Cathedral - Part Two 
By Raj Sisodia 

E-mail: seek2reveal333@aol.com 


December 20th 2012 
C17 test sortie                    
En route to New York City 
11:53 p.m. 

They were sitting in two of the foldable seats that lined the
darkened cargo hold, secured with nylon belts around their waists.
The powerful engines of the C17 military transport rumbled as Fox
Mulder and Dana Scully were bathed in the faint red glow of the
security lights. The plane was flying at over thirty-thousand feet. 

Just before arriving at Andrews Air Base they had been forced to
abandon their sidearms and Father Jacobs' modified laptop. Scully
had felt a spasm of dread when their car rolled up to the security
gate - knowing that if the personnel at the base realized something
was wrong their last chance at stopping colonization would be
snatched away. But the guards at the front gate said they were
expecting them, that the C17 Globemaster was minutes from take-
off. Their Vigil IDs were authenticated and verified. Scully glanced
at Mulder and exhaled slowly once the guard handed back their
IDs. They were immediately escorted by truck across the base to
the waiting military transport, boarded the cargo hold and were told
by the pilots over the intercom to secure themselves for take-off.
Minutes later the C17 began taxiing down the runway. It had been
the most nerve-wracking take-off Scully had ever experienced,
expecting to be found out at any moment, but Taskforce-Leader
Janet Lessinger had apparently done an efficient job before ODNI
pulled the plug on Vigil. 

Now, Scully glanced at Mulder in the red-lit darkness of the cargo
hold. They were less than twenty minutes from JFK International,
but they hadn't had time to call ASAC John Doggett at FBI New
York Division and beg him for his help. 

"This feels like we're flying into God knows what," Mulder said
gravely. 

"Doggett will help us," Scully told him, gripping his hand. 

"You sure about that? Even if he finds out that all Vigil members are
being interrogated as potential terrorists by Homeland Security?" 

"He won't believe that, Mulder. He's a brilliant investigator and a
good man. He'll figure out something is wrong. He has to help us.
He *has* to." 

"I hope you're right," Mulder told her. "Because if NYPD or FBI
is waiting to arrest us when we land at JFK...then we're screwed.
We might not even get the chance to ask for Doggett's help. Even if
everything goes smoothly I'm not even sure if our IDs will get us
past airport security." 

The thought made them silent for a while. They sat listening to the
engine-rumble of the C17 Globemaster. Scully was thinking about
the awful shadow-apparition she'd seen standing over the dead
body of Rachel Marx. She was still trying to summon the courage
to tell Mulder about it. She didn't quite know why she was finding it
so difficult. 

She exhaled sharply and said, "I saw something, Mulder. Just after
Rachel let herself get hit by the bus..." 

Mulder peered at her in the red-lit darkness. "What did you see?" 

"I'm not sure, but it was some kind of shadow." 

"A shadow?" 

"Some kind of...shadow-entity. I know it sounds crazy, Mulder.
But I saw it. It was really thin, at least eight feet tall, and hooded. It
seemed to be flickering in and out of sight, but...nobody could see it
but me. It wasn't my imagination. This thing was *real*. I...I got
this ancient, almost religious feeling from it. It felt evil, Mulder..." 

She could see Mulder frowning at her in the semidarkness. "Why
didn't you tell me this before?" 

"I don't know. I didn't want to accept it, I guess. Or even consider
it." 

"Scully, what are you saying to me? You're saying you saw some
kind of *demon* standing over Rachel's body?" 

"I don't know what I saw. It felt almost religious...really, really
dark. But it also had this incomprehensible quality that felt...I don't
know....*alien*? I don't know what it means, but I'm sure it's
connected to everything that's happened today...and to whatever's
coming." 

"I'm sure it is," Mulder said, his voice grim. 

"You believe me?" 

"Of course I believe you, Scully." 

She wasn't sure why she felt so surprised by his attitude. He may
have had a number of problems with religion and religious
interpretations of the paranormal, but closed-minded was the last
thing he was. He had even prayed with her for the victims of
Hurricane Sandy back in October, and done it earnestly. 

"Dana," he said, "All we can do is take this piece by piece. I know
it's overwhelming, but once we land - if we're not arrested - we
need to find this Dr. Ryan Cohen and learn everything he knows
about Pellucid. Hopefully it'll lead us to this key that everyone's
looking for - this Key of Ages." 

"You think this key is even real, Mulder?" 

"The insider said it has the power to stop colonization, so I'm damn
well praying it's real." 

Beside him in the darkened cargo hold, she placed her head on his
shoulder. 

"But back at the church, before he shot himself, Father Jacobs said
this key was supposed to unlock something that DOD calls
Triskelion. Whatever the hell that is, I'm thinking it's not good. It
seems like Diego Roberto Cielo's murder was in retaliation for
something. For this CIA Bedtime operation? Someone carved a
Triskelion symbol into his chest....and then those bees came
pouring out of his mouth at NBACC. I think you were right,
Mulder. Science and magic are blurring somehow. And it really,
really scares me. It's going to be December 21st in less than ten
minutes. Colonization is almost here, and we're running out of
time." 

Mulder didn't say anything. He simply squeezed her hand in an
attempt to comfort her. 


*         
                     
December 21st 2012
John F. Kennedy International Airport 
New York City 
12:18 a.m. 

As the aft ramp of the C17 transport was finally lowered, they
didn't know what they were going to find. Mulder half expected to
see an armed tactical unit waiting for them on the darkened runway.
But there was nobody. He glanced uncertainly at Scully, and the
two of them made their way down the ramp and onto solid ground.
It was colder here than in D.C. The coastal air had a biting chill to
it. Off in the distance they could see a commercial airliner taxiing
down another runway. Beyond it the lights of the terminal and
control tower were glowing against the night sky. 

"Ok," said Mulder, confused, "I was at least expecting some
airport security..." 

He realized he could hear a low throbbing sound nearby, like the
idling rotors of a helicopter. Scully tugged the sleeve of his suit-
jacket and pointed to their right. About a hundred feet away a
helicopter was indeed sitting on the tarmac. Mulder saw that it had
the letters FBI stencilled on the side in orange. A back-lit figure
was already striding away from the chopper towards them, tie and
jacket flapping in the downwash of the spinning rotors. 

A few moments later Mulder realized they were being approached
by John Doggett. 

Mulder was surprised and a little unsettled. They hadn't been able
to contact him before arriving at Andrews Air Base. How did he
even know they were here? Neither of them had seen Doggett face
to face since the night he and Monica helped to break Mulder out
of federal custody. Even in the darkness of the night Mulder could
see that the grizzled FBI agent was looking a decade older, but he
still seemed lean and fit and capable, dressed like Mulder in a black
suit and tie. Scully glanced at Mulder with a relieved smile. She ran
towards Doggett and threw her arms around him. 

"It's good to see you, Agent Scully," Mulder heard him say, with a
tentative laugh in his gravelly voice. "It's been a long time. Too
long." 

Mulder closed the gap, watching as Scully kissed Doggett's cheek
and glanced back with another relieved smile, her red hair whipping
around in the downwash. 

"How did you even know we'd be here, John?" she asked. "We
didn't get a chance to contact you before we boarded." 

Doggett glanced at Mulder before answering, his expression
immediately growing serious. "It was Monica. She and Janet
Lessinger managed to call me from Vigil Headquarters, gave me the
flight details and said it was really, really bad" 

Mulder looked back at the idling chopper and saw the faces of two
other agents peering at them from the rear of the cabin. Mulder
appraised the now senior FBI agent and said frostily, "For a
second I thought you were here to arrest us, Agent Doggett." 

But Doggett ignored him and returned his attention to Scully, his
expression fierce. 

"Dana, you need to explain to me what the hell is going on. The line
went dead while I was talking to Monica. I tried calling back and I
couldn't get through. Her cell phone was blocked. The last thing
she said to me was that it was imperative that I met the military
transport when it landed - that six men had their throats cut at Vigil
Headquarters, and now all Vigil's members are gonna be
interrogated by Homeland Security as potential terrorists, including
Monica..." 

"It's Labyrinth, John," Scully said quickly. "Labyrinth engineered
this whole thing." 

"I don't even know what Labyrinth is, Scully," Doggett replied with
narrowed eyes. "All I know is what you and Monica told me; that
Vigil is some kind of NSA-CIA taskforce. If you want my help you
need to tell me what the hell is really going on; what you and
Mulder have really been doing for the last eight months." He waited
a moment and then added, "And please don't say this has
*anything* to do with the X Files..." 

"It has everything to do with the X Files, Agent Doggett," Mulder
told him. "But you knew that already." 

Doggett grimaced and said, "I'm already breaking protocol by
being out here. I spoke to airport security. They eventually agreed
to let me meet you right here. I convinced them that this military
flight was a matter of National Security, part of a crucial inter-
agency counterterrorism operation. So, we're going to take the
chopper directly back to the offices, and then you're both going
explain every single detail of this to me. Ok?" 

"We don't have a lot of time," Mulder said. 

Doggett glared at him. "And I don't have a lot of patience, Mulder.
I managed to salvage my career in the last ten years after the X
Files. I'm the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of New York's
Counterterrorism Division. I'm not some renegade D.C. agent with
a death-wish. What Monica said on the phone, it frightened the hell
outta me. She was crying. She sounded terrified. So we're going
back to HQ and you're gonna *find* the time." 

Scully looked up into his eyes and nodded. "Ok, John. Ok." 

Mulder gritted his teeth but said nothing. 

He had an awful feeling of paranoia, a sense that Doggett might
actually have him and Scully both arrested the moment they arrived
at the New York field-office. He tried to shake off the feeling,
telling himself that Doggett had met them here on the runway of
JFK International because he genuinely wanted to help them. But
ten years had passed since they last met face to face, and Mulder
had no guarantee that Doggett was still the same man. Mulder tried
to ignore his fear. He followed a few steps behind as Doggett
hustled Scully through the downwash of the spinning rotors towards
the waiting FBI helicopter. 
                     
* 
                     
Jacob K. Javits Federal Building
Manhattan, New York City 
12:42 a.m. 

The chopper took them high above the night-time city. Down
below the city's lights glinted like thousands of jewels scattered
across darkness. They passed the edifice of the Brooklyn Bridge
stretching across the East River, and carried on above the maze of
the Manhattan skyline. The chopper pilots eventually landed on the
helipad on the roof of 26 Federal Plaza, where a small team of
agents were waiting. Over forty storeys above the city, the
helicopter's passengers exited the chopper as it powered down.
Mulder glanced nervously at Scully and then at Doggett as they
were surrounded by the team of blank-faced FBI agents. 

Mulder wondered if this would be the moment the full force of the
federal government came crashing down on them, thwarting their
final chance to stop an imminent apocalypse. 

But it seemed his paranoia was just that, for now. 

Visitor-passes were clipped to Mulder and Scully's jackets and
they were quickly escorted into the building, into an elevator and
down to the twenty-third floor. When the elevator doors opened
they were greeted with a plush reception area, and the FBI seal on
the wall behind the counter. Mulder glanced again at Scully. The
entire floor of the building was occupied by the FBI New York
field-office. Mulder was worried because the Department of
Homeland Security might already be looking for them, and they
happened to have their field-offices in the exact same building. So
despite Scully putting her trust in John Doggett, Mulder felt like at
the very least they were seriously tempting fate. 

But they didn't have any other options. 

They were led through the main bullpen and a series of corridors,
into Doggett's well-appointed office. He didn't bother to turn on
the main lights. He simply switched on the desk lamp, casting the
office in a dim half-light, and turned to peer at them both. 

"So," Doggett said quietly, "we're alone now. Please tell me that I
haven't just aided and abetted two terrorists. Because that's kinda
the antithesis of my job description." 

"Of course not, John," Scully muttered. 

"Well, I didn't think so. So what the hell is going on? You haven't
told me much about Vigil since July, Scully, but I'm betting Monica
knows more than I do. So, Vigil is an NSA-CIA taskforce...but I
need to know more. Make what Monica told me on the phone
make actual sense. Because I'm very, very worried right now." 

Mulder was about to speak when Scully touched his arm and
peered at him. Mulder realized that a censored version of the truth
would sound better coming from her. He nodded at her intention. 

"Ok, listen," Scully began, "the Vigil Intelligence Taskforce was
created by a Presidential Executive Order. It's comprised of
around fifty members including analysts and field operatives. Most
of them are ex NSA and CIA, and the work is extremely classified.
Or it was until a few hours ago. The Office of the Director of
National Intelligence just had Vigil officially dissolved because of
two major security-breaches." 

"The men with their throats cut?" Doggett asked. 

Scully nodded. "Since April we've been gathering information on a
rogue faction hidden within US military-intelligence. This faction
refers to themselves as Labyrinth. They seem to be a domestic
terror network with huge influence and resources. And the Oval
Office believes they may have infiltrated almost every government
agency in the United States. They're planning to completely cripple
this country, John. And they don't care who they kill. Taskforce-
Leader Janet Lessinger believes they're planning a massive terrorist
attack on US soil in the next twenty-four hours...something that
could potentially kill *millions* of American citizens. The
dissolution of Vigil is some kind of set-up. A preamble to whatever
they're planning." 

Doggett's expression was darker and fiercer than Mulder had ever
seen it before. For a few moments he didn't speak. Eventually, in
an almost trembling voice, he said, "That sounds made up, Agent
Scully. That sounds like...like a boogieman that DOD would cook
up for some kind of war-game scenario, not an actual terrorist
threat..." 

But the quiver in his voice told them that he didn't actually think
they were joking. Mulder could clearly see the horror in the
ASACs eyes. 

"Listen to me, John," Scully told him, gripping his hands. "I of all
people know how crazy this sounds, but Labyrinth is real. They
almost killed me and Mulder on more than one occasion. They tried
to mastermind a bombing at FBI headquarters in D.C. last
Christmas. They hung me out of the side of a moving helicopter in
Wyoming, for Christ's sake. These people are cold-blooded
sociopaths, and they've infiltrated most of our military-intelligence
infrastructure. This boogieman is *real*, John." 

"*Jesus,*" Doggett murmured. "Monica told me about the
bombing attempt at Christmas, but she said it was the work of a
Christian militia. The Scythe of St John." 

"The Scythe were created and controlled by Labyrinth," Scully told
him. "Apparently they've created or funded a whole bunch of
extremist groups and militias and cults." 

"But...for the love of God, we're FBI *counterterrorism.* If this
is true, how...how come the Bureau doesn't know *anything*
about this entire situation?" 

Mulder finally spoke. "Because the FBI has probably been
compromised along with everyone else. The Oval Office is trying to
minimize the damage that's already been done. Or so they claim.
Apart from the White House only a handful of people within NSA,
CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence know
about Vigil's true mandate. Or what kind of threat Labyrinth really
poses to the United States." 

Doggett peered darkly at him. "And how does the X Files fit into all
this? You gonna tell me that aliens and Bounty Hunters are a part of
this too?" 

"Yes," said Scully, before Mulder could answer. "John, you know I
wouldn't lie to you. I know it's been over ten years. But we both
saw things on the X Files. You saw things you couldn't explain.
And as much as you might not want to admit it, you know there's
truth to what we're saying. Truth to everything we had to deal with
back then." 

Doggett sighed deeply and shook his head. "I'm not an idiot, Agent
Scully. Just because I wasn't ready to jump on the alien
bandwagon doesn't mean I was ready to ignore my own
experiences." 

"You're a gifted investigator, John. I wouldn't have got Mulder
back without you. I wouldn't have got through my own grief
without you. You saved me. And you saved Mulder." 

