the x files: antibodies
by
Kevin J Anderson


By Kevin J. Anderson

Ground Zero

Ruins

Antibodies

Published by HarperPrism

Herin ,.1. Anderson

Based on The characters created

bq Chris Carter

HarperPrism

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The X-Files is a trademark of Twentieth Century

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This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are
products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as
real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
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To all the agents, investigators, scientists, and other
employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In conjunction with my writing research, I have met
several agents and seen the Bureau at work on real cases.
These people aren't all like Mulder and Scully, but they
are all proud of the professionalism and dedication they
bring to their jobs.

Writing a book like this is sometimes as involved as the
deepest government conspiracy. For Antibodies, a few of
the shadowy people lurking behind the scenes were:
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Chris Carter, Mary Astadourian,
Jennifer Sebree, Frank Spotnitz, Caitlin Blasdell, John
Silbersack, Dr. Robert V. Stannard at Adobe Pet Hospital,
Tom Stuffer, Jason C. Williams, Elton Elliot, Andrew
Asch, Lil Mitchell, Catherine Ulatowski, Angela Kato,
Sarah Jones, and (as always) my wife, Rebecca Moesta.

DyMar Laboratory Ruins
Sunday, 11:13

Late on a night filled with cold mist and still air, the alarm went off.

It was a crude security system hastily • erected around the abandoned
burn site, and Vernon Ruckman was the only guard stationed to monitor
the night shift.., but he got paid-- and surprisingly well--to take care
that no intruders got into the unstable ruins of the Dymar Labora tory
on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon.

He drove his half-rusted Buick sedan up the wet gravel driveway. The
bald tires crunched up the gentle rise where the cancer research
facility had stood until a week and a half ago.

Vernon shifted into park, unbuckled his seatbelt, and got out to
investigate. He had to be sharp, alert. He had to scope out the scene.

He flicked on the beam of his official security flashlight--heavy enough
to be used as a weapon--and shone it like a firehose of light into the
blackened ruins that covered the site.

His employers hadn't given Vernon his own security vehicle, but they had
provided him with a uniform, a badge, Tlli and a loaded revolver. He had
to display confidence and an intimidating appearance if he was to chase
off rambunc tious kids daring each other to go into the charred husk of
the laboratory building. In the week and a half since the facility had
been bombed, he had already chased a few trespassers away, teenagers who
ran giggling into the night. Vernon had never managed to catch any of
them.

This was no laughing matter. The Dymar ruins were unstable, set to be
demolished in a few days. Already con struction equipment, bulldozers,
steam shovels, and little Bobcats were parked around large fuel storage
tanks. A padlocked locker that contained blasting caps and explo sives.

Someone sure was in a hurry to erase the remains of the medical research
facility.

In the meantime, this place was an accident waiting to happen. And
Vernon Ruckman didn't want it to happen on his watch.

The brilliant flashlight beam carved an expanding cone through the mist
and penetrated the labyrinth of tilted girders, charred wooden beams,
and fallen roof timbers.

Dymar Lab looked like an abandoned movie set for an old horror film, and
Vernon could imagine celluloid monsters shambling out of the mist from
where they had lurked in the ruins.

After the fire, a rented chain-link fence had been thrown up around the
perimeter--and now Vernon saw that the gate hung partially open. With a
soft exhale of breeze, the chain-link sang faintly, and the gate
creaked; then the air fell still again, like a held breath.

He thought he heard movement inside the building, debris shifting, stone
and wood stirring. Vernon swung the gate open wide enough for him to
enter the premises. He paused to listen carefully, then proceeded with
caution, just like the guidebook said to do. His left hand gripped the
flashlight, while his right hovered above the heavy police revolver
strapped to his hip.

ANTIBODIES He had handcuffs in a small case on his leather belt, and he
thought he knew how to use them, but he had never managed to catch
anyone yet.

Being a nighttime security guard generally involved a lot of reading,
mixed with a few false alarms (especially if you had a vivid
imagination)-- and not much else.

Vernon's girlfriend was a night owl, an English major and aspiring poet
who spent most of the night waiting to be inspired by the muse, or else
putting in a few hours at the round-the-clock coffee shop where she
worked. Vernon had adjusted his own biological c. ycle to keep up with
her, and this night-shift job had seemed the perfect solution, though he
had been tired and groggy for the first week or so.

Now Vernon was wide awake as he entered the burned- out labyrinth.

Someone was indeed in there.

Old ashes crunched under his feet, splinters of broken glass and smashed
concrete. Vernon remembered how this research facility had once looked,
a high-tech place with unusual modern Northwestern architecturea mixture
of glossy futuristic glass and steel, and rich golden wood from the
Oregon coastal forests.

The lab had burned quite well after the violent protest, the arson, and
the explosion.

It wouldn't surprise him if this late-night intruder was something more
than just kids--perhaps some member of the animal rights group that had
claimed responsibility for the fire, Maybe it was an activist collecting
souvenirs, war trophies of their bloody victory.

Vernon didn't know. He just sensed he had to be careful.

He stepped deeper inside, ducking his head to avoid a fallen wooden
pole, black and warty with gray-white ashes where it had split in the
intense heat. The floor of the main building seemed unstable, ready to
tumble into the base ment levels. Some of the walls had collapsed,
partitions blackened, windows blasted out.

TH£ X- Fli,£ S He heard someone moving stealthily. Vernon tilted the
flashlight around, and white light stabbed into the shadows, making
strange angles, black shapes that leapt at him and skittered along the
walls. He had never been afraid of closed-in spaces, but now it seemed
as if the whole place was ready to cave in on him.

Vernon paused, shone his light around. He heard the sound again, quiet
rustling, a person intent on uncovering something in the wreckage. It
came from the far corner, an enclosed office area with a partially
slumped ceiling where the reinforced barricades had withstood most of
the destruction.

He saw a shadow move there, tossing debris away, digging.

Vernon swallowed hard and stepped forward. "You there! This is private
property. No trespassing." He rested his hand on the butt of his
revolver. Show no fear. He wouldn't let this intruder run from him.

Vernon directed his flashlight onto the figure. A large,
broad-shouldered man stood up and turned toward him slowly. The intruder
didn't run, didn't panicmand that made Vernon even more nervous. Oddly
dressed, the man wore mismatched clothes, covered with soot; they looked
like something stolen from a lost duffel bag or tom down from a
clothesline.

"What are you doing here1' Vernon demanded. He flared the light into the
man's face. The intruder was dirty, unkempt---and he didn't look at all
well. Great, Vernon thought. A vagrant, rooting around in the ruins to
find something he could salvage and sell. "There's nothing for you to
take in here."

"Yes, there is," the man said. His voice was strangely strong and
confident, and Vernon was taken aback.

"You're not supposed to be here," Vernon repeated, losz ing his nerve
now.

"Yes I am," the man answered. "I'm authorized. I .. .

worked at Dymar."

Vernon moved forward. This was entirely unexpected.

He continued to shine the flashlight, counting on its intimi dation
factor.

"My name is Dorman, Jeremy Dorman." The man fum bled in his shirt
pocket, and Vernon grabbed for his revolver.

"I'm just trying to show you my Dymar ID," Dorman said.

Vernon took another step closer, and in the glare of his powerful
flashlight he could see that the intruder appeared sick, sweating ...
"Looks like you need to go to a doctor."

"No. What I need.., is in here," Dorman said, pointing.

Vernon saw that the burly man had pulled away some of the rubble to
reveal a hidden fire safe.

Dorman finally managed to pluck a bent and battered photo badge out of
his shirt pocketma Dymar Laboratory clearance badge. This man had worked
here .. . but that didn't mean he could root around in the burned
wreckage now.

"That means nothing to me," Vernon said. "I'm going to take you in, and
if you really have authorization to be here, we'll get this all
straightened out."

"No!" Dorman said, so violently that spittle sprayed from his lips.

"You're wasting my time." For a moment, it looked as if the skin on his
face shifted and blurred, then reset itself to normal. Vernon swallowed
hard, but tried to maintain his stance.

Dorman ignored him and turned around.

Indignant, Vernon stepped forward and drew his weapon. "I don't think
so, Mr. Dorman. Get up against the wall--right now." Vernon suddenly
noticed the thick bulges underneath the man's grimy shirt. They seemed
to move of their own accord, twitching.

Dorman looked at him with narrowed dark eyes. Vernon gestured with the
revolver. With no sign of intimidation or respect, the man went to one
of the intact concrete walls that was smeared and blackened from the
fire. "I told you, you're wasting my time," Dorman growled. "I don't
have much time."

TIle X-FII, ES "We'll take all the time we need," Vernon said.

With a sigh, Dorman spread his hands against the soot- blackened wall
and waited. The skin on his hands was waxy, plastic-looking.., runny
somehow..Vemon wondered if the man had been exposed to some kind of
toxic substance, acid or industrial waste. Despite the reassurance of
his gun, Vernon didn't like this at all.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the bulges beneath Dorman's
shirt squirm. "Stand still while I frisk you."

Dorman gritted his teeth and stared at the concrete wall in front of
him, as if counting particles of ash. "I wouldn't do that," he said.

"Don't threaten me," Vernon answered quickly.

"Then don't fouch me," Dorman retorted. In response, Vernon tucked the
flashlight between his elbow and his side, then quickly patted the man
down, frisking him with one hand.

Dorman's skin felt hot and strangely lumpy--and then Vernon's hand
touched a wet, slick substance. He snatched his palm back quickly.

"Gross!" he said. "What is this?" He looked down at his hand and saw
that it was covered with a strange mucus, a slime.

Dorman's skin suddenly writhed and squirmed, almost as if an army of
rats rushed along beneath the flesh. "You shouldn't have touched that."
Dorman turned around and looked at him angrily.

"What is this stuff?" Vernon shoved the revolver back into his holster
and, staring squeamishly at his hand, tried to wipe the slime off on his
pants. He backed away, looking in horror at the unsettling movement
throughout Dorman's body.

Suddenly his palm burned. It felt like acid eating deep into his flesh.

"Hey!" He staggered backward, his heels skidding on the uneven rubble.

A burning, tingling sensation started at Vemon's hand, as if miniature
bubbles were racing up his wrist, tiny bullets firing through his
nerves, into his arms, his shoulders, his chest.

Dorman lowered his arms and turned to watch. "I told you not to touch
me," he said.

Vernon Ruckman felt all of his muscles lock up.

Seizures wracked his body, a thousand tiny fireworks exploded in his
head. He couldn't see anymore, other than bright psychedelic flashes,
static in front of his vision. His arms and legs jittered, his muscles
spasmed and con vulsed.

From inside his head he heard bones breaking. His own bones.

He screamed as he fell backward, as if his entire body had turned into a
minefield.

The flashlight, still glowing brightly, dropped to the ash- covered
ground.

Dorman watched the still-twitching body of the guard for a few moments
before turning his attention back to the half- exposed safe. The
victim's skin rippled and bubbled as large red-black blotches appeared
in the destroyed muscle tissue.

The guard's flashlight illuminated a brilliant white fan across the
ground, and Dorman could see swollen growths, pustules, tumors, lumps.

The usual.

Dorman ripped away the last of the wall frame and the powdery gypsum
from the burned Sheetrock to expose the fire safe. He knew the
combination well enough, and quickly spun through the numbers, listening
to the cylinders click into position. With one meaty, numb hand, he
pounded on the door to chip free some of the blackened paint that had
caked in the cracks. He swung open the door.

But the safe was empty. Somebody had already taken the contents, the
records, and the stable prototypes.

THE X'FII, ES He whirled to look at the dead guard, as if Vernon Ruck-
man somehow had been involved with the theft. He winced as another spasm
coursed, through him. His last hope had been inside that safe. Or so he
thought.

Dorman stood up, furious. Now what was he going to do? He looked down at
his hand, and the skin on his palm shifted and changed, like a cellular
thunderstorm. He shud dered as minor convulsions trooped through his
muscle sys tems, but taking deep breaths, he managed to get his body
under control again.

It was getting harder every day, but he vowed to keep doing whatever was
necessary to stay alive. Dorman had always done what was necessary.

Sickened with despair, he wandered aimlessly around the wreckage of
Dymar Laboratory. The computer equip ment was entirely trashed, all of
the lab supplies obliterated.

He found a melted and broken desk, and from its placement he knew it had
been David Kennessy's, the lead researcher.

"Damn you, David," Dorman muttered.

Using all his strength, he ripped open one of the top drawers, and in
the debris there he found an old framed photograph--burned around the
edges, the glass cracked-- and stared at it. He peeled the photo out of
the remnants of the frame.

David, dark-haired and dashing, smiled beside a strong- looking and
pretty young woman with strawberry-blond hair and a towheaded boy.

Sitting in front of them, tongue lolling out, was the Kennessys' black
Labrador, always the dog ... The family portrait had been taken when the
boy was eleven years old--before the leukemia had struck him.

Patrice and Jody Kennessy.

Dorman took the photo and stood up. He thought he knew where they might
have gone, and he was sure he could find them. He had to. Now that the
other records were gone, only the dog's blood held the answer he needed.

He would gamble on where they might go, where Patrice might think to
hide. She didn't even know the remarkable secret their family pet
carried inside his body.

Dorman looked back to the guard's dead body. Paying no attention to the
horrible blotches on his skin, he removed the guard's revolver and
tucked it in his pants pocket. If it came down to a crisis situation, he
might need the weapon in order to get his way.

Leaving the cooling, blotched corpse behind and taking the weapon and
the photograph, Jeremy Dorman walked away from the burned Dymar
Laboratory.

Inside of him, the biological time bomb kept ticking. He didn't have
many days left.

FBI Headquarters Washington, D. C.

Monday, 7:43 A. M.

The bear stood huge, five times the size of an all-star wrestler.

Bronze-brown fur bristled from its cable-thick muscles--a Kodiak bear, a
prize specimen. Its claws were spread as it leaned over to rip a salmon
from the rocky stream, pristine and uninterrupted.

Mulder stared at the claws, the fangs, the sheer primal power.

He was glad the creature was simply stuffed and on dis play in the
Hoover Building, but even still, he appreciated the glass barrier.

Mounting this beast must have been a taxi dermist's nightmare.

The prize hunting trophy had been confiscated in an FBI raid against a
drug kingpin. The drug lord had spent over twenty thousand dollars for
his own personal hunting expedi tion to Alaska, and then spent more
money to have his prize kill mounted. When the FBI arrested the man,
they had confis cated the gigantic bear according to RICO
statutes--since the drug lord had funded the expedition with illicit
drug money, the stuffed bear was forfeited to the federal government.

TIle FILES Not knowing what else to do with it, the FBI had put the
monster on display beside other noteworthy confiscated items: a
customized Harley-Davidson motorcycle, emerald and diamond necklaces,
earrings, bracelets, bricks of solid gold.

Sometimes Mulder left his quiet and dim basement offices where he kept
the X-Files just to come up and peruse the display case.

Looking at the powerful bear, Mulder continued to be preoccupied,
perplexed by a recent and highly unusual death report he had received,
an X-File that had come across his desk from a field agent in Oregon.

When a monster like this bear killed its prey, it left no doubt as to
the cause of death. A bizarre disease raised many questions,
though-especially a new and virulent disease found at the site of a
medical research laboratory that had recently been destroyed by arson.

Unanswered questions had always intrigued Agent Fox Mulder.

He went back down in the elevator to his own offices, where he could sit
and read the death report again. Then he would go meet Scully.

She stood between the thick soundproofed Plexiglas partitions inside the
FBI's practice firing range. Special Agent Dana Scully removed her
handgun, a new Sig Sauer 9mm.

She slapped in an expanded clip that carried fifteen bullets, an extra
one in the chamber.

She entered the code at the computer keypad at her left; hydraulics
hummed, and a cable trundled the black silhouetted "bad guy" target to a
range of twenty yards. She locked it into place and reached up to grab a
set of padded earphones. She snugged the hearing protection over her
head, pressing down her red-gold hair.

Then she gripped her pistol assuming a proper isosceles firing stance,
and aimed at her target. Squinting and focusing down the hairline, she
squeezed the trigger in an unconscious reflex and popped off the first
round. She paid no attention to where it struck, simply aimed and shot
again, firing over and over. Expended casings flew into the air like
metal popcorn, clinking and rattling on the cement floor.

The smell of burned black powder filled her nostrils.

She thought of those shadowy men who had killed her sister Melissa,
those who had repeatedly tried to silence or discredit Mulder and his
admittedly unorthodox theories.

Scully had to stay calm, maintain her firing stance, maintain her edge.

If she let her anger and frustration simmer through her, then her aim
would be off.

She looked at the black silhouette of the target and saw only the
featureless men who had entwined themselves so deeply in her life.

Smallpox scars, nose implants, vaccination records, and mysterious
disappearancesmlike her own-- and the cancer that was almost certainly a
result of what they had done to her while she had been abducted. She had
no way to fight against the conspiracies, no target to shoot at. She had
no choice but to keep searching. Scully gritted her teeth and shot again
and again until the entire clip was expended.

Removing her ear protection, she punched the button to retrieve the
yellowish paper target. FBI agents had torequalify at the Quantico
firing range at least once every three months. Scully wasn't due for
another four weeks yet, but still she liked to come early in the morning
to practice. The range was empty then, and she could take her time.

Later in the day, tour groups would come through to watch demonstrations
as a special agent forced into tour guide service showed off his
marksmanship skills with the Sig Sauer, the M-16, and possibly a
Thompson submachine gun. Scully wanted to be long finished here before
the first groups of wide-eyed Boy Scouts or schoolteachers marched in
behind the observation windows.

TIle X- IF! I, E S She retrieved the battered target, sdying her skill
and was p)eased to see how well her sixteen shots had clustered aroumd
the center of the siouetted chest.

Quantico instructors taught agents not to think of their mark as a
person but as a "target." She didn't aim for the heart or the head or
the side. She aimed for the "center of mass." She didn't aim to shoot
the bad guys--she simply "removed the target."

Drawing her weapon and firing upon a suspect was the last possible
resort of a good agent, not the proper way to end an investigation
unless all other methods failed.

Besides, the paperwork was horrendous. Once a federal agent fired her
weapon, she had to account for every single shell casing
expended--sometimes a difficult task during a heated running firefight.

Scully yanked the paper target from its binder clip and left the
gunshot-spattered piece of support cardboard hanging in place. She
punched the computer controls to reset the target to its average point,
and then looked up, startled to see her partner Mulder leaning against
the wall in the observation gallery. She wondered how long he had been
waiting for her.

"Good shooting, Scully," he said. He didn't ask whether she was simply
doing target practice or somehow exorcising personal demons.

"Spying on me, Mulder?" she said lightly, trying to cover her surprise.

After an awkward moment of silence she said, "All right, what is it?"

"A new case. And this one is going to capture your interest, no doubt
about it." He smiled.

She replaced her safety goggles on the proper hook and followed him.

Even if they weren't always believable, Mulder's discoveries were always
interesting and unusual.

Titii. EE Khe Sanh Khoffee Shoppe Washington, D. C.

Monday, 8 : 44 A. M.

As Mulder led her out of the Hoover Building, Scully wondered about the
new case he had found almost as much as she dreaded the cof fee shop
where he planned to take her. Even his offhanded promise, "I'm buying,"
hadn't exactly won her oven They walked together past the metal
detector, out the door, and down the granite steps. At all corners of
the big, box-like building, uniformed FBI security teams manned
imposing-looking guard stations.

Mulder and Scully passed alongside the line of tourists that had already
begun to form for the first FBI tour of the day. Though most of the
pedestrians wore the formal busi ness attire typical in the bureaucratic
environment of Wash ington, D. C., the knowing looks told Scully that
the tourists recognized them as obvious federal agents.

Other federal buildings stood tall around them, ornate and majesticmthe
architecture in downtown Washington had

to compete with itself. Upstairs in many of these buildings TIIE XF! ies
were numerous consulting firms, law offices, and high- powered lobbyist
organizations. The bottom levels contained cafes, delis, and newsstands.

Mulder held the glass door of the Khe Sanh Khoffee Shoppe. "Mulder, why
do you want to take me here so often?" she asked, scanning the meager
clientele inside.

Many immigrant Korean families had opened similar businesses in the
federal district--usually delicious cafeterias, coffee shops, and
restaurants. But the proprietors of the Khe Sanh Khoffee Shoppe imitated
mediocre American cuisine with a vengeance, with unfortunate results.

"I like the place," Mulder said with a shrug. "They serve coffee in
those nice big Styrofoam cups."

Scully went inside without further argument. In her opinion, they had
more important things to do ... and she wasn't hungry.

Handwritten daily specials were listed on a white board propped on an
easel near a large and dusty silk plant. A refrigerator filled with
bottled water and soft drinks stood beside the cash registen An empty
steam table occupied a large portion of the coffee shop; at lunchtime
the proprietors served a cheap--and cheap-tasting--lunch buffet of
various Americanized Oriental specialties.

Mulder set his briefcase on one of the cleared tables, then bolted for
the cash register and coffee line as Scully took her seat. "Can I get
you anything, Scully?" he called.

"Just coffee," she said, against her better judgment.

He raised his eyebrows. "They've got a great fried egg and hash browns
breakfast special."

"Just coffee," she repeated.

Mulder came back with two large Styrofoam cups. Scully could smell the
bitter aroma even before he set the cup in front of her. She held it in
both hands, enjoying the warmth on her fingertips.

Getting down to business, Mulder snapped open his briefcase. "This one
will interest you, I think." He withdrew a manila folder. "Portland,
Oregon," he said. "This is Dymar Laboratory, a federally funded cancer
research center."

He handed her a slick brochure showcasing a beautifully modern
laboratory facility: a glass-and-steel framework trimmed with handsome
wood decking, support beams, and hardwood floors. The reception areas
were heavily decorated with glowing golden wood and potted plants, while
the laboratory areas were clean, white, and sterile.

"Nice place," Scully said as she folded the pages together again. "I've
read a lot about current cancer research, but I'm not aware of their
work."

"Dymar tried to keep a low profile," Mulder said, "until recently."

"What changed?" Scully asked, setting the brochure down on the small
table.

Mulder removed the next item, a black-and-white glossy photo of the same
place. This time the building was destroyed, gutted by fire, barricaded
by chain-link fencesm an abandoned war zone.

"Presumably sabotage and arson," Mulder said. "The investigation is
still pending. This happened a week and a half ago. A Portland newspaper
received a letter from. a protest group--Liberation Now-claiming
responsibility for the destruction. But nobody's ever heard of them.

They were supposedly animal rights activists upset at some of the
research the lead scientist, Dr. David Kennessy, was performing.

High-tech research, and a lot of it was classified."

"And the activists burned the place down?"

"Blew it up and burned it down, actually."

"That's rather extreme, Mulder--usually those groups are just content to
make their statement and get some publicity."

Scully stared down at the charred building.

"Exactl Scully. Somebody really wanted to stop the experimentation."

"What was Kennessy's research that got the group so excited?"

	"The information on that is very vague," Mulder said, his forehead
creasing. His voice became troubled. "New cancer therapy
techniques--really cutting-edge stuff--he and his brother Darin worked
together for years, in an unlikely combination of approaches. David was
the biologist and medical chemist, while Darin came to the field from a
background in electrical engineering."

	"Electrical engineering and cancer reseach?" Scully asked. "Those two
don't usually go together. Was he devel oping a new treatment apparatus
or diagnostic equipment?"

	"Unknown," Mulder said. "Darin Kennessy apparently had a falling-out
with his brother six months ago. He aban doned his work at Dymar and
joined a fringe group of sur vivalists out in the.

Oregon wilderness. Needless to say, he isn't reachable by phone."

	Scully looked again at the brochure, but found no men tion of the
specific team members. "So, did David Kennessy continue the work even
without his brother?"

	"Yes," Mulder said. "He and their junior research part ner, Jeremy
Dorman. I've tried to locate their records and reports to determine the
exact nature of their investigations, but most of the documents have
been removed from the files. As far as I know, Kennessy concentrated on
obscure techniques that have never been previously used in cancer
research."

	Scully frowned. "Why would anyone be so upset about that? Did his
research show any progress?"

	Mulder gulped his coffee. "Well, apparently the mem hers of the mob
were outraged at some supposedly cruel and unapproved animal tests
Kennessy had performed. No details, but I suppose the good doctor
strayed a bit from the rules of the Geneva Convention." Mulder shrugged.
"Most of the records were burned or destroyed, and it's hard to get any
concrete information."

	"Anyone hurt in the fire?" Scully asked.

"Kennessy and Dorman were both reported killed in the blaze, though the
investigators had trouble identifying--or even accounting for--all the
body parts. Remember, the lab didn't just burn, it exploded. There must
have been some kind of bombs planted. That group meant business,
Scully."

"That's all interesting, Mulder, but I'm not sure why it's interesting
to you."

"I'm getting to that."

Scully's brow furrowed as she looked down at the glossy print of the
burned lab. She handed the photo back to Mul- der.

At other tables, people in business suits hunched over, continuing their
own conversations, oblivious to anyone listening in. Scully kept her
senses alert out of habit as a federal investigator. A group of men from
NASA sat at one table, discussing proposals and modifications to a new
interplanetary probe, while other men at a different table talked in
hushed tones about how best to cut the space program budget.

"Kennessy had apparently been threatened before," Mul- der said, "but
this group came out of nowhere and drew a big crowd. I've found no
record of any organization called Liberation Now before the Dymar
incident, until the Portland Oregonian received the letter claiming
responsibility."

"Why would Kennessy have kept working under such conditions?" Scully
picked up the colorful brochure and unfolded it again, skimming down the
predictable propaganda statements about "new cancer breakthroughs,"

"remarkable treatment alternatives," and "a cure is just around the
corner." She took a deep breath; the words struck a chord with her.

Oncologists had been using those same phrases since the 1950s.

Mulder withdrew another photo of a boy eleven or twelve years old. The
boy was smiling for the camera, but looked skeletal and weak his face
gaunt, his skin gray and papery, much of his hair gone.

"This is his twelve-year-old son Jody, terminally ill with TIle ][- FII,
ES cancer--acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Kennessy was des perate to find
a cure, and he certainly wasn't going to let a few protesters delay his
work. Not for a minute."

She rested her chin in her hands. "I still don't see how an arson and
property-destruction case would capture your interest."

Mulder removed the last photo from the folder. A man in a security
guard's uniform lay sprawled in the burned debris, his face twisted in a
mask of agony, his skin blotched and swollen with sinuous lumps, arms
and legs bent at strange angles. He looked like a spider that had been
dosed with bug spray.

"This man was found at the burned lab just last night,"

Mulder said. "Look at those symptoms. No one has figured it out yet."

Scully snatched the photo and looked intently at it. Her eyes showed her
alarm. "He appears to be dead from some fast-acting and exceedingly
virulent pathogen."

Mulder waited for her to absorb the gruesome details, then said, "I
wonder if something in Kennessy's research could be responsible?

Something that didn't entirely perish in the fire ..."

Scully frowned slightly as she concentrated. "Well, we don't know what
exactly the arsonists did before they destroyed the lab. Maybe they
liberated some of the experi mental animals .. . maybe something very
dangerous got loose."

Mulder took another sip of his coffee, then retrieved the papers from
the folder. He waited for her to draw her own conclusions.

Scully let her interest show plainly as she continued to study the
photo. "Look at those tumors ... How fast did the symptoms appear?"

"The victim was apparently normal and healthy when he reported to work a
few hours earlier." He leaned forward intently. "What do you think this
guard stumbled upon?"

Scully pursed her lips in concern. "I can't really say with out seeing
it myself. Is this man's body being held in quar antine?"

"Yes. I thought you might want to come with me to take a look."

Scully took her first sip of the coffee, and it did indeed taste as
awful as she had feared. "Let's go, Mulder," she said, standing up from
the table. She handed him back the colorful brochure with its optimistic
proclamations.

Kennessy must have performed some radical and unorthodox tests on his
lab animals, she thought. It was pos sible that after the violent
destruction of the facility, and with this possible disease outbreak,
some of the animals had escaped. And perhaps they carried something
deadly.

State Highway 22

Coast Range, Oregon Monday, i0:00 P. M.

The dog stopped in the middle of the road, dis tracted on his way to the
forest. The ditch smelled damp and spicy with fallen leaves.

Roadside reflectors poked out of the ditches beside gravel driveways and
rural mailboxes.

Unlike the rich spruce and cedar forest, the road smelled of vehicles,
tires, hot engines, and belching exhaust.

The twin headlights of the approaching car looked like bright coins. The
image fixated the dog, imprinting spots on his dark-adapted eyes. He
could hear the car dominating the night noises of insects and stirring
branches in the trees around him.

The car sounded loud. The car sounded angry.

The road was wet and dark, shrouded by thick trees. The kids were cranky
after a long day of traveling.., and at this point the impromptu
vacation didn't seem like such a good idea after all.

The rugged and scenic coast was still a dozen miles away, and then it
would be another unknown number of miles up the highway until they
encountered one of the clustered tourist havens filled with cafes, art
galleries, sou venir shops, and places to stay ..each one called an
"inn" or a "lodge," never a simple motel.

Ten miles back, they had driven past a lonely crossroads occupied by a
gas station, a hamburger joint, and a run down fifties-era motel with a
pink neon "No" flickering next to the "Vacancy" sign.

"We should have planned this trip better," Sharon said beside him in the
front seat.

"I believe you mentioned that already," Richard answered testily. "Once
or twice."

In the backseat, Megan and Rory displayed their intense boredom in
uncharacteristic ways. Rory was so restless he had switched off his Game
Boy, and Megan was so tired she had stopped picking on her brother.

"There's nothing to do," Rory said.

"Dad, don't you know any other games?" Megan asked.

"Were you ever bored as a kid?"

He forced a smile, then glanced up in the rearview mir ror to see them
sulking in the back seat of the Subaru Out back. Richard had rented the
car for this vacation, impressed 'by its good wheels, good traction for
those mountain roads.

At the start of the long drive, he had felt like Superdad.

"Well, my sister and I used to play a game called 'Silo." We were in
Illinois, where they've got lots of farms. You'd keep watch around the
countryside and call out every time you saw a silo next to a barn.

Whoever saw the most silos won the game." He tried to make it sound
interest ing, but even back then only the tedium of the Midwestern rural
landscape had made Silo a viable form of entertain ment.

"Doesn't do much good when it's dark out, Dad," Rory said.

"I don't think there are any silos or barns out here any way," Megan
chimed in.

The dark tres pressing close to the narrow highway rushed by, and his
blazing headlights made tunnels in front of him. He kept driving, kept
trying to think of ways to dis tract his kids. He vowed to make this a
good vacation after all. Tomorrow they would go see the Devil's Churn,
where waves from the ocean shot up like a geyser through a hole in the
rock, and then they would head up to the Columbia River Gorge and see
waterfall after waterfall.

Now, though, he just wanted to find a place to spend the night.

"Dog!" his wife cried. "A dog! Watch out!"

For a frozen instant, Richard thought she was playing some bizarre
variant of the Silo game, but then he spotted the black four-legged form
hesitating in the middle of the road, its liquid eyes like pools of
quicksilver that reflected the headlights.

He slammed on the brakes, and the new tires on the rental Subaru skiied
across the slick coating of fallen leaves.

The car slewed, slowed, but continued forward like a loco motive, barely
under control.

In the back, the kids screamed. The brakes and tires screamed even
louder.

The dog tried to leap away at the last instant, but the Subaru bumper
struck it with a horrible muffled thump. The black Lab flew onto the
hood, into the windshield, then car omed off the side into the
weed-filled ditch.

The car screeched to a halt, spewing wet gravel from the road's
shoulder. "Jesus Christ!" Richard shouted, slamming the gearshift into
park so quickly the entire vehicle rocked.

He grabbed at his seatbelt, fumbling, punching, strug gling, until the
buckle finally popped free of the catch.

Megan and Rory huddled in stunned silence in the back, but Richard
popped the door open and sprang out. He looked from side to side,
belatedly thinking to check if another car or truck might be bearing
down on them.

TIle even the nocturnal insects had fallen silent, as if watching.

He walked around the front of the car with a sick dread.

He saw the dent in the bumper, a smashed headlight, a scrape in the hood
of the rental car. He remembered too vividly the offhanded and cheerful
manner in which he had declined insurance coverage from the rental
agent. He stared down now, wondering how much the repairs would cost.

The back door opened a crack, and a very pale-looking Megan eased out.

"Daddy? Is he all right?" She peered around, blinking in the darkness.

"Is the dog going to be okay?"

He swallowed hard, then crunched around the front of the car into the
wet weeds. "Just a second, honey. I'm still looking."

The dog lay sprawled and twitching, a big black Labrador with a smashed
skull. He could see the skid marks where it had tumbled across the
underbrush. It still moved, attempting to drag itself into the brambles
toward a barbed- wire fence and denser foliage beyond. But its body was
too broken to let it move.

The dog wheezed through broken ribs. Blood trickled from its black nose.

Christ, why couldn't the thing have just been killed outright? A mercy.

"Better take him to a doctor," Rory said, startling him.

He hadn't heard the boy climb out of the car. Sharon stood up at the
passenger side. She looked at him wide-eyed, and he gave a slight shake
of his head.

"I don't think a doctor will be able to help him, sport,"

he said to his son.

"We can't just leave him here," Megan said, indignant.

"We gotta take him to a vet."

He looked down at the broken dog, the dented rental car, and felt
absolutely helpless. His wife hung on the open door.

"Richard, there's a blanket in the back. We can move the suitcases
between the kids, clear a spot. We'll take the dog to the nearest
veterinary clinic. The next town up the road should have one."

Richard looked at the kids, his wife, and the dog. He had absolutely no
choice. Swallowing bile, knowing it would do no good, he went to get the
blanket while Sharon worked to rearrange their suitcases.

The next reasonably sized town up the road, Lincoln City, turned out to
be all the way to the coast. The lights had been doused except for dim
illumination through window shades in back rooms where the locals
watched TV. As he drove through town, desperately searching for an
animal care clinic, he wondered why the inhabitants hadn't bothered to
roll up the sidewalks with sundown.

Finally he saw an unlit painted sign, "Hughart's Family Veterinary
Clinic," and he swerved into the empty parking lot. Megan and Rory both
sniffled in the backseat; his wife sat tight-lipped and silent next to
him up front.

Richard took the responsibility himself climbing the cement steps and
ringing the buzzer at the veterinarian's door. He vigorously rapped his
knuckles on the window until finally a light flicked on in the foyer.

When an old man peered at them through the glass, Richard shouted,
"We've got a hurt dog in the car. We need your help."

The old veterinarian showed no surprise at all, as if he had expected
nothing else. He unlocked the door as Richard gestured toward the
Subaru. "We hit him back up the highway.

I ... I think it's pretty bad."

"We'll see what we can do," the vet said, going around to the rear of
the car. Richard swung open the hatchback, and both Megan and Rory
clambered out of their seats, intently interested, their eyes wide with
hope. The vet took one look at the children, then met Richard's eyes,
understanding exactly the undertones here.

In back, the dog lay bloody and mangled, somehow still stared at it, and
from the masked expression on the old man's face, Richard knew the dog
had no hope of surviving.

"This isn't your dog?" the vet asked.

"No, sir," Richard answered. "No tags, either. Didn't see any."

Megan peered into the back to look. "Is he going to be all right,
Mister?" she asked. "Are we coming back to visit him, Daddy?"

"We'll have to leave him here, honey," he answered.

"This man will know what to do with the dog."

The vet smiled at her. "Of course he'll be all right," he said. "I've
got some special kinds of bandages." He looked up at Richard. "If you
could help me carry him in back to the surgery, I'll let you all be on
your way."

Richard swallowed hard. The way the old man looked right into his heart,
he knew the vet must see cases like this every week, hurt animals
abandoned to his care.

Together the two men reached under the blanket, lifting the heavy dog.

With a grunt, they began to shuffle-walk to the back door of the clinic.

"He's hot," the vet said as they entered the swinging door. Leaving the
dog on the operating table, the vet went around the room, flicking on
lights.

Anxious to be awa Richard stepped to the door, thanking the old man
profusely. He left one of his business cards on the reception table,
hesitated, then thought better of it. He tucked the card back in his
pocket and hurried out the front door.

He rushed back to the Subaru and swung himself inside.

"He'll take care of everything," Richard said to no one in particular,
then jammed the vehicle into gear. His hands felt grimy, dirty, covered
with fur and a smear of the dog's blood.

The car drove off as Richard desperately tried to relocate the peace and
joy of a family vacation. The night insects resumed their music in the
forest.

Mercy Hospital Portland, Oregon Tuesday, 10:03 A. M.

The middle of morning on a gray day. Early mist hanging above and
through the air made the temperature clammy and colder than it should
have been. The clouds and gloom would burn off by noon, giving a blessed
few minutes of sunshine before the clouds and the rain rolled in again.

Typical morning, typical Portland.

Scully didn't suppose it made any difference if she and Mulder were
going to spend the day in a hospital morgue anyway.

In the basement levels of the hospital, the quiet halls were like tombs.

Scully had seen the same thing in many hospitals where she had performed
autopsies or continued investigations on cold cadavers in refrigerator
drawers. But though the places were by now familiar, she would never
find them comforting.

Dr. Frank Quinton, Portland's medical examiner, was a bald man with a
feathery fringe of white hair surrounding the back of his head. He had
wire-rimmed glasses and a cherubic face.

TIle X-FII, ES Judging by his friendly, grandfatherly smile, Scully
would have pegged him as a charming, good-natured man--but she could see
a tired hardness behind his eyes. In his career as a coroner, Quinton
must have seen too many teenagers pulled from wrecked cars, too many
suicides and senseless accidents, too many examples of the quirky nature
of death.

He warmly shook Scully's hand, and Mulder's. Mulder nodded at his
partner, speaking to the coroner. "As I men tioned on the phone, sir,
Agent Scully is a medical doctor herself, and she has had experience
with many unusual deaths. Perhaps she can offer some suggestions."

The coroner beamed at her, and Scully couldn't help but smile back at
the kind-faced man. "What is the status of the body now?"

"We used full disinfectants and have been keeping the body in cold
storage to stop the spread of any biological agents," the ME said.

The morgue attendant held out a clipboard and smiled like a puppy dog
next to Quinton. The assistant was young and scrawny, but already nearly
as bald as the medical examiner. From the idolizing way he looked up at
the ME, Scully guessed that Frank Quinton must be his mentor, that one
day the morgue attendant wanted to be a medical exam iner himself.

"He's in drawer 4E," the attendant said, though Scully was certain the
coroner already knew where the guard's body was stored. The attendant
hurried over to the bank of clean stainless-steel refrigerator drawers.

Most, Scully knew, would contain people who had died of natural causes,
heart attacks, or car accidents, surgical failures from the hospital, or
old retirees fallen like dead leaves in nurs ing homes.

One drawer, though, had been marked with yellow tape and sealed with
stickers displaying the clawed-circle "Bio Hazard" label: 4E.

"Thank you, Edmund," the ME said as Mulder and Scully followed him to
the morgue refrigerators.

"You've used appropriate quarantine conditions?" Scully asked.

Quinton looked over at her. "Luckily, the police were spooked enough by
the appearance of the corpse that they took precautions, gloves,
contamination wraps. Everything was burned in the hospital incinerator
here."

Edmund stopped in front of the stainless-steel drawer and peeled away
the Biohazard sticker. A card on the front panel of the drawer labeled
it "Restricted, Police Evidence."

After tugging on a sterile pair of rubber gloves, Edmund grabbed the
drawer handle and yanked it open. "Here it is.

We don't usually get anything as curious as this poor guy."

He held open the drawer, and a gust of frosty air drifted out.

With both hands, Edmund dragged out the plastic- draped cadaver of the
dead guard. Like a showroom model revealing a new sports car, the
attendant drew back the sheet. He stood aside proudly to let the medical
examiner, Scully, and Mulder push forward.

