"Hello? Who's there?" Her voice came out as a dry croak.
She moaned, her head aching, as she tried once again to right
herself.
"Let me help you," the voice said.
Female, definitely, Beth thought, but the arms were strong
and capable. They righted her against the stone wall, and slowly
removed the blindfold from over her eyes, and delicately peeled the
tape away from her mouth, but left the rest of her restraints in place.
She blinked several times, her head dropping down towards her
chest, some hair falling into her face. After a few fuzzy minutes, she
finally accustomed herself to the dim light of the basement. A hand
came forward to brush the hair from her face, and she opened her
mouth in thanks, when her head came up to see her savior.
Instead of words escaping, what came out was a shrill scream,
and then another. One of the hands that had helped her came up
over her mouth, to still her cries.
The face that she was staring into was her own.
"What do you mean the voice?" Dana asked.
"The voice—the one on the phone," Mulder explained, "I
thought that it was the phrase that I'd heard before, but it was the
voice.
"So where did you hear it?"
"At the warehouse. The two men that took me—I'm almost
positive that the smaller guy was the one who called today."
"The ones who killed Juda?" Alex asked, his eyes widening.
Mulder nodded. "Dammit!" he said, jumping up and grabbing
his coat. Alex was already shrugging his on and pulling the door
open.
"What is it?" Dana asked, following them out of the office.
"The voice belonged to Mirstov's friend. I thought it was a little
suspicious that they were shipping Mirstov out of the country so
quickly, but it was just a blind. They tried to side-track me from
Mirstov by taking Beth, and they would have gotten away with it, too,
if I hadn't recognized that voice." He pressed the elevator button
impatiently. "He could be out of the country already."
Dana was on her cell. "Walter, we've got a situation. Where
are you?" She listened for a few minutes, then gave him a brief
summary of everything that they knew up to this point. "Can you
meet me at the CIA building in—" she checked her watch "about
twenty minutes? Great." She pocketed the phone and turned to
Alex. "What was the name of the agent that took Mirstov?"
"Morris," Mulder said, before he could answer.
"You know, for an ex-FBI agent, I'm clocking more time with
you than when I was your partner."
"You should come back," Alex said. "We'd make a hell of a
trio."
"We do," Dana said.
A sudden flash of an overhead light in the basement temporarily
blinded both of them. The woman dropped her flashlight on the
ground, swearing as it rolled away from her. She turned towards the
stairs, where a large man was descending.
"What the hell are you doing down here? Get away from her!"
The man held a gun in his hand, pointed at the fake-Samantha.
She raised her arms, stepping away from Beth. "You want me
to be her, don't you? How do I learn to be her without seeing her?"
"You're a goddamn actress! You act. The surgery was the
hard part." He glared at her. "Dammit, she's seen us now—we're
gonna have to kill her."
She shook her head, lowering her arms. "You were always
going to have to kill her, Buddy. You didn't really think that the boss
was going to all of this trouble just to let her go, did you? You might
as well leave me down here with her, and let me watch her for a
while."
"You've been watching her for over a day already."
"Watching her sleep, yeah," she said, dryly. "I think I have the
unconscious part of her personality down pat. I've got to get her
voice, her mannerisms, her body language. I can't do that when
she's lying there in a lump on the floor." She slithered over to the
large man, whose attention was increasingly wavering between the
gun in his hand and the two women before him. "C'mon, Buddy, let
me untie her. You know I can take care of myself."
"Yeah, well, if she tries anything, it's your hide."
She flashed him a smile. "Thanks, Buddy. Give us a hand,
okay?"
He put the gun down on top of a case, and started untying her.
"What the hell are you two doing? Trying to pull a
double-cross?" The other voice she'd heard, Beth realized.
"Aw, Kenny—it's okay. 'Sam' just wants to watch her do stuff."
"Jesus, Buddy—why don't you just hand out business cards?
You are going to stay down here while she 'watches', and watch
her. The first sign of anything funny going on, and you can kill them
both."
'Sam' started to protest, but Kenny replied, "You don't honestly
think that the boss couldn't come up with another to replace you,
honey? You're crazy." Her smile faltered only a little, and she
continued to tug at the ropes holding Beth prisoner.
"You're never going to make that plane, Agent Mulder." Morris was
looking at him with something like contempt. "It leaves in less than
thirty-five minutes. This is a delicate diplomatic situation."
Mulder threw him against the wall. Alex and Dana looked at
each other, but did nothing to interrupt him. They'd been fielding
double-talking CIA agents for the better part of thirty minutes, and
none of them were in any mood to continue doing it. Dana was
hoping that Walter would show up soon.
"We're talking about a woman's life! I don't give a damn what
'delicate diplomatic situation' is going on! You are going to stop that
plane for me, and you're going to do it now!" He removed his hands
from the agent's neck, only to give the man the chance to speak.
"I'm going to have your badge for that, Agent Mulder," Morris
said, coughing slightly.
Mulder pulled out his ID and gun and threw them on his desk.
"Here. You can have my VISA and my Boy Scout membership card,
too—but stop that plane." He looked ready to take another swing at
the man, when the door opened.
"I'd suggest you do just that, Agent Morris."
The man in the doorway was unknown to the three FBI agents,
but obviously not to Morris. He paled slightly. "But, sir—"
"When I want your opinion, Morris, I'll ask for it."
"Yes, sir." He picked up the telephone, furious, and started
dialling.
The tall man moved out of the doorway, and Dana smiled when
she saw her husband behind him.
"How did you get results so fast?" she asked, coming up to
him.
"I've been on the phone in the car on the way over here. It
helps to have friends in low places. Am I too late?"
She shook her head. "The plane hasn't left yet."
"Thank god. It would have been almost impossible to get
Mirstov back once he'd left the country."
"Probably completely impossible," Alex said, glancing at
Mulder. "If I know anything at all about Sandro, there would have
been a 'welcoming committee' to meet him wherever he'd land."
"The details of that flight were classified," Morris snapped from
behind him.
"And we all know how well you take care of ex-Russian
nationals, don't we?" Alex retorted. "Especially when they're
crossed double agents."
Morris said nothing.
It was surreal. She couldn't make a move without being scrutinized,
but when she'd initially refused to do anything, they'd tied her up
again and left her there for twenty-four hours without food or water. It
was only after they returned that she agreed to cooperate. Die of a
bullet wound, or die of starvation, she thought. What a choice. At
least a bullet is faster.
So she'd eaten, drank, stood, sat, walked and talked for days.
'Sam' studied her, sometimes even making video and audio tapes to
refer to, taking copious amounts of notes. At least she's dedicated
to her 'art.'
She still hadn't been able to figure out what they were doing, or
who it was that wanted another 'Sam' in the picture. It had to do with
Mulder, that much was obvious, but beyond that was a mystery. She
briefly thought of the conspiracies that Alex had told her about, but
they'd all seemed so long past, until Fox had been kidnapped. I
guess he was right—nothing is ever over.
Except maybe for me.
They had him brought in off the plane and to the Hoover Building with
an armed escort within two hours. Even though they'd had no sleep
for the past two days, Mulder, Alex, and, occasionally, Skinner
himself, handled the interrogation of the prisoner. Dana pored over
the files that had so helpfully been turned over by their fellow agents
in the CIA, most of it already declassified information, and as such,
useless.
Mulder talked himself raw, then let Alex take his turn. They
worked in shifts, alternating English and Russian, trying to break
down Mirstov. He was a stubborn bastard, and he had absolutely
nothing to lose or gain by cooperating with them, and he knew it,
keeping his mouth shut. It was only when Alex pointed out that
without whatever help they could offer, he'd probably be dead
whether he stayed in the country or went anywhere else in the world,
that he finally seemed to break down a little.
They lived in the building, staying there day and night, talking to
him. Mulder met Krycek in between one of their marathon
interrogations.
"How are you?"
Alex shook his head wearily. "He could be me. If it wasn't for
you, I could be in the very same situation right now."
Mulder looked at him, concerned. "If you want to stop for a
little while—"
"No," Alex said, "I'm getting close, I can feel it. Somewhere in
that thick skull is an ounce of brain matter that's actually listening to
me."
Slowly, piece by piece, they started to get little bits of
information out of him. Dana was doing most of their legwork,
assisted by several other agents that Skinner had assigned to the
case.
Several of the leads connecting Mirstov with the still-unknown
caller were dead ends, but two of them came up promising: a motel
room manager who remembered a man who vaguely fit the
description that Mulder had supplied to a sketch artist, and a waitress
in a bar down the street from the motel. They traced the car
registered to the motel room to a rental agency in Alexandria—it was
a dark-blue sedan, which the hospital nurse said looked like the car
that had run her down. An APB was put out on the car.
The waitress was able to provide them with a more detailed
sketch of their man—he'd been a regular customer of hers for nearly
a week, and a good tipper, to boot, so she remembered him vividly.
They ran it through the FBI computer and finally had a name to match
the face: Ken Tyler. He had a long list of priors, and a healthy little
group of known associates that they started bringing in.
Faced with their ever-growing pile of evidence, Mirstov
crumbled. He gave them all that he said he had, an address of an
abandoned farmhouse, on the evening of the fourth day.
It took only a couple of hours for them to figure out that the
farmhouse was, indeed, the place that they were looking for. The
team, including Mulder, Alex, and Dana, swarmed the house at dawn,
giving the occupants no time to react before taking over. Half the
house was asleep, the other half on watch. There were two men in
the upstairs bedrooms, but no Samantha. The man in the kitchen put
up a struggle and was shot, but not fatally. A woman in the front
room came out without any incident, but wouldn't say anything to any
of the agents.
Alex searched the second floor, Dana the first. Mulder found
the secret door leading to the basement under the kitchen carpet,
and rolled it back. He went down alone, the other agents busy with
taking away the half-dazed, half-angry suspects.
The room was dim, and a flick at the light switch proved
ineffective. He could see someone standing in the middle of the
room, and raised his gun. "Freeze."
The woman—he could tell from the silhouette that it was a
woman, even in the terrible light—held her hands up. He reached for
his flashlight and shone it at her. She smiled.
"Samantha," he breathed, and lowered his gun. She smiled at
him.