Doggett turned his fierce attention to Mulder. "This potential
terrorist attack...it wouldn't have anything to do with what you used
to call colonization, would it? With the substance you and I
encountered on the Galpex-Orpheus? What you called Purity?" 

Mulder stared back at him. "We think it does, John. No matter
how ludicrous and nonsensical that might sound to you. This is all
somehow connected to a faction within the Guatemalan D-2 that
was running a child-snatching operation in league with elements
within the CIA. Something they called  Bedtime' - recruitment for a
larger black project within DOD that was named Pellucid...which is
some kind of MK-Ultra experiment into lucid dreaming." 

"MK-Ultra? Just slow down for a second, Mulder." 

Doggett sat on the edge of his desk, pressed his eyes shut and ran a
hand through his hair. Mulder could sense his desperation and fear. 

"So, what you're basically asking me to believe is that all of this -
Labyrinth and D-2 and MK-Ultra and kidnapped kids - it's all
somehow connected to some kind of alien invasion? That alien
colonists are gonna reveal themselves to the world and begin taking
over the Earth? *Right*? I mean, that's what you're basically
saying to me." 

"Yes," said Mulder. "A full-scale invasion that's going to begin in
twenty-four hours, unless we find a way to stop it." 

Doggett glared at Mulder, his expression full of fear, anger and
helplessness. Mulder could see Doggett's mind working furiously
behind his pale blue eyes. 

"Fox," he said quietly, "do you have any...any idea how bat-shit
*insane* that sounds? How ridiculous? Since Hurricane Sandy this
whole city's been a disaster zone. Parts of Queens and Brooklyn
are still strewn with garbage and rubble. Some areas are still
flooded. We lost over a hundred homes to a fire in Breezy Point.
All kinds of damage throughout the city. We've got almost ten
thousand residents still without heat and electricity. And you come
in here and want to talk to me about an alien invasion? Do you have
any idea how *insulting* that is to me? This city just suffered a
tragedy. A *real* tragedy. New York won't fully recover for a
while yet, and what you're saying makes a mockery of everything
these people went through. It makes a mockery of all those folks
who've had their lives ruined." 

Scully frowned, stepping between Mulder and Doggett. "You
know it's more complicated than that," she said quietly. "We're not
here to mock anyone. We're here to try and *save lives.* You
really think Mulder and I have come all this way just to spin you a
tall tale? Damn it, John, you know me better than that. Something
really, really bad is about to happen. I need you to put your
skepticism aside and really *listen* to us." 

Doggett grimaced and ran both hands through his hair with a careful
exhalation of breath. 

He muttered, "I listened to you before, Dana. And it nearly got me
killed. Bounty Hunters and supersoldiers and alien
replacements...*Jesus.*" He stared hard at Scully. "I'm...I'm
guessing Monica believes every goddamn word that's come out of
your mouths about this Labyrinth faction, huh?" 

"She trusts that we're not liars, John. She trusts her friends." 

"I don't think you're liars, Dana." 

"So what do you think we are now?" asked Mulder. "Just
completely delusional?" 

Doggett chuckled humourlessly. "I think...I think you're lightning
rods for weirdness. I think you're both living, breathing X Files.
And that scares the crap outta me." 

Scully gripped his hands again, pleading with him. "Does that mean
you'll help us, John? I'm begging you, as a friend." 

Doggett seemed to be studying Scully's face, and Mulder could
suddenly sense his deep affection for her. That affection was still
there all these years later. It made Mulder bristle a little despite
there being much bigger things to worry about. 

Doggett swallowed and said, "Of course I'm gonna help you,
Agent Scully. I don't abandon my friends. *Ever.*" He glanced
over at Mulder. "Even the ones that kinda piss me off." 

Mulder couldn't imagine that John Doggett had ever seen him as an
actual friend. He was saying it for Scully's benefit, but it still gave
Mulder a little flare of hope. 

"Thank you, John," said Scully. "I...I need to use the restroom, but
I'll be back in a minute and we'll go through everything we know,
ok?" 

Doggett nodded and gestured at the door. "Right, then left, at the
end of the second corridor." 

Scully gave Mulder a pointed glance before hurrying from the
office. Mulder knew what the look meant. Be honest with him.
Connect with him. Mulder already knew that wouldn't be as easy
as Scully wanted it to be. Doggett stared blankly at Mulder. He
waited a beat and said, "The only reason you're both in my office
and not in an interrogation room right now is because of her." 

"I kind of figured that, John. You've taken us right into the lion's
den." 

Doggett fixed him with a cold, uncompromising stare. "If Homeland
is really looking for both of you, then I'm putting my career on the
line with every passing minute that I don't arrest you. Do you have
any idea how serious this could be?" 

Mulder nodded and said quietly, "Of course I do. I love this
country. I've risked my life to protect it. And now Labyrinth might
be trying to set us up. As *terrorists.* That makes me feel sick to
my stomach, John. But I'm praying that Homeland Security is going
to realize its error once they finish questioning everyone at Vigil." 

"If they don't...I could go to jail for what I'm doing right now,"
Doggett muttered, and then almost as an afterthought he added,
"You know...after William was born...you just upped and left,
Mulder. You just *left* her." 

Mulder was quiet for a few moments, trying to control the flush of
guilt at Doggett's sudden change in the topic of conversation. "Are
you remarried, John?" Mulder asked eventually, a little flare of self-
hate in his gut. 

Doggett peered angrily at him, thrown by his question. "No.
I've...I've been seeing someone for the last seven years, but we're
not married exactly." 

Mulder nodded with mock sympathy. "Sometimes it's hard to put
out the old torches." 

"What *the hell* does that mean?" Doggett practically snarled at
him. 

Mulder shrugged, knowing it was a low blow. He hadn't come here
to argue with Doggett like some possessive adolescent. It was
insane to bait and rile the man when he so desperately needed his
help. He sighed heavily and forced himself to mutter, "Agent
Doggett...I'm...I'm really sorry for saying that. I'm an asshole." 

"Mulder, I *never* tried to..." 

"I should thank you," Mulder said quickly, before he lost his nerve.
"No games, no ego. In the chopper I told myself that I honestly
wanted to thank you." 

Doggett stared at him. "For what? For helping you? Did you really
think I'd just let Homeland tear you both to pieces? That I'd look
the other way because I want to protect my *career*? Then you
really never knew me, Fox." 

"No," Mulder told him quietly, "I mean I want to thank you for
helping *her.* After my funeral...when...when I was in the ground.
That night with the gun, when Scully asked you to kill her. She
thought she tried to kill our unborn child that night. But she didn't.
You took care of her. You saved her when I couldn't. When she
called you from Boston back in July, and you told her the truth
about that night...she was able to let go of a lot of pain she'd been
carrying for a long time. The truth is...neither of us would be here if
it wasn't for you. I owe you my life, John. And I owe you Scully's
life too. That's what a brave guy would say, because it's the truth.
So...I'm...I'm *really* trying to be brave right now." 

Doggett stared at him, clearly emotional at what Mulder had just
said. "Did *she* ask you to say all that?" 

"No. I'm saying it because it's honest. It's the truth. And I'll die
before the truth stops counting for something." 

Eventually Doggett let out an awkward sigh and muttered
reluctantly, "You don't owe me anything, Fox." 

"Listen," said Mulder, unable to look the FBI agent in the eye,
"Scully begged me to go underground when the supersoldiers were
threatening my life. But I left because I was afraid, ok? Afraid of
not uncovering the truth...afraid of failing them both. It was a
mistake, John. And I regret it. I've regretted it every single day for
twelve years." 

Doggett nodded. In a conspiratorial murmur he said, "The X
Files...all that craziness - it would've destroyed most people. But
you're still kicking. It's impressive." 

Mulder just smiled sadly at the look of relent in Doggett's eyes. It
was the closest thing to a peace-making that either of them were
comfortable with. 

"Mulder, listen to me...December 22nd is going to be just another
day. It's not some Roland Emmerich movie. I know you're afraid,
and I get it. I get *why* you're afraid, but it'll be a day like any
other. The sun will rise, everything will still be here. Just as shitty
and broken as ever. No apocalypse, no alien invasion." 

"Are you really so sure about that, John? Seeing what you've seen
on the X Files unit?" 

"I'm not willing to consider the alternative," Doggett said quietly. 

There in the lamp-lit office Mulder crossed the gap between them
and gently gripped Doggett's shoulder. 

"When you and Barbara found out Luke was dead, you realized
that an apocalypse had occurred, didn't you? And you spent every
day after that stumbling through the ruins, trying to make sense of
that apocalypse. The world seemed the same to everyone else, but
not to you. You knew the world had changed. You knew the End
had come. You couldn't save Luke. I couldn't save Samantha.
Scully couldn't save Emily. The three of us, we're same
underneath. We've all walked in the *real* darkness, you know?
We've all seen the devil take away the things that mattered most to
us. There has...there *has* to be at least *one* child we can save.
I know that William is somehow tied to all this...and if I fail, he dies.
Apocalypses are real. You know that because you already lived
through one. And this time if I sit back and do nothing...I...I don't
think the sun will rise again. I want to be the father that William
deserved, John." 

Doggett's eyes were wet with tears now, but so were Mulder's. He
nodded sadly and muttered, "I dreamt about him a few nights ago,
Mulder. About Luke..." His hushed words had the tone of a
tentative, dangerous confession. 

"Tell me," Mulder said simply. 

Doggett couldn't make eye contact now. He peered at the office
floor. "In the dream he...uh...he said that bad spirits were
coming....and that he'd come to tell me about it to make me
stronger. He said...*ah* *Christ*..." 

"What?" Mulder urged gently. "What did Luke tell you in the
dream?" 

"He said...that the bad spirits were coming to eat the whole world.
He told me not to be afraid..." 

Mulder stared into Doggett's pale blue eyes and could feel the pain
and fear and uncertainty behind them. "And do you *honestly*
think that was just a dream?" 

Doggett glanced away, wiped his eyes and shrugged. "I don't
know what the hell it was." 

"I think maybe you do. I think maybe we both do, John." 

Doggett sniffed and took a deep breath. "What do you need?" he
asked simply. 

"I need you to run a name through the system. Dr. Ryan Cohen.
We've already got an address but I want any other information we
can find on him. Hopefully he's got a criminal record." 

"What's the address?" 

"306c Malachi Street, in Brooklyn Heights." 

Doggett glanced sharply at Mulder. "Jesus...that's...that's *my*
neighbourhood. That's only three blocks from my house." 

There was silence in the office for a few moments. 

Finally Doggett said, "I'm needed here. Take Scully and find this
guy. I wish I could give you an escort, one of my agents, but-" 

"I understand," Mulder said immediately. "No escorts, John.
You've already put everything on the line just by meeting us at
JFK. I just need one more favour, and then your hands are clean
from here on in. Let me requisition a Bureau vehicle...and a
sidearm. Scully and I need to do this alone, but we need you to
cover our tracks." 

Mulder realized that he was asking a lot from Doggett; access to
not only a car but also a handgun that could theoretically be traced
back to this field-office. 

Doggett grimaced and glanced away. "Listen to me very carefully,
Mulder. If what Monica said on the phone is true...then Vigil is
being set up to take a very bad fall. If Homeland decides that Vigil
operatives are a genuine threat to National Security...and if they
learn that you and Scully are here in New York...if ODNI learns
that FBI Counterterrorism had both of you here in the building...and
*armed* you before letting you both *go*......my...my team might
be given orders to hunt down the two of you." 

"I know, John. But I'm praying that doesn't happen. We're not
terrorists. Hopefully they'll figure that out before Scully and I lose
our last shot at stopping this." 

Doggett sighed, unbuttoned his suit jacket, unclipped his holster and
placed his own handgun on the desktop. "Take it." 

"I didn't mean your own..." 

Doggett waved away his inhibition. "If I'm gonna arm two fugitives
who are also two old friends of mine then I'm gonna do it the
right way, if such a thing is possible. You and Scully are gonna have
to share. But file off the goddamn serial number." He took a long
breath and then added quietly, "There's something else I have to
tell you, Mulder." 

"What?" 

"In the dream...when Luke told me that bad spirits were coming to
eat the world...I...I saw his eyes go black. I saw his eyes go
*black,* Mulder." 

Mulder peered across the desk at the senior FBI agent and saw his
fearful, haunted expression - and saw the tears that had begun
welling in his eyes. Mulder didn't know what to tell him. 

The chirp of a cell phone broke the awkward silence. For a
moment Mulder thought it was his own, before recalling that he and
Scully had destroyed their phones back in D.C. after receiving the
disturbing call from Janet Lessinger detailing Vigil's security breach
and the brutal murder of six analysts. 

It was Doggett's cell that was ringing. He pulled the phone from his
suit jacket, glanced at the screen and frowned. He answered the
call, listened for a moment before peering over at Mulder. 

In a low, worried voice he said, "It's for you." 

"Is it Monica?" Mulder asked quickly. "Did Homeland release
her?" Doggett shook his head and offered the phone. Mulder took
it warily, pressed it to his ear and said, "Yeah?" 

"I've been trying to reach you for the last hour, Agent Mulder." It
was the voice of the DOD insider that Mulder had met at the
Lincoln Memorial, the man who had given them information on the
ritual-suicides at El Mirador and Father Jacobs' location at the
church in Michigan Park. 

Mulder growled into the phone, "You gave us some dangerous
intel, and it could've got us killed. You told me that Benjamin
Jacobs was a member of the Resistance, but he was a sick pervert
who shot himself after we questioned him. A goddamn child
molester." 

Doggett looked horrified at Mulder's words but said nothing. 

The insider's voice was firm and unwavering. "I also told you he
was a dangerous man. You asked for intel and I gave you the best I
could gather. Now you need to shut up and listen to me, Fox. You
and Dana are being *hunted.*" 

The way the insider said it deepened the sense of dread. "You
mean by Homeland Security? We already-" 

"No," the insider cut in. "Not Homeland. You're being hunted by
something exceptionally dangerous...a man who's no longer a man.
His name is Lucien Farrow. He's an ex special-forces soldier who
was recruited by the black-intel community within DARPA during
the late nineties. He was their most valued field-operative, but was
supposedly killed three months ago when he was hit by lightning
during a black-op somewhere in Canada. Agent Mulder, my
contacts within DARPA claim that Farrow is somehow *back
from the dead*...a rogue operative...that he's become
exceptionally powerful and virtually invulnerable. They said he
recently survived an explosion in England that should have ripped
apart a normal man. He's acquired the Key that I told you about.
The Clavem Saeculorum. Labyrinth and the Apostles are both
looking for him. And now he's coming for *you.*" 

What the insider was telling him was absolutely terrifying, but
Mulder still found himself asking, "*Why?* Why is this man hunting
us? And how did you found out about all this? How did you know
I'd be here in New York with Agent Doggett?" 

Immediately the insider replied, "I've been tracking you through the
US Defense Department's OSIRIS - an Artificial Intelligence
network of twelve Top Secret weapons-satellites in
geosynchronous orbit." 

"OSIRIS?" muttered Mulder, aware of the historical significance of
the name. Osiris was the ancient Egyptian god of death and the
underworld. 

"It's an acronym," replied the insider. "Orbital Synthetic Intelligence
Reconnaissance and Information System. But it doesn't matter how
I discovered information about this man Farrow. All that matters is
that you realize he's coming for you and your partner. I don't
*know* why he's hunting you. All I know is that he may already be
in NYC, and when he finds you he'll kill both of you. If these
rumors about his strength and his resurrection are true, then you're
in *unimaginable* danger." 