Mixed with the cold breath of the refrigerator, the smell of heavy,
caustic disinfectants swirled in the air, stinging Scully's eyes and
nostrils. She was unable to keep herself from bending over in
fascination. She saw the splotches of coagulated blood beneath the
guard's skin like blackened bruises, the lumpy, doughy growths that had
sprouted like mushrooms inside his tissues.

"I've never seen tumors that could grow so fast," Scully said. "The
limited rate of cellular reproduction should make such a rapid spread
impossible." She bent down and observed a faint slimy covering on some
patches of skin.

Some kind of clear mucus.., like slime.

"We're treating this as a high-contamination scenario.

Our lab tests are expected back in another day or so from the CDC,"
Quinton said. "I'm doing my own analysis, under Tile ](FILES Scully
continued to study the body with the practiced eye of a physician
analyzing the symptoms, the patterns, trying to imagine the pathology.
The attendant offered her a box of latex gloves. She snapped on a pair,
flexing her fin! 	gers, then she reached forward to touch the cadaver's
skin.

	She expected it to be cold and hard with rigormbut instead the body
felt warm, fresh, and flexible.

		"When was this man brought in?" she asked.

		"Sunday night," Quinton answered.

		She could smell the frosty coldness from the refrigerator, felt it
with her hand. "What's his body temperature? He's still warm," she said.

		The medical examiner reached forward curiously, and laid his own
gloved hand on the cadaver's bruised shoulder.

	The ME turned and looked sternly at the morgue attendant.

	"Edmund, are these refrigerators acting up again?"

		The morgue attendant scrambled backward like a pan icked squirrel,
devastated that his mentor had spoken sternly to him. "Everything is
working fine, sir. I had Main tenance check it just yesterday." He
dashed over to study the gauges. "It says that the drawers are all at
constant tempera ture."

		"Feel his temperature for yourself," the ME snapped.

		Edmund stuttered, "No, sir, I'll take your word for it. I'll get
Maintenance down here right away."

		"Do that," Quinton said. He peeled off his gloves and i went over to a
sink to scrub his hands thoroughly. Scully did the same.

		"I hope those refrigerators don't fall apart on us again,"

i' Quinton muttered. "The last thing I need is for that guy to start to
smell."

		Scully looked again at the cadaver and tried, to picture what Dymar's
mysterious research might have produced. If something had gotten loose,
they might have to deal with a lot more bodies just like this one. What
had Darin Kennessy known, or suspected, that had led him to run and hide
from the research entirely?

"Let's go, Mulder. We've got a lot of ground to coven"

Scully dried her hands and brushed her red hair away from her face. "We
need to find out what Kennessy was working on."

Kennessy Residence Tigard, Oregon Tuesday, 12:17 P. M.

The house looked like most of the others on the street--suburban normal,
built in the sev enties with aluminum siding, shake shingles, average
lawn, average hedges, nothing to make it stand out among the other
middle- class homes in a residential town on the out skirts of Portland.

"Somehow, I expected the home of a hotshot young can cer researcher to
be more .. . impressive," Mulder said.

"Maybe a white lab coat draped on. the mailbox, test tubes lining the
front walkway ..."

"Researchers aren't that glamorous, Mulder. They don't spend their time
playing golf and living in mansions.

Besides," she added, "the Kennessy family had some rather extraordinary
medical expenses beyond what insurance would cover."

According to records they had obtained, Jody Kennessy's leukemia and his
ever-worsening spiral of last-ditch treat ments had gobbled their
savings and forced them into tak ing a second mortgage.

TIle X-FII, ES Together, Mulder and Scully walked up the driveway toward
the front door. Wrought-iron railings lined the two steps up to the
porch. A forlorn, waterlogged cactus looked out of place beside the
downspout of the garage.

Mulder removed his notepad, and Scully brushed her hands down her
jacket. The air was cool and damp, but her shiver came as much from her
thoughts.

After seeing the guard's body and the gruesome results of the disease
that had so rapidly struck him down, Scully knew they had to determine
exactly what David Kennessy had been developing at the Dymar Laboratory.

The available records had been destroyed in the fire, and Mulder had so
far been unable to track down anyone in charge; he couldn't even
pinpoint who had overseen Dymar's funding from the federal government.

The dead ends and false leads intrigued him, kept him hunting, while the
medical questions engaged Scully's interest.

She wouldn't necessarily expect the wife of a researcher to know much
about his work, but in this case there were extenuating circumstances.

She and Mulder had decided their next step would be to talk to
Kennessy's widow Patrice an intelligent woman in her own right. In her
heart, Scully also wanted to see Jody.

Mulder looked up at the house as he approached the front door. The
garage door was closed, the drapes on the house windows drawn,
everything quiet and dark. The fat Sunday Portland Oregonian lay in a
protective plastic wrapper on the driveway, untouched. And it was
Tuesday.

As Mulder reached for the doorbell, Scully instantly noticed the
shattered latch. "Mulder ... "

She bent to inspect the lock. It had been broken in, the wood
splintered. She could see dents around the knob and the dead bolt, the
tom-up jamb. Someone had crudely pressed the fragments back in place, a
cosmetic, coverup that would fool casual passersby from the street.

Mulder pounded on the door. "Hello!" he shouted.

Scully stepped into a flowerbed to peer inside the window; through a gap
in the drapes she saw overturned furniture in the main room, scattered
debris on the floor.

"Mulder, we have sufficient cause to enter the premises."

He pushed harder, and the door swung easily open.

"Federal agents," he called out--but the Kennessy home answered them
only with a quiet, gasping echo of his call.

Mulder and Scully stepped into the foyer, and both stopped
simultaneously to stare at the disaster.

"Very subtle," Mulder said.

The home had been ransacked, furniture tipped over, upholstery slashed,
stuffing pulled out. The baseboards had been pried away from the walls,
the carpeting ripped up as the violent searchers dug down to the
floorboards. Cabinets and cupboards hung open, bookshelves lay tipped
over, with books and knickknacks strewn about.

"I don't think we're going to find anybody here," Scully said, hands on
her hips.

"What we need to find is a housekeeper," Mulder answered.

They searched through the rooms anyway. Scully couldn't help wondering
why anyone would have ran sacked the place. Had the violent protest
group struck at Kennessy's family as well, not satisfied with killing
David Kennessy and Jeremy Dorman, not content with burning down the
entire Dymar facility?

Had Patrice and Jody been here when the attack occurred?

Scully dreaded finding their bodies in the back room, gagged, beaten, or
just shot to death where they stood.

But the house was empty.

"We'll have to get evidence technicians to search for blood traces,"
Scully said. "We'll need to seal off the site and get a team in here
right away."

They entered Jody's room. The Sheetrock had been smashed open,
presumably to let the searchers look between TIle X-FILES the studs in
the walls. The boy's bed had been overturned, the mattress flayed of its
sheets and fabric covering.

"This doesn't make any sense," Scully said. "Very violent •.. and very
thorough."

Mulder picked up a smashed model of an alien space ship from
Independence Day. Scully could imagine how care fully and lovingly the
twelve-year-old boy must have assembled it.

"Just like the Dymar attack two weeks ago," Mulder said.

Mulder bent over to pick up a chunk of broken gypsum board, turning it
in his fingers. Scully retrieved a fighter jet model that had been
suspended by fish line from the ceiling but now lay with its plastic
airfoils broken on the floor, its fuselage cracked so that someone could
pry inside. Searching.

Scully stood, feeling cold. She thought of the young boy who had already
received a death sentence as the cancer ravaged his body. Jody Kennessy
had been through enough already, and now he had to endure whatever had
happened here.

Scully turned around and walked into the kitchen, ful of the drinking
glasses shattered on the linoleum floor and onthe Formica countertop.
The searchers couldn't pos sibly have been looking for anything inside
the glass turn-.

blers. They had simply enjoyed the destruction.

Mulder bent down next to the refrigerator and looked at an orange
plastic dog food bowl. He picked it up, turning it to show the name
"Vader" written in magic marker across.

the front. The bowl was empty, the food crumbs hard and dry.

"Look at this, Scully," he said. "If something to Patrice and Jody
Kennessy ... then where is the dog?"

Scully frowned. "Maybe the same place they are." With a long, slow look
at the devastation in the kitchen,. Scully swallowed hard, "Looks like
our search just got wider•"

Coast Range, Oregon Tuesday, 2:05 P. M.

No one would ever find them in this cabin, iso -

lated out in the wilderness of the Oregon coastal mountains. No one
would help them, no one would rescue them.

Patrice and Jody Kennessy were alone, des perately trying to hold onto
some semblance of normal life by the barest edges of their fingernails.

As far as Patrice was concerned, though, it wasn't work ing. Day after
day of living in fear, jumping at shadows, hid ing from mysterious
noises.., but they had no other choice for survival--and Patrice was
determined that her son would survive this.

She went to the window of the small cabin and parted the dingy drapes to
watch Jody bounce a tennis ball against the outside wall. He was in
plain view, but within running dis tance of the thick forest that ringed
the hollow. Each impact of the tennis ball sounded like gunshots aimed
at her.

At one time the isolation of this plot of land had been a valuable
asset, back when she had designed the place for her brother-in-law as a
place for him to get away from Dymar. Darin was good at getting away,
she thought. Scattered' empty patches on the steep hills in the distance
showed where clear-cutting teams had removed acres and acres of hardwood
a few years before, leaving stubbled rectangles like scabs on the
mountainside.

This cabin was supposed to be a private vacation hideout for relaxation
and solitude. Darin had deliberately refused to put in a phone, or a
mailbox, and they had promised to keep the location secret. No one was
supposed to know about this place. Now the isolation was like a fortress
wall around them.

No one knew where they were. No one would ever find them out here.

A small twin-engine plane buzzed overhead, aimless and barely seen in
the sky; the drone faded as it passed out of sight.

Their plight kept Patrice on the verge of terror and paral ysis each
day. Jody, so brave that it choked her up every time she thought about
it, had been through so much already-- the pursuit, the attack on Dymar
.. and before that, the doctor's assessment--terminal cancer, leukemia,
not long to live. It was like a downward-plunging guillotine blade
heading for his neck.

After the original leukemia diagnosis, what greater threat could shadowy
conspirators possibly use? What; could outweigh the demon inside Jody's
own twelve-year- old body? Any other ordeal must pale in comparison."

As the tennis ball bounced away from the cabin into the i knee-high
weeds, Jody chased after it in a vain attempt to amuse himself. Patrice
moved to the edge of the window to keep him in view. Ever since the fire
and the attack, Patrice took great care never to let him out of her
sight.

The boy seemed so much healthier now. Patrice didn't dare to hope for
the remission to continue. He should be in the hospital now, but she
couldn't take him, She didn't dare.

Jody halfheartedly bounced the tennis ball again, then once more ran
after it. He had passed a remarkable milestone their crisis situation
had become ordinary after two weeks, and his boredom had overwhelmed his
fear. He looked so young, so carefree, even after everything that had
hap pened.

	Twelve should have been a magic age for him, the verge of the teenage
years, when concerns fostered by puberty achieved universal importance.
But Jody was no longer a normal boy. The jury was still out as to
whether he would survive this or not.

	Patrice opened the screen door and, with a glance over her shoulder,
stepped onto the porch, taking care to keep the worried expression off
her face. Although by now, Jody would probably consider any look of
concern normal for her.

	The gray Oregon cloud cover had broken for its daily hour of sunshine.
The meadow looked fresh from the previ ous night's rain showers, when
the patter of raindrops had sounded like creeping footsteps outside the
window. Patrice had lain awake for hours, staring at the ceiling. Now
the tall pines and aspens cast afternoon shadows across the muddy
driveway that led down from the rise, away from the distant highway.

	Jody smacked the tennis ball too hard, and it sailed off to the
driveway, struck a stone, and bounced into the thick meadow. With a
shout of anger that finally betrayed his ten sion, Jody hurled his
tennis racket after it, then stood fum ing.

	Impulsive, Patrice thought. Jody became more like his father every day.

	"Hey, Jody!" she called, quelling most of the scolding tone. He fetched
the racket and plodded toward her, his eyes toward the ground. He had
been restless and moody all day.

	"What's wrong with you?"

	Jody averted his eyes, turned instead to squint where the sunshine lit
the dense pines. Far awa she could hear the deep drone of a heavily
laden log truck growling down the highway on the other side of the tree
barricade.

"It's Vader," he finally answered, and looked up at his mother for
understanding'. "He didn't come back yesterday, and I haven't seen him
all morning."

Now Patrice understood, and she felt the relief wash over her. For a
moment, she had been afraid he might have seen some stranger or heard
something about them on the radio news.

"Just wait and see. Your dog'll be all right--he always is."

Vader and Jody were about the same age, and had been inseparable all
their lives. Despite her worries, Patrice smiled at the thought of the
smart and good-natured black Lab.

Eleven years before, she had thought the world was golden. Their
one-year-old son sat in his diapers in the middle of the hardwood floor,
scooting around. He had tossed aside his action figure companions and
played with the dog instead.

The boy knew "Ma" and "Da" and attempted to say "Vader,"

though the dog's name came out more like a strangled "drrrr!"

Patrice and David chuckled together as they watched the black Lab play
with Jody. Vader romped back and forth, his paws slipping on the
polished floor. Jody squealed with delight. Vader woofed and circled the
baby, who tried to spin on his diaper on the floor.

Those had been peaceful times, bright times. Now, though, she hadn't had
a moment's peace since the fateful night she had received a desperate
call from her husband at his beseiged laboratory.

Up until then, learning that her son was dying of had been the worst
moment of her life.

"But what if Vader's lying hurt in a ditch Morn?" Jody asked. She could
see tears on the edges of her son's eyes as he fought hard against
crying. "What if he's in a fur trap, or got shot by a hunter?"

Patrice shook her head, trying to comfort her son. "Vader will come home
safe and sound. He always does."

Once again, Patrice felt the shudder. Yes, he always did.

Mercy Hospital Portland, Oregon Tuesday, 2:24 P. M.

Even through the thick fabric of her clumsy gloves, she could feel the
slick softness of the corpse's inner cavity. Scully's movements were
irritatingly sluggish and imprecisebut at least the heavy gear protected
her from expo sure to whatever had killed Vernon Ruckman.

The forced-air respirator pumped a cold, stale wind into her face. Her
eyes were dry, burning. She wished she could just rub them, but enclosed
in the anticontamination suit, Scully had no choice but to endure the
discomfort until the autopsy of the dead security guard was complete.

Her tape recorder rested on a table, voice-activated, waiting for her to
say in detail what she was seeing. This wasn't a typical autopsy,
though. She could see dozens of baffling physical anomalies just on
first glance, and the mys tery and horrific manifestations of the
symptoms grew more astonishing as she proceeded with her thorough
inspection.

Still, the step-by-step postmortem procedure had been established for a
reason. She remembered teaching it to stu dents at Quantico, during the
brief period when the X-Files had been closed and she and Mulder had
been separated.

Some of her students had already completed their training through the
FBI Academy and become special agents like herself.

But she doubted any of them would ever work a case like this one.

At such times, falling back on a routine was the only way to keep her
mind clear and focused.

First step. "Test," she said, and the red light of the voice- activated
recorder winked on. She continued speaking in a normal voice, muffled
through her transparent plastic faceplate.

"Subject's name, Vernon Ruckman. Age, thirty-two; weight, approximately
one hundred eighty-five pounds.

General external physical condition is good. He appears to have been
quite healthy until this disease struck him down."

Now he looked as if every cell in his body had gone haywire all at once.

She looked at the man's blotchy bod}6 the dark red marks of tarlike
blood pooled in pockets beneath his skin.

The man's face had frozen in a contortion of agony, lips peeled back
from his teeth.

"Fortunately, the people who found this body and the medical examiner
established quarantine protocols immediately.

No one handled this cadaver with unprotected hands." She suspected that
this disease, whatever it was, might be exceedingly virulent.

"Outward symptoms, the blotches, the swellings under the skin, are
reminiscent of the bubonic plague." But the Black Death, while killing
about one-third of Europe when it raged through the population centers
of the Middle Ages, had acted over the course of several days, even in
its deadli est pneumonic form. "This man seems to have been struck down
nearly instantaneously, however. I know of no disease Scully touched the
skin on Ruckman's arms, which hung like loose folds of rubbery fabric
draped on the bones. "The epidermis shows substantial slippage, as if
the connective tissue to the muscles has been destroyed somehow.

"As for the muscle fiber itself ..." She pushed against the meat of the
body with her fingers, felt an unusual soft ness, a squishing. Her heart
jumped. "Muscle fibers seem dissociated.., almost mealy."

Part of the skin split open, and Scully drew back sur prised. A clear,
whitish liquid oozed out, and she gingerly touched it with her gloved
fingertips. The substance was sticky, thick and syrupy.

"I've found some sort of unusual .. . mucus-like sub stance coming from
the skin of this man. It seems to have pooled and collected within the
subcutaneous tissue. My manipulations have released it."

She touched her fingertips together, and the slime stuck then dripped
back down onto the body. "I don't understand this at all," Scully
admitted to the tape recorder. She would probably delete that line in
her report.

"Proceeding with the body cavity," she said, then drew the
stainless-steel tray of saws, scalpels, spreaders, and for ceps close to
her side.

Taking great care with the scalpel so as not to puncture the fabric of
her gloves, she cut into the man's body cavity and used a rib-spreader
to open up the chest. It was hard work; sweat dripped down her forehead,
tickling her eye brows.

Looking at the mess of the guard's opened chest, she reached inside the
wet cavity, fishing around with her pro tected fingers. Getting down to
work, Scully began by taking an inventory, removing lungs, liver, heart,
intestines, weigh ing each on a mass-balance.

"It's difficult to recognize the individual organs, due to the abundant
presence"--perhaps infestation was a better word, she thought--"of
tumors."

	I TIle XF! L(S In and around the organs, Vernon Ruckman's lumps,
growths, tumors spread like a nest of vipert)us worms, thick and
insidious. As she watched, they moved, slipping and settling, with a
discomforting writhing appearance.

		But in a body this disturbed, this damaged, no doubt the simple
process of autopsy would have caused a vigorous i': reaction, not to
mention the possibility of contraction due to the temperature variations
from the morgue refrigerator to the heated room.

		Among the displayed organs, Scully found other large pockets of the
mucus. Inside, under the lungs, she discov-

	, ered a large nodule of the slimy, runny substancealmost like a
biological island or a storehouse.

		She withdrew a sample of the unusual fluid and sealed it in an Extreme
Hazard container. She would perform her own analysis of the specimen and
send another sample to the Centers for Disease Control to supplement the
samples already sent by the ME. Perhaps the pathogen specialists i had
seen something like this before. But she had a far more immediate
concern.

		"My primary conclusion, which is still pure specula tion,"

Scully continued, "is that the biological research Dymar Laboratory may
have produced some sort of disease organism. We have not been able to
track down full disclo sure of David Kennessy's experiments or his
technic and so I am at a disadvantage to go on the record with more
detailed conjectures."

	"

	She stared down at Ruckman's open body, The tape recorder waited for
her to speak again. If the situa'

		tion was as bad as Scully feared, then they would "

	need much more help than either she or Mulder could by themselves.

			"The lumps and misshapen portions inside Ruckman's body look as if
rapid outgrowths of cells engulfed his body with astonishing speed." Dr.

		was working on cancer research. Could he have somehowi

produced a genetic or microbial basis for the disease? she wondered. Had
he unleashed some terrible viral form of cancer?

She swallowed hard, frightened by her own idea. "All this is very
far-fetched, but difficult to discount in light of the symptoms I have
observed in this body-especially if this man was visibly healthy mere
hours before his body was found."

The period from onset to death was at a maximum only part of an evening,
perhaps much less. No time for treat ment, no time even for him to
realize his fate ...

Vernon Ruckman had had only minutes before a termi nal disease struck
him down.

Barely even time enough to pray.

Hughart's Family Veterinary Clinic Lincoln City, Oregon Tuesday, i:ii A.
M.

Dr. Elliott Hughart was torn between intentionally putting the mangled
black Labrador to sleep, or just letting it die. As a veterinarian, he
had to make the same decision year after year after year. And it never
got easier.

The dog lay on one of the stainless-steel surgical tables, still alive
against all odds. The rest of the veterinary clinic was quiet and
silent. A few other animals hunkered in their wire cages, quiet, but
restive and suspicious.

Outside, it was dark, drizzling as it usually did this time of night,
but the temperature was warm enough for the vet to prop open the back
door. The damp breeze mitigated the smell of chemicals and frightened
pets that thickened the air.

Hughart had always believed in the curative properties of fresh air, and
that went for animals as well as humans.

His living quarters were upstairs, and he had left the television on,
the single set of dinner dishes unwashednbut he spent more time down
here in the office, surgery, and lab 6nyway. This part was home for
him--the other rooms upstairs were just the place where he slept and
ate.

After all these years, Hughart kept his veterinary prac tice more as a
matter of habit than out of any great hope of making it a huge success.

He had scraped by over the years.

The locals came to him regularly, though many of them expected
freetreatment as a favor to a friend or neighbor.

Occasionally, tourists had accidents with their pets. Hughart had seen
many cases like this black Lab: some guilt-ridden sightseer delivering
the carcass or the still-living but grievously injured animal, expecting
Hughart to work mira cles. Sometimes the families stayed. Most of the
time--as in this instancethey fled to continue their interrupted vaca
tions.

The black Lab lay shivering, sniffing, whimpering. Blood smeared the
steel table. At first, Hughart had done what he could to patch the
injuries, stop the bleeding, bandage the worst gashes--but he didn't
need a set of X-rays to tell that the dog had a shattered pelvis and a
crushed spine, as well as major internal damage.

The black Lab wasn't tagged, was without any papers. It could never
recover from these wounds, and even if it pulled through by some
miracle, Hughart would have no choice but to relinquish it to the animal
shelter, where would sit in a cage for a few days and hope pathetically
for freedom before the shelter destroyed it anyway.

Wasted. All wasted. Hughart drew a deep breath and sighed.

The dog shivered under his hands, but its body tempera ture burned
higher than he had ever felt in an animal before, He inserted a
thermometer, genuinely curious, then watched in astonishment as the
digital readout climbed from 103 104. Normally a dog's temperature
should have been 101..5, or 102 at most--and with the shock from his
injuries, this dog's body temp should have dropped. The number on
readout climbed to 106°F.

He drew a routine blood sample, then checked diligently for any other
signs of sickness or disease, some cause for the fever that rose like a
furnace from its body. What he found, though, surprised him even more.

The black Lab's massive injuries almost seemed to be healing rapidly,
the wounds shrinking. He lifted one of the bandages he had pressed
against a gash on the dog's rib cage, but though the gauze was soaked
with blood, he saw no sign of the wound. Only matted fur. The
veterinarian knew it must be his imagination, mere wishful thinking that
somehow he might be able to save the dog.

But that would never happen. Hughart knew it in his mind, though his
heart continued to hope.

The dog's body trembled, quietly whimpering. With his calloused thumb,
Hughart lifted one of its squeezed-shut eyelids and saw a milky covering
across its rolled-up eye, like a partially boiled egg. The dog was deep
in a coma.

Gone. It barely breathed.

The temperature reached 107°F. Even without the injuries, this fever was
deadly.

A ribbon of blood trickled out of the wet black nostrils.

Seeing that tiny injury, a little flaw of red blood across the black fur
of the delicate muzzle, made Hughart decide not to put the dog through
any more of this. Enough was enough.

He stared down at his canine patient for some time before he shuffled
over to his medicine cabinet, unlocked the doors, and removed a large
syringe and a bottle of Euthanol, concentrated sodium pentabarbitol. The
dog weighed about sixty to eighty pounds, and the suggested dose was
about 1 cc for each ten pounds, plus a little extra. He drew 10 ccs,
which should be more than sufficient.

If the dog's owners ever came back, they would find the notation "PTS"

in the records, which was a euphemism for "Put To Sleep'--which was
itself a euphemism for killing the animal.., or putting it out of its
misery, as veterinarian school had always taught.

Once he had made the decision, Hughart didn't pause.

He bent over the dog and inserted the needle into the skin behind the
dog's neck and quietly but firmly injected the lethal dose. After its
enormous injuries, the black Lab didn't flinch from the prick of the
hypodermic.

	A cool, clammy breeze eased through the cracked-open door, but the dog
remained hot and feverish.

	Dr. Hughart heaved a heavy sigh as he discarded the used syringe.
"Sorry, boy," he said. "Go chase some rabbits in your dreams.., in a
place where you don't have to watch out for cars."

	The chemical would take effect soon, suppressing the dog's respiration
and eventually stopping his heart. Irrevo--

cable, but peaceful.

	First, though, Hughart took the blood sample back to the small lab area
in the adjoining room. The animal's high body temperature puzzled him.
He'd never seen a case like this before. Often animals went into shock
if they the trauma of being struck by a motor vehicle, but didn't
usually have such a high fever.

	The back room was perfectly organized according to a system he had
developed over decades, though a casual observer might just see it as
cluttered. He flicked on the overhead lights in the small Formica-topped
lab area placed a smear of the blood on a glass slide. First step would
be to check the dog's white blood cell count to see if he had some sort
of infection, or parasites in the blood.

	The dog could have been very sick even dying, he'd been hit by the car.
In fact, that could explain why animal had been so sluggish, so unaware
of the large mobile bearing down on him. A fever that high would been
intolerable. If the dog suffered from some major Hughart needed to keep
a record of it.

	Out in the adjoining operating and recovery area, two the other dogs
began to bark and whimper. A cat and the cages rattled, i'

		Hughart paid little attention. Dogs and cats made a cal chaotic noise,
to which he'd grown deaf after so years. In fact, he'd been surprised at
how quiet the animals were when thrown together in a strange situation,
penned up in a cage for overnight care. They were already smarting from
spaying or neutering or whatever ailments had brought them into the
vet's office in the first place.

	The only animal he was worried about was the dying black Labrador, and
by now the Euthanol would be working.

	Bothered by the distracting shadows, Hughart switched on a brighter
fluorescent lamp tucked under the cabinets, then illuminated the slide
under his microscope with a small lamp. Rubbing his eyes first, he gazed
down at the smear of • blood, fiddling with the focus knob.

	The dog should even now be drifting off to perpetual dreams--but its
blood was absolutely alive.

	In addition to the usual red and white cells and platelets, Hughart saw
tiny specks, little silvery components.., like squarish glittering
crystals that moved about on their own.

	If this was some sort of massive infection, it was not like any
microorganism he had ever before laid eyes on. The odd shapes were as
large as the cells and moved about with blurred speed.

	"That's incredible," he said, and his voice sounded loud in the
claustrophobic lab area. He often talked to the animals around him, or
to himself, and it had never bothered him before.

	Now, though, he wished he wasn't alone; he wished he had someone with
him to share this amazing discovery.

	What kind of disease or infection looked like this? After a long career
in veterinary medicine, he would have thought he'd seen just about
everything. But he had never before witnessed anything remotely like
this.

And he hoped it wasn't contagious.

	This revamped building had been Elliott Hughart's home, his place of
work for decades, but now it seemed i strange and sinister to him. If
this dog had some sort of unknown disease, he would have to contact the
Centers for Disease Control.

He knew what to do in the case of a rabies outbreak or other diseases
that normally afflicted household petsbut these tiny microscopic..,
slivers? They were utterly foreign to him.

In the back surgery room, the caged animals set up a louder racket,
yowling and barking. The old man noticed it subconsciously, but the
noise wasn't enough to tear him from his fascination with what he saw
under the microscope.

Hughart rubbed his eyes and focused the microscope again, blurring the
image past its prime point and then back to sharp focus again. The
glittering specks were still there, buzzing about, moving cells. He
swallowed hard; his throat was dry and cottony. What to do now?

Then he realized that the barking and meowing inside the operating room
cages had become an outright din, as if a fox had charged into a
henhouse.

Hughart spun around, bumped into his metal stool, knocked it over, and
hopped about on one foot as pain shot through his hip. When he finally
rushed into the operating room, he looked at the cages first to see the
captive animals pressed back against the bars of their cages, trying to
get away from the center of the room.

He didn't even look at the black Lab, because it have been dead by
now--but then he heard paws skittering across the slick surface of
stainless steel.

The dog got to its feet, shook itself, and leaped down from the table,
leaving a smear of blood on the clean surface.

But the dog showed no more wounds, no damage. It trem bled with energy,
completely healed.

Hughart stood in total shock, unable to believe that dog had not only
regained consciousness despite its: grievous injuries and the euthanasia
drug--but had jumped down from the table. This was as incredible as the
contamination in the blood sample.

He caught his breath, then eased forward. "Here, boy, me take a look."

Quivering, the dog barked at him, then backed away TEll Dymar Laboratory
Ruins Tuesday, 4:50 P. M.

Not long before sunset, a patch of bright blue sky made a rare
appearance in the hills over Portland. Mulder squinted up, wishing he
had brought along sunglasses as he maneuvered the rental car up the
steep drive to the site of the Dymar Laboratory.

Much of the facility's structure remained intact, though entirely gutted
by the fire. The walls were blackened, the wood support structure burned
to charcoal, the office furniture slumped and twisted. Some overhead
beams had toppled, while others balanced precariously against the
concrete load-bearing walls and metal girders.

Glass shards lay scattered among ashes and broken stone.

As they crested the. hill and reached the sagging chain- link fence
around the site, Mulder shifted the car into park and looked through the
windshield. "A real fixer-upper," he said. "I'll have to talk to my real
estate agent."

Scully got out of the car and looked over at him. "Too late to make an
offer, Mulder--this place is scheduled to be demolished in a few days to
make way for a new business park." She scanned the thick stands of dark
pines and the sweeping view of Portland spread out below, with its sinu
ous river and necklace of bridges.

Mulder realized the construction crew was moving awfully fast,
disturbingly so. He and Scully might not even be able to finish a decent
investigation in the amount of time alloted to them.

He opened the chain-link gate; sections of the fence sagged and left
wide gaps. Signs declaring "Danger" and "Warning" adorned the fence,
marking the hazards of the half-collapsed building; he doubted those
signs would dis courage any but the meekest of vandals.

"Apparently Vernon Ruckman's death has proved a greater deterrent than
any signs or guards," Scully said. She held on to the chain link for a
moment, then followed Mulo der into the burned area. "I contacted local
law enforcement, trying to get a status on their arson investigation.

But so far, all they would tell me is that it's 'pending--no progress.'"

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "A protest group large enough to turn into a
destructive mob, and they can't any members?"

The FBI crime lab was analyzing the note claiming respon sibility. By
late that evening they expected to have results whoever was behind
Liberation Now. From what Mulder had seen, the letter seemed to be a
very amateurish job.

He stared at the blackened walls of the Dymar for a moment, then the two
agents entered the shell of building, stepping gingerly. The smell of
soot, burned tics, and other volatile chemicals bit into Mulder's
nostrils..:

As he stood inside the ruins, looking across the vista toward the
forests and the city below, Mulder ima ined that night two weeks
earlier, when a mob of angry uncontrolled protesters had marched up the
gravel He drew a deep breath of the ash-clogged air.

"Conjures up images of peasants carry'.mg doesn't it, Scully?" He looked
up at the ceiling, unstable splintered pillars, the collapsed walls. He
gingerly arother step into what must have been a main lobby area.

"A mob of angry people charging up the hill to burn down the evil
laboratory, destroy the mad scientist."

Beside him, Scully appeared deeply disturbed. "But what were they so
worried about?" she said. "What did they know? This was cancer research.

Of all the different kinds of science, surely cancer research is
something even the most vehement protesters will abide."

"I don't think it was the cancer part that concerned them," Mulder said.

"What then?" Scully asked, frowning. "The animal test ing? I don't know
what sort of experiments Dr. Kennessy was doing, but I've researched
animal rights groups before--and while they sometimes break in and
release a few dogs and rats from their cages, I'm unaware of any other
situation that has exhibited this extreme level of vio lence."

"I think it was the type of research itself," Mulder said.

"Something about it must have been very scary. Otherwise, why would all
of his records be sealed away?"

"You already have an idea, Mulder. I can tell."

"David Kennessy and his brother had made some waves in the research
community, trying unorthodox new approaches and treatments that had been
abandoned by everyone else. According to Kennessy's resume, he was an
expert in abnormal biochemistry, and his brother Darin had worked for
years in Silicon Valley. Tell me, Scully, what sort of relationship
could there be between electronics and cancer research?"

Scully didn't ofer any of her thoughts as she poked around, looking for
where the guard had been found. She saw the yellow-taped section and
stood gazing at the rough outline of the body impressed into the loose
ash, while Mul- der ranged around the perimeter. He moved a fallen sheet
of twisted metal out of the way and stumbled upon a fire safe, its door
blackened but ajar. He called for Scully.

TIle X-Fli, ES Mulder raised his eyebrows and rummaged around in the
sooty debris.

"It's open, but empty. And the inside is dirty but not burned." He
waited for that to sink in, then looked up at his partner. From her
expression, it was clear she thought the same thing he did. The safe had
been opened after the fire, not before. "Someone else was here that
night, someone looking for the contents of this safe."

"That's why the guard came up here into the ruins. He saw someone."

Scully frowned. "That could explain why he was here.

But it still doesn't tell us what killed him. He wasn't shot or
strangled. We don't even know that he met up with the intruder."

"But it's possible, even likely," Mulder said.

Scully looked at him curiously. "So this other person took all the
records we need?"

He shrugged. "Come on, Scully. Most of the other infor, mation on
Kennessy's cancer research was locked away classified. We get our on may
can't hands it.

						There well been some evidence here, too--but now that's gone as
well and a security guard is dead."

"Mulder, he was dead from a kind of disease."

"He was dead from some kind of toxic pathogen.

don. oknow where it came from."

whoever was here that night killed the guard, stole the records from the
safe?"

Mulder cocked his head to one side. "Unless else got to it first."

Scully remained tight-lipped as they eased around burned wall, ducked
under a fallen girder, and slowly into the interior. "

What remained of the lab areas sprawled like a ous maze, black and
unstable. Part of the floor had lapsed, tumbling down into the basement
dean holding areas, and storage vaults. The remaining section floor
creaked underfoot, demonstrably weakened after the fire.

Mulder picked up a shard of glass. The intense heat had bent and
smoothed its sharp edges. "Even after his brother abandoned the
research, I think Kennessy was very close to some sort of magnificent
breakthrough, and he was willing to bend a few rules because of his
son's condition. Someone found out about his work and tried to stop him
from taking rash action. I suspect that this supposedly spontaneous
protest movement, from a group nobody's ever heard of, was a violent
effort to silence him and erase all the progress he had made."

Scully brushed her reddish hair back away from her face, leaving a
little soot mark on her cheek. She sounded very tired. "Mulder, you see
conspiracies everywhere."

He reached forward to brush the smudge from her face.

"Yeah, Scully, but sometimes I'm right. And in this case it cost the
lives of two peoplemaybe more."

EI, E]EII Under Burnside Bridge Portland, Oregon Tuesday, 11:21 P. M.

He tried to hide and he tried to sleep--but nothing came to him but a
succession of vicious nightmares.

Jeremy Dorman did not know whether the dreams were caused by the swarms
of micro scopic invaders tinkering with his head, with his thought
processes.., or whether the nightmares came as a result of his guilty
conscience.

Wet and clammy, clad in tattered clothes that didn't fit him right, he
huddled under the shelter of Burnside Bridge, on the damp and
trash-strewn shore of the Willamette River.

The muddy green-blue water curled along in its stately course.

Years ago, downtown Portland had cleaned up River Park, making it an
attractive, well-lit, and scenic area for the yuppies to jog, the
tourists to sit on cold concrete benches and look out across the water.

Young couples could listen to street musicians while they sipped on
their gourmet coffee concoctions.

But not at this dark hour. Now most people sat in their TIle X'Fli, ES
warm homes, not thinking about the cold and lonely night outside Dorman
listened to the soft gurgle of the slow- moving river against the
tumbled rocks around the bridge pilings. The water smelled warm and rich
and alive, but the cool mist had a frosty metallic tang to it. Dorman
shivered.

Pigeons nested in the bridge superstructure above, cooing and rustling.

Farther down the walk came the rattling sound of another vagrant
rummaging through trash cans to find recyclable bottles or cans. A few
brown bags containing empty malt liquor and cheap wine bottles lay piled
against the green-painted wastebaskets.

Dorman huddled in the shadows, in bodily pain, in mental misery Fighting
a spasm of his rebellious body, he into a mud puddle, smearing dirt all
over his back but he ..

didn't even notice.

A heavy truck rumbled overhead across the bridge with a sound like a
muffled explosion.

Like the Dymar explosion.

That night, the last night, came back to him too the darkness filled
with fire and shouts and Murderous and destructive people: faceless,
nameless, brought together by someone pulling strings invisibly in
shadows. And they were malicious, destructive.

He must have fallen asleep.., or somehow been ported back in time. His
memory had been enhanced in sort of cruel and unusual punishment,
perhaps by the card action of his affliction.

"A chain-link fence and a couple of rent-a-cops does make me feel safe,"
Dorman had said to David This wasn't exactly a high-security
installation they working in--after all, David had smuggled his damned
dog in there, and a handgun. "I'm starting to think brother had the
right idea to walk away from all this months ago."

Dymar had called for backup security from the police, and had been
turned down. The ostensible was some buried statute that allowed the
police to defer "internal company disputes" to private security forces.

David paced around the basement laboratory rooms, fuming, demanding to
know how the police could consider a mob of demonstrators to be an
internal company dispute. It still hadn't occurred to him that somebody
might want the lab unprotected.

For all his biochemical brilliance, David Kennessy was clueless.

His brother Darin hadn't been quite so politically naive, and Darin had
gotten the hell out of Dodge in time. David had stayed--for his son's
sake. Neither of them understood the stakes involved in their own
research.

When the actual destruction started, Jeremy recalled seeing David
scrambling to grab his records, his samples, like in all those old
movies where the mad scientist strives to rescue a single notebook from
the flames. David seemed more pissed off than frightened. He kicked a
few stray pencils away from his feet, and spoke in his "let's be
reasonable"

voice. "Some boneheaded fanatic is always trying to stop progressmbut it
never works. Nobody can undiscover this new technology." He made a rude
noise through his lips.

Indeed, biological manufacturing and submicroscopic engineering had been
progressing at remarkable speed for years now. Genetic engineers used
the DNA machinery of certain bacteria to produce artificial insulin. A
corporation in Syracuse, New York, had patented techniques for storing
and reading data in cubes made of bacteriorhodopsin, a genetically
altered protein. Too many people were working on too many different
aspects of the problem. David was right--nobody could undiscover the
technology.

But Dorman himself knew that some people in the government were
certainly intent on trying to do just that. And even with all the prior
planning and the hushed agreements, they hadn't given Dorman himself
time to escape, despite their promises.

While David was distracted, rushing to the phone to Ill( X-FILES warn
his wife about the attack and her own danger, Dorman had not been able
to find any of the pure original nanoma- chines, just the prototypes,
the leftover and questionable samples that had been used--with mixed
results---on the other lab animals, before their success with the dog.
But still, the prototypes had worked.., to a certain extent. They had
saved him, technically at least.

Then Dorman heard windows smashing upstairs, the murderous shouts
pouring closer--and he knew it was time.

Those prototypes had been his last resort, the only thing he could find.

They had been viable enough in the lab rat tests, hadn't they? And the
dog was just fine, perfectly healthy. What choice did he have but to
take a chance? Still, the possibility froze Dorman with terror,
uncertainty, for a moment--if he did this, it would be an irrevocable
act. He couldn't just go to the drugstore and get the antidote.

But the thought of how those men had betrayed him, how they meant to
kill him and tidy up all their problems, gave him the determination he
needed.

After Dorman added the activation hormone and the self-perpetuating
carrier fluid, the prototypes were sup posed to adapt, reset their
programming.

With a small whumpp, a Molotov cocktail exploded in the lobby, and then
came running feet. He heard hushed voices in quiet discussion that
sounded cool and professional--a: contrast to the chanting and yelling
that continued outside,: the protests Dorman knew were staged.

Quickly, silently, Dorman injected himself, just before David Kennessy
returned to his side. Now the researcher finally looked afraid, and with
good reason.

Four of the gunshots struck Kennessy in the chest, driv ing him backward
into the lab tables. Then the Dymar building erupted into flames--much
faster than Jeremy Dor-..

man could have imagined.

He tried to escape, but even as he fled, the flames swept along, closing
in on him as the walls ignited, The shok wave of another large explosion
pummeled him against one of the concrete basement walls. The stairwell
became a chute of fire, searing his skin.

He had watched his flesh bubble and blacken. Dorman shouted with outrage
at the betrayal ...

Now he awoke screaming under the bridge. The echoes of his outcry
vibrated against the river water, ricocheting across the river and up
under the bridge.

Dorman hauled himself to his feet. His eyes adjusted to the dim
illumination of streetlights and the moon filtering through clouds
above. His body twisted and contorted. He could feel the growths
squirming in him, seething, taking on a life of their own.

Dorman clenched his teeth, brought his elbows tight against his ribs,
struggling to regain control. He breathed heavily through his nostrils.

The air was cold and metallic, soured with the memory of burning blood.

As he swayed to his feet, Dorman looked down at the rock embankment
where he had slept so fitfully. There he saw the bodies of five pigeons,
wings splayed, feathers ruffled, their Their beaks hung with a eyes
glassy gray.

					open trickle of blood curling down from their tongues.

Dorman stared at the dead birds, and his stomach clenched, turning a
somersault with nausea. He didn't know what his body had done, how he
had lost control during his nightmares. Only the pigeons knew.

A last gray feather drifted to the ground in silence." Dorman staggered
away, climbing up toward the road.

He had to get out of Portland. He had to find his quarry, find the dog,
before it was too late for any of them.

Main Post Office Milwaukie, Oregon Wednesday, 10:59 A. M.

Mulder didn't feel at all nondescript or unno ticeable as he and Scully
stood in the lobby of the main post office. They moved back and forth,
pretending to wait in line, then going back to the counter and filling
out unnecessary Express Mail forms. The postal officials at the counter
watched them warily.

All the while, Scully and Mulder kept their eyes on the wall of covered
cubbyholes, numbered post office boxes, espeo cially number 3733. Each
box looked like a tiny prison cubicle.

Every time a new customer walked in and marched toward the appropriate
section of boxes, he and Scully • exchanged a glance. They tensed, then
relaxed, as person after person failed to fit the description, went to
the wrong cubbyhole, or simply conducted routine post office business,
oblivious to the FBI surveillance.

Finally, after about an hour and twenty minutes of stake out, a gaunt
man pushed open the heavy glass door and moved directly to the wall of
P. O. boxes. His face was lean, his head completely shaven and
glistening as if he used explosion of black bristly beard. His eyes were
sunken, his cheekbones high and protruding.

"Scully, that's him," he said. Mulder had seen various photos of
Alphonse Gurik in his criminal file--but previ ously he had had long
hair and no beard. Still, the effect was the same.

Scully gave a brief nod, then flicked her eyes away so as not to draw
the man's suspicions. Mulder nonchalantly picked up a colorful brochure
describing the Postal Service's selection of stamps featuring famous
sports figures, raising his eyebrows in feigned interest.

The National Crime Information Center had rapidly and easily completed
their analysis of the letter claiming respon sibility for the
destruction of the Dymar Lab. Liberation Now had mailed their note on a
piece of easily traceable sta tionery, written by hand in block letters
and sporting two smudged fingerprints. Sloppy. The whole thing had
sloppy and amateurish.

NCIC and the FBI crime lab had studied the using handwriting analysis
and fingerprint identification This man, Alphonse Gurik--who had no l
address--had been involved in many causes for outspoken protest groups.

His rap sheet had listed after name of organizations that sounded so
outra they couldn't possibly exist. Gurik had written the claiming
responsibility for the destruction and arson Dymar.

But already Mulder had expressed his doubts. After iting the burned
Dymar site, it was clear to both of that this had been a professional
job, eerily precise coldly destructive. Alphonse Gurik seemed to be a
amateur, perhaps deluded, certainly sincere. Mulder think him capable of
what had happened at Dymar.

As the man reached for P. O. Box 3733, spun his tion, and opened the
little window68 to withdraw his Scully nodded at Mulder. They both moved
forward, reach ing into their overcoats to withdraw their ID wallets.

"Mr. Alphonse Gurik," she said in a firm, uncompromis ing voice, "we're
federal agents, and we are placing you under arrest."

The bald man whirled, dropped his mail in a scattershot on the floor,
and then slammed his back against the wall of boxes.

"I didn't do anything!" he said, his face stricken with ter ror. He
raised his hands in total surrender. "You've got no right to arres me."

The other custoiners in' the post office backed away, fas cinated and
afraid. Two workers at the counter leaned for ward and craned their
necks so they could see better.

Scully withdrew the folded piece of paper from her inner pocket. "This
is an arrest warrant with your name on it. We have identified you as the
author of a letter claiming respon sibility for the fire and explosion
at Dymar Laboratory, which resulted in the deaths of two researchers."

"But, but--" Gurik's face paled. A thread of spittle con nected his lips
as he tried to find the appropriate words.

Mulder came forward and grabbed the bald man's arm after removing a set
of handcuffs from his belt. Scully hung back, keeping herself in a
bladed position, ready and. pre pared for any unexpected action from the
prisoner. An FBI agent always had to be prepared no matter now
submissive a detainee might appear.

"We're always happy to hear your side of this, Mr.

Gurik," Mulder said. He took advantage of Gurik's shock to bring the
man's arms down and cuff his wrists behind him.

Scully read the memorized set of Miranda rights, which Alphonse Gurik
seemed to know very well already.

According to his file, this man had been arrested seven times already on
minor vandalism and protest charges throwing rocks through windows or
spray-painting mis spelled threats on the headquarters buildings of
companies he Tit(

read in his field. Gurik had the courage to stand up for what he
believed in, but he gave over his beliefs a little too easily.

As Mulder turned the prisoner around, escorting him toward the glass
door, Scully bent down to retrieve Gurik's scattered mail. They ushered
him outside.

It took thirty seconds, almost like clockwork, until Gurik began to
babble, trying to make excuses. "Okay, I sent the letter! I admit it, I
sent the letter--but I didn't burn any thing. I didn't kill anybody. I
didn't blow up that building."

Mulder thought he was probably telling the truth.

Gurik's previous minor pranks had made him a nuisance, but could not be
construed as a dry run for the destruction of an entire research
facility.

"It's a little convenient to change your story now, isn't it?" Scully
said. "Two people are dead, and you'll be up for murder charges. This
isn't a few out-of-hand protest activi ties like the ones you've been
arrested for in the past."

"I was just a protester. We picketed Dymar a few times in the past..,
but suddenly the whole place just exploded!

Everybody was running and screaming, but I didn't do any thing wrong!"

"So why did you write the letter?" Mulder asked.

"Somebody had to take responsibility," Gurik said. "I kept waiting, but
nobody sent any letters, nobody took credit. It was a terrible tragedy,
yeah! But the whole scene!: would have been pointless if nobody
announced what were protesting against. I thought we were trying to free
all those lab animals, that's why I sent the letter ...

"Some of us got together on this, a few different pendent groups. There
was this one guy who really against the stuff at Dymar--he even drafted
the letter to paper and made sure we all had a copy before the protest,.

He showed us videotapes, smuggled reports. You wouldn't: believe what
they were doing to the lab animals. You have seen what they did to that
poor dog."

Scully crossed her arms over her chest. "So what happened to this man?"

"We couldn't even find him again--he must have turned chicken after all.

So I sent the letter myself. Somebody had to. The world has to know."

Outside the post office, Gurik looked desperately toward an old woody
station wagon with peeling paint, touched up with spots of primer coat.

Boxes of leaflets, maps, newspaper clippings, and other literature
crammed the worn seats of the station wagon.

Bumper stickers and decals cluttered the car body and rear.

One of the car's windshield wipers had broken off, Mulder saw, but at
least it was on the passenger side.

"I didn't burn anything, though," Gurik insisted fervently.

"I didn't even throw rocks. We just shouted and held our signs. I don't
know who threw the firebombs. It wasn't me."

"Why don't you explain to us about Liberation Now?" Mul- der asked,
falling into the routine. "How do they fit into this?"

"It's just an organization I made up. Really! It's not an official
group--there aren't even any members but me. I can make any group I
want. I've done it before. Lots of activists were there that night,
other groups, people I'd never seen before."

"So who set up the protest at Dymar?" Scully said.

"I don't know." Still pressed against the side of his car, Gurik twisted
his head over his other shoulder to look at her. "We have connections,
you know. All of us activist groups. We talk. We don't always agree, but
when we can join forces it's stronger.

"I think the Dymar protest was pulled together by leaders of a few
smaller groups that included animal rights activists, genetic
engineering protesters, industrial labor organizations, and even some
fundamentalist religious groups. Of course, with all my work in the past
they wouldn't dare leave me Out."

"No, of course not," Mulder said. He had hoped Gurik would be able to
lead them toward other members of Liber TE X'FILES ation Now, but it
appeared that he was the sole member of his own little splinter group.

	The violent protesters had materialized promptly, with no known leaders
and no prior history, conveniently turned into a mob that burned the
facility down and destroyed all records and research.., then evaporated
without a trace.

Whoever had engineered the bloody protest had so smoothly pulled
together the various groups that even their respective members didn't
know they were being herded to the same place at the same time.

		'

Mulder thought it was very clear that the entire incident had been
staged.

"What were you fighting against at Dymar?" Scully said.

Gurik raised his eyebrows, indignant. "What do you mean, what were we
fighting against? The horrible animal' research, of course! It's a
medical facility. You've got to know: what scientists do in places like
that."

"No," Scully said, "I don't know. What I do know is that they were
trying to find medical breakthroughs that help people. People dying of
cancer."

Gurik snorted and turned his head. "Yeah, as if have any less right to a
peaceful existence than humans do!

By what standard do we torture animals so that humans can live longer?"

Scully blinked at Mulder in disbelief. How could argue with someone like
this?

"Actually," Mulder said, "our investigation turned up evidence of any
animal experimentation the lab rat stage."

"What?" Gurik said. "You're lying."

Mulder turned to Scully, cutting the protester off.

think he's been set up, Scully. This guy doesn't know thing. Someone
wanted to destroy Dymar and David nessy, while transferring the blame
elsewhere."

Scully raised her eyebrows. "Who would Want to that, and why?"

Mulder looked hard at her. "I think Patrice Kennessy knows the answer to
that question, and that's why she's in trouble."

Scully looked pained at the mention of the missing woman. "We've got to
find Patrice and Jody," she said. "I suggest we question the missing
brother, Darin, as well. The boy himself can't be too hard to find. If
he's weak from his cancer treatments, he'll need medical attention soon.

We've got to get to him."

"Cancer treatments!" Gurik exploded. "Do you know how they develop those
things? Do you know what they do?" He growled in his throat as if he
wanted to spit. "You should see the surgeries, the drugs, the
apparatuses they hook to those poor little animals. Dogs and cats,
anything that got lost and picked up on the streets."

"I'm aware of how .. . difficult cancer treatments can be," Scully said
coldly, thinking of what she herself had endured, how the treatment had
been nearly as lethal as the cancer itself.

But she had no patience for this now. "Some research is necessary to
help people in the future. I don't condone excessive pain or malicious
treatment of animals, but the research helps humans, helps find other
methods of curing terminal diseases. I'm sorry, but I cannot sympathize
with your attitude or your priorities."

Gurik twisted around enough so that he could look directly at her.

"Yeah, and you don't think they're experi menting on humans, too?" His
eyes were not panicky now, but burning with rage. He nodded knowingly at
her. The skin on his shaven head wrinkled like leather.

"They're sadistic bastards," he said. "You wouldn't say that if you knew
how some of the research was conducted!"

He drew a deep breath. "You haven't seen the things I have."

TBlitteek Federal Office Building Crystal City, Virginia Wednesday,
11:30 A. M.

In a nondescript office with few furnishings, Adam Lentz sat at his
government-issue desk and pondered the videotape in front of him.

The tape still smelled of smoke from the Dymar fire, and he was anxious
to play it.

Lentz's name wasn't stenciled on the office door, nor did he have a
plaque on the new desk, none of the trappings of importance or power.

Useless trappings. Adam Lentz had many titles, many positions, which he
could adopt and use at his convenience. He simply had to select
whichever role would allow him best to complete his real job.

The office had plain white walls, an interior room with no windows, no
blinds--no means for anyone else to spy on him. The federal building
itself sported completely unremarkable architecture, just another
generic government building full of beehive offices for the unfathomable
business of a sprawling bureaucracy.

Each evening, after working hours, Crystal City became a ghost town as
federal employees--clerks and paper pushers and filing
assistants--rushed home to Gaithersburg, TIle X-FILES Georgetown,
Annapolis, Silver Spring, .. leaving much the area uninhabited. Lentz
often stayed late just to witness the patterns of human tribal behavior.

Part of his role in the unnamed government office been to oversee David
and Darin Kennessy's research Dymar Laboratory. Other groups at the
California Institute Technology, NASA Ames, the Institute for Molecular
Manu' facturing even Mitsubishi's Advanced Technology and Development
Center in Japan--had forged ahead their attempts. But the Kennessys had
experienced a few cial. lucky breaksor made shrewd decisions--and knew
Dymar was the most likely site for a breakthrough.

He had followed the work, seen the brothers'

progress, egged them on, and held them back. Some of earlier experiments
on rats and small lab animals had amazing--and some had been horrific.

Those initial and prototypes had all been confiscated and, he destroyed.

But David Kennessy, who had after his brother left, had proved too
successful for his good. Things had gotten out of control, and hadn't
even seen it coming.

Lentz hoped the confiscated tape had not been dama.

in the cleansing fire that had obliterated Dymar. His up teams had
scoured the wreckage for any evidence, intact samples or notes, and they
had found the hidden safe, removed its contents, and brought the tape to
him.

He swiveled a small portable TV/VCR that he his desk and plugged into a
floor socket. He closed locked his office door, but left the lights on,
,harsh and ering fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling. He sat back in
standard-issue desk chair--he wasn't one for extrava amenities--and
popped the tape into the player. He heard about an extraordinary tape,
but he had never ally seen it. After adjusting the tracking and the
Lentz sat back to watch.

In the clean and brightly lit lab, the dog paced inside cage, an
enclosure designed for larger animals. He whined twice with an uncertain
twitch of his tail, as if hoping for a quick end to his confinement.

"Good boy, Vader," David Kennessy said, moving across the camera's field
of view. "Just sit."

Kennessy paced the room, running a hand through his dark hair, brushing
aside a film of perspiration on his fore head. Oh he was nervous, all
right--acting cocky, doing his best to look confident. Darin
Kennessy--perhaps the smarter brother--had abandoned the research and
gone to ground half a year before. But David hadn't been so wise.

He had continued to push.

People were very interested in what this team had accomplished, and he
obviously felt he had to prove it with a videotape. Kennessy didn't
know, though, that the success would be his own downfall. He had proven
too much, and he had frightened the people who had never really believed
he could do it.

But Lentz knew the researcher's own son was dying, which might have
tempted him into taking unacceptable risks. That was dangerous.

Kennessy adjusted the camera himself, shoving his hand in the field of
view, jittering the image. Beside him, near the dog's cage, the
big-shouldered technical assistant, Jeremy Dorman, stood like Igor next
to his beloved Frankenstein.

"All right," Kennessy said into the camcorder's micro phone. A lot of
white noise buzzed in the background, diag nostic equipment, air
filters, the rattle of small lab rodents in their own cages. "Tonight,
you're in for a rilly big shew!"

As if anybody remembered Ed Sullivan, Lentz thought.

Kennessy postured in front of the camera. "I've already filed my data,
sent my detailed documentation. My initial rodent tests showed the
amazing potential. But those progress reports either went unread, or at
least were not understood. I'm tired of having my memos disappear in
your piles of paper. Considering that this breakthrough will Tlie X-FII,
ES change the universe as we know it, I'd think somebody might want to
give up a coffee break to have a look."

Oh no, Dr. Kennessy, Lentz thought as he watched, your reports didn't
disappear. We paid a great deal of attention.

"They're management boobs, David," Dorman mut - tered. "You can't expect
them to understand what they're funding." Then he covered his mouth, as
if appalled that he had made such a comment within range of the
camcorder's microphone.

Kennessy glanced at his watch, then over at Dorman.

"Are you prepared, Herr Dorman?"

The big lab assistant fidgeted, rested his hand on wire cage. The black
Lab poked his muzzle against Dor- man's palm, snuffling. Dorman
practically leaped out of skin.

"Are you sure we should do this?" he asked.

Kennessy looked at his assistant with an expression pure scorn. "No,
Jeremy. I want to just give up, shelve work, and let Jody die. Maybe I
should retire and become CPA."

Dorman raised both hands in embarrassed "All right, all right--just
checking."

In the background, on one of the poured-concrete base, ment walls, a
poster showed Albert Einstein handing a dle to someone few people would
recognize by Eric Drexler; Drexler, in turn, was extending a toward the
viewer. Come on, take it! Drexler had been one the first major
visionaries behind genetic engineering years before.

Too bad we couldn't have gotten to him soon enough, thought.

Vader looked expectantly at his master, then sat down the middle of his
cage. His tail thumped on the floor.

boy," Kennessy muttered.

Jeremy Dorman went out of range, then returned a moments later holding a
handgun, a clunky but Smith & Wesson. According to records Lentz had
easily obtained, Dorman himself had gone into a Portland. gun shop and
purchased the weapon with cash. At least the handgun hadn't come out of
their funding request.

Kennessy spoke again to the camera as his assistant sweated. Dorman
looked down at the handgun, then over at the caged dog.

"What I am about to show you will be shocking in the extreme. I
shouldn't need to add the disclaimer that this is real, with no special
effects, no artificial preparations." He crossed his arms and stared
firmly into the camera eye. "My intention is to jar you so thoroughly
that you are ready to question all your preconceptions."

He turned to Dom-an. "Gridle} you may fire when ready."

Dorman looked confused, as if wondering who Ken- nessy meant, then he
raised the Smith & Wesson. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down,
exhibiting his nervous ness. He pointed the gun at the dog.

Vader sensed something was wrong. He backed up as far as he could in the
cage, then growled loud and low. His dark eyes met Dorman's, and he
bared his fangs.

Dorman's hand began to shake.

Kennessy's eyes flared. "Come on, Jeremy, dammit!

Don't make this any worse than it is."

Dorman fired twice. The gunshots sounded thin and tinny on the
videotape. Both bullets hit the big black dog, and the impact smashed
him into the mesh of the cage. One shot struck Vader's rib cage; another
shattered his spine.

Blood flew out from the bullet holes, drenching his fur.

Vader yelped and then sat down from the impact. He panted.

Dorman looked stupidly down at the handgun. "My God!" he muttered. "The
animal rights activists would cru cify us, David."

But Kennessy didn't allow the silence to hang on the tape. He stepped
forward, delivering his rehearsed speech.

TIle X'FILES make this breakthrough work are going to shake up society
like you won't be able to imagine." Kennessy sounded as if he was giving
a speech to a board of directors, while his pet dog lay shot and
bleeding in his cage.

Lentz had to admire a man like that.

He nodded to himself and leaned forward, closer to the television. He
rested his elbows on the desktop. All the reason to make sure the
technology is tightly controlled, released only when we deem it
necessary.

On the screen, Kennessy turned to the cage, down with clinical
detachment. "After a major trauma this, the first thing that happens is
that the nanocritters down all of the dog's pain centers."

In his cage, Vader sat, confused. His tongue lolled He had clumsily
managed to prop himself upright. The seemed not to notice the gaping
holes in his back. After moment, the black Lab lay down on the floor of
the ca squishing his fur in the blood still running along his sides.

His eyes grew heavy, and he sank down in deep sleep, ing his head on his
front paws. He took a huge breath released it slowly.

Kennessy knelt down on the floor beside the reached his hand in to pat
Vader on the head. "His ture is already rising from the waste heat.

Look, the has stopped flowing. Jeremy, get the camera over here so can
have a close-up."

Dorman looked befuddled, then scurried over to the camera. The view on
the videotape rocked and then came into focus on the dog, zooming in on
the "

Kennessy let the images speak for themselves for a before he picked up
the thread of his lecture.

"A large-scale physical trauma like this is actually easier to fix than
a widespread disease, like cancer. A gunshot injury needs a bit of
patchwork, cellular bandages, and some reconstruction.

"With a genetic disease, though, each cell must be repaired, every
anomaly tweaked and adjusted. Purging a cancer patient might take weeks
or months. These bullet wounds, though--" He gestured down at the
motionless black Lab.

"Well, Vader will be up chasing squirrels again tomorrow."

Dorman looked down in amazement and disbelief. "If this gets to the
newspapers, David, we're all out of a job."

"I don't think so," Kennessy answered, and smiled. "I'll bet you a box
of dog biscuits."

Within an hour, the dog woke up again, groggy but rapidly recovering.

Vader stood up in the cage, shook him- sell then barked. Healthy.

Healed. As good as new. Ken- nessy released him from the cage, and the
dog bounded out, starved for attention and praise. Kennessy laughed out
loud and ruffled his fur.

Lentz watched in astonishment, understanding now that Kennessy's work
was even more frightening, even more suc cessful than he had feared. His
people had been absolutely right to take the samples, lock them away,
and then destroy all the remaining evidence.

If something like this became available to the general public, he
couldn't conceive of the earth-shattering conse quences. No, everything
had to be destroyed.

Lentz popped out the videotape and locked it within a repository for
classified documents. The fire safe at Dymar had protected this tape and
the other documents with it, but unfortunately he knew with a grim
certainty that they had not recovered every scrap, every sample.

Now, after all he had seen, Lentz finally understood the frantic phone
call they had tapped, when David Kennessy had dialed his home number on
the night of the explosive protest, on the night of the fire.

i Tile Z-FIL, E$

		Kennessy's voice had been frantic, ragged. He didn't even let his wife
speak. "Patrice, take Jody and Vader and get out of there now!
Everything I was afraid of is going down. You have to run. I'm already
trapped at Dymar, but you can get away. Keep running. Don't let them ..
.

	you."

		Then the phone recording was cut off before Kennessy his wife could
say anything else. Patrice Kennessy had tened to her husband, had acted
quickly. By the time clean-up teams got to their suburban house, she had
up with the boy and the dog, and vanished.

I..

		After seeing the videotape, Lentz realized what a mistake he had made.
Before, he had worried that

	might have a few notes, some research information Lentz needed to
retrieve. Now, though, the danger increased by orders of magnitude.

		How could he have missed it before? The dog wasn't a family pet that
the Kennessys couldn't bear to behind. That black Lab was the dog. It
was the research mal, it carried the nanomachines inside its lurking
there, just waiting to spread around the world.

		Lentz swallowed hard and grabbed for the phone.

	a moment, though, he froze and gently set the receiver in the cradle.
This was not a mistake he wanted to admit the man in charge. He would
take care of it himself.

		Everything else had been destroyed in the Dymar but now Adam Lentz had
to call in all of his resources, reinforcements, spend whatever time or
money was sary.

		He had a woman, a boy, and, especially, their pet track down.

F611itteeii Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Wednesday, 1:10 P. M.

The midday sunlight dappled the patches in the Oregon hills where the
trees had been shaved in strips from clearcut logging. Patrice and Jody
sat by the table in the living room with the cur tains open and the
lights switched off, working on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle they had
found in one of the cedar window seats.

The two of them had finished a lunch of cold sand wiches and an old bag
of potato chips that had gone stale in the damp air. Jody never
complained. Patrice was just glad her son had an appetite again. His
mysterious remission was remarkable, but she couldn't allow herself to
hope.

Soon, she dreaded, the blush of health would fade, and Jody would resume
his negotiations with the Grim Reaper.

But still, she clung to every moment with him. Jody was all she had
left.

Now the two of them hunched over the scattered puzzle pieces. When
finished, the image would show the planet Earth rising over lunar crags,
as photographed by one of the Apollo astronauts. The blue-green sphere
covered most of Tile XFli,(S the small wooden table, with jagged gaps
from a few ontinents not yet filled in.

	They weren't having much fun, barely even their minds. They were just
killing time.

Patrice and Jody talked little, in the shared silence of two people
who'd had only their own company for many days.

They could get by with partial sentences, cryptic c private jokes. Jody
reached forward with a jagged piece the Antarctic ice cap, turning it to
see how the pieces fit in.

	"

		"Have you ever known somebody who went to tica, Mom?" Jody asked.

		Patrice forced a smile. "That's not exactly on the dard tour list,
kid."

		"Did Dad ever go there? For his research? Or Darin?"

		She froze her face before a troubled frown could over her features.
"You mean to test out a new medical ment on, say, penguins? Or polar
bears?" Why not? He tested it on Vader.. ..

		"Polar bears live at the North Pole, Mom." Jody his head with mock
scorn. "Get your data right."

		Sometimes he sounded just like his father.

		She had explained to her son why they had to hide the outside world,
why they had to wait until they some answers and discovered who had been
behind destruction of Dymar.

		Darin had split from his brother after a huge fight the dangers of
their research, about the edge they were ing. He had walked away from
Dymar, sold his home, this vacation cabin to rot, and joined an isolated
group survivalists in the Oregon wilds. From that point on, had spoken
of Darin with scorn, dismissing the usual guided complaints by Cuddite
groups, like the one brother had joined.

		Darin had insisted they would be in danger as soon more people found
out about their research, but somehow David could not believe anybody
but the technically literate would understand how significant a
breakthrough he had made. "It's always nice to see that some people
understand more than you give them credit for," David answered. "But I
wouldn't count on it."

			But Patrice knew he was naive. True this wasn't the type of thing
ordinary people got up in arms about--it was too complicated and
required too much foresight to see how the world would change, to sort
the dangers they feared from the miracles he offered. But some people
were paying atten tion.

Darin had had good reason to fear, good reason to run.

	Patrice's question now was who was orchestrating all this?

			The demonstrators outside Dymar consisted of an odd mix of religious
groups, labor union representatives, animal-

	rights activists, and who knew what else. Some were fruit cakes, some
were violent. Her husband had died there, with only a crisp warning for
her. Go. Get away! Don't let them catch you. They'll be after you.

			Hoping it was just a temporary emergenc a flareup of destructive
demonstrators, she had thrown Jody and the dog into their car, driving
aimlessly for hours. She had seen the Dymar fire blazing on the distant
bluff, and she feared the worst. Still not grasping the magnitude of the
conspiracy, she had rushed home, hoping to find David there, hoping he
had at least left her a message.

		Instead, their place had been ransacked. People search ing for
something, searching for them. Patrice had run, tak ing only a few items
they needed, using her wits and her fear as they raced away from Tigard,
away from the Port-

	land metropolitan area, into the deep wilderness.

		She had swapped license plates several times in dark ened parking
lots, waited until near midnight and then grabbed a day's maximum cash
from an ATM. in downtown Eugene, Oregon; she had driven across town to
another ATM, after midnight this time and therefore a new date, and
gotten a second day's maximum. Then she had fled for the coast, for
Darin's old, abandoned cabin, where she and lody could go to ground, for
however long it took for them to feel safe again.

For years she had worked freelance as an doing her designs from home,
especially in the last months when Jody became more and more ill from
his cer and--worse--from the conventional chemo and tion treatments
themselves.

Patrice had designed this little hideaway as a favor her brother-in-law
several years ago. With rented ment, Darin had installed the electricity
himself, graded driveway, cut down a few trees, but never gotten around
making it much of a vacation home. He had been too lowed up in his
eight-days-a-week research efforts. C rupted by David, no doubt.

No one else would know about this place, no one think to look for them
here, in an unused vacation built years ago for a brother who had
disappeared half year previously. It should have been a perfect place
for and Jody to catch their breath, to plan their next step.

But now the dog had disappeared, too. Vader had Jody's last remaining
sparkle of joy, his anchor during chaos. The black Lab had been so
excited to be out of suburbs, where he could run through the forest. He
been a city dog for so long, fenced in; suddenly he had turned loose in
the Oregon forests.

She wasn't surprised that Vader had run off, but always expected him to
come home. She should have him on a ropebut how could she bear to do
that, when and her son were already trapped here? Prisoners in Patrice
had been so afraid, she had stripped away the ID tag. Now if Vader were
caught, or injured there would be no way to get them back togethermand
way to track them down.

Jody had taken it hard, trying his best to keep his up. His every
thought was a wish for his dog to return.

	Apart from his gloom, he looked increasingly healthy now; most of his
hair had grown back after the leukemia thera pies.

His energy level was higher than it had been in a long time.

He looked like a normal kid again.

		But his sadness over Vader was like an open sore. After every piece he
placed in the Earth-Moon jigsaw puzzle, he glanced through the dingy
curtains over the main windows, searching the treeline.

		Suddenly he jumped up. "Mom, he's back!" Jody shouted, pushing away
from his chain For a moment, Patrice reacted with alarm, thinking of the
hunters, wondering who could have found them, how she might have given
them away. But then, through the open screen door, she could hear the
dog barking. She stood up from the puzzle table, astonished to see the
black Labrador bounding out of the trees.

		Jody leaped away from the table and bolted out the door.

	He ran toward the black dog so hard she expected her son to sprawl on
his face on the gravel driveway or trip on a stump or fallen branch in
the yard.

		"Jody, be careful!" she called. Just what she needed--if the boy broke
his arm, that would ruin everything. So far, she had managed to avoid
all contact with doctors and. any people who kept names and records.

		Jody remained oblivious to everything but his excite ment over the
dog.

		The boy reached his dog safely, and each tried to outdo the other's
enthusiasm. Vader barked and danced around in circles, leaping into the
air. Jody threw his arms around the dog's neck and wrestled him to the
wet ground in a tumble of black fur, pale skin, and weeds.

		Dripping and grass-stained, Jody raced Vader back to the cabin.
Patrice wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and came out to the porch to
greet him. "I told you he'd be okay" she said.

Idiotically happy, Jody nodded and then stroked the dog.

Patrice bent over and ran her fingers through the black fur. The wedding
ring, still on her finger, stood out among the dark strands. The black
Lab had a difficult time standing still for her, shifting on all four
paws and letting his tongue loll out. His tail wagged like an
out-of-control rudder, rock ing his body off balance on his four paws.

Other than mud spatters and a few cockleburrs, found nothing amiss. No
injuries, no wounds. Not a mark on him.

She patted the dog's head, and Vader rolled his brown eyes up at her.

With a shake of her head, she said, wish you could tell us stories."

Hughart's Family Veterinary Clinic Lincoln City, Oregon Wednesday, 5:01
P. M.

As they approached the veterinary clinic in the sleepy coastal town of
Lincoln City, Scully could hear the barking dogs.

The building was a large old house that had been converted into a
business. The aluminum siding was white, smudged with mildew; the wooden
shutters looked as if they needed a coat of paint. The two agents
climbed the concrete steps to the main entrance and pushed open a storm
door.

On their way to tracking down David Kennessy's suro Vivalist brother, a
report from this veterinarian's office had caught Mulder's attention.

When Scully had requested a rush analysis of the strange fluid she had
taken during the security guard's autopsy, the CDC had immediately
recognized a distinct similarity to another sample--also submitted from
rural Oregon.

Elliott Hughart had treated a dog, a black Labrador, who was also
infected with the same substance. Mulder had been intrigued by the
coincidence. Now at least they had someplace to start looking.

In the front lobby, the veterinarian's receptionist looked harried.
Other patrons sat in folding chairs around the beside pet carriers.
Kittens wrestled in a cage. Dogs on their leashes. Posters warned of the
hazards of worm, feline leukemia, and fleas, next to a magazine ra(
filled with months-old issues of Time, Catfancy, and Mulder flashed his
ID as he strode up to the recef "I'm Agent Fox Mulder, Federal Bureau of
Investi We'd like to see Dr. Hughart, please."

"Do you have an appointment?" The information sink in for a few seconds,
then the harried woman blinked him. "Uh, the FBI?"

"We're here to see him about a dog he treated two ago," Scully said. "He
submitted a sample to the Centers Disease Control."

"I'll get the doctor for you as soon as possible," she "I believe he's
performing a neutering operation at moment. Would you like to go into
the surgery room wait?"

Mulder shuffled his feet. "We'll stay out here, thanks."

Three-quarters of an hour later, when Scully had a ing headache from the
noise and chaos of the distressed mals, the old doctor came out. He
blinked under eyebrows, looking distracted but curious. The FBI a were
easy to spot in the waiting room.

"Please come back to my office," the veterinarian with a gesture to a
small examining room. He closed door.

A stainless-steel table filled the center of the room, the smell of wet
fur and disinfectants hung in the air.

nets containing thermometers and hypodermic needles treatment of
tapeworms, rabies, and distemper sat glass doors.

"Now, then," Hughart said in a quiet, gentle voice obviously flustered.

"I've never had to deal with the before. How can I help you?"

"You submitted a sample to the CDC yesterday black Labrador dog you
treated," Scully said. "We'd like to ask you a few questions."

Mulder held out a snapshot of Vader that they had taken from the family
possessions at the ransacked Tigard home.

"Can you identify the dog for us, sir? Is this the one you treated?"

Surprised, the veterinarian raised his eyebrows. "That's almost
impossible to tell, just from a photograph like this.

But the size and age look about right. Could be the same animal."

The old veterinarian blinked. "Is this a criminal matter?

Why is the FBI involved?"

Scully withdrew the photos of Patrice and Jody Ken- nessey. "We're
trying to find these two people, and we have reason to believe they are
the dog's owners."

The doctor shook his head and shrugged. "They weren't the ones who
brought him in. The dog was hit by a car, brought in by a tourist. The
man was real anxious to get out of here. Kids were crying in the back of
the station wagon. It was late at night. But I treated the dog anyway,
though there wasn't much cause for hope." He shook his head. "You can
tell when they're about to die. They know it. You can see it in their
eyes. But this dog.., very strange."

"Strange in what way?" Scully asked.

"The dog was severely injured," the old man said. "Massive damage,
broken ribs, shattered pelvis, crushed spine, ruptured internal organs.

I didn't expect him to live, and the dog was in a great deal of pain."

He distractedly wiped his fingers across the recently cleaned steel
table, leaving fingerprint smears.

"I patched him up, but clearly there was no hope. He was hot, his body
temperature higher than any fever I've seen in an animal before. That's
why I took the blood sample.

Never expected what I actually found, though."

Mulder's eyebrows perked up. Scully looked at her partner, then back at
the veterinarian. "With severe trauma from a car accident, I wouldn't
expect the temperature to rise,"

state."she said. "Not if the dog was in shock and entering a coma The
doctor nodded his head patiently. "Yes, that's why was so curious. I
believe the animal had some sort of infec tion before the accident.

Perhaps that's why he was so dis oriented and got struck by the car."

Hughart disturbed, almost embarrassed. "When I saw there was no hope, I
gave the dog an injection of pentabarbitolwto put him to sleep. Ten ccs,
way more enough for the body mass of a black Lab. It's the only to do in
cases like that, to put the animal out of its misery.

and this dog was in a world of misery."

"Could we see the body of the dog?" Scully asked.

"No." The veterinarian turned away. "I'm afraid impossible."

"Why?" Mulder asked.

Hughart looked at them from beneath his bushy eyebrows before glancing
back down at his fingers. "I was working in the lab, studying the fresh
sample, when I heard a noise. I came in and found that dog had jumped
off the table. I swear its forelegs were ken, its rib cage crushed."

Scully drew back, unable to believe what she was ing. "And did you
examine the dog?"

"I couldn't." Hughart shook his head. "when I tried get to the dog, it
barked at me, turned, then pushed its through the door. I ran, but that
black Lab bounded out the night, as frisky as if he were just a puppy."

Scully looked at Mulder with eyebrows raised. The erinarian seemed
distracted by his own recollection.

scratched his hair in puzzlement. "I thought I saw a disappearing toward
the trees, but I couldn't be called for it to come back, but that dog
knew exactly he wanted to go." .

Scully was astonished. "Are you suggesting that a struck by a car, as
well as given an injection of sodium pentabarbitol.., was somehow able
to leap down from your operating table and run out the door?"

"Quite a lot of stamina," Mulder said.

"Look" the veterinarian said, "I don't have an explana tion, but it
happened. I guess somehow the dog.., wasn't as injured after all. But I
can't believe I made a mistake like that. I spent hours searching the
woods around here, the streets, the yards. I expected to find the body
out in the parking lot or not far from here .. . but I saw nothing.

There've been no reports either. People around here talk about unusual
things like that."

Scully changed the subject. "Do you still have the origi nal blood
sample from the dog? Could I take a look at it?"

"Sure," the veterinarian said, as if glad for the opportu nity to be
vindicated. He led the two agents to a small labo ratory area where he
performed simple tests for worms or blood counts. On one countertop
underneath low fluores cent lights stood a bulky stereomicroscope.

Hughart pulled out a slide from a case where a dried smear of blood had
turned brown under the cover slip. He inserted the slide under the lens,
flicked on the lamp beneath it, and turned the knobs to adjust the lens.

The old man stepped back and motioned for Scully to take a look.

"When I first glanced at it," the veterinarian said, "the blood was
swarming with those tiny specks. I've never seen anything like it, and
in my practice I've encountered plenty of blood-borne parasites in
animals. Nematodes, amoebas, other kinds of pests. But these .. . these
were so unusual.

That's why I sent the sample to the CDC."

"And they called us." Scully looked down and saw the dog's blood cells,
as well as numerous little glints that seemed too angular, too
geometrical, unlike any other microorganism she had ever seen.

"When they were moving and alive, those things looked almost ... I can't
describe it," the old vet said. "They've all stopped now, hibernating
somehow. Or dead."

TIle X-FILES Scully studied the specks and could not understand them
either. Mulder waited patiently at her side, and she finally let him
take a look. He looked at her knowingly.

Scully turned to the veterinarian. "Thank you for time, Dr. Hughart. We
may be back in touch. If you find any information on the location of the
dog or its owners, please contact us."

"But what is this?" the doctor asked, following as Scully led Mulder
toward the door. "And what prompted an FBI followup?"

"It's a missing persons case," Mulder said, "and

some urgency.

The two agents made their way out through the reception area, where they
encountered a different assortment of and dogs and cages. Several of the
examining room doors were closed, and strange sounds came from behind
them.

The veterinarian seemed reluctant to get back to his routine chaos of
yowling animals, lingering in the door watch them go down the steps.

Mulder held his comments until they had climbed back the car, ready to
drive off again. "Scully, I think the were doing some very unorthodox
research at Lab."

"I admit, it's some kind of strange infection, Mulder, that doesn't
mean--"

"Think about it, Scully." His eyes gleamed. "If developed some sort of
amazing regenerative David might well have tested it on the pet dog."
Scully her lip. "With his son's condition, he would have been perate
enough for just about anything."

She slumped into the seat and buckled her seatbelt.

Mulder, what kind of treatment could heal a dog from trous injuries
after a car accident, then neutralize the of sodium pentabarbitol
designed to put the dog to sleep?" .

"Maybe something in the combined expertise of and David Kennessy,"
Mulder said, and started the car.

She unfolded the state higliway map, looking for the next stopping point
on their search: the vicinity where Darin Kennessy had gone into hiding.

"But, Mulder, if they really developed such a .-.. miracle cure, why
would Darin have abandoned the research? Why would someone want to blow
up the lab and destroy all the records?"

Mulder eased out of the parking lot and waited as a string of RVs drove
along the Coast Highway, before he turned right and followed the road
through the small pic turesque town. He thought of the dead security
guard, the rampant and unexplained growths, the slime. "Maybe all of
Dymar's samples weren't so successful. Maybe something much worse got
loose."

Scully looked at the road ahead. "We've got to find that dog, Mulder."

Without answering, he accelerated the car.

Mercy Hospital Morgue Portland, Oregon Thursday, 2:04 A. M.

