Title: STICKS AND STONES Author: aka "Jake" Rating: R (Violence, Language) Classification: X, MSR Spoilers: Leonard Betts, Pusher, Hungry. (Honorable Mentions: The Host, Teliko, Tooms, 2Shy, Paper Hearts, Beyond the Sea, Detour -- notice a theme here?) Keywords: Ununnilium (Read and find out.) Summary: Just your average everyday mutant hunt? Don't bet on it. This murdering monster's MO includes carving Mulder's name onto his victim's backs. And Mulder's taking the killer's signature personally. "I hate this guy, Scully. I hate that he's using my name. I hate that I'm clueless about why he's doing what he's doing. And I hate that he's gonna do it again. And he will kill again. We're gonna get another call to come down to another murder to see another dead woman with *my* name on her back. He's...he's mocking us, Scully -- he's mocking *me* -- with his twisted truisms and his aberrant exploitation of my name and...and I hate it." -- Fox Mulder in "Sticks and Stones" Disclaimer: The characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are the property of Chris Carter, FOX and 1013 Productions. No copyright infringement intended. This is for fun, not profit. Author's notes at end. STICKS AND STONES (1/4) By aka "Jake" George Washington Elementary School Oakton, Virginia 10:13 PM With a box of poster paints wedged beneath one arm and twenty- five second-grade art projects dangling from the fist of her other hand, Theresa Johnson relied on her teeth to hold her car keys. Almost there, she told herself, crossing the parking lot while losing her hold on the box of paints inch-by-inch. She squeezed her elbow into the collapsing cardboard, pinning it stubbornly to her side. If she could just hang on a little longer, she could set the carton on the car's hood and...the paint jars shifted and the box slid a rib or two lower. "Dahn idt," she swore around her mouthful of keys. Five steps. Four. Three, two, one, she ran the last few paces and lunged toward the car. The box settled onto the hood and she spit the keys from her mouth. They landed somewhere beneath the front fender. "Alright, Theresa," she mumbled to herself, "Just find the keys and get the kids' drawings inside the car without wrinkling them and you're home free." Raising the drawings to keep them from dragging onto the ground, she stooped to search between the front tires. Something moved beneath the car. Theresa bent lower and peered into the shadows. She held her breath to listen. Nothing. "You're imagining things, Theresa ol' girl. Not a good sign." She spotted the wayward keys nestled beside the front tire and reached for them. A hand shot out. Grabbed her wrist. Jerked her to her knees. Trying to wrench free, she corkscrewed backward but the thing held her. It felt wet and slick and muggy around her arm. With five fingers, sheathed in pulpy flesh, it squeezed her wrist and stopped the flow of blood to her hand. "Let...let m-me go!" What the hell was this thing? The perverted limb was scarcely recognizable as human. A series of gristly chords snaked from its crusted fingernails up the length of its forearm. Blistery skin pouched and oozed between its splayed fingers. Veins rode on the surface in knots, pulsing with the thing's monstrous heartbeat. "P-please, let m-me go." When a hideous head thrust out from beneath the fender, Theresa screamed. She gaped in openmouthed horror as the deformed creature, wrought by a misshapen conglomeration of muscle and sinew and bone, crawled out from beneath the car. The thing's flesh bubbled and expanded, lurching first sideways, than upward, than back, wrapping it in a grotesque swathe of mounting tissue. Like a runaway cancer accelerated beyond any known mutation, the warped mound of flesh surrounding the beast's skull bristled with patchy hair that drooped over submerged animal-like eyes. Its pupils collapsed to mere pinpoints and its brutal irises swirled with hate and anger. The drooling mouth grinned with distorted anticipation. "F-freak!" Theresa screamed before the creature's wet palm closed over her mouth, silencing her in a sticky, swollen embrace. The children's drawings dropped from Theresa's hand, seesawing toward the pavement and scattering like lost souls across the black parking lot. * * * 8:36 AM Mulder drew back the sheet enough to view the body but not so far as to expose the dead woman's nudity or her wounds to the prying eyes of the gawpers beyond the line of crime tape. Jesus. Her bruises were black. Like Rorschach's inkblots. Mulder squinted from imagined pain and wondered why the color blue was so often linked with black when describing a bruise. Contusions rarely included pretty azures, cobalts or indigos - - these colors were more often found in pleasant things like sapphires, tropical seas or Scully's eyes. Perhaps, he thought, the blue in black-and-blue referred not to the color at all, but to the emotional state. Mulder rolled the corpse onto its side. Yep. The slashes were there -- a series of precise cuts incised into the dead woman's bare flesh just above her shoulder blades. A grotesque mutilation, these deliberate lacerations spelled out Mulder's name, transforming his Christian and surnames into the mocking signature of a murderer. The killer's MO shocked Mulder every bit as much now as it had the first and second times he'd seen it. He found it difficult to keep his breakfast in his stomach at the sight of his own name sliced with the exactitude of a surgeon into the victim's skin. Goddamn, it must have hurt, all those letters, one at a time. Oddly, each letter had been meticulously sewn back together sometime later. Tiny, careful stitches. Same as the previous victims. Also like the previous victims, Miss Theresa Johnson's misery finally ended with a deathblow to the back of the head. Despite the obvious signs of sexual assault, not a drop of semen defiled Ms. Johnson or spotted the crime scene. No hairs, fibers or fingerprints, no incriminating evidence of any kind had been left behind to point an accusing finger at the sick bastard who raped and murdered at least three women in the same number of days...after he'd carved the name of his pursuer into their hides. "Agent Fox Mulder?" "Yeah," Mulder drew the sheet over the body and rose, knees feeling stiff. Out of habit he offered his right hand only to shrug an apology for the blood slicking his latexed fingers. "Detective...uh?" "Cho. Detective Dan Cho, Oakton PD. I understand this was your case before it was mine." "I'd just as soon it was your name engraved in Ms. Johnson's back, Detective Cho. Less painful...for her and for me." "Yeah, I guess so," Cho glanced at the sheet-covered corpse. "I was kinda hoping you and I might work together." "FBI hi-hosied this one, Detective. Federal crime. We've got a serial killer on our hands whose first victim was found in the Quantico parking garage." "Well, Theresa Johnson is right here in my backyard." Mulder squinted at the crime scene. "Rock, Paper, Scissors?" "Make that arm wrestling and you've got yourself a deal, Agent Mulder. What've you found so far? Any idea at all who did this?" "No." Mulder noticed Scully step from her car beyond the line of yellow tape. "But I'll let you know if anything pops up. Excuse me." Mulder brushed past the detective to join Scully. Her arrival calmed his clanging nerves in a way he hated to admit and unconsciously or not, he sought comfort beneath her umbrella of composure by crowding as close to her as possible. "Same MO?" she asked. "Check it out," he steered her to where a forensics team photographed a scrawl of letters painted across the hood of Theresa Johnson's white car. An open jar of poster paint punctuated the killer's message. "'Sticks and stones will break my bones...'" she read the aphorism's first line. "'But words will never hurt me,'" he finished. "Is that from 'Maxims for Murderers' or the sequel, 'More Maxims'?" "I hate this guy's perverse irony, Mulder. Did he cut your name into her like the other two?" She turned from the car to the body. "Yep. Indelibly marked. Guess I won't be getting her mixed up with the other kid's dead corpses at summer camp, will I?" Scully snapped on a pair of latex gloves and knelt beside the murdered woman. "Who the hell are we looking for, Mulder? Someone from an old case? Someone you once ticked off?" "Oh that narrows the field. Whom exactly can we rule out?" Scully pulled back the sheet and inspected the victim's marked back. "This killer reminds me of Harry Cokely." Mulder squatted, too, and huddled close to Scully while his voice skated like silk across her eardrum. "Sculleee," he cooed, "Sometimes it's just like you're inside my head!" "I said he *reminds* me of Cokely, not that he *is* Cokely." She nudged him aside, elbowing for more room. "We've known killers who've come back to life, Scully. You have to admit there's a definite resemblance between the two cases," he said, thinking back to the deceased rapist/murderer from Aubrey, Missouri, who carved 'sister' into his victims' chests. "Maybe we should check with Shamrock Women's Prison to find out if BJ Morrow's been released from the psychiatric ward." "There's not that much of a resemblance. Cokely never sutured his victim's wounds after-the-fact," she reminded him, pointing at the neat rows of stitches that spelled out his name. He nodded and she drew the sheet back over Theresa Johnson's head, once more hiding the dead woman from the curious stares beyond the crime tape. Scully stood and looked down at the crown of Mulder's head. "I suppose you'd like me to do the autopsy." He stripped a bloodied glove from his hand and tapped the tip of his nose with his index finger. "And Scully?" he looked up at her with insistent eyes, "Find something good. I wanna catch this guy before I see my name sliced into anyone else's back." - - - - - - - - - - - Quantico Morgue 3:15 PM "So did you find anything?" Mulder hung over Scully's shoulder while she used a pair of stainless steel pincers to remove bone fragments from a jagged hole splitting the back of Theresa Johnson's skull. "I found plenty." "Anything *good*?" "If by 'good' you mean 'incriminating,' the answer is no." She straightened, pincers poised in mid-air. "Mulder, you're in my light." "Sorry," he took a step back, reluctant to stray too far from her reassuring calm. No two ways around it, this case shook Mulder and he was not used to being shaken. Both his stint in the VCU and his years working on the X-Files had prepared him for the horrors of most psychopaths. Luther Boggs, John Lee Roche, Robert Modell, Donnie Pfaster. Especially Donnie Pfaster. But this...this bastard's methods were a little too personal. Who the hell was this guy and why was the son-of-a-bitch carving *his* name into the backs of innocent women? After three days and three 'Mulder Murders' as they were being called, rumors were circulating around the Bureau that ol' 'Spooky' Mulder must be losing his touch. Still without any leads or theories, he found he increasingly needed Scully's cool detachment to brace his professional confidence. The necessity irritated him. "Tell me what you *did* find, Scully." "Like the two previous victims, Theresa Johnson died from a blow to the back of the head, probably inflicted by her tire jack, which was found at the scene and is now at SCI for analysis. Prior to her death, she suffered multiple contusions and abrasions, not to mention the rather obvious lacerations on her upper back -- which clearly spell out your name. She was raped. And she was beaten until the tibia, fibula and patella of both legs, as well as the sixth and seventh left ribs, were fractured or broken. As with the previous victims, the killer actually took the time to close the lacerations on her back with sutures. Post mortem. Very neat stitches, I might add. He's someone who's practiced a lot." "A doctor." "Well, he's no plastic surgeon, but he's certainly had some medical training. We need to consider dentists, veterinarians, ER personnel, residents, a variety of health specialists." She added another bone fragment to the growing pile in her tray. "Why sew them back up?" "I don't know, Mulder. You're the profiler. You tell me." "Maybe he's showing off." "In what way?" Mulder shrugged. "Haven't figured that out yet." He aimlessly prodded the instruments lining her tray. "I hate this guy, Scully. I hate that he's using my name. I hate that I'm clueless about why he's doing what he's doing. And I hate that he's gonna do it again." Mulder faced her, eyes filled with guilt for a crime he didn't commit but for which he felt responsible because it had his name all over it...literally. "He will kill again. We're gonna get another call to come down to another murder to see another dead woman with *my* name on her back. He's...he's mocking us, Scully -- he's mocking *me* -- with his twisted truisms and his aberrant exploitation of my name and...and I hate it." "So give the case to VCU. You don't have to solve this one, Mulder. You don't own this crime. Just because it was your name on these women doesn't mean you owe it to anyone to catch this guy." "Give up now and satisfy the rumor mill?" "Mulder, since when do you care what they're saying about you in the bullpen?" "Since they suddenly started spreading the truth. Or maybe seeing my name on dead women is making me a tad oversensitive. Besides..." Mulder was about to quote Scully's own refusal to step away from the Donnie Pfaster case last year when a throat cleared at the autopsy bay door. The interloper was Scully's technician and the tech hung back, an apology pinching his face for the interruption. Mulder recognized the young man; he'd seen the technician hovering around Scully at the morgue on a number of occasions. A reedy young man, not too tall, mid twenties, with a neck that appeared too fragile to hold up his head, the guy was always tripping over himself in an effort to please Scully. Mulder expected the kid to pee on the floor like an overexcited puppy whenever Scully handed him a tray of dismembered body parts. "Excuse me, Dr. Scully. May I take those samples for you now?" the eager young man asked. "Thanks, Richard. Send the tray on the left for redwop. Put a rush on the toxicological. And get the personal effects -- her watch, earrings, et cetera -- to Evidence. You know the drill." "Yes, ma'am. You want me to clean up here after you're finished?" "Richard, what would I ever do without you?" Scully's smile pinked Richard's cheeks with pride. "I'd be happy to prepare the body for you, too. Close her up and wrap her for transport," he offered, gathering the trays and nearly spilling the samples in his struggle to impress. "I can do it. I'd like to do it." "That would be great, Richard. I appreciate the offer." "Anytime, Dr. Scully. Really. I...I'm glad to help." Nodding and smiling and juggling the specimen trays, Richard backed out of the room, his ungainly feet tying themselves in knots at the threshold. Mulder held his breath, anticipating a clatter of stainless steel upon the floor when the uncoordinated young man finally made his way into the hall. "Scully's got an admirer," Mulder chanted once the danger of an accident had passed without the expected crash and Richard had disappeared into the corridor with trays and samples still intact. "Don't be silly, Mulder. He's just eager to help. And I appreciate his enthusiasm." "Guess you gotta love a guy who's willing to scrub entrails off the linoleum for you." "He's been invaluable to me for years." "Invaluable? I don't remember you ever mentioning his name." "His name is Richard Weed and I'm sure I've mentioned him." An unbelieving laugh chuffed from Mulder's nose. "Dick? Weed? His name is Dick Weed? For real?" "He prefers Richard." "I'll bet. And I thought 'Fox' was bad." "Mulder, don't you have a profile to write, backgrounds to check, files to search, something?" "I do." "Then go. I'll catch up with you later." "Whatever you say, Dr. Scully," he mimicked Richard's worshipful tone, "I can do it. I'd like to do it." He blew her a kiss and kowtowed out of the room. - - - - - - - - - - - Le Lion d'Or Washington DC 7:45 PM "Richard, are you sure you can afford this place?" Scully whispered as the maitre de paraded them to a linen covered table. The upscale shimmer of silver and crystal and pearl- draped women left Scully feeling a little out of place in office clothes and street shoes. Not to mention her nylons spotted with Theresa Johnson's blood, she noticed. Richard's discomfort came less from his college-student wardrobe than from Scully's question. He didn't imagine she asked her other boyfriends about their finances. Not that he was her boyfriend or anything, but her query seemed inappropriate nonetheless. After all, he had money. He'd saved specifically for this occasion while he counted down the months, weeks and then finally the days. Scully's ten-year anniversary with the Bureau! The perfect time to ask her out without his invitation sounding like some clumsy come on. "Please, don't worry, Dr. Scully. I have plenty of money," he assured her, holding her chair while she sat. The chivalrous act made him feel charming and worldly and helped expunge his earlier faux pas. Walking from the cab to the restaurant's front door, he'd tried placing his palm at the small of her back the way he'd seen Fox Mulder do. But the gesture didn't come naturally and he accidentally bumped his knuckles into her buttocks, which caused her to turn in surprise...and him to blush. Of course, he pretended his gaffe was innocent, which it was, in a way, but touching her became out of the question at that point. To his dismay she still looked uncomfortable, sitting across the table from him in the candlelight, glassware clinking around them on all sides, expensive cologne mixing with the delicious aroma of seafood and seven-fifty-a-cup desert coffee. Her uneasy expression saddened him. He wanted to make her smile, show her a good time, have her look at him the way...well, the way she looked at her partner. Fox Mulder. God, what he wouldn't give to be Fox Mulder, working side-by-side with Dr. Scully everyday, saving lives and hunting paranormal frea...uh, phenomena. "Dr. Scully, please...please relax. This is a celebration." "I'm sorry, Richard. I didn't mean to seem..." She stopped speaking and made an effort to smile instead. "Order anything you want," he told her, trying to dispel any more embarrassing money concerns before the waiter arrived to take their order. "I...I'm going to have the Lobster Chiffonade," he announced to show he could afford the most expensive thing on the menu. "Why...why don't you join me?" "Oh, Richard. I don't know. Are you sure...?" "And wine. We should order some wine, too," he insisted. Trouble was, Richard knew nothing about wine. He wasn't even certain if white or red would be most appropriate with seafood. "What's your favorite?" he asked. "A glass of Chardonnay would be nice." "I was thinking the exact same thing." Oh, he could stare into her eyes all night if she'd let him. She was beautiful. Perfect. A goddess. Unfortunately she didn't return his appreciative stare. Her gaze traveled around the room, to the door, to her watch. "I...I got you a little present," he said, digging into his jacket pocket. "Richard, you shouldn't have done that." She sounded sincere. Or maybe surprised. Or maybe a little appalled. "It's nothing really. Just a token. To mark the event," he insisted. He placed a slim rectangular box capped with a blue and white bow on the table. "Go ahead," he urged, excited as a kid at Christmas. "Open it." A wary grin painted her face as she plucked up the slender box and shook the package with mock enthusiasm. She lifted the lid and peered inside. "Richard. It's beautiful." Her lipsticked mouth curved around a deferential 'O,' searing him from brow to breastbone with a flare of pride. "It's a bookmark," he explained. "You...you've quoted Herman Melville before, so I figured you liked to read. D-do you ever read Stevenson?" "Stevenson? Yes, I read Treasure Island years ago." "How about his other work?" "Sure, as a kid. What is this made from?" She lifted the tapered marker from the box and ran her fingertips along the smooth, dark surface. "Some kind of polished wood?" "Petrified wood, actually." He watched her stroke the glossy surface, hypnotized by the back-and-forth movement of her hand. Each appreciative caress tickled him, standing the hairs of his arms on end as if her fingers massaged his skin and not the cool length of the bookmark. "I...I liked the idea of something that's organic and inorganic all in one. The dual nature of it. Wood and rock. Opposites, if you will, fused together. People are like that, don't you think?" "People?" "Sure. Every person is a balance of opposites, a whole made up of complimentary elements." "You're describing Yin and Yang." "Exactly. The principal of polarity, Yin and Yang -- it's fundamental to Taoistic philosophy." "The Chinese view of the human body as a microcosmos." "Right. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine, written during the third millennium BCE, provided the intellectual framework for much of Chinese scientific thinking, especially in fields like biology and medicine. It says that if Yang is overly powerful, then Yin may be too weak. If Yin is particularly strong, then Yang is apt to be defective. Too much of either upsets the natural balance and disease or illness results." Gosh, talking with her like this was easier than he'd imagined. "Richard, I had no idea you adhered to Eastern philosophies. After all, Western medicine doesn't generally accept emotional chaos as the cause for disease, let alone the Eastern principle that good health relies on a balance of energy streams." "But who's to say Western thinking is correct? You can't deny the success of age-old practices such as acupuncture." "Well, I'm certainly not disallowing the possibility, Richard. Despite my training as a scientist, working with Agent Mulder has taught me to keep an open mind." "Right. Of course." Agent Mulder. It only made sense that after eight years, Spoo...uh, Agent Mulder's acceptance of the unusual would rub off on her. She smiled, looking relaxed for the first time all evening. "As a matter of fact, I guess you could say Mulder and I are living proof of the dichotomous nature of the universe." "How's that?" he asked, pretty certain he didn't really want to know. "Well, despite our different approaches, we're still together. Opposites apparently do attract." It was clear from her tone that she was referring only to the length and success of her professional partnership with Agent Mulder and nothing more personal. But the prospect of a deeper inference caused Richard's eyelids to flutter, blinking her declaration from his eyes like a stinging spray of sand. Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, Yin and Yang, two complimentary opposites conjoined to make a whole. Christ. Richard didn't have a snowball's chance in hell with a woman like Dana Scully. - - - - - - - - - - - 2630 Hegal Place, Apt. 42 Alexandria, VA 10:48 PM Socks and shoes strewn across the floor, bare feet propped on the coffee table, Mulder scribbled another line or two onto his notepad. The glow of the fish tank barely reached him, yet rather than break his train of thought by rising and turning on the desk lamp, he hugged the pages closer to his chest in an effort to reread his notes. sticks and stones sticks and stones will break my bones, but words words WORDS (FOX MULDER) words will never hurt me Fox Mulder will never hurt me? a challenge? he feels invincible, out of reach, untouchable or dictum holds intrinsic, personal meaning for him sociopathic game player experiences extreme alienation from normal social interaction and traditional interaction with others displays complex misplacement of values and deviation from cultural norms no regard for the feelings of his victims perceives people as objects anger toward woman/mother highly likely yada, yada sutures meticulousness indicates deliberate exactitude perfectionism with regard to performance wishes to be taken seriously, noticed as proficient often feels overlooked, under-aggrandized FOX MULDER FOX MULDER fixation anger? envy? (yeah, right) misplaced blame? suspicious of authority? government? of me???? Why? have I met this guy? ????? At a dead end, Mulder let the notepad drop to his lap and he scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He was getting nowhere and his gut told him he was on the wrong track - completely off the mark with this one. Perhaps he was too close to the case and should take Scully's advice, turn the whole thing over to Violent Crimes where it belonged. It seemed clear there was no connection to the occult, the paranormal, divination, or extraterrestrials. This case wasn't an X-File and he didn't particularly enjoy trying to get into the head of a killer who had already managed to get into his own. Jesus, ten years ago he was VCU's 'Golden Boy' and could have nailed a killer like this on the MO alone. Had he spent too many years hunting supernatural creatures until he all but forget how to capture the more down-to-earth variety or was it seeing his name carved into the backs of three brutalized women that dulled his once proficient edge? Didn't matter. The fact remained that the rumormongers were right this time -- he was off his game and he needed more than a textbook profile to find this goddamn son-of-a-bitch. He needed something solid. He needed quantifiable evidence, incontrovertible proof. He needed Scully. Where was she anyway? As if on cue, he heard her key in the door, followed by her familiar step across the hall's hardwood floor. "Where've you been?" he asked from the dark, immediately kicking himself for sounding more like a jealous husband than her concerned partner. "I tried phoning but the cell service is wiggy. The transmission signal's affected by the increased solar activity. It's been all over the news, Mulder. The sunspots are interfering with pagers, radios, televisions. Haven't you noticed?" "I thought I forgot to pay my cable bill again." He nodded at the small bag in her hand. "Whadya bring me?" "A little something from Le Lion d'Or." She waggled the doggie bag. "Dinner was on Richard." "Dick Weed took you to Le Lion d'Or?" he asked, sounding surprised. "We were celebrating a special occasion." She hung her coat and crossed the room to sit next to him on the couch. "What special occasion?" "Anniversary." She set the leftovers on the table next to his feet and reached for his notes. "Ten years with the Bureau." "He doesn't look old enough to have been with the Bureau for ten years." "Not him, Mulder. Me." "Ohh. And he remembered that? Don't you find that a bit creepy?" "I think it was sweet. He's a nice guy, Mulder. He's thoughtful." "Meaning...?" "Meaning nothing. I've told you before, not everything is about you." "So I recall. Didn't think you meant it though." "Did you have dinner?" she changed the subject. "A couple of tacos from the back of the fridge." "Mulder, when was the last time you ate Mexican?" "February of '93...more or less." He pointed to his notepad. "So what do you think?" "I think you're going to suffer from an El Nino-sized bout of Montezuma's Revenge *and* I think you need some hard evidence to solve this case." "Got anything that'll help?" "I do. Mylanta's in the medicine cabinet," she smiled at him. "I was kinda hoping you might have brought home the clue-du- jour in that doggie bag." "Afraid not. Just leftover Lobster Chiffonade." She tossed his notes back to him before wrestling her jacket from her arms. "Theresa Johnson's toxicological came back negative. I reviewed and re-reviewed all three victims' autopsy reports. I had Theresa Johnson's personal effects checked for prints, fibers, hair, semen. Nothing. How about you? Develop any theories while I was slaving over a cold corpse?" She folded her jacket neatly across her lap. Closing his eyes, he tipped back his head and sunk wearily into the cushions. "No." She waited a moment for him to say more, but when he remained uncharacteristically mute she tried to spark his enthusiasm. "No? That's it? No theories about trans-dimensional beings, mara experiences, astral projections, transmigrations of the soul, OBEs?" He surprised her by not pursuing her lexicon of paranormal phenomenon, any of which he might normally use to explain the lack of physical evidence. Instead, he acted as if he hadn't heard her words at all. "I can't get into his head, Scully." "Maybe that's a good thing." "Not if it means I don't catch him and he keeps on killing." He combed his fingers through his hair with a huff of exasperation. "I can't peg him, Scully. All this..." he waggled his notes at her, "It's not him. He's more complex than a mother-hating, bed-wetter with delusions of grandeur. He's someone I know, but...but I don't know the first thing about him. This profile is crap." He pitched the notebook onto the coffee table. "I'm not so sure, Mulder. I think you're probably right about the dictum 'sticks and stones' -- that it holds intrinsic, personal meaning for him." "But what meaning, Scully? If I can't figure it out, I can't catch him." "We." "What?" "If *we* can't figure it out, *we* can't catch him. You're not in this alone, you know." She ran her hand down his arm and settled her fingers across the back of his hand. He pinned her there with the slightest pressure of his thumb, acknowledging his gratitude for her presence in his life. "Can you stay?" He always phrased his invitation that way, as if he were more interested in what might prevent her from remaining than whether or not she actually wanted to sleep with him. "I didn't pack anything." Her own evasive maneuver -- not an excuse to go, but a chance for him to convince her to stay. "What do you need?" "Probably nothing that's not already here." She rose, tugged at his hand until he flowed upward from the couch to loom loosely over her, his breath steamy on her neck. He knitted his fingers with hers and softly brushed his lips across her earlobe. "Maybe something to sleep in," she suggested. "That's what the bed is for." He traced her eyebrow with the tip of his nose. "My arms are the alternate choice." To make his preference clear, he wrapped his arms around her back. "Both nice suggestions, but I was thinking more along the line of pajamas." "Aaah. T-shirt okay?" "Sure. I'll take this one." She plucked at the hem of the shirt he wore, tugging it up high enough to reach beneath the fabric and trail her hands across his bare stomach. The tickle of her palms was all the encouragement he needed. He hauled the shirt over his head and stood before her, bare-chested and inching her backward toward the bedroom. "Bathroom first," she said, delighted that her delay creased his brow with disappointment. "You're welcome to help me wash up, if you like." His smile returned. "I like." He steered her into the bathroom and crowded behind her at the sink. She twirled the faucets and while she removed her wristwatch and unfastened the buttons at her sleeves, he watched her twin in the mirror. Efficient. Calm. An exact replica of Scully. He edged as close to the real Scully as possible, hoping her composure would rub off on him and sooth the twitchy feeling that vibrated beneath his skin like an invading parasite. Hell. On an intellectual level, he knew he wasn't to blame for the death of Theresa Johnson or the other two victims, but his gut...his gut condemned him, prodded him with a painful finger of unwarranted accountability. Unfortunately, he was used to trusting his gut and this time it stuck him with a two-pronged fork of accusation. His name, carved into the back of each victim, made him an unintentional accessory to the crime, providing some unknown motivation for the killer. His own inability to solve the murders made him an impotent profiler. Shit. Either way, he felt responsible. Scully must have recognized his internal struggle and his ultimate self-damnation because she stared at him in the mirror with sympathy glistening her eyes. "It's not your fault," she said with absolute certainty. "None of it." "What does he want?" he sighed into her hair, ignoring her show of loyalty and avoiding his own regretful expression in the mirror. "I have no idea, Mulder. Does that make me guilty of his murders?" "Of course not." "Well then neither are you." He kissed the crown of her head, sprinkling her hair with appreciation. At each kiss, she unfastened a button of her blouse, calmly resuming her nightly routine. And with each button that slipped from its buttonhole, he increased the ardor of his kisses. The blouse undone, Mulder exhaled a lungful of desire across the nape of Scully's neck and eased her blouse from her shoulders. Drawing the silky garment downward, he exposed the creamy skin of her back and he rubbed his cheek possessively along the flat of her shoulder blade. "Mmmm," she collapsed against him, head dropping to her chest, revealing more pearl-white skin to his lips. His mouth tickled the path of her spine and his hands followed behind, fingers exploring the trail of delicate bones and satin skin flushed by his kisses. He brushed her back with his palm, erasing his invisible kisses in order to begin once more. Fresh. A clean slate. **Jesus! What the hell?** He blinked at her back. The imagined letters vanished like words wiped from a chalkboard but their pale ghosts danced in his memory, spelling out his name. "What is it, Mulder? What's the matter?" she asked, seeing the panic in his mirror-twin's eyes. He searched her back again. Now only the shadows from the overhead light streaked her unblemished skin. "Nothing," he said. Did she hear the uncertainty in his voice? - - - - - - - - - - - 7-Eleven Oakton, VA 11:02 PM Soda. Chips. TidyBowl. Breath mints. Where do they keep the bar soap, Richard wondered as he picked up the latest issue of TV Guide and an evening edition of the newspaper. He glanced at the paper's headlines. The bulk of the frontpage was filled with a feature story about the week's flaring solar storms and the inconvenience the larger than normal sunspots were causing cell phone users and TV-addicted couch potatoes. But down in the page's bottom-most corner, a smaller headline caught Richard's eye: Teacher Found Slain in Oakton Schoolyard. A tiny photo showed Dr. Scully and Agent Mulder kneeling over the sheet-covered body of Theresa Johnson. The picture was blurry, shot from a distance, but Richard could clearly see Agent Mulder speaking directly into Dr. Scully's ear, the two of them surrounded by uniformed police, crime scene tape, curious onlookers and the scattered drawings of Ms. Johnson's second-grade class. Theresa Johnson herself lay hidden beneath a sheet so white it stung Richard's eyes to look at it. He avoided the incandescent corpse by reading the photo's caption instead: 'FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate the death of Theresa M. Johnson, age 32, second-grade school teacher at George Washington Elementary School.' Richard knew the 'M' stood for Marie, the name he had typed on the top of Dr. Scully's autopsy report. "Awful, ain't it?" The observation was punctuated by a snap of gum so close to Richard's ear it caused him to flinch and he nearly dropped the TidyBowl toilet cleanser. "Uh, yeah," Richard held his breath against the girl's overwhelming perfume. She smelled like an entire cosmetic counter. Dressed in a mini skirt, halter-top and the highest spike heels he'd ever seen, he guessed she made her living on the streets. "A girl ain't safe in her own backyard anymore," she said, snapping her gum and repositioning the shopping basket on her arm. He noticed she was buying condoms and peppermints. "You look like the gentleman type. You wouldn't mind walkin' a girl home, would you, sweetie pie?" She smiled and revealed a smudge of lipstick