Mulder swallowed. He could hear the genuine fear in the insider's
tone. With apparent trepidation the man on the other end of the line
added, "My contacts also told me that this rogue operative has
taken to calling himself *Abaddon.* I don't know if you're familiar
with that name..." 

"Yeah," was all Mulder could manage in response. 

He immediately recalled what Father Jacobs had mentioned a few
hours ago - that the Angel of the Abyss was hunting them. In
Christian mythology the Angel of the Abyss was an entity named
Abaddon. The Destroyer, according to Scully. 

Mulder couldn't pretend that he wasn't utterly chilled by what the
DOD insider was telling him. The insider's final words were,
"Don't...don't let this *thing* find you, Agent Mulder. I'm deeply
afraid for you. I'll contact you again when I can. Good luck and
Godspeed." 

Once the call was over Mulder gently placed the cell phone on the
desk. He glanced at Doggett's worried gaze before closing his
eyes. He was completely shaken by what he'd just been told. 

In the women's restroom Scully was standing before the mirrors,
her hands gripping the sides of one of the sinks. Her reflection
looked intense and fearful. She was trying to gather her strength,
but it felt like she was trembling inside. She couldn't stop thinking
about the shadow-thing she had seen a few hours ago, standing
over the corpse of Rachel Marx, and the bees that swarmed her in
the biolab at NBACC earlier in the day. She didn't know what it
meant. 

She didn't know what any of it meant. 

"Keep it together, Dana," she warned herself. "Keep it together." 

She took a long, tremulous breath as she peered at her reflection.
She turned on the taps, leaned forward and repeatedly splashed
cold water onto her face. It helped a little. She couldn't afford to
burn out now, so early in the fight. 

* 

Brooklyn Heights 
1:27 a.m. 

Doggett had found nothing on Dr. Ryan Cohen. The address they
acquired from Father Jacobs' laptop was registered under another
name. There were several men named Ryan Cohen in the State of
New York, and a handful of them had doctorates, but the man they
were looking for could have been any or none of them. They had
no further way to narrow it down. Despite this failure Mulder was
still willing to hope that the address's registered name would turn
out to be counterfeit - that the guy they were looking for was trying
to conceal his identity. Doggett had secured a Bureau vehicle for
them; a nondescript silver Ford. They had crossed the Brooklyn
Bridge, travelled up Old Fulton Street and into the heart of the
affluent neighbourhood. Mulder was driving as they finally pulled
onto Malachi Street. He glanced at Scully in the passenger seat.
The street was practically deserted at such a late hour. Like much
of the area the street was lined with brownstones and elegant
redbrick row houses. It was picturesque even in the darkness of the
night. 

They parked near a particular building. 

"Do you think Homeland Security is interrogating Monica right
now?" Scully asked quietly as she peered through the passenger
window. 

"I think Homeland will be interrogating everyone in the building,
Scully. Monica included." 

"How in the hell did Labyrinth engineer this whole thing? How did
they get an assassin inside our building?" 

But from the tone of Scully's voice Mulder knew it was a rhetorical
question. It was the work of Rachel Marx, or Rosa Maria Santos -
Vigil's chief programmer. Their supposed former friend had been
an infiltrator the entire time, and had obviously compromised Vigil's
systems and security-protocols in ways the other analysts could
barely fathom. 

And now six analysts had been murdered inside Vigil
Headquarters, Rachel was dead and the Taskforce had been shut
down. He and Scully were fugitives. 

Mulder was well aware that Doggett was risking his career by not
arresting them. In fact, by giving them an FBI vehicle and sidearm
Mulder knew that Doggett was wilfully aiding and abetting two
potential enemies of the state. 

But worst of all was the insider's confirmation of what Benjamin
Jacobs had told them just before his death - that an  Angel of the
Abyss' was hunting them; an ex special-forces soldier who was
apparently back from the dead. Mulder had already told Scully
about the call and what the insider said. Scully was also deeply
unsettled by the news, and had touched her little gold cross for
comfort. 

Now she asked, "This man Lucien Farrow - Abaddon - he's going
to find us, Mulder, isn't he?" 

Mulder winced at the almost childlike fear in Scully's tone, yet he
was feeling it too. The religious resonances of everything that was
happening had already begun crawling under his skin like something
malevolent. 

Instead of answering his partner's question he reached across to
the passenger seat and caressed her cheek. She closed her eyes at
his touch, thankful for the brief comfort. She seemed to understand
why Mulder hadn't answered the question. Things seemed to be
getting darker and darker with each passing hour. 

When they got out of the car and climbed the small flight of steps to
the roughhouses' entrance they realized the building had been
converted into three separate apartments. 306c was the top-floor
apartment. They buzzed the intercom repeatedly but there was no
answer. 

"Do we break in?" asked Scully, matter-of-fact. 

"We don't have a reason," Mulder told her, "Or probable cause." 

"Does the extinction of all mankind count as probable cause?" 

Mulder forced a smile at her grim little joke. He gazed beneath the
intercom and saw a row of three mail compartments. He grabbed
the fa‡ade of the third one and tugged repeatedly until the cheap
lock finally snapped open. Inside were dozens of flyers; junk mail
for local businesses. Several of them were for a local all-night diner
called The Night Owl. 

As Mulder peered at the flyers he said, "If this guy Ryan Cohen
knows things about colonization then maybe he's having trouble
sleeping, right? We haven't exactly had it easy recently either." 

"Yeah," said Scully. "*So...?*" 

He raised a couple of flyers for her to see. "Worth a shot?" he
asked. 

She glanced at the flyers and nodded. "Always. Now more than
ever." 
                     
                     
* 

1:46 a.m. 

The Night Owl was a small contemporary diner on an intersection.
When Mulder and Scully stepped into the establishment the two
waitresses behind the counter glanced up briefly from the magazines
they were reading and smiled cordially at them. The place was
decorated in dark wood and steel. Atmospheric black & white
photos of Brooklyn hung on its walls. There were only four
customers. Two of them were women sitting at a table as they
drank coffee, chuckled and watched YouTube videos on a shared
laptop. The other two customers were a grizzled old man in his late
sixties, with a newspaper and pot of tea in front of him - and in a
window booth a man in a zippered brown hooded sweatshirt. 

He had his hood up, his profile concealed from where Mulder and
Scully were standing. But they could see that his table was filled
with several plates and glasses, all of them filled with half-eaten
food. 

Mulder glanced at Scully, who nodded. 

They approached his booth and Scully said, "Dr. Cohen? Dr. Ryan
Cohen?" 

His gaze shot up to meet hers immediately. Both Mulder and Scully
saw that despite the gluttony of food at his table, the bearded guy in
the brown hoodie was sallow-faced and unhealthy-looking. He
seemed to be in his mid-forties, maybe older. It was hard to tell
because of his scraggly beard and because he was so thin. His eyes
were slightly bloodshot, and filled with sadness. 

He glanced back down at the table, tore off a chunk of bread from
one of the many plates and stuffed it into his mouth. 

"Yes ma'am, Dr. Ryan Cohen." He waited a beat and then added,
"You don't seem like mercenaries. I guess that's the idea though,
right?" Mulder could hear the mingled fear and disgust in his voice.
He gestured at the oblivious waitresses. "Don't hurt them. No more
blood than is necessary, ok?" 

Mulder frowned and told him, "We're not here to hurt you, Dr.
Cohen. We just want to talk to you." 

Mulder could sense the nervous, jittery energy emanating from this
guy. He really seemed to think they were here to kill him. 

"How'd you find me?" he asked bluntly, snatching a half-filled glass
of Pepsi and gulping it down. He wiped his mouth and forced
himself to peer up at Mulder and then at Scully. 

"Well," he muttered bitterly as he looked at the redhead, "assassins
are getting prettier every day, aren't they? Are you going to shoot
up the place, now that the consequences don't really matter?" 

Mulder glanced worriedly at Scully and sat down in the booth
opposite the sallow-faced man. "Just who the hell do you think we
are?" Mulder asked him. 

"Black baggers," he replied immediately without holding Mulder's
gaze. "DOD, CIA, NSA, or privately contracted mercs. Either
way, you work for Labyrinth or the Apostles. Nobody else would
know my real name. You know, I really thought I was gonna just
slide right under your radar." He grimaced and chuckled, peering
down at his own hands. "You get so used to running and hiding,
you think it'll always be that way." 

His gaze snapped up, fixing Mulder with an almost psychotic
intensity. "But I outwitted you sick sons of bitches for *twenty-
two* years, didn't I? And you come to me now, you finally find me
now...on the Eve of Occupation? What kind of victory is that? You
don't get what you're looking for, and you don't get my soul." He
smiled triumphantly, hatefully, and muttered, "You can kill me
now." 

Mulder shook his head. "Listen to me very carefully, Dr. Cohen.
We're not black-baggers. We're ex FBI agents working for
something called the Vigil Intelligence Taskforce. We're trying to
*upset* plans for Occupation. We got your name and address
from a priest in Washington D.C.; a man calling himself Father
Benjamin Jacobs, who shot himself after we interrogated him. He
said that he'd known you were in NYC the whole time, but he
enjoyed watching you suffer." 

The man in the brown hoodie just peered wildly at Mulder until
tears began to roll silently down his face. 

"Ben is dead?" he muttered finally. "That sick, degenerate pervert is
dead? Then there *is* a God." He continued to peer tearfully at
Mulder, as though trying to intuit his true motivations. 

Eventually Ryan Cohen tilted his head and smiled vaguely at
Mulder, then up at Scully. 

"If you're not mercenaries here to kill me, then what *are* you
here for?" 

"We need your help," Scully told him. "We need to know what you
know." 

He narrowed his eyes as he stared at her. "Why?" 

"So we might have one last shot at stopping it." 

"You can't *stop* it. Nobody can stop it. Even the Rebels
couldn't stop it. It's already happening." 

Mulder glanced at Scully, then back at the man on the opposite
side of the table. "What do you mean it's already happening?" 

"Occupation has already started. Several of the major cities already
have ships present in their skies. They're cloaked, but they're
waiting. DOD knows it's already begun. That's why they initiated
the Eidolon Covenant." He smiled darkly at Mulder. "So, if you're
not going to kill me, then go away and let me enjoy my banquet. I
suggest you take the redhead, find a hotel room, and screw each
other's brains out, while you still can." 

Scully sneered at Cohen and asked him, "What is the Eidolon
Covenant?" 

"You know what it is." 

"No, Dr. Cohen, we don't. We're not who you think we are." 

"The Eidolon Covenant is total military-intelligence inaction with
regards to Occupation. Up until yesterday certain groups within the
US government have been trying to stop what's coming, for over
sixty years. But now...everyone's standing down. The occupation
of this planet by a superior alien race is now a mathematical
certainty." 

"I don't believe that," Mulder said sharply. 

Cohen shrugged. "Then you're either a liar or a fool. And you don't
look like a fool. You want to know what I know, but I'm not going
to tell you jack shit. So this elaborate ruse is pointless. You may as
well kill me." 

"We're trying to *stop* Occupation, Dr. Cohen. We don't work
for Labyrinth or the Apostles. They've been our mortal enemies for
the last eight months. We're allies, Ryan, not enemies." 

He chuckled darkly again. "And unless you can somehow prove
that to me, why on Earth would I believe you?" 

"How can we prove it?" asked Scully. 

Cohen chuckled and shrugged. He tore off another chunk of bread
from one of his plates and stuffed it in his mouth. For a few
moments Mulder peered at him, trying to intuit the psychological
terrain this man had been inhabiting for the last several years. 

"My name is Fox Mulder, Ryan. Do you recognize that name?" 

Cohen's gaze shot upwards again, his eyes wide with disbelief. He
clearly did recognize the name. "It's it's a trick," he faltered. 

"No, it's no trick," Mulder said quickly. "But you know that name,
don't you? You know who I am?" 

In a sudden furious gesture, Cohen swept all the plates off the table
with a swipe of his arm. They went crashing to the floor at Scully's
feet, eliciting a startled cry from her as she jumped back. The staff
and other patrons were now peering at the three of them with
shock and fear. 

"Don't screw around with me!" Cohen growled at Mulder, rising to
his feet in the booth. "Death I can accept, but I'm so goddamn tired
of mind-games!" 

Mulder stood up on the other side of the booth, glancing at Scully
before returning his gaze to the ill-looking bearded guy in the brown
hoodie. 

"No games, Ryan. I'm Fox Mulder. And this is Dana Scully." 

Cohen narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. "If you're Fox
Mulder, then you can tell me some things, can't you? Who's the
mechanical angel?" 

Mulder frowned. "I don't understand..." 

Cohen sneered and chuckled. "Tell me the angel's name." 

After a few moments of silent thought Mulder said quietly, "Gabriel.
An Archangel drone-prototype designed to protect US military
infrastructure once the invasion begins." 

Cohen seemed taken aback by his answer. "And...and who's the
elder man?" 

"What *elder man?*" asked Mulder. 

"The elder man who calls himself your guardian, and lives on the
edges of your dreams." 

"What in the hell are you talking about?" Mulder hissed. 

But to Mulder's surprise Scully said, "Albert. Albert Hosteen. A
Navajo Elder." 

Dr. Ryan Cohen frowned again, visibly shaken by her answer.
Mulder felt a flash of surprise and admiration at his lover before the
guy in the hoodie fixed him with a piercing stare. 

"And and what did you carve into the tree on your sister's
eighteenth birthday?" 

Mulder inhaled sharply, a flood of emotions rushing up from the pit
of his stomach. He could suddenly feel the tears in his eyes and
glanced uncertainly at Scully. Somehow this guy Cohen knew a
secret that Mulder had never shared with another living soul. 

"How could...how could you possibly *know* about that?" Mulder
murmured. "Nobody but me knows about that...not even Scully." 

"Answer the question. What did you carve into the tree on
Samantha's eighteenth birthday?" 

In little more than a whisper Mulder closed his eyes and said,
"*Never Stop Looking.*" 

"*Oh God,*" muttered Cohen, shaking his head. "Ok. Ok, we
need...we need to get back to my apartment. I need to tell you
everything." 


* 
                     

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW 
Washington D.C. 
2:04 a.m. 

He didn't think the end would come like this. Not like this, with
dread and horror twisting his guts - his body slick with sweat
beneath his suit, his heart screaming beneath his ribs. Garrett Moss
was standing in the opulent Red Room on the State Floor of the
Executive Residence of the White House Complex, its parlour walls
decorated in a lavish shade of carmine. The Oval Office was less
than a hundred yards away from where he was standing, along the
colonnade and into the West Wing. 

He couldn't quite believe he was doing it, but Special Agent Garrett
Moss was now aiming his trembling sidearm at something that
appeared to be his mentor and best friend of almost twenty-five
years. The senior agent had also immediately drawn his weapon,
pointing it incredulously at the younger man. 

For a disturbing moment the stand-off was completely silent, and
then the older man said carefully, "For the love of God,
Garrett...*what the hell are you doing*...? Listen to me...I don't
know what's happening, but you've just crossed a very dangerous
line. But we can still...we can still make this right..." 

But Special Agent Moss knew there was no making anything right
again. He had drawn his weapon inside the White House Complex,
and trained it on a fellow United States Secret Service agent. There
was no coming back from that. Even if he survived this encounter
he would be painted as a rogue agent who suffered an aberrant
psychotic break. 

