In the Light of the Frozen Moon (12/?) by Decoyly Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully aren't mine, they belong to CC and Co. Absolutely no copyright infringement is intended! Rating: PG-13 Classification: MSR Author's Notes: I just want to thank everyone who wrote to let me know that I still had a few readers! It really means a lot, and I promise not to keep you hanging so long from now on! :P XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Kaya wasn't there. They searched and searched, but the little girl had simply disappeared. Again. Struggling to breathe and to hide her deteriorating condition from Mulder, Scully began to wonder if Kaya hadn't been another hallucination. