a look of such warm satisfaction and peace that she could feel the burn of tears in the corner of her eyes.

“So,” said her mother, standing up, “who’s ready for dessert?”

At that moment, William inhaled a sharp breath and shot up from his seat so fast that the chair he was sitting in fell over backwards.

“Will?” she said, looking at him in concern. She glanced at Joy and saw that the girl was staring at her plate, gripping the table so hard that her fingers were turning white.

“William?” said Margaret, tilting her head curiously.

“I get excited about dessert, too,” said Matt glibly, but Scully could see that a serious look had crossed over his face, and his eyes, normally alight with impish mirth, were clouded and dark.

“William, what is it?” Mulder said, and William looked down at Joy, who exchanged a look with him.

“They’re coming,” William said, his voice tremulous.

“Who’s coming?” Scully asked.

“Super soldiers,” said Joy, her voice like a whisper.

“How many?” Mulder asked grimly.

William looked to his father, his face white as a sheet. “All of them,” he said.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Joy knocked on the general’s door with a quick rat-a-tat-tat . Sidney answered the door a minute later, dressed for bed, a pair of bifocals perched on the end of his nose. He took one look at Joy, William, Mulder and Scully standing in the hallway, and said, “Let me get dressed.”

He was back at the door less than a minute later dressed in his full fatigues, and he stepped out into the hallway and began walking toward the command center.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Super soldiers, sir,” Joy said, rushing to keep up with his quick, long strides.

“Where?” Sidney asked, swinging around a corner.

“It’s hard to say,” Joy said, “I’ve never felt anything like this.”

“South,” William piped up, only a half step behind Joy. Mulder and Scully brought up the rear.

The General turned into the control room at full pace and a young soldier leapt up from his post.

“Officer on deck!”

“As you were,” Sidney barked, moving to the center of the room. “I want a live satellite feed on the big screen.”

The soldiers on duty rushed to their stations if they weren’t already there. Sidney turned to William. “South of this location?”

William nodded.

“How far away?”

William shook his head.

Sidney turned and rattled off latitude and longitude and a minute later, the big screen in the front of the room populated with a satellite picture of the area near the base.

“Adjust south a hundred clicks,” ordered Sidney and a moment later, the picture adjusted.

“It’s going to be hard picking up anything at night, sir,” said a soldier to their right.

“I’m aware of that,” the General said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “Okay, give me another 40 clicks south.”

The screen adjusted minutely. He leaned forward and Mulder tried to make out what he was looking at. The picture wasn’t zoomed in very close, but something was odd about it.

“Switch to thermal,” Sidney barked.

And that’s when Mulder’s heart went to his throat. On the screen, amidst a large swath of North America that was almost entirely black, was a white and red mass moving incrementally in a northerly direction.

“Zoom,” the General said. The picture adjusted. “More.”

On screen was an absolute mass of super soldiers. Mulder couldn’t make them out as individuals, but as a colossal horde, miles long and miles wide. Tens of thousands of them, marching steadily north.

“Holy f*cking sh*t,” muttered a soldier. Mulder wasn’t sure who said it because no one could take their eyes off of the large screen at the front of the room, but he had to agree with the sentiment.

“Someone wake up Carmichael,” Sidney said. “And I want speed and trajectory calculations. Someone tell me how long until they reach Base Zero.” A beat. “Now!”

“We have about thirty-six hours,” said a young female soldier, looking up at the General from a computer screen.

Mulder felt Scully slide her hand into his and squeeze it, hard. He chanced a look at her, and saw only fear.

Peter shuffled into the room, his feet in slippers, sliding one arm into a flannel shirt.

“What is it?” he asked as he fastened the buttons. Mulder could see they were all off by one.

Sidney gave him a succinct breakdown.

“Sweet fancy Jesus,” he said, looking up at the screen. “But they can’t enter the base,” he said. “The magnetite protects us.”

“Yes,” said Sidney, looking grim. “But they can surround us. Cut off our flow of supplies. It would be a siege. One we would lose.” The General heaved a sigh. “We’ll have to fight them.”

“That many?” Scully asked.

“We have no other choice.”

“General, our magnetite technology is untested,” Peter pointed out. “And we don’t have enough of it.”

“We’ll have to make more. As of right now Base Zero is in Condition Red. I need a call for civilian volunteers. Anyone willing or able to fight. I want Gen3 weapons in the hands of anyone ex-military or law enforcement. All those who cannot fight should report to engineering to help make weapons. I want any refugee with a scientific or manufacturing background called up first. We’ll need quick and dirty IEDs and as much of the MAG-2 ammunition that we have distributed. Get Base Two on the horn and see if they can scramble air support.”

An alarm whooped through the air and a PA system began announcing the change to the base’s condition and a call for civilian volunteers. The voice was calm, but Mulder could feel the tension ratchet up.

The General began speaking again. “I want Team Commanders and their XOs in the conference room in ten minutes with topo maps of the entire region.”

From Mulder’s elbow, he heard a quiet “General?” He looked over and Will had taken a step forward. He cleared his throat and spoke louder, “General?” he said again.

General Sidney turned toward him.

“I want you and Alpha in the conference room as well, Bravo. Ten minutes.” When the General turned away, Joy grabbed his elbow.

“Sir, William has something you need to know.”

Sidney peered at him curiously. “Any time, son.”

“During the Aptitude Tests, sir,” he said, “there was one you didn’t run. I have a power that Joy doesn’t. Something that will be able to help us.”

“And that would be?”

“Magnetite, sir,” William said. “I can control it.”

Sidney crossed his arms over his chest. “Control it, how?”

“I think I might need to show you.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

35:08 hours left

Above the conference room table, forty pounds of magnetite hovered in the air, chipped bits and dust swirling around the center mass of rock like light arcing at the edge of an event horizon.

The officers that sat and stood around the conference table watched – some in fascination, some in abject discomfort – Sidney himself was hard to read.

“How much can you lift?” he asked William.

“I’m not sure. It’s finite, but… A lot?”

“Can you separate it? If you went down to the mines right now, could you remove the magnetite from the rest of the elemental rock?”

“Yes,” William said, “that’s easy.”

For the first time, Sidney looked pleased about something.

“Son, I’m going to need you to go down there as soon as we break here.”

“Okay,” said William, and he let the magnetite sample that had been brought up settle gently back onto the table.

“Now,” the General went on, “you’ve said you’ve killed the Metallics with this?”

William explained how he’d done it, leaving out the part about Dan.

“We’ll need to consider his position on the battlefield,” said Sidney, addressing the amassed officers.

“What’s the range of your control over the element?” asked Humphries.

“Half a mile, maybe,” William said. “At the most.”

“Get me a geologic survey map,” Sidney ordered, and a moment later one came up on the conference room’s big screen.

Everyone studied it.

“We’ll need to get him close enough to a reliable surface seam,” Humphries said. “Maybe if our forces abutt the mountain,” she pointed to an area on the map, “with Bravo out front.”

“I’ll need room to work,” William said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone but the super soldiers.”

Sidney stood for a moment just looking at him.

“We will work around you,” he finally said. “Tell us what you need and we will plan around it.”

William rose from his seat and walked around the table to stand in front of the map. He closed his eyes and felt the mass of voids moving steadily towards them.

“Where, William?” General Sidney said, stepping up close to him. “Where should we go?”

“Here,” William said, pointing to the map. “North,” he went on. “We have to go north of Zero.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

26:03 hours left

William didn’t walk back into their suite until well into the night. Scully waited up and pressed a cup of tea into his hand. He tiredly smiled his thanks and then went into his room and shut the door.

Scully watched his retreating form and she thought she finally understood what Mrs. Peaco*ck had told her all those years ago about the enormity of love for one’s child.