It felt like his mind was indeed beginning to fracture, but Garrett
Moss knew he wasn't suffering from some strange psychosis. He
knew the sky really was falling. A hidden unholy reality had been
revealed to him, darker and more terrifying than any piece of
science-fiction. Several months ago an associate in the Counter
Sniper Team had whispered a bizarre, impossible rumour, and later
a contact inside Arlington had confirmed that rumour. The contact
revealed that he was part of something that DOD referred to as
Blackflame; some kind of highly-classified Special Operations
annexe. For some reason the contact had taken pity on Garrett,
and had shown him a piece of the hidden reality. 

His friends were no longer his friends. 

Their faces had been stolen, by things made of oil and smoke and
fire. 

Monsters were secretly walking the Earth, walking the halls of
power inside Washington. Things that belonged in nightmares had
traversed some kind of veil, and had made themselves as gods.
They had been secretly ruling our world for a very, very long time.
He wouldn't have believed such madness if he hadn't seen it for
himself. 

Special Agent Garrett Moss was convinced that the thing
pretending to be his friend had somehow sensed that he knew, and
had broken their detail and brought him into the Red Room to kill
him. What did such an ostentatious high-risk execution matter, now
that the sky was falling? The Blackflame contact from Arlington had
shown him irrefutable evidence of the unimaginable - that in less
than twenty-four hours a demonic alien race was going to begin a
full-scale invasion of the entire planet. It sounded like the ravings of
a lunatic, but it wasn't. Garrett swallowed his terror and tightened
his grip on his drawn sidearm. 

"You think I won't do it?" he hissed, his voice shaking with
violence. "You brought me in here to kill me, but you think I won't
pull this trigger? I know about Blackflame, and the ships, and the
Chameleons. *I know about all of it.* I...I love my country. I
know what's coming. I won't let you do this. YOU HEAR ME?" 

The senior agent looked genuinely afraid, but Garrett wasn't fooled. 

"For Christ's sake, Garrett, it's *me.* It's *Mitch.*" 

"MITCH IS DEAD!" screamed Garrett, terror and fury making his
aim tremble. 

Special Agent Mitchell Casey was his mentor and best friend. They
had first served on close protection together in the mid-nineties
during the Clinton Presidency, when Garrett was eager to hone his
craft and earn the respect of the older men. Mitch Casey had taught
him true humility and true professionalism. 

But Mitch was dead. Garrett's DOD Blackflame contact had
shown him the corpse, stuffed like garbage into an oil drum and
tossed into the Potomac River. Garrett had seen it with his own
eyes, and now the thing wearing his best friend's face was trying to
get inside his head - trying to convince him that the nightmare
wasn't real. 

"ERT is gonna be through these doors less than thirty seconds,
Garrett. I'm begging you, please don't make me do-" 

Special Agent Garrett Moss fired three times in rapid succession,
directly into the center of mass. The older man flinched and
stumbled backwards, blinking and staring in disbelief at his prot‚g‚
for a few moments before collapsing to the floor. A pool of blood
as red as the walls of the room began to spread around him,
immediately soaking into the antique rug. Garrett had the vague
realisation that it was arterial blood, that one of the bullets must
have pierced the imposter's heart. Shocked at his own actions,
oddly numb, Garrett took a few steps towards the body, half
expecting it to revert back to its true form. 

It didn't. 

And suddenly Special Agent Garrett Moss felt his stomach clutch
with a different kind of dread. A new horror began to roll through
his insides like sickening damnation, as the hideous truth began to
dawn. 

The thing lying dead at his feet was not a Chameleon. It wasn't a
shapeshifter. 

His DOD contact had staged an elaborate set-up, and he had been
taken in by it like a fool. He had just murdered his best friend in
cold blood within the most symbolic and powerful building in the
entire United States. 

"*Oh Christ,*" he murmured as a fist of ice seemed to close
around his heart, "*Oh Jesus Christ....forgive me...*" 

The doors to the Cross Hall burst open as the first wave of the
Emergency Response Team flanked the doorway, weapons aimed. 

But Special Agent Garrett Moss had already pressed his SIG P229
against his own right temple. For a split-second he locked gazes
with one of the ERT framed in the doorway before pulling the
trigger. The self-inflicted gunshot blew apart the left side of his skull
in a burst of crimson and bone fragments as he collapsed. 

For a few moments the members of the Emergency Response
Team in the doorway peered incredulously at the two Secret
Service agents lying dead on the floor of the Red Room of the
White House Complex. It was nothing they had ever expected to
witness, but their elite training quickly reasserted itself. 

The team-leader on the right-hand side of the doorway tapped his
throat-mic and said shakily, "This is Kessler on the State Floor,
Red Room. We have a Code Black security-situ. Immediate
SecDef contact. POTUS advise. Initiate immediate lockdown. I
repeat: We have a Code Black security-situ. This is not a drill.
Standing-by..." 

As the ERT leader peered at the two dead Secret Service agents
he couldn't even begin to fathom what had occurred here, or why,
but he knew one thing with chilling certainty. Knowledge of the
events that transpired in this room would never leave the walls of
the Executive Residence. Efforts to covertly neutralise the scene
were already in motion.
 

* 

Brooklyn Heights 
New York City 
2:46 a.m. 

The top-floor apartment of the converted row house was luxurious
and spacious, or it had been once. But Dr. Ryan Cohen possessed
very little furniture. Instead, countless little stacks of books filled the
open-plan space. There were dozens upon dozens of books in
small piles all across the floor. And the far wall of exposed
brickwork was covered with hundreds of newspaper cuttings,
magazine articles and printed images. UFOs, crop circles,
geometric patterns, structural blueprints and engineering schematics
covered the wall from floor to ceiling. At first glance it looked like
the externalised imagination of a delusional psychotic. 

Neither Mulder nor Scully had expected what Dr. Ryan Cohen did
next, but now as they watched him they weren't too surprised.
They sat with him at the little dining table as he cooked the heroin in
a citric acid solution, holding the spoon over the open flame of a
Zippo lighter - preparing it for injection. Scully watched with a faint
look of distaste on her face. As a medical doctor she had seen
what kind of terrible damage heroin addiction could do to the
human body, both inside and out. 

Cohen glanced at her, seeing her expression and said, "You judge
me, but you have no idea." 

"I'm not judging you." 

"Don't pity me either. I don't need your pity. Look around you. It's
literally the end of the world." 

Mulder gestured at the wall of clippings and images. "What is all
that?" 

Cohen kept his eyes on his task but said, "That's over twenty years
of research and contextualization and paranoia. That wall kept me
alive. I guess you think it looks demented, huh?" 

"Actually," Mulder said quietly, "My office used to look just like it." 

The thin bearded doctor smiled darkly as he continued heating the
heroin. Scully glanced at Mulder and then told Cohen, "Look,
we're running out of time. You said you were going to tell us
everything." 

He nodded. "Over by the wall. One of the floorboards is loose." 

Scully shot Mulder a quizzical look. He got up and navigated his
way through the stacks of books on the floor. 

"You're gonna have to move some stuff," Cohen told him. 

Mulder crouched by the wall and moved some of the book piles.
He realized which floor board Cohen had been talking about and
eventually pried it up with his fingernails. He reached into the dark
gap in the floor, his fingers found something, and he removed a
thick manila folder coated with dust. 

But he could still read what was printed across the folder's front. 

*TOP SECRET//SAR-PELLUCID - TEC-2971-3011-B6149.* 

Scully could see that Mulder felt the thrill of anticipation and unease
before he'd even opened what he held in his hands. He glanced
over at her and then Cohen. "How did you manage to get a hold of
this?" 

Dr. Ryan Cohen grimly held his gaze for a few moments before
answering. "Because men who were far, far braver than I sacrificed
their lives to protect it. That's the only file I was able to bring above
ground. They sanitised everything and *everyone*...made it like it
never happened. What you're holding in your hands are some of
the most dangerous documents on this Earth. And believe me,
that's not hyperbole. You have...you have no idea how exhausting
that burden was...to be the guardian of those pages...to live every
day of your life in absolute terror because it. It was terrifying to
bring even a fraction of those pages to the surface." 

"What do you mean *to the surface?*" asked Mulder, weighing
the folder in his hands. 

The thin bearded doctor glanced away from Mulder, fear in his
eyes. "I have a lot more documentation, on DOD's Triskelion, but I
didn't dare bring it to the surface. It's locked away, hidden in a safe
place underground." 

"You know about Triskelion?" asked Scully, recalling the strange
symbol that had been carved into the chest of Diego Roberto Cielo
- the three interlocking spirals in a triangular configuration that she'd
witnessed on his corpse at the National Biodefense Analysis and
Countermeasures Center. She added, "We've been told about a
key...the Key of Ages...a piece of ancient alien technology that's
supposed to unlock this thing that the Department of Defense calls
Triskelion." 

"That's right," muttered Cohen. "Triskelion is the US military-
intelligence elite's most closely-guarded secret. They will kill
*anyone* who presents a threat to its secrecy. The fact that you
even know the name Triskelion in this context means your lives are
already in danger. But you need to focus on what's right in front of
you, or none of this will make sense. Don't get ahead of yourself,
Miss Scully." 

Scully shared a look of worry with Mulder, who brought the dusty
folder back to the table and sat down with it. She didn't bother to
tell the bearded doctor that a DOD insider had told them that a
man named Lucien Farrow now possessed this Key of Ages.
Scully realized that Mulder was afraid to open the folder now. She
suspected the thrill of anticipation was gone, replaced with the
nagging intuition that what he would discover in its pages would be
just more saddening horror. 

The bearded doctor in the brown hoodie let the heroin cool for
minute before sucking it up with a syringe. He gestured at the
unopened folder on the tabletop. "You're not actually scared of the
truth, are you, Spooky?" 

"Just how *the hell* do you know so much about me anyway?"
Mulder asked him, eyes narrowed. 

"Well...I've never actually seen your photo but I'm friends with
some truly gifted psychics and remote viewers. It keeps me alive.
And you're something of a celebrity within the black-intel
community, Agent Mulder. Seeker of the Crossroads, they call
you." Cohen smiled sadly, stood up from the table and began
casually unbuttoning his jeans. 

Scully frowned. "Uh...what the hell are you *doing?*" 

"Finding a vein," he murmured. He pulled his jeans down to his
knees, sat back down and searched his skin before injecting the
syringe into his thigh. He closed his eyes and let out an exhalation of
breath that sounded almost erotic. 

When he opened his eyes again, instead of the dreamy, drugged
expression that Scully had been expecting Cohen's eyes were
suddenly sharper and clearer. He got up again from the chair just
enough to button up his jeans. He then unzipped the front of his
brown hoodie, reached inside and casually placed a black
semiautomatic pistol onto the table. 

Its barrel was pointing directly at Mulder who tensed immediately,
glancing uncertainly at Cohen and then at Scully. The atmosphere in
the apartment was suddenly as heavy as lead. Scully swallowed at
this sudden development. 

"You're running out of time," Cohen muttered. 

"What are you doing, Ryan?" Mulder asked carefully, his eyes
flitting from Cohen's face to the gun resting menacingly on the
tabletop. 

The thin bearded doctor wasn't even touching the gun now, but
Mulder instantly knew that Cohen could grab it and pull the trigger
incredibly quickly if he wanted to - much faster than the time it
would take for he or Scully to try snatching the weapon away, or
for Mulder to reach into his suit jacket for the sidearm Doggett had
given him. 

Cohen leaned forward slightly and said, "I don't *really* know
who you are, do I? I mean, I learned about you from psychics and
remote viewers. How do I know you haven't done the same? Hell,
the real Fox Mulder might already be dead. You might've killed
him." 

Mulder took a breath and said, "Ryan, I can assure you...I am who
I say I am." 

Cohen nodded. "I hope so, otherwise I'm going to have to kill you.
I don't really think you're faking, otherwise I wouldn't have invited
you up here, would I? But you can't be too careful. Least not on
the Eve of Occupation. So, start reading the file, ok? But if you try
anything dumb...or I get the feeling you're not who you say you
are...I'm going to shoot Miss Scully in the face while you watch,
and then I'm going to shoot you." 

"You don't need to shoot anyone, Ryan," Scully told him in as
measured and calm a tone as she could manage. 

Cohen gently placed his right hand on the black handgun. "That
remains to be seen, really, doesn't it?" 

Mulder shared a nervous glance with Scully and opened the folder
as she leaned in beside him. He attempted to focus on the task at
hand and ignore the gun that lay on the table. In the folder there
were pages and pages of lists and names and seemingly
meaningless statistical data, followed by photographs of the interior
of some kind of research facility. One of the photographs made
Mulder almost gasp. It was an image of several rows of children
standing in a large white medical bay. There must have been at least
sixty or seventy kids in the photo, all of them with sad, haunted
expressions. Mulder felt a twisting in his guts and a lump in his
throat. He swallowed immediately. The utter hopelessness in those
children's eyes...it reminded him of certain images he'd seen of
Auschwitz or Dachau. Some were crying, some were glaring
defiantly at the camera. But none of them were smiling. 

"Oh *God,*" Scully murmured over his shoulder. 

The next photo was filled with different children but the same
darkness, and the next, and the next. In the last image Mulder
finally realized that the kids were all standing on a large pattern that
had been stencilled or painted onto the floor - three interlocking
spirals. 

It was another Triskelion symbol, identical to the one that had been
carved into the chest of Diego Roberto Cielo. 

"You were a part of this?" Mulder muttered with barely veiled
contempt, unable to look away from the photos. "Are you going to
start talking, Dr. Cohen?" 

The bearded doctor nodded sheepishly, taking his hand off the
black handgun and resting it beside the weapon. He glanced away
as though humbled by the raw emotion in the eyes of the
photographed children. 

"Pellucid," Cohen began, "was just the modern form of an agenda
that's been a part of this country's power-elite since at least the late
1700s, from the time this country was first created - *'the
aggressive utilization of man's occult powers',* as they called it
back then. Today the military-intelligence community call it  the
*weaponization of human consciousness'.* But it doesn't matter
what you call it. For over two hundred years the most powerful
people in this country have wanted to unlock and control the
secrets of the human mind - telepathy, telekinesis, remote viewing,
astral projection. The list goes on and on. But it wasn't until the
twentieth century that they developed the technology to make that
kind of control feasible - reverse-engineered *alien* technology,
Mr. Mulder. Do you want to know why the FBI kept extensive
records of unexplainable cases? Do you want to know what the X-
Files *really* is?" 

Mulder glanced quickly at the gun resting on the table, and waited
impatiently for an answer. 

"It's the most acceptable face of a vast and covert data-gathering
operation that's been going on in this country since Majestic and
Seraph during the Second World War - the extensive mapping of
every quirk and detail concerning the mysteries of human
consciousness, how that consciousness interfaces with  unexplained
phenomena' and the alien presence that's been influencing human
development since the very beginning. All the data-points locked
away in the X-Files since the forties...it all fed into their magnum
opus; The Eight Configuration. It's an MK-Ultra masterwork, Mr.
Mulder, orchestrated by factions within NSA, CIA, and other
alphabet agencies including your beloved FBI." 

Mulder sneered. "*Beloved?* The FBI and I were never exactly
on great terms." 

Cohen shrugged and continued, "Either way, it's what these elites
have spilled so much blood to protect. High Weirdness meets hard
science, the place where theoretical physics and the human psyche
interconnect - theoretical time-travel, advanced telekinesis,
enhanced PSI. This was a program with an infinite budget and no
oversight. These people literally *invented* money to fund this
thing. Pellucid was the central project of the entire T.E.C program." 

"Lucid dreaming?" asked Scully, still unconvinced. 

The emaciated doctor chuckled emptily at the disbelief in her tone.
He put his hand on the semiautomatic again, gripping it and sliding
his finger around the trigger ever so gently. 

"Not just lucid dreaming," he went on casually. "Pellucid was about
creating a *weaponized* lucid dreamer...a consciousness that
could bridge the gap between dreams and the real world, creating
entire dreamscapes down to the smallest detail, and potentially
gaining access and similar influence to other people's dreams. Think
of the incredible power that could give someone." 

Mulder just listened quietly, aware that Cohen now had his finger
on the trigger of the gun that was laying sideways in his direction.
He was afraid, but was desperately trying not to show it. 

Scully said angrily, "You're telling us this is all because of some
*Inception* nonsense?" 

"No, no. That movie was about using dreams to plant ideas for the
purposes of corporate power. Pellucid was about using dream-
consciousness to potentially alter the very fabric of material reality." 

"Wait," said Mulder, forcing himself to look away from Cohen's
trigger-finger. "I don't understand. What the hell do you mean
*alter the fabric of material reality?*" 

The sallow-faced doctor laughed again, but there was still no humor
in it. "Pellucid wanted to know just how powerful human
consciousness really is. And we...we accidentally gave birth to a
god." 

A chill gripped Mulder at Ryan Cohen's words, deeper than the
chill of having a gun on the table with this man's finger resting on the
trigger. He glanced uncertainly at Scully. 

"What do you mean a *god?*" she asked, appalled. "Are you
talking about the Sleeper? This thing that Labyrinth thinks is the
Antichrist?" 

Cohen smiled, wide-eyed. "There's something I need to show
you." 

He kept his right hand on the gun, reached under the table and
brought out a modified laptop. From the Apple logo Mulder could
see it had once been a MacBook, but it was now augmented with
various pieces of technology, much like Father Jacobs' laptop back
in D.C. 

Cohen powered up the hybridized MacBook, opened a particular
file, turned the device round to face them and slid it across the
table. A video-file was already playing. 

Mulder shared a knowing, fearful glance with Scully and then
looked at Cohen again. The bearded doctor in the brown hoodie
had picked up the gun from the table and was now pressing its
length to his lips as though it were a toy. 

He took the length of gun away from his lips and told Mulder,
"Look at the computer screen, not me." 

Mulder immediately did as he was told. A young boy, no older than
eleven or twelve, was sitting on a chrome chair in a white medical
bay whilst peering dejectedly at the camera. 

Scully inhaled sharply at the boy on the screen. Although he didn't
look exactly like William - like the photo the Van De Kamps had
given her - the boy was also dark-haired and about the same age
as their son, with the same sad, soulful eyes. The boy reminded her
enough of William to unsettle her more deeply than she was
already. 

From somewhere off-camera a male voice said coldly, *"Subject
MK8C-247, please state your name for the camera."*

*"Caleb,"* the boy said quietly. *"Caleb Altman."* His head
was bowed slightly and he didn't raise his eyes to meet the camera. 

*"How is it that you're still alive, Caleb?"* 

*"I don't know."* 

*"Please tell the camera where you lived before you were
brought here to Pellucid."* 

A pause. *"The Bell-Ferrier Orphanage in Redhill, Oregon."*
There was a trembling kind of longing in the boy's words that made
Scully's stomach clench. She glanced at Mulder and saw the
sadness and horror in his expression. 

*"You're a very special boy, Caleb. I hope you're finally
beginning to realize that. None of the other dreamers survived
this kind of repeated exposure. Somehow you have survived
the process. Somehow you've thrived. I told you that you were
different to the other children, didn't I?"* 

*"Yes, Dr. Abrams,"* the boy said softly. 

*"We all think that you're going to change the world,
Caleb."* 

The young boy finally lifted his head, fixing his haunting eyes on the
camera. There was a brief moment of distortion as the boy's image
glitched and flickered, and then Scully and Mulder were peering at
nothing but static. 

They both turned to Cohen, deeply unsettled and waiting for an
explanation. 

Cohen kept the gun in his right hand but dropped it out of sight
below the table. He sighed and said, "In November of 1989, nearly
ten months after that video was taken, something happened at
Pellucid - a miracle. We succeeded far, far beyond anything we'd
hoped for. The CIA and Guatemala's D-2 used an operation called
 Bedtime' to secretly recruit children for Pellucid, but- " 

"*Recruit?*" sneered Scully. "No more goddamn euphemisms.
You mean *kidnap*...you mean snatch from their families. The
Guatemalan and United States intelligence services were running a
child-snatching operation, and you were a part of it." 

"Yes," Cohen admitted quietly after a moment. He brought the gun
back into sight and slammed it down onto the tabletop. Mulder and
Scully both flinched at the action and glanced at one another. 

"But all the other dreamers died," Cohen went on as if he had done
nothing dramatic. "One of the many goals of Pellucid was to
massively augment and weaponize the children's PSI abilities, to
enhance their lucid dreaming capabilities. But we quickly realized
the program was too ambitious. The children couldn't withstand the
clinical conditioning; the repeated exposure to what many of us
believed to be an alien energy-source taken from a crashed UFO.
But twelve-year-old Caleb Altman was an anomaly. His central
nervous-system didn't completely collapse. He didn't die. He was
changed. Somehow Caleb achieved what DOD referred to as
*zero-point.* The ramifications sent absolute terror through
Washington's military-intelligence elites when they learned of our
initial findings. They weren't prepared for such a staggering
success. Neither were we. I quickly realized that what occurred
with Caleb was in some way connected to DOD's Triskelion
secret. Rumors started flying that day. They were afraid of what
little Caleb had apparently become. They realized they wouldn't be
able to control him. So they tried to kill him." 

Suddenly Cohen picked up the gun from the tabletop again and
dropped it into his lap, as though the threat of the weapon was no
longer necessary. 

Mulder felt himself relax only slightly. 

"That same night," Cohen went on, "they ordered that Pellucid be
immediately shut down and dissolved. But they knew that the
medical and tech teams running Pellucid were going to refuse. They
were counting on it. We knew that we'd inadvertently stumbled
across perhaps the most significant discovery in *all of human
history.* We thought that little Caleb was going to eventually
revolutionize not just physics and biology, but our philosophical
understanding of religion and spirituality. We thought that what
happened to Caleb Altman in November of 1989 was going to
transform every single paradigm in human existence. But we were
fools. We knew that DOD would never allow such an unmediated
truth out into the open for public knowledge...at least not
initially...but we didn't realize the full implications of that fact, and
what it meant for our own survival." 

The emaciated doctor in the brown hoodie glanced with wet eyes
at Mulder. Tears rolled down his sallow cheeks and into his
scraggly beard. 

"We ignored the dissolution order, as they knew we would. Like
idiots we thought that if enough of us stuck together they couldn't
charge us all with treason for defying them. We had literally no idea
how far they were willing to go. They knew we weren't about to
destroy our own work - destroy a living miracle. An external
containment order was issued. Several units of mercenaries were
activated. They had orders to neutralize the entire site and everyone
in it. But their massacre didn't...didn't go according to plan. That
little boy...he, uh...he slaughtered every single member of the kill-
teams that DOD sent that night and then almost the entire staff of
Pellucid. He razed the entire facility to the ground. Nearly two
hundred men and women died that night. Only six of us
escaped...and now Ben is dead that means I'm one of the last.
Three hours after the facility came down DOD had the entire site
buried and sealed, including the bodies. Today it's just snow and
ice. You'd never even know it had been there." 

Scully was extremely shaken and disturbed by what the junkie
doctor had just told them. She didn't want to believe it. And she
was well aware that he still had a loaded gun in his lap, though he
seemed less inclined to use it now. 

Scully narrowed her eyes and snarled in fear, "Ryan, how is
*anything* you've just described even *remotely* possible?" 

Cohen shook his head ruefully. "Because Pellucid gave birth to a
god. One moment that little boy was dreaming, and then the next
moment he was awake. But, impossibly, his electroencephalograph
and neuro-imaging data showed that he was *still* sleeping.
Awake *and* dreaming at the same time. Lucid dreaming. Do you
understand? Listen to me, I think Labyrinth believes that Caleb
Altman is still alive...that he didn't perish that night in 1989 like
DOD believed. I think Labyrinth believes Altman is the entity
described in their Sleeper prophecy; their interpretation of an
obscure legend concerning the return of the ancient Mayan serpent-
deity Kukulkan. The War Serpent." 

A cold black chill seemed to flood through Scully's entire system as
she finally began to understand the context and implications of what
Cohen was saying. She glanced nervously at Mulder, whose face
was unreadable, and then back at the ravaged doctor. 

"What *the hell* are you saying?" she muttered. "You're...you're
saying that Pellucid managed to unleash some incredibly destructive
telekinetic power in this child's mind? And because of that
Labyrinth actually believed that this boy Caleb Altman was the
Mayan serpent-god Kukulkan...the biblical Antichrist?" 

Cohen said quietly, "Not just the power of destruction the power
of *creation.* The power to alter reality on an atomic level,
through an act of will. The power of a god, Miss Scully. The power
to reshape and rebuild the world in his own image." 

"*That's impossible,*" Scully murmured, utterly horrified. 

Mulder decided to finally speak, his voice quiet, thoughtful and
afraid. "The ritual-suicides at El Mirador, Scully; those Mayan
peasants were chanting about the *waking of the one who
sleeps.* It makes a kind of sense. The cult must have believed that
Kukulkan was returning to lead the Mayan sky-gods to rule in a
new baktun of time upon the Earth. And Labyrinth must believe a
Christian interpretation of something similar." 

Scully was still speechless and horrified. 

Mulder focused his attention on Ryan Cohen. Quietly he asked,
"So you're saying a powerful military-intelligence cult began to form
around the legend of this telekinetic child? A fusion of Mayan
folklore and Christian extremism?" Cohen nodded. Mulder
continued, "But a schism eventually formed between Labyrinth and
the Apostles, right? A civil war. So the Apostles must believe..." 

"Yes," said Cohen, intuiting Mulder's thoughts. "The Apostles have
come to believe the opposite of Labyrinth - that Caleb Altman is
the physical incarnation of Christ himself." 

"This is *insane,*" murmured Scully. "This is *completely*
insane." She glanced wide-eyed at Mulder for confirmation, but
Mulder's eyes were now lit with frightening new thoughts and
deductions. 

Scully snapped her gaze back to Ryan Cohen and exclaimed, "No.
No! I *refuse* to accept this! Labyrinth and the Apostles are high-
ranking members of the military-industrial complex - part of the
intelligence community! They cannot honestly *believe* any of this,
can they? That this kid Caleb is some kind of Mayan serpent-god -
the Antichrist or the Second Coming? It's absolute *lunacy!*" 

It was only then that Scully realized she was fiercely gripping the
little gold cross at her throat, clutching it in her fist as though for
protection against what the bearded doctor was telling them. 

"You don't understand," Cohen said quietly. "My father was
Jewish and my mother was Protestant Christian, but they were both
non-practicing. We never really accepted religion. To my family
they were all fairytales. My parents never forced me to believe
anything in particular. Judaism, Christianity, Islam - it's all the same
to me. But I was *there.* I saw what Caleb did that night. He did
things that only a god can do. I don't know how else to explain
it..." 

"Are you saying you *agree* with Labyrinth?" Scully balked
incredulously. 

"No, of course not! I knew Caleb. I talked with him countless
times. He was incredibly intelligent...a prodigy, really...but he was
still just a kid. A lonely, terrified kid who was trapped in an unholy
experiment he could barely understand. But I can understand why
DOD would think that little boy was some kind of god...some kind
of messiah. I mean, he took those mercenaries apart on a molecular
level. He began to reshape everything. He began to imagine things,
and those things came to pass. He was so angry at what we'd done
to him. He took his revenge on all of us. I saw him literally walk
through walls, Miss Scully. I saw him teleport and levitate, and fuse
flesh with steel and concrete. I saw him disassemble and
reassemble reality on a whim. He eventually pulled the whole facility
in on itself. Our reality became his dream. I ran. I just *ran.* I
barely escaped with my life. Even before the change, that little boy
was the most powerful lucid dreamer we'd ever encountered. I
guess that's why he managed to survive the conditioning process.
Only six of us got out alive. He collapsed the entire facility. When
Caleb was done the whole place was nothing but a heap of
smoking ruins in the snow." 

Scully glanced at Mulder. She was terrified. He looked very
frightened too, in truth. Scully pulled her fearful gaze away and
peered at Dr. Ryan Cohen once more. He was about to speak
again when the lights in the apartment suddenly dimmed and began
flickering strangely. The flickering was enough to terrify the
emaciated doctor as he glanced wildly at the lights above them. 

"Oh God," he murmured, "It's happening...they're *listening* to
us." 

Mulder shot a worried glance at Scully and then peered up at the
flickering apartment lights. "Who? *Who's* listening?" 

Cohen didn't answer him. After a few moments the lights stopped
flickering, returning to normal. But Cohen pulled his gaze away
from the ceiling and suddenly lunged across the table, grabbing
Mulder by the lapel of his suit jacket with one hand, and shoving
the black semiautomatic into his palm with the other. 

"Take this!" Mulder could only glance down uncomprehendingly at
the gun that Cohen had suddenly forced into his grasp. "Listen to
me, if you want to know the truth about DOD's Triskelion you
need to go underground. I hid all the surviving files and my journals
in a steel lockbox fourteen years ago. You just better pray that
nobody's found it yet." 

Mulder shoved the doctor in the brown hoodie away from him with
a scowl, and looked down at the gun now clasped in his own hand.
Mulder had to fight the urge to immediately point the gun at Cohen
in retaliation for making him and Scully think their lives were in
danger. 

"What the hell are you talking about, Ryan...?" he muttered,
glancing at Scully as she looked on with baffled surprise. 

Cohen glanced up at the apartment lights that had been flickering
only moments ago, and then fixed Mulder with an almost psychotic
stare. For a while he didn't bother speaking. Mulder simply glanced
at Scully again and let the tension hang in the air. 

Eventually Cohen began, "For...for the first nine years after Pellucid
was destroyed I went...I went literally underground. I lived among a
specific subset of New York City's homeless community; what
surface-dwellers called *the mole people.* We...we lived in
underground spaces beneath the city, in abandoned tunnels and
subway stations. People wrote newspaper articles and made
documentaries about us. Amtrak evicted us from the Freedom
Tunnel beneath Riverside Park in 1991. After that many of us
moved on to other underground places, but the Transit Authority
kept trying to kick us out whenever they found us...smashing up the
shantytowns we'd built for ourselves, making it hard for us to live
our lives, such as they were. A handful of my friends eventually
settled in the lower levels of Bergen Street Station, just ten minutes
away from here on Boerum Hill. The lower levels of Bergen Street
have been abandoned and closed to the public since the mid-
seventies. We eventually stumbled upon a series of hidden rooms
down there - storage rooms for construction equipment that had
been walled off just after the station was built. We called them the
Nest. We made the Nest our home for many years, hidden from
the Transit Authority...until the shapeshifters found me in 1998." 

A particular kind of heaviness settled in the air at Cohen's mention
of shapeshifters. Mulder gave Scully a quick look. 

"They posed as some of us, obviously...and then they began
murdering everybody. They...they set my friends on fire. Can
you imagine? I can still remember the screaming and the smell.
You never forget the smell of burning flesh. They were looking for
the Triskelion files. But I'd already sealed the lockbox in one of the
hidden cavities down there. They murdered all my friends that night,
but they never found what they were looking for. I barely escaped.
They thought I'd taken the files with me to the surface." 