A sudden low muffled noise from behind her made him raise it
again, even as the woman before him stepped towards him.
"Mulder," she said, smiling, reaching her arms out to him.
The noise sounded again, and he flashed his light behind her.
He could make out a crumpled form against the wall. It looked like—
He saw the flash of a gun in front of him and dropped the
flashlight, raising his gun in two hands. He ducked from the bullet
coming towards him, and squeezed the trigger as he hit the floor,
intending only to wound.
The figure before him fell.
He watched it in slow-motion. He'd miscalculated his aim due
to the sideways motion of his own body, he realized. The sound of
the shots brought Alex and Dana down into the basement, flashlights
shining on him.
He was on his knees in front of her, his 'sister'. She still
clutched her gun, but her eyes were open and glassy, and he could
tell that she was dead even before he touched her pulse.
The moan brought him out of his stunned reverie. He went
over to her, Dana's flashlight guiding the way.
He pulled the tape away from Beth's mouth, and pulled her into
his arms, reaching behind to undo the ropes at her back. Alex came
up to help them, while Dana checked the body on the floor. Within a
minute they had Beth untied and pulled her up, shakily, onto her feet.
She turned away from the body in horror, stepping delicately
over it, eyes closed, only when she realized that there was no other
way to leave the room. Mulder came and put an arm around her,
leading her up and out of the house.
The ride to the hospital was one that they were becoming far too
familiar with. Alex drove Dana over, Mulder went with Beth in the
ambulance. She gave no protest—she hadn't said a word since they
found her.
Walter was waiting at in the emergency room when they came
in, and led them out to the waiting room.
"What happened?"
Dana shook her head, and sat down beside him. "I don't even
know."
"If she hadn't said 'Mulder'," Alex said, shaking his head, "he
might not have known until it was too late."
"I didn't even know then," Mulder said, coming into the waiting
room. "I reacted to the gun. It was instinct. I wasn't even trying to
kill her—" He closed his eyes, and his body sagged a little. Alex
came over to catch him, and eased him into a chair.
"She is dead, isn't she?" he asked.
"Yes," Dana said, quietly. "How's Beth?"
"The doctor's looking at her. The paramedics couldn't find
anything wrong with her, but they're checking her over again, just to
be sure."
"It wasn't your fault, Mulder," Alex said.
He nodded. "Yeah," he said, and closed his eyes, resting his
head against the wall.
The doctor came out twenty minutes later, and told Mulder that he
could go in with her while they arranged for a room. He returned to
the same cubicle that he'd left her in and looked at Beth in concern.
She seemed to have such a vacant, haunted look in her eyes, even
though the doctor had told them again that there was no evidence of
any physical damage. They wouldn't know for sure until they finished
running their tests, and she had missed two radiation appointments,
but her therapy could probably recommence with little damage
incurred. The psychological scars were going to be more difficult.
"Are you hungry?" he asked. She jumped a little at the sound
of his voice, and he winced. She shook her head. "When was the
last time you ate?"
"I don't remember." Her voice was low, toneless. She looked
at him, a little dazed. "What day is it?"
"Sunday."
"They had me for five days?"
He nodded.
"It felt like longer."
"From here, too."
"They kept talking about how they were going to kill me," she
said. Her voice was dangerously devoid of emotion. "Once my
'double' had completed her lessons, that is."
"It's over now." He came over a little closer to her, and sat
down on the edge of the bed.
"It doesn't feel over. She was me. Me. She looked
exactly like me. She was studying me, learning how I walked, how I
talked. She was going to become me, Fox. How do we know that
there aren't other 'me's out there somewhere? How do we know that
I'm me?"
"Beth—"
"Tests can be faked. Hell, I might have been a man at one
time! How are we ever going to be sure who I am?"
"I'm sure," he said, putting his arms around her.
"I think we should have the DNA run through again."
"Beth—"
"Fox, please. I've been living through a conspiracy for the last
week. I want to know who I am." She laughed a little desperately.
"Maybe I'm her, and they've just brainwashed me into thinking that
I'm Samantha Mulder." She rested her head on his shoulder. "I
don't even know what I mean anymore."
"It's okay," he said, wrapping his arms around her. She felt
almost limp in his arms, the weariness washing over her. "We're
going to find out what's going on. I know that you're my sister, but
if you need more proof, we'll get you more proof."
She nodded her head. "Do I have to stay here tonight?"
"That's what the doctor said."
"Will you stay with me? I know that they've assigned guards,
and you don't have to, but—"
"Try to get me to leave," he interrupted. "I'll be right here, all
night. Come on," he said, taking her hand, "Let's go find your room."
"They're going to have to give me my own parking spot, soon,"
she said.
He laughed. "If you're not my sister, I think you may be a
long-lost Scully." At her puzzled look, he shook his head. "I'll
explain it to you later."
"Bedtime story?"
He nodded. "Sure."
She stopped. "Mom—"
"Already called her, and she's on her way."
She nodded, and didn't notice his smile as they walked down
the hall.
Five
by Mona Ramsey
"Samantha." The voice was soft, as if attempting to wake her without
really trying. "Samantha."