XxX

22:46 hours left

She had fallen asleep on the couch and was startled awake when there was a soft knock on the entrance to their suite. She looked over at William’s door and it was closed, the boy still asleep behind it.

When she swung their suite door open she found her mother standing there, kneading a tissue into shreds.

“They put out a call for volunteers,” her mother said shakily. “Matthew is going to fight.”

Scully ushered her mother through the door and to their sofa.

“I’m not good at this anymore Dana,” she said, “sending my men off to war.”

“No one is good at it, Mom,” she said. “No one should be.”

“What if I lose him? He was all I had left, and then I found you and William again and I…” She took a bracing breath and turned to her daughter. “On the wall,” she said, “in every hallway down on the lower levels, there’s a clock. It’s counting down the hours until the super soldiers arrive and it never stops, that clock. Every second brings me closer to losing you all again. Every breath. Every step. I know that everything in life changes. Especially in wartime. I’ve been around long enough to know that for a fact. But when your father shipped out, I at least had you kids. But this time, Dana, you will be up there and I will be down here and the only constant, level thing I can look to will be that damn clock.”

Scully leaned in and wrapped her arms around her mother’s small frame.

As she was sitting there holding the birdlike wings of her mother's scapulae, Scully wandered into a flash of haptic memory, of hugging her mother after her cancer diagnosis. She let herself fall into a shallow pool of remembrance. She thought of the high, grinding whirl of the Kitchen Aid mixer in her mother's kitchen, the plush, velvety feel of the carpet in her den. The scent of the dogwood just off her mother's porch. Everything she thought of that was just so quintessentially Margaret Scully.

She pulled back. “I know it wasn’t always easy to be my mother,” she said, “my choice to enter the FBI and all of the things that happened to me and our family because of that choice. And now that I’m watching my son carry the same weight as Atlas, I-” Scully sighed, unable to look her mother in the eye. “I’m sorry for what you had to endure. I understand it now. And I’m sorry that you’ll have to endure it again.”

Her mother put a gentle hand under her chin and lifted her face so that she could see her eyes.

"Dana, you were always the fighter," she said. "Oh, how you used to go toe to toe with Bill. You'd stomp and rage and I honestly think he was always a little scared of you. This little scrap of a redheaded thing raging against a boy four years older and twice your size. And while Bill had the job for fighting, and Charlie had the pluck, you have the heart. I have never encountered a more tenacious soul in my life. I have to think that that's what God put you on this earth to do. To have that child and fight this war, and if I was merely a vessel through which you traveled to get you both to this point in time, then when I meet St. Peter at the gates of heaven, I can tell him that I played my part. And he’ll know – and you should, too – that I supported you. I always have.”

Scully tipped forward and held her mother tight.

XxXxXxXxXxX

15:23 hours left

Mulder found William pacing the hallway in front of their suite, looking restless and lost.

“Hey,” he said, and the boy looked up, startled.

“Hey,” William said.

Mulder was carrying a couple of cups of coffee back from the cafeteria. He and Scully had planned to sit down together and try to come up with some sort of plan with how they would handle the various outcomes of the next morning’s events, but he decided that that could wait.

“You all right?” Mulder asked.

William put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Mulder looked at the boy — the last Mulder, who had never been a Mulder at all — and he could see himself in him, in the arc of his jaw, in the shape of his eyes, in the rangy way the boy walked, leading with his hips. He opened the suite door and set the coffees down, then closed it and turned to his son.

“Come on,” he said, turning to walk back down the hallway from which he’d just come.

“What?”

“I think we need some fresh air.”

William stood there for a moment and then trotted to catch up.

“Is it, uh-” Mulder gestured vaguely around, “everything? Or is this just teenaged ennui?”

William chuffed a laugh. “Teenaged ennui, definitely,” he said. “Tomorrow will be a piece of cake.”