"The lockbox is still down there, in this Nest?" Scully asked
tentatively, still shaken by his bizarre account of Pellucid and Caleb
Altman and by the gun he'd been toying with. Cohen nodded.
"Why haven't you tried retrieving it since then?" she added. 

"Those files are just...too dangerous...and frankly I was too scared.
I saw all my friends get butchered down there. I can't...I can't ever
go back. If you want to stop colonization you'll need those DOD
files on Triskelion. But I can't go back down there with you. I can
give you a map...I can guide you to the lockbox, but that's it. It got
my friends killed." 

"You want us to go traipsing through abandoned subway tunnels
for DOD files that you hid down there over *fourteen* years
ago?" asked Mulder, with an angry scowl. "Just tell me what the
hell is in those files and save us the trouble." 

But Mulder already knew that a second-hand account of the files
wouldn't suffice. He already sensed that he would need to
physically possess the originals if he wanted even the slightest
chance of stopping colonization. 

The bearded doctor grimaced and shook his head. "The truth is...I
only read a fraction of what we stole from the Defense Department.
And most of that was utterly terrifying, what I did read. I didn't...I
didn't want to know any more, so I just sealed the files, and kept
them as insurance if I ever needed it. In the end I just wanted to
forget about Bedtime and Pellucid, all of it. All I could figure out
from what I did read is that our government believes Triskelion is
the ultimate source of power...some kind of tangible spiritual
power. Look...I've already said too much. They're *listening.*"
He raised a finger and pointed at the ceiling, at the lights that had
been flickering just minutes ago. 

"The colonists are going to reveal themselves to the entire planet -
in less than twenty-four hours. The invasion is going to begin, and
most of the human race will be dead within the first six months. If
you want even the faintest chance of stopping them, then you'll
need those files. If you have the courage to read them all, then
you're a braver man than me, Mr. Mulder." 

Cohen forced a self-deprecating smile onto his face, but Mulder
saw more tears roll down his cheeks and into his beard. Suddenly
Mulder got the sense that Cohen didn't want them to realize just
how wounded and emotionally scarred he really was. But it wasn't
something the sallow-faced junkie doctor could easily conceal
anymore. 

Mulder stared at him for a few moments and said, "Benjamin
Jacobs told us something before he shot himself. He said you
couldn't protect the children from him, or from DOD. And that
you'll fail to protect the Vessel as well. What is this *'Vessel'?"* 

A flash of panic played across Cohen's face and he averted his
eyes. "The Vessel is the last goddamn bit of hope that we have to
keep Triskelion away from the bad guys..." For a while he didn't
speak, his eyes full of guilt, and then he said sharply, "Wait here."
He got up from the table and hurried away into what Mulder
assumed was the bedroom. 

Mulder gazed at the gun in his hand and then looked over at Scully.
"This guy knows things he's not telling us, Scully. Whatever the hell
he went through, it seriously messed him up." 

Scully shrugged tiredly. "I...I know he's holding something
back...and that frightens me. But I have this horrible feeling that the
stuff he *is* telling us is true." 

"Yeah," Mulder conceded. "Me too. I don't think threatening him
is going to make much of a difference. We might have to go looking
for this lockbox." 

Scully nodded. "If he's telling the truth about these Triskelion files
then we need to find them. If this...this man  Abaddon' doesn't find
us first." 

Her voice was shaking at the mention of Abaddon. Beneath the
table Mulder took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. 

"We're not giving up, are we?" he asked sternly. 

"No, we're not," she replied, forcing steel into her tone. "Whatever
it takes. To the ends of the Earth, right?" 

"Right," he replied and gave her hand another squeeze. 

Dr. Ryan Cohen returned clutching a collection of items to his
chest, and dumped them on the table. An expensive-looking LED
flashlight, a cell phone and a hand-drawn map in a clear plastic
sleeve. Scully ignored the items and instead gestured for the gun in
Mulder's hand. He gave it to her. Mulder was already carrying
Doggett's sidearm in a shoulder-holster beneath his suit jacket.
They were both armed now. She immediately assessed the gun's
sights and weight and briefly unloaded the magazine to check it was
full. 

"Sig Sauer P250," she muttered. Mulder nodded. It was a weapon
they were both familiar with. 

"You got a permit for that handgun?" Mulder asked with a dark
smile. 

Cohen shrugged. "Not exactly. Don't worry, I'm not leaving myself
unarmed by letting you have that. Sorry about that whole thing, by
the way. I had to be sure." Mulder raised his eyebrows cynically.
Cohen glanced away and tapped the cell phone on the tabletop.
"After you retrieve the lockbox and get back to the surface if you
want to call me it needs to be from only this phone. My cell number
is the only number on the SIM card. From there we can organize a
new place to meet, if you want." 

"We're not sure we entirely trust you, Ryan," Scully told him
gravely. 

Cohen just shrugged. "The world is ending. But I'm offering you
one of my guns. I'm offering to help you even though it'll probably
get me killed. If you don't trust me then shoot me...because I want
this to be over." 

Scully didn't reply. 

Cohen fixed Mulder with another intense stare. "There's just one
thing I must ask of you, Agent Mulder." 

"Yeah? What's that?" 

"I'm not sure if ghosts are real or just symbolic concepts,
but...when you're down there...tell my friends that Ryan says he's
sorry. Tell them I'm truly sorry that I got them killed." Mulder saw
tears in the junkie doctor's eyes again. "Will...will you do that for
me, Agent Mulder?" 

Mulder had to look away from the pain in Cohen's eyes. He
swallowed and nodded. 
                     

* 
                     
Bergen Street Station
Brooklyn 
3:34 a.m. 

The station was less than ten minutes walk from Cohen's
apartment, on the border of Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill. The walk
was brief and they encountered almost no-one on the streets at
such a late hour. Tension, fear and a strange sense of expectation
were all swirling within Scully. They were about to take drastic
action, in a day filled with drastic actions. An entire career filled
with them, she thought ruefully. 

Unlike the mass-transit systems of many major cities, the New
York Subway was open twenty-four hours a day. But as she and
Mulder hurried down the steps into the underground station they
found the space to be practically deserted. The token booth at their
end was apparently unmanned, its little windows dark. There were
no security guards; only nearby full-length turnstiles to make fare
evasion virtually impossible. Above them harsh fluorescent lights
cast an unearthly glare on the white and green tiled walls. 

Scully glanced uncertainly at Mulder. "Shouldn't the booth be
manned at all times?" 

He shrugged. "Hurricane Sandy knocked this city for six, Scully.
That was just eight weeks ago. Who knows what the hell is going
on." He glanced around and added, "We're going to have to buy
some Metrocards." 

He hurried over to a Metrocard Vending Machine, Scully at his
side, and began tapping away at the touchscreen. A few moments
later he fished his wallet from his suit jacket, pulled out a debit card
and inserted it into the machine. 

While Mulder finished the transaction Scully glanced around
nervously. She noticed a young black guy in a Nike hoodie emerge
from the stairwell and stroll across the harshly-lit space towards the
turnstiles. He was busy with the phone in his hands but glanced up
and caught Scully eyeing him. He grinned, winked and blew her a
kiss - but it was a gesture more humorous than sleazy, and Scully
glanced away with a half-smile as he swiped his card and
disappeared through the turnstiles. 

Mulder pulled their newly credited Metrocards from the machine,
retrieved his debit card and muttered, "Ok, we're good to go." 

Once they passed through the turnstiles and made their way onto
the platform they realized the station wasn't entirely deserted. There
were three other people waiting for trains, including the young black
guy Scully had just seen. The other two were a young couple on the
opposite platform, standing close together with their hands around
each other's waists as they smiled and kissed and whispered things
to one another. 

Scully tried to take in the surroundings. The platform walls were
decorated in white tile with a dark green trim running along the top
and bottom, and large name tablets that read BERGEN ST. Dark
green I-beam columns ran the length of both platforms. The station
was relatively clean and well-lit, but the general lack of commuters
still gave Scully an eerie feeling. 

The young black guy in the Nike hoodie was leaning casually
against one of the I-beams, apparently playing a game on his
phone. He glanced up, noticed that Scully was with someone and
quickly returned his attention to his phone The sound of an
approaching train reached the platform, swelling quickly in volume
as twin points of light finally appeared in the mouth of the tunnel. 

Scully glanced over at Mulder and found him studying the hand-
drawn map that Ryan Cohen had given them. A few seconds later
the train pulled into the subway station on the opposite platform.
The couple got on but nobody got off. The doors hissed closed. As
the train began pulling out of the station and back into the blackness
of the tunnel Mulder started walking a little further along the length
of the platform. Scully followed a few steps behind him until they
came to a set of stainless steel doors in the tiled wall. Scully could
see electric light spilling from beneath them. 

"This is it," said Mulder. "This is the old access to the abandoned
lower levels." He glanced over his shoulder at Scully and then up at
the platform ceiling. "Tell me which way the cameras are pointing." 

Scully studied their surroundings. "There's several cameras. One of
them is pointing right in this direction." 

"Well," he muttered, "We better be quick then, huh?" He
unholstered the sidearm that Doggett had given him and quickly
slammed the butt of the handgun against the protruding lock on one
of the doors. The metallic clang resounded through the underground
space, causing the young black guy further down the platform to
glance up from his phone. He was peering curiously at them, a look
of vague amusement on his face. He shook his head and returned to
his phone like he couldn't care less. 

Mulder struck the lock a second time and the stainless steel door
suddenly popped open slightly. The young black guy didn't even
look up this time. Mulder pulled open the door, gesturing for Scully
to move. She slipped through, immediately followed by Mulder.
The door still managed to close behind him but the actual lock was
ruined. 

They found themselves in a dimly-lit stairwell; graffiti covering the
damp and peeling walls. Low-wattage security lights were spaced
through the stairwell, down into what appeared to be pitch
darkness. But around them the graffiti tags adorned the walls, some
of them quite detailed and artistic. 

"Who did these, Mulder?" asked Scully, "If these levels have been
closed since the seventies?" 

"Urban explorers," was Mulder's reply. "People who explore
derelict and abandoned places for a hobby. It's all illegal,
obviously, but there's an entire subculture online dedicated to it.
Come on." 

They began descending the damp, graffiti-covered winding
stairwell, moving further and further down towards where the light
of the security lamps didn't seem to reach. 

As they made their way down Scully muttered, "I shudder to think
how many of these urban explorers disappeared without a trace." 

"What do you mean?" asked Mulder. 

"Well, you and I have explored more abandoned and derelict
places than I care to remember...and a lot of the time we found
*things* living in those places. Things that were pretty unfriendly." 

Mulder looked at her with a faint smile on his lips but said nothing. 

"If we find a clan of flukemen living down here, Mulder, you're on
your own." 

He smiled a little wider at her grim attempt at levity, but Scully
knew that Mulder understood her humour was a little forced. She
was trying to make them both smile, to give them strength. The last
eighteen hours had been exhausting, and they were both well aware
that the chase was far from over. 

When they finally stepped out of the stairwell and into the
abandoned depths of the station they found it was not a complete
darkness. A handful of security lamps were aglow along the length
of the stripped-down platform, casting the barest illumination. But
these were different to the ones in the stairwell. These lights had a
bluish hue. There was only enough faint blue light to make out the
most basic details. Everything was still shrouded in darkness. 

"Ok," muttered Scully, "this is officially creepy as hell." 

Mulder pulled the LED flashlight that Cohen had given them from
the rucksack, switched it on and pointed the powerful beam of light
at the ceiling. He moved his face towards the beam and squinted,
making his features appear ghastly. 

"Just like old times, Agent Scully," he muttered with a smile. 

She returned the smile even though she wasn't comforted. She
appreciated the effort though. "So," she said softly, "we've got to
find this hidden Nest that Cohen mentioned...and pray that urban
explorers or the Metropolitan Transit Authority hasn't found it first,
right?" 

"Yeah." Mulder pointed the flashlight at the hand-drawn map in his
hand. "This way." 

They moved along the darkened platform. As Mulder swept the
flashlight beam ahead of them Scully noticed that all the tiles and
signage along the platform had been stripped away, leaving behind
damp cement-colored walls adorned with more graffiti. Among the
usual street-handles and urban slang Scully noticed a spray-painted
inverted pentagram on one of the I-beams. Although she knew it
was most likely done by some inane death-metal fan with little
regard for its occult significance the image still set a feeling of dread
in her stomach. She didn't bother to point out the satanic symbol to
Mulder. 

"We've got to get down onto the tracks and head into the tunnels,"
Mulder told her quietly. Scully had no idea why they felt the urge to
keep their voices lowered since there was nobody to hear them,
and yet it seemed like the right thing to do. 

They went to the platform's edge and Mulder shone the flashlight
onto the tracks. An inch of water had collected in the center
indentation between the rails. 

"This whole place is damp, Mulder," Scully said nervously. "You
don't think the rails are still electrified do you? Because that doesn't
look safe at all." 

"I don't know. It might be partial flooding from Hurricane Sandy.
But even if these tunnels have been abandoned for over thirty
years...Cohen's map says they still eventually connect to Carrol
Street Station. I'm thinking the rails are probably still live." 

"Then I'm not going down there." 

"I don't think we have a choice, Scully." 

She knew Mulder was right, but the dread was still slowly gathering
in her stomach. "I've...I've got a really bad feeling about this,
Mulder. I'm not even kidding this time." 

Mulder looked at her in the darkness and she could just about
make out his profile in the ambient illumination from the flashlight. 

"I feel it too, Scully, but this is our only lead. We're running out of
time. If there are US Defense Department files on Triskelion
stashed down here, then we need to find them." 

Scully tried to swallow her dread, as she had done countless times
in the past. 

"I know, Mulder," she muttered, "I know. Ok, ok, let's just go." 

Mulder climbed down first, and wasn't immediately electrocuted.
He helped her down beside him onto the tracks. For now they
were unharmed. Mulder was still wearing his suit and leather shoes.
She was still clad in the blazer, skirt and heels she had been
wearing all day. And now she was about to go traipsing through
dark underground tunnels in the most inappropriate footwear
possible. But it was either that or walk barefoot, which with the
potential combination of water and electricity at her feet was out of
the question. 

"You ok?" muttered Mulder, sensing her discomfort. 

"Just wish I was wearing sneakers," she told him. 

"If you can't walk I'll carry you myself, Scully." 

"My hero," she said softly, although she knew that Mulder would
actually do just that if he had to. He had once travelled to the Arctic
Circle - to literally the edge of the world - in order to rescue her. "I
love you, Fox," she told him suddenly, determination in her tone. 

"Where did that come from?" 

"Because you actually *would* just pick me up and carry me
through the darkness, wouldn't you? Even at the end of the world." 

"Of course," he muttered boyishly, as though he was almost
embarrassed by the question. 

"That's why I love you. Let's find this lockbox." 

They trudged into the mouth of the wide tunnel, with Mulder
holding the flashlight like a spear of illumination ahead of them. They
heard the sounds of a train passing in the tunnels above them, but
kept moving. Occasionally Mulder shone the flashlight at the
plastic-sleeved map he was clutching in his other hand. 

"Should be about a hundred feet up ahead." 

They kept moving through the blackness of the tunnel that was
punctuated only occasionally by dim electric lights on the wall. They
stopped when they heard the sound of another train passing in the
tunnels overhead. 

This one sounded conspicuously louder. 

