Legal Thingies are needed here so that I can't be taken to court and other bad stuff like that.  Okay, so
the X-Files stuff belongs to other people like Chris Carter (who, by the way, is a much cooler person than
I) and all those other companies that have copyrights (those lucky people) and crud like that.  There,
now no one can take me to jail (that's supposed to be a good thing).  Oh, one more, sorry Campbell's
soup, I used your tag line without permission.  I am acknowledging that it's yours, though.  CC, if you
read this, I'm willing to write for the show for mere peanuts!  They have to be circus peanuts, mind you,
but peanuts nonetheless. (ha ha)  
Special thanks go to my pen pal "Spooky" because she encouraged me to write more and Kathy
because she inspired a character.  You're both great!
Finished July 10th, 1996

Far Away So Close
By Amber Kelsall  (EnglshYew@aol.com)

FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
1:02 PM

     "I really appreciate you doing this for me, Kathy."  Mulder handed the file over to his
acquaintance.  "We really don't know where to go, but since the guy tried to hack into this company we
thought you might be able to track him down."
     "I never could pass up a free lunch--even if it cost me in the end."  She set the file on her desk
and sat down.  Mulder took a seat next to her.
     He and Kathy had taken coffee breaks together and even worked over a case at one time.  He
didn't really know anything about her except that she could make delightful small talk, and had one hell
of a set of legs.
     'I've really got to get into the dating scene again.'  He chided himself.
     As she opened the case file, Mulder looked over her desk.  She kept it as messy as he did,
papers were stacked and waded around her computer terminal like a moat around a castle.  He noticed
a small protrusion from a few of the papers and pushed them aside to get at the shining metal.  He
pulled out her desk plate and read the name:  Special Agent Katherine Billings.  She worked computer
sciences, mostly the cases that involved hackers.  She had an immaculate record for recovery in her
cases, and he hoped that she would be able to lead him to a suspect as well.
     She appeared to be about medium height for a woman in the 90's, and her hair hung in waves of
blonde to the nape of her neck.  Her skin was olive in color, and her eyes were green to accent it
perfectly.  Her fingers were long and slim, and she wore a dainty silver watch on her right wrist, a small
silver chain adorned the left wrist.  There were no rings on her fingers, nor did she happen to be wearing
earrings.  
     Mulder thought a minute about himself.  He wondered if his brown hair seemed unruly or his tie
that displayed flying pigs was on crooked.
     "By the way, nice tie."  She snickered.
     "At least I spiced up April Fool's Day.  Not many of our colleagues could say the same."
     She nodded and continued looking over the profile Mulder had written up.  He wrote very
eloquently, and she knew that she was dealing with an intellectual equal.  He wasn't that bad looking,
either.  He had those dark chiseled looks to him that beckoned any woman to be near.  He was a
dangerous player that mocked you if you found yourself attracted him.  His skin was darker than hers,
like he'd seen a little too much sun in the past week.  His green eyes stuck out like a sore thumb, but
they were beautiful.  He was dressed immaculately in a dark brown suit that seemed custom made.  It
hung on his frame nicely.
     "What do you think?"  He asked, interrupting her thoughts.
     "I don't know, yet, maybe if you gave me a little time to look over it first."  She suggested, never
taking her eyes from the pages.  "Do you have the disk that was recovered?"
     "Yeah, but the guys down in the lab say they couldn't find anything."  He removed a 3.5" disk
protected by the plastic of an evidence bag from his pocket and handed it to her.  It was an ugly yellow,
and the label was marked with evidence numbers.  
     "Those guys never know where to look.  Did they also go over the hardware?"  She asked,
punching the disk into her computer drive and typing away at her keyboard.
     "Hardware? Oh, you mean the hard drive?  Nah, it was torched before anyone to get to it.  All we
have is the disk."  He informed her.
     "That doesn't leave us much to go on."
     "I thought you were the 'Miracle Worker'."  He joked.
     Kathy turned to stare him down.  "I'm afraid I don't always live up to the expectations that
nickname entails.  I only do what I can, 'Spooky'."
     Mulder sat back and checked his watch.  He wished that the food would arrive soon so that he
could go eat and leave Kathy to her devices.
     A sound knocked on the office door.  "Delivery for Mulder?"
     He turned to see a teenager, obviously concerned about his surroundings, standing in the
doorway.  "Yeah, that's me."
     A calm swept over the teen with the recognition.  "That'll be eight fifty."  
     Mulder pulled out his wallet and handed the boy a ten.  "Keep the change."
     "Yeah, thanks, mister."  He frowned, and headed out the door faster than he came in.
     Mulder fumbled with the sack as he tried to fold his wallet and put it back in his pocket.  He failed
and whined miserably as it sailed to the floor.  His plastic cards slid across the floor and hit the tip of
Billings' dress shoe.
     "Need a little help?"  She bent down to pick everything up.
     Mulder set the food down on her desk and turned to help her.  She had moved too quickly and
was already stuffing everything back into the leather pockets.  As she did so, she took the time to look at
the pictures it held.  She couldn't help it, she was nosy by nature; that's what made her so good at her
job.
     "Mulder, who is this little girl?"  She looked up at him, still in crouching close to the floor.  "She
seems very familiar to me."
     "Who?"  Mulder was caught off guard.
     Kathy put the wallet in his hands and pointed to the first picture; it was faded and covered in a
thick plastic sheath, but he knew who it was right away.  "This one--I could swear that I knew this girl."
     "That's impossible."  He suddenly got defensive.  "That's my sister, Samantha."
     "No."  She took the picture out of the sheath and gave it a hard looking over.  "No, I definitely
know her, Mulder.  I don't know from where, but I've seen her before."
     "Like I said, you can't have known her."  He turned back to the food and set Billings' order on a
stack of papers, then headed out the door with his stash.  "Let me know when you're finished."
     "Yeah."  She said almost dreamily, her mind still thinking of her possible connection to the girl in
the picture.  
     With Mulder gone, she headed back to the computer and began running diagnostics on the disk. 
She couldn't get the photo out of her head.  She was positive that she had seen Mulder's sister
somewhere before...
     'Nah, I must be mistaken.'  She told herself.  'It's just the Familiarity Syndrome that everyone in
the family has been afflicted with.'
     Kathy unwrapped her turkey sandwich and took a huge bite out of it.  "Mmm, Mmm, Good!"

XXX

     Mulder sat at his desk, feet up and tie loosened.  He was just finishing up his sandwich and was
about to start attacking the bag of chips when his phone rang.  He finished chewing his last bites and
picked up the receiver.  
     "Yeah."  
     "Agent Mulder, you requested the background files on Agent Katherine Billings, they're ready for
you to pick up now."  A woman's voice sounded on the other line.
     "Could you have someone bring those down to me?  I can't get up there right now, but I need to
take a look at those."  He opened his bag of chips and it exploded in his face.  He swore softly as he
listened for a reply.
     "Sure, I'll send Agent Burns.  She'll be right down."  
     "Thanks, I owe you one."  Mulder joked.
     "I'll keep that in mind, Agent Mulder."  The line went dead.  How was it that he could picture the
smile on the woman who had manned the other end of the phone?  
     He hung up the phone and began to clean up the chips but got distracted by a newfound issue
of "Celebrity Skin" that he thought he had lost about a month earlier.  After he finished putting the
magazine in his desk drawer and had tucked the chips away in the garbage can, a knock sounded at the
door.  "Come in."
     "Agent Mulder?"  The woman opened the door, partially hiding behind it.  "I have the files that
you wanted."
     "Great."  He walked over to her, and she handed him the files.
     "You know, Kathy is a friend of mine...what is it that you want to know about her?"  She asked,
curious.
     "You make it sound like I'm out to get her."  He laughed.
     "Are you?"  Her tone was serious.
     "Look, I know what you must think about me with all those rumors, but I'm telling you, I'm not as
strange and evil as those rumors say I am."  He opened the top file and flipped over the pages without
really looking at them.
     "It's not the rumors about you that I'm worried about, Mulder."  Gerri insisted.  "I was just curious. 
I'm always curious."
     "Well, thanks for the stuff."  He pushed her out the door.       
     "Sure."  She left, bewildered by what had just taken place.  After a moment she headed back to
her office and her current research concerning inter-departmental relations.  
     Mulder went back to his desk, setting the file atop all the other loose papers on the surface.  It
made a slapping sound as it made contact with its fellow tree products.  He read that Billings was 32,
born in the same year as Samantha.  He found it odd that both women were born just a few days apart
at the same hospital.
     She had been with the bureau for six years, and had numerous awards for her accomplishments
in catching the perpetrators in her cases.  She had grown up with her father in a suburb of Virginia; her
mother having died early in her life.  She attended M.I.T. and Yale, specializing in computers and
biology.  She graduated cum laude, and her thesis rewrote the scientific findings for black holes and
alternate universes as scientific basis for computers and biological entities.  He had read it about a year
ago when she had mentioned it in passing.  They had been talking about virtual reality and some how
ended up on the subject of the universe and it's invariants.  He had no doubt that this woman was
intelligent, seeing as how she just about had him believing that time was not a universal invariant
because it was merely a label to define the conditions of space.
     Mulder thought about the scene with his wallet.  Could she have known his sister?  If so, what
would be their connection?  The more he dwelled on it, the more interested he became.

XXX

     Kathy saved her file notes, then ordered her computer to print them out.  She loved the new
voice recognition system.  Unfortunately, she also knew that hackers enjoyed the program as well.  She
had made a virus that would be triggered should anyone try to access her system without her
permission, but she didn't like the fact that she had to do it in the first place.  If only the government
would spring for machines that didn't need to be specialized before they could be used.
     She gathered the file, her print out, and the disk and shoved them all together.  She wasn't
exactly the neatest person in the world, but since it was a deal for lunch, she figured it didn't have to be
nice and orderly.
     The hallway was unusually dim that day, Kathy noticed, because two of the over head lights had
gone out.  Maintenance would take weeks to fix that. Perhaps she would ask Paul to take care of it when
she got back.
     She turned to the elevator and waited for it to approach her floor.  To her luck, everyone filed out
on her floor and she had the elevator all to herself.  She hated having to be in it when it was crowded. 
She had missed her floor more often than not in that situation.  She pushed the button for the basement
and leaned against the wall as the elevator began its motion.
     The elevator beeped as it reached its destination and the doors slid open.  The hallway ahead of
her was as dark as the other had been on her floor.  She stepped out and headed toward Mulder's
office.  She had been there only one other time when he had been going off about animals species from
outer space.  Of course she thought that he was being highly irrational and just plain crazy, but she
couldn't deny that he almost made her believe in what he was trying to express.  He had a way with
words.
     As she turned the corner, Kathy noticed a very distinct smell.  She knew it was cigarette smoke,
or more precisely Morley's.  Her father had smoked that brand all of her life.  She had always hated the
smell of his cigarettes.  She loved her Dad as any daughter would, but he had his habits.
     There was a door to her right that led out to the parking garage, and on her left was a metal
ashtray; the cigarette had only been lit, and was left there to smolder.  Kathy took it out and threw it onto
the ground.  She took pleasure as she smashed it to bits beneath her shoe.  She took what was left and
tossed it back into the tray, then noticed a sign on the wall that read:  ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING IN
THIS FACILITY BY FEDERAL LAW.
     Obviously someone thought they were above the rules.  Kathy smacked her hands together,
feeling the cigarette still lingering on her skin.  She looked ahead of her, and spotted a ladies' rest room,
grateful that she'd be able to get the stink off of her hands.  
     She opened the door leaning into it, then headed toward the sinks.  She set the file down next to
one of them and filled her hands with the pink soap from the dispenser.
     "Kathy."  A voice sounded behind her.  "How is everything?"
     She looked up in the mirror to find Dana Scully staring at her back.  "Hey Dana.  Yeah, things
are going okay, I was just on my way to give this file to your partner."
     Dana rolled up her navy suit sleeves and slathered her hands in soap.  "He got you with the
"you-do-the-notes-and-I'll-pay-for-lunch" routine, eh?"  
     "I'm afraid so."  She looked up in the mirror again, suddenly feeling a chill.  She took her hands
out of the water and grabbed at some paper towels.  "You headed back to your office?"
     "Actually, yes."  Scully followed suit.  "Did you want me to take the file with me?"
     "Could you?"  Kathy brightened.  "I just got swamped an hour after Mulder brought this to me
and I need to get started on my other cases.  Some kid hacked into a corporation and set off the fire
sprinklers.  Geez, what is this world coming to?"
     "I don't know."  Dana nabbed the file then opened the bathroom door.  "Hey listen, why don't we
get together when you have some free time; I miss our lunches."
     "Me too.  I'll let you know, okay?"  Kathy headed down the hall.
     Dana turned in the opposite direction and headed toward the office that she and Mulder shared. 
It used to be no more than a closet that had been used for the copy machine, but since she had joined
the X-Files three years ago, they had managed to get a wall knocked out for more space.  She liked the
new glass wall dividers, and had gotten a kick out of seeing Mulder walk into them the first day that they
had been installed.  Thinking of that time, Scully began to chuckle. 
     She remembered meeting Billings the first week of her assignment to the X-Files; they had run
into each other on the elevator.  After they both missed their floors, they began talking and found that
they had a lot in common; they were both scientists and they had both been brought up by fathers in the
Navy.  They became quick friends who had lunch together when they had the chance.  Scully smiled as
she remembered the first time that they had gotten drunk together.  They had rented a terrible B-movie
about a planet named Gor where the hero's name was Cabbot.  They had been wired on Bailey's Irish
Cream and coffee when they started the evening, and by the time it was over, they were each yelling
"Hey, Cabbot!" at the top of their lungs like Abbott and Costello.  They promptly shut up once Dana's
neighbor came down to complain, but still giggled until their lungs hurt.  They had finally settled into
sleep around three in the morning.  
     She enjoyed the time that she spent with the woman, but unfortunately, their job schedules were
terribly demanding so they didn't get to spend as much time together as friends should.
     Scully opened the door to her office and stepped in.  Mulder actually had the lights on for once,
and she could see that she was about to step on a sandwich wrapper.  She stepped around it and stared
at her partner.  "Do you mind?"
     "Not at all."  He looked up from the file he was reading.  "What is it?"
     "I mean the wrapper on the floor."  She pointed.  "Would it be so hard to actually get out of your
chair and put it in the wastebasket?"
     "Yeah."  He pointed to an over flowing trash bin.  "It seems that we're not good enough to have
our trash taken out with the rest of the building."
     "There's another complaint that Skinner's gonna LOVE hearing about."  She commented.  "What
are you doing?"
     "Looking over a personnel file."  He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a small bag of
sunflower seeds.  
     "Anyone I know?"  She walked over to his desk and sat on the edge.  
     "Maybe.  Her name is Katherine Billings."  He told her.
     "Kathy?"  Scully found herself interested.  "Why are you checking out Kathy?"
     "Well, when I pulled out my wallet to pay for lunch, she said that recognized the picture of
Samantha."  He chomped down on a sunflower seed.  The salt burst into his mouth and he silently
reminded himself why he didn't eat them all the time.
     "Has that suddenly become a crime?"  She asked.
     "Well no, but the way she insisted, she kept going on.  Scully, I have to admit that it kind of
scared me; she was so certain."  He said.  "In fact, I was so disturbed by it when I thought it over on the
elevator.  That's when I came down here and asked for her file as well as her father's."
     "I guess they don't call you 'Spooky' for nothing."  
     Mulder stared at her hard.  She stared right back.
     "Have you found anything interesting?"  Scully hopped off of the desk and moved to her side,
the file Kathy had given her still in her fingers.
     "Well, she was born in the same year as my sister, just a few days apart.  They were even born
in the same hospital."
     "Ooo, deja vu."  She tossed the file onto Mulder's desk.  "I ran into Kathy just down the hall.  She
had to get back to her office about a case, but she wanted me to give this to you."
     "Great, the notes."  He stopped for a moment and looked back up at his partner.  "What if she
knows something, Scully?"  
     "Who?"  She put her feet up.
     "Billings.  What if she really does have a connection to Samantha, do you realize what this could
mean?"  Mulder suddenly perked up.  "Her father was a bio geneticist; my father worked with bio
geneticists according to those files we found in that underground vault.  In fact, our mothers both went to
Vassar before meeting our fathers.  There are so many little associations like that, Scully.  How would
you explain it?"
     "It's grasping at straws, Mulder."  She looked at him.  "Her father was also a Navy officer, like
mine, but we have no link beyond that.  It's purely coincidental that you have managed to find so many
likenesses.  You can't say that it could be anything more than that."
     "Ah, but I have."  He pointed his finger into the air.
     "You've gone too far into space on this one, Mulder.  Pardon the pun."  She reached across the
desk to nab Kathy's file and began to scan over the information.  "How do you know that she wasn't just
mistaken?  She has been wrong about knowing someone before.  It's not impossible that it's a simple
case of mistaken identity and to treat it as anything other than that would be getting your hopes up high
enough just to have them crushed."
     "That's what I thought too, until I looked through her father's file as well."  Mulder pulled a photo
from the mess that he called his desk and handed it to Scully.  "Doesn't he look familiar to you?"
     "He has that kind of face, yes."  She waited for an explanation.  
     "So you don't see the connection?"  
     "I'm afraid not."  She let the photo drop from her fingers.
     "Maybe this will brighten your memory."  He pulled another photograph and handed it to her. 
"Remember this, the picture of my father with Viktor Klemper, Deep Throat, Cancerman, and Dr.
Ishimaro?  Look to the left."
     Scully took a good look at the picture, then brought the other photo back up.  When compared,
she realized that they were both pictures of the same man.  "So her father had a connection to them,
how does that link Kathy to Samantha's abduction?"
     "Now that's the great question, isn't it?"  Mulder took the photos back from his partner.
     "Look, if you have no clear substantiation, Mulder, I think that you should back away from this. 
How many times are you going to risk your job to find shapes in the clouds?"
     He frowned.  She was in one of her whiny moods again.  "So you won't go with me on this one?"
     "I think that it's unfair of you to use bureau resources to check out a thread that isn't even close
to a lead.  The bureau isn't here to be used to aid you in your quest or personal vendetta --or whatever it
is -- especially when there is so little evidence to go on.  I can't stop you from doing it, but I can't be a
part of it either."  She lectured.
     Mulder got up and walked over to his partner.  She stood up so that their faces were barely
touching.  "You know damn well that if you had a lead like this in Melissa's case you'd do the same thing
I am to find out what happened to her."
     Scully pulled away, obviously hurt.  She knew he was right, but she had to keep her resolve. 
She had a certain face that she kept on at work, and she'd be damned if Mulder would shatter it over a
disagreement.  "That was a low blow, Mulder.  Don't you ever do that again."
     "I--I'm sorry."  He apologized.  He had wanted to give her a nugget to think about, not upset her
as much as he did.
     "So what are you going to do?"  She picked up the photos and looked them over again.
     Without another word, Mulder picked up his jacket and headed out of the office.  Scully followed
him into the hall.  She was getting sick of seeing people leave this way.
     "Where are you going?"  She called after him.
     "Into space!"  He called back, rushing toward the parking garage.
     Scully leaned against the wall.  What a day this was turning out to be.