Mulder led them through the various levels, making his way to the entrance of the base. William was silent until they approached the large iron door. There were two young soldiers standing guard this time, but after a beat, they stepped aside and let Mulder lead his son out into the air at the base of the mountain. It was golden hour, and the light hit the trees in the valley below with a downy brightness. It was as beautiful an evening as Mulder had ever witnessed.

“Grandma Scully was here, earlier,” William said, the name sounding odd coming from the boy’s mouth. “In our suite, I mean.”

“Oh yeah?” Mulder turned from the flat area in front of the base door and noticed a small rocky path that led upwards just to its left. He turned to climb it and William followed him.

“I think she’s maybe come around to this ‘chosen one’ thing.”

“Don’t think that’ll get you out of a six am roll call under the Christmas tree.”

William smiled, and they found an area that leveled out on a small ridge above the base, the valley and woods beyond spread out below them. They turned to look at the vista.

“Do you think I’m the chosen one?”

Mulder stood for a moment, considering his answer.

“I think you have incredible gifts,” Mulder said, “and I think they coincide with a timeline wherein humanity desperately needs them. But I don’t know that I really believe in a grand purpose, in fate above all else. I think each individual deserves more credit than that. That said, I do think you’re the right person in the right place at the right time, and while it’s an awful lot to fall on the shoulders of a fifteen year old kid, I do think they fell on the right ones.”

William kept his eyes in front. “So I’m peaking early is what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying that I think you’ll absolutely do right by humanity. I think you’ll do right by yourself. And that no matter what happens tomorrow, I’m proud to call you my son, and I will be until the day I die.”

He heard the boy take a breath, drawing the mountain air deep into his lungs. They stood in silence for several long minutes.

“What’s your last name, William?” Mulder finally said. “I never knew.” A small part of him was ashamed of the oversight. A small part of him still didn’t want to know.

William looked out at the horizon, at the scope and breadth of the world he would have to save — a child of fifteen, whose chest was only just filling out, whose voice had deepened only in the last few months — and replied:

“Does it matter?”

“To the scholars and the historians, it probably will.”

There was a sound behind them – the slightest scratch of a heel turning on gravel, and Mulder turned to see Joy standing off on a spare bit of shale by the edge of the path. She was holding her small wing-like elbow in a delicate hand, looking at William with a longing he recognized in his own love-sick heart. He suddenly had the urge to find Scully, to bury his face in the skin of her lily white neck. Instead he looked back to their son.

“If there ends up being a history at all,” William said, finally turning to his father, “I think I should get to decide.”

William had grown up since Scully had found him on a ridge in their hunting grounds, Mulder decided. Not so much older, but wiser, harder, now armored with the quiet kind of knowledge that sneaks up on you and grabs you by the neck. Mulder tried to think of the boy who had frolicked in a field with Tisdale, who had joyfully pulled fish up out of the ice.

He wasn’t a boy anymore, Mulder thought. He’d never be a boy again.

“When tomorrow comes,” he said, reaching out and running his fingers through the feathered ducktail of William’s coppery locks, “we’ll be right beside you.” He pulled the young man in and placed a gentle kiss to his forehead, and Mulder could feel the fan of his son’s humid breath on his jugular notch.

Then Mulder turned and headed back down the path, reaching out to brush his fingers along Joy’s sleeve as he walked by, passing his son’s care into her hopeful, innocent hands.

XxXxXxXxXxX

William could hear his father make his way down the path back to base, but he knew he wasn’t alone.

“Someone send you along to make sure I didn’t run off?” It wasn’t a fair thing to say, but he couldn’t help but lash out, only a little. The fear and anticipation had hollowed him out until he felt like only an outline of himself. A memento pinned to the wall like a Hiroshima shadow.

“I thought we might run away together,” Joy said, “f*ck ‘em.”

At this William turned to her in surprise. She stood a little ways off the path, looking at him with a small smile on her face.

“Don’t tempt me,” he said, turning back to look at the valley and gesturing to his feet. “I’m a man on a ledge.”

He felt her approach and stand next to him, her sleeve just brushing his.

“William-“ she started, but he cut her off.

“No, I… I wouldn’t. I won’t.

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

When he looked at her again, her upturned face was shy but hopeful, and he felt something spark inside his chest. He spread one arm wide in invitation and Joy tucked herself into his side. The outside of her jacket was cold and she smelled like the night. He pulled her in close and felt her arms wrap around his waist and underneath the fear and the dull panic, he felt a small thrill. If his heart was a smoldering orange coal, she was the breath that kept it lit.

“We’re crossing the rubicon,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I wish you could help me.”

“I will. I’ll be right next to you.”

“You know what I mean.”

She sighed and turned a little in his arms so that she was facing him. He had to look down.

“It was always going to end like this,” she said. “You know that as well as I do.”

“But now?” It didn’t feel fair. He leaned his head down, resting his forehead against hers. “I’ve only just found you.”

Joy slowly rose onto her toes and pressed a warm, soft kiss to his lips. It was his first.

“You say the magnetite speaks to you, right?” she said when she pulled away. It took him a minute to compose a response, and even then it was only the nod of his head.

“And what is it saying to you? Right now?”

William looked back and forth between her eyes and then knelt upon the ground. He held out a hand and asked a question. He felt the Earth respond.

“I’m ready,” he said, looking up.

XxXxXxXxXxX

00:08 hours left

Mulder stood at the ready along with the other fighters that General Sidney had amassed. There were over a thousand, spread along the front of a ridge north of the base, hundreds of clumps of a dozen people spread over a mile of land, the base behind them, and a long field stretched out to the horizon in front.

William, who stood at the center of the fighting force, had chosen well. The magnetite of the mountain wherein Base Zero was housed would keep the super soldiers off of their rear, so that when they came, they would have to stream around the sides of the mountain and approach the fighters from the front – the geography of the area such that the fighters’ flanks were also protected.

In amongst the fighting force were spread the military, with two groups of special forces on either side of William and Joy who were tasked with protecting the two teens, whose job it would be to wield the vast stores of magnetite that were buried in the hills behind them. William would call it up from the earth, and – theoretically – Joy would help him sling it. Everyone else was armed with guns and magnetite ammo, and throwable IEDs filled with the element that should render the approaching super soldiers to dust. They’d been given other various weapons including magnetite infused knives, but if the enemy got close enough for them to use them, their cause was all but lost anyway.

Mulder ran a hand over a sweaty lip, looking over William to where Scully stood on his other side, one of the larger gatling guns held at the ready. He had tried to talk her into staying back at the base with those who could not fight, but she’d refused as he knew she would, and had told Sidney in no uncertain terms where she would be located on the field of battle. Next to her son. Next to Mulder.

The super soldier force was maybe ten minutes out according to the math, and if you paid attention, you could feel the slight rumble in the ground of the untold number of feet marching steadily toward them.

The anticipation was killing him. Mulder felt a keen sense of lachesism – he almost longed for the clarity delivered by disaster, the singular, shocking pleasure of doom. Anything was better than waiting for death to come, and when he finally saw the invading force wending their way over the distant hillsides, he thought that perhaps doom was the right word.

It must have been like what Leonidas and the other 300 Spartans had seen when they saw the full might of the Persian army wending towards them at Thermopylae. It wasn’t just a mass of super soldiers coming toward them, but a wall, a front, tens of thousands of beings who had once been people sweeping towards them like a hurricane approaching a beach.

He could hear swearing and prayers, whimpers and breaths, and one or two shots from the guns of fighters who couldn’t hold their nerve.

“Are you ready?” he heard his son ask Joy.

“Yes,” she said, and he watched as the two teens stood strong in the face of overwhelming odds, feet braced, their hands out, ready to wield the odd power they were born with to save humanity or die trying.

The enemy was upon them.

XxXxXxXxXxX

+00:35

William did not have the time or energy to think or worry or feel.

The battle hadn’t been raging long, but already the fighters from Zero were losing it.

The super soldiers were coming at the ragtag force far faster than they could be taken out. It was as if a horde of locusts had descended on what remained of humanity to pick their bones clean. There was the constant prattle of gunfire, one IED explosion after another, super soldiers turning to dust so quickly that every fighter on the battlefield looked like they were covered in a layer of ash. And still they came.

William was bringing up metric tons of magnetite from the ground and he and Joy were slinging it in vast swaths through the endless line of troops in front of them, but it was only buying them time. This couldn’t last. Whatever hope they had that morning was spent, trampled into the ground like a daisy beneath a boot. The world around them was nothing but shades of gray and black.

He coughed once on the dust; it was in his mouth and up his nose and as he expelled it, time slowed.

To his right, his mother had a large gun that was spraying forth magnetite bullets in a never ending half arc, holding off the wall of soldiers coming at them, but only just. To his left, the line was beginning to break. He saw Peter with one of the massive next gen gatling guns run out of ammo. A super soldier came at him, his hand like a knife, and Peter grabbed the gun he was holding by the barrel and swung it up with such force that the super soldier’s head whipped back and he flew into the enemy soldiers ten feet behind him. It only took a moment, however, for his place to be filled and William saw with detached horror as a soldier put a hand through Peter’s enormous neck and he crumpled to the ground. William’s father, standing next to him, lunged up with one of the magnetite infused combat knives and the soldier who had felled Peter vaporized. A second later another soldier stepped in and Mulder fell as well, an arc of blood spraying the air where he had not a moment before been standing tall. William saw Joy dive for the men, everything still moving in slow motion. He turned his head back to the front.

Standing before him, like a tree in the middle of a river’s current, was a young woman, not more than sixteen or seventeen years of age. Her hair was auburn streaked with the dust of her atomized compatriots and she wore a pink hooded sweatshirt with a pair of boot cut jeans, stained at the knee with grass.

In her hand was a baseball bat.

“Dan?” he said into the molasses drip of time, the name on his lips sounding hollow and as stretched out as taffy.

The super soldier before him co*cked her head to the side and shifted her gaze to where Joy kneeled on the ground, her eyes closed, her hand resting the temples of William’s father. Dan took a step forward and raised the bat.

His hands shook as he held them out to the side and summoned forth an arrow of magnetite – no more than would take to fill a tea cup – sending it into the forehead of the girl who had been his only friend. She burst into dust just as a cool breeze whipped through the battlefield, and she was carried off into nothingness.

For a moment, time stopped. It was as quiet as the silence before Creation.

William remembered the feeling he had on the Preacher’s ship when his mother lay choking on her own blood, the incandescent rage that had come from within his chest and flowed to his fingers and hands, peeling apart the hard metallic alloys of the ship like they were no more than tissue paper. What he felt now was so much more powerful and intense that it felt like a vibrating psychosis – needles along his skin, rising up and through him like a tsunami taking a beach.

He called forth a force so potent that it would have torn any other person on Earth in two.

But instead of destroying him, the power itself cleansed him. The elements of the earth that answered his call were a pumice to his heart, distilling his essence to its purest form — if the soldiers before him were dark, he was light; if they were hate, he was love.

He was everything they ever were in their life and he would be the death that sent their souls home.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The ammo in Scully’s gatling gun was nearly out. It would only be a matter of seconds before she and every other human fighter with their backs to Base Zero were overwhelmed by the invading force. She thought of her mother, waiting in a small room beneath a mountain, rosary beads clutched in her hands. She thought of the pain of childbirth, of the coursing flow of love that followed it. She thought of Mulder’s eyes in the night and the way the color of his irises would shift when he was deep in the cradle of her hips.

And then the ground beneath Scully’s feet shook, as if a beast was erupting from the bowels of the earth.

She had only time to glance to her left to see Joy dive toward William and take his hand before the world itself seemed to implode.

There was a massive reverberation and then above them everything went dark. When she looked up to see what had blocked the sun, she saw nothing but a dark wall of stone miles wide and long rushing through the air over their heads and then careening down until it blasted into the line of super soldiers in a tremendous conflagration of rock and debris. The sound was like an atomic bomb going off. Scully slammed shut her eyes and covered her ears, falling to her knees.

Untold seconds or minutes or hours later, it was over. She blinked and lowered her hands, dust falling out of her hair and onto the already thick layer at her feet. She glanced over and William and Joy were still standing there, hands linked, breathing hard, both of their heads lowered in exhaustion or defeat or some other unnamed emotion Scully could scarcely bring herself to name.

To their left, Mulder sat, propping himself up on one arm, shaking his dusty head as if he’d just woken up from a trance. Next to him, the enormous crumpled body of Peter Carmichael lay still and silent. All around them were the fallen bodies of comrades and refugees, and amongst them stood the shell-shocked fighters who had survived.

The entire field before them was empty, but for a dust devil blowing west to east, swirling what remained of their enemy up beyond the surly bonds of the earth and into the heavens from which their destruction had both come, and gone.

William had to shove the door hard with his shoulder. It had been a damp summer, and the door itself, he was happy to see, hadn’t been touched in a few years.

“This is it,” he said, smiling behind him.

The little cabin had weathered the end and beginning of the world with robust cheerfulness, its windows reflecting the brownish green of the lake out front with watery solemnity, and the inside of the small house was dry and quiet, each piece of furniture and all their various knickknacks sitting exactly where they’d left them.

“Aren’t you going to carry me over the threshold?” Joy asked.

“I would, but I don’t want to throw out my back.”

“Kids,” said Scully, issuing a stern warning.

“I don’t think you can call them kids anymore, Scully,” said Mulder, bringing up the rear, his arms laden with food and supplies.

William reached back and took Joy’s hand, leading her into the kitchen with a wink and a smile.

“Come to the window,” he said, pulling her into the living room so that they could look out and onto Green Lake. “You gotta see the view.” His parents ducked back out to unsaddle the horses and give them some privacy — their timing fairly conspicuous.

Joy moved to stand in front of the big windows and took a deep breath, watching the gentle ripples of the water undulate along the lake’s surface. William took advantage of their seclusion and moved to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her in tight.

“I was thinking,” he said into her ear, as she brought both of her arms up to cover his, “we could build our own cabin on the lot next door. There’s a little grove of poplar trees in between there and here, just enough so we’d have a little privacy.”

Joy inhaled again and thunked her head back so that it rested on his shoulder.

“I think that sounds like Heaven,” she said.

William Mulder took a moment to reflect on how far they’d come.

Maybe it was surprising, but he didn’t often think of the battle north of Zero. Today, however, standing in the one place in the world where he’d always felt safe and at home, he did.

He thought of the people they lost and couldn’t save. He thought of his grandmother and the others who had been deep below the earth, shrouded in the velvety darkness of soil and stone, not knowing whether they would ever see the sun again. He thought of Joy on the battlefield, choosing to save Mulder’s life over Peter Carmichael’s, a man who had been like a father to her, because she only had time to save one. He thought of the zealot Elaine, and the way her gun trembled when she held it. He thought of his cousin Matthew, how he’d come up to him after the battle and put his hand on William’s shoulder, the impish glint in his eye as dull as an old penny.

The cover of the hemlocks above the cabin waved thickly in the breeze off the lake, waving shadows onto the weedy yard in front of them.

“It’s just like you said it would be,” Joy said, squeezing his arm. “I don’t feel anything here but peace.”

He pressed a hand to the window and felt the cool glass press back. They had given all they could, all they had, to the outstretched hands of humanity and had earned a long awaited rest. For the rest of their days, they had no plans but to live a quiet life, a settled life, a life beyond the reach of fear, or judgment, or regret.

Their service had ended. Their lives had begun.