"Is that...?" Scully began, but the growing rumble of the train
immediately answered her question. A train was coming through
*this* tunnel, despite the lower platforms being abandoned. 

"Christ," said Mulder, alarm in his tone, "it must be one of the
express trains. *Move it!*" 

They broke into a run as terror and adrenaline immediately surged
through Scully's system. They had no idea which direction the train
was coming from. They didn't know whether to keep racing ahead
or turn back, or leap onto the right-hand set of tracks instead -and
they wouldn't know until it was too late. The rumble of the train
swelled into a roar. 

*"Run, Scully!"* 

Like a moment from a nightmare Scully suddenly lost her footing as
the heel of her left shoe twisted on the uneven ground between the
rails and she almost fell. She cried out. Mulder caught her arm,
arresting her fall. The roar of the train was almost deafening, almost
upon them. Light spilled all around, illuminating the tunnel walls.
Scully only had time to glance over her shoulder at lights like eyes
right behind them - before Mulder grabbed her waist and dragged
her into a brick alcove, thrusting an arm across her chest as he
shoved her flat against the wall. 

A split-second later the train blasted past them with a sound like
shrieking thunder. 

The slipstream forced their eyes closed as over a hundred feet of
screaming metal swept by, mere inches from their faces. 

The moment seemed to last forever, but then it was gone as fast as
it had come. Scully's heart was slamming in her heaving chest. Her
ears were ringing as she stood pressed into the tunnel alcove, held
in place by Mulder's forearm. She opened her eyes, peered down
at his arm, his clenched fist, and then over at his face. 

*"Jesus Christ,"* she panted in disbelief, but she could barely hear
her own words above the ringing in her ears. 

He was peering at her in equal shock, pressed beside her against
the wall in the alcove. Suddenly Mulder was in front of her, his
hands in her hair as he cupped the back of her head and pressed a
palm to the side of her face. 

"Are...are you ok?" 

The ringing in her ears was already subsiding. She nodded and
swallowed, shaken but relieved that they were both still in one
piece. He kneeled and retrieved the still-lit flashlight he had
dropped at their feet in the alcove. 

"Behind you," he said breathlessly. 

She turned in the alcove and realized her back had been pressed
against a rusted metal door. Because of the curved alcove the door
was at a slight angle, but it had no lock. Mulder grabbed the
handle. Scully did a moment later and the two of them grit their
teeth as they strained to pull the door open. It moved slightly, but
years of rust and inactivity and made it seize in its frame. They kept
pulling and tugging until it finally came open with a metallic squeal. It
was pitch black inside. Mulder shone the flashlight. It was a single
passage that stopped after ten feet. There were skeins of rotted
cables and junction boxes all along both sides of the passage. 

Mulder hustled Scully inside and then dragged the rusted door
closed behind them. 

They stood in the narrow passage as Mulder shone the flashlight at
the far wall, where Scully had hoped another door would be.
Mulder turned the flashlight on the map again. 

"Ok...ok, it says here that the Nest is beyond that wall; old storage
rooms that were built when the station was first being designed. It
says those rooms aren't even on most of the old blueprints...that
they found them by accident, by knocking through that wall. Says
here that some of Cohen's homeless friends were former engineers,
and they built a hidden door for easier access so they could hide
the Nest from the MTA." 

"I don't...see anything...that could be a secret door, Mulder," said
Scully, her voice shaking. She was still trembling with adrenaline
from their encounter with the train just moments ago, but Mulder
was already forging ahead. She took a long breath in an attempt to
balance her equilibrium. 

"It says here the last junction box." Mulder went to the box in
question and pried open its cover. Scully followed. Inside were a
mess of rotted fuses, switches and cables - and tucked behind them
a lever. In the flashlight beam Scully could see that while the lever
was somewhat rusted it appeared far newer than everything else in
the derelict junction box. Mulder grabbed the lever and with
enough force he managed to pull it all the way down. 

A series of heavy clicks and thuds seemed to come from behind the
wall to their left, and Scully realized that the entire narrow wall at
the end of the passage was a cleverly disguised door, made to
almost perfectly match the surrounding brickwork. It was now
standing ajar, blackness beyond the threshold. 

"Come on," said Mulder, "we can do this. We *need* those files." 

Scully caught the distinct note of resolve in his voice. She knew that
tone all too well. It was a tone that belied something dangerous and
unstoppable within him - a seeker that would never ever quit until
he held the truth in his hands. Scully realized she was both afraid
and grateful for the immediate presence of that part of Mulder. It
meant they might actually find what they were searching for,
regardless of the cost they might be forced to pay. 

Scully took another deep breath as she followed Mulder through
the disguised door and into the blackness beyond. 

It felt as though they had entered a tomb, which considering the
massacre that Cohen claimed had occurred down here wasn't
entirely inappropriate. 

Scully said quietly, "Are you getting a kind of bad juju feeling in
here, Mulder?" 

"Little bit," he admitted. 

"Mulder...you realize what we're doing is insane, right? Traipsing
around in the darkness, underground, on the vaguest of leads. I
mean, we were given Dr. Cohen's name by Father Jacobs...a
goddamn child molester. This whole day has been psychotic." 

Scully knew that her partner could sense she was just trying to talk
herself down from the unsettling fear that had gripped her. 

"We've broken cases on far, far less," Mulder told her, trying to
inject a soothing quality into his voice. "Me and you, we're the
King and Queen of tenuous connections...and improbable
successes." He glanced at her in the flashlight glare and added,
"You think?" 

Scully tried to smile. "I guess." 

What Ryan Cohen had referred to as the Nest appeared to be a
warren of passages and adjacent rooms with arched doorways, all
of them with doors still in place. The entire forgotten cavity seemed
to be built from a kind of brutalist concrete architecture unlike the
brick subway tunnels back the way they had come. Scully was
reminded that the space was intended to be purely functional ;
temporary storage for tools and construction equipment, sealed and
forgotten as soon as the station was completed. She noticed deep
groove marks in the floor, presumably from where heavy equipment
had been repeatedly dragged back and forth. 

As Mulder swept the flashlight around Scully half expected the light
to fall upon bones or the desiccated remains of a human corpse;
whatever was left of Cohen's homeless friends who he claimed had
perished down here. Scully realized she was holding her breath in
anticipation of something ghastly. She exhaled gently, but what
Mulder's flashlight found a moment later was unsettling in an
entirely unexpected way. 

On one of the dark cement walls a series of words had been
daubed in black paint. The phrase was faded but still entirely
legible: 

*AND NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP 
I PRAY THE LORD MY SOUL TO KEEP 
IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE 
I PRAY THE LORD MY SOUL TO TAKE*

Scully glanced apprehensively at Mulder in the spill of the flashlight
and saw that he looked just unnerved as she was feeling. The
phrase on the wall was a famous children's bedtime prayer dating
back to the 1700s. Most people were familiar with it from one
source or another. But its presence here was chilling. They knew
from Special Agent Owen Cameron's archived files that he had
uncovered a CIA kidnapping-operation of Guatemalan and
American children, referred to as  Bedtime' - recruitment for
Pellucid, the most highly classified MK-Ultra project in existence,
according to Ryan Cohen. 

"Whatever they were trying to keep at bay," Scully said quietly,
touching the little gold cross at her throat, "I guess they failed." 

"The Bounty Hunters," Mulder replied grimly. "Cohen said that
shapeshifters infiltrated their group and burned everyone alive down
here. We need to keep looking. We need to try some of these
rooms." 

They turned their attention to the adjacent rooms, which were more
numerous than they expected. None of the doors were fitted with
locks, and they immediately found evidence that the Nest had once
been inhabited. Scully was taken aback at the sophistication and
orderliness of what they found. There was actual furniture in most
of these rooms; beds and cabinets and dressers and shelves, all
apparently manufactured from scrap and discarded pieces of
wood. Incredibly detailed hand-crafted quilts were lying on the
empty beds, and equality intricate rugs lay on the concrete floors -
items that had been stitched with obvious passion and care. The
people who had lived down here had built themselves household
essentials that were functional but also surprisingly elegant. There
were framed paintings and poems that hung on the walls too. Scully
was forced to fully recognize that real people with real lives and real
passions had been living down here in the dark. The remains of
candles sat in plates beside beds and on dressers, and other
candleholders had been affixed to the walls of the various rooms.
This had once been a thriving underground community, living in
candlelight like some Victorian colony existing outside of time. 

Scully felt the pang of genuine sadness. She could now feel a touch
of the horror that must have swept through this little community
when they realized monsters had found a way into their midst. The
horror and pain they must have felt when those monsters decided to
burn them all to death. 

"Damn, Mulder," Scully muttered sadly. "I wasn't expecting this..." 

Mulder swallowed and nodded. "This was a real home. You can
feel the warmth and the camaraderie that was down here." 

"Yeah," was all Scully could say. 

"Let's keep looking," urged Mulder. 

They navigated the warren of tight-knit passages, finding rooms
filled with more of the same. Several of the passages connected into
a wide central hallway, and when Mulder shone his flashlight at the
floor they saw it had been scorched completely black. Scully
glanced at Mulder and knew exactly what he was thinking. This
was where the Bounty Hunters had rounded up Cohen's homeless
friends. This was where they had burned them. Cohen had been
telling the truth. Based on the number of rooms in the Nest, and the
number of beds in each room, there could have been up to thirty
people living down here. Thirty lost souls. 

Scully wanted to say something, but she was overcome at the
thought of the massacre that had occurred down here. Instead,
Mulder tried another door and wordlessly ushered her inside. What
they found within this particular room was enough to make them
both inhale sharply. Mulder's flashlight picked out writing scrawled
all over the walls. But not just writing, there seemed to be images
too. Without saying it aloud they both realized this had been
Cohen's room. Mulder entered the space, his flashlight searching
the walls, but Scully remained motionless in the doorway. 

The vibe in here was palpably stronger than anywhere else in the
Nest. She wasn't sure what that meant, but she didn't like it. 

In the darkness Mulder made his way to the bed. He dropped the
flashlight on the handcrafted quilt and picked up a box of matches
sitting on the bedside cabinet, next to a plate containing the stub of
a red candle. The box of matches was at least fourteen years old,
but he took one out and struck it anyway. It sparked briefly before
fizzling out. But the second match sparked and caught aflame.
Mulder lit the candle stub beside the bed. A faint flickering
illumination grew in the room. He noticed two candleholders on the
wall, containing similar stubs. He went over and lit those too. Dim
candlelight finally banished the darkness and brought the room's
features into focus. 

*"Mulder..."* Scully said warily. 

He turned at the sound of her voice and saw what had drawn her
attention. All of the walls were covered with scribbled text, much of
it chaotic and illegible. But there was also an image that was
instantly recognizable. 

The spindly body, oversized head and almond-shaped eyes of an
alien Grey peered out at them from the wall. The image of the Grey
was crude but evocative. Scully then realized that the writing which
covered every available inch of wall space was actually just one
word repeated over and over again. 

*CATHEDRAL.* 

"Whoa," Mulder said quietly, "This is hardcore crazy-town." 

But it wasn't the image of the alien Grey or the word  cathedral'
repeated over and over that was most unsettling. It was the fact that
on the right-hand wall opposite the bed there was an image that
stood over eight feet tall, dominating everything else in the room. 

A tall and thin figure in some kind of hooded black cloak. 

The drawing was composed of scratchy black lines and scribbles,
but the overall effect was deeply atmospheric. Scully could even
make out the vaguest suggestion of facial features in the shadows
beneath the hood, except that those features seemed inhuman and
disturbing somehow. 

*"Jesus,"* said Mulder in obvious shock, "that's...that's what you
told me you saw standing over Rachel Marx's dead body..." 

The evocative image of the cloaked, hooded figure seemed to
exude a presence that was both demonic and strangely alien. Scully
couldn't bear the thought of staring at it for too long, and yet she
couldn't pull her eyes away. 

"That's what you saw, isn't it?" asked Mulder, fear in his voice. 

"Yeah," Scully managed weakly. 

"Dana," muttered Mulder, unable to take his eyes of the image
either, "I can see why you were so freaked out." He added
tentatively, "Do you...do you think this is one of the things that
Cohen said was listening to us back at his apartment? When the
lights started flickering?" 

"I think so, Mulder," Scully told him gravely. She recalled how
malevolent and ancient the shadow-entity had felt when she saw it
standing over Rachel Marx's dead body back in D.C. Even this
image of the thing seemed to exude the same touch of evil. Just
looking at it made Scully feel nervous and superstitious, like a
frightened Catholic schoolgirl. Like how she used to feel as child
when she first realized the world was a dark and foreboding place -
before Science and God had found an equilibrium to banish the
shadows from her imagination. 

"The lockbox," said Mulder, trying to refocus on the task at hand,
"it must be in here somewhere." 

He set about searching for it; hunting through the bedside cabinet,
under the bed and in the chest of drawers, while Scully stood
transfixed by the image of the tall hooded figure that dominated the
room. 

"It's not here," Mulder finally hissed through clenched teeth.
Suddenly he slammed a fist into the wall and cried, "GOD DAMN
IT!" He cried out again in frustration and kicked over the bedside
cabinet. 

Scully was startled by his sudden outburst but immediately went to
him, and tried to hug him. Mulder was resistant at first before
relenting and softening into the embrace. 

"We're going to find it, Mulder," she told him, trying to soothe him.
"We just have to keep looking. Ok?" 

"We're running out of time, Scully," he murmured. "And I don't
know what the hell I'm doing. Colonization is just hours away and I
still have no goddamn idea how to stop it..." 

Scully held him. "I believe in you, Fox. I believe in *us.*" 

"That might not be enough." 

"It *has* to be." 

"Ok, ok," said Mulder, trying to inject some optimism into his
voice. "Let's...let's keep looking. I guess we'll need to try the other
rooms. I really thought it'd be in here..." 

Scully pulled away and found herself peering again at the image of
the tall hooded entity on the wall. She frowned, wondering. She left
Mulder's side and tentatively approached the image, and found
herself reaching out to touch it. As her hand touched the wall her
stomach tightened suddenly and she recoiled. 

"You ok?" Mulder asked immediately. 

"Yeah," she told him, "but..." 

She dug her fingernails into the black paint that formed the chest of
the hooded entity, and found the wall yielding to her touch. At least
part of the wall wasn't solid, she realized. 

"I think I've got something here, Mulder," she said with surprise
and sudden anticipation. 

She began clawing handfuls of what appeared to be soft black clay
from the center of the image, from the place where the figure's
heart would have been. Mulder hurried over and began to help.
They quickly excavated the cavity in the wall that had been
disguised to appear solid like its surroundings. Scully's fingers
brushed something cold and metallic within the cavity. She shot
Mulder a hopeful smile. A moment later Mulder felt it too. Together
they both slid the rectangular lockbox out of its hiding place inside
the wall. 

It was made of steel and was roughly the size of a garage toolbox,
but weighed a little less than Scully had been expecting. It had a
hinged carry-handle on its top. There were metallic Department of
Defense seals in full color on both of its sides. Scully glanced briefly
at the familiar depiction of the United States eagle-shield clutching
three arrows in its talons, wreathed by laurels and stars. It was a
symbol very familiar to all Americans, but especially to US federal
employees. Mulder took the box by the carry-handle and briefly
weighed it in his grip. It wouldn't be much trouble to carry back to
the surface. Scully saw that Mulder's eyes were lit with relief and
gratitude. He smiled at her. 

She returned the smile and said, "Shall we break it open right now,
or....?" 