XXX

702 NE 20th
Washington, D.C.
8:31 PM

     Kathy sat on her couch, watching as the light of her television screen flickered from bright to
dark.  Her dog, an Australian Dingo named Heinrich, was sprawled across his owner protectively. 
Billings ran her hand over the pup's soft brown fur and searched for the remote with the other hand.  As
she began to channel surf, a knock sounded at her back door.
     Heinrich perked up and ran toward the sound, barking loudly.  He was very protective of his
territory.  Kathy followed him as fast as she could.  When she reached the door, she lifted up the
material that kept others from looking inside, and saw the face of Agent Mulder staring back at her.
     She unlocked the door, and held Heinrich by his collar as she opened it.  "Come on in.  I can't
guarantee that you'll pass the Heinrich test, but I'm sure you're not one to turn down a risk."
     Mulder entered, keeping his eye on the dog.  "Heinrich?  Is that your dog's name?"
     "Yep."  She closed the door and let go of his collar.  "I got him down at the animal shelter two
years ago."
     He knelt down and let the dingo smell his hand.  The dog smelled it then jumped on Mulder,
licking his face.
     "Heinrich!"  Kathy spouted.  "You know better!"
     Mulder laughed a bit, then pushed the dog off of him.
     "I have to admit, I'm surprised at his behavior.  Heinrich usually doesn't like men.  At least, none
of the ones I ever date."  She told him.  "Would you like some tea?"
     Mulder watched her as she moved, and took note that she was wearing a pair of old sweat pants
and a New York Knicks t-shirt.  "Before you offer to let me stay, I just want to you to understand that I'm
here about what you said earlier today.  You know, about recognizing my sister?"
     "And here I was hoping that it might be a social visit."  She frowned.  "I should have known
better.  All work and no play makes Spooky a dull guy."
     "Kathy, finding my sister means everything to me.  Today when you said you recognized her
photo it made me think that I had found a lead.  I came here to find out if I was right or not." 
     Heinrich sat at Mulder's feet staring at his owner in anticipation.
     "Look, Mulder."  She said.  "I know that you're not going to like this, but could we talk about this
some other time?  I need to get some things together for a case and I--"
     "Why are you so afraid to talk to me?"  Mulder interrupted.
     Kathy stood there, in the stale air of her kitchen for a moment, a memory tickling at the back of
her brain--in a flash she was back in the forest, everything was dark, and she could hear the screaming
surrounding her.  She let the memory pass and looked back into Mulder's eyes.  "I just am."
     "Look, Kathy.  People go through painful things.  The most pain that I have suffered was the day
that my sister was abducted and I couldn't do a damn thing about it.  You should have heard her
scream..."  He took a seat at the dining table.
     "Mulder..."  She began to cry.  "I'm always sorry when someone loses a part of their family, but I
need more time to think.  I need to collect my thoughts.  Could I meet you later tonight--say the
waterfront?"
     He stood, glad that he was going to get something out of her after all.  "Yeah, of course."
     "Thanks."  She smiled briefly then led Mulder to the door.  She shut it after he stepped onto the
stoop and leaned against the door.  "The problem is, I HAVE heard the screams."


XXX

     Mulder stood on the stoop, and opened his hands.  He had had them balled up into fists and his
fingers were beginning to hurt.  As he made his way down to his car, he pulled his keys from his pocket
and wondered about the meeting he had just been a part of.  He silently hoped talking to Kathy would
not lead to another dead end.  He was really getting sick of those.  
     Fox opened the car and slumped into the driver's seat.  The clock on the dashboard read nine
o'clock.  It was too late to go back to his apartment then make it for their meeting, so he decided to go
for a bite to eat.  
     He picked up some Taco Bell drive-through and headed to the office to pick up the files he had
taken out earlier.  Maybe he could find something else on Billings and her father before they met.  He
really didn't have a lot of questions to ask her.  He needed more to go on.
     He had been reading the files for about an hour when he finally realized that he was hungry.  By
now his food had gotten cold, but that didn't stop him from digging into it.
     He had just taken a bite out of his burrito when the phone rang.
     'It figures.'  He told himself.  'Someone would call while there was food in my mouth.'
     After downing the food, he picked up the line.  "Mulder."
     "Hi, it's me."  Scully sounded on the other line.  
     "What's up?"  He put the phone between his ear and neck as he tried to search for the files.
     "I wanted to let you know that I have those photos.  I wasn't sure about their authenticity, so I'm
having them checked out."  She said.
     There was a mumbled voice in the background.  "What was that?"
     "What?"  She asked the voice.  "Well, you were right.  It seems that the photos are genuine.  It's
definitely her father, but we still don't know why he's in this photo.  Have you found anything else?"
     "No, I just left Kathy's house.  It seems she wasn't inclined to speak with me until later tonight." 
He attempted to eat after he spoke.  "So did you find out anything else on her father?"
     "Not yet, but we're running him through the system.  I have to tell you, I'm not expecting to find
anything.  You know how the military likes to clean up all their dirty laundry."
     "What makes you think he was dirty?"  He asked.  
     "With friends like Klemper and Ishimaro, do you really expect him to be squeaky clean?"  She
tried to get a theory out of him.  
     "To the shine."  He checked his watch.  "Look, give me a ring if you find out something else, I'm
going to be late for that meeting."
     They hung up without another word, and he practically inhaled the rest of his meal.  He grabbed
the files on his desk and headed out his car.  He realized that he still hadn't looked at the notes Billings
had done for him.  Now that he had a chance at finding his sister, he had completely blown off the other
case.  
     He sped through several yellow lights and kept his eye on the clock as he made his way through
the streets of Washington.  He was going to make it on time after all.  He hoped that Scully would be
able to find something more substantial than he had.  

XXX

     "Hey Scully, I think I might have something."  Byers, the communications expert of the Lone
Gunman, called to her.  
     "What is it?"  She walked over to his work area.  
     "I found some stuff on this Billings character, but these are protected files."  He told her.
     "Can't you hack into them?"  She took a seat next to him.  
     "No, this is serious shit."  He hit a few more keys, resulting in a screen change.  "Pardon my
French."
     "How serious?"  Scully licked her lips in anticipation. 
     "Let's just say that I'd have a better chance breaking into the Pentagon with only a paper clip and
not getting caught."  He turned off the monitor.
     "I wonder what made her Dad so special."  
     "Maybe he was bringing home more than bread."  He suggested.
     "Maybe Daddy's little girl saw something."  She remembered her partner telling her about his
encounter with Billings over the phone.  "That would explain why she threw Mulder out of her house
earlier tonight."
     "And here we all thought Mulder was such a ladies' man."  Frohike tried to lighten the
atmosphere.
     "I'll try to see if there is any possible way to get around this, but I can't guarantee anything." 
Byers offered.  "Until then, I think that you might have better luck at the Bureau than we would."
     "Yeah, my luck in the Bureau will turn around when I start getting ski reports from hell."  She
hated running into dead ends.  Maybe this meeting Mulder had would give them more to go on. 
Otherwise, he was going to get his hopes crushed.  
     She knew what that was like, and couldn't bear to see him go through it all over again.   

XXX

Waterfront
Washington, D.C.
10:13 PM

     Mulder approached Billings with caution, hoping that she had managed to find what she was
looking for earlier that night.  He hugged his overcoat closer to take the chill out of the wind, but it didn't
help much.  Being near water on a windy night was the worst place to be.
     "Hey."  He called to her.
     She turned to see him, and motioned him closer.  
     "So what happened earlier?"  He asked.  "I thought you liked me."
     "Look, it was nothing to do with you."  She started.  "Okay it had to do with you, I just didn't want
to talk to you right at that moment.  I needed time to go through some things and make sure that I wasn't
going to give you false information."
     He nodded, glad that she was one of the few who was prepared to be honest with him.  
     Billings pulled a photograph from her coat and handed it to Mulder.  "I found this tonight when I
got home from work.  I had to find more to go on than the picture and that's why I wanted the extra hour
or so."
     He stared it down, recognizing his father's face, his sister, and finally himself.  There was
another man standing beside them, his hands rested on another little girl about Samantha's age.  
     "What does this mean?"  Mulder looked up to her.  "Where did you get this?"
     Kathy pointed to the man.  "That's my father."  Then to the six year old with platinum blonde hair. 
"And that was me.  I knew that I had seen her before."
     "I don't remember being in this photo."  Mulder ran his hand over his sister's face, realizing that
she was six at the time, which meant that he had been about ten.
     "Neither do I."  Her voice went hollow.  "I wasn't quite sure what to think about it...then I found
this letter in some of my father's things."
     She handed him a piece of mail and waited for him to open it.  Instead he looked at it, feeling it
burn his hands and looked up to her to an explanation.
     "It's all connected."  She offered.
     "How?"  
      She told him.  "I don't know what's in it yet.  But he wrote it for your father, and it's in a special
type of coding.  So far I've found a few words that seem to be key."
     Mulder opened the letter and looked it over.  Billings moved closer to him and pointed out some
words that she had circled in red.
     "See that?  I know that this has to do with files, but that's so generic that it really doesn't help. 
But later on, he uses the word 'package' and 'home base'.  Anyone could ascertain that these usually
mean a shipment of something big, and a test site.  What kind of site it was, I can't tell."
     "Why are you so willing to help me?"  Mulder asked, suddenly having fear of being led astray
grip him.  
     Billings turned back to the river and watched as it flowed.  "Mulder, if I had met you and your
sister before, why is it that I don't remember you?  I want to know why I don't remember.  Helping you
seems to be the only way to find the answers to my questions.  It was so much easier when I thought it
was just a case of mistaken identity."
     "And now you don't think that it was just coincidence?"  He questioned.
     "No I don't."  She turned back to him, pain washing over her facial features.  "I have this dream
sometimes...where I'm standing in the forest as a little girl and someone is screaming for me.  I never
thought of it as more than a dream."
     Mulder listened to her every word.  "Have you ever thought of undergoing regression hypnosis?"
     "No, I don't really like the thought of people messing with my mind."  She hugged her coat closer
to her body.
     "There's something more here that goes beyond both of us.  Your father was a biogenetisist, my
father worked with your father -- this letter proves that.  Even our mothers attended Vassar together
before they married our fathers.  What is the connection here?  What linked them together in this secret
conspiracy?"
     "How do you know that it's a conspiracy at all?  I mean, I'm not doubting that there are some
shadowy aspects lurking behind the man that my father was, but I don't think that he could have been
involved in some huge government plot."  She rationalized.  
     "Look, I'm not trying to make you doubt your father, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this dirty
barrel so that I can find my sister."
     "I realize that, but I need more time.  If my father was anything more than I thought he was, I
have to come to terms with it on my own.  Until that time comes, I have to deal with this alone, okay?  I'm
really sorry that I can't help you more right now, but there's more involved in this than just you and your
sister.  Everything I have ever thought about my father is being stripped away.  It's like watching him die
all over again."  She stood in silence for a moment.  
     Mulder couldn't help but feel uncomfortable.  He knew what it was like to be plagued with
dreams of losing a loved one every time his eyes closed.  But he thought that it had to be different with
Billings.  Muck like him, she was facing the ugly truths while she was still awake.
     "Look, keep the photo and the letter.  I hope that you find something to go on."  She finally
spoke.  "I'll give you a ring if I find anything else."
     "What about the hypnosis?"  He tried to hang on to the lead she was providing.  Perhaps her
dream was something more than what it seemed.
     "I don't like the thought of it, Mulder."  She told him flatly.  "But I'm not completely opposed to it
either.  Let's just wait and see if I find anything else.  I think that the hypnosis is going to have to take a
back burner for now."
     "I need to know more."  He was practically begging.  "Can I have access to your father's things?"
     "Mulder, quit it!"  She snapped at him. 
     "I'm sorry."  He apologized, then continued.  "Before you go, can I just ask a few more
questions?"  
     Kathy sighed in frustration.  "What do you want to know?"
     "What can you tell me about you father and his associates?" 
     "Not much.  They never really came to the house.  He was out a lot."   
     "Do you know what kind of project your father was involved in when this photo was taken?"
     She shook her head and sniffled.  "Biogenetics.  It had always been his dream."
     "Do you know what he might have been doing with the medical files of every American born
from the 1940's on?"
     "I don't know.  He didn't talk about work very often.  If he did, it was so long ago I don't think that
I could remember anything that he said anyhow."  She faced him.
     "Think a little harder."  He raised his voice and set his hand on her arm.  "They have a file on
Scully, on my sister--just about every abductee has one in that vault."
     "One of those files is mine, Mulder.  When my father was putting mine together he explained
that it was necessary.  Like a time capsule."  She kept her voice low.  "It's obvious that these medical
files were necessary to begin another world, to leave our piece behind on this earth should we all
destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons.  Why would they have been made if there were any other
reason?"  
     Mulder looked at her in shock.  
     "I should go, now."
     "You can't leave it like this!  It has to be exposed!  Do you know what this would mean for
America?"  He grabbed her arm.
     She pulled her arms away.  "It means NOTHING!  Don't you get it?  What is there to expose? 
The American public wouldn't care, they would root it on!  Everyone wants to be remembered, and this is
the way the government is making sure that they will be."
     "How can you stand there and believe what you just told me?"  He asked.  "You're obviously an
intelligent person.  Why can't you see through the smoke screen that everyone involved in this has
created to keep the American public in the dark about experiments on human subjects with alien
technologies?"
     "Listen to what you're saying, Mulder."  She looked at him in surprise.  "The universe is big, but
the approximation for any statistical alien visitation is astronomical.  You're searching the clouds for
something that just isn't there.  Why can't you accept that my father was a good man?  There's no way
that he could have possibly--"
     "What?"  Mulder looked around the park suspiciously when Kathy cut herself off.
     "I don't know--I--I have to go."  But she knew exactly what it was.  Mulder had made her doubt
her own father.
     "You really haven't given me anything that I don't already know.  How am I supposed to go off of
this?"  Mulder complained.
     "It's all I have.  The only other thing I can tell you is that my father used to have a saying, Mulder. 
'Never take words for granted, never take people for granted.'"  Kathy's face was still.  "The truth is just a
property of statements.  The meanings are there, you just have to know how and where to find them."
     "I need to know what you know."  He stuck the letter in his pocket and followed her as she
moved to leave.
     Billings turned to look him square in the eyes.  "I don't know anything.  I've told you everything
that I can. You're pushing me way too soon.  Learn a little patience."
     "When will I know if you have something else for me?"
     "Like I said, I'll call you."  She turned from him and disappeared into the night.

XXX

Martha's Vineyard
12:01 am

     Mulder pulled the car up his mother's driveway and quickly cut the ignition.  He had gotten this
letter from Kathy, but he wasn't even close to figuring out what it might mean.  He hoped that his mother
could be of more help now that he knew who he was going to be asking her about.
     He walked up to the door and unlocked it with the set of keys he had gotten from his mother
when he was just a boy.
     "Mom?"  He called from the hallway.  It rang clean through the almost empty hallways.  His
mother never had been a knick knack collector.  She didn't like all the dust they collected.  
     Caroline Mulder woke from her sleep.  The sound of her son calling her had sparked a little pang
of fear in her heart since the disappearance of his sister.  She was always so afraid that her little Fox
was going to be next.  
     She crawled out of bed and pulled her slippers and a warm robe on then headed out into the
hall.  "Fox?"
     "Mom."  He acknowledged, flicking on a light switch.
     "Why don't you call before you come down, honey?"  She yawned.  "You always come at such
strange hours.  If I knew you were coming down, I could at least set up a bed or something."
     Mulder loved that his Mom was always so concerned about him, but he had more important
things on his mind.  "I got this picture and letter from a colleague this evening.  I need to know anything
that I can about them.  I think that they might finally lead us to Sam."
     "Fox, why do you always do this to me?  It's midnight for goodness sake!"  She was visibly
upset, but took the items that her son handed to her.  
     Mulder watched as his mother's face washed over with the recognition of the people in the
photograph.
     "Where did you say you got this, Fox?"  She couldn't take her eyes off of the photograph.
     "Do you know who they are?"  He avoided the question.
     "Sure, that's Larry Billings and his daughter Katherine.  I took this picture the summer after Iris
passed away."  She looked her son in the eyes.  "Why do you want to know about them?"
     "You went to Vassar with her mother?"  He continued.
     "Sure, we were good friends.  So were Larry and your father.  We met them one night at a local
college hang out.  We got married within a few days of each other, had our kids within a few days of
each other..."She sat down on the living room couch and Mulder took a seat next to her.  "The summer
that Iris died, there began to be tensions between your father and Larry.  So we kept in touch, but not as
often as Samantha and Katherine liked.  A year later we all went up to the lake and that's when we took
this picture.
     "The men got into an awful argument about ethics and their jobs.  The next morning Larry
thanked me for our hospitality and headed home with his daughter.  Samantha and Katherine used to be
inseparable--practically from birth.  You, of course, didn't have any interest in her beyond taunting.  You
probably don't even remember telling her that she couldn't climb trees because she was a girl.  She sure
showed you."
     "What do you mean?"
     "She climbed higher in that old oak tree at the summer house than you or Samantha had ever
dared.  When you tried to climb up to her, you fell out of the tree all together."
     "I remember being high in tree, but I don't remember following anyone up."
     "Not much harm came to you aside from your scratched pride."  She smiled at the memory.
     "What else can you tell me about them?"  He asked gently.
     "Not much.  We hung out together as families, not as business associates.  Your father had
worked with him on occasion, but that's all I know."  She told him.
     "What about this letter?"  He handed the envelope over for his mother to examine.  "Kathy said
that it was addressed to Dad."
     Caroline read over the letter and handed it back to her son.  "You know that I don't have any
information about this kind of thing, Fox."
     "Have you thought about anyone else who might know about this?"  He set his hands on his
mother's.
     "No.  I really don't know anything, I can't fathom why you won't believe me."  She told him.  "It's
late, why don't you settle in for the night and drive back in the morning?  You looked so tired."
     Mulder nodded emptily.  He had come to a dead end for now.
     "Are you getting enough sleep dear?  You look awful."  He mother looked him over.  "Maybe I
should come up and stay with you for a few days.  You look so scrawny -- like you've forgotten how to
eat properly again."
     "I'm fine, Mom."  He assured her.
     "Don't 'Fine, Mom' me."  She smiled.  "I know when your job has become too much for you.  Why
don't you lie down and I'll make some tea.  Tomorrow you'll eat a good breakfast, and I'll make sure of
that."
     As Mulder watched his mother head into the kitchen, he silently reminded himself that he would
have to leave early to avoid the motherly smothering.

XXX

702 NE 20th
Washington, D.C.
1:26 am

     Kathy hunched over the cardboard box that she had managed to drag down from the attic.  She
had been looking through her father's things for hours now and seemed to be no closer to any
information that linked her to the Mulders.
     She took a stack of papers from the remaining items in the box and set it next to her on the floor. 
Silently she cursed the amount of things that her father had kept as she took another sip of her root
beer.
     Heinrich lifted his head at the sound, but went back to sleep once he realized that everything
was fine.
     Kathy let her fingers sift through the pile until she came across a headline and pulled it out to get
a better look.
     'LOCAL GIRL MISSING:  Witness Suffering From Shock Claims Alien Abduction.'  She read the
article, slowly taking in that her name was among the words.
     'Katherine Billings, age 8 was reported missing by her father, Naval Captain Lawrence Billings
early Sunday morning from their rural home.  Authorities have spoken to the only witness, a homeless
man, who claims that the girl was taken by aliens.  Doctor Paul Kitan examined the man and suggests
that he may be suffering from shock and his memory is blacking out the incident with the images of
aliens.  "It's not uncommon for people to black out those situations which the mind views as harmful to
remember."  he says.  Police believe that a serial kidnapper may be on the loose and ask that anyone
who may be able to identify anyone linked with several other kidnappings across the nation contact their
local station with that information.'
     Kathy set the article down and looked through the pile again.  Was this for real?  She had no
memory of any such thing happening to her and her father had never mentioned it.  It seemed authentic,
but she couldn't be sure.  She soon came upon another clipping and began to read over it as well.
     'BILLINGS GIRL FOUND IN FOREST:  Doctors Rush To Save Her Life."  It was then that the
dream hit her.  She was eight, and stood in her pajamas in the open air of the forest.  She had loved to
play in the trees as a child, but tonight was different.  She turned as a bright light came up behind her. 
She could only think to scream and run away from what she could not see.  The scream sounded
through the forest like an alarm and Kathy covered her ears.
     She was brought back to her living room by a knock on the door.  She realized that she had
been living in that dream for a moment and brought her hands down from her ears.  Heinrich was
barking out of control.
     "Quit it, Heinrich!"  She scolded.
     The dog headed toward the door and continued barking there.  She followed it, in a mild haze,
trying to shake the scene from her head.
     When she reached the door, Heinrich stopped barking and sat next to the entrance.  She
brought the curtain back with her hand.  "Who are you?"
     The man didn't answer right away.  He appeared to be as old as a traditional grandfather, his
hair was dark, but showed gray streaks.  He was wearing a dark suit, which seemed to have been
recently pressed, but his tie was unoriginal stripes.  She decided that she didn't like it.
     He brought a cigarette to his lips in silent motion.  As she watched the flame of the lighter strike
and burn, he finally spoke.  "May I speak to you a moment, Ms. Billings?"
     "I want to know who you are."  She repeated herself.  Heinrich began to bark again.
     "You don't need to know who I am, but you need to know what I know."  He puffed on the cancer
stick.  She recognized the brand -- Morleys.
     "And what might that be?"  She asked cautiously while shooing her dog into silence.
     "I was a colleague of your father's."  He stated.  
     His explanation were simple, but she had to know more, and going through her father's things
were only raising more questions that she couldn't find answers to.  She unlatched the door and let him
across the threshold.
     When the door had been closed, she turned to the man and stared him down.  "What can you
tell me about my father?"
     "What exactly do you know?"  He asked.
     Kathy immediately picked up that he was probing her for information.  But why?  What could she
remember that validated this line of questioning?  "Very little.  Except what happened at home, his little
habits, stuff like that.  But I have more questions."
     "It's best to forget that you have them."  He urged, taking another long drag off of his cigarette.
     "Why would you say that?  My father was a good man, he gave his life to his work."  She argued.
     "You don't know how right you are."  His voice was barely audible.
     "Are you saying that my father was murdered because of what he knew?  Because of his job?" 
She raised her voice slightly.
     "You're a fine Agent, and a nice girl, Ms. Billings.  If you want to stay that way, I suggest you
leave this alone."  
     "Are you threatening me?"  She knew that he was, but it seemed appropriate to ask.
     "By all means."  
     Suddenly the pieces seemed to fall together.  "Is that why I was taken?  Were you threatening
my father with my death all those years ago?"
     The mysterious man's lips thinned into a line, accenting the wrinkles on his face.
     "It was, wasn't it?  Is that why Samantha Mulder has been missing all these years?  Were you
threatening my father's colleague as well?"  She pressed, moving closer to him.  "What was my father
working on that was so important to threaten the lives of innocent children?"
     The Smoking Man quickly gripped Kathy's arms in a strong hold, turning her back to him.  His
grip was stronger than she had anticipated.  "You need to forget."
     "What the hell do you think you're doing?"  She struggled to relieve herself of his grip.  "You
can't just walk into my house and start threatening me!"
     "You have to understand the position that I'm forced to take in this situation."  He began to shove
her toward the door.  "This is all for the better."
     "For the betterment of whom?"  She still struggled, her dog taking a defensive stance, preparing
to attack.
     The Smoking Man haphazardly covered Kathy's mouth with his hand while tightening his grip on
her.  Her arms were bent in ways that she thought were never meant to happen.  The pain began to run
through her.
     Heinrich launched himself at the intruder as he opened the door, sinking his teeth into the leg of
his owner's abductor.  The man managed to kick the dog off for a moment, but Heinrich prepared
himself to attack again.  Before he could, two other men rushed into the house and contained the dog. 
Before he knew what was going on, the dog had been muzzled and injected with drugs.  The dog
whimpered as it began to feel more sedate.  
     With their job done, the two men continued through Kathy's home, searching for anything that
might turn out to be incriminating.  They heard the sounds of a car taking off as they turned over the
abductee's belongings.
     When they came to the box, they gathered everything up and took it out to the car.  
     "Is that it?"  One of them asked.
     "Yeah, take off."  The other one acknowledged.
     Both made their way into an awaiting car and the driver sped down the street as fast as the
vehicle would carry them.
     In the distance, Heinrich tried to make his way out to the back porch as the door swung open in
the wind.


XXX

     Agent Scully sat comfortably in her desk chair, reading over the notes that Billings had made on
her current case.  As she flipped through another page, she sighed is frustration realizing that there was
only two things that her friend had found, and neither of them seemed to be significant.
     'But maybe that's what the killer wants me to think.'  She thought to herself, then read over the
information again.
     As she was about to run a few keywords through the FBI database system, her partner walked
through the door.
     "Good morning, Mulder."  Scully greeted him without straying herself from her work.  "Have a
good night?"
     "Not by far."  He answered, feeling the clean shaven skin of his chin with his fingertips.  "Have
you heard from Kathy Billings this morning?"
     "No, should I have?"  She finally looked up at him.  
     "No, I was just wondering."  He hung his overcoat next to the rung on the coat rack which
housed his NICAP hat.  "Did you find anything else on our case?"
     "Well, Kathy made some notes here that the killer left this one line over and over on his hacking
program--I think it was, "I play the game".  I'm not sure what it could mean yet, but I think that because
no one really paid attention to it that it may mean more than we think it does."  She explained.  "What are
your thoughts?"
     Mulder looked back at his partner anxiously.  He didn't have any thoughts on this case, he was
too preoccupied with his new leads on finding his sister.
     "You don't have any, do you?"  She looked at him, hoping that she wouldn't have to probe her
partner for the truth.  It was so taxing on her emotions when she had to do that.
     Before he could answer, Mulder's desk phone rang, and he silently praised the phone gods for
getting him out the situation for the time being.  "Yeah, Mulder."
     "Agent Mulder, I'd like to see you in my office as soon as possible."  A.D. Skinner's voice
boomed over the connection.  "There's something that I need to talk to you about."
     "I'll be right up."  He was perplexed, but hoped it was nothing that he should be worried about. 
He hadn't broken any protocol as of late, but maybe his past record was coming back to haunt him.  "I
have to see Skinner.  I'll meet you at the crime scene as soon as I can."
     "Fine."  Scully answered, flipping the file onto her desk.  "Call if anything comes up."
     "Will do."  Mulder straightened the collar of his suit jacket as he headed out the door.  He made
his way through the dank corridors of the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover building with expert timing
and pushed the call button for the elevator.
     As he stood there, watching the numbers fall in sequence, he wondered if anyone else had ever
done the same thing that he was doing now.  He suddenly scolded himself for thinking childish thoughts
and continued to worry about what he might face in Skinner's office.
     The elevator arrived and opened its door to let Mulder enter.  After he punched the button for the
floor he wanted, he caught a whiff of an unpleasant smell.  He looked around the small elevator and
realized that not only was he alone, but that someone had left a smoldering cigarette on the floor of the
car.
     Mulder turned and picked the object up in his fingers, and examined it.  As the bell rang to
inform him that he had arrived at the floor he desired, the recognized the brand of cigarette -- Morley.
     He stepped off of the elevator and threw the cigarette in a nearby trash bin.  Skinner's office was
less than twenty steps away, but in that time, he contemplated the meaning of what he had found in the
elevator car.  He didn't have an answer for what he found, but he knew if he thought on it a little longer
he might come up with something.
     When Mulder entered the outer office where Skinner's assistant usually worked, he noted that
she was absent from her post.  He took the liberty of knocking on the Assistant Director's door and
letting himself in.
     "You wanted to see me, Sir?"  He asked.
     "Yes, Mulder, come in."  Skinner rose from his chair and moved in front of his desk.  "Have a
seat."
     "Don't mind if I do."  He muttered, taking a seat in front of his boss.
     "When was the last time you saw Special Agent Katherine Billings?"  He quickly got to the point.
     "Last night, about ten o'clock."  He answered.  "Why?"
     "Because when she didn't show up for work this morning, Special Agent Gerri Burns called her
home, only to find that she wasn't answering her phone and that her machine wasn't on."  Skinner told
him, taking a file from his desk and tossing it into Mulder's lap.  "Then the call came -- the D.C. police
answered a distress call at about 2 o'clock this morning and found Billings' apartment trashed and her
dog dead.  Although there are faint traces of a struggle there is no other evidence to be found in or
around the apartment."
     "Why are you telling me all this?  Do you want Scully and I to investi--"
     "You don't seem to get what I'm asking, Agent Mulder."  Skinner pursed his lips.  "Do you know
who might have wanted to do this to her?"
     "Why would I know?"  
     "Because you were the last one to see her before these photos were taken!"  Skinner stressed
his point by raising his voice.
     Mulder took a moment to look over the photos of the crime scene.  "Do you think she's dead?"
     "I hope to God she's still alive."  The Assistant Director took the folder back him.  "If you're
implicated in another disappearance of a highly regarded Agent, this is going to put you and I on the
proverbial hot seat."
     "You think that "I" had something to do with this, Sir?"  Mulder shot back.
     "Do you?"
     "Thanks for the vote of confidence."  Mulder stood to leave, but Skinner's ringing phone kept his
standing like a scarecrow for a moment.
     "Skinner."  He answered.  
     "Sir, there's a call from County General.  It's Agent Billings, she wants to talk to Agent Mulder." 
The phone operator's voice rung in his eardrum.
     "Patch it through."  He handed the phone to Mulder.  "It seems you don't have to worry about
those allegations quite yet.  Agent Billings is calling for you."
     Mulder took the phone and listened to the distraught voice of his colleague as she tried to tell
him pertinent information through the stress of her shock.  "What?  Wait...calm down, I need you to say
that again."
     Skinner offered Mulder a pad of paper and a pen from his desk.
     "Now, where are you?"  Mulder asked.
     The Assistant Director watched the side of the conversation that he could actually hear and
waited for the call to end so that he could be filled in on the situation.
     "Okay, I'll be there as soon as I can."  Mulder told her.  "Stay calm until I get there."
     "What did she tell you?"  Skinner took the phone back from Mulder and replaced it on its cradle.
     "She admitted herself to County General after she was abducted last night.  She doesn't know
who did it or why, but she knows that she was forced out of her home.  She wants me to sit in on a
regression hypnotherapy session."  He informed his boss.  
     "Anything else?"  
     "That's all I know for now, I need to get down there."  
     "Keep me up to date on any information that would be pertinent to her strange disappearance
last night, Agent Mulder."  Skinner moved to sit behind his desk again.
     "Yes, Sir."  He walked out of the office and headed for his FBI issued car.
     It only took a few minutes to reach the hospital by car, and once in the hospital he headed for
the information desk.
     "I'm looking for a patient, her name is Katherine Billings."  Mulder flashed his FBI Badge in the
nurses' face.
     The woman looked through the papers on her clipboards and finally stopped at Billings' name. 
"Yes, she's in the psychological wing, fourth floor.  You'll want to look for her doctor, um, Doctor Marjorie
Collins.  Go down this hall and take the third elevator from the gift shop.  It'll take you right up, Sir."
     "Thanks."  He put his badge away and headed toward the elevator as he had been instructed. 
The elevator was particularly crowded, and he paid more attention to those around him than his actual
thoughts.
     When the car finally opened it's doors on the fourth floor, he was greeted by a shining face. 
"Agent Mulder, I presume?"
     "Yes.  Are you Doctor Collins?"  Mulder held out his hand in greeting.
     "That would be me."  She shook his hand briefly, then gestured for him to follow her down a
hallway.  "Kathy checked in last night in horrible shape.  She had several bruises and contusions on her
arms and legs.  The ER also noted that she had one needle puncture wound, but they were not able to
detect any foreign substance in her bloodstream to substantiate it.  When she was brought up to me, she
was suffering from shock and in the throes of a mental breakdown.  After the last time, I didn't think that
we'd see her again."
     "This isn't the first time?"  Mulder raised his eyebrow in curiosity.
     "No actually, she's been here twice before under my care."  The doctor stopped in front of a
room and turned to face him.  "Both times she checked herself in, and there is a substantial family
history of breakdowns.  She's been experiencing them particularly since the death of her mother, then
they escalated from unknown causes at the age of eight.  Unfortunately, she never agreed with my
wanting to try regression hypnosis, so we couldn't pinpoint the stress.  It has come back to haunt her
only twice in her career at the Bureau, and I thought she would be fine."
     "What do you think now?"
     "I think that her finally agreeing to this hypnosis will help her to heal her stress and the sooner
that happens the sooner she can get back to work."  Marjorie opened the door.  "Shall we begin?"
     Inside the room, Kathy looked up from a small loveseat that had been upholstered in a calming
blue.  Her eyes were dark and hallow, almost as if she had been punched in both eyes.
     Mulder picked up on the fear in the green circles of her eyes.  He took a seat across from her
and waited.
     "Good morning, Kathy."  Doctor Collins took as seat as well and started a tape recorder.  "I want
you to just relax as much as possible during the course of this session and I want to assure you that no
one will hear you testimony unless you give consent.  Do you want to give your consent?"
     Kathy looked at Mulder.  "If it will help anyone, I give permission for people to listen to or  the
tapes of this session."
     Mulder was taken aback at how confident she sounded compared to his conversation with her
over the phone.
     "All right, then, we're going ²___é______________________________to get started."  Marjorie
spoke in a velvety voice that was comforting even to Mulder.  "I want to you know that you can come out
of this if you feel any fear whatsoever.  Just imagine a "safe" place within yourself and when you feel
trapped, imagine yourself in that "safe" place and the hypnosis will be broken.  Do you understand?"
     Kathy closed her eyes and nodded "yes".
     "All right, then.  I want you to start off by focusing on the sound of my voice.  As you listen, you
will feel yourself getting a little bit drowsy, but don't let it scare you."  Doctor Collins assured her patient. 
"Are you feeling calm now?"
     "Yes."  Kathy answered.
     "Now I want to take you back to last night, when you were taken from your home--"
     "You can't do that!"  Kathy began to yell as the images came back to her.  "My father was a good
man!"
     "Kathy, we need you to calm down and focus, can you focus?"  
     Billings quieted herself almost immediately and waited her doctor's suggestions.
     "All right, Kathy, what's happening to you?"  
     Mulder leaned forward, his muscles so tense that a headache was forming at the base of his
neck.
     "The men are taking me away again."  Her voice was soft, almost childlike.
     "Again?"  Mulder asked out of turn.
     Marjorie shot him a look for interrupting, but Kathy didn't seem to notice the change in voices.
     "He's the same man that took me last time."
     "And when was last time, Kathy?  I want you to go back to last time, and tell me what happened
to you."
     "I'm playing in my room...and it's dark.  I know that I should be in bed...but Daddy is out with
some friends, playing cards and my babysitter is on the couch with her boyfriend, yuck."
     "How old are you?"
     "Eight."
     Mulder's eyes opened wide.  Did she really have THIS close of a connection?
     "And what's happening now?"
     Kathy's face shriveled and went back to normal.  "The light..."
     There was a moment of silence that rushed through the room.
     "And the men...all military men like boys play with...they're taking me away from my room and
telling me to be quiet because my Daddy said they could take me.  It's so cold outside, and I'm 
wondering why they wouldn't get my coat for me..."
     "Go on."
     "But I hear this crying, a terrible cry.  I'm put on the back of a truck and as it moves I see bright
lights, so bright that they blind me.  I don't know what to do, I'm so scared!"
     Mulder tensed as he watched Billings curl herself up into the fetal position, thinking that she had
to stay warm.
     "We're stopping again and this time I hear more...Someone's yelling a name, but I can't quite
make it out.  It all seems like slow motion...but when they put the girl on the truck, I recognize her, she's
my friend.  I call to her and we curl up with each other to keep warm..."
     "What else do you see?"  Marjorie probed a bit further.
     "It's all dark...I can't really see anything but the lines on the road because I'm near the edge of
the truck.  Wait...we're stopping...I hear the men's voices...they're going away now.  No, no they're
opening the back of the truck...and they're making us all get out of the back...it's bright here too."
     "Do you know where you are?"
     "It's a forest...it's big.  We're in a clearing and the grass is wet.  The bottoms of our nightgowns
are soaked."
     "How many people are with you, Kathy?  Are they all little girls like you?"
     "No, some are boys, and they're crying just like we are.  I can't--I think there are eight of us, but I
can't be sure."
     "Is there anything around you that might show us where you are?"  
     "I know that we're still in state because we didn't pass any checkpoints.  When Daddy and I pass
through states, we usually go through checkpoints."  Kathy's body began to jerk.
     "What's happening now?  Kathy?!"  Marjorie began to raise her voice as her patient began to
convulse slightly.
     "No they can't take us!  Run, we have to run!!  No, it'll be okay, we'll run!"
     "What's happening?"  Mulder asked, worry dripping through is words.
     "She's regressed, we can't get her out of this unless she wants to come out of it or the sequence
passes.  Help me hold her down."  Doctor Collins told him.
     Mulder did as she said and listened as Kathy began yelling in her child-voice again.
     "NO!!!!  You can't take HER!!!  SAMANTHA!!!  SAMANTHA!!!"  Kathy's mind filled with the
images of her past, and she was back there, standing in her soaked pajamas, yelling for the freedom of
her friend from the light.  It was so bright and she heard her friend screaming her name, screaming for
her family.  "HELP HER!!!  SAMANTHAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
     Mulder held his colleague down as the convulsions became more rampant, shocked at her
words and the experience he was witnessing through her.
     "THEY'RE TAKING HER!!!  SOMEBODY HELP!!"   She screamed again.
     "Who?  Who's taking your friend?"  Marjorie tried calming Kathy with her voice again.
     "The little green men!"  Her voice began to lower.  "The light, they're taking her -- I have to run!  I
have to run!  I have to tell someone so they can help her!"
     "Where are you going, Kathy?  Where are you running?"
     "To the river..."  Her convulsing stopped, but the cold sweat that had formed on her brow
remained testimony to the incident.
     "Which river?"  Mulder asked, eager.
     "I--I don't know..."  Kathy's voice faded out as she opened her eyes to look at the two people
cradling her in their arms.
     Mulder gave her a look of sympathy, because he knew that she had experienced the same thing
that he had gone through when he was twelve.  The frightening situation of not being able to help
Samantha.  He had a few geological clues to go off of, so he figured he could have Scully check on them
when he called her later.  Then the thought hit him -- Kathy had gone through so much more than he had
-- she had been abducted herself.  
     "Help me get her into her room, Agent Mulder."  Dr. Collins moved to stand, Kathy's right arm
slung over her shoulders.
     Mulder took the hint and helped the Doctor move Billings.  He helped get her into bed then was
sent out to the waiting room until she recovered from her ordeal.  He used the time to call his partner.
     "Scully."  She answered her phone.
     "Hi, it's me.  Something came up."  
     "Why could I have guessed?"  She asked.
     "I've had a delightful afternoon, thank you.  I just spent an hour holding down Kathy Billings
because she regressed too far in her hypnosis and was actually reliving her experience."
     "What did you find out?"
     "She was there when it happened, Scully.  She saw it all."
     "Saw what, Mulder?"
     "Samantha, she was one of the kids taken that night.  I hadn't even thought of that before, I need
you to do me a favor.  Could you run the date that my sister was taken through the database?  See if you
can find any other names of children who were taken that night, and see if you can find any news articles
on Kathy or some other information other than her file.  I have a feeling about this Scully."
     "Describe your 'feeling' Mulder."
     "I'm serious, and could you check on any geological areas in the Massachusetts area, and
Virginia that resemble a forest with a large clearing with a river running through it.  If you need more to
go on, check to see if anyone reported crop circles in any of the identified areas after that night."
     "Mulder..."  She huffed.
     "Please, Scully."  He was practically begging.
     "All right, but you owe me -- BIG TIME."  She relented.
     "I know."  He hung up the phone and looked up to see Doctor Collins walking toward him.  "How
is she?"
     "We have her vitals back to normal.  She asked to see you, but I want to make the visit quick. 
She's been through a lot today mentally, emotionally and physically."  She answered, stripping her
plastic medical gloves from her hands.  "If anything seems wrong, I want to you call someone in the
room right away."
     "Thank you."  He rushed past the doctor and headed to Billings' hospital room.  
     "Mulder."  Kathy managed a weak smile.  Her experience had really taken a physical toll on her. 
"Sit down."
     He spotted a chair in the corner of the room and brought it up to the edge of Kathy's bed then
took a seat.
     "I didn't know that I was this close to your sister, but I remember now.  We used to go to your
house.  You broke your leg trying to climb up after me..."  She stopped for a moment, taking the time to
swallow to calm her parched throat.
     "Do you want some water?"
     "Please."  
     Mulder took the plastic pitcher and poured a glass of water for Billings, then helped her get it
down.  "Where do we go from here?"  
     "I'm not crazy, Mulder."  She gripped his arm suddenly.  "I KNOW it happened, I was there, I saw
her being taken and I couldn't do a damn thing about it."
     "You were eight years old, you didn't know any better.  You tried to help her by running for help. 
I would have done the same thing."  He tried to console her.
     "No, you wouldn't have.  You aren't a coward."  She turned her head away from him.  "God,
what's happening to me?"
     Mulder stayed silent.  He wished that he could offer her an answer, but he didn't even have a
theory at the moment.
     Kathy turned back to him and looked him dead in the eyes.  "There's a key...in my office...you
have to find it.  My father left it to me when he died, it belongs to his safety deposit box.  Something
might be in there."
     "Do you know what's in the box?"  He asked.
     "I don't know, a couple of his diaries from work, I think.  He told me to use it if I found myself in a
bad situation.  I hope that they help you."
     "Thank you, Kathy.  Thank you for everything."  Mulder moved to head for his next lead, but was
brought back by Billings' soft crying.  "What is it?"
     "I'm scared, Mulder.  I used to only write about the existence of extra-terrestrial life forms, and
now I remember all of this...I'm frightened of my own memories."  She sobbed.  "What's going to happen
to me?"
     "Everything's going to be fine, Kathy."  Mulder tried to reassure her.  "It'll be all right."
     "I hope so."  Kathy licked her lips nervously.  "I really hope so."
     "Get some rest."  He told her, then left the room.  "I'll come back tomorrow."

XXX

County General
Room 131
12:25 am

     Kathy was resting quietly in her room, drifting in and out of sleep as the drugs let her.  It had
been awhile since she had the chance to just sleep whenever she felt like it.  
     The footsteps sounding in the hallway of her room kept her from dozing off again.  "Who's
there?"
     "No one of mention."  The voice answered.  
     "You."  She recognized the voice, tensing every muscle in her body.  "What do you want now?"
     "I thought I warned you."  He said, the cherry of is cigarette lighting up the darkness.  "I thought I
told you to forget."
     "I guess I just don't listen as well as I used to."
     "You should have."  He told her, motioning two men from the shadows.  "Then this would never
have had to happen.  You've remembered too much.  We left you with your father because you were his
only child, you know.  The others had more than one, so they had one to give up as collateral for the
project."
     "What the hell?"  Kathy muttered as the two men pulled her from the hospital bed, and stripped
the sheet as well.
     "Now that you've given Agent Mulder so much to go on you need to be taken out of the picture." 
Cancerman continued his speech.  "I want to know what your father did with his journals."
     "I wouldn't tell you if you were the last man on earth."  Kathy spit at him, still feeling dopey from
the pills she had been given to help her rest.
     "Well, I guess it really doesn't matter anyway."  He said.  "Whether you tell me where it is or not,
you're still going to die.  You've caused a breech in security.  I have been appointed to protect the
project.  No one who goes against what I have been trying to protect my entire life lives to tell the tale."
     "What do you want with me?  I know nothing!"  She lied, trying to get her softened muscles to
struggle against her captors.
     "But I'm afraid you do."  He took another drag off of his cigarette as the two men in black draped
the sheet over the rafter of room.  
     "Stop this!  You can't do this!"  She struggled, trying to reach the nurse call button.  
     The men held tight and one fastened the sheet around her neck as the other pulled out the bed
and secured the sheet around the rafter.  When they were finished, they pushed the bed back into it's
original position.
     "I can do anything it takes."  He said, then turned towards the door as Kathy dangled from the
sheet, struggling to keep the sheet from taking her life.
     The men exited her room as she realized that she just didn't have the strength to fight anymore. 
It was her time.
     In her last thoughts, she saw Samantha when they had played dolls and rode their bicycles.  She
saw her father and her mother, looking down on her in happiness.  And finally, she hoped that Mulder
would get to her father's things before her killers did.  
     In the end, she knew that Mulder would find the truth; and in that peace, she breathed her final
breath. 

XXX

J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, D.C.
8:31 am the next day

     "Scully, give me good news."  Mulder greeted his partner as he walked into the basement office
that they had come to share since she was assigned to the X-Files as his partner.
     "I wish I could."  Scully typed at the computer a little more before looking up.
     "Nothing?"  Mulder asked.
     "Absolutely nothing, Mulder."  Scully removed her reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of her
nose.  There were two red marks left there from wearing the lenses too long.  "Are you sure that the
allegations made by Kathy during her hypnosis are reliable?  She was eight at the time, after all."
     "If you have been there, you wouldn't be saying that."  Mulder leaned down to read the
information displayed on the screen.  It only repeated what his partner had already told him.  "There has
to be something..."
     As Mulder typed at the computer and experienced the same annoying computer sounds that she
had run into during her search, Scully stood behind him her arms crossed over her chest.
     "C'Mon!"  Mulder hit the side of the computer screen.  "Work, dammit!"
     "Mulder!"  Scully pushed him from her equipment.  "Calm down!"
     Suddenly he looked her over and it all made sense to him.  "You don't believe me, do you?  You
don't believe her either!  Scully, you never change!  After all you've seen, after all we've been through,
you're still the same."
     "Mulder..."  She tried to get him to stop.
     "No!"  He pointed his finger at her.  "You admit it!  You CAN'T believe!  You're afraid!"
     "Fine."  Scully kept her voice calm as she reached for a file on her desk.  "You want to know
what I really think?  I think that Kathy Billings was suffering from paranoid delusions and that anything
she said cannot be considered truth from a sane human being.  She was suffering from a breakdown
and has been under constant psychiatric care since the age of seven -- when her mother died."
     Mulder was caught off guard when his partner shoved the medical records of Billings into his
arms.
     "You told me to look for other information on Kathy and I found it."  She told him defiantly. 
"Mulder, this is a lost cause!  Let's get back to our case before the management upstairs finds another
petty reason to shut the X-Files down."
     "You don't understand..."  He whined.
     "No, I do understand!  I understand that you are driving your career into the drain and are
managing to take yourself down right along with it!"  She touched her partner's arm.  "Tell me, what good
are you going to do your sister without the resources that the X-Files provide -- what good are you going
to do her if you're no longer around to find her?"
     Mulder shrugged her off, but realized that she was right.  Why did she always have to be right? 
He suddenly thought that he was very lucky to have someone to keep him from his brinks of insanity.  
     "I'm not saying that you should give up your search, I'm just saying that when you do find leads,
use moderation.  If the Bureau found out that you were using government resources for yourself..." 
Scully let the sentence fall.  Her partner knew what she was going to say.  He always knew.
     "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully?"  Special Agent Gerri Burns rushed into their office, half out of
breath.  "A.D. Skinner just requested you check out this case."
     She handed Scully another manila folder.  A folder that could easily be lost between it's
counterparts on Mulder's desk.  "What is it?"
     She stared down Mulder hard, almost as if to place blame.  "Kathy Billings was found dead in
her hospital room early this morning.  The coroner ruled suicide, but her doctor disagrees."
     "We're on it."  Mulder grabbed their overcoats and ushered Scully out of the office.
     The drive to the hospital was a familiar one.  He had no trouble finding the crime scene.  As he
and Scully entered the room, he noticed just how white it really was.  The other side of the room had
been curtained off and he stared at the scene as Scully paged through the notes.
     "Tell me her fortune, Scully."  He touched the edge of the hospital bed and for some reason then
smelled his fingertips.  
     "Apparently she hung herself with her hospital bedsheet."  Scully began to look around the room
herself.  "Wait a minute...Mulder, do you have a tape measure?"
     "No, why?"  
     "Has the furniture been moved at all since the body was found?"
     "Not that I was told."  He leaned in to hear her theory.  "What are you thinking?"
     "That there's a discrepancy concerning the arrangement of the furniture and where Billings was
found hanging from the eight foot high rafters."  Scully noted.  "It would be virtually impossible for her to
get up there, unless..."
     "What?"
     "Unless someone moved the bed back or she threw the sheet over the rafter.  She was tall
enough to do that."
     "But answer me this,"  Mulder moved to the other side of the bed and pointed up to the rafters,
"how did she get all the way up there to TIE the knot around the rafter without a ladder?"
     "She could have used the bed."
     "But the crime scene hasn't been messed with since the body was found, Scully."  Mulder
informed her.  "The nurse outside confirmed it on our way in."
     "Then you tell me how a woman who was hanging herself managed to push a bed over three
feet out of her reach while she was dying?"  She looked to him.
     "Isn't that the 64 thousand dollar question?"
     Something in Scully's mind clicked.  "So she was murdered.  Why would someone want to
murder her?"
     "Maybe she wasn't as crazy as you think."
     "Are you suggesting that Katherine Billings was murdered because she recovered repressed
memories of alien abduction?"
     "What do you think?"  Mulder looked around the room again.
     "I think that we should check to see if she had any enemies, check the records to see who had
access to her while she was here."  Scully rationalized.
     "Does the fun never end?"  Mulder quipped.
     "Apparently not."  Scully shut the file and walked out of the room.

XXX

     "Addendum for X-File case number X-dash-one-one-two-one-nine-six:  After three weeks of
investigation by myself and Agent Mulder, we have found no further evidence which has led to any
significant leads in the murder of fellow Agent Katherine Billings.  While Agent Mulder believes that she
may have been murdered for her memories, I have to believe that there is a simple solution to this
murder investigation that will be accomplished after we find a proper lead; an Occam's razor if you will.  I
do express remorse that this case is remaining unsolved for the time being because Billings was not
only a colleague and fine agent, but she was also my friend.  The key that Agent Billings spoke of to
Agent Mulder was never recovered, as her office had been broken into and trashed before either Mulder
or myself were able to search for the key.  As there are no other leads to follow, the Bureau has ordered
this case to be shelved until any other evidence can be found.
     As for the possible leads taken from Billings' regression hypnosis, I find it hard to believe that a
person thinking with the mind of an eight year old could possibly lead any agent to the sight or sights of
the alleged abductions or provide substantial evidence to make me think that the abductions ever took
place.  According to the evidence found thus far, there is no sign of finding out what happened to Kathy
Billings or the possible link she may have had to Samantha Mulder."
     Scully turned off the tape recorder and looked back up to the images on the television screen. 
She watched as the figures on the screen silently interacted.  From the remote, Dana turned on the
sound.
     "SAMANTHA!!  THEY'RE TAKING HER!"  Billings' image was yelling as Mulder and Doctor
Collins held her down on the floor.  "SAMANTHAAAAAA!"
     Scully closed her eyes and sighed as she stopped the tape.  She had been watching the tape all
night, unable to get the piercing screams out of her head.  She headed back to the desk and picked up a
couple of newspaper articles that she had managed to dig up, then turned back to the television.
     The images stirred up other thoughts in her.  Why couldn't she bring herself to acknowledge the
things that she and Mulder had seen in the past three and half years?  What was this fear of the
unknown that had such a hold over her?  She could believe in miracles, she had seen them in a boy
once.  He surely would have died in the blades at the recycling plant if a miracle hadn't occurred.  So
why was it so hard for her accept the things she'd seen even if she did so thinking of them as miracles?
     Scully rewound the tape and started playing it again.  As she listened this time, she thought of
her own experience with regression hypnosis and how it had worked for her.  She was scared to admit it,
and that's why she had left the session.  But now, seeing the tension and the emotion flickering on the
screen in two-dimensional images she wondered.
     She wanted to believe.

THE END