Some people might have thought being alone in a morgue late at night
would be frighten- ing--or at least cause for some uneasiness. But
Edmund found the silent and dimly lit hospital the best place to study.

He had hours of quiet solitude, and he had his medical books, as well as
popularized versions of true crime and coroner's work.

Someday he hoped to get into medical school himself and study forensic
medicine. The subject fascinated him.

Eventually, if he worked hard, he might become at least a first or
second assistant to the county medical examiner, Frank Quinton. That was
the highest goal Edmund thought he could reach.

Studying was somewhat hard for him, and he knew that medical school
would be an enormous challenge. That was why he hoped to learn as much
as he could on his own, looking at the pictures and diagrams, boning up
on the details before he got a chance to enter college.

After all, Abraham Lincoln had been a self-educated man, hadn't he?

Nothing wrong with it, no way, no how.

Tile ambition to learn as much as he could.

Fluorescent lights shone in white pools around him on the clean tile
floor, the white walls. The steel and chrome gleamed. The air vents made
a sound like the soft breath of a peacefully sleeping man. The hospital
corridors were silent. No intercom, no elevator bell, no footsteps from
crepe-soled shoes walking down the halls.

He was all alone down here in' the morgue on the night shift--and he
liked it that way.

Edmund flipped pages in one of his medical texts, refreshing his memory
as to the difference between a perfo.

rating and a penetrating wound. In a penetrating wound, the bullet
simply passed into the body and remained there while in a perforating
wound, the bullet plowed through the other side, usually tearing out a
larger chunk of flesh in the exit wound, as opposed to the neat round
entry hole.

Edmund scratched the bald top of his head as he read the distinction
over and over again, trying to keep the straight. On another page, he
analyzed gunshot dia saw dotted lines indicating the passage of bullets
throu the body cavity, how one course could be instantly while another
could be easily healed.

At least it was quiet here so he could concentrate, when Edmund finally
got all of the explanations clear in mind, they usually stayed in place.

The back of his throbbed with a tension headache, but Edmund didn't to
get more coffee or take aspirin. He would think his through it.

Just when he thought he was on the verge of a tion, ready to grin with
exhilarated triumph, he heard thing moving.., stirring.

Edmund perked up, squaring his shoulders and around the room. Only a
week before, another morgue dant had told him a whopper about a
cadaver--a decapitated in an auto accident--that had supposedly One of
the lights flickered in the left corner, but Edmund saw no shambling,
headless corpses.., or any other manifestations of ridiculous urban
legends.

He stared at the dying bulb, realizing that its strobe- light pattern
was distracting him. He sighed and jotted a little note for the
maintenance crew. Maintenance had already double-checked the temperature
in the refrigerator drawers, had added more freon, and claimed that
everything in the small vaultsmincluding 4Emwas exactly the way it
should be.

Hearing no further sound, Edmund turned the page and flipped to another
chapter about the various types of trauma that could be inflicted by
blunt weapons.

Then he noticed the sound of movement againma brushing, stirring.., and
then a loud thump.

Edmund sat bolt upright, blinking repeatedly. He knew this wasn't his
imagination, no way, no how. He had worked here in the morgue long
enough that he didn't get easily spooked by sounds of settling buildings
or whirring support machinery.

Another thump. Something striking metal.

He stood up, trying to determine the source of the noise.

He wondered if someone was hurt, or if some sinister lurker had slipped
into the quiet morgue.., but why? Edmund had been at his station for the
previous three hours and he had heard nothing, seen nothing. He could
remember everyone who had entered the place.

Again, he heard a pounding, and a thump, and a scraping.

There was no pretense of quiet at all anymore. Someone hammered inside a
chamber, growing more frantic.

Edmund scuttled to the rear of the room with growing dread--in his
heart, he knew where he would find the Source of the noise. One of the
refrigerator drawersmone of the drawers that contained a cadaver.

He had read horror stories in school, especially Edgar

Tile X-FILES Allan Poe, about premature burials, people not actually
dead. He had heard spooky stories about comatose victims slammed into
morgue refrigerators until they died from the cold rather than their own
injuries--patients who had been misdiagnosed, in a diabetic shock or
epileptic seizures that gave all the appearance of death.

From his limited medical expertise, Edmund had dismissed each of these
anecdotal examples as urban legends, old wives' tales.., but right now
there could be no mistaking it.

Someone was pounding from the inside of one of the refrigerator doors.

He went over, listening. "Hello!" he shouted. "I'll get you out." It was
the least he could do.

A RESTRICTED sign marked the drawer making the sounds, yellow tape, and
a BIOHAZARD symbol. Drawer 4E.

This one contained the body of the dead security guard, and Edmund knew
the blotched, lumpy, slime-covered corpse.) had been inside the drawer
for days. Days! Agent even performed an autopsy on the man. '.

This guy could not still bealive. The restless noises fell quiet after
his shout, then heard a stirring, almost like .. . rats crawling within
the walls.

Edmund swallowed hard. Was this a prank, trying to Spock him? People
picked on him often, called him a geek.

If this was a joke, he would get even with them. But someone needed
help, Edmund had to take the chance. :

"Are you in there?" he said, leaning closer to the refrigerator door.

"I'll let you out." He pressed his white together to squeeze just a
little more bravery into his and tugged on the handle of 4E.

The door popped open, and something inside tried to push its way free.

Something horrible.

Edmund screamed and fought against the door. He a strange twisted shape
inside the unlit chamber thrashing about, denting the stainless-steel
walls. The sliding drawer rocked and rattled.

A fleshy appendage protruded, bending around in ways no jointed limb
would ever move.., more like a stubby ten tacle.

Edmund wailed again and used his back to push against the door,
squirming out of the way so the groping thing would not be able to touch
him. His weight was more than enough to force back the attack. Other
protrusions from the body core, twisted lumps that seemed to have been
arms or hands at one point, scraped and scrabbled for a hold against the
slippery metal door, trying to get in.

A sticky coating of slime, like saliva, drooled from the inside ceiling
of the drawer.

Edmund pushed hard enough that the door almost closed. Two of the
tentacles and one many-jointed finger were caught in the edge. Other
limbs--far too many for the normal complement of arms and legs--flailed
and pounded, struggling to get out.

But he heard no sound from vocal chords. No words. No scream of pain.

Just frantic movement.

Edmund pushed harder, crushing the pseudo-fingers.

Finally they jerked and broke away, yanking themselves back into the
relative safety of the refrigerator drawer.

Biting back an outcry, Edmund slammed himself against the steel door,
shoving until he heard the latch click and lock into place.

Trembling with a huge sigh of relief, he fiddled with the latch to make
sure it was solid. Then he stood in shock, star ing at the silent
refrigerator drawer.

He had a moment of blessed peacebut then he heard the trapped thing
inside pounding about in a frenzy.

Edmund shouted at it in panic, "Be quiet in there!"

The best thing he could think of was to rush to the tem perature
controls, where he dialed the setting as low as it could possibly go to
hard freeze. That would knock the thing down, keep it still. The
refrigerators had just been charged, and the freezers would do their
work quickly. They were designed to preserve evidence and tissue without
any chance of further decay or handling damage.

Inside the coffin-sized drawer, the cold recirculating air would even
now be intense, stunning that thing that had somehow gotten inside where
the guard's body was stored.

In a few moments he heard the frantic thrashing begin to subside--but it
might have been just a ruse. Edmund wanted to run, but he didn't dare
leave. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't think of any other way to
deal with the problem. Cold ... cold. That would freeze the thing.

The thumping and scrabbling slowed, and finally Edmund got up the nerve
to hurry to the telephone. He punched a button and called Security.

When two hospital guards eventually came down-- already skeptical and
taking their sweet time, since they received more false alarms from
night-shift morgue atten dants than in any other place or any other time
in the hospi,:: tal--the creature inside the drawer had fallen entirely
silent.

Probably frozen by now.

They laughed at Edmund, thinking it was just his imagi nation. But he
endured their joking for now.

He stood back, unwilling to be anywhere close by they opened up drawer
4E. He warned them again, but they slid open the drawer anyway.

Their laughter stopped instantly as they stared down the hideous
remains.

SEVEiiteeii Ross Island Bridge Portland, Oregon Thursday, 7:18 A. M.

The bridge spread out into the elrly morning fog. Its vaulted and lacy
metal girders disap peared into the mist like an infinite tunnel.

To Jeremy Dorman it was just a route across the Willamette River on his
long and stumbling trek out of the city, toward the wilderness .. .

toward where he might find Patrice and Jody Kennessy.

He took another step, then another, weaving. He couldn't feel his feet;
they were just lumps of distant flesh at the ends of his legs, which
themselves felt rubbery, as if his body were changing, altering, growing
joints in odd places.

At the peak of the bridge, he felt suspended in air, though the dawn
murk prevented him from seeing the river far below. The city lights of
skyscrapers and streetlamps were mere fairy glows.

Dorman staggered along, focusing his mind on the van ishing point, where
the bridge disappeared into the fog. His goal was just to get to the
other side of the bridge. One step Tli(

another for himself, and another, until he finally made his way out of
Portland.

	The wooded coastal mountains--the precious dog--

seemed an impossibly long distance away.

	The morning air was clammy and cold, but he couldn't feel it, didn't
notice his sticky clothes. His skin crawled with gooseflesh, but it had
nothing to do with the temperature, just the rampant disaster happening
within all of his cells.

As a scientist, he should have found it interesting--but as the victim
of the change, he found it only horrifying.

	Dorman swallowed hard. His throat felt slick, as if clogged with slime,
a mucus that oozed from his pores.

When he clenched his teeth, they rattled loosely in their gums. His
vision carried a black fringe of static around the edges.

	He walked onward. He had no other alternative.

	A pickup truck roared by on the deck plates of the bridge. The echoes
of the engine and the tires throbbed in his ears. He watched the red
taillights disappear, i Suddenly Dorman's stomach clenched, his spine
whipped about like an angry serpent. He feared he would disintegrate
here, slough off into a pool of dissociated flesh and twitching muscles,
a gelatinous mass that would drip down beneath the grated walkway of the
bridge.

	"Noooo!" he cried, a howling inhuman voice in the still ness.

	Dorman reached out with one of his slick, waxy hands and grabbed the
bridge railing to support himself, his body to cease its convulsions. He
was losing control again.

	It was getting harder and harder to stop his body. All his biological
systems were refusing commands from his mind, taking on a life of their
own. He gripped the bridge rail with both hands and squeezed until he
thouglt the steel would bend.

		He must have looked like a potential suicide waiting to leap over the
edge into the infinite murk of whispering water belowmbut Dorman had no
intention of killing him self.

In fact, everything he was doing was a desperate effort to keep himself
alive, no matter what. No matter the cost.

		He couldn't go to a hospital or seek other medical atten tion-no
doctor in the world would know how to treat his affliction. And any time
he reported his name, he might draw the attention of ... unwanted eyes.
He couldn't risk that. He would have to endure the pain for now.

	Finally, when the spasm passed and he felt only weak and trembly,
Dorman set off again. His body wouldn't fall apart on him yet. Not yet.
But he needed to focus, needed to reestablish the goal in his mind.

	He had to find the damned dog.

	He reached into his tattered shirt pocket and pawed out the wrinkled,
soot-smudged photo he had taken from the broken frame in David
Kennessy's desk. Lovely young Patrice with her fine features and
strawberry blond hair, and wiry, tousle-haired Jody grinning for the
camera. Their expressions reflected the peaceful times before Jody's i
leukemia, before David's desperate drive for research.

	Dorman narrowed his eyes and burned the picture into his brain.

	He had been a close friend of the Kennessys. He had been Jody's
surrogate uncle, practically a member of the familymfar more than the
skittish and rude brother Darin, that's for sure. And because he knew
her so well, Dorman had a good idea where Patrice would think to hide.
She would imagine she was safe there, since Darin had loved his secrets
so much.

	In the deep pocket of his tattered jacket, the revolver he had taken
from the security guard hung like a heavy club.

	When he finally reached the far end of the Ross Island Bridge, Dorman
stared westward. The forested, fog-

	shrouded mountains of the coast were a long distance away.

rl 10S

THE X-Files want to have to kill them--hell, the kid was already a
skeleton, nearly dead from his leukemia--but he would shoot them, and
the dog, too, if it became necessary. In the big picture, it didn't
really matter how much he cared for them.

He already had plenty of blood on his hands.

Once again, he cursed David and his naivet6. Darin had understood, and
he had run to hide under a rock. But David, hot-headed and desperate to
help Jody, had blindly ignored the true sources of funding for their
work. Did he really think they were givg Dymar all those millions just
so David Kennessy could turn around and decide the morally responsible
approach to its use?

David had stumbled into a political minefield, and he had set in motion
all the events that had caused so much damageincluding Jeremy Dorman's
own desperate gambit for survival.

A gambit that was failing. Though the prototype samples had kept him
alive at first, now his entire body was falling into a biological
meltdown, and he could do nothing about it.

At least, not until he found the dog.

Oregon Coast Thursday, 12:25 P. M.

Mulder pulled up to the Mini Serve pump in the small, rundown gas
station. As he got out of the car, he looked toward the glassed-in
office and the tall, unlit Conoco sign. He half expected to see old men
sitting in rocking chairs on the porch, or at least someone coming out
to offer Andy Griffith-like hospitality.

Scully got out of the car to stretch. They had been driv ing for hours
up Highway 101; seeing the rugged coastline, small villages, and
secluded houses tucked away into the forested hills.

Somewhere out here David Kennessy's brother had joined his isolated
group of survivalists, and it was the same general area where the black
Lab had been hit by the car. That made too great a coincidence for
Mulder's mind. He wanted to find Darin and get some straight answers
about the Dymar research.. If Darin knew why Dymar had been destroyed,
he might also know why Patrice had gone missing.

But further information on the survivalists was vague.

The group, by its very nature, kept its exact location secret, TIE
X-FILES without phones or electricity. Finding the camp might be as hard
as finding Patrice and Jody.

Mulder popped the gas tank and lifted the nozzle from the pump. Then the
office door banged open, but instead of a "service with a smile"

attendant, a short potbellied man with a fringe of gray-white hair
scuttled out.

"Hey, don't touch that!" the potbellied man snapped, wearing a stormy
expression. "This ain't no self-serve."

Mulder looked at the gas nozzle in his hand, then at the Mini Serve
sign. The potbellied man came over and grabbed the nozzle out of
Mulder's grasp as if it were a dangerous toy in the hands of a child.

The man slid the nozzle into the gas tank, squeezed and locked on the
handle, then stepped back proudly, as if only a professional could be
trusted with such a delicate operation.

"What is the problem, sir?" Scully asked.

The potbellied man glowered at her, then at Mulder, as they were
incredibly stupid. "Damn Californians." He.

shook his head after glancing at the license plate of their rental car.

"This is Oregon. We don't allow amateurs to pump their own gas."

Mulder and Scully looked at each other from across the roof of the car.

"Actually, we're not Californians," Mulder said, reaching inside his
overcoat. "We' re federal agents. We work for the FBI--and I can assure
you that pumping gasis one of rigorous training courses we're required
to undergo at tico." He flashed his ID and gestured over at Scully. "In
Agent Scully here is nearly as qualified as I am to fill up a tank."

The potbellied man looked at Mulder skeptically.

flannel shirt was oil-stained and tattered. His jowl shaved
intermittently, giving him a rugged, patchy ance. He didn't seem the
type ever to have dirtied his with knotting a necktie.

Scully drew out the photo of Patrice and Jody.

"We're searching for these people," she said. "A woman, mid-thirties,
her son, twelve years old."

"Never seen 'em," the man said, then devoted his entire attention to the
gas nozzlel On the pump, numbers clicked around and around in circles.

"They're also with a dog," Mulder said, "a black Labrador."

"Never seen 'em," the man repeated.

"You didn't even look at the picture, sir." Scully pushed it closer to
his face across the top of the car.

The man looked at it carefully, then turned away again.

"Never seen 'em. I got better things to do than to keep my eye on every
stranger that comes through here."

Mulder raised his eyebrows. In his mind this man was exactly the type
who would keep a careful eye on every stranger or customer who came
through--and he had no doubt that before the afternoon was over,
everyone within ten miles would hear the gossip that federal agents were
searching for someone on the isolated stretches of the Ore gon coast.

"You wouldn't happen to have any idea where we might locate a
survivalist compound in this area?" Mulder added.

"We believe they may have been taken there, to be with a family member."

The potbellied man raised his eyebrows. "I know some of those places
exist in the hills and the thick forestmnobody in their right mind goes
looking too close for them."

Scully took out her business card. "If you do see any thing, sir, we'd
appreciate it if you give us a call. We're not trying to arrest these
two for anything. They need help."

"Sure, always happy to do my duty," the man said, and tucked the card
into his shirt pocket without even glancing at it. He topped off the gas
tank to an even dollar amount and then, maliciously, it seemed, squirted
a few cents more into the tank.

Mulder paid him, got a receipt, and then he and Scully climbed back in
the car. "People around here sure value their privacy," Mulder said.

"Especially outside of the cities, Oregon has a reputation for harboring
survivalists, isolation ists, and anybody else who doesn't want to be
bothered."

Scully glanced down at the photo in her hands, at Jody Kennessy's
smiling face, and Mulder knew what must be occupying her mind. "I wonder
why David Kennessy's brother wanted so badly to drop out of sight," she
said.

After four more hours of knocking on doors, stopping at cafes, souvenir
shops, and art galleries scattered along the back roads, Mulder wasn't
sure they would get any out of continuing their methodical search unless
they a better lead to the location of Darin Kennessy.

But they could either sit and cool their heels in their Lin coln City
motel room, or they could do something. Mulder preferred to do
something. Usually.

He picked up his cell phone to see if he could call Quinton, the medical
examiner, to check on any results the analysis of the strange mucus, but
he saw that the phone was out of range. He sighed. They could have
missed a dozen phone calls by now. The wooded mountains sparsely
inhabited, often even without electrical Cellular phone substations were
too widely separated to reception. He collapsed the antenna and tucked
the back into his pocket.

"Looks like we're on our own, Scully," he said.

The brooding pines stood dense and dominant on side of the road, like a
cathedral tunnel. Wet leaves, needles, and slick moisture coated the
pavement.

had bothered to put up an unbroken barbed-wire fence which "No
Trespassing" signs dangled at frequent intervals, Mulder drove slowly,
glancing from side to side.

too friendly, are they?"

"Seems like they're overdoing it a bit," Scully agreed: "Anybody who
needs that much privacy must be hiding thing. Do you think we're close
to the survivalist compound'

Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder saw a black shape moving, an animal
loping along. He squinted at it intently, then hit the brakes.

"Look, Scully!" He pointed, sure of what he saw in the trees behind the
barbed-wire fence: a black dog about the right size to be the missing
pet, looking at them curiously, then loping back off into the trees.

"Let's go check it out.

Maybe it's Vader."

He swung the car onto the narrow gravel shoulder, then hopped out.

Scully exited into the ditch, trying to maintain her footing.

Mulder sprinted to the barbed wire, pushing down on the rusted strands
and ducking through. He turned to hold one of the wires up for Scully.

Off in the trees, the dog looked at them before trotting nervously away.

"Here, boy!" Mulder called, then tried whistling. He ran crashing after
it through the underbrush. The dog barked and turned and bolted.

Scully chased after him. "That's not the way to get a skittish dog to
come back to you," she said.

Mulder paused to listen, and the dog barked again.

"Come on, Scully."

Along the trees even this deep in the woods he saw frequent "No
Trespassing" signs, along with "Private Property, Warning--Violators
Will Be Prosecuted." Several of the signs were peppered with buckshot
dents.

Scully hurried, but kept herself intensely alert, aware of the very real
danger of excessive traps and the illegal countermeasures some of these
survivalist groups were known to use. At any moment they could step into
a hunting snare, snap a trip wire, or find themselves dropped into a
trap pit.

Finally, as Mulder continued up the slope after the black dog, ducking
between trees and wheezing from lack of breath, he reached the crest of
the hill. A line of DANGER signs marked the area.

Tile -FII, ES As Scully came close to him, flushed from the pursuit,
they topped the rise. "Uh-oh, Mulder."

Suddenly dozens of dogs began barking and baying. She saw a chain-link
fence topped with razor wire, surrounding an entire compound of
half-buried houses, bunkers, prefab ricated cabins, and guard shacks.

The black dog raced toward the compound.

Mulder and Scully skidded to a stop in the soft dirt as armed men rushed
from the guard shacks at the cor ners of the compound. Other people
stepped out of the ins. Women peered through the windows, grabbing
children and protecting them from what they thought be an unexpected
government raid. The men shouted raised their rifles, firing warning
shots into the air.

Mulder instantly held up his hands. Other dogs bounding out of the
compound, German shepherds, rott-i weilers, and Doterman pinschers.

"Mulder, I think we found the survivalists we've looking for," Scully
said.

Survivalist Compound Thursday, 5 : 09 P. M.

"We're federal agents," Mulder announced.

"I'm going to reach for my iden[Jfica[/on."

With agonizing slowness, he groped inside his topcoat.

Unfortunately, a11 the weapons remained leve|ed at him, if possible with
even greater are.

He realized that radical survivalists probably wanted nothing to do with
any government agency.

One middle-aged man with a |ong beard stepped forward to the fence and
glowered at them. "And do federa| agents not know how to read?" he said
in a firm, inte|ligent voice. "You've passed dozens NO TRESPASSING signs
to get here. Do you have a du|y authorized search warrant?"

"I'm sorry, sir," Scully said. "We were trying to stop your dog, the
black one. We're searching for a man named Darin Kennessy. We have
reason to believe he may have information on these people." She reached
inside her jacket and withdrew the photos. "A woman and her boy."

"If you come one step closer, you'll be into a minefield,"

the bearded man said. The other survivalists continued Tile l-FIl, ES
watching Mulder and Scully with increased suspicion. "Just stay where
you are."

Mulder couldn't imagine that the survivalists would let their dogs run
loose if there were really a minefield around the compound.., but, then
again, it wasn't completely incon ceivable either. He didn't feel like
arguing with this man.

"Who are they?" one of the women asked, also holding a high-powered
rifle. "Those two people you're looking for?"

She looked at least as deadly as the men. "And why do you need to talk
to Darin?"

Mulder kept his face impassive, not showing his excite ment at learning
they had finally tracked down the brother of David Kennessy.

"The boy is the nephew of Darin Kennessy. He desper ately needs medical
attention," Scully said, raising her voice.

"They have a black Labrador dog. We saw your dog and thought it might be
the one we were looking for."

The man with the beard laughed. "This is a spaniel, not black Lab," he
said.

"What happened to the boy's dad?" the woman asked.

"He was recently killed," Mulder said. "The where he worked--the same
place Darin worked--was destroyed in a fire. The woman and the boy
disappeare& We hoped they might have come here, to be with you.

"why should we trust you?" the man with the asked. "You're probably the
people Darin warned us about.!

"Go get Darin," the woman yelled over her then she looked at the bearded
man. "He's the one got to decide this.

Besides, we have plenty of firepower take care of these two, if there's
trouble."

"There won't be any trouble," Scully assured them.

just need some information."

A lean man with bushy cinnamon-red hair climbed the underground stairs
of one of the half-buried Uncertainly, he came closer, approaching the
bearded and the angry-looking woman.

"I'm Darin Kennessy, David's brother. What is it you want?"

Shouting across the fence, Mulder and Scully briefly explained the
situation, and Darin Kennessy looked deeply disturbed. "You suspected
something beforehand, didn't you--before Dymar was destroyed and your
brother was killed?" Mulder asked. "You left your research many months
ago and came out here.., to hide?"

Darin became indignant. "I left my research for philosophical reasons. I
thought the technology, was turning in a very alarming direction, and I
did not like some of the funding.., sources my brother was using. I
wanted to separate myself from the work and the men associated with it.

Cut loose entirely."

"We're trying to stay away from people like that," the man with the
beard said. "We're trying to stay away from everything, build our own
life here. We want to create a protected place to live with caring
neighbors, with strong families.

We're self-sufficient. We don't need any interference from people like
you--people who wear suits and ties."

Mulder cocked his chin. "Did you folks by any chance read the Unabomber
Manifesto?"

Darin Kennessy scowled. "I'm as repelled by the Unabomber's use of bomb
technology as I am by the atrocities of modern technology. But not
everything--just one facet in particular. Nanotechnology."

He waited for a beat. Mulder thought the rugged dress and homespun
appearance of the man shifted subtly, so he could see the highly
intelligent computer chip researcher hiding beneath the disguise. "Very
tiny self-replicating machines small enough to work inside a human cell,
versatile enough to assemble just about anything ... and smart enough to
know what they're doing."

Mulder looked at Scully. "Big things come in small packages."

Darin's eyes shone with fervor. "Because each nanomachine is so small,
it can move its parts very rapmiymtmm< of hummingbird's wings vibrating.
A swarm could scour through a pile of rubble or a tank of and separate
out every single atom of gold, platinum, or ver and sort them into
convenient bins, all in total with no waste and no unsightly mess." i
Scully's brow furrowed. "And this was your work?"

"I started long before that," Darin said. "But and I took our ideas in
even more exciting Inside a human body, nano-scouts could do the same as
white corpuscles do in fighting diseases, bacteria, viruses. But unlike
white corpuscles, these can also inspect DNA strands, find any
individual cell turns cancerous, thenreprogram the DNA, fixing errors
and mutations they find. What if we could in creating infinitesimal
devices that can be injected body to act as 'biological robots that seek
out and repair damage on a level?"

"A cure for cancer," Mulder said.

"And everything else."

Scully flashed him a somewhat skeptical look. "Mr.

nessy, I've read some speculative pieces in popular " magazines, but
certainly nothing that would suggest we within decades of having such a
breakthrough in nology."

"Progress is often closer than you think,", he "Researchers at the
University of Wisconsin used graphic techniques to produce a train of
gears a tenth millimeter across. Engineers at AT&T Bell Laboratories
ated semiconductors out of clusters containing only twelve atoms at a
time. Using scanning microscopy, scientists at the IBM Almaden Research
drew a complete map of Earth's western hemisphere fiftieth the diameter
of a human hair."

	"But there must be a limit to how small we can physi cally manipulate
tools and circuit paths," Mulder said.

	The dogs set up a louder barking, and the man with the beard went over
to shush them. Darin Kennessy frowned, distracted, as if torn by his
need to hide and deny all his technological breakthroughs and his clear
passion for the work he had abandoned.

	"That's only tackling the problem from one direction.

	Between David and myself, we also started to build from the bottom up.
Self-assembly, the way nature does it.

	Researchers at Harvard have made use of amino acids and proteins as
templates for new structures smaller than the size of a cell, for
instance.

	"With our combined expertise in silicon microminiatur ization
techniques and biological self-assembly, we tried to match up those
advances to yield a sudden breakthrough."

	"And did you?"

	"Maybe. It seemed to be working very well, up until the time I
abandoned it. I suspect my fool brother continued pushing, playing with
fire."

	"So why did you leave your research, if it was so promis ing?"

	"There's a dark side, Agent Mulder," Darin continued, glancing over at
the other survivalists. "Mistakes happen.

	Researchers usually screw up half a dozen times before they achieve
success--it's just part of the learning process. The question is, can we
afford that learning process with nano technology?"

	The woman with the shotgun grumbled, but kept her direct comments to
herself.

	"Just suppose one of our first nanomachines--a simple one, without
fail-safe programming--happens to escape from the lab," Darin said. "If
this one goes about copying itself, and each copy builds more copies, in
about ten hours there would be sixty-eight billion nanomachines. In less
than two days, the runaway nanomachines could take apart the TEE ](FILES
entire Earth--working one molecule at a time! Two days, beginning to
end. Think of the last time you saw any ernment make a decision that
fast, even in an emergency."

No wonder Kennessy's research was so threatening people in
well-established circles of power, Mulder No wonder they might be trying
to suppress it, at all costs.

"But you left Dymar before you reached a point you could release your
findings?" Scully asked.

"Nobody was ever going to release our findings,"

said, his voice dripping with scorn. "I knew it would be made available
to society. David made noises about public, releasing the results of our
first tests with lab and small animals, but I always talked him out of
it, did our assistant, Jeremy Dorman." He drew a deep "I guess he must
have come too close, if those people they finally had to burn down the
lab facility and our records."

"Patrice and Jody aren't with you, are they?" Scully confirming her
suspicions. "Do you know where they Darin snorted. "No, we went our
separate ways, haven't spoken to any of them since I came out here to
the camp." He gestured to the dogs, the guard shacks, razor wire. "This
wouldn't be scenic enough for them."

"But you are Jody's uncle," Mulder said.

"The only person that kid spent time with was Dorman. He was the closest
thing to a real uncle the had."

"He was also killed in the Dymar fire," Scully said.

"He was low man on the totem pole," Darin said, "but he knew how to pull
the business deals. He our initial funding and kept it coming. When I
left to out here, I think he was perfectly happy to step into; shoes,
working with David."

Darin frowned. "But I had nothing more to do them, not then and not
now." He seemed deeply as if the news of his brother's death was just
now through his consciousness. "We used to be close, used to spend time
out in the deep woods."

"Where?" Mulder asked.

"Patrice designed a little cabin for me, just to get away from it all."

Scully looked at Mulder, than at Darin. "Sir, could you tell us how we
could locate the cabin?"

Darin frowned again, looking skittish and uneasy. "It's up near Colvain,
off on some winding fire roads."

"Here's my card," Mulder said. "In case they do show up or you learn
anything."

Darin frowned at him. "We don't have any phones here."

Scully grabbed Mulder's sleeve. "Thank you for your time."

"Be careful of the minefield," the man with the beard warned.

"We'll watch our step," Scully said.

Feeling tired and sweaty, Mulder was nonetheless excited by the
information they had learned.

They made their way back through the thick woods past the dozens of
warning signs to where theyhad parked their car at the edge of the road.

Scully couldn't believe how the survivalists lived. "Some people will do
anything to survive," she muttered.

Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Thursday, 11:47 P. M.

On hearing Jody's cry, Patrice awoke from a restless sleep. She sat up
in her narrow cot in the cabin's single back bedroom, throwing aside the
musty-smelling blankets.

"Jody!"

The cabin was dark and too silent--until the dog woofed, once. She
blinked the disorientation of sleep away and brushed mussed strawberry
blond hair away fro. m her eyes. She struggled free of the last tangles
of blankets, as if they were a restraining net trying to keep her from
the boy. He needed her.

On her way to the main room, she stumbled into an old wooden chair, hurt
her foot as she kicked it away, then plunged blindly ahead into the
darkness. "Jody!"

Pne moonlight gave just enough silvery light to guide her way once she
got her bearings. On the sofa in the main room, she saw her boy lying in
a sweat. The last embers of their fire in the hearth glowed red-orange,
providing more Wood smell than heat. After dark, no one should have been
able to see the smoke.

Tile X-FII, ES For a moment the smoldering embers reminded her the Dymar
fire, where her husband had died in the ra flames. She shuddered at the
thought, the reminder of violence. David had been ambitious and
impulsive and haps he had taken ill-advised risks. But David had
passionately in his research, and he had tried to do his best.

Now he had died for his discoveries .. . and Jody lost his father.

Vader sat erect close to Jody, a black guardian the boy's chest in
concern. Seeing Patrice, Vader's thumped on the hardwood floor next to
where one of pillowd had fallen. The black Lab pushed his muzzle the
blankets, whining.

Jody moaned and made another frightened sound.

Patrice stopped, looking down at her son. Vader back up with his liquid
brown eyes, emitting another as if asking why she didn't do anything.
But she let Jody Nightmares again.

Several times in the past week, Jody had awakeneft the isolated and
silent cabin, frightened and lost.

the start of their desperate flight, he'd had good for nightmares. But
was it his fear that brought on dreams.., or something else?

Patrice knelt down, and Vader squirmed with pushing his nose against her
side, anxious for her to sure him. She patted him on the head, thumping
hard, the way he had always liked it. "It's okay, Vader," she attempting
to soothe herself more than the dog.

With the flat of her palm, she touched Jody's feeling the heat. The boy
stirred, and she wondered if should wake him. His body was a war zone, a
cellular tlefield. Though David had repeatedly denied what he done, she
knew full well what caused the fever.

Sometimes Patrice wondered if her son would be off dead after all--and
then she hated herself for even ing such things

Vader padded across the floor toward the fireplace, nosed around the
base of a faded overstuffed chair, and came back to Jody's bedside with
a slobber-soggy tennis ball in his jaws. He wanted to play, as if
convinced that would make everything all right.

Patrice frowned at Vader, turning away from the sofa.

"You've got so damned much energy, you know that?"

Vader whined, then chewed on the tennis ball.

She remembered sitting at home in their living room, back in the old
suburban house in Tigard--now trashed and ransacked--with David. Jody,
in extreme pain from his can cer, had soaked in a hot, hot bath, taken
his prescription painkillers, and gone to bed early, leaving his parents
alone.

Vader didn't want to settle down, though, and if his boy wouldn't play,
then he would pester the adults. David halfheartedly played tug-of-war
with the black Lab, while Patrice watched with a mixture of uneasiness
and fascina tion. The family dog was twelve 'years old already, the same
age as Jody, and he shouldn't have been nearly so frisky.

"Vader's like a puppy again," Patrice said. Previously, the black Lab
had settled into a middle-aged routine of sleeping most of the time,
except for a lot of licking and tail- wagging to greet them every day
when they came home. But lately the dog had been more energetic and
playful than he had been in years. "I wonder what happened to him," she
said.

David's grin, his short dark hair, and his heavy eyebrows made him look
dashing. "Nothing."

Patrice sat up and pulled her hand away from him. "Did you take Vader
into your lab again? What did you do to him?" She raised her voice, and
the words came out with cold anger. "What did you do to him!"

Vader dropped the pull-toy in his jaws, staring at her as if she had
gone insane. What business did she have yelling when they were trying to
play?

TIle X-FILES David looked at her, hard. He raised his eyebrows in
expression of sincerity. "I didn't do anything. Honest."

With a woof, Vader lunged back with the pull-toy wagging his tail and
growling as he dug his paws into carpet. David fought back, leaning
against the sofa to more leverage. "Just look at him! How can you think
thing's wrong?"

But in their years of marriage, Patrice had learned thing, and she had
learned to hate it. She could always when David was lying ...

Her husband had been focused on his research, ing ahead and ignoring
regulations and restrictions.

didn't consult with her on many things, just barged doing what he
insisted was right. That was just the David Kennessy did things.

He had been too focused, too involved in his work to note of the
suspicious occurrences at Dymar until it was late. She herself had
noticed things, people watching house at night, keeping an eye on her
when she was out David, odd clicks on the phone line.., but David had
her worries aside. Such a brilliant man, yet so oblivious. At last
moment, at least, he had called her, warned her.

She had grabbed Jody and run, even as the 1 burned down the Dymar
facility, trapping her husband the inferno with Jeremy; she barely made
it into hiding with her son. Her healthy son.

On the sofa, Jody fell into a more restful sleep. His perature remained
high, but Patrice knew she could nothing about that. She tucked the
blankets around again, brushed straight the sweat-sticky bangs across
forehead.

Vader let the tennis ball thump on the floor, giving up the possibility
of play. With a heavy sigh, the dog three times in a circle in front of
the sofa, then slumped.

a comfortable position, guarding his boy. He let out a heavy animal
sigh.

Comforted by the dog's devotion, Patrice wandered back to her cot, glad
she hadn't awakened her son after all. At least she hadn't switched on
any lights.., lights that could have been seen out in the darkness.

Leaving Jody to sleep, she lay awake in her own cot, alternately growing
too hot, then shivering. Patrice longed for rest, but she knew she
couldn't let her guard down. Not for an instant.

With her eyes closed, Patrice quietly cursed her husband and listened
for sounds outside.

Mercy Hospital Morgue Portland, Oregon Friday, 5:09 A. M.

Edmund was amazed at how fast the officials arrived, considering that
they supposedly came all the way from Atlanta, Georgia. Their very
demeanor unnerved him so much he didn't dare question their credentials.

He was just glad that somebody seemed to believe his story.

Edmund had sealed drawer 4E after the previous night's.

incident and lowered the temperature as far as it would go, though
nobody showed, much interest in looking for the monsters that had given
him the willies. He was waiting to.

talk to his mentor Dr. Quinton, who was busy analyzing the mucus
specimen taken during the autopsy. He expected the ME any minute now,
and then he would feel vindicated.

But the officials showed up first, three of them, nondescript but
professional, with a manner that made Edmund want to avert his eyes.

They looked clean-cut, well-dressed, but grim.

"We're here from the Centers for Disease Control," one man said and
ripped out a badge bearing a gold-plated TIle X-FILES shield and a
blurry ID photo. He folded the back into his suit faster than Edmund
could make out any the words.

"The CDC?" he stammered. "Are you here for ... ?"

"It's imperative that we confiscate the organic tissue have stored in
your morgue refrigerator," said the man the left. "We understand you had
an incident yesterday."

"We certainly did," Edmund said. "Have you seen sort of thing before? I
looked in all my medical books--"

"We have to destroy the specimen, just to be safe,"

the man on the right. Edmund felt relieved to know someone was in
charge, someone else could take care of from here.

"We need to inspect all records you have re victim, the autopsy, and any
specimens you might kept," the man in the middle said. "We're also going
to extreme precautions to sterilize every inch of your refrigerators."

"Do you think I'm infected?" Edmund said.

"That's highly unlikely, sir. You would have symptoms immediately."

Edmund swallowed hard. But he knew his ties.

"But--but I have to get approval," he said. "The examiner has explicit
responsibility."

"Yes, I do," Frank Quinton said, walking into morgue and scanning the
situation. The medical grandfatherly face clouded oven "What's going on
here?"

The man on the right spoke up. "I assure you, sir, have the proper
authority here. This is a potential matter national security and public
health. We are very concerned "And so am I," Quinton said. "Are you
working other federal agents who were here?"

"This ... phase of the operation is out of their "

tion, sir. This outbreak poses an extreme danger proper containment
procedures."

The central man's eyes were hard, and even the ME seemed intimidated.

"Sir," the first man said, "we need to get an entire team In here to
remove the.., biomaterial from the refrigerator.

We'll inconvenience you as little as possible."

"Well, I suppose ..." Quinton's voice trailed off, soundg flustered as
the three CDC men quickly ushered them both out of the quiet and clean
room.

"Edmund, let's go for a cup of coffee," Quinton finally said, glancing
uneasily over his shoulder.

Happy for the coroner's invitation--he had never been so lucky
before--Edmund took the elevator and went to the hospital cafeteria for
a while, still trying to recover. He kept seeing the many-tentacled
creature trying to escape from the morgue refrigerator drawer.

Normally he would have had a thousand questions for the ME, checking
details, demonstrating all the trivia he had learned from his midnight
studies in the morgue. But Quin- ton sat quiet and reticent, looking at
his hands, deeply troubled.

He took out the card the FBI agents had given him previously, turning it
over and over in his hands.

When they returned to the basement level an hour later, they found that
the morgue had been scoured and sterilized.

	Drawer 4E had been ripped out entirely, its contents taken away. The
men had left no receipt, no paperwork.

"We don't have any way to contact them to find out their results,"
Edmund said.

But the medical examiner just shook his head. "Maybe that's for the
best."

The Devil's Churn Oregon Coast Friday, i0:13 A. M.

The ocean crashed against the black cliffs with a hollow booming sound
like boulders dropped from a reat height. The breeze at the scerc
overlook whipped cold and salb/ and wet against Scully's face.

"It's called the Devil's Chum," Mulder had said, though Scully could
certainly read the Oregon State Scenic Marker sign.

Below, the water turned milky in a frothing maelstrom as the breakers
slammed into a hollowed-out indentation in the cliff. Sea caves there
had collapsed, creating a sort of chute; as the waves struck the narrow
passage head-on, it funneled the force of the water and sprayed it into
a dramatic tower, like a water cannon blasting as high as the clifftops
above, drenching unwary sightseers.

According to the signs, dozens of people had died at this place:
unsuspecting tourists picking their way down to the mouth of the Chum,
caught standing in the wrong place when the unexpected geyser of water
exploded upward.

Their bodies had been battered against the algae-slick or simply sucked
out to sea.

	Station wagons, minivans, and rental cars were in the scenic area as
families from out of state as well locals came to stare down at the sea.
Obnoxious sea screamed overhead.

A battered old vending coach stood open with awnings rattling in the
breeze; a grinning man with a sold warmed-over hot dogs, sour coffee,
bagged chips, canned soft drinks. On the other side of the parking area,
woman with braids huddled in a down hunting vest, ing her handmade rugs
flap vigorously on a clothesline.

Fighting back a headache and drawing a deep breath the cool, salty
breeze, Scully buttoned her coat to warm. Mulder went directly over to
the cliff edge, ea peering down and waiting for the water to spray up.

withdrew her cell phone, glad to see that the signal strong enough, at
last. She punched in the buttons for Portland medical examiner.

	"Ah, Agent Scully," Dr. Quinton said, "I've been to call you all
morning."

"Any results?" she asked. After seeing the slide of dog's contaminated
blood at the veterinarian's, she had the medical examiner to look at his
own sample of the mucus she had taken during Vernon Ruckrnan's By the
unsteady-looking guardrail, Mulder fascination as a rooster tail of cold
spray jetted into the curling up to the precipice, and then raining back
down the sea. She gestured for Mulder to come back to her as pressed the
phone tightly against her ear, the ME's staticky words.

	'

	"Apparently something .. . unusual happened to plague victim's body in
the morgue refrigerator."

seemed hesitant, at a loss for words. "Our hearing noises, something
moving inside the sealed And it's been sealed since you left it."

		:

"That's impossible," Scully said. "The man couldn't still be alive. Even
if the plague put him in some kind of extreme coma, I'd already
performed an autopsy."

The ME said, "I know Edmund, and he's not the skittish sort. A little
bit of a pest sometimes, but this isn't the kind of story he would make
up. I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but ..." Quinton
hesitated again, and Scully pressed the phone closer to her ear,
straining to hear the undertone in his voice. "Unfortunately, before I
could check it out myself, some gentlemen from the Centers for Disease
Control came in and sterilized everything. As a precaution, they took
the entire refrigerator drawer."

"From the CDC?" Scully said in disbelief. She had worked many times with
the CDC, and they were always consummate professionals, following
official procedures rigorously.

This sounded like something else entirel someone else.

Now she was even more concerned about what she had learned earlier that
morning when she called Atlanta to check on the status of the sample she
had personally sent in. Apparentl their lab technician had lost the
specimen.

Mulder came up to her, brushing his damp hair back, though the wind
continued to blow it around. He looked at her, raising his eyebrows. She
watched him as she spoke into the phone, keeping her voice carefully
neutral. "Dr. Quinton, you kept a sample of the substance for your own
analysis.

Were you able to find anything?"

The ME pondered for a moment before answering. She heard static on the
line, clicking, a warbling background tone.

They still must be at the edge of reception for cellular transmissions.

"I think it's an infestation of some kind," Quinton said finally. "Tiny
flecks unlike anything I've seen before. The sample is utterly clotted
with them. Under highest magnification they don't look like any
microorganism I've ever seen.

Squarish little boxes, cubes, geometrical shapes ... "

Scully felt cold as she heard the ME's words, echoing what Darin
Kennessy had told them at the survivalist camp.

"Have you ever seen anything like this, Agent Scully?

the ME persisted on the phone. "You're a doctor yourself."

Scully cleared her throat. "I'll have to get back to you that, sir. Let
me speak with my partner and compare Thanks for your information." She
ended the call and looked at Mulder.

After she briefly recounted the conversation, nodded. "They sure were
eager to get rid of the body. Every trace."

Scully pondered as she listened to the roar of the against the rocks
below. "That doesn't sound like the way Centers for Disease Control
operates. No phone number in case Dr. Quinton has further Mulder
buttoned his coat against the chilly "Scully, I don't think that was the
CDC. i think it could be representatives from the same group that
arranged the destruction of Dymar Laboratory and pinned the on a
scapegoat animal rights group."

"Mulder, why would anyone be willing to take extreme action?"

"You heard Kennessy's brother. Nanotechnology he said. "It's gotten
loose somehow, maybe from a animal carrying something very dangerous.
The from the dead security guard sounds just like what we in the sample
of the dog's bloodm"

Scully put her hands on her hips as the sea whipped her red hair.

"Mulder, I think we need to find dog, and Patrice and Jody Kennessy."

Behind them the Devil's Churn erupted again with loud booming sound.

Spray shot high into the air. A of children stood next to their parents
at the guardrail cheered and laughed at the spectacle. No one seemed to
paying any attention to the food vendor in his van or braided woman with
her handmade rugs.

"I agree, Scullymand after that report from the ME, think maybe we
aren't the only ones looking for them."

TIteiit ? TIIIIEE Tillamook County Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 10:47 A.
M.

The cold rain sheeted down, drenching him and the roadside and
everything all aroundm but Jeremy Dorman's other problems were far worse
than a bit of lousy weather. The external world was all bad data to him
now, irrelevant numbness. The forest of nerves inside him pro vided
enough pain for a world all its own.

His shoes and clothes were soaked, his skin gray and clammy--but those
discomforts were insignificant com pared to the raging war within his
own cells. Slick patches of the protectant carrier fluid coated his
skin, swarming with the reproducing nanocritters.

His muscles trembled and vibrated, but he continued lifting his legs,
taking steps, moving along. Dorman's brain seemed like a mere passenger
in his body now. It took a con scious effort to keep the joints bending,
the limbs moving, like a puppeteer working a complicated new marionette
while wearing a blindfold and thick gloves.

A car roared past him, spraying water. Its tires struck a puddle in a
depression in the road and jetted cold rainwater all over him. The
taillights flickered red for an instant as driver realized what he had
done, and then, the man honked a few times and continued weaving the
road.

Dorman trudged along the muddy shoulder, He focused ahead. The long road
curved into the mountains. He had no idea how many miles he had from
Portland, but he hoped he could find some way hurry. He had no money and
he didn't dare rent a car way, at the risk of someone spotting his
identity. No knew he was still alive, and he wanted to keep it that Not
that he would trust his rebellious body or depth perception if he was
driving ...

He shambled past a small county weigh station, a shack with a gate and a
red stoplight for trucks.

miniblinds covered the windows, and a sign that looked if it hadn't been
changed in months said, "Weigh Closed."

As Dorman trudged past, he looked longingly at shelter. It would be
unheated, with no food or supplies, it would be dry. He longed to get
out of the rain for a to sleep.., but he would likely never wake up
again.

time was rapidly running out.

He continued past the weigh station. Waterlogged fields sprawled in one
direction, with a marsh on the side of the road. Dorman headed toward
the gentle slope leading into the mountains.

Strange and unfathomable shapes skirled across vision like static. The
nanocritters in his body were around with his optic nerves again, fixing
them, improvements.., or just toying with them. He able to see colors
for days.

Dorman clenched his jaws together, feeling the his bones. He almost
enjoyed the ache a real pain, phantom side effect of having his body
invaded by programmed machines.

He picked up his pace, so focused on keeping himself moving forward that
he didn't even hear the loud hum of the approaching truck.

The vehicle grew louder, a large log truck half-loaded with pine logs
whose bark had been splintered off and most of their large protruding
branches amputated. Dorman turned and looked at it, then stepped farther
to the side of the road. The driver flashed his headlights.

Dorman heard the engine growl as the trucker shifted down through the
gears. The air brakes sighed as the log truck came to a halt thirty feet
in front of Dorman.

He just stood and stared, unable to believe what had happened, what a
stroke of luck. This man was going to give him a ride. Dorman hurried
forward, squelching water from his shoes. He huddled his arms around his
chest.

The driver leaned over the seat and popped open the passenger door. The
rain continued to slash down, pelting the wet logs, steaming off the
truck's warm grille.

Dorman grabbed the door handle and swung it open.

His leg jittered as he lifted it to step on the running board.

Finally he gained his balance and hauled himself up. He was dripping,
exhausted, cold.

"Boy, you look miserable," the truck driver said. He was short and
portly, with dirty-blond hair and blue eyes.

"I am miserable," Dorman answered, surprised that his voice worked so
well.

"Well, then, be miserable inside the truck cab here. You got a place to
go-or just wandering?"

"I've got a place to go," Dorman said. "I'm just trying to get there."

"Well, you can ride with me until the Coast Highway turnoff. My name's
Wayne--Wayne Hykaway."

Dorman looked at him, suspicious. He didn't want his identity known.

"I'm .. . David," he said. He slammed the truck's door, shoving his
hands into the waterlogged pock ets of his tattered jacket, hunched over
and huddling into THE X-Files himself. Hykaway had extended his hand but
quickly it back when it became obvious Dorman had no intention shaking
it.

The interior of the cab was warm and humid.

blasted from the vents. The windshield wipers slapped and forth in an
effort to keep the view clean News played across the speakers of a
far-too-expensive sound tern, crackling with static from poor reception
out here the wilderness.

The trucker wrestled with the stick shift and rammed vehicle into gear
again. With a groan and a labor of engines, the log truck began to move
forward along the road uphill toward the trees.

As the truck picked up speed, Dorman could only that he was growing
closer to his destination every every mile. This man had no idea of the
deadly risk he just taken, but Dorman had to think of his ultimate goal
finding Patrice and Jodymand the dog. Whatever the cost.

Dorman sat back, pressed against the door of the trying to ignore the
guilt and fear. Water trickled down face, and he blinked it away. He
maintained his through the windshield, watching the wipers tock back
forth. He tried to keep as far away from Wayne Hykaway possible. He
didn't dare let the man touch him. He risk the exposure another body
would bring.

The cordial trucker switched off the talk radio and in vain to strike up
a conversation, but when proved reticent, he just began to talk about
himself He chatted about the books he liked to read, his hobby chi
relaxation techniques, how he had once trained ployed people.

Hykaway kept one hand on the steering wheel of, mammoth logging truck,
dnd with the other he fiddled the air vent controls, the heater. When he
couldn't think anything to say, he flicked on the radio again, tuning to
different station, then switched it off in disgust.

Dorman concentrated on his body, turning his thoughts inward. He could
feel his skin crawling and squirming, his muscle growths moving of their
own accord. He pressed his elbows against his ribs, feeling the clammy
fabric of his jacket as well as the slick ooze of the nanomachine
carrier mucus that seeped out of his pores.

After fifteen minutes of Dorman's trancelike silence, the trucker began
to glance at him sidelong, as if wondering what kind of psychopath he
had foolishly picked up.

Dorman avoided his gaze, staring out the side window-- and then his gut
spasmed. He hunched over and clenched his hands to his stomach. He
hissed breath through his teeth.

He felt something jerk beneath his skin, like a mole burrow ing through
his rib cage.

"Hey, are you all right?" the trucker said.

"Yes," Dorman answered, ripping the answer out of his voice box. He
squeezed hard enough until he could finally regain control over his
rebellious biological systems. He sucked in deep pounding breaths.

Finally the convulsions settled down again.

Still, he felt his internal organs moving, exploring their freedom,
twitching in places that should never have been able to move. It was
like a roiling storm inside of him.

Wayne Hykaway glanced at him again, then turned back to concentrate on
the wet road. He kept both hands gripped white on the steering wheel.

Dorman remained seated in silence, huddled against the hard comfort of
the passenger-side door. A bit of slime began to pool on the seat around
him.

He knew he could lose control again at any moment.

Every hour it got harder and harden ...

Ttle/T ?-Fiiilil Max's General Store and Art Gallery Colvain, Oregon
Friday, 12:01 P. M.

Scuhy was already Hred of driving and glad for the chance to stop and
ask a few more people if they recognized Patrice and Jody Kennessy.

Mulder sat in the passenger seat, munching cheese curls from a bag in
his lap and dropping a few crumbs on his overcoat. He plastered his face
to the unfolded official road map of the state of Oregon.

"I can't find this town on the map," Mulder said. "Colvain, Oregon."

Scully parked in front of a quaint old shake-shingle house with a
hand-painted sign dangling on a chain on a post out front. Max's General
Store and Art Gallery.

"Mulder, we're in thetown and I can't find it."

The heavy wooden door of the general store advertised Morley cigarettes;
a bell on the top jingled as they entered the creaking hardwood floor of
Max's. "Of course they'd have a bell," Mulder said, looking up.

Old 1950s-style coolers and refrigerators enameled white with chrome
trim--held lunch meats, bottled soft drinks, and frozen dinners. Boxes
around the cash register displayed giant-size Slim Jims and seemingly
infinite eties of beef jerky.

T-shirts hung on a rack beside shelves full of knacks, most made from
sweet-smelling cedar and with witty folk sayings related to the soggy
weather in gon. Shot glasses, placemats, playing cards, and key rounded
out the assortment.

Scully saw a few simple watercolor paintings aslant on the far wall
above a beer cooler; price tags from the gold-painted frames. "I wonder
if there's kind of county ordinance that requires each town to certain
number of art galleries," she said.

Behind the cash register, an old woman sat by newspaper racks and wire
trays that held gum, and breath mints. Her hair was dyed an outrageous
red, glasses thick and smudged with fingerprints. She was ing a
well-thumbed tabloid with headlines proclaiming foot Found in New
Jersey, Alien Embryos Frozen in Facility, and even Cannibal Cult in
Arkansas.

Mulder looked at the headlines and raised his at Scully. The red-headed
woman looked up over glasses. "May I help you folks? Do you need maps
sodas?"

Mulder flashed his badge and ID. "We're federal a ma'am. We're wondering
if you could give us cabin near here, some property owned by a Mr. Darin
nessy?"

Scully withdrew the much-handled Kennessy and spread them on the
counter. The woman folded her tabloid and shoved it beside the cash re
Through her smudged glasses, she peered down at photos.

"We're looking for these two people," Scully said, ing no further
information.

Jody Kennessy smiled optimistically up from the graph, but his face was
gaunt and sunken, his hair fallen out, his skin grayish and sickly from
the rigorous chemo and radiation treatments.

The woman removed her glasses and wiped them off with a Kleenex, then
put them on her face again. "Yes, I think I've seen these two before.

The woman at least. Been out here a week or two."

Mulder perked up. "Yes, that's about the time frame we're talking
about."

Sculiy leaned forward, unable to stop herself from telling too many
details, so as to enlist the woman's aid. "This young man is very
seriously ill. He's dying of leukemia. He needs immediate treatment. He
may have gotten signifi cantly worse since this photo was taken."

The woman looked down at Jody's photograph again.

"Well, then, maybe I'm wrong," she said. "As I recall, the boy with this
woman seemed pretty healthy to me. They could be staying out at the
Kennessys' cabin. It's been empty a long time."

The woman rocked back on her chair, which let out a metal squeal. She
pressed the thick glasses up against the bridge of her nose. "Nothing
much moves around here with out us knowing about it."

"Could you give us directions, ma'am?" Scully repeated.

The redheaded woman withdrew a pen, but didn't bother to write down
directions. "About seven or eight miles back, you turn on a little road
called Locust Springs Drive, go about a quarter of a mile, turn left on
a logging road--it's the third driveway on your right." She toyed with
her strand of fake pearls.

"This is the best lead we've got so far," Scully said softly, looking
eagerly at her partner. The thought of rescuing Jody Kenness} helping
him out in his weakened state, gave her new energy.

As an FBI agent, Scully was supposed to maintain her objectivity and not
get emotionally involved in a case lest her judgment be influenced. In
this instance she couldn't TIle X- F!!,ES help it. She and Jody Kennessy
both shared the shadow cancer, and the connection to this boy she'd
never met too strong. Her desire to help him was far more than Scully
had anticipated when she and Mulder had Washington to investigate the
Dymar fire.

The bell on the door jingled again, and a state strode in, his boots
heavy on the worn wooden floor of general store. Scully looked over her
shoulders as trooper walked casually over to the soft drink cooler
grabbed a large bottle of orange soda.

"The usual, Jared?" the woman called from the cash ister, already
ringing him up.

"Would I ever change, Maxie?" he answered, and tossed him a pack of
artificially colored cheese crackers the snack rack.

The policeman nodded politely to Mulder and and noticed the photographs
as well as Mulder's badge let. "Can I help you folks?"

"We're federal agents, sir," Scully said. She picked up photographs to
show him and asked for his assistance.

haps he could escort them out to the isolated cabin Patrice or Jody
might be held captive--but suddenly radio at Jared's hip squelched.

A dispatcher's voice came over, sounding alarmed brisk and professional.

"Jared, come in, please. We've got emergency situation here. A passing
motorist found a body up the highway about three quarters of a mile
Doyle's property."

The trooper grabbed his radio. "Officer Penwick here he said. "What do
you mean by a dead body? What tion?"

"A trucker," the dispatcher answered. "His logging half off the road.

The guy's sprawled by the steering and .. . well, it's weird. Not like
any accident injuries ever heard of."

Mulder quickly looked at Scully, intrigued. They understood that this
sounded remarkably like their own case. "You go ahead, Scully. I can
ride out to the location of the body with Officer, uh, Penwick here and
take a look around. If it's nothing, I'll have him take me to the cabin
and meet up with you."

Uneasy about being separated from him, but realizing that they had to
investigate both possibilities without delay, she nodded. "Make sure you
take appropriate precautions."

"I will, Scully." Mulder hurried for the door.

The bell jangled as the trooper left, clutching his cheese crackers and
orange soda on one hand as he sent off an acknowledgment on his
walkie-talkie. He glanced over his shoulder. "Put it on my tab,
Maxie--I'll catch you later."

Scully hurried behind them, letting the jingling door swing shut. Mulder
and the trooper raced for his police vehicle, parked aslant in front of
the general store.

Mulder called back at her, "Just see if you can find them, Scully. Learn
what you can. I'll contact you on the cell phone."

The two car doors slammed, and with a spray of wet gravel the highway
patrolman spun around and raced up the road with his red lights
flashing.

She returned to their rental car, grabbing her keys. When she glanced
down at the unit on the car seat, she finally noticed to her dismay that
her cellular phone wasn't work ing. They were out of range once more.

Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 12:58 P. M.

Outside the cabin, Vader barked. He stood up on the porch and paced,
letting a low growl loose in his throat.

Patrice stiffened and hurried to the lace curtains. Her mouth went dry.

She had owned Vader for a dozen years, and she knew' that this time the
dog was not making one of his puppy barks at a squirrel.

This was a bark of warning. She had been expecting something like this.

Dreading it.

Outside, the trees girdling the hollow stood tall and dark,
claustrophobic around the hills that sheltered them.

The rough trunks seemed to have approached silently closer, like an
implacable army.., like the mob she had imagined surrounded Dymar.

The grassy, weed-filled clearing stirred in a faint breeze, laden with
moisture from the recent downpour. She had once thought of the meadow as
beautiful, a perfect set-piece to display the wilderness cabin to best
effect--a wonderful spot, Darin had said, and she had shared his
enthusiasm.

Now, though, the broad clearing made her feel and vulnerable.

Vader barked again and stepped forward to the edge the porch, his muzzle
pointed toward the driveway plunged into the forest. His black nostrils
quivered.

"What is it, Morn?" Jody asked. From the drawn sion on his face, she
could tell he felt the fear as much as did. In the past two weeks she
had trained him well enou "Someone's coming," she said.

Forcing bravery upon herself, she doused the inside the cabin, let the
curtains dangle shut, then open the front door to stand guard on the
porch. They run here, gone to ground, without preparation. She had count
on their hiding place, since she had no gun, no weapons. Patrice had
ransacked the cabin, but Darin not believed in handguns. She had only
her bare hands her ingeauity. Vader looked over his shoulder at her,
turned toward the driveway again.

Jody crowded next to her, trying to see, but she him back inside.
"Morn!" he said indignantly, but pointed a scolding finger at him, her
face hard. He away quickly.

The mother's protective instinct hung on her like a She had been
helpless in the face of his cancer, she had helpless when his father was
murdered by shadowy pretending to be activists, the same people who had
their phones, followed them, and might even now be to track them down.

But she had taken action to get her to safety, and she had kept him
alive so far. Patrice had no intention of giving up now.

A figure appeared in the trees, approaching on down the long driveway
bordered by dark pines, closer, intent on the cabin.

Patrice didn't have time to run..

She had taken Jody out to the coastal of its abundance of survivalists,
of religious cults extremists--all of whom knew how to be left alone.
David's own brother had joined one such group, abandoning even this
cabin to find deeper isolation, but she hadn't dared to go to Darin and
ask for protection.

The people hunting them down would think to find David's brother. She
had to do the unexpected.

Now her mind raced, and she tried to think of even the smallest misstep
she might have made to tip off who she was and where she and Jody were
staying. Suddenly she remembered that the last time she had gone into a
gro cery store, she had noticed the cover of a weekly Oregon newspaper
depicting the fenced-off and burned ruins of Dymar Laboratory.

Surprised, she had flinched and tried to maintain her composure,
cradling her groceries in front of the TV Guides and beef jerky strips
and candy bars. The old woman with shockingly dyed red hair had looked
up at her from behind smeared eyeglasses. No one, Patrice insisted to
herself, would have put such a coincidence together, would have taken
note of a woman traveling alone with her twelve-year- old son, would
have connected all the details.

Still, the clerk had stared at her too intently ...

"Who is it, Morn?" Jody asked in a stage whisper from the cold
fireplace. "Can you see?" Patrice was glad she hadn't built a fire that
morning, because the telltale wisp of gray-white smoke would have
attracted even more atten tion.

They had made a plan for such a siation, that they would both try to
slip away unnoticed and vanish in the trees, hiding out in the wooded
hills. Jody knew the sur rounding forest well enough. But this intruder
had taken them by surprise. He had come on foot, with no telltale engine
noise. And now neither of them had time to run.

"Jody, you stay back there. Take Vader, go to the back door, and hide.

Be ready to rtm into the trees if you have to, but right now it'll be a
tipoff."

TIle X- FII, E S "If I buy you some time, then you can get a head start.

they don't mean any harm, then you don't have anything worry about." Her
face turned to stone, and Jody flushed he realized what she meant.

She turned back to the door, squinting her eyes.

keep yourself out of sight. Wait until the timing's right."

With a grim expression on her face, Patrice crossed arms over her chest
and waited on her front porch to the approaching stranger. The terror
and urgency paralyzed her. This was the moment of confrontation had
dreaded ever since receiving David's desperate call.

The figure was a broad-shouldered man walking with odd injured gait. He
looked as if he had passed on through a car wash with open cans of waste
oil in his He staggered toward the cabin, but stopped dead in tracks
when he noticed her on the porch. i Vader growled.

Even from a distance, Patrice could see his dark turn toward her, his
eyes lock with hers. He had his facial features distorted somehow--but
she reco him. She felt a flood of relief, a sensation she had not enced
in some time. A friend at last!

"Jeremy," she said with a sigh. "Jeremy Dorman!"

Kennessys' Cabin Oregon Coast Range Friday, 1:14 P. M.

"Patrice!" Dorman called in a hoarse voice, then walked toward her at an
accelerated, somehow ominous pace.

She had bought newspapers from unattended machines on shadowy street
corners, and had read that her husband's lab partner had also perished
in the Dymar fire, murdered by the men who wanted to keep David's
nanotech research from becoming public knowledge.

"Jeremy, are those men after you, too? How did you get away?"

The fact that Jeremy Dorman had somehow escaped gave her a flash of hope
that perhaps David might have survived as well. But she could not grasp
the thought; it slipped through her mental fingers. She had a thousand
questions for him, but most of all she was glad just to see a familiar
face, another person facing the same predicament as she was ...

But something was very wrong about Jererny's presence here. He had known
to look for her and Jody in this cabin.

[BE She knew that David had always talked too much. Even brother's
secret hideaway would never have been a for long, after tedious hours of
small talk in the David and Jeremy together.

She was suddenly wary. "Were you followed? If come after us here, we
don't have any weapons--"

"Patrice," he interrupted her, "I'm desperate. Please me." He swallowed
hard .. . and his throat continued move far longer than it should have.

"I need to inside."

As he stepped closer, the burly man looked very barely able to move, as
if suffering from a hundred ills.

skin had a strange, wet cast--and not just from the moisture in the air,
but with a kind of slickness. Like slime.

"What happened to you, Jeremy?" She gestured the door, wondering why she
felt so uneasy. Dorman spent a great deal of time with her farnil:
especially Darin had abandoned the work and fled to his camp. "You look
awful."

"I have a lot to explain, but not much time. Look at at the shape I'm
in. This is very important do you have dog here as well?"

She remained frozen in place; then it was all she do to step forward and
grip the damp, mossy handrail.

did he want to know about Vader, hidden inside with Even though this was
Jeremy, Jeremy Dorman, she felt need to be cautious.

"I want some answers first," she said, not moving the porch. He stopped
in his tracks, uncertain. "How you survive the fire at Dymar? We thought
you were "I was supposed to die there," Dorman said, his heavy .....

"What do you mean, you were supposed to die there?

the phone, in his last message to me, David said the protest was some
kind of setup, that it wasn't just rights people after all."

Dorman's dark, hooded eyes bored into her. "I was betrayed, just like
David was." He took two steps closer.

"What are you saying?" After what she had been through, Patrice thought
almost anything might sound believable by now.

Dormn nodded. "They had orders to make sure nothing would survive, no
record of our nanotechnology research.

Only ashes."

Patrice stood her ground, silently warning him not to approach closer.

"David said the conspiracy went much deeper in the government than he
had thought. I didn't believe him until I went back to our house--only
to find it ransacked."

Dorman lurched to a halt ten feet from the porch, stop ping in the weeds
of the meadow. He walked away from the cleared driveway, on the trampled
path toward the door of the cabin. "They're all after you now, too,
Patrice.

We can help each other. But I need Vader. He carries the stable
prototypes in his bloodstream."

"Prototypes? What are you talking about?"

"The nanotechnology prototypes. I had to use some of the defective
earlier generations, samples from the small lab animals, but many of
those exhibited shocking.., anoma lies. I didn't have any choice,
though. The lab was on fire, everything was burning. I was supposed to
be able to get away, but this was the only way I could survive." He
looked at her, pleading, then lowered his voice. "But they don't work
the way they were supposed to. With Vader's blood, there is a chance I
can reprogram them in myself."

Her mind reeled. She knew what David had been work ing on, had suspected
something wrong with their black Lab.

"Where's Jody?" Dorman said, peering past her to see through the
curtains or the half-closed door. "He3 Jody!

Come out here! It's all right."

Jody had always looked at Dorman as a friend of his father's, a
surrogate unclc especially after Darin had left.

They played video games together; Jeremy was just about Tile X-FILES the
only adult who knew as many Nintendo 64 tricks Jody did. They exchanged
tips and techniques for Wave Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Shadows of the
Empire.

Before Patrice could collect her thoughts, exactly where the situation
stood, Jody pulled open cabin door, accompanied by his black dog.
"Jeremy!"

Dorman looked down at Vader, delighted and but the dog curled back his
dark lips to expose fangs.

low growl sounded like a chainsaw embedded in the throat, as if Vader
had some kind of grudge But Dorman paid no attention. He was staring at
healthy Jody--in amazement. The skin on Dorman's blurred and shifted. He
winced, somehow forcing it back place. "Jody, you're.., you're recovered
from the cancer."

"It's a miracle," Patrice said stiffly. "Some kind of taneous
remission."

The sudden predatory expression on Dorman's glistening face made a knot
in her stomach. "No, it's not spontaneous remission. Is it, Jody? My
God, you have it The boy paled, took a step backward.

"I know what your dad did to you." For some odd son, Dorman kept his
eyes fixed upon Jody and the dog. '

Patrice looked at Jody in confusion, then an instant dawning horror as
she realized the magnitude of what had done, the risk he had taken, the
real reason why brother had been so frightened of the research. Jody's
good health was not the result of another remission. All David's hard
work and manic commitment had paid off all. He had found his cure for
cancer, without telling But in the space of an indrawn breath, her
incredible and relief and lingering heartbreak tempered with fear Jeremy
Dorman. Fear of his predatory glances at Jody, unnaturally shifting
features, his slipping control.

"This is even better than Vader." Dorman's dark blazed, taking on a
distorted look. "I just need a sample your son's blood, Patrice. Some of
his blood. Not much."

Shocked and confused, Patrice flinched, but stood defi antly on the
porch, not moving. She wasn't going to let any one touch her son. "His
blood? What on earthm"

"I don't have time to explain to you, Patrice. I didn't know they meant
to kill David! They were staging the protest, they meant to burn the
place down, but they were going to move the research to a more isolated
establish ment." His face contorted with anger. "I was supposed to be
their lead researcher in the new facility, but they tried to murder me,
too!"

Patrice's mind reeled; her perception of reality was being assaulted
from too many directions at once. "You knew all along they intended to
burn the place down? You were part of the conspiracy."

"No, I didn't mean that! It was all supposed to be under control. They
lied to me, too."

"You let David be killed, you bastard. You wanted the credit, wanted his
research."

"Patrice ... Jody, I'll die without your help. Right now."

Dorman strode toward the porch with great speed, but Patrice moved to
block his path.

"Jody, get back in the cabin--right now. We can't trust him! He betrayed
your father!" Her voice was ice cold, and the boy was already
frightened. He quickly moved to do as she asked.

Dorman stopped five feet away, glowering at her. "Don't do this. You
don't understand."

"I know I've got to protect my son, after all he's been through. You're
probably still working for those men, hunt ing us. I'm not letting you
near him." She held her fists at her sides, ready to tear this man apart
with her bare hands.

"Jody, go out and hide in the forest! You know where to go, just like we
planned before," she shouted into the gap of the half-open door. "Go!"

Something squirmed beneath Dorman's chest. He hunched over, covering his
stomach and his ribs. Finally, he TIle X-FILES side with Jeremy and want
to help the man.

Vader bounded around the side of the cabin after barking.

Dismissing Patrice, Dorman turned toward the "Jody! Come here to me,
boy!" He trudged away from porch over to the side of the cabin.

Patrice felt an animal scream build within her "You leave my boy alone!"

Dorman spun about and withdrew a revolver from pants pocket. He gripped
it with unsteady hands, holding in front of her disbelieving gaze. "You
don't know you're doing, Patrice," he said. "You don't know about what's
going on. I can just shoot the dog-or and get the blood I need. Maybe
that would be easiest all."

His muscle control was sporadic, though, and he not keep a steady bead
on her. Patrice could not believe would shoot her anyway. Not Jeremy
Dorman.

With an outcry, she vaulted over the porch throwing herself in a
battering-ram tackle toward Dorman.

As he saw her charging him, he flinched backward a look of horror on his
face. "No! Don't touch me!"

Then she plowed into him, knocking his gun away driving the man to the
ground. "Jody, run! Keep she screamed.

Dorman thrashed and writhed, trying to kick her "No, Patrice! Stay away.

Stay away from me!" But fought with him, clawing, pummeling. His skin
was and slimy ...

Without a word, Jody and the dog raced into the forest.

TIIEiltyseveli Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 1:26 P. M.

The dense trees clawed at him. Their branches scratched his face, tugged
his hair, grabbed his shirt--but Jody kept sprinting anyway. The last
words he heard were his mother's desperate shout. "Jody, run! Keep
running!"

Over the past two weeks Patrice had drilled into him her fear and
paranoia. They had made contingency plans. Jody knew full well that
people were after them, powerful and deadly people. Someone had betrayed
his father, burned down the whole laboratory facility.

He and his mother had driven away into the night, sleeping in their car
parked off the road, going from place to place before finally arriving
at the cabin. Again and again his mother had pounded into him that they
must trust no one--and now it appeared that she might even have meant
Jeremy Dorman himself. Jeremy, who had been like an uncle to him, who
had played with him whenever he and his father could tear themselves
away from work.

Now Jody didn't think; he just responded. He ran out the back door,
across the meadow to the trees. Vader llle ](FILES bounded Lto the
fringe of pines ahead of him, barkg as if scouting a safe path.

The cabin quickly fell behind, and Jody turned abruptly left, heading
uphill. He hopped over a fallen tree, crunching broken branches and
plowing through thick, thorny shrubs Vines grabbed at the toes of his
shoes, but Jody kept bling along.

He had explored these back woods in the last few His mother had hovered
over him, making sure he get into trouble or stray too far away, but
still Jody found time to poke around in the trees. He where he was
supposed to go, how best to elude pursuit.

knew his way. He knew a few of the secret spots in the est, but he
didn't remember a hiding place that would good enough or safe enough.

His mother had told him keep running, and he couldn't let her down.

If I buy you some time, then you can get a head start, she said.

"Jody, wait!" It was Jeremy Dorman's voice, but it ried a strange and
strangled undertone. "Hey, okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

Jody hesitated, then kept pushing ahead. Vader loudly and dashed under
another fallen tree, then up a rocky slope. Jody scrambled after him.

"Come here, boy. I need to talk to you," Dorman from far back, near the
cabin. Jody knew the man had ducked into the trees, following him.

He paused for a moment, panting. His joints still sometimes with the
strange tingly feeling, as if parts body had gone to sleep--but this
discomfort was like what he had experienced before, when the was at its
worst, when he had honestly felt like stop the bone-deep ache. Now Jody
felt healthy enough go through with this effort--but he didn't want to
keep for long. His skin crawled, and sweat prickled on his on his neck.

He heard Dorman lumbering through the trees, crashing branches aside,
alarmingly close. How could the man have moved so fast? "Your mother
wants to see you. She's wait ing back at the cabin."

Jody hurried down a slope into a small gully where a stream trickled
over rocks and fallen branches. Two days ago, as a game, he had skipped
and hopped from stone to tree trunk to outcropping, crossing the stream
and daring himself not to fall. Now the boy ran as fast as he could.

Halfway across he slipped on a moss-covered boulder, and his right foot
plunged into the icy water that chuckled along the banks.

He hissed in surprise, yanked his dripping foot back out of the stream,
and continued across the stream. His morn had always warned him against
getting his shoes wet.., but right now Jody knew simple escape was much
more impor tant, was worth any sort of risk.

Dorman shouted again, "Jody, come here." He seemed a little more angry,
his words sharper. "Come on, please. Only you can help me. Hey, Jod) I'm
begging you!"

With his shoe sogg Jody climbed back onto the bank. He heaved a deep
breath to keep running. Grabbing a pine branch and getting sticky resin
on his palm, he used it to haul himself up out of the gully to more
level ground so he could run again.

He had a stitch in his side, which sent a sharp pain around his kidneys,
his stomach, but he, pressed his hand against the ache so he could keep
fleeing. Jody didn't under stand what was going on, but he trusted his
fear, and he trusted his mother's warning. He vowed not to let Jeremy
Dorman catch him.

He paused in his tracks, gasping beside a tree as he lis tened intently
for further pursuit.

Down the slope on the other side of the stream, he saw the heavy form of
Jeremy Dorman and his tattered shirt.

Their eyes met from across the great distance in the shad owy forest.

Seeing a complete stranger behind Jeremy's eyes, Jody TIle X-FII, ES
ran. with redoubled effort. His heart pounded, and breath came in great
gasps. He dove through bushes that held him back. Behind him, Dorman had
no ficulty charging through the underbrush.

Jody scrambled up a slope, slipping on loose wet leav He knew he
couldn't keep up this incredible effort for Dorman didn't seem to be
slowing at all.

He ran to a small gully, thick with deadfall and mottled sandstone
outcroppings. The trees and stood thick enough around him that he knew
couldn't see him, and he had a chance to duck down in damp animal hollow
between a rotting tree stump and cracked boulder. Twigs, vines, and
underbrush crackled he tried to huddle in the shelter.

He sat in silence, his lungs laboring, his pulse ing. He listened for
the man's approach. He had heard ing at all from his mother, and he
feared she might be back at the cabin. What had Dorman done to her, what
she sacrificed so that he could get away?

Heavy footsteps crunched on the forest floor, but man had stopped
calling out now. Jody remembered chase games on his Nintendo system, how
he and Dorman would be opponents in death-defying races the country or
on alien landscapes.

But this was real, with a lot more at stake than a highest score.

Dorman came closer, pushing shrubs away, through the forest murk. Jody
sat in tense silence, that his hiding place would remain secure.

In the distance Vader barked, and. Dorman paused, turned in a different
direction. Jody saw his chance attempted to slip away, but as he moved
one of the branches aside, a precariously balanced log crunched into the
brittle deadwood.

Dorman froze again, and then came charging Jody's hiding place.

The boy ducked down under the fallen trunk again, scut tled along next
to the slick rock, and wormed his way out the other side of the gully.

He stood up and raced off again, keeping his head low, pushing branches
out of the way as Dorman yelled at him, fighting through the front of
the thicket. Jody risked a glance over his should to see how close his
pursuer had come.

Dorman reached up with a meaty hand, pointing toward him. Jody
recognized a handgun at the same moment he saw a blaze of light flare
from its muzzle.

A loud crack echoed through the forest. A chunk of splintered bark and
wood exploded away from the pine tree only two feet above his head.
Dorman had shot at him!

"Come here right now, dammit!" Dorman yelled.

Biting back an outcry, Jody scrambled away into the thick underbrush
behind the tree that had protected him.

Through the forest murk, he heard Vader barking, whin ing as if in
encouragement. Jody trusted his dog a lot more than he would ever trust
Jeremy Dorman.

Jody ran off again, holding his side. His head pounded, his heart ran
like a race car engine.

Back behind him, Dorman sloshed across the cold stream, not even trying
to use the stepping stones. "Jody, come here!"

Jody fled desperately toward the sound of the barking dog--and, he
hoped, safety.

Ttteiltyei6iit Rural Oregon Friday, 1:03 P. M.

The logging truck sat half off the road in a shallow ditch, its cab
tilted at an odd angle like a metallic behemoth with a broken back.

As they drove up in the police cruiser, Mul- der could tell instantly
that something was wrong. This was more than a standard traffic
accident. A red Ford pickup sat parked on the shoulder beside the
logging truck, and a man with a plastic rain poncho climbed out of the
driver's side as Officer Jared Penwick pulled to a halt.

Studying the scene, Mulder spotted sinuous tire marks in the wet grass.

The logging truck had weaved back and forth out of control before
grinding to a stop here. A few raindrops spattered the police cruiser's
windshield, and Jared left the wipers streaking back and forth. He
picked up his handset, clicked the transmit button, and reported in to
the dispatcher that they had arrived at the scene.

The man in the pickup truck waited beside his vehicle, hunched over in
the plastic slicker as the trooper crunched toward him. Mulder followed,
pulling his topcoat closed to TIle of- FII. ES keep himself warm. The
wind and the rain mussed his but there was nothing he could do about it.

"You didn't touch anything in there did you, Domini Jared said.

"I'm not going near that thing," the man in the answered with a
suspicious glance at Mulder. "That guy there is gross."

"This is Agent Mulder of the FBI," Jared said.

"I was just driving down the road," Dominic said, keeping his eyes on
Mulder, until he flicked his gaze the tilted log truck. "When I saw that
truck there, I the driver maybe lost control in the rain. Either that,
sometimes truckers just pull off the road and sleep--not much traffic on
this stretch, you know--but it was ous the way he had parked. Didn't
have an orange set up around the back of the truck bed, like he should.

was going to chew his ass."

Dominic flicked rainwater away from his face shaking his head. He
swallowed hard. "But then I got a inside the cab. My God, never seen
anything like that."

Mulder left Jared to stand with the pickup owner as went over to the
logging truck. He held the door handle and cautiously raised himself up
by on the running board.

Inside the cab, the driver of the truck sprawled with his arms akimbo,
his legs jammed up, and his wedged behind the steering wheel like a
cockroach that been sprayed with an exterminator's poison.

The pudgy man's face was contorted and swollen lumps, his jaw slack. The
whites of his eyes were gray smoky, laced with red lines of
worse-than-bloodshot Purplish-black blotches stood out like leopard
spots all his skin, as if a miniaturized bombing raid had taken in his
vascular system.

The truck window was tightly rolled up. The rain ued to trickle off the
slanted roof of the cab and down passenger-side window. From inside, the
windshield was fogged in some places. Mulder thought he saw faint steam
rising from the body.

Still balanced on the running board, he turned back to the state
trooper, who stood looking at him curiously. "Can you run the plates and
registration?" Mulder asked. "See if you can find out who this guy was
and where he might have been going."

It made Mulder very uneasy to see another hideous death so close to the
possible location of Patrice and Jody Kennessy--so close to where Scully
had gone to look for them.

The trooper came forward and took his turn peering through the
driver's-side window, as if it were a circus peep show. "That's
disgusting," he said. "What happened to the guy?"

"No one should touch the body until we can get some more help out here,"
Mulder said briskly. "The medical examiner in Portland has dealt with
this before. He should probably be called in, since he'll know how to
handle this."

The trooper hesitated, as if he wanted to ask a dozen more questions,
but instead he trotted back to talk on his radio.

Mulder walked around the front of the truck, saw how the cab had shifted
to the right, nearly jackknifing the vehi cle. The splintered logs were
still securely fastened by chains to the long truck bed.

If the driver had gone into convulsions and swerved the heavy vehicle
off the road, luckily his foot had slipped from the accelerator. The log
truck had come to a stop on this rise without careening into a tree or
crashing over a steeper embankment.

Mulder stared at the grille of the truck as the rain picked up again.

Trickles of water slithered down his back, and he shrugged his
shoulders, pulling up the collar of his topcoat in an effort to keep
himself a little drier.

Mulder continued walking around the truck, into the ditch. His shoes
splashed in the water, and weeds danced along his pant cuffs. Once he
got drenched, he supposed, it wouldn't matter if the rain any heavier.

Then he saw that the log truck's passenger door ajar.

He froze, suddenly considering possibilities. What someone else had been
in the truck, a with the driver, maybe even a hitchhiker? The carrier of
lethal biological agent?

Mulder walked carefully over to the open door, behind him into the close
trees, the tall weeds, he would see another corpse, the body of a
passenger had undergone similar convulsions but managed to sta away and
collapse outside.

But he saw nothing. The rain began to sheet harder.

"What did you find, Agent Mulder?" the trooper called: "Still checking,"
he said. "Stay where you are."

The trooper called out again. "I've got the Portland and some other
local law enforcement on their way.

have a real party scene here in a little while." Then, happy let Mulder
continue his business, Officer Penwick back to chat with the pickup
driver.

Mulder carefully opened the heavy passenger-side and the metal swung out
with a groan of hinges. He back to peer inside.

The dead trucker looked even more bent and from this perspective.
Condensed steam had formed a across the windshield and the driver's-side
door. The smelled humid, but without the sour sharpness of The body
hadn't been here for long, despite its horrible dition.

The passenger seat interested Mulder the most, thou He saw threads and
tatters of cloth from a shirt that been split or torn. Runnels of a
strange translucent sticky substance clung to the fabric of the seat. A
kind of congealed .. slime, similar to what Mulder had seen on the dead
security guard.

He swallowed hard, not wanting to get any closer, careful not to touch
anything. This was indeed the same thing they had encountered before at
the morgue. Mulder was sure this strange toxin, this lethal agent, was
the result of Kennessy's renegade work.

Perhaps the unfortunate trucker had picked up someone and had become
infected in close quarters. After the truck had crashed and the driver
had died, the mysterious passenger had slipped away and escaped.

But where would he go?

Mulder saw a square of something like paper lying in the footwell
beneath the passenger seat. At first he thought it was a candy wrapper
or some kind of label, but then he realized it was a photograph, bent
and half-hidden in the shadow of the seat.

Mulder withdrew a pen from his pocket and leaned forward, still careful
not to touch any of the slimy residue. It was risky, but he felt a
growing sense of urgency. Extending the pen, he reached in and drew the
bent photo toward him.

The edges were surrounded by other threads, as if the photo had fallen
out of a shirt pocket during some sort of violent struggle.

He used the pen to flip over the photograph. It was a picture Mulder had
not seen before, but he certainly recognized the faces of the woman and
the young boy. He had seen them often enough in the past few days, had
shown other photos to hundreds of people in their search for Patrice and
Jody.

That meant whoever had been a passenger here in the truck, whoever had
carried the nanotech plague, was also on his wax also connected to the
woman and her son.

Headed to the same place Scully had gone.

TIle X-FILES Mulder tossed the pen into the truck, not daring to back in
his pocket.

As he hurried back around to the the trooper called to him from his
patrol car, waving oven "Agent Mulder!"

Mulder stepped away from the truck, wet and cold, ing a deeper tension
now. Distracted, Mulder went to what Officer Penwick wanted.

"There's a truck weigh station a few miles back on road. It's rarely
open, but they have Highway Patrol lance cameras that operate
automatically. I had someb.

run them back a few hours to see if we could grab an "

of this truck passing." Penwick smiled, and Mulder at the man's good
thinking. "That way we can at least lish a solid time frame."

"Did you find anything?" Mulder asked.

The trooper smiled. "Two images. One, we got the truck barreling
past--10:52 A. M. And a few minutes that, we caught a man walking past.

Very little traffic on road."

"Can we get a video grab?" Mulder said eagerly, into the front seat of
the patrol car, looking down at small screen mounted below the dash for
their crime puter linkups.

"I thought you might want that," Penwick said, with the keypad. "I just
had it up here.., ah, there we The first image showed the log truck
heading down road, obviously the same vehicle now stalled in the The
digital time code on the bottom of the picture what the trooper had
said.

But Mulder was more interested in something "Let me see the hitchhiker,
the other man." His knitted as he tried to think of other possibilities.

If nanotechnology pathogen was as lethal as he the trucker wouldn't have
lasted long in close with it.

The new image was somewhat blurry, but showed a walking on the muddy
shoulder, seemingly impervious to the rain. He looked directly at the
camera, at the weigh sta tion, as if longing to stop there and take
shelter, but then he walked on.

Mulder had seen enough, though. He had looked at the file pictures, the
Dymar background dossiers, the photos of the two researchers supposedly
killed in the devastating fire.

It was Jeremy Dorman--David Kennessy's assistant. He was still alive.

And if Dorman had been exposed to something at Dymar, he was even now
carrying a substance that had already killed at least two people.

He slid out of the front of the patrol car, looking urgently at the
trooper. "Officer Penwick, you have to stay here and protect the scene.

This is a highly hazardous place. Do not let anyone go near the body or
even inside the cab of the truck without proper decontamination
equipment."

"Sure, Agent Mulder," the trooper said. "But where will you be?"

Mulder turned toward Dominic. "Sir, I'm a federal agent.

I need the use of your vehicle."

"My truck?" Dominic said.

"I need to reach my partner. I'm afraid she may be in grave danger."

Before Dominic could argue with him, Mul- der opened the door of the
Ford pickup and extended his left hand. "The keys, please."

Dominic looked questioningly over at the state trooper, but Officer
Penwick simply shrugged. "I've seen his ID. He is who he says." Then the
trooper tucked his hat down against the rain. "Don't worr Dominic. I'll
give you a ride home."

The pickup driver frowned, as if this hadn't been the part that
concerned him at all. Mulder slammed the door, and the old engine
started with a comforting roan He wres- fled with the stick shift,
trying to remember how to apply the clutch and nudge the gas pedal.

TIle X- FII, fs don't want to waste time messing with insurance compa
nies."

Mulder pushed down hard on the accelerator, would reach Scully in time.
'

Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 1:45 P. M.

Scully became disoriented on the winding dirt logging roads, but after
making a cautious Y- turn on the narrow track, she finally found the
driveway as described by Maxie at the general store and art gallery. She
saw no mailbox, only a metal reflector post that bore a cryptic num ber
designating a specific plot for fire control or trash pickup.

It was just a nondescript private road chewed through the dense
underbrush, climbing over a rise and vanishing somewhere back into a
secluded hollow. This was it, thoughwthe place where Patrice and Jody
Kennessy had supposedly been taken, or gone into hiding.

Scully drove down the driveway as quickly as she dared through mud
puddles and over bumps. Up the rise on either side of her, the forest
seemed too close. Branches ticked and scraped along the sideview
mirrors.

She accelerated over a large bump, some long-buried log, and reached the
top of the rise. The bottom of the car scraped on the gravel as she
headed down the slope. Ahead of her, in a cleared meadow surrounded on
all sides dense trees, sat a single isolated cabin. A perfect place
hiding.

This modest, rugged home seemed even more out way and invisible than the
survivalist outpost she and der had visited the day before.

She drove forward cautiously, noticing a muddy parked to one side of the
cabin, where a corrugated overhang protected it from the rain. The car
was a Volvo, type a yuppie medical researcher would have the old pickup
or sport utility vehicle a regular inhabitant these mountains would have
purchased.

Her heart raced. This place felt right: isolated, quiet, nous. She had
come miles from the nearest assistance, from reliable phone reception.

Anyone could hide out and anything could happen.

She eased the car to a stop in front of the cabin waited for a few
moments. This was a dangerous She was approaching alone with no backup.
She had no of knowing whether Patrice and Jody were hiding ily, or if
someone held them hostage here, someone weapons.

As Scully stepped out of the car, her head pounded.

paused for a moment as colors flashed before her eyes, then with a deep
breath she calmed herself and slammed car door. "Hello?"

She wasn't approaching in secret. Anyone who lived this cabin would have
heard her approach, perhaps before her car topped the rise. She couldn't
be stealthy.

had to be apparent.

Scully stood beside the car for a few seconds, She withdrew her ID
wallet with her left hand and kept right hand on the Sig Sauer handgun
on her hip. She ready for anything.

Most of all, though, she just wanted to see Jody make sure he got the
medical attention he needed.

ANTIBOOils "Hello? Anybody there?" Scully called, speaking loudly enough
to be heard by anyone inside the house. he took two steps away from the
car.

The cabin seemed like a haunted house. Its windows were dark some
covered with drapes. Nothing stirred inside. She heard no sounds from
within.., but the door was ajar.

Beside the door she saw a fresh gouge in the wood siding, pale
splinters.., the mark from a small-caliber bullet Scully stepped up onto
the slick wooden porch. "Anybody home?" she said again. "I'm a federal
agent."

As she hesitated in front of the door, though, Scully looked to her left
and spotted a figure in the tall grass beside the cabin. A human figure,
lying still.

Scully froze, all senses alert, then approached to the edge of the
porch, peering Over the railing. It was a woman, sprawled on her chest
in the tall grass.

Scully rushed back down the steps, then pulled herself to a halt as she
looked down at a woman she recognized as Patrice Kennessy with
strawberry blond hair and narrow features--but the resemblance ended
there.

Scully recalled the smiling woman whose photo she had looked at so many
times--her husband a well-known and talented researcher, her son
laughing and happy before the leukemia had struck him.

But Patrice Kennessy was no longer vivacious, no longer even on the run
to protect her son. Now she lay twisted in the meadow, her head turned
toward Scully and her expression grim and desperate even in death. Her
skin was blotched with numerous hemorrhages from subcutaneous damage,
distorted with wild growths in all shapes and sizes. ' Her eyes were
squeezed shut, and Scully saw tiny maps of blood on the lids. Her hands
were outstretched like claws, as if she had died while fighting tooth
and nail against something horrible.

Scully stood stricken. She had arrived too late.

TII( X-FILES She moved back, knowing not to approach or touch possibly
contagious body. Patrice was already dead. N the only thing that
remained was to find Jody and keep safe--unless something had already
happened to him.

She listened to the wind whispering through the pines, a shushing sound
as needles scraped against other. The clouds overhead were thick with
the threat of rain. She heard a few birds and other forest but the
silence and abandonment of the place oppressive, surrounding her.

Then she heard a dog bark off in the forest, a excited sound--and a
moment later came the crack of a gunshot. "

"Come here right now, dammit!" She heard the words voice flattened by
distance, made gruff with a threat.

come here!"

Scully drew her handgun and advanced toward the est, following the sound
of voices. Jody was still out running for his life---and a man who must
have carried plague, the man who had exposed Patrice Kennessy, now after
the boy.

Scully had to catch him first. She ran toward the forest.

Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 1:59 P. M.

No matter how far Jody ran, Dorman followed.

The only shelter he could think of was the cabin, endlessly far back
through the trees. The small building was not much of an island of
safety, but he could think of no better place to go. At least there he
could find some crude weapons, something with which to fight back.

His mother was resourceful, and Jody could be, too. He had learned a lot
from her in the past weeks.

Jody circled through the trees in a long arc, looping around the meadow
and approaching from the rear. Vader continued to bark in the trees,
sometimes running close to Jody and then bounding off, as if ready to
hunt or play. Jody wondel if the black Lab thought it was all some kind
of game.

He continued stumbling along, his legs aching as if sharp metal pins had
been inserted into his knees. His side was aflame with pain. His face
had been scratched by sharp branches and whipping pine needles, but he
paid no atten tion to the minor injuries; they would fade quickly. His
throat was dry, and he couldn't draw in enough breath.

17S As quietly as he could move, he stumbled along trails, without
guidance, but after weeks of nothing to but play in the woods, he knew
how to find the cabin. Vader would follow him. Together they could get
out of this, and his mother ... if she was still safe.

From above, Jody could see the small building and meadow ahead. He'd
come farther than he had thought, now he could see another car in the
driveway. A vehicle.

He felt a rush of cold fear. Someone else had tracked down! One of those
others his mother had warned him Even if he succeeded in outsmarting
Jeremy Dorman escaping back to the cabin, would others be waiting there
him? Or did they mean to help? He had no way of knowing.

But right now his greatest fear was much closer at hand.

Dorman continued to charge after him like a plowing through the trees
and underbrush, closing the Jody couldn't believe how fast the
broad-shouldered was moving, especially because the big lab assistant
did look at all healthy.

"Jody, please! I won't hurt you if you just let me talk you for a
second."

Jody didn't waste his breath answering. He ran arrowing toward the
cabin, but abruptly came to a slope where a mudslide had sheared off the
gentle Two enormous trees had uprooted, tumbling down leaving a gash in
the dirt like an open wound.

Jody didn't have time to go around. Dorman approaching too fast, rushing
along the hillside, onto trees and pulling himself along.

The slope looked too steep. He couldn't possibly down it.

He heard the dog bark again. Halfway to the bottom, to the left of the
mudslide, Vader stood with his spread, his fur tangled with cockleburrs
and weeds.

barked up at his boy. ,

With no other choice, Jody decided to follow. He eased himself over the
lip of the mudslide and started to descend, using his hands, digging his
fingers into the cold ground, stepping on loose rocks, and looking for
support.

He heard twigs snapping, branches crashing aside, as Dorman came closer.

Jody tried to move faster. He looked up and glimpsed the burly figure at
the upper edge of the hillside. He gasped--and his hand slipped.

Jody's foot stepped on an unstable rock, which popped out of the raw
dirt like a rotten tooth coming loose from a gum. He bit back an outcry
as he began to fall.

He scrabbled with his fingers, digging into the mud, but his body slid
down, tumbling, rolling, covering his clothes in dirt and mud. Rocks
pattered around him.

As he bounced and slid, Jody saw Dorman standing at the lip of the
mudslide, his hands outstretched like claws, ready to bend down and grab
him--but the boy was too far away, still falling, still picking up
speed.

Jody rolled, struck his side, and then his head--but he remained
conscious, terrified that he would break his leg so that he couldn't
keep running away from Dorman.

Dirt and rocks showered around him, but he didn't scream, didn't even
cry out--and he finally came to rest at the bottom of the slide, up
against one of the toppled trees.

Its matted root system stuck out like a dirt-encrusted scrub bing pad.

He slammed hard against the bark and lay gasp° ing, struggling, trying
to move. His back hurt.

Then, to his horror, he saw Jeremy Dorman bounding down the sharp slope
up above, somehow keeping his bal ance. Dirt and gravel flew up from his
feet as he stomped heavy indentations in the soft hillside. He waved the
revolver in his hand in a threat to keep Jody where he wasm not that
Jody could have gotten up and moved fast enough anyway.

Dorman skidded to a halt just above the boy. His face IIIE I-FILES was
flushed .. . and his Skin looked as if it were writhing, seething like a
pot of candle wax slowly coming a boil. Rage and exertion contorted the
man's face.

He held the handgun up, gripping it with both and pointing the barrel
directly at Jody. It looked like cyclopean eye, a deadly open-mouthed
viper.

Then Dorman's shoulders sagged, and he just stared the boy for a few
moments. "Jody, why do you have this so hard? Haven't I been through
enough--haven't been through enough?"

"Where's my morn?" Jody demanded, drawing breaths. His heart thumped
like a jackhammer and breath felt cold and frosty, like knives in his
lungs. He gled to get to his knees.

Dorman gestured with the revolver again. "All I need some of your blood,
Jody, that's all. Just some blood.

blood."

"I said, where's my morn?" Jody shouted.

Dorman looked as if a thunderstorm passed across face. Both the boy and
the man were so intent on each neither heard the other person approach.

"Freeze! Federal agent!"

Dana Scully stood in the trees fifteen feet away, her braced, her arms
extended and gripping her handgun precise firing position.

"Don't move," she said.

Scully had breathlessly followed the sounds of pursuit, barking dog, the
angry shouted words. When she upon the hulking man who loomed too close
over Jody nessy, she knew she had to prevent this man--this carrier
something like a deadly viral cancer--from so much touching the boy.

Both the intimidating man and the twelve-year-old snapped their glances
aside to look at her, astonished.

expression flooded with relief, then rapidly turned to suspi cion.

"You're one of them!" the boy whispered.

Scully wondered how much Patrice Kennessy had told him, how much Jody
knew about the death of his father and the possible conspiracy involving
Dymar.

But what astonished her the most was the appearance of the boy. He
seemed healthy, not gaunt and haggard, not at all pale and sickly. He
should have been in the final stages of terminal lymphoblastic leukemia.

Granted, Jody looked exhausted, battered.., haunted perhaps by constant
fear and lack of sleep. But certainly not like a terminal cancer
patient.

Nearly a month earlier, Jody had been bedridden, at death's doorway. But
now the boy had run vigorously through the forest and been caught by
this man only because he had stumbled and fallen down a steep hillside.

The large man scowled at Scull dismissed her, and tried to ease closer
to the boy.

"I said don't move, sir," Scully said. Seeing the revolver hanging
loosely in his hand, she feared he might take Jody in a hostage
situation. "Put your gun down," she said, "and identify yourself."

The man looked at her with such pure disgust and impa tience that she
felt cold. "You don't know what's going on here," he said. "Stop
interfering." He looked hungrily back' down at the trapped Jody, then
snapped his glance toward Scully once more. "Or are you one of them?

Just like the boy says? Out to annihilate both of us?"

Before she could answer or question him further, a black shape like a
rocket-propelled battering ram bounded from the underbrush and launched
itself toward the man threat ening Jody.

In a flash Scully recognized the dog, the black Lab that had somehow
survived being struck by a car, that had escaped from the veterinarian's
office and gone on the run with Patrice and Jody.

Tile X-Fli, ES The dog lunged. Black Labradors were not norm used as
attack dogs, but Vader must have been able to the fear and tension in
the air. He knew who the enemy and he fought back.

The burly man whirled, raising his gun and gripping trigger with the
sudden unexpected threat--but the crashed into him, growling and
snarling, spoiling his The man cried out, threw up his free hand to ward
off attack--and his finger squeezed the trigger.

The explosion roared through the quiet isolation far the main road.

Instead of taking off Jody's head, the .38caliber slammed into the boy's
chest before he could hurl out of the way. The impact sprayed blood
behind knocking the boy's lean frame back against the fallen tree, if
someone with an invisible piano wire had just jerked backward. Jody
cried out, and slid down the rain-slick of the tree.

Vader bore the gunman to the ground. The man tried fight the dog off,
but the suddenly vicious black Lab bit his face, his throat.

Scully raced over to the wounded boy, dropped to knees, and cradled
Jody's head. "Oh my God!"

The boy blinked his eyes, wide with astonishment seemingly far away.

Blood bubbled out of his mouth, and spat it aside. "So tired." She
stroked his hair, unable to him to rescue the big man who had shot him.

The dog continued growling, snapping his jaws, his muzzle into the man's
throat, ripping at the Blood sprayed onto the forest floor. The man
dropped smoking revolver and pounded on the black Lab's rib trying to
knock him away, but growing weaker and Scully stared at where foamy
scarlet blood from the center of Jody's chest. A hole with neat edges
stood out against a welling, pulsing lake of blood.

could tell from the placement of the wound that no simple first aid
would do Jody any good.

"Oh, no," she said and bent down, tearing Jody's shirt wider and looking
at the gunshot wound that had pene trated his left lung and perhaps
struck the heart. A serious wound--a deadly wound.

He would never survive.

Jody's skin turned gray and pale. His eyes were closed in
unconsciousness. Blood continued to pour from the bullet hole.

Leaning forward, Scully pushed aside her empathy for Jod mentally
clicking into her emergency medical mindset, slapping the heel of her
hand on the wound and pressing down, pushing hard against the cloth of
his shirt to stop the flow of blood. At her side, she could hear the dog
continuing his attack on the fallen man--a vicious attack, a personal
vendetta, as if this man had once hurt the dog very badly.

Scully concentrated, though, on helping the boy. She had to slow the
terrible bleeding from the bullet wound.

Tllllit?-61ie Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 2:20 P. M.

The sudden carnage astonished Scully, and time seemed to stop as the
forest pressed around her, the smell of blood and black pow der from the
gunshots. The birdsong and the breeze fell silent.

She hesitated for only a moment before snapping back into her mindset as
a federal agent. After pressing down her makeshift bandage, she stood up
jerkily from the mortally wounded boy and ran over to the dog, who was
still growling and snapping at the fallen man. She grabbed Vader by the
skin of his neck, grappling with his strong shoulders and front forepaws
to pull him away. His bloodied victim lay twitching in the mud, leaves,
and twigs.

She tugged at the dog, dragging him away.

The dog continued to growl, and Scully realized the dan ger of throwing
herself upon a vicious animal that had just ripped out the throat of a
man. A killer. But the black Lab acquiesced and staggered away, sitting
down obediently in the forest debris. Frothy blood covered his muzzle,
and his Tii( lfil.(S sepia eyes were bright and angry, still fixed on
the form. Scully saw his red teeth and shivered.

She glanced down at the man who had held Jody at who had shot the boy.

His throat was mangled. His hung in tatters, shredded as if it had burst
from the inside.

Though he was obviously dead, the man's hand and jerked like a frog on a
dissection table, and his squirmed as if alive from the inside, the home
of a colony swarming cockroaches.

Patches of his exposed skin tened, wet and gelatinous .. . like the
mucus Scully found during her autopsy of Vernon Ruckman.

His skin also had an uneven darkish cast .. . but blotches shifted and
faded, mobile hemorrhages that and passed across his complexion. This
man must be carrier of the instantly disruptive disease that had Patrice
Kennessy and Vernon Ruckman, and probably trucker Mulder had gone to
investigate. She had no who this was, but he looked oddly familiar to
her. He have some connection with Dymar Laboratory, with Kennessy's
research, and the radical cancer treatment had meant to develop for his
son.

As time seemed to stand still, Scully looked over at black Lab to see if
Vader might be suffering from the of the plague as well--but apparently
the cellular tion did not transfer readily across species Vader sat
patiently, not wagging his tail but focused on her reaction. He whined,
as if daring her to what he had done to protect his boy.

She whirled back toward Jody, who still lay gasping bleeding from the
bullet wound in his chest. She tore more of his shirtsleeve and pressed
the wadded cloth upon the open bubbling wound.

This was a penetrating wound--the bullet had passed through the other
side of Jody's back, but lodged somewhere in his lung, in his heart ...

Scully couldn't imagine how the boy might 184 .

lost fellow agents before, other people injured on casesmbut she felt a
unique affinity with Jody.

The twelve-year-old also suffered from a form of termi nal cancer; both
he and Scully were victims of the vagaries of fate, the mutations of one
cell too many. Jody had already been given a death sentence by his own
biology, but Scully didn't intend to let a tragic accident rob him of
his last month or so of life. This was one thing she could control.

She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the cellular phone. With
shaking, blood-tipped fingers, she punched in the programmed number for
Mulder's phone--but all she received was a burst of static. She was out
of range in the isolated wooded hills. She tried three times, hoping for
at least a faint signal, some stray opening of the electromag netic
window in the ionosphere .. . but she had no such luck. It was almost as
if someone was jamming her phone.

Scully was alone.

She thought about running back to the car, driving it across the rugged
meadows as close as she could get to the slide area, then rushing to
Jody and carrying him to the car.

It would be easier that way, if the car could travel over the wet and
uneven meadow.

But that would also mean she'd have to leave Jody's side. She looked at
the blood on her hands from pressing down on his gunshot wound, saw his
pale complexion, and noted his faint fluttery breathing. No, she would
not leave him. Jody might well die before she made it back here with the
car, and she vowed not to let the boy die alone.

"Looks like I'll have to take you myself, then," she said grimly, and
bent over to gather up the young man. "Above and beyond the call of
duty."

Jody's frame was slight and frail. Though he appeared to have fought
back the worst ravages of his wasting disease, TIle X-Fii, ES he still
had not put on much weight, and she could lift It was lucky they were
close to the cabin.

Vader whined next to her, wanting to come close.

Jody moaned when she moved him. She tried not to him further, though she
had no choice but to get him back her car, where she could drive at
breakneck speed to nearest hospital.., wherever that might be.

She left the mangled and bloody form of the lying on the trampled forest
floor. The burly man was killed before her eyes.

Later on, evidence technicians would come here study the body of this
man, as well as Patrice's. But in the future. There would be plenty of
time to pick up loose threads, to explain the pieces.

For now, the only thing that mattered to Scully get this boy to medical
attention.

She felt so helpless. She was sure that whatever first she could give
him even whatever emergency surgery the doctors could perform whenever
she arrived.

a medical center--would be too little, too late.

But she refused to give up.

In her arms, Jody felt warm and feverish.

in fact. But Scully couldn't waste time thinking of tions. She trudged
ahead at her best speed, lugging him of the forest, taking him to help.

The black Lab close at her heels, silent and worried.

Jody continued to bleed, spilling crimson droplets the forest floor, the
grass, finally out to the clearing the cabin. Scully focused her
attention straight ahead kept moving toward her rental car. She had to
get here, had to hurry.

She looked off to one side as she bypassed the' ridden body of Patrice
Kennessy. She was glad Jody have to see his mother like this. Perhaps he
didn't know what had happened to her.

Scully reached the car and gently set the boy the ground, leaning his
back against the back fender as she opened the rear door. Vader barked
and jumped in, then barked again, as if urging her to hurry.

Scully picked up Jody's limp form and gently positioned him inside the
car. Her makeshift bandage had fallen off, soaked with blood. But the
bleeding from his huge wound had slowed remarkably, congealing. Scully
worried that meant Jody's heartbeat was weak, at the edge of death. She
pressed more cloth against the bullet hole, and then jumped into the
driver's seat and started the car.

She drove off at a reckless speed up the bumpy dirt driveway, over the
rise. She scraped the bottom of her car again as she headed back toward
the logging road, but she accelerated this time, ignoring all caution.

The isolated cabin with all of its murder and death fell behind them.

In the back seat, Vader looked through the rear window and continued
barking.

Federal Office Building Crystal City, Virginia Friday, 12:08 P. M.

The phone rang in Adam Lentz's plain government office, and he grabbed
for it immediately.

Very few people knew his direct number, so the call had to be important,
though it startled him from his quiet and intense study of maps and
detailed local survey charts of the Oregon wilderness.

"Hello," he said, keeping his voice neutral.

Lentz listened to the voice on the other end of the phone, feeling a
sudden chill. "Yes, sir," he answered. "I was about to have a progress
report for you."

Indeed, he had put together a careful map of his ongoing search, a
listing of all the attempts he had made, the professional hunters and
investigators combing the wooded, mountainous area of western Oregon.

"In fact," Lentz said, "I have my briefcase packed and a ticket voucher.

My plane leaves for Portland within the hour.

I'm going to head up the mobile tactical command center there.

I want to be on site so I can take care of things personally."

He listened to the voice, detecting no displeasure, no scorn, only the
faintest background lilt of sarcasm.

TIle X'FILES Je ma di('t want a formal report. Not al this time.

fact, he tended to avoid anything on paper whatsoever, Lentz erbally
gave him a summary of what he had done track down Patrice and Jody
Kennessy and their pet dog.

Lentz looked at his topographical maps. With a flat he listed where the
six teams had concentrated searches, rattling off one after another. He
did not need make his efforts sound extravagant or competent.

Finally, though, a hint of criticism came from the end of the phone
conversation. "We had thought all of uncontrolled samples of Kennessy's
nanomachines destroyed. Your previous reports stated as much. This very
important goal of ours, and I'm quite disappointed learn that this isn't
so. And the dog--that's a rather mistake."

Lentz swallowed. "We believed those efforts had successful after the
fire at Dymar. We had sent crews in to retrieve any unburned records. We
found the safe and the videotape, but nothing else."

"Yes," the man said on the phone, "but from the tion of the dead
security guard--as well as several bodies--we must assume that some of
the have now escaped."

"We'll get them, sir," Lentz said. "We're doing our to track down the
fugitives. Finding the dog should problem. When we complete our mission,
I assure you, won't be any samples remaining."

"That isn't a suggestion," the voice said. "That's the it must be."

"I understand, sir," Lentz replied. "I've narrowed my search,
concentrating on a particular area in rural gon."

He rolled up the maps as he talked, folded other ments, and slid them
into his briefcase. He glanced at watch. His plane would be departing
soon. He had unmarked carry-on luggage, and he had papers that allowed
him to bypass normal ticketing requirements. Lentz could take advantage
of oe of those empty seats the airlines were required to keep on all
flights for important military or gov ernment personnel. His passes
allowed him to move about at will with no written record of his travel
plans or his movements. Such things were required in his line of work.

"And one last thing," said the man on the phone. "I've suggested this
before, but I will reiterate it. You would do well to keep your eye on
Agent Mulder. Make sure part of your team is specifically assigned to
shadowing his move ments, following everything he does. Eavesdrop on
every conversation he has.

"You already have the manpower that you need, but Agent Mulder has a
certain.., talent for the unexpected. If you stay close to him, he may
well lead you exactly where you need to be."

"Thank you, sir," Lentz said, then glanced at his watch again. "I need
to get to National Airport. I'll remain in touch, but for now I've got a
plane to catch.",

"And a mission to accomplish," the man said without the slightest hint
of emotion.

T 1 T?-TII E Kennessys' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 3:15 P. M.

The red pickup truck Mulder had comman deered handled surprisingly well.

With its big tires and high clearance, it ran like a steam roller over
the potholes, puddles, and broken branches on the old logging road and
the over grown half-graded driveway that led back to the isolated cabin.

After seeing the dead trucker's body and the image of supposedly dead
Jeremy Dorman on the surveillance video tape, he felt an urgency to find
Scully, to warn her. But the cabin was quiet, empty, abandoned.

Leaving the truck and walking around, he saw fresh tire marks embedded
in the soft mud and gravel. Someone had driven here recently and then
departed again. Could Scully have gone already? Where would she go?

When he discovered the woman's body lying in the grass, he knew it was
Patrice Kennessy, without a doubt.

Mulder frowned and stepped back away from her.

Patrice's skin had been ravaged by the same disease he had just seen on
the dead truck driver. He swallowed hard.

"Scully!" He moved with greater urgency. The blood spatters on the
ground were obvious, bright red splashed in an uneven pattern.

With a sheen of sweat on his forehead, Mulder into a trot, looking
ahead, then back down to the ground he followed the blood trail back
into the forest.

Now he saw footprints. Scully's shoes. Paw prints from dog. His heart
beat faster.

Mulder found his way to the base of a steep slope a mudslide had gouged
the hillside. Near one of the zontal tree trunks Mulder saw the
blood-smeared man broad shoulders, tattered clothes, and a mangled
ripped all the way down to the neck bone.

He recognized the burly man from the Dymar photos, from the surveillance
video at the truck weigh tion. Jeremy Dorman certainly dead now.

Mulder also smelled gunpowder beyond the blood.

dead man's hand clutched a service revolver. From smell, Mulder could
t611 it had been recently fired--but man didn't look as if he'd be
firing it again anytime soon.

Mulder bent over to inspect the gaping wound in man's throat. Had the
black Lab attacked him?

But even as he watched, Dorman's mangled larynx the muscle tissue and
skin around it looked melted, ing itself over, as if someone had sealed
it with wax.

throat injury was filled with translucent mucus, slime ing over the
mangled skin.

Around him, Mulder saw signs of a struggle where and mud had slid down
the slope. It looked as if had fallen over the edge, and then been
pursued. He more of the dog's footprints, Scully's shoe prints.

And smaller prints--the boy's?

"Scully!" he called out again, but he heard no only the rustle of pine
trees and a few birds. The remained hushed, fearful or angry. Mulder
listened, but .

heard no answer.

Then the dead man on the ground lurched up as if spring-loaded.

His claw-like left hand grabbed the edge of Mulder's overcoat. Mulder
cried out and struggled backward, but the desperate man clung to his
coat.

Without changing his cadaverous expression, Jeremy Dorman brought up the
revolver he held in his hand, point ing it threateningly at Mulder.

Mulder looked down and saw the clutching hand, its covering of skin
squirming, mov- ingninfested with nanomachines? mslicked with a coating
of slime. A contagious mucus.., the carrier of the deadly nanotech
plague.

Tiltittyf6iiit Oregon Wilderness Friday, 4:19 P. M.

Fifty miles at least to the nearest hospital, along tangled roads
through wooded mountains and Scully didn't know exactly where she was
going. She raced away as the lowering sun glittered through the trees,
and then the clouds closed over again.

She kept driving, pushing her foot to the floor and wrestling with the
curves of the county road, heading north. Dark pine trees flashed by
like tunnel walls on either side of her.

In the backseat, Vader whimpered, very upset. Clumps of blood and foam
bristled from his muzzle. She hadn't taken time to clean him up. He
snuffled at the motionless boy on the seat beside him.

Scully remembered the brutal way the dog had attacked the hulking man
who had carried the plague that killed Patrice Kennessy, who had
threatened Jody. Now, despite the spattered evidence of dried blood on
his fur, he seemed utterly loyal and devoted to guarding his master.

Before driving away from the cabin, she had checked Jody's pulse. It was
faint, his breathing shallow--but the boy still lived, clinging
tenaciously. He seemed to be in coma. In the past twenty minutes Jody
hadn't made sound, not even a groan. She glanced up in the mirror, just
to reassure herself.

From the trees on her right, a dog stepped into the in front of her, and
she spotted it out of the corner of eye. Scully slammed the brakes and
yanked the wheel.

The dog bounded back out of sight, into the She swerved, nearly lost
control of the car on the slick then at the latest minute regained it.
Behind her, in rearview mirror, she saw the dark shape of the dog trot
across the road, undaunted by its close call.

In the backseat Jody gasped, and his spine arched some kind of
convulsion. Scully jerked the car to a stop the middle of the road and
unbuckled her seatbelt to back, dreading to find that the boy had
finally succumbed death, that he had reached the limits of endurance.

She touched him. Jody's skin was hot and damp with sweat. His skin
burned. Sweat trickled along forehead. His eyes were squeezed shut.

Despite all her ical training, Scully still didn't know what to do.

In a moment the convulsion faded, and Jody breathed little more easily.

Vader nudged the boy in the shoulder then licked Jody's cheek,
whimpering.

Seeing him stabilized for the moment, Scully didn't waste any more time.

She shifted back into gear and off, her tires spinning on the
leaf-covered asphalt.

swallowed the curves ahead, and she was forced to trate on the road
rather than her patient.

Beside her the cell phone still displayed "No Service"

its little screen. She felt incredibly isolated, like the ists in the
group where Jody's uncle had gone to hide.

people wanted it that way, but right now Scully would much preferred a
large, brightly lit hospital with lots of tors and other specialists to
help.

She wished Mulder were here. She wished she could at least call him.

When Jody coughed and sat up in the back seat, looking groggy but
otherwise perfectly healthy, Scully nearly drove off the road.

Vader barked and nuzzled the young man, crawling all over him,
slobbering on him, utterly happy to see Jody restored.

Scully slammed on the brakes. The car slewed onto the soft shoulder, and
she came to a stop near an unmarked dirt road.

"Jody!" she cried. "You're all right."

"I'm hungry," he said, rubbing his eyes. He looked around in the
backseat. His shirt still hung open, and though dried blood was caked on
his skin, she could see that the wound itself had closed over.

She popped open her door and raced to the back of the car, leaving the
driver's side open. The helpful chiming bell scolded her for leaving the
keys in the ignition. In the back she bent over, grasping Jody by the
shoulders.

"Sit back. Are you all right?" She touched him, checking his skin. His
fever had dropped, but he still felt warm. "How do you feel?"

She saw that skin had folded over the gunshot wound in his chest, clean
and smooth, with a plastic appearance. "I don't believe this," Scully
said.

"Is there anything to eat?" Jody asked.

Scully remembered the bag of cheese curls Mulder had left in the front
seat, and she moved around to the other side of the car to get it. The
boy grabbed the bag of snack food and ate greedily, chomping handfuls as
powdery orange fla vor'mg covered his lips and fingers.

The black Lab wiggled and squirmed in the backseat, demanding as much
attention as his boy could give him, though Jody was more interested in
just eating. Offhandedly, he patted Vader on the shoulders.

TIle scrounge around. Scully saw something glint. With a sound, a piece
of metal dropped away from his back.

Scully reached behind him, and Jody distractedly aside to give her room.

She picked up a slug--the bullet had been lodged inside him. She lifted
the back of his saw a red mark, a puckered scar that faded even as
watched. She held the flattened bullet between her tips, amazed.

"Jody, do you know what's happened to you?" she The boy looked up at
her, his face smeared with powder. Vader sat next to him and laid his
chin on Jod shoulder, blinking his big brown eyes and looking lutely at
peace, enthralled to have the boy back and read, pay attention to him.

Jody shrugged. "Something my dad did." He "Nanotech .. . no, he called
them nanocritters.

policemen to make me better from the leukemia, fix He made me promise
not to tell anybody--not even mom."

Before she could think of another thing to ask, yawned again and his
eyes dulled. Now that he had an overpowering weariness came over him. "I
need to he said, and though Scully tried to ask him more q Jody was
unable to answer.

He blinked his heavy eyelids several times and drew a deep breath,
fading backward into the seat, where dropped into a deep and restful
sleep, not the induced coma she had seen before. This sleep was and
important for his body.

Scully stood back up and stepped away from the car, mind reeling with
what she had seen. The dull bell tinued to remind her that she had her
door open and keys dangling in the ignition.

The implications astounded her, and she stood pletely at a loss. Mulder
had suspected as much. She have been skeptical herself, unable to
believe the cellular technology had advanced so far--but she'd witnessed
Jody Kennessy's healing powers with her own eyes, not to men tion the
fact that he had visibly recovered from the terrible wasting cancer that
had left him an invalid, weak and skele tal, according to the photos and
records she had seen.

Scully moved slowly, in a daze, as she climbed back behind the steering
wheel. Her head pounded. Her joints ached, and she tried to tell herself
that it was just from the stressful several days of sleeping in hotel
rooms, traveling across country, and not an additional set of symptoms
from her own cancer, the affliction that had resulted perhaps from her
abduction, the unfathomable tests that had been done on her.., the
experiments.

Scully buckled her seatbelt and pulled the door closed, if only to halt
the idiotic bell. In the backseat, Vader heaved a heavy sigh and rested
his head on Jody's lap. His tail bumped against the padded armrest of
the rear door.

She drove off, slower this time, aimless.

David Kennessy had developed something wonderful, something
astonishing--she realized the power he had tapped into at Dymar
Laboratory. It had been a federally funded cancer research facili, and
this work had a pro found meaning for the millions of cancer patients
each year--people like herself.

It was appalling and unethical for Dr. Kennessy to have given his own
son such an unproven and risky course of treatment. As a medical doctor,
she was indignant at the very idea that he had bypassed all the checks
and balances, the control groups, the FDA analysis, other independent
studies.

But then again, she understood the heartache, the des perate need to do
something, anything, taking unorthodox measures when none of the normal
ones would suffice. Was it so different from laetrile therapy, prayer
healers, crystal meditation, or any number of other last-ditch schemes
that ished, the gullibility factor increased. With nothing to why not
try everything? And Jody Kennessy had been dying. He'd had no other
chance.

However, prayer healers and crystal meditation no threat to the
population at large, and Scully realized a sick tenseness in her stomach
that the risk was far with Kennessy's nanotechnology experiments. If he
made the slightest mistake in tailoring or adapting his logical
policemen" to human DNA, they could become foundly destructive on a
cellular level. The could reproduce and transmit themselves from person
person. They could cause a radical outrage other people, healthy people,
scrambling the That would have been a concern only if the chines didn't
work properly.., and Kennessy had gambled that he had made no mistakes.

Scully set her jaw and drove along, tugging down sun visor in an effort
to counteract the flickering tree ows that danced in an interlocking
pattern across her shield.

After the plague victims she and Mulder had seen,.

appeared that something must have gone wron wrong.

Tiiliit? F WE Kennessys ' Cabin Coast Range, Oregon Friday, 4:23 P. M.

The wounds in ]eremy Dorman's throat had sealed, and a tanble heat
emanated from hhn, a pulsing warmth that radiated from his skin and
body.

The supposedly dead man opened his mouth and formed words, but only a
whispery gurgle came from his ruined voice box. He jabbed with the
revolver and hissed words using only modulated breath. "Your
weapon--drop it!"

Mulder slowly reached to the other side of his overcoat, found the
handgun in its pancake holster. He dropped his handgun on the forest
floor with a thump. It struck the mud, slid to one side, and rested
against a clump of dried pine needles.

"Nanotechnology," Mulder said, trying to quell the wonder in his voice.

"You're healing yourself."

"You're one of them," Dorman said, his voice harsh, his breath still
grievously wounded. "One of those men."

Then he released his grip on Mulder's overcoat, leaving a handprt of
slime Lhat seeped LLo The fabric, movg of its own accord like an amoeba.

"Can I Lake off y coal?" u]e asle, g to e a]a out o s oce.

"Go ahead." Doa eae e to s eet, holdg e revolver. Mulder shed s outer
jacket, only his dark sportcoat.

"How did you fd me?" Dorman said. "o are "I'm wi& e FBI. My name is
Mulder. I've been for Paice and Jody Keessy. I'm after em, not you
though I would certay like to ow how you suived Mar fire, Mr. Dorms."

e m snorted. "FBI. I ew you were volved conspiracy. You're yg to
suppress ormation, our discoveries. You thought I was dead. You thought
had lled me."

Mulder would have laughed der y other stces. "No one's ever accused me
of berg volved conspiracy. I assure you, I had never heard of you, or
Keessy, or Mar Laborato before the desction the facili." He paused.

"You're contanated wi g from Keessy's research, aren't you?"

"I am e research" Dorm said, raisg s wch was still rough and rocky.

Something in his chest squirmed beneath the covering of his shirt.

Dorman winced, nearly over. Mulder saw writhing lumps like serpents, of
a strange oily color that flickered into motion his skin, and then
calmed, seeping back into his mass.

"It looks to me like e research still needs a lile Mulder said.

Dorm gesred with the revolver for Mulder to arod. "You have a vecle
here?"

Mulder nodded, tg of the battered pickup. "

speak."

"We're going to get out of here. You have to help me find Jody, or at
least the dog. They're with the other one.., the woman. She left me for
dead."

"Considering the condition of your throat, that would have been a
reasonable assumption," Mulder said, covering his relief at hearing
confirmation that Scully had been here, that she was still alive.

"You're going to help me, Agent Mulder." Now Dorman's voice had an edge.

"You are my key to tracking them down."

"So you can kill them both like you murdered Patrice Kennessy and the
truck driver and the security guard?"

Mulder said.

Dorman winced again as an inner turmoil convulsed through his body. "I
didn't mean to. I had to." Then he snapped his gaze back toward Mulder.

"But if you don't help me, I'll do the same to you. Don't try to touch
me."

"Believe me, Mr. Dorman"--he glanced down at the slime-encrusted wounds
on the man's exposed skin-- "touching you is absolutely the last thing
on my mind."

"I don't want to hurt anybody," Dorman said, his face twisted with
anguish. "I don't. I never meant for any of this to happen.., but it's
rapidly becoming impossible not to hurt anyone else. If I can just get a
few drops of fresh blood--preferably the boy's blood, but the dog might
do- no one else needs to get hurt, and I can be well again. It's all so
simple. Everybody wins."

For once Mulder let his skepticism show. He knew the dog had been used
as some sort of research animalnbut what did the boy have to do with it?

"What will that accom plish? I don't understand."

Dorman flashed him a look of pure scorn. "Of course you don't
understand, Agent Mulder."

"Then explain it to me," Mulder said. "You've got those nanotechnology
machines inside your body, don't you?"

"David called them 'nanocritters'nvery cute."

"The dog has them inside his bloodstream," Mulder TIle I-F! L, ES
guessed: "Developed by David and Darin Kennessy Jody's cancer."

"And apparently Jody's nanocritters work just fine."

man's dark eyes flashed• "He's already cured of leukemia."

Mulder froze under the tangled, shadowy forest as he tried to digest the
information. "But if ... if the dog the boy are infected, if the dog
recovers from his injuries Jody's healthy now--why are you falling
apart? Why do bring death to anyone you touch?"

Dorman practically shouted, "Because their function perfectly! Unlike
mine." He gestured for Mulder march out of the forest, back toward the
isolated where he had parked the pickup truck. "I didn't have The lab
was burning, and I was supposed to die, just David. They betrayed me! I
took.., whatever was able."

Mulder's eyes widened, turning to look over his de. "You used early
generation nanocritters, the ones fully tested. You injected yourself so
your body could so you could escape while everyone else thought you
dead."

Dorman scowled. "That dog was our first real realize now that David must
have immediately taken fresh batch of virgin nanocritters and secretly
injected in his son. Jody was almost dead already from leukemia, so what
difference did it make? I doubt even knew. But after seeing Jody
today--he's cured.

healthy. The nanocritters worked perfectly inside Dorman's skin
shuddered and rippled in the dim light.

"Unlike yours," Mulder pointed out.

"David was too paranoid to leave anything within easy reach. He'd
learned that much at least from 1 brother. I only had access to what
remained in our storage. Some of our prototypes had produced ...

results. I should have been more careful, but the facility burning
around me. When the machines got into my system, they reproduced and
adjusted to my genetics, my cell struc ture. I thought it would work."

As he trudged into the meadow, Mulder's mind raced ahead, sifting the
possibilities. "So Dymar was bombed because someone else was funding
your research, and they didn't want the nanotechnology to get loose.

They didn't want David Kennessy testing it out on his pet dog or his
son."

Dorman's voice carried a strange tone. "The cure to dis ease, the
possibility of immortality--why wouldn't they want it all to themselves?

They intended to take the samples to an isolation laboratory where they
could continue the work in secret." He continued under his breath. "I
was sup posed to be in charge of that work, but those people decided to
obliterate me as well as David and everyone else."

He gestured again with the revolver, and Mulder stepped carefull
swallowing hard as understanding crys tallized around him.

The prototype nanocritters had adapted themselves to the DNA of the
initial lab animals, but when Dorman had brashly iniected them into
himself, the cellular scouts were forced to adapt to completely
different genetics: biological policemen with conflicting sets of
instructions. The drastic shift must have knocked the already unstable
machines out of whack.

Mulder continued to speculate. "So your prototype nano- critters are
confused with conflicting programming. When they hit a third person, a
new genetic structure, they grow even more rampant. That's what causes
this viral form of cancer whenever you touch someone, a shutdown in the
ner vous system that grows like wildfire throughout the human body."

"If that's what you believe," Dorman said with a low mutter. "I haven't
exactly hadtime to run a lot of tests."

Mulder frowned. "Is that mucus"--he carefully pointed TIle ][FILES at
Dorman's throat, which was glistening with carrier substance for the
nanocritters?"

Dorman nodded. "It's infested with them. If gets the carrier fluid on
them, the nanomachines penetrate their body ..."

The battered red pickup stood parked in the driveway right in front of
them now. As he walked, made every effort to avoid the fallen body of
Patrice nessy. "And now the same thing is happening to you as pened to
your victims," Mulder said, "but much slowly. Your body is falling
apart, and you think blood will save you somehow."

Dorman sighed, at the end of his patience. "The critters in his system
are completely stable. That's what need. They're working the way they
should, not flawed contradictory errors like mine. The dog's
nanocritters good, too, but Jody's are already conformed to DNA."

Dorman drew a deep breath, and Mulder realized the man had no reason to
believe his own theory; merely hoped against hope that his speculation
was "If I can get an infusion of stable nanocritters, be stronger than
my warped ones. They will supersede infestation in my own body and give
them a blueprint." He looked intensely at Mulder, as if he to grab the
FBI agent and shake his shoulders. "Is that wrong?"

When the two men reached the old pickup front of the cabin, Dorman told
Mulder to take out his keys.

"I've left them in the ignition," Mulder said.

"Very trusting of you."

"It's not my truck," Mulder said, making excuses, tating, trying to
figure out what to do next.

Dorman yanked open his creaking door. "Okay, let's

He slid onto the seat, but remained as far toward the passen ger door as
possible, avoiding contact. "We've got to find them."

Mulder drove off, trapped in the same vehicle with the man whose touch
caused instant death.

Tactical Team Temporary Command Post Oregon District Friday, 6:10 p To
Adam Lentz and his crew of professionals, the fugitives were leaving a
trail of clues like muddy footprints on a snow-white carpet.

He didn't know the members of his team by name, but he knew their
skills, that they had been hand-picked for this and other simi lar
assignments. This group could handle everything themselves, but Lentz
wanted to be on the scene in person to watch over them, to intimidate
them.., and to be sure he could claim the proper credit when this was
all over.

In his line of work, he didn't get official promotions, awards, or
trophies. In fact, his successes didn't even amount to tangible pay
raises, though income was never a factor for him. He had many sources of
cash.

He had flown into Portland, discreet and professional.

He had been met at the airport and whisked off to the ren dezvous point.

Other team members converged at the site of a local police call, their
first stop.

Their high-tech mobile sanitation van arrived" escorted by a black
sedan. Men in black suits and ties boiled out of lee ](FILES the open
doors next to where a logging truck had off the road. The report had
come in over the airwaves, Lentz's response team had scrambled.

A state trooper, Officer Jared Penwick, had remained the scene. Next to
him, huddled in the patrol car seat--obviously not a prisoner--was an
old man wearing red wide-billed cap and a rain slicker. The man looked
erable and worried.

The men in suits flashed their badges and themselves as operatives from
the federal government.

all wore sidearms. They moved quickly as a unit.

The doors to the cleanup van popped open and men spacesuit-like
anti-contamination gear clambered armed with plastic bags and foam guns.

The team in the rear carried a flamethrower.

"What's going on here?" Officer Penwick said, toward them.

"We're the official cleanup team," Lentz answered.

hadn't even bothered to take out his badge. "We appreciate your full
cooperation."

He stood stoically out of range beyond the risk of tamination as the
crew opened the truck driver's door descended upon the victim with
plastic wrapping.

sprayed thick foam and acid, using extreme tion efforts. They quickly
had the dead trucker bundled, | arms and legs bent so he could be
wrapped up like a caterpillar in a cocoon.

The trooper watched everything, wide-eyed. "Hey, can't just take--

"We're doing this to eliminate all risk of sir. Did you or this
gentleman here'--he nodded toward man in the rain slicker--"actually
open up the truck Cab go inside?"

"No," Officer Penwick said, "but there was an FBI a iwith us. Agent
Mulder. One of your people, I suppose?"

Lentz didn't answer.

The trooper continued, "He commandeered this man's pickup truck and
headed off. He said he had to meet his partner, which had something to
do with this situation. I've been waiting here for'--he glanced at his
watch--"close to an hour."

"We'll take care of everything from this point on, sir.

Don't concern yourself." Lentz stepped back, shielding his eyes as the
suited man with the flamethrower sprayed jellied gasoline inside the cab
of the logging truck and then ignited it with a whump and a roan "Holy
shit!" said the man in the rain slicker. He slammed the door of the
patrol car as a wave of heat ruffled over them, sending clouds of steam
from the wet weeds and asphalt.

"You'd best step back," Lentz said to the trooper. "The gas tank will
blow at any minute."

They hustled away, ducking low. The rest of the team had gotten the
trucker's body wrapped up and tucked inside a sterile isolation chamber
within the cleanup vehicle.

They would shuck their suits and incinerate them as soon as they got
inside.

The log truck burned, an incandescent torch in the gray rainy afternoon.

The gas tank exploded with a deafening roar, and all the men ducked just
long enough to avoid the flying debris before they turned back to their
work.

"You mentioned Agent Mulder," Lentz said, returning to the trooper. "Can
you tell us where he's gone?"

"Sure, I know where he's headed," Officer Penwick said, still astounded
at the fireball, how the men had so efficiently obliterated all the
evidence. The sound of the fire crackled and roared, while the black
smoke stank of gasoline, chemi cals, and wet wood.

The trooper gave Lentz directions on how to find Darin Kennessy's cabin.

Lentz wrote nothing down, but memo rized every word. He had to restrain
himself from shaking his head.

TIle X-FILES The men climbed back into the black sedan, while rest of
the crew sealed the cleanup van and its driver the engine. :

"Hey!" The old manin the rain slicker opened the senger door of the
trooper's car and stood up. He shouted Lentz, "When do I get my pickup
back?" i:'

If the image of Agent Fox Mulder driving around battered redneck pickup
truck amused Lentz, his betrayed no expression.

"We'll do everything we can, sir. There's no need worry."

Lentz then climbed into the sedan, and the team off to Kennessy's
isolated cabin.

Tlillit? SEVEii Oregon Back Roads Friday, 6:17 P. M.

With a brief sigh from the backseat, Jody woke up again at dusk,
refreshed, fully healed--and ready to talk.

"Who are you, lady?" Jody asked, startling her again. He woke up so
quickly and fully.

Vader sat up next to him, panting and happy, as if all was right with
the world again.

"My name is Dana Scully," she said, intent on the darkening road.

"Dana--just call me Dana. I was here looking for you. I wanted to make
sure you got to the hospital before your cancer got any worse."

"I don't need the hospital," Jody said with a lilt in his voice that
made it clear he thought the answer to that was plain. "Not anymore."

Scully drove on into the dusk. She hadn't been able to reach Mulder.

"And why is it that you don't need a hospital?" Scully asked. "I've seen
your medical records, Jody."

"I was sick. Cancer." Then he closed his eyes, .trying to remember.

"Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, that's what it's called--or 'LL." My dad
said there were lots of names it, cancer the blood."

"]t means your blood cells are being made Scully said. "They're not
working properly and killing ones that are."

"But I'm fixed now---or most of the way," Jody said fidently. He patted
Vader on the head, then hugged his The black Lab absolutely loved it.

Though Scully suspected the answers, she still had hard time wrestling
with the actual facts.

Jody suddenly looked forward at her with "Are you one of those people
chasing after us? Are you one my mom was so afraid of?"

"No," Scully said, "I was trying to save you from people. You were very
hard to find, Jody. Your morn good job of hiding you." She bit her lip;
knowing was going to ask next.., and he did, looking around backseat,
suddenly realizing where he was.

"Hey, what happened to my morn? Where is she?

was chasing her, and she told me to run."

"Jeremy?" Scully asked, hating herself for so avoiding his question.

"Jeremy Dorman," Jody said, as if she should know this information. "My
dad's assistant. We thought was killed in the fire, too, but he wasn't.

I think there's thing wrong with him, though. He said he needed Jody
hung his head, absently patting the dog. He hard. "Jeremy did something
to my mom, didn't he?"

Scully drew a deep breath and slowed the car. She want to be distracted
by any sharp curves or road as she told Jody Kennessy that his mother
was dead.

"She tried to protect you, I think," Scully said, "but man, Mr. Dorman,
who came after you ..." She her mind raced through possible choices of
words.

is very sick. He's got some kind of disease. You were not to let him
touch you."

"And did my room catch the disease?" Jody asked.

Scully nodded, looking straight ahead and hoping he would still see her
answer. "Yes."

"I don't think it was a disease," Jody said. He spoke bravely, his voice
strong. "I think Jeremy has nanocritters inside him, too. He stole them
from the lab.., but they're not working right in him. His nanocritters
kill people. I saw what he looked like."

"Is that why he was after you?" Scully asked. She was impressed by his
intelligence and composure after such an awful ordeal--but his story
seemed so fantastic. Yet, after what she had seen, how could he be
making it up?

Jody sighed and his shoulders slumped. "I think those people are
probably after him, too. We're carrying the only samples left, carrying
them inside us. Somebody doesn't want them to get loose."

He blinked up, and Scully glanced in the rearview mir ror, seeing his
bright eyes in the fading light. He seemed ter rified and innocent. She
thought of the cancer ravaging him, how he faced a similar fate but a
much greater risk than she herself did.

"Do you think I'm a threat, Dana? Are other people going to die because
of me?"

"No." Scully said. "I've touched you, and I'm fine. I'm going to make
sure you're okay."

The boy said nothing--it was hard to tell whether her words had the
reassuring effect she intended.

"These 'nanocritters'," Jody. What did your dad say to you about them?"

"He told me they were biological policemen that went through my body
looking for the bad cells and fixing them one at a time," Jody said.

"The nanocritters can also protect me when I get hurt."

"Like from a gunshot," she said.

Scully realized that if the nanomachines were able to repair
well-entrenched leukemia, a gunshot would have TIle X-FIt, ES been
simple Patchwork. They could easily stop the plug up holes, seal the
skin.

Altering acute leukemia, though, was a more difficult task. The
biological policemen would have.

comb through billions of cells in Jody's body, a restructuring. It was
the difference between a Band-Aid a vaccine.

"You're not going to take me to a hospital, are Jody asked. "I'm not
supposed to be out in public. I'm supposed to let my name get around
anywhere."

Scully thought about what he had said. She wished could talk this over
with Mulder. If Kennessy's ogy actually worked--as was apparent from the
her own eyes--Jody and his dog were all that the Dymar research.

Everything else had been cally destroyed, and these two in her backseat
were carriers of the functional nanocritters .. . and wanted to destroy
them.

It could be a grave mistake for her to take the boy t hospital and
entrust him into the care of other people. Scully had no doubt that
before long Jody and would fall into the hands of those men who had
destruction of Dymar.

As she drove on, Scully knew she couldn't let this captured and whisked
away, his identity erased.

nessy would not be swept under the rug. She felt to him.

"No, Jody," Scully said, "you don't have to keep you safe."

TIIIIIT -EIIIIIT Oregon Back Roads Friday, 6:24 P. M.

As the pickup truck droned on and the darkness deepened, at least Mulder
didn't have to look at Jeremy Dorman, didn't have to see the sickening
squirming and unexplained motion of his body.

After a long period of uneasiness, restlessness, and barely suppressed
pain, Dorman seemed to be dropping into unconsciousness. Mulder could
see that the former researcher, the man who had faced--and been
seemingly killed by--the other conspirators, was in anguish. He clearly
didn't have long to live. His body could no longer function with such
severe ravages.

If Dorman didn't get his help soon, there would be no point.

But Mulder didn't know how much to believe the man's story. How much had
he himself been responsible for the Dymar disaster?

Dorman lifted his heavy-lidded eyes" and when he noticed the antenna of
Mulder's cellular phone poking from the pocket of his suit jacket, he
sat up at once. "Your phone, Agent Mulder. You have a cell phone!"

Tile l,- FII, E S Mulder blinked. "What about my phone?"

"Use it. Pull it out and dial your partner. We can them that way."

So far Mulder had avoided bringing this distorted man anywhere close to
Scully or the innocent in her possession--but now he didn't see any way
he talk himself out of it.

"Take out your phone, Agent Mulder,"

growled, the threat clear in his voice. "Now."

Mulder gripped the steering wheel with his left compensating from side
to side to maintain a steady on the uneven road. He yanked out the phone
and the antenna with his teeth. With some relief, he saw that light
still blinked NO SERVICE.

"I Can't," Mulder said and turned the phone so that man could see. "You
know how far out we are. There any substations nearby or booster
antennas." He drew deep breath. "Believe me, Mr. Dorman, I've wanted to
her many times."

The big man slumped against the passenger-side until the armrest
creaked. Dorman used his fingertip to at an imaginary mark on the pickup
window; his finger a tracing of sticky, translucent slime on the glass.

Mulder kept his eyeson the road. The stabbed into the mist.

When Dorman looked at Mulder, in the shadows eyes seemed very bright.

"Jody will help me. I know will." Dark trees flickered past them in the
twilight. "He I were pals. I was his foster uncle. We played games,
talked about things. Jody's dad was always busy, and uncle that
jerk--told them all to go to hell when he had fight with David and ran
off to stick his head in the But Jody knows I would never hurt him. He
has to that, no matter what else has happened.".

He gestured to the phone lying between them on seat. "Try it, Agent
Mulder. Call your partner. Please."

The sincerity and desperation in Dorman's voice sent tin gles down
Mulder's spine. Reluctantl) without any faith that it would work, he
picked up the phone and punched in Scully's speed-dial number.

This time, to his surprise, the phone rang.

Tiilitt t lilile Tactical Team Temporary Command Post Oregon District
Friday, 6:36 P. M.

As the two vehicles toiled down the muddy rutted drive, Lentz couldn't
believe they had missed the obvious connection all this time.

Earlier, they had quietly checked out the survivalist enclave where
David Kennessy's brother Darin had gone to ground, thinking himself
invisible and protected. But Patrice had not gone there. There was no
sign of the dog or the twelve- year-old boy.

She had come instead to this land and this cabin, which had belonged to
Kennessy's brother, purchased long ago and seemingly ignored. Focused on
the red herring of the survivalist enclave, Lentz had not spotted this
hiding place on any of their computer searches of where Patrice might
have gone.

This cabin would have been a perfect place for Patrice to shelter her
son and the dog.

But now it appeared that someone had found them first.

The team again sprang out of their vehicles, this time fully armed,
their automatic rifles and grenade launchers pointed toward the small
silent building.

Tli[ )[FILES frozen in attack positions.

"Move closer," Lentz said without raising his voice.

the still-misty air, his words carried clearly. The team hers shuffled
about, exchanging positions, moving tightening a noose around the cabin.

Others sprinted the back to secure the site.

Lentz flicked his glance around, confident that ev member of the group
had noticed the twin sets of fresh tracks on the driveway. Agent Mulder
had already here, as had his partner Scully.

One of the men shouted, gesturing toward a thick of tall grass and weeds
near the front porch. Lentz and others hurried over to find a woman's
body sprawled ground, blotched from the ravages of rampant infestation.
She had been tainted. The disease had her, too.

The viral infestation was spreading, and with each tim the prospect for
containment grew worse and The team members had just barely thwarted an
outbreak!

the Mercy Hospital morgue, where the nanomachines continued their work
on the first victim, crudely ing some of the cadaver's bodily systems.

It was Lentz's job to ensure that such a close call happened again.."

"They've gone," Lentz said, "but we've got more up to do here."

He directed the teams in the cleanup van to put on protective gear and
prepare for another Lentz stood back and drew a deep breath, inhaling
resiny scent of the nearby forest, the damp perfume of clean fresh
meadow. He turned to one of the men.

the cabin to the ground," he said. "Make sure remains."

He turned to see the crew already swaddling Kennessy's body with the
plastic and the foam. Another man took out pumping equipment and began
to spray jel lied gasoline around the exterior cabin walls, then made a
special effort to douse the meadow where Patrice had lain.

Lentz didn't bother to stay and watch the fire. He went back to the car,
where the radio systems connected to other satellite uplinks and
receiving dishes, to cellular phone tap ping or jamming devices and
security descramblers.

Other members of the extended tactical squadron had been keeping tabs on
Agent Mulder, and now Lentz required whatever information they could
give him.

Mulder could be the one to lead them right where they needed to be.

Oregon Back Roads Friday, 6:47 P. M. Scully's cellular phone rang in the
quiet darkness of the car's front seat, like an electronic chipmunk
chittering. She snatched it up, knowing who it must be, relieved to be
back in touch with her partner at last.

In the rear of the car Jody remained quiet, curious. The dog whimpered,
but fell silent.

She yanked out the antenna while driving with one hand.

"Scully, it's me." Mulder's voice was surrounded by a nimbus of static,
but still understandable.

"Mulder, I've been trying to reach you for hours," she said quickly,
before he could say anything. "Listen, this is important. I've got Jody
Kennessy with me. He's healed from his leukemia, and he's got amazing
regenerative abilities-but he's in danger. We're both in danger." Her
breath caught in her throat. "Mulder, he doesn't have the plague he has
the cure."

"I know, Scully. It's Kennessy's nanotechnology. The actual plague
carrier is Jeremy Dorman--and he's sitting right here next to me ... a
little too close, but I don't have much choice at the moment."

Dorman was alive! She couldn't believe it. She lookedat the blood-soaked
body, his hand still No human being could have survived an injury such
as "Mulder, I saw the dog attack him, tear his throat But then, Scully
realized, she never would have young Jody could live after the gunshot
wotmd he received.

"Dorman's got the nanomachines in him as well,"

der said, "but his are malfunctioning. Rather I'd say."

Jody leaned forward, concerned. "What is it, Dana?

Jeremy after us?"

"He's got my partner," Scully muttered quietly to boy.

Mulder's voice continued at the same time. "Those critters are amazing
things with remarkable healing as we've both seen. No wonder somebody
wants to them under wraps."

"Mulder, we saw what happened at the Dymar Lab.

know people came in and confiscated all evidence of dead security guard
in the hospital morgue. I'm not let Jody Kennessy or the dog be
captured, taken in, somehow erased."

"I don't think that's what Mr. Dorman wants, Mulder said. "He wants to
meet." She heard a cussion on the phone, Dorman saying something in a
ening tone. She remembered his gruff, dismissive her confrontation with
him in the forest, just before he accidentally shot Jody. "In fact, he
insists on it."

She pulled into a clearing at the side of the road.

trees were thinning, becoming scrubbier, and she down a shallow grade to
a small city ahead. She noticed the town's name as she drove along, but
direction she had been heading, Scully knew she nearing the suburbs
around Portland.

"Mulder, are you all right?" she said.

"Dorman needs something from Jody. Some of his blood."

Scully interrupted. "I stopped him before.., or at least I tried. I
won't let Jody get hurt."

Mulder's voice fell silent for a few seconds on the phone, then she
heard a scuffle. "Mulder! Are you all right?" she called out, wondering
what was happening and how far away she was from helping him.

He didn't answer her.

As Mulder tried to think of something to say, Dorman finally gave up in
frustration and reached over to snatch the tele phone from Mulder's
hand.

"Hey!" he said, then flinched away to keep from touch ing the
slime-slick man.

Dorman cradled the cellular phone and pushed it against his fluctuating
face. The skin on his cheeks glistened and squirmed. The mucus on his
hands left sticky patches on the black plastic.

"Agent Scully, tell Jody I'm sorry I shot him," Dorman said into the
phone. "But I knew he would heal, just like the dog. I didn't mean to
hurt him. I don't want to hurt any body."

He reached up to flick on the dome light in the pickup's cab so that
Mulder could see the intent look on his face and the revolver still held
in his hand. "You need to tell the boy something for me, please. I need
to explain to him."

Mulder knew his own conversation with Scully was now over. He couldn't
touch the telephone again, or else the nano- critters would infiltrate
his body too and leave him a splotched, convulsing wreck like Dorman's
other victims.

Dorman swallowed, and from the anguished look on his face and the yellow
shadows cast from the dim dome light, Mulder thought perhaps the
distorted man really was sorry for all that had happened. "Tell him his
mother is dead--and it's because of me. But it was an accident.

She was trying to protect him. She didn't know that touching me would be
deadly."

His lips pressed together. "The nanocritters in my are going wrong, very
wrong. They didn't heal her, Jody's do---they destroyed his mother's
systems, and died. There was nothing I could do." He spoke faster
faster. "I warned her to stay away from me, but she"-- drew a deep
breath--"she moved too fast. Jody knows tough his morn was."

Dorman looked up, turning his gleaming, hooded at Mulder.

Mulder kept driving. The red pickup rattled over a hole, and a loose
wrench in the rear bed clanged bounced. He hoped one of the bumps would
knock it free he wouldn't have to hear the grating noise any more.

"Listen, Agent Scully." Dorman's voice was soothing; mangled voice box
must have healed quite nicely.

nanocritters work just fine--and that's what I need blood for. I think
the nanocritters his dad gave him able to fix the ones in me. It's my
only chance."

Dorman winced as his body convulsed again, and tried not to gasp into
the phone. The hand holding t revolver twitched and jerked. Mulder hoped
his wouldn't clench around the trigger and shoot a hole the roof of the
pickup. i "You saw how I look," he said. "Jody remembers was like, how
everything was between us. Me and him ing Mario Kart or Cruisin" USA.
Remind him about the time I let him beat me."

Then he sat back, curling his mouth in a little bit smile, perhaps
nostalgic, perhaps predatory. "David nessy was right. There are
government men after us.

want to destroy everything we created--but I got away, so did Jody and
Vader. But we're marked for I'm going to die in less than a day unless
my can be fixed. Unless I can see Jody."

Mulder looked over at him. The broad-shouldered, dev astatingly sick man
was very persuasive. On the phone he could hear faint voices, a
discussion--presumably Jody talk ing to Scully. By the expression on
Dorman's face, Jody seemed swayed by the big man's arguments. And why
not?

Dorman was the only connection remaining to the boy's past. The twelve
year old would give him the benefit of the doubt. Dorman's shoulders
sagged with relief.

Mulder felt sick in the pit of his stomach, still not sure whether to
believe Dorman or not.

Finally Dorman growled into the phone again. "Yes, Agent Scully. Let's
all go back to Dymar. Th-e lab will be burnt and abandoned, but it's
neutral ground. I know you can't trick me there."

He rested the revolver in his lap, calmer and confident now. "You have
to understand how desperate I ammthat's the only reason I'm doing this..

But I won't hesitate. Unless you bring Jody to meet me, I will kill your
partner."

He raised his eyebrows. "I don't even need a gun. All I need to do is
touch him." As if in an effort to provoke Mul- der, he dropped the
revolver onto the worn seat between them.

"Just be at Dymar." He punched the END button.

He looked at the sticky residue on the black plastic of the phone,
frowned in disappointment. He rolled down his win dow and tossed the
phone away. It bounced on the gravel and shattered.

"I guess we won't be needing that anymore."

Mobile Tactical Command Center Northwestern Oregon Friday, 7:01 P. M.

Satellite dishes mounted atop the van tilted at different azimuths to
tap into various relay satellites. Computer signal processors sifted
through the complex medley of transmissions broadcast by hundreds of
thousands of unsus pecting people.

The van sat parked at the terminus of a short dirt road that ended in a
shallow dumping ground.

Compost, deadwood, rotting garbage, and uprooted stumps stood in a
massive pile like a revolutionary's barricade.

Some farmer or logger had been tossing his debris here for years rather
than pay a disposal fee at the county dump.

"Private Property" and "Keep Out" signs offered impotent threats; Adam
Lentz had far more serious methods of intim idation at his disposal.

No one had been out here for some time, though, espe cially not after
dark. The men on the professional surveillance team had the area to
themselves--and with the black- program technology rigged into the van,
they had most of North America at their fingertips.

Tree branches bristling with pine needles offered a mesh ile of
camouflage overhead, and the thick clouds made night dark and soupy,
blocking the stars--but neither trees nor the clouds hampered satellite
transmissions ....

The computers in the dashboard of the mobile command center scanned
thousands of frequencies, ran missions through voice-recognition
algorithms, searched key words, targeted on likely transmission points.

They had continued their invisible surveillance for with no success, but
Adam Lentz was not a man to give Unless he broached the subject himself,
the rest of his te members would not dare to comment on the matter
either.

Lentzwas also not one to lose patience. He had vated it over the years,
when patience and a cool lack emotion as well as an absence of remorse
had allowed to rise to this unrecognized yet still substantial position
power. Though few people understood what he about, Lentz was content
with his place in the world, the importance of his activities.

But he would have been much more content if he just find Agent Fox
Mulder.

"He can't know we're looking for him," Lentz The man at the command
console looked over, his stony, reflecting no surprise whatsoever.
"We've been discreet," the man said.

Lentz tapped his fingertips on the dashboard, ing. He knew Mulder and
Scully had split up. Agent had seen the dead trucker whose body Lentz's
team cleanly eliminated. Both Mulder and Scully had been Dorman's
isolated cabin out in the hollow, with the body of Patrice Kennessy--was
now a pile of dering ashes.

Then they had fled, and Lentz believed either A Mulder or Scully had the
boy Jody and his infected dog.

But something else was spreading the plague.

Kennessy and the boy had feared something. Was the going rampant? Had
the nanomachines within it--as Lentz had witnessed so clearly and so
brutally in the videotaped demonstration--somehow gone haywire so that
they now destroyed human beings?

The prospect frightened even him, and he knew that his superiors were
absolutely right in insisting that all such dan gerous research be
contained. Only responsible, authorized people should know about it.

He had to restore order to the world.

Outside, the awakening night insects in the Oregon deep woods made a
humming, buzzing sound. Grasshoppers, tree bugs ... Lentz didn't know
their scientific names. He had never been much interested in wildlife.

The hive behav ior of humanity in general had been enough to capture his
interest.

He sat back and waited, clearing his mind, thinking of nothing.

A man with many pressures, burdens, and dark secrets, Lentz found it
most restful when he could make his mind entirely blank. He had no plans
to set in motion, no schemes to concoct. He proceeded with his missions
one step at a time.

And in this instance, he couldn't proceed to the next step until they
heard from Agent Mulder.

The man at the command deck sat up quickly. "Incom ing," he said. He
pushed down his earphones and fiddled with switches on his receiver.

"Transmission number confirmed, frequency confirmed."

He almost allowed himself a smile, then turned to Lentz.

"Voice pattern match confirmed. It's Agent Mulder. I'm record-

He handed the earphones to Lentz, who quickly snugged them in place. The
technician fiddled with the con- trois and the recorder.

Lentz listened to a staticky, warbled conversation be tween Mulder and
Scully. In spite of his own tight control TIle ][FILES over his
reactions, Lentz's eyes went wide, and his lifted.

Yes, Scully had the boy and the dog in her the boy had healed himself
from a grievous wound ...

the most astonishing news of all was that the patsy, Jeremy Dorman, had
not been killed in the Dymar after all. He was still alive, still a
threat.., and now too was a carrier of the rogue nanotechnology.

And so was the boy! The infestation was already ing.

After various threats and explanations, Dorman Agent Scully worked to
arrange a time and a place they could meet. Mulder and Scully, Dorman,
Jody, dog were all falling right into his lap--if Lentz's team set up
their trap sufficiently ahead of time.

As soon as the cellular transmission ended, launched his team into
motion.

Every member of his group was well aware of reach the burned-out ruins
of the laboratory. After all one of the mercenaries had been part of the
protest group that had brought down the cancer establishment. They had
thrown the firebombs set the accelerants, detonated the facility so that
little than an unstable skeleton remained.

"We have to get there first," Lentz said.

The mobile van launched like a killer shark out of dead-end dirt road
and onto the leaf-slick highway, ating recklessly up the coast at a
speed far from safe.

But a mere traffic accident was not enough to Adam Lentz at that moment.

Dymar Laboratory Ruins Friday, 8:45 P. M.

Back to the haunted house, Scully thought as she drove up the steep
dveway to the uded, fire-

blackened ruins of the Dymar Laboratory.

Behind the clouds the moon spread a pearlescent glow, a shimmering
brightness in the soupy sky overhead. On the hills surround ing Dymar,
the forest had once been a peaceful, protective barricade--but now
Scully thought the trees were ominous, offering cover for the stealthy
movement of ene mies, perhaps more violent protesters.., or those other
men that Jody feared were after him and his mother.

"Stay in the car, Jody." She walked-to the sagging chain- link fence
that had been erected to keep trespassers from the dangerous
construction site. Nobody manned it now.

The bluff overlooking the sprawling city of Portland was prime business
real estate, but she saw only the blackened ruins like the carcass of a
dragon sprawled beneath the diluted moonlight. The place was empty,
dangerous yet enticing.

As Scully passed through the open and too-inviting chain-link gate, she
heard a car door slam. She whirled, TIle X-FILES expecting to see Mulder
and his captor, the big man had shot Jody--but it was only the boy
climbing out of car and looking around curiously.

The black Lab out next to him, anxious to be free, glad that his boy
healthy.

"Be careful, Jody," she called.

"I'm following you," he said. Before she could scold he added, "I don't
want to be left alone."

Scully didn't want him to go into the burned ruins her, but she couldn't
blame him, either. "All right. Come l then."

Jody hurried toward her while Vader bounded frolicking. "Keep the dog
next to you," Scully warned.

Small sounds of settling debris came from the site, structural timbers
tugged by time and gravity.

damp breeze stirred the ashes, but still the blackened hers creaked and
groaned.

Some of the structural walls remained intact, but ready to collapse at
any moment. Part of the floor had into the basement levels, but in one
section walls stood tall, coated with fire-blistered enamel paint
covered with soot.

Bulldozers sat like metal leviathans outside the perimeter. A steam
shovel, Porta Potti outhouses; and struction lockers had been set up by
the of erasing the last scar of. Dymar's presence.

Scully thought she heard a sound, and proceeded tiously toward the
bulldozer. Fuel tanks sat near the equipment. The demolitions crew had
been ready to and she wondered if the unusual rush to level the place:i
anything to do with the cover-up plans Dorman had about.

Then Scully saw a metal locker that had been open. A starburst of bright
silver showed where a had ripped off the lock, just below the marking,
Explosives,"

Suddenly the darkness seemed much more oppressive, the silence
unnatural. The air was cold and gauzy damp in her nostrils, with a sour
poison of old burning.

"Jody, keep close to me" she said.

Her heart pounded, and all of her senses came fully alert.

This meeting between the boy and Jeremy Dorman would be tense and
dangerous. But she would make sure Jody got through it.

She heard the approach of another engine, a vehicle rat tling and
laboring up the slope, tires crunching on gravel.

Twin headlights swept through the night like bright coins.

"Stay with me." She put a protective hand on Jody's shoulder, and the
two stayed at the edge of the burned-out building.

It was an oltt red pickup truck patched with primer, rusted on the
sides. The body groaned and creaked as the driver's door opened and
Mulder climbed out.

Of all the unbelievable things she had witnessed with Fox Mulder, seeing
her strictly suit-and-tie partner driving a battered old pickup ranked
among the most unusual.

"Fancy meeting you here, Scully," Mulder said.

A larger form heaved itself out of the passenger side.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and even the shad ows could not
hide that something was wrong with the way he moved, the way his limbs
seemed to have extra joints, the way weariness and pain seemed ready to
crush him.

Jeremy Dorman had looked bad before, and now he appeared even worse.

Scully took a step forward but kept herself in front of Jody. "Are you
all right, Mulder?"

"For now," he said.

Dorman took a step closer to Mulder, who edged away in an attempt to
keep his distance. The broad-shouldered man held a revolver in his
hand.., but the weapon itself seemed the least threatening aspect about
him.

Scully drew her own handgun. She was a good shot and THE X-FILES utterly
confident. She pointed the 9mm directly at Dorman. "Release Agent Mulder
right now," she said.

	der, step away from him."