"We've got what we came for," Mulder said. "Let's just get
topside again. Then we can sort through whatever we..." 

Mulder's words trailed off, as though he had heard something. 

Scully felt her awareness sharpen immediately. "What?" she
murmured. 

"I thought I heard...some kind of..." 

"What?" Scully urged again. 

"Some kind of low *growling* sound," Mulder said quietly. 

And then Scully heard it too. It was faint but there. A low, bassy
growl. Scully was immediately afraid. 

Both of their gazes fell upon the image of the tall hooded entity on
the wall, now with a large hole in its heart. In the candlelight it
almost appeared as if tiny flecks of paint were pulling themselves
away from the wall and drifting lazily in the air like dust. The
growling came again, much louder this time. Scully gasped and took
a few steps backwards, her stomach clutching in utter dread. She
glanced incredulously at Mulder, and saw a look of fearful
incomprehension in his eyes. 

Flecks of paint were indeed pulling themselves away from the
image, in odd spirals that seemed to begin taking shape in mid-air
right in front of them. 

"*What the-*" Scully began, her words choked off by sheer
disbelief at what they were witnessing. 

"*Oh my God,*" murmured Mulder. "Scully...we need to get the
hell out of here. *Right now.*" 

Although Scully could barely comprehend it, the image of the
hooded shadow-entity seemed to be actually pulling itself away
from the wall and *reassembling* itself in the room with them. The
low bass-like growling was growing in volume. They could feel it in
the floor through their feet, as though the entire room trembled with
it. The flames of the candles that Mulder had lit began to dance and
waver dangerously. Then, as one, all three of the candles went out,
plunging the room into darkness again. 

*"Run, Scully."* 

Mulder's command seemed to break them free from their horrified
paralysis. He grabbed her by the arm and they both bolted towards
the door, abandoning the lit flashlight on the bed. For a terrifying
moment Scully expected the door to be sealed shut by some act of
dark magic, but it opened easily and they ran through. Behind them
the deep, bassy growling was quickly growing in pitch, resolving
itself into a monstrous shrieking sound. 

That inhuman sound put the fear of God in Scully as they raced
through the tight warren of passages, towards the door that would
lead them back into the subway tunnel. Mulder was running at her
side, the lockbox clenched in his grip. The hideous shriek was
swelling behind them like something unholy, and neither of them
dared to turn around for fear of what they might see coming up
behind them. 

"DON'T STOP!" barked Mulder, but Scully had no intention of
stopping. 

A moment later the awful shrieking ended abruptly, as though
contained somehow, but still neither of them dared look back. They
hustled through the hidden door, out of the Nest and into the
narrow passage lined with junction boxes and skeins of dead cables
- and then through the outer door and back into the subway tunnel.
Mulder slammed shut the rusted metal door in the brick alcove.
Both of them were heaving for breath but gave each other only a
brief glance before turning left and hurrying back towards the
abandoned lower levels of Bergen Street Station. 

Scully could barely process what had just occurred back there, and
yet she knew what both of them had seen. It was as though the
image of the hooded shadow-entity on the wall had begun to come
to life. Her stomach was still tight with dread, disbelief and
confusion. 

Suddenly Mulder grabbed her arm, halting her immediately. They
both stood there in the space between the two tracks in the center
of the wide tunnel, and Scully knew her partner had seen
something. She squinted and tried to focus on what was up ahead -
half expecting to see a real-life manifestation of the frightening
hooded figure. But instead Scully recognised the silhouette of a
man. He was standing perhaps sixty feet up ahead, where the
mouth of the tunnel opened onto the abandoned platforms. He was
standing side-on, but then turned to face them. He began walking
casually towards them, with no sense of urgency at all. 

"Transit cop?" Scully muttered, unconvinced of her own words. 

"I doubt it," Mulder said quickly. 

They could both feel that something was very wrong here. As the
slowly approaching silhouette passed a low-wattage security light
on the tunnel wall they saw his eyes suddenly flash green and
reflective, like the eyes of a cat. 

A new fear skittered across Scully's shoulders. She realized
whatever was casually approaching them was not entirely human.
She sensed that Mulder recognized the truth at almost the same
moment. 

The approaching figure called out to them in a voice that was deep
and resonant and frighteningly calm. "Hello again, Fox and Dana.
You don't remember me, do you? I held your whispering hearts in
my hands before either you were even born...and I put a promise
inside each of them." 

"*Oh God...*" Scully murmured involuntarily. 

The figure in the tunnel up ahead was the man their DOD insider
had warned them about. An ex special-forces DARPA operative
named Lucien Farrow - a man who had apparently died from a
lightning-strike and yet achieved some form of resurrection. It was
the man that Father Jacobs claimed had taken to calling himself
Abaddon. 

Scully tried to hold back a wave of cold black terror. 

The Angel of the Abyss had found them. 

"And so we meet here now," the figure continued, "at the nexus of
a billion worlds. And you presume you can finally *bind* the
truth?" He chuckled. "Such vanity." 

Something in his words made Scully sick with dread. She
immediately backed up a few steps, clutching at Mulder's arm.
"What...what do we *do?*" 

*"Run,"* was Mulder's immediate reply. 

Scully was suddenly, horrifyingly aware that she was wearing heels,
but she spun round and began pounding along the track as fast as
possible into the depths of the tunnel. Mulder did the same, cradling
the lockbox against his chest. 

"Where are you going, little weeping gods?" Farrow called out to
them. 

Scully knew the thing behind them was incredibly dangerous. If they
allowed it to get anywhere near them it would all be over. She
could feel it in her bones like a sixth sense. She was frightened now
in a primal, elemental way. She knew in her gut that the entity in the
tunnel with them was more than something disturbingly inhuman. It
was something almost biblical. That knowledge sent a cold black
fear through her entire system, bypassing all reason and logic. Her
heart was already slamming against her ribs as she ran, and she
risked a glance back. 

The silhouette was now sprinting along the subway track with
almost impossible speed, his eyes repeatedly flashing green in the
almost-darkness. Scully felt her guts twisting with sheer dread at the
image. 

He was gaining on them. 

There was no way she and Mulder were going to outrun him. 

"STARBUCK!" he suddenly roared in fury. "DON'T RUN
FROM ME!" 

"Don't look back, Dana!" Mulder cried. 

Like a nightmare Scully felt the heel of her right shoe suddenly snap
as she ran, and with a sickening lurch she realized she was falling.
Her right arm hit the track inches from the live rail, cushioning her
fall, but pain still surged through her shoulder as she grunted through
gritted teeth. She could sense the faint hum of the electrical current
as it passed through the rail only inches from her. 

Above her Mulder skidded to a stop, turning and catching sight of
how quickly their pursuer was gaining. He made a split-second
calculation and instead of reaching for Scully he unholstered the
sidearm that Doggett had given him and immediately fired three
shots into the central mass of the rapidly advancing DARPA agent.
Each impact made Farrow jerk back with concussive force but
barely slowed him. Mulder couldn't even tell if the bullets had
drawn blood. 

He didn't bother to waste more ammunition, instead hauling Scully
to her feet again as she kicked off her useless heels. And then she
was running again beside Mulder, barefoot now, the soles of her
feet slapping against the damp and grimy subway track. 

She wasn't concerned about the possibility of electrocution from
the live rail. All she cared about was making sure this man calling
himself Abaddon didn't catch up with them. Sweat was already
spreading across her forehead and neck, spilling down the small of
her back. 

"We're not gonna *make* it!" Scully gasped as they ran. She
dared not glance back this time for fear of seeing their pursuer right
behind them. 

"Just don't stop!" Mulder managed beside her, the terror naked in
his voice. 

The darkened tunnel seemed endless. Scully had no idea how far
the next station was. It was perhaps only moments before the thing
behind them finally caught up. She couldn't take the horror of that
thought and glanced back instinctively. The sprinting silhouette with
the flashing catlike eyes was only twenty feet behind them, and
closing. 

The sight squeezed Scully's heart with dread. Her chest was
heaving, her thigh and calf muscles burning from the strain. 

"Oh God," she gasped, realising there was literally nowhere to go.
Gruesome images of being physically torn apart flashed through her
mind as she ran. 

Up ahead illumination and noise began to fill the tunnel. 

Another express train. 

"*Mulder...*" Scully gasped in warning. 

The swelling illumination resolved itself into the lights like eyes at the
front of the train. It was heading right for them. Mulder was about
to snatch Scully's arm to pull her towards the other set of tracks on
the right-hand side of the tunnel when he recognized another
metallic roar. Horrified, he snapped his gaze round and saw the
approaching lights of a second train surging through the tunnel
behind them, backlighting their pursuer. 

They were trapped. 

Both sets of track were about to be filled with screaming metal. 

Mulder snatched Scully's hand, mentally urging her onward and
willing her not to break her stride yet. He tried to judge the width of
the gap between the tracks. He had an idea. A dangerous, insane
idea. And he had literally moments to execute it. 

Scully didn't need to glance back to recognize the fact that two
trains were coming at them from opposite directions. "We're
*dead,*" she gasped mid-stride. 

Mulder glanced to his left and saw what he was looking for. An
alcove, much smaller than the one that had protected them earlier.
Both trains were howling through the tunnel, almost upon them. 

"Get flat in the alcove, Dana!" he cried. 

"I'm not leav-" 

"JUST DO IT!" he screamed above the approaching roar. 

The sheer violence in his voice made Scully suddenly lunge to her
left and throw herself flat against the alcove. 

Mulder was surrounded by the monstrous roar and bathed in light
from both directions. He had one shot. If he messed this up he was
dead. He slowed for just a moment, before spinning round to find
his inhuman pursuer within arm's reach. Mulder's adversary made a
striking motion with his hand flat like a blade, but Mulder was
already lunging - the full force of the steel lockbox crashing into the
side of Farrow's head, causing him to stumble sideways for just a
moment. 

It was enough. 

Mulder stepped side-on into the gap between the tracks and threw
up his arms in a crucifixion pose. A fraction of a second later the
first train shrieked past less than an inch from Mulder's face -
slamming into his disoriented adversary and instantly sucking him
out of sight. A moment after that the second train screamed past in
the opposite direction, less than an inch from Mulder's back. For a
few horrifying seconds he was caught in the slipstream between the
two metal behemoths. The noise was unholy and the wind forced
his eyes closed. Mulder felt the edge of the lockbox in his raised
right hand clip one of the trains, as it was almost wrenched from his
grasp by the sheer force. 

And then both trains had passed, shrieking away into the distance,
apparently unaware that there were people in the tunnel, that they
had hit someone. 

Mulder's ears were ringing badly. He could feel himself trembling in
shock. He forced his eyes open, finally lowering his arms and letting
go of the lockbox's carry-handle. It landed in the gap between the
tracks with a heavy clunk. In the semidarkness he finally took a
huge inhalation of breath and saw Scully wedged into the alcove,
peering at him with incredulous eyes. She opened her mouth to say
something, but she was lost for words. She continued to stare
wide-eyed at him for a few moments before lunging from the
alcove, stumbling towards him and throwing her arms around him.
She was breathing heavily and began kissing his face over and over
again. 

"Mulder, I...I thought...I thought that second train *hit* you..." 

Her voice was slightly distorted and muffled from the ringing in his
ears but he took another deep breath and tried to smile for her.
Mulder could feel himself shaking. His heart was still hammering in
his chest, his hands literally quivering with fear and the rush of
adrenaline. He pressed his face into the curve of Scully's neck. For
a few moments she held him, trying to soothe him. Despite his
shaken state Mulder knew a few soothing moments were all they
could afford. 

"The trains," murmured Scully in his ear, "Why why didn't they
stop? Didn't they see us?" 

Mulder had no answer for her. Instead he pulled away from the
embrace and gestured shakily back down the track. 

Scully followed his gaze. 

In the scant illumination from the low-wattage security lights on the
walls they could see the subway tracks were strewn with a mess of
spilled blood and splintered bone and ragged chunks of ruined
flesh. The express train had completely taken Lucien Farrow apart.
Mulder grimaced at the sight and the new coppery scent of blood in
the tunnel. 

He stumbled along the trail of gore and began shakily scanning the
tracks for something in particular. He saw shredded bits of clothes
amongst the pungent viscera, and had to glance away when he
spotted Farrow's head over by the wall, the left side of his skull
completely crushed and missing his lower jaw. It was a hideous
sight, strands of flesh still attached to the ragged stump of their
pursuer's neck. Mulder swallowed and tried to keep searching
despite the adrenaline still racing through his system. 

"What...what're you looking for?" muttered Scully, and instinctively
retrieved the DOD loxbox that Mulder had dropped. 

"The Key. Clavem Saeculorum. Our insider said...said this man
Farrow possessed it." 

In the darkness it was difficult to see, but Mulder finally came
across a ripped and bloodied section of a suit-jacket with the inner
pocket still attached. He crouched and carefully prodded it with the
tip of his little finger. There was something inside the pocket.
Mulder carefully pulled it free in trembling anticipation. He wasn't
sure what he'd actually been expecting, but this legendary key that
Labyrinth and the Apostles had been warring to find for the last
seventy years - it appeared almost ordinary. 

It was a metallic circular disc about an inch thick and slightly bigger
than his hand. Its center was inscribed with a Triskelion symbol,
identical to the one they had seen on the biohazardous corpse of
Diego Roberto Cielo. 

As Mulder held the disc in his palm its edges seemed to soften
impossibly for a moment, creating indentations to more comfortably
accommodate the grip of his fingers. He inhaled sharply at the
sensation of the shapeshifting metal. A strange energy was radiating
from the disc, through his hand and up through his forearm. It felt
like the disc was thinking, adapting to him. It felt like this thing was
somehow *alive.* 

Scully was behind him, barefoot, peering down at his discovery.
"You found it," she muttered, a note of hope in her voice. 

Farrow had unwittingly brought the thing they were seeking right to
them. 

But Mulder knew there was no time for celebration. They had to
get out of the tunnel and back to the surface. The clock was still
ticking. Colonization was drawing ever nearer and they were
literally still groping blindly in the dark. They had no idea how to
utilise this legendary Key they had found. Mulder carefully rose to
his feet and slipped the strange metallic disc into the inner pocket of
his own scuffed suit jacket. 

"Scully -" he began, before his words were cut off by an odd
sound. The sound of metal violently clinking against metal. For
some reason the sound was deeply unsettling. 

"What is that?" murmured Scully. 

They followed the trail of gore along the subway tracks for another
ten feet or so. There on the ground was what appeared to be an
odd, spiky-looking piece of metal. As Mulder crouched he realized
what it actually looked like. It looked like two fused metallic
vertebrae. Mulder frowned, trying to understand what he was
actually looking at, when suddenly the chunk of metal began to spin
on its axis. 

Mulder flinched and heard Scully gasp just behind him. 

There was another loud metallic clink. The spinning abruptly
stopped and Mulder found himself peering at a third fused
vertebrae. 

"Oh," muttered Mulder as the horrifying truth began to dawn, "Oh
no no no..." 

He was peering at a regenerating spinal column. He felt Scully
clutch his shoulder. 

"Mulder...we need to get out of here. *NOW.*" 

The section of metallic spine began a cycle of spinning and
stopping, getting longer with each revolution. Mulder stared in
horror, unable to tear his gaze away from the impossible sight. 

"Mulder, come on!" cried Scully. 

He came to his senses and they both launched into a terrified run
back the way they had come, towards the abandoned lower levels
of Bergen Street Station. They had to get back to the surface.


(To Be Continued...) 

***************************