on her front tooth. The splotch of red disappeared with the next snap of gum. "I, uh..." A ripple surged beneath the skin of his hand like a tiny cresting wave. The skin bubbled and expanded, frothing a little like foam. He felt his fingers grow a bit fatter and he thrust the hand into his pocket. "Uh, yeah, I guess so," he said. The flesh beneath his collar blistered. A pleat of tissue ridged his chest. Nodding nervously, Richard trailed the smiling young woman to the counter. - - - - - - - - - - - Mulder's Apartment 5:45 AM Mulder liked the way Scully slept with one arm flung loosely across his pillow. If he'd been a gambling man, he'd have bet she slept curled on her side, compact and tidy and in the same position each night. But he was surprised to find out she was neither conservative nor predictable in sleep. Her pattern varied night to night. She didn't even prefer one side of the bed to the other. The only thing he could depend on was the fact that she took up a helluva lot of room for someone of such diminutive proportions. It pleased him that while in bed she tolerated his constant need to touch her. He'd locate her in the dark, his palm on her arm or shoulder or belly, where he would anchor himself to her body and she wouldn't roll away or pluck his fingers from their resting place. The connection allowed him to finally conquer his unconquerable insomnia without resorting to sleeping pills, midnight jogs, pornography marathons or other such mind-dulling activities. At night Scully became a living conduit between his innate restlessness and the blissful Land of Nod; holding her, he slept peacefully for the first time in his life. Asleep, Scully was easy and untroubled and delightfully exposed. He liked her that way and wondered where her lenient night spirit hid during the day and if it was the act of washing off her make-up that freed her each evening. Did Scully's exacting persona spiral down the drain with her lipstick and mascara at the end of each workday? Not that he didn't love Scully's rigorous daytime qualities, too. She was thorough and tough and challenging -- all in a good way. Yet it was because she was so strict at work and even after hours that the dichotomy of her awake-versus-asleep nature surprised him so. Pleasantly. Eight years together and he was still getting to know this familiar woman. Dawn was now his favorite time of the day whenever Scully shared his bed because he always woke first and it gave him the opportunity to study the Scully he hadn't known before she'd spent the nights with him. This Scully was still somewhat of a stranger to him. Carefree and childlike and achingly beautiful with her tousled hair and freckled nose and russet lashes draping her cheeks. Her parted lips and curled fingers and ringless earlobes captured his heart every bit as much as the Scully who was his professional partner during the work day, the Scully who guarded his back and trusted him and believed in him and followed him beyond all reasonable good sense, the Scully who saved his life, not to mention his spirit, again and again and again -- so often in fact, he'd stopped counting after the first year. God, there were days when Mulder felt as though he had loved Scully his entire life, and yet there were other days when he fell in love with her all over again as if for the first time. And he was completely unprepared for those actions of hers that would send his heart reeling. Aim her gun at an invisible entity just on his say so and he'd love her. Stand her ground against Skinner or Kersch or a whole goddamn syndicate and he'd love her. Arch one questioning eyebrow at his latest off- the-wall theory and he'd love her. Frown or smile or tears or fury, he loved all of her. It was no wonder he loved this sleeping Scully, too. She was just the flip side of the same golden coin. Although she was Mulder's opposite in most if not all ways, Scully complimented him so perfectly, it seemed the universe had made her just for him. And him for her. Mulder smiled at this truth. He and Scully orbited each other like the spinning atoms of a molecule, drawn together by the inexorable force of electrons to nuclei. Perhaps they were the 111th element. **Move over Ununnilium, MulderScully's being added to the Periodic Table.** Splitting the predawn silence and interrupting his thoughts, the phone rang and its trill fluttered Scully's lashes. **Damn it.** Mulder grabbed the receiver from the nightstand before the bell could sound again. "Mulder," he identified himself, keeping his voice low although Scully's eyes had already blinked open and she was shooting him a baffled who-is-it stare. "Detective Cho here," the voice on the other end of the line crackled, "Sorry to bother you at this hour, Agent Mulder, but there's been another one." Dan Cho didn't have to explain further; Mulder knew what the detective meant. The Oakton PD had discovered another dead woman...with the name Fox Mulder etched into her back. - - - - - - - - - - - Oakton Park, VA 8:12 AM Splashed with colorful blooms bright enough to burn the eyes, the sunny residential park seemed a paradoxical spot to find a dead body. But there it was anyway, tucked beneath a white sheet and looking as improbable as a patch of forgotten snow in this cheery spring landscape. A spray of footprints crisscrossed the damp morning grass, obliterating any reliable trace of last night's atrocity. Mulder and Scully added yet another vivid green trail to the speckled lawn as they wound their way through a gathering of onlookers to where a knot of vigilant police secured the crime scene. Mulder flashed his badge before dipping beneath the string of yellow tape. He held the barrier at shoulder height so Scully could follow him through. On the other side, looking as patient and solid as a fireplug, Detective Cho waited beside a feathery clump of shrubs. At his feet, only partially hidden in the greenery, lay the draped body of the most recent victim. Forgoing the more traditional handshake, Cho greeted the agents by thrusting a pair of latex gloves into their outstretched hands. "Kandy J. Kane, age seventeen. Runaway," Cho explained, pointing at the body. "Parents been notified?" Scully asked, snapping on the detective's gloves. "'Bout a half hour ago. They wanted to pick up the body, take her back to West Virginia. I explained to them there'd have to be an autopsy first." Kneeling, Scully drew back the sheet and unveiled the assaulted girl's beleaguered body, abandoned face down in the grass, nude and badly bruised. The skull had been crushed like the previous victims. And across her narrow back, Mulder's name marred her snowy flesh. Sutures held the terrible incisions closed with dozens of tight stitches. Hundreds of stitches. The rawness of it made Mulder cringe. She's just a kid, he thought as he examined her from where he stood, not yet ready to kneel beside Scully for a more intimate look. Despite a black eye and a disfiguring smear of lipstick across her cheek, the girl was pretty, so much so she could have been her high school's homecoming queen if she had stayed in school. He noticed she'd lost two false fingernails during her unsuccessful fight for her life; the remaining eight were metallic blue in color. A wad of flesh-pink bubble gum stuck to the grass below the girl's chin, the bite of her teeth still obvious in the soft mass. There was something so personal about it, a wash of sour bile stung the back of Mulder's throat. The gum wasn't the worst detail in this dreadful scene, however. What got to Mulder, what really chilled the blood in his veins, was the girl's tousled coppery red hair. Cropped short like Scully's, the shade was a perfect match for the ruffled tresses that veiled his pillow only a couple of hours ago -- with one appalling difference. Miss Kandy J. Kane's hair was tinted with the sticky foam of her smashed brains. "Scully, I'll...I'll be in the car." He didn't care how green he looked to Cho, Scully or the uniforms on the other side of the tape. He had to leave. Now. Scully flashed him a concerned glance but let him go without comment and he was grateful for her lack of questions. He shoved his hands deeply into his pockets and crossed the grass without looking back. Bumping through the crowd of bystanders, he avoided their curious stares and concentrated on reaching the curb and the car. **Left foot. Right foot. Keep going and don't lose your cookies, Spooky ol' boy.** With relief, he took hold of the door handle and allowed the smooth metal to cool him one heartbeat at a time. When he felt the roll in his stomach subside, he opened the door and eased himself into the passenger seat. Scully's coat draped the back of the seat, so he pulled it into his lap before settling into the upholstery, tilting his head against the rest and closing his eyes. Despite the blackness behind his lids, he could still see his name spelled out in puckered stitches. Goddammit. Four days and four bodies and not a single step closer to solving this case. The only thing he'd managed to prove so far was the office gossips' assumptions about his waning detective skills. He opened his eyes to stare dully at the police officers in the park. Several years ago while investigating the deaths of four sisters, quadruplets whose eyes had been burned out by their assailant, he'd told Scully not to let the killer get into her head, that personal issues were clouding her judgment and she should step away. He realized he should take his own advice now. His personal connection was preventing him from seeing things clearly and he should hand the case over to VCU before his own involvement hampered the investigation further and resulted in yet another woman's death. The clues were out there, certainly, but with his objectivity swirling down the toilet, he felt blind to them. Worried fingers kneading Scully's coat, his hand closed around something solid in her pocket. He withdrew a slim, white box capped with a small blue and white bow. Curious, he lifted the lid from the narrow package and revealed a smooth, tapered stone. Or was it wood? The color whorled with tree-like knots, but the material felt too dense and hard for wood. Petrified wood maybe? The driver's door opened, startling Mulder, and Scully slid in behind the wheel. "I see you found Richard's gift," she said. "What is it?" "A bookmark. It's made from petrified wood. He said he liked the idea of something organic and inorganic all in one. Wood and rock together." "Wood and rock. 