		He did so by two or three steps, but he moved carefully, not wanting
to provoke Dorman.

		"I'm afraid I can't return your partner's weapon,"

	man said. "I've touched it, you see, and it's no use to anymore."

		"And I've also lost my jacket and my cell phone,"

	der said. "Think of all the paperwork I'm going to fill out."

	' i Jody came hesitantly forward, standing close Scully. "Jeremy, why
are you doing this?" he said. "You'reii bad as ... as bad as them."

	Dorman's shoulders sagged, and Scully was the pathetic lummox Lenny
from Of Mice and Men, who things he loved without knowing why or how.

"I'm sorry, Jody," he said, spreading one hand while gripped the
revolver in the other. "You can see how affecting me. I had to come
here. You can help me.

only way I know to survive."

	Jody said nothing.

"Other people are after us, Jody," Dorman said. He a step closer. Scully
did not back away, maintaining as a barrier between them. ;

"We're being hunted by government officials, ing to bury your dad's work
so that no other cancer will ever be helped.

No one else will be cured like you These men want to keep that cure for
themselves."

He was so emphatic that the skin on his face shifted his intense
emotion. "The protesters that killed your the ones who burned down this
whole facility, were not animal-rights activists. They were staged by
the group talking about. It was planned. It's a conspiracy. They're ::
ones who killed your father."

At that point, as if on cue, other figures appeared, silhouettes, men in
dark suits emerging from the perimeter of the chain-link fence. They
came out of the trees and the access road.

Another group trudged up the steep driveway with bright flashlights
blazing.

"We have evidence that suggests otherwise, Mr. Dorman,"

said one of the men in the lead. "We're your reinforcements, Agent
Mulder. We'll take care of the situation from here."

Dorman looked around wildly and glared at Mulder, as if the agent had
betrayed him.

"How did you know our names?" Mulder asked.

Scully backed away until she clutched Jody's wrist. "It's not that
simple," she said. "We won't relinquish custody of this boy."

"I'm afraid you have to," the man in the lead said. "I assure you, our
jurisdiction in this matter supersedes yours."

The men came closer; their dark suits acted as camouflage in the shadowy
overhangs in the burned building.

"Identify yourselves," Scully said.

"These men don't carry business cards, Scully," Mulder said.

Jody looked at the man who had spoken. "What did you mean?" he said, his
eyes gleaming. "What did you mean that they weren't the ones who killed
my father?"

The man in the lead looked over at Jody like an insect collector
assessing a prize specimen. "Mr. Dorman didn't explain to you what
really happened to your father?" His voice held a mocking tone.

"Don't you dare, Lentz," Dorman said. His voice seethed. He had raised
the revolver in his hand, but Lentz didn't seem at all bothered by the
threat.

"Jeremy killed your dad, Jody. Not us."

"You bastard!" Dorman wailed in despair.

Scully was too astonished to respond, but it was clear to her that
Dorman realized he would never convince the boy to help him, not now.

With a roar, swngg s too-fle×ib]e arms, Jeremy man brought up the
revolver in his hand, amg at Len.:

The other team members were much faster, They snatched their own weapons
and opened fire.

Fliiit? Titile£

Dymar Laboratory Ruins Friday, 9:03 P. M.

The hail of small-caliber bullets struck Jeremy Dorman, and he thrashed
out his arms in a scream of pain--as his body suddenly went haywire.

Mulder and Scully both dove to one side, reacting according to their
training. Jody cried out as Scully dragged him with her, scrambling
toward shelter among the large construction equipment.

Mulder moved away, shouting for the men to hold their fire, but no one
paid the slightest attention to him.

Dorman himself remained the focus of all the shooting.

He had known these men wanted to take him down, though he doubted that
they had known he was still alive before now. They did not know what had
changed inside of him ...

how he was different.

Adam Lentz had betrayed him before: The people in the organization that
had promised him his own laboratory, the ability to continue the
nanotechnology research, had already attempted to destroy him. Now they
were here to finish the job.

As two hot bullets struck him, one high in the shoulder THE X-FILES and
the other on the left side of his rib cage, the pain adrenaline and fury
destroyed the last vestiges of his over his own body. He let slip his
hold on the systems had played havoc with his genetic structure, his and
nerves. He roared a wordless howl of outrage.

	And his body changed.

	''

	His skin stretched like a trembling drumhead.

muscles convulsed and clenched. The wild growths that had protruded from
his ribs, his skin, his came loose, ripping their way through his
already shirt.

	The mass of protrusions had fought themselves time previously, while he
had been trapped with Hykaway in the logging truck. But that loss of
control nothing compared to the unleashed biological chaos exhibited
now, a wild-card reorganization that the critters had found in his most
primitive DNA coding.

	His shoulders groaned, his biceps bulged, and his bent and twisted.
Another whipping tumor crawled out his throat from the base of his
tongue. The skin on his and neck ran like melting plastic.

	The men in dark suits continued to fire at him, in and self-defense
now, but Dorman's bodily integrity breaking down, mutating, able to
absorb the impacts soft clay.

	From his position at the lead of the team, Adam reacted quickly,
retreating to cover as the Dorman charged forward to attack the nearest
suited man with one twisted arm while tentacles out in a hideously
primeval mass from his body. His was a blur, filled with pain and static
and images. The nerve signals he tried to send to his had very little
effect. Now his warped and rebellious broke free, going on the rampage.

		:

	The government man's cool professionalism erated into a scream as an
explosion of fleshy "

tentacled claws, a nightmare of bizarre biological abomina tions wrapped
around his arms, his chest, his neck. Dorman squeezed and strangled,
until the man broke like balsa kin dling in his grasp.

Another bullet shattered Dorman's femur, but before he could collapse,
the nanomachines knitted the bone together again, allowing him to charge
forward to snare another vic tim.

The hot translucent slime covered Dorman's body, pro viding a vehicle
for the seething nanocritters. He needed only to touch the enemy men and
the cellular plague would instantly eradicate their systemsmbut his
out-of-control body took great delight in snapping their necks, crushing
their windpipes, folding up their rib cages like accordions.

The single tentacle whipped out of his mouth like the long sharp tongue
of a serpent, lashing the air. He didn't know how to interpret his own
senses anymore. He had no idea how much-or how littlehumanity still
remained within him.

For now he saw only the enemy, the conspirators, the traitors--and his
buzzing, disintegrating brain thought only of killing them.

But even as he continued the struggle, Dorman felt dis oriented. His
vision blurred and distorted. The surrounding agents brought more
weapons to bear. The bullet impacts drove him away, and Dorman stumbled
backward.

A dim spark in his mind made him remember the' Dymar laboratory, the
rooms where Darin and David Ken- nessy had developed their fantastic
work--work that even now had brought them to this threshold of disaster.

Like a wounded animal fleeing into its. lair, Jeremy Dor- man lurched
into the burned wreckage, seeking refuge.

And the men with weapons charged after him.

Fillitv-F 6illi Dymar Laboratory Ruins Friday, 9:19 P. M.

As soon as Lentz and his team conveniently I appeared, Mulder knew that
these men were no "reinforcements," but a cleanup crew, minor players in
the same conspiracy that he and Scully battled constantly. They had
tracked Patrice and Jody, they had staged the violent protest that
burned the lab down, they had ransacked the Kennessy home, they had
confiscated the evidence in the hospital morgue.

Mulder could do without that kind of "reinforcement"

any day of the week.

When the shots rang out, he was instantly afraid that he, Scully, and
young Jody would all be mowed down in the rain of bullets. He ducked to
one side, seeking shelter.

Thanks to Dorman, he no longer had a handgun of his own, but Scully was
still armed.

"Scull stay with the boy!" he shouted. He heard the solid wet impact of
bullets striking skin, and Dorman roared in pain.

Mulder scuttled along the darkened ground, ducking behind fallen beams
and broken walls. He looked up as the TEE ululating sound emanating from
the ominous turned more bestial, less defined.

Jeremy Dorman transformed into a monster before eyes.

All the horrors of wild cellular growth, the spread of a malignant
cancer with a mind of its extended like some ill-defined creature that
had lain mant inside Dorman's cells. Now it spread forth, without a
plan. Like tract home developments approved bribed city council, he
thought.

And this cellular assault was unleashed with a mind bent on attack and
destruction.

From her vantage point, Scully couldn't see the She shielded Jody with
her own body and ran over to shelter of the nearby bulldozer. With the
bright sound of metal upon metal, bullets ricocheted from armored side
of the machine. Scully dove down into shadows, knocking Jody to safety.

Mulder kept low, racing along the broken bricks fallen timbers. He ran
into the dubious shelter of the structure of the Dymar Laboratory.

Dorman---or what was left him--managed to of two more of the attacking
agents and kill them, using bination of hands and tentacles, as well as
the ulent plague that lived in the slime on his skin.

Gunfire continued to ring out, sounding like an control popcorn popper.

Yellow pinpoints of light flew fireflies in the darkness. Mulder could
see that the suited men had scattered to surround the entire They closed
in, driving Dorman back into the ruins.

As if it was part of a. plan.

Mulder ducked beneath an overhanging archwa with teeth of shattered
glass, had somehow remained even after the fire and the explosion.

Over by the bulldozer, Jody shouted in despair as dog let out a long and
nerve-grating chain of barks growls. Raising his head, Mulder saw a dark
shadow, the black Labrador, racing into the ruins. Vader barked and
snapped as he pursued Jeremy Dorman.

Lentz's other agents also crept up to the labyrinthine wreckage, but
they were wary now. Dorman had withstood their hail of gunfire, and he
had already killed several of them. Two of the men had flashlights,
bright white eyes that burned a white lance into the murk. Ash sifted
down from where Dorman had stirred the debris. Mulder smelled the tang
of soot and burned plastic.

One of the agents pinned Dorman with his flashlight beam, attempting to
stun him like a deer facing oncoming headlights. With a grunt, the
monstrous man shoved side ways against a support pillar, knocking a
charred wooden pole down along with a shower of concrete blocks.

The agent with the flashlight tried to scramble back but the wreckage
fell on his upper leg. Part of the wall collapsed.

Mulder heard the hard bamboo sound of a bone breaking.

Then the dark-suited man, who had been so calm as he hunted down his
victim, yelped in pain; he had a high- pitched bawling voice.

Somewhere inside the burned building, the dog barked.

Mulder tried to stay under cover, but he made plenty of noise as he
tripped over fallen bricks and crunched broken glass. He ducked behind a
slumped, charred desk as more gunfire rang out.

A bullet struck the office furniture, and Mulder let out a hiss of
surprise. He could see Scully outside in the pearly gray of fog-muffled
moonlight. She was holding the boy back, clutching his torn shirt. Jody
continued to shout after his dog as the gunfire peppered the night with
sharp sounds. Scully pushed Jody back down as a barrage of bul lets
struck the bulldozer again.

Another shot slammed into the desk near where Mulder hid.

He realized that these shots couldn't be accidental misfires, though
they would be excused as such. To the who had surrounded the Dymar site
and tried to kill man and Jody, it might also prove advantageous if
Mulder and Scully were also "accidentally" caught in line of fire.

Fiilit? Ftve Dymar Inferno Friday, 9:38 P. M.

The trap had sprung. Not as neatly as Adam "

Lentz had hoped, perhaps, but still the results would be the same.., if
a bit messier.

Messes could be cleaned up.

The gunfire crackled in the night with sharp, deadly sounds, but none of
the shots caused sufficient damage to take down Jeremy Dorman, their
immediate target. Though Lentz's team members had standing instructions
to use all the force necessary to capture the boy and the dog as well,
Agent Scully had protected young Jody Kennessy. She had sheltered him
with all the training and skills she had learned at the FBI Academy at
Quantico.

Lentz and his men had undergone more rigorous training, though, in
other.., less accredited schools.

After the initial gunfire, he thought he had seen Agent Mulder also run
for cover into the gutted building. No matter.

Everything would be taken care of in time.

Jeremy Dorman's horrific transformation had captured the focus of the
team members. Seeing several of their comrades slaughtered in the
monster's murderous rage, they set out after him, grim-faced and
murderous.

Though Lentz himself had ducked out of the way Dorman and his
plague-laced slime, he was still pointed in how his team's cool
efficiency had so shattered into a backwash of vengeance. He'd believed
these men were the best and most professional in the w If so, the world
should offer better.

He heard the shrill cry of another man inside ruins, and more gunshots
rang out. The team had Dorman inside the unstable facility. In that
respect, at everything was going as smoothly as he had hoped.

Lentz stopped at the nearest tactical vehicle, reached the front seat,
and took out the demolition control. Butt had to wait for the right
moment.

His team had arrived a full twenty-five minutes Agent Scully and the
boy, but Lentz had not moved 1 turely. It was so much more efficient to
wait for everyone reach the same rendezvous point.

Lentz's hand-picked demolitions men had used blasting caps stored at the
construction site, as well as incendiaries and explosives they kept
inside their van. Working in the precarious structure, his men rigged
sealed drums of jellied gasoline in the basement levels. When the drums
exploded, flames shoot up through the remaining floors and incinerate
rest of the Dymar building. No trace would remain.

Lentz didn't particularly want to obliterate his members who had
foolishly followed Dorman inside, ing him in a cat-and-mouse routine
among the walls. But they were expendable. Each man had been of the
risks when he signed up.

Agent Mulder had also vanished inside, and Lentz pected that some of the
gunfire was also directed at The team members would have taken it upon
eradicate all witnesses.

Lentz had received clear instructions that Mulder not to be killed. He
and his partner Scully were of a larger plan, but Lentz had to make
on-the-spot decisions.

He had to set priorities--and seeing the rampaging thing unleashed from
within Dorman's body had hardened him to the extreme necessity. If he
had to, Lentz would make excuses to his superiors. Later.

Mulder and Scully both knew too much, after all, and this weapon, this
breakthrough, this curse of rampant nanotechnology had to be controlled,
no matter what the cost.

Only certain people could be trusted with so much power.

And the time was now.

One of the other men rushed back to the armored cleanup van. His eyes
were glazed; sweat bristled across his forehead. He panted, looking
around wildly.

Lentz glanced over at him and snapped, "Control yourself."

The effect was like an electric shock running through the team member.

He stopped, reeled for a second, then swallowed hard. He stood straight,
his breathing resumed a normal rate almost instantl and he cleared his
throat, waiting for additional orders.

Lentz held up the control in his hand. A small trans- mitten "Is
everything prepared?"

The man looked down at the controls inside the van. He blinked, then
answered quickly. His words were as fast and as crisp as the gunshots
that pattered through the darkness.

"That's all you need, sir. It will set off the blasting caps and trigger
the remaining explosives. On a parallel circuit, the jellied gasoline
will ignite. Just push the red button.

That's all you need."

Lentz nodded to him curtly. "Thank you." He took one last look at the
blackened skeletal building and pushed the indicated button.

The Dymar Laboratory erupted in fresh flames.

TIle X-FILES heat was so intense, even the glass and broken stone to
have caught fire. The black Labrador had bounded the building, gotten
caught in the explosion, and thrown against a wall. Vader's fur
smoldered, but still ran, casting about for something.

One of the overhead girders fell with a crash among debris. Flames
licked along the splintered edge.

Mulder stood up from behind the desk shielding his "Vader!" he shouted.

"He over here!" That black dog evidence. Vader's bloodstream carried
functional nology that could be studied to save so many people, the
horrendous mutations Jeremy Dorman had suffered.

Mulder waved his hand to get the dog's attention, instead another man
trapped inside the wreckage and fired at him. The gunshot spanged
against the desk ...

ricocheted onto one of the broken concrete walls.

Before the man could shoot again, though, the form of Jeremy Dorman
crashed through the debris.

man with the gun tore his attention from Mulder--the target--to the
monstrous creature. He didn't make an outcry before several of Dorman's
new a grasped him. With a twisted but powerful arm, snapped the man's
neck, then discarded him.

At the moment, Mulder didn't feel inclined to the distorted man with
gratitude. Shielding his eyes, able to see through the smoke and the
blaze, he toward the outside, needing to get away.

The dog was hopelessly lost inside the facility.

couldn't understand why Vader had run into such a ous area in the first
place.

The unstable floor was on fire. The walls, the debris.

even the air burned his lungs with each gasping, breath he drew.

Mulder didn't know how he was going to get out alive..

Scully clutched Jody's torn shirt, but the fabric ripped and pulled free
as he lunged after his dog.

"Jody, no!"

But the boy charged after Vader. The men in the ambush continued
shooting, but Dorman was killing them one after another. The black dog
plunged directly into the crossfire.

The twelve-year-old boy--perhaps a bit too confident in his own
immortality, as many twelve-year-olds wereran after him a few seconds
later.

Scully dropped the useless scrap of cloth in her hand.

Desperate, she stood up from behind the shelter of the bull- dozen
Scully watched the boy run miraculously unharmed toward the charred
walls of Dymar. With a loud ricochet, another bullet bounced off the
heavy tractor tread; she didn't even bother to duck.

Bits of debris showered Jody, but he lowered his head and kept running.

He stood screaming at the edge of the walls, looking at the barrier of
flames. He ducked down and tried to get inside. She heard Mulder's voice
call out for the dog, then more gunshots. The Dymar facility and all it
stood for continued to burn.

So far, no police, no fire engines, no help whatsoever came to
investigate the gunfire, the explosion, the flames.

"Mulder!" she shouted. She didn't know where he was or how he could get
out. Jody ducked recklessly inside.

"Jody!" she shouted. "Come back here!"

She ran to the threshold and squinted through the smoke. A girder
tumbled as a ceiling collapsed, showering sparks. Part of the floor
showed gaps and holes where the flames and the explosion beneath had
weakened it, causing it to crack and tumble down in sections like a
house of cards.

Jody stood half-balanced, flailing his hands. "Vader, whereare you?

Vader!"

Throwing all caution to the wind, needing to save the boy as if it were
some measure of her own worthiness to sur vive, Scully hurried inside.

She struggled ahead, taking Tile X-FII, ES blinking them open for a
quick glimpse, then sta along.

"Vader!" Jody called again, out of sight.

Finally Scully reached the boy's side and grabbed arm. "We have to go,
Jody. Out of here! The whole going to collapse."

"Scully!" Mulder shouted, his voice raw and ra.

with the smoke and heat. She turned to see him making way across the
floor, stepping in flames and racing He swatted out a fire that
smoldered on his trousers•

She gestured for him to hurry--but then a wall her crumbled. Concrete
blocks fell to one side in a mound::i cinders as a wooden support beam
split.

"Hello, Jody.. "Jeremy Dorman's tortured voice said

he pushed himself through the fire and debris of the wall had just
knocked down• The distorted man stood undisturbed by the heat raging
around him. Embers tered on his body, smoking on his skin and leaving
craters that shifted and melted and healed over. His ran like candle
wax. His clothes were fully involved in fire that blazed around him, but
his skin thrashed writhed, a horror show of tentacles and growths.

Dorman blocked their way out.

"Tod j y, you wouldn't help me when I asked--and look what's happened."

Jody bit back a small scream and only glared at hideously mutated
creature. "You killed my dad."

"Now we're all going to die in this fire," Dog'man Scully doubted that
even the swarming could protect the boy from the intense flames. She
knew a fact, though, that she and Mulder had no such mere humans,
completely susceptible to the fire's heat smoke. They were both doomed
unless they could around this man.

Mulder tripped and fell to one knee in the hot glass; he hauled himself
up again without an outcry. Scully still had her handgun, but she knew
that would offer no real threat against Dorman. He would laugh off her
bullets, the way he had ignored the crossfire from the dark-suited
men.., the way he even now didn't seem troubled by the fire that raged
around them.

"Jody, come to me," Dorman said, plodding closer. His skin roiled and
rippled, glistening with slime that oozed from his every pore.

Jody staggered back toward Scully. She could see burns on his skin,
scratches and bleeding cuts where debris had showered him in the
explosion, and she wondered briefly why the small injuries weren't
magically healing as his gunshot wound had. Was something wrong with his
nanocritters?

Had they given up, or shut down somehow?

Scully knew she couldn't protect the boy. Dorman lunged closer, reaching
out to him with a flame-covered hand.

And then from a wall of burning wreckage to one side, where the light
and the smoke made visibility impossible, the black Labrador howled and
launched himself at the target.

Dorman spun about, his head twisting and swiveling.

His broken, bent hands rose up, thrashing. His tentacles and tumors
quivered like a basket of snakes. The dog, a black-

furred bulldozer, knocked Dorman backward.

"Vader!" Jody screamed.

The dog drove Dorman staggering into the flames, where bright light and
curling fire rose up through ever-growing gaps in the floor, as if the
pit of hell itself lay beneath the support platform.

Dorman yelped, and his tentacles wrapped around the dog. The black Lab's
fur caught on fire in patches, but Vader didn't seem to notice. Immune
to the plague Dorman carried, the dog snapped his jaws, digging his
fangs deep into the soft flowing flesh of the nanotech-infected man.

Dorman wrestled with the heavy animal and both bled to the creaking,
splintering floorboards. Dorman's foot crashed through one of the
flame-filled holes. ,."

He cried out. His tentacles writhed. The dog bit ciously at his face.

Then the floor collapsed in an avalanche of debris. Sparks and smoke
flew upward like a land-mine explosion. With a howl and a scream, both
Dorman Vader fell into the seething basement.

Jody wailed and made as if to run after his dog, but Scully grabbed him
fiercely by the arms. She dragged boy back toward the opening, and
safety. Coughing, followed, stumbling after her. :

The flames roared higher, and more girders collapsed:) Another concrete
wall toppled into shards, then an entire section of the floor fell in,
nearly dragging them with it.

They reached the threshold of the collapsing and Scully could think of
nothing more than to push out into the fresh air, into the blessed
relief. Safe from fire.

The cool night seemed impossibly dark and cold as they fought their way
from the flames and the wreckage..

eyes burned, so filled with tears that she could barely See.

Scully held the despairing boy, wrapping her arms him. Mulder touched
her shoulder, getting her attention they stumbled away from the flames.

She looked up to see a group of men waiting for them, staring coldly.

The survivors of Lentz's team held their auto.

matic weapons high and pointed at them:

"Give me the boy," Adam Lentz said.

Dymar Inferno Friday, 9:58 P. M.

Mulder should have known the men in suits would be waiting for them at
the perimeter of the inferno. Some of Lentz's "reinforcements"

would have realized there was no need to endanger themselves--better
just to hang around and let any survivors come to them.

"Stop right there, Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," the man in the lead
said. "There's still a chance we can bring this to a satisfactory
resolution."

"We're not interested in your satisfactory resolution,"

Mulder answered with a raw cough.

Scully's eyes flashed as she placed her arm protectively around the boy.

"You're not taking Jody. We know why you want him."

"Then you know the danger," Lentz said. "Our friend Mr. Dorman just
showed us all what could go wrong. This technology can't be allowed to
be disseminated uncon trolled. We have no other choice." He smiled, but
not with his eyes. "Don't make this difficult."

"You're not taking him," she said more vehemently.

To emphasize her point, Scully drew herself tall. Her face TIle was
smudged with soot; her clothes reeked of smoke cinder burns. She stood
defiantly in front of Jody, a cade between him and their automatic
weapons.

wasn't sure if her body would block a hail of hi gunfire, but he thought
her sheer determination just stop them.

"I don't know who you are, Mr. Lentz," Mulder taking a step closer to
Scully to support her stand, "but young man is in our protective
custody."

"I just want to help him," Lentz said smoothly.

take him to medical care. A special facility where he'll i looked after
by people who can.., understand his tion. You know no normal hospital
would be able him."

Scully did not budge. "I'm not convinced he would survive your
treatment."

From below, finally, Mulder could hear sirens approaching vehicles.

Response crews with flashing red blue lights raced along the suburb
streets toward the base the hill. The second Dymar fire continued to
blaze at the of the bluff.

Mulder stepped backward, closer to his partner. He his eyes nailed on
Lentz's, ignoring the other men in suits.

"Now you're sounding like me, Scully," Mulder said, "Give us the boy
now," Lentz said. Below, the were getting louder, closer.

"Not a chance in hell," Scully answered.

Fire engines and police cars raced up the hill, sirens ing. They would
reach the hilltop inferno in seconds Lentz meant to do something, it
would be now. But knew if he did shoot them, he wouldn't have time to up
his mess before the Dymar site became very. public.

"Mr. Lentz "one of the surviving team members Scully took one step,
paused a terribly long then began to walk slowly away, one step at a
time.

determination didn't waver.

Lentz stared at her. The other men kept their guns trained.

Rescue workers and firefighters yanked open the chain- link gate,
hauling it aside so the fire trucks could drive inside.

"You don't know what you're doing," Lentz said coldly.

He eyed the arriving vehicles, as if still gauging whether he could get
away with shooting the two agents and eliminat ing the bodies under the
very noses of the rushing emer gency crews. Adam Lentz and his men stood
angry and defeated, backlit by the raging inferno that burned the
remains of Dymar Laboratory to the ground.

But Scully knew she was saving the boy's life. She kept walking, holding
Jody's arm. He looked forlornly back at the wall of flames.

As the uniformed men rushed to hook up hoses and rig their fire engine,
Lentz's team stepped back, disappearing into the forest shadows.

Somehow the three of them managed to reach the rental car.

"I'll drive, Scully," Mulder said as he popped open the driver's-side
door. "You're a bit distracted."

"I'll keep an eye on Jody," she said.

Mulder started the engine, half-expecting that gun shots from the trees
would ring out and the windshield would explode with spider-webbed
bullet cracks. But instead, he managed to drive off, his tires spitting
loose gravel on the steep driveway leading down from Dymar Laboratory.

He had to flash his ID several times to get past the converging
authorities. He wondered how Lentz would explain himself and his team if
they were found at all in the surrounding forest.

FIjlit? Etgiit Mercy Hospital Portland, Oregon Saturday, 12:16 P. M.

In the hospital, Scully checked and rechecked Jody Kennessy's lab
results, but she remained as baffled after an hour of contemplation as
when she had first seen the data.

She sat in the bustling cafeteria at lunchtime, nursing a bitter-tasting
cup of coffee. Doctors and nurses came through, chatting about cases the
way sports fans talked about football games; patients spent time out of
their stuffy rooms with their family members.

Finally, realizing the charts would show her nothing else, Scully got
another cup to go, and went to meet Mulder where he sat stationed on
guard duty outside the boy's hospital room.

As she walked from the elevator down the hall, she waved the manila
folder in her hand. Mulder looked up, eager for confirmation of the
technology. He stuffed the magazine he had been reading back into its
plain brown envelope. The door to Jody's room stood ajar, with the TV
droning inside. So far, no mysterious strangers had come to challenge
the boy.

	"I don't know whether to be more astonished at the dence of functional
nanotechnology--or at the lack of it."

	Scully shook her head and pushed the dot matrix of lab scans at Mulder.

	'

	He picked them up, glancing down at the graphs, and tables, but
obviously didn't know what he looking for. "I take it this isn't what
you expected?"

	"Absolutely no traces of nanotechnology in blood." She crossed her arms
over her chest. "Look at lab results."

	Mulder scratched his dark hair. "How can that be?

saw him heal from a gunshot wound--a mortal wound."

	"Maybe I was mistaken," she said, "Perhaps the managed to miss vital
organs--"

	:

	"But Scully, look at how healthy he is! You saw the ture of him with
the leukemia symptoms. He only had month or two to live. We know David
Kennessy tested cure on him."

	Scully shrugged. "He;s clean, Mulder. Remember sample of dog's blood at
the veterinarian's office? The nants of nanotechnology were quite
obvious. Dr.

said the same thing about the fluid specimen I took my autopsy of Vernon
Ruckman. The traces aren't hard to find if the nanom0chines are as
ubiquitous in the stream as they. should be and there would have to be
lions upon millions of them in order to effect the cellular repairs that
we witnessed."

	Her first evidence that something was not as she pected, though, had
been Jody's recent scrapes, and cuts after the fire. Though not serious,
they failed heal any more quickly than other ordinary scratches.

Kennessy now seemed like a normal boy, despite what knew of his
background.

	"Then where did the nanocritters go?" Mulder "Did Jody lose them
somehow?"

	Scully had no idea how to explain it.

	'

Together they entered Jody's room, where the boy sat up in bed, paying
little attention to the television that played loudly in the background.

Considering all he had been through, the twelve-year-old seemed to be
taking the ordeal well enough. He gave Scully a wan smile when he saw
her.

A few moments later, the chief oncologist bustled into the room, holding
a clipboard in his hand and shaking his head. He looked over at Scully,
then at Jody, dismissing Mul- der entirely.

"I see no evidence of leukemia, Agent Scully," he said, shaking his
head. "Are you sure this is the same boy?"

"Yes, we're sure."

The oncologist sighed. "I've looked at the boy's previous charts and lab
results. No blast cells in the blood, and I performed a lumbar puncture
to study the cerebrospinal fluid for the presence of blast cells--still
nothing. Very standard procedures, and usually very conclusive. In an
advanced case such as his is supposed to be, the symptoms should be
obvious just by looking at himmlord knows, I've seen enough cases."

Now the oncologist finally looked at Jody. "But this boy's leukemia is
completely gone. Not just in remission--it's gone."

Scully hadn't honestly expected anything else.

The oncologist blinked his eyes and let his chart hang by his hip. "I've
seen medical miracles happen.., not often, but given the number of
patients through here, occasionally events occur that medicine just
can't explain. But this bo36 who was facing terminal cancer only a month
or two ago, now shows no symptoms whatsoever."

The oncologist raised his eyebrows at Jody, who seemed uninterested in
the discussion, as if he knew the answers all along. "Mr. Kennessy,
you're cured. Do you understand the magnitude of that diagnosis? You're
completely healthy, other than a few scratches and scrapes and minor
burns.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with you."

TIle X-F! I, ES Scully said, and the doctor seemed disappointed that
wasn't quite as amazed as he was. A little too brusquel3 perhaps, she
ushered him out the door of the hospital room,.

After the oncologist departed, she and Mulder sat at the end of Jody's
bed. "Do you know why there's no trace left the nanocritters in your
bloodstream, Jody? We can't undera ii stand it. The nanomachines healed
you from the wound before, they cured you of your cancer--but gone now."

"Because I'm cured." Jody looked up at the but did not care about the
housewives' talk show going on at low volume.

"My dad said they would shut down and.

dissolve when they were done. He made them so they would fix my leukemia
cell by cell. He said it would long time, but I would get better every
day. Then, when were finished .. . the nanocritters were supposed to
themselves down."

Mulder raised his eyebrows at Scully. "A fail-safe nism. I wonder if his
brother Darin even knew about it."

"Mulder, that implies an incredible level of technolo sophistication--"

she began, but then realized that the prospect of self-sustaining
biological policemen that worked on the human body, using nothing more
than DNA as an instruction manual, was also fantastically what she had
believed were modem capabilities.

"Jody," she said, leaning closer to the boy, "we intend release these
results as widely as possible. We need everyone know that you are no
longer carrying any signs the nanotechnology. If you're clean, there
should be no son why those men will continue to be after you."

"Whatever," he said, sounding glum.

Scully didn't waste her effort in a false cheeriness.

boy would have to deal with his situation in his own way.

Jody Kennessy had carried a miracle cure, not just cancer but probably
for all forms of disease that humanity. The nanocritters in his blood
might even have offered immortality.

But with Dymar Laboratory destroyed, Jeremy Dorman and the black Lab
swallowed up in the inferno, and David Kennessy and anyone else involved
in the project dead, sim ilar nanotechnology breakthroughs would be a
long time coming if they had to be made from scratch.

Scully already had an idea of how the Bureau might keep Jody safe in the
long run, where they could take him. It didn't make her feel good, but
it was the best option she could think of.

Mulder, meanwhile, would simply write up the case, keep all of his
records and his unexplained speculations, add them to his folders full
of anecdotal evidence. Once again, he had nothing hard and fast to prove
anything to anyone.

Just another X-File.

Before long, Scully figured, Mulder would need to install several more
file cabinets in his cramped office, just to keep track of them all.

F6il T? liliie Federal Office Building Crystal City, Virginia Sunday,
2:04 P. M.

Adam Lentz made his final report verbally and face to face, with no
paperwork buffers between them. There would be no written record of
thisinvestigation, nothing that could be uncovered and read by the wrong
sets of prying eyes. Instead, Lentz had to face down the man and tell
him everything directly, in his own words.

It was one of the most terrifying experiences he had ever known.

A curl of acrid cigarette smoke rose from the ashtray, clinging like a
deadly shroud around the man. He was gaunt, his eyes haunted, his face
unremarkable, his dark brown hair combed back.

He did not look to be a man who held the eggshells of human lives at the
mercy of his crushing grip. He didn't look like a man who had seen
presidents die, who had engineered the fall of governments and the rise
of others, who played with unknowing test groups of people and called
them "merchandise."

THE X-F! I, ES 'i But still, he played world politics the way other
played the game of Risk.

He took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly
through parchment-dry lips. So far, he had said nothing.

Lentz stood inside the nondescript office, facing the man squarely. The
ashtray on the desk was crowded with: stubbed-out cigarette butts.

"How can you be so sure?" the man finally said. His voice was
deceptively soft, with a melodious quality.

Though he had never once served in the military, at least not in any
official capacity, Lentz stood ramrod strai "Scully and Mulder have
tested the boy's blood We have complete access to his hospital records.
There is absolutely no evidence of a nanotechnology microscopic
machines, no fragments--nothing. He's "Then how do you explain his
remarkable healing erties? The gunshot wound?"

"No one actually saw that, sir," Lentz said. "At least, one on record."

The man just looked at him, smoke curling around'

face. Lentz knew his answer wasn't acceptable. Not "And the leukemia?
The boy shows no sign of further ill : ness, as I understand it."

"Dr. Kennessy knew the potential threat of ogy--he was no fool and he
might have been able to gram his nanocritters to shut down once their
mission accomplished, once his son was cured of his cancer.

according to the tests recently run in the hospital, Jody nessy is
perfectly healthy, no longer suffering from lymphoblastic leukemia."

Eyebrows raised. "So he's been cured, but he no carries the cure." The
man blew out a long breath cigarette smoke. "We can be happy for that,
at least. We tainly wouldn't want anyone else to get their hands on
miracle."

Lentz didn't answer, simply stood watchful and wary. In a secret
repository, a building whose address was unknown, in rooms without
numbers, drawers without markings, the Cigarette-Smoking Man kept
samples and bits of evidence hidden away so that no one else could see.

These tangible items would have proven enormously useful to others who
sought the truth in all its many forms.

But this man would never share them.

"What about Agents Mulder and Scully?" the smoking man said. "What do
they have left?"

"More theories, more hypotheses, but no evidence,"

Lentz said.

The smoking man inhaled again, then coughed several times, a deep
ominous cough that held a taint of much deeper ills. Perhaps he just had
a guilty conscience .. . or perhaps something was wrong with him
physically.

Lentz fidgeted, waiting to be dismissed or complimented or even
reprimanded. The silence was the worst.

"To reiterate," Lentz said, speaking uncomfortably into the man's
continued gaze. Languid smoke curled up and around, making a sinuous
arabesque dance in the air. "We have destroyed the bodies of all the
known plague victims and sterilized every place touched by the
nanotechnology. We believe none of these self-reproducing devices has
survived."

"Dorman?" the smoking man asked. "And the dog?"

"We sifted through the Dymar wreckage and found an assortment of bones
and teeth and a partial skull. We believe these to be the remains of
Dorman and the dog."

"Did dental records verify this?"

"Impossible, sir," Lentz answered. "The nanotechnology cellular growths
had distorted and changed the bone struc ture and the teeth, even
removing all the fillings from Dor- man's mouth. We can't make a
positive identification, even as to the species. However, we have
eyewitness accounts.

We saw the two fall into the flames. We found the bones.

There seems to be no question."

"There are always questions," the man said, raising eyebrows. But then,
unconcerned, he lit another and smoked half of it without saying a word.

Lentz waited.

Finally the man stubbed out the butt in the already crowded ashtray. He
coughed one more time, and allowed himself a thin-lipped smile. "Very
good, Mr. Lento.

I don't think the world is ready yet for miracle cures ...

least not anytime soon."

"I agree, sir," Lentz said.

As the man nodded slightly in dismissal, Lentz forcibly stopping himself
from running full-tilt out of Office. Behind him, the man coughed again.
Louder time.

Survivalist Compound Oregon Wilderness One Month Later The people were
strange here, Jody thought ...

but at least he felt safe. After the ordeal he had recently survived,
after his entire world had been destroyed in stages--first the leukemia,
then the fire that had killed his father, then the long flight that
ended with the death of his mother--he felt he could adapt easily.

Here in the survivalist compound, his Uncle Darin was overly protective
but helpful as well. The man refused to talk about his work, his past..,
and that was just fine with Jody. Everyone in this isolated but vehement
community fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces.

Just like the puzzle of the Earth rising above the Moon he and his
mother had put together one of those last afternoons hidden in the cabin
Jody swallowed hard. He missed her very much.

After Agent Scully had brought him here, the other members of the
heavily guarded survivalist compound had taken him under their wing.

Jody Kennessy was an icon for themnow, something like a mascot for their
group--this TIle X-FILES Jody's story had only heightened the resolve of
the pound members to keep themselves isolated and the interfering and
destructive government they Ffluch.

	Jody, his Uncle Darin, and the other survivalists their days together
in difficult physical work. All the bers of the compound shared their
own specialties Jody, instructing him.

	Still healing from the stinging wounds in his heart andi his mind, Jody
spent much of his time walking the extended perimeter, when he wasn't
working in their dens or fields to help make the colony self-sufficient:

survivalists did a lot of hunting and farming to their enormous
stockpile of canned and dried foods.

	:

	It was as if this entire community had been ripped and transplanted
here from another time, a self-sufficiei!

time. Jody didn't mind. He was alone now. He didn! t fi close even to
his Uncle Darin ... but he would survive.

had overcome terminal cancer, hadn't he?

	The other members of the group knew to leave Joa alone when he was in
one of his moods, to give him the time and space he needed. Jody
wandered the fences, looking at the trees.., but mainly just being by
self and walking.

	, A mist clung to the forest, hiding in the hollows, like cottony fog
as the day warmed up. Overhead.

clouds remained gray and heavy, barely seen throughi tall treetops. He
watched his step carefully, though had assured him that there really was
no booby traps or secret defenses. The survivalists just foster such
rumors to maintain the aura of fear and around their compound. Their
main goal was to be ...

undisturbed by the outside world, and they whatever means necessary to
accomplish that end.

Jody heard a dog bark in the distahce, clear and sharp.

The cold damp air seemed to intensify the sound waves.

The survivalists had many dogs in their compound, Ger man shepherds,
bloodhounds, rottweilers, Dobermans. But this dog sounded familiar. Jody
looked up.

The dog barked again, and now he was more certain.

"Come here, boy," he called.

He heard a crashing sound through the underbrush, branches and vines
tossed aside as a large black dog bounded toward him, emerging from the
mist. The dog barked happily upon seeing him.

"Vader!" Jody called. His heart swelled, but then he dropped his voice,
concerned.

The dog looked unharmed, fully healed. Jody had seen Vader vanish into
the flames. He had seen the Dymar facility collapse into embers, shards,
and twisted girders.

But Jody also knew that his dog was special, just like he'd been before
all the nanocritters in his own body had died off. Vader had no such
fail-safe system.

The dog bounded toward him, practically knocking Jody over, licking his
face, wagging his tail so furiously that it rocked his entire body back
and forth. Vader wore no tags, no collar, no way to prove his identity.

But Jody knew.

He suspected his uncle might guess the truth, but the story he would
have to tell the others was just that he had found another dog, another
black Lab like Vader. He would give his new pet the same name. The rest
of the survivalists didn't know, and no one else in the outside world
would ever need to find out.

He hugged the dog, ruffling his fur and squeezing his neck. He shouldn't
have doubted. He should have kept watch, hoping, waiting. His mother had
said it herself. The dog would come back to him eventually.

Vader always did.