'Sticks and stones,'" he murmured, stroking the polished surface, seemingly hypnotized by the glassy marker. "You okay, Mulder?" she asked. "Why?" He flipped the bookmark over and squinted at the identical underside. "Well, you looked a little out of it back in the park." "No, I mean, *why* does Richard like the idea wood and rock all in one?" "I don't know, Mulder. He said something about the inherent duality of things. Polarity and balance." "Yin and Yang?" "Mm. Eastern medical philosophies. Opposites attracting." "Oh." "It didn't mean anything, Mulder." "To you." "Well...right," she held out her hand. "Car keys?" He fished in his pocket and finding the keys, placed them in her palm. "You headed to Quantico?" he asked, once again fondling the glossy bookmark. "Mm hm." She glanced at the park, "Mulder, one of the bystanders is a clerk at a nearby 7-Eleven. Claims he saw Miss Kane in his store last night. He says she left with a young man at around 11:15. Detective Cho would like you to interview the guy, get a description of the man he saw and run it through the ING. That is...if..." she paused. "If what?" "If you're up to it." "I know I came across like one of Colonel Sanders' entrees, Scully, but I'm fine. As a matter of fact, Richard's gift has given me an idea about the killer's motivation." "Really?" She started the car, adjusted the seat and mirror. "What are you thinking?" "I'll explain later, after the interview. If my theory doesn't pan out though, I promise to hand the case over to VCU." "Rumormongers be damned?" "'Words will never hurt me,'" Mulder quoted. "Glad to hear 'Spooky' Mulder's not down for the count." "Never." Mulder spotted Cho at the edge of the park. The squat detective beckoned to the agent with a waggle of two fingers. "Gotta go," he said and surged from the seat. Dropping Scully's coat beside her, he pocketed Richard's gift. Several cars down he could see Cho's cruiser and a grinning young man with hair like a bleached Brillo pad bouncing eagerly on the balls of his feet. The detective joined the man and pointed out Mulder. The young man's grin grew impossibly wider. "You really an FBI agent?" the blond Brillo pad asked once Mulder was within earshot. Withdrawing his badge, Mulder displayed his ID. "Cooool." "This is Rockford Phillips," Cho introduced. "Rocketman. You can call me Rocketman. All my friends do," the young man said. "Mr. Phillips, describe what you saw at the 7-Eleven last night," Mulder suggested, pocketing his ID. "You mean, like, after the girl came in?" "Yeah, like, then." "Well, I was ringing up a customer when she first came in. I noticed her right away. Cute red hair and the tightest little...uh, skirt. She went straight for the rack of condoms." "Had you ever seen her before, Mr. Phillips?" "Nah. Anyway, she went up to this dude by the magazines and asked him to walk her home. I don't think he realized exactly what she meant though." "Why do you say that?" "She's a hooker, Agent Mulder. She was looking to pick up a customer. But the guy didn't treat her like a hooker, you know? He was like all polite." "Can you describe the man?" "Sure. He was buying Pepsi, TicTacs, Doritos, Tidybowl, uh...oh, a TV Guide and an evening paper." Phillips looked proud at his ability to recall all of the man's purchases." "His face, Mr. Phillips. Can you describe what he looked like?" "Oh, yeah. He was about average height, maybe five-nine, five- ten. Average weight or maybe a little on the skinny side. Kinda dark hair. Nice teeth." "Nice teeth?" "Yeah, I notice teeth. I had braces for six years when I was a kid. What a p..." "Anything else?" Mulder interrupted. "Looked like a college student or something. Like a guy who studies a lot. Head seemed too big for his neck, if you know what I mean. He was dressed in, you know, like my dad's sport coat and tie. Total freaky geek." "You think you could describe this 'freaky geek' in a little more detail to one of Detective Cho's artists?" Mulder asked. "Cool! You mean like on Law and Order?" "Yeah, just like on TV." "Agent Mulder, you're welcome to tag along," Cho offered. "Thanks, but you can fax the composite to me at Headquarters. I wanna nose around here a little bit." "Forensics swept the place pretty clean. What do you expect to uncover?" "I won't know until I find it." - - - - - - - - - - - 1762 Middle Street, Apartment 216 Richard Weed Residence Oakton, VA Curled into a tight ball, Richard huddled in the back corner of his tiny bathroom. **What am I going to do?** The windowless room was dark and he purposely hid himself in the shadows, whimpering every now and again while he waited for the pain to ease and his mind to clear. **I'm a monster.** The change hurt. Not so much when his skin bubbled and grew, distorting his flesh, his bone, his organs, even his brain, turning him grotesque and uncontrollable, but afterward when the lesions began to heal, sealing themselves and smoothing the surface of his body once again, when his longed-for physical restoration brought with it a realization of the horrible acts he had committed while transformed. He guessed maybe the runaway deformation dulled his nervous system the same way it fogged his brain, so during the transformation itself, he could barely think at all, couldn't so much as speak his own name. All he knew in those moments was anger. Regret came later when the atrocities he had caused stared him full in the face, reminding him too late that he was an aberration. Defiler. Mutilator. Murderer. **No. No.** Fear. Pain. Regret. This is what life had become. **Why? Why is this happening?** As the pain in his body lessened, the agony in his heart grew. He hated the thing he'd turned into. **I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.** - - - - - - - - - - - Oakton Park Oakton, VA Mulder paced the crime scene for the umpteenth time. Most of the uniforms had left as soon as the body was loaded for transport. A police photographer stayed on for another quarter of an hour or so after the forensics team finished patrolling the site. Now only one officer stood outside the tape to keep the curious at a distance and Mulder undisturbed. **'Sticks and stones.' Wood and rock. Opposites combined into one. He has two sides. Good and evil.** Mulder crouched in the grass and stared at the flattened patch of lawn where the body lay not more than an hour ago. His photographic memory supplied a vivid image of his name incised into the dead girl's skin and the dozens of tight stitches that closed the remembered wounds. **He wants to heal, to make things right. He regrets what he's done.** Mulder opened his eyes and cleared his mind, allowing a passage from a story read a long time ago to come back to him, connected to the recent events by nothing more than a spooky leap of logic. **'All things therefore seemed to point to this: that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.'** The quote was from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll and Hyde. Yin and Yang. Part and parcel of the same package. Mulder suddenly understood he needed to look for Dr. Jekyll in order to find Mr. Hyde. His earlier profile had been an attempt to know the monster. He now realized he must first know the man before he could find the beast. At times like this, Mulder's intuition helped him to solve seemingly unsolvable cases. Yet in addition, every now and again, luck stepped in too, providing the missing link between his conjecture and the hard evidence he needed to prove his theories. Or maybe he simply had the ability to put himself in the right place at the right time. Like now when a light breeze brought an eddy of fresh air and stirred the leaves of the nearby shrubs just as the bright spring sun pierced the brush, drawing Mulder's eye to a small rectangle of white paper lodged deeply within the branches. He plucked the fluttering card from the thicket. Neat block letters written in pencil spelled out 'sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' Flipping the card over, he read the print on the front. Le Lion d'Or, 1150 Connecticut Avenue NW. Fine dining by reservation only. The killer was Richard, described to a 'T' by the clerk from the 7-Eleven. Mulder was certain ol' Dick Weed had left the Lion d'Or card after he murdered Kandy Kane. Now to prove it. And warn Scully. He punched her number into his cell phone, fully aware she'd argue against his presupposition but knowing he had to try to convince her of his theory anyway. Damn, the call wasn't ringing through. Must be the solar flares Scully had been talking about. He'd have to call her from a land phone. Or better yet, go straight to the morgue. Tucking the business card into his pocket with Richard's gift, Mulder jogged to the street to catch a cab. - - - - - - - - - - - Richard Weed Residence Oakton, VA Richard felt more like himself with each passing minute. As before, the healing phase of the change didn't take very long. Like something out of a comic book or a sci-fi movie, he thought. He was like one of the X-Men, for chrissake, and the idea might have made him smile if it didn't still hurt so goddamn much. The transformation still shocked him, despite the number of times he'd been through it. There was something unspeakable about seeing your own skin morph into an unrecognizable horror, only to inexplicably change back again. After the first time, he no longer bothered to watch it in the mirror -- that was too much. But he did stare at his hands while normalcy returned. And it always surprised him afterward when the same old creases lined the palms of his hands, the same freckles speckled his arms, and the same ragged fingernails still needed trimming. The whole damn thing scared the crap out of him. The rapidity and unexpectedness at the onset and the painful and unexplainable conclusion. Not to mention the atrocities sandwiched in between when his disease-warped mind made him commit acts he didn't want to think about. He was a freak and it revolted him. He loathed the monster he became. He wanted it to stop. But how could he prevent it from happening when he couldn't even figure out *why* it happened? Or predict when. **Maybe I should kill myself.** Lurching stiff-legged from the bathroom to the livingroom, Richard doubted if suicide would be possible. After all, what terminal damage could he possibly inflict on himself that wouldn't automatically heal? His lesions and tumors mended themselves. Hills of diseased-looking tissue returned to normal seemingly on their own. Inflamed flesh cooled without ice compresses. Bruises faded in mere hours, sometimes minutes. He expected a bullet to the head would leave only a momentary hole in his skull before it closed shut and disappeared as if it had never been there at all. He had no more control over his body's predictable repairs than he had over its recent regular disintegration. **I don't want to be like this.** Richard hadn't always been a ghoul. Oh, he'd been a quick healer all his life. As a matter of fact, when he was only eight years old, he'd astonished his mother, not to mention his doctor, when he'd tumbled from his bicycle and broken his leg only to have the bones knit back together as good as new in just a matter of days. Boyhood cuts healed almost overnight. All through elementary school, he'd maintained a perfect attendance record because he was literally never sick. The kids at school called him Super Boy. That is until they started calling him Freak, after he severed a finger on a kid's jackknife only to grow it back within a week's time. Soon after that, Jimmy Jillson, Billy Myers and Todd Burgess held him down and sliced his skin open on purpose just to watch him heal. It became a regular spectator sport after school each night. They carved the word 'FREAK' into his skin and his odd flesh went ahead and proved them right by healing itself before their eyes and erasing their accusation. Over and over again. What name would they have for him now that he repeatedly changed into an inhuman monster? A murdering monster at that. **I hate what I am.** Sinking onto the couch, Richard realized he was late for work. Dr. Scully would already be at the morgue. She'd be autopsying the girl from the 7-Eleven, looking for evidence -- evidence to convict him. What would she think when she found out the truth? **Maybe I should turn myself in.** Yes. And...and maybe she could cure him and he could go back to his life and his job and helping her at the morgue and... **No. That is never going to happen now. I've killed four people. I'm a monster.** - - - - - - - - - - - Quantico Morgue Mulder paused at the autopsy bay door, relieved to see Scully safe and sound and stooped over the opened chest of Kandy J. Kane. Despite scrubs and sneakers and the unflattering cap covering her hair, not to mention her gore-splattered apron, blood-slicked gloves and oversized safety glasses, Mulder fell in love with Scully all over again when she swiped at her itching nose, carelessly ignoring the scalpel dangling from her fingers. Just another one of those ordinary but wholly unexpected moments that regularly caught him off guard. "You could poke an eye out with that," he said, nodding at her scalpel. "That would be the reason for the glasses." She continued to cut into the corpse. "Not the stylin' good looks?" He meandered to her side, taking his time as if he had nothing in particular on his mind. "Um, no Richard this morning?" "Apparently not." "He didn't call?" "No." "You haven't heard from him at all?" "Mulder, what are you getting at?" She stopped slicing to look up at him. "Is it like him to miss work?" "Actually, it isn't. Do you have a point?" "I think he did it, Scully. I think he's the murderer." "Richard? Don't be ridiculous, Mulder. Richard wouldn't hurt a fly." She resumed her work. "I found this at the park this morning." He held up an evidence bag containing the Lion d'Or business card. He turned the bag so she could see the handwritten message on the back. "So? I'm sure a lot of people eat at Lion d'Or." "How many do you think ate there last night?" She hesitated before sifting through the contents of Miss Kane's stomach. "At least eighty or a hundred." "How many of those could be described as a medium height, scrawny student-type who walked the victim home from the Oakton 7-Eleven at around 11:15 p.m.?" She blinked as his point sunk in. "Not many. But that's still only circumstantial evidence and it's not necessarily tied to Richard." "The store clerk is working with a sketch artist right now. It's only a matter of time before we know for sure." He waggled the glassine envelope. "In the meantime, I'm going to have this checked out." "Call me if you come up with anything *conclusive,* Mulder." Bowing her head to her task once more, she picked what appeared to be green peppers and mushrooms from the victim's stomach. "Count on it." He leaned over and kissed the nape of her neck, momentarily stilling her hands. "Are the car keys in your coat?" he asked, heading for the rack by the door. "Left pocket." Hand dipping into her coat, he snagged the keys, tossed them high over his shoulder and deftly caught them behind his back. "Be careful, Scully," he warned before disappearing into the hall. * * * Hurrying down the back stairs, Richard missed Mulder stepping into the elevator. By the time the frantic technician burst through the door at the bottom of the stairwell, the elevator doors had closed and Mulder was already somewhere between the basement and ground floors. **Please, please, please let Dr. Scully be late...for once, just for once,** Richard prayed to the inattentive gods in his head as he scurried down the hall toward the autopsy bay. He had expected to be at work hours before Scully arrived. His intention had been to prepare the room, the body and the trays himself, cleaning up any trace of his terrible crime. But he was late. Very late. Pausing at the door, Richard peered through the glass. Naturally Dr. Scully was already there, dressed in green scrubs, hands thrust into the flayed corpse of the young woman from the 7-Eleven. "Dr. Scully, I'm sorry to be so late," he apologized as he entered, his stomach rolling with worry. "Not a problem, Richard. I was getting worried, though. It's not like you to miss work." Scully stopped her cutting to look at the frazzled tech. "I...uh, I had an emergency," he said by way of an explanation. Donning a rubber apron and fumbling into a pair of gloves, he hurried to her side. "You want me to take anything to the lab?" "No, I already sent the trays down." "Oh. You need her checked for trace evidence?" Was she looking at him strangely? "No, I did that myself." "I'm really sorry, Dr. Scully. I..." Richard's brows peaked with anxiety. "Richard, it's okay, really. Here," she set down her scalpel, "Why don't you help me turn over the body?" Richard stepped to Scully's side and standing there, shoulder to shoulder, he relaxed as the heat of her arm poured through his shirtsleeve. She seemed fine. Normal. Not suspicious at all. Beginning to feel better, he inhaled the lingering fragrance of her shampoo. Oh, she smelled good. When she looked up at him, he wanted to fall into her eyes. Her gaze was so beautiful and determined and sincere. Wasn't it? Or was it...well, maybe it was suspicious. "D-did you find any evidence, Dr. Scully?" He looked away and brushed his finger over a bruise on the dead woman's delicate arm. A tiny tattoo of a pink rose vanished into the black stain on her shoulder. "No." Scully sounded...how exactly *did* she sound? Sad? Or angry? He was having trouble reading her. "Richard, the guy who did this...he's careful. He doesn't leave clues." She sighed. "I've seen a lot of terrible things as a pathologist, but this guy just about takes the cake." "M-maybe...maybe he can't control what he does. Maybe he doesn't do these things on purpose." "Richard, he's beaten, raped and killed four women. He's carved Mulder's name into their backs -- while they were still alive -- and then he sewed them up again. You could hardly classify any of that as an accident." "M-maybe he needs help. Maybe he wants help." "Richard, it's a tough thing to face, but some people kill because they enjoy it." "But h-haven't you run into other..." his throat closed around the next word, "k-killers...that do the things they do for...biological reasons?" Richard knew of course that Scully and Mulder had hunted a number of genetic deviants over the years. He'd seen the files. Hell, he'd helped autopsy some of the victims. The list of murdering mutants was impressive: Eugene Tooms, Virgil Incanto, Samuel Aboah, Leonard Betts, Rob Roberts, and of course, the mothman and the flukeman -- each driven by a physical imperative to commit their crimes. None of them, however, went beyond their need to survive. "This killer is different, Richard. What possible biological motive would push him to beat and rape his victims or carve words into their backs? Not to mention the fact that he mocks us by leaving little messages. His reasons must be psychological not physical. It's likely he's getting his ya- yas from doing the terrible things he does." "What if...what if something physical is affecting his brain? Like a tumor? Isn't it possible, Dr. Scully?" It was possible. Robert Modell, i.e., Pusher, was the perfect example. According to Mulder's notes on the case, Modell's suggestive ability, brought on by his terminal brain tumor, was really a form of psychokinesis, allowing the sick man to push his will onto others. "I suppose anything's possible, Richard, but not probable. Come on, let's turn her. On three," Scully instructed. "One. Two. Three." She pulled and he pulled but when Richard yanked too hard, the body lurched toward them and threatened to roll off the edge of the table. "Oh!" he cried and pushed the corpse back, shoving it into position but losing his grip as the body settled once more into place. Off balance, his hand skidded across the steel table and his palm rammed into the point of Scully's abandoned scalpel. Blood spurted from the wound. "Richard!" Scully grabbed a sterile pad from the supply shelf on her instrument cart and shoved the gauze into his palm to absorb the flow of blood. "I'll get the first aid kit." She hurried across the room while Richard pressed on his wound. "I...I think I'm okay, Dr. Scully." "You might need stitches," she warned, glancing at the puddle of fresh blood slicking the steel table. "Come over here," she suggested, lifting the lid off the kit and quickly unpacking the contents. She lined the countertop with antiseptic cream, bandages and more gauze. Pulling needle and thread from one of the drawers, she turned to face Richard. "Really, Dr. Scully, it's nothing," he hung back, reluctant to have her take a look. "Richard, if you're nervous about my sewing skills, I've sutured a cut or two in my life," she chided. "No, no, it's not that..." he blushed. "Then come here," she coaxed. "There's nothing to be afraid of." Scuffling his feet, he inched closer until he was finally within her arms reach and she gently took hold of his injured hand. She lifted the bloodied gauze from his cupped palm and examined the tear in the latex glove. The bleeding had apparently slowed, perhaps stopped altogether; no gush of blood poured from the sliced rubber. She set the bloodied cotton on the countertop. "Let's take this off," she said, tugging at his glove. Her voice sounded tender to him and the compassionate timbre sent a jolt of pleasure from the point where she touched him on his wrist, up the veins of his arm and straight through the chambers of his heart She peeled the glove from his injured hand. "I told you it was nothing, Dr. Sc-scully." She bent to get a closer look. There was no cut. She shifted her position, allowing the overhead light to fall directly across his palm. Even so, the skin was bloodied but unbroken. "This is impossible, Richard," she traced through the still- wet blood with her index finger, searching for the wound. "You were bleeding. I thought..." "The blood must have been from the corpse," he told her. Unsatisfied, she swiped the excess blood from his hand with a clean pad of gauze. Still nothing. His skin was perfectly smooth. At the touch of her hand, he felt a narrow ridge of flesh swell and edge across the flat of his shoulder blades beneath his shirt. The skin of his upper back shifted and bulged like a miniature molten flow. His bones ballooned a little, knotting along the length of his spine. "See? I'm fine, Dr. Scully. I'm fine." - - - - - - - - - - - FBI Headquarters Crime Lab "I need you to tell me what this is, Jen." Mulder held up the evidence bag containing the Lion d'Or business card. "I hope it's an invitation," the technician flirted. "Let's just say I'll owe you big time if you can identify the stains." "Call in that dinner reservation right now because you know I'm good at what I do, Agent Mulder." "The best in the Bureau, I understand." "Don't believe everything you read in the men's room," she laughed and took the card. "Is it okay if I wait while you work?" "Oh, you like to watch? I charge more for an audience, you know. This isn't a spectator sport." "How about I pay for your husband's dinner, too?" "Now you're talking. Drew loves seafood and *expensive* French wine." "Ouch." "Why don't you have a seat?" Jen pointed to a row of chairs tucked beneath the counter. Mulder accepted her offer and slouched in the nearest one "Finished," she announced almost as soon as he sat down. "Already? You really are the best in the Bureau." "Well, maybe not the best, but I take the most bribes. And this is one of my favorites: Lobster Chiffonade." She held up the card to her nose and sniffed. "That would be mustard, vinegar, egg yolk, a splash of cognac and of course, fresh tarragon. Very distinctive odor," she grinned. "Not to mention it's Lion d'Or's signature meal. Exactly what I'll be ordering this Friday night when you buy me and my husband dinner, by the way." "I feel like I've been taken for a ride." "You wouldn't be the first. By the way, there's another spot here. Looks like blood." She took a scraping and prepared a slide for the microscope. Sitting in front of the scope, she slid the sample under the lens. "This is weird," her good- natured tone turned serious. "Jesus. I've never seen anything like this before." He rose from his chair to stand next to her, bumping her elbow and edging her out of the way. Reluctantly she relinquished her position, allowing him to peer into the eyepiece. "What am I looking at? What's happening here?" On the slide, blood cells twirled and jittered, impossibly alive after several hours in the park. In the blink of an eye, they abruptly doubled in number, dividing and splitting and spreading across the glass. "I can't begin to explain it. By all rights, those cells should be dead." Impatient for another look, Jen nudged Mulder away from the scope. On the slide, several distorted cells multiplied at an unprecedented rate. "It's like a cancer only not one I've ever seen before. The growth is too rapid. Nothing spreads this fast." The cells were lumping together, piling up and oozing toward the edge of the slide. "I don't understand. The spot didn't spread when it was on the card. Did you mix something with the sample?" "Nothing but distilled water. There must be another catalyst at work here." "Like what?" Mulder's eyes searched the room as if the cause might be plainly visible. "It may be something in the cells themselves. It's possible the trigger is a timed genetic marker, or the mutation might be working in conjunction with an external stimulus of some sort. Whatever, this is out of control." The sample of blood spilled over the edges of the slide and drizzled down the side of the microscope. "I'm going to get something to contain it." Jen crossed the room to locate a sterile bag. "Wait. Look." Mulder pointed to the pool of blood. Almost as quickly as the puddle had spread, it now receded, condensing inch by inch until nothing remained but a smattering of pinprick-sized dots. Jen took another look in the scope. "The mutated cells are returning to normal," she sounded incredulous. "I...I...don't know what to say. It's almost as if it's healing. Like a cancerous tumor shrinking on its own." "Is that possible?" "Not really." "Jen, run a complete chemical analysis on both stains. Check the card for prints, too, and phone me with the results." Mulder headed for the door. "Thanks for the information." "What information?" she mumbled, eyes still to the microscope. - - - - - - - - - - - Quantico Morgue Richard's arm rose and fell with the steady tug and pull of thread and needle through the corpse's split flesh. Methodically, almost hypnotically, he closed the body's gaping skin with tiny, precise stitches. "Neatness doesn't count in an autopsy, Richard," Scully warned. "This isn't embroidery class." "I just want to do a good job. Try to repair what we do here." He felt the muscles in his lower legs buckle and balloon. As a pathologist's technician, he could easily name the convoluting groups: the soleus, the gastrocnemius and along the front, the extensor longus digitorum. The popliteus muscle behind his knee pouched to accommodate a strange expansion of bone below. "Richard, we perform autopsies. There's nothing to hide." She penciled another note or two into her report on Miss Kane. "But it's so ugly, Dr. Scully. I want to fix it." The skin of his feet blistered, packing his shoes and pushing out and over the laces. His heels split and oozed wetly into his socks. "We do what we do to find killers." "Killers aren't so easy to find." A line of tumors rippled and pillowed his thighs from kneecap to groin. The knotted bones of his spine quietly popped one after the next, no louder than the teeth of a nylon zipper. He stooped a little when his insides rolled, wedging his heart between two overgrown ribs. "How can we hope to find what hides in its opposite?" "What are you talking about, Richard?" "Yin and Yang and the unfairness of life." He continued his stitching, ineffectually attempting to make impossible amends. A spray of welts stippled his abdomen. "Richard, are you all right?" Even to his plugging ears, she sounded concerned. "No," he whispered, his tongue thick and his lungs emptied of air. Out of the corner of his drooping eyes, he saw her move to his side. Caring. Lovely. Perfect. His opposite. The touch of her palm pressing against his distorted brow spilled tears down his warping cheeks. He slid her gun from her holster while she worried about his well-being. He was a monster. Tossing the gun across the room, he grabbed her wrist. - - - - - - - - - - - FBI Headquarters X-Files Department Mulder tossed his coat over his chair and checked the fax machine. Where the hell was that composite? Yanking open a file drawer, he quickly rifled through a row of folders. "Betts. Would that be under 'M' for 'mutant' or 'C' for 'cancer-eating-mutant'?" He thumbed the tabs and tried a different drawer. "Ooohh. Whaddaya know, 'D' for 'decapitated- mutant.'" He pulled the file and spread the contents across his desk. Sifting through the record, Mulder skimmed Scully's autopsy transcripts: '...no signs of rigor mortis or fixed lividity... postmortem galvanic response...' Mulder smiled at the thought of Leonard Betts' decapitated head winking at Scully during the autopsy. Abandoning the transcripts, he read the pathologist's biopolymerization report instead. It described an anterior slice of Mr. Betts' frontal lobe, which showed a giant glioma. Cancer. Actually, Betts' entire head and body had been made up of nothing but cancer cells, accounting for his unique ability to regenerate a new head after his decapitation. Rapidly. Like the out-of-control cells upstairs on Jen's microscope. If the blood on the restaurant card was Richard's, it was possible this case was an X-File after all and Richard was a lot more Mr. Hyde than Dr. Jekyll. - - - - - - - - - - - Quantico Morgue Scully flinched when her gun flew through air and smashed into the glass door of a storage cabinet, spraying the far side of the room with a blizzard of glass. "Richard!" She tried to wrench her arm free from his pressing fingers, but the half-man/half-creature held on to her. "See what I am, Dr. Scully?" he screamed at her. "I'm a monster!" "No..." "Yes, I am. You can see for yourself. I've been called a freak all my life and I've felt like a freak all my life and now I *am* a freak!" As if to prove his point, he hurtled her across the room. Crashing heavily into the stainless steel gurney that held Kandy's body, she was struck by a clattering rain of metal trays and instruments. The scalpel she'd used only an hour ago spiraled off the gurney and caught her in the neck, slicing a bloody line along her collarbone before tumbling to the floor. "Richard..." Scully wiped at the blood slicking her neck, smearing it onto her scrubs. Dazed, she held up her stained palm for him to see. He lunged at her, grabbed her by the front of her bloody shirt and hauled her from the floor. Shoving her backward with the weight of his body, he pummeled her to the counter on the other side of the room. Desperately she tried to grab something off the shelf, anything she might be able to use as a weapon, but he pinned her against the counter and emptied the countertop with a swipe of his arm. Beakers and containers bounced and rattled across the tile. Steel instruments clattered like spilled silverware. A microscope toppled and split in two when it hit the floor. "Richard, you don't want to hurt me." She pushed at his misshapen chest, shocked by the lumps she felt beneath his shirt. She stared directly into the inky pupils of his angry eyes. "I can't stop it," he warned her; his strangled voice gurgled behind his bobbing Adam's apple. "Try." She squirmed against him in an attempt to free herself. "I know you, Richard. You don't want to hurt me." His knotted nose hung only inches from hers; his gnarled skin was an abominating contrast to her smooth features. Wide-eyed, she watched his flesh expand and shift, crawling up and over the bony ridges of his cheeks and brow. The resulting conglomeration of blistered protrusions that masked his face resembled cancerous tumors at the most extreme metastatic stage. Richard's cells multiplied at an impossible rate and he felt a quaver of fear shake her body as she gaped at him. "You know what I learned today, Dr. Scully?" he whispered, his breath steaming against her lips. "I found out petrified wood isn't made of wood at all. I looked it up. I found out the stone displaces all the wood. *All* of it until none of the original wood remains. Bit by bit, the stone takes over until all that's left *is* the stone." A silvery-white strand of saliva drooled loosely from the bubbled membranes that once outlined his lips. "I'm a freak, Dr. Scully. There's nothing left of Richard in me." - - - - - - - - - - - FBI Headquarters X-Files Department Mulder typed the words 'neurobehavioral genetic mutations' onto his keyboard and hit the enter key to initiate his Internet search. While he watched the cursor blink, a year-old conversation with Rob Roberts drifted to the front of his consciousness. 'I think we're looking for some kind of genetic freak -- a carnivorous predator as yet unidentified. A monster, if you will,' he'd told the hamburger-flipping young man with a biological imperative to eat human brains. Unlike the notorious Mr. Hyde who changed his form and personality by drinking chemicals, it turned out poor Robertson couldn't help what he did. 'I can't be something I'm not,' the young man had told Mulder just before he was shot to death. Maybe Richard couldn't help himself either. The computer's search ended and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals topped the list of matches. Evidently they were conducting a large mutagenesis program at the MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit in Harwell, England. The gist of their study was to find mouse models that would help investigate genetic contributions to human psychiatric disorders. Human inheritance testing of abnormal individuals would eventually follow the tests on mice and genetic crosses would map mutant human loci. "Interesting but a few decades from being helpful," Mulder mumbled and retyped his search: mutagenesis and carcinogenesis research. Again he waited for the computer to complete its scouring of the Internet. When it did, a University of California, Berkeley, citation popped up and he followed the link. He scrolled through the dense text. 'Ames and his group have been able to reverse much of the decay that occurs in mitochondria with age, including the leakage of mutagenic oxidants. Acetyl-carnitine restores the cardiolipin, the membrane potential, and the oxygen...' "Jesus Christ. I think there might be something here, but I'll need Scully standing by to translate." The phone rang. "Mulder," he identified himself. "Good news, Agent Mulder," Jen's voice swirled into his ear from several stories above. "We found a print and a match." "Lay it on me." "The print belongs to an FBI employee. Pathology Technician over at Quantico. Richard L. Weed." "Do me another favor, Jen, and call Detective Cho at the Oakton PD. Tell him to meet me at Richard Weed's apartment. I'm headed to Quantico to pick up Scully on my way." - - - - - - - - - - - Quantico morgue Glass and metal littered the morgue floor. Overturned tables filled one back corner. Drawers were upended. Files scattered. Scully crouched next to a chair and tried to protect her head from the debris Richard slung at her while he kept himself between her and her gun. He hadn't spoken for at least twenty minutes. He suddenly halted his chaotic outburst and paced around her, tightening his circle until he was within arms reach. Although she knew what he was going to do, had seen it written on the bodies of four dead women, she didn't cower. She looked directly at him and he could imagine the monster she saw. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but he was long past the point where words were possible. By now the tumors blocked his throat and clouded his mind, bringing on that moment when he crossed over into something completely inhuman. He hated this part. The inevitable loss of control. Giving up who he was to something he didn't want to be. Desperate to be normal again. Despite his show of outrage, Scully didn't weep or cry. Outwardly calm, she spoke to him although he could no longer hear her words. His own unruly flesh clogged his ears and shut out the beautiful sound of her voice. He tried to imagine it, remember the steady, comfortable tone, but other voices filled his head now while his brain cleaved and expanded, pushing against the inside of his skull with a thrust so insistent he expected his eyes to pop right out of his head. Voices. Voices. Voices always saying the same thing. **Freak!** Had the word come from her? No. Her lips weren't moving. **Freak!** He couldn't see her face clearly, so he moved closer, hung over her and cocked a deaf ear to her lips. Was she speaking? He wrapped his fingers around her neck and tried to feel whether or not the word had climbed from her throat. **'Don't let what they say bother you, Richard. Remember, sweetheart? Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'** Not Scully's words. But...words. Words weren't supposed to hurt. **Freak!** Richard pushed Scully to the floor, flattened her onto her stomach, and held her in place with his knee. Brushing his hand across the small of her back he tried to remember something he once wanted to do there. Touch her? She was so perfect. They had all been so perfect. Their perfection reconciled his imperfection. With them, there was balance. With them, with her particularly, he became whole. Knee still holding her in place, he poked at the surgical instruments scattered around them and selected Scully's scalpel. The blade was sharp. The handle felt cool and familiar to his unfamiliar fingers. **Somebody help me, please.** A brutal yank. The sound of tearing fabric. **Help me.** A swath of hospital green rent in two. A smooth expanse of creamy white skin. **Who can help me?** Words. Letters. FOX MULDER. Help. The blade slipped so easily into the creamy-white... A pretty line of red. A cry for help. Not hers but his. "Move away from her!" Mulder stood at the door, the demand pouring from his lungs. Gun raised and trained on Scully's attacker, he crossed the room in three strides, stepping around the fallen furniture and ignoring the crunch of broken glass beneath his feet. "Don't shoot him, Mulder!" Scully shouted, her chin in the glass and Richard's knee still pinning her to the floor. Richard didn't move. He held the scalpel an inch or two above the bloody lines marking Scully's back. "Move away! Now!" Mulder ordered and stepped closer, keeping his gun aimed at Richard's head. "I will shoot you!" "No, Mulder! Don't! Don't kill him!" Scully yelled. His weapon only inches from Richard's temple, Mulder demanded once more, "Move! NOW!" Richard's glance slid away from the blood on Scully's back to stare sidelong into the barrel of Mulder's gun. A minute shift of his pupils, and he gazed directly into Mulder's eyes. Not the gaze of a monster. Not packed with rage. Not brutal. But a swirling eddy of sadness and pleading and remorse. Mulder blinked in surprise, unclenched his teeth, and allowed the gun in his hand to waver almost imperceptibly. "Let...her...go." For a moment, it looked as if Richard might do just that. He shifted his weight, sliding his knee from Scully's back. The monster watched as she sucked in a deep lungful of air and waited patiently while a cough rattled her body. When her choking finally subsided, he slipped the blade of the scalpel into her skin and sliced a small crescent moon into her flesh -- the left half of the letter 'O.' In an instant that dragged like a lifetime, Mulder's finger tightened on the trigger, but before his gun fired, Richard jerked and fell sideward. Blood burst from a hole in his side. Only after the fact, did the blast of a Magnum register in Mulder's ears, temporarily deafening and disorienting him. At the autopsy bay door, Detective Cho stood with arms outstretched and weapon fired. "You weren't at Richard Weed's apartment, so I came here," he said. Mulder nodded. "Good thinking." - - - - - - - - - - - Mulder's Apartment 5:45 AM Two days later Propping his cheek on his fist, Mulder studied Scully in her sleep. This morning she lay on her belly in deference to the stitches on her back. A dozen or so sutures neatly closed the letter 'F' and a half-drawn 'O.' When Mulder's mind supplied the rest of the signature, he reached out and hid her shoulder blades gently beneath his palm. His touch caused her to stir and she opened one drowsy eye. "Times'it?" she slurred. "Still early." He kept his voice low although there was no one to disturb now. "Mmm." She buried her nose into his pillow and let the heat of his hand soak into her back. "It doesn't hurt, Mulder," she assured him, her words muffled by the bedding. Hurts me, he thought, but said nothing. Instead he drew her to him and fitted her against his chest. "Is it too early in the morning to talk about the case?" he asked, his Adam's apple vibrating against her forehead. "It's too early in the morning to talk about anything, Mulder." He kissed her hair. "My next girlfriend is going to be a morning person." "Am I your girlfriend?" she mumbled into his skin. "Sure. Don't I take you out on Saturday nights?" "Stakeouts don't count, Mulder." "My next girlfriend is going to be easier to please." He tossed back the covers. "Mulder...!" she groaned. "I'll make some coffee," he promised and slid from the bed. * * * "Richard's transformation was stimulated by the recent rash of sunspots," Scully explained, fingers curled around the warmth of her coffee mug. Showered and dressed for the office, she was now prepared to discuss the case. "The increased solar radiation played havoc with his unusual immune system. The greater than normal solar flares triggered a run-away cancer, if you will, pushing the process out of control. All of his systems were affected -- his organs, muscles, bone, even his brain became riddled with cancerous tumors. I can only imagine the pain." "So how did he manage to change back to normal after each murder?" Unlike Scully, Mulder didn't need to be dressed in office attire to talk about the case. As a matter of fact, he was perfectly comfortable sipping his coffee and pacing the livingroom in nothing but his pajama bottoms. "Richard had an innate ability to heal, Mulder. His DNA tests confirmed an anomalous strand, an ultra-sensitive genetic mutation that was in all likelihood responsible for his substantial capacity to rapidly repair injuries and disease. His suped-up immune system attacked the cancerous cells and killed them. Each time the solar flares initiated an onset of cancer, his natural healing ability kicked in and cured him." "Scully, this guy healed faster than I can zip my fly. You're saying he was born that way?" "That's the way it looks. Tests will tell us more. Samples of Richard's blood and tissue have been sent to a mutagenesis research facility in California. Who knows, the study of Richard's atypical genetic material may lead to a cure for cancer." "He'd like that." "Yes, he would." Mulder lifted the near-empty coffee carafe from the desk and poured the remaining contents into Scully's outstretched mug. "I suppose the tumors in his brain made him act the way he did," Mulder said, wandering into the kitchen and setting his cup and the empty carafe in the sink. "Want some cereal?" he called to her. "Sure." "Lucky Charms?" He peeked around the corner and rattled the box. "On second thought, I think I'll pass." Popping a pink candy heart into his mouth, he shrugged and filled his bowl. "The change in Richard's brain was so extreme, it's no wonder he was driven to commit acts he would never normally consider. You know, Mulder, that's one thing that's always bugged me about the Leonard Betts case." "Whah s'at," he asked around a mouthful of cereal. Gingerly he lowered himself onto the couch, taking care not to spill his overfull bowl. "How could Leonard Betts possibly regrow a head with a brand new brain and yet still retain all the memories of the old one?" Mulder paused in his chewing and frowned. "Dunno." "Well, stuff like that bugs me. I don't like unanswered questions. Especially when they fly in the face of logic." He stared at the crease of impatience in her brow. "Scully, are you sure Richard was *born* the way he was?" "What else would explain his genetic mutation? Are you thinking he might have been exposed to some unknown carcinogenic? Like what?" "I dunno, Scully. 'Unknown' would imply..." he left his argument at that. "Mulder, there's nothing in current scientific research to support such a theory. Unless you're suggesting Richard was the subject of secret biological experiments conducted by a covert government group or, worse yet, by aliens. You aren't, are you?" "No," he smiled, "I was just wondering if..." He hesitated and his smile vanished. "Wondering what, Mulder?" "If Richard might have been a freak because he was told he was a freak and he believed it. Dick Weed was called a freaky geek all of his life and he felt every bit like a freak. Then lo and behold, he literally became a freak. Isn't it possible his mutation wasn't a birth defect at all, but was formed by his environment?" "Nature vs. nurture?" "Exactly. Maybe words really do hurt, Scully. Maybe we are affected by the opinions of others more than we know and our image of ourselves literally forms who we are. If we are told we are a freak, will we in fact become a freak? Do people call me Spooky because I am or am I Spooky because people call me that?" A small smile tugged at her lips. "Laugh if you want, Scully, but did you happen to notice I wasn't so spooky once the bullpen gossips started saying I'd lost my investigative intuition? Was that a coincidence or what?" She reached for his hand and squeezed. "I think other factors were at work. Even so, Richard might agree with your nature vs. nurture argument. He believed in the forces of Yin and Yang and quoted the The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine. You know the text claims disharmony in the spirit manifests itself as disease in the body." "See? Centuries-old philosophy backs the theory." She pulled his hand into her lap and gently traced his fingers. "Mulder, why do you think Richard carved your name into the backs of his victims?" "If you insert my name -- the *words* he carved -- into the dictum 'sticks and stones,' the phrase reads 'Fox Mulder will never hurt me.' Richard wasn't challenging me or bragging. This was never a game for him the way it was for Robert Modell." "What then?" "Richard knew me through you. He knew I hunted monsters and he hoped I'd understand him because of my familiarity with cases like his. Writing my name on his victim's backs was a cry for help." "So why carve your name and not mine? I'm familiar with the same cases you are. I'm sympathetic. I hunt the same monst...um, persons of genetic disadvantage that you do." "But you aren't called 'Spooky.'" "Humph," she swallowed the last of her coffee and set the mug on the table. "Richard was so careful to clean up all the forensic evidence. If he really wanted help, why not leave more clues?" "I don't think he was trying to hide his involvement so much as he was trying to make amends by setting things back the way they were -- as much as possible. That's why he sutured the victims' wounds. He was sorry for what he'd done." Mulder placed his empty bowl next to Scully's coffee cup. "Mulder, why do you suppose Richard didn't turn himself in?" "He must have been scared shitless, Scully. Can you be certain you'd turn yourself in if you found out you were suddenly a murdering genetic mutant? The first murder was only a few days ago. That's not much time to get used to the idea." "I suppose not. By the way, I never thanked you, Mulder." "For what?" "For not killing Richard." "He murdered four women, Scully. He was about to kill you. I was gonna shoot him, but Cho fired first." "Richard couldn't help doing the things he did." Wrapping his arms around her, he kissed her ear. "Scully, the way Richard heals, he'll be fully recovered from Cho's shot in no time." "And facing a lifetime in prison." "Did I mention he killed four women and attacked you?" She sighed and frowned at his pajama bottoms. "You plan on getting dressed sometime this morning, Mulder?" "I'm thinking it's still a little too early to be dressed." He eyed the buttons on her blouse. "Oh, really?" She arched a questioning brow. "Can you stay?" he asked and kissed her curving brow. His kisses continued, trailing from her temple to her collarbone. With each kiss, she calmly unfastened a button of her blouse and with each button that slipped from its buttonhole, he fell in love with her all over again as if for the first time. **Move over Ununnilium, MulderScully's being added to the Periodic Table of Elements.** THE END Author's notes: Feedback, good or bad, is welcome on this or any of my stories. I don't even pretend to be a professional writer, so any pearls of wisdom are very welcome. Send comments to nejake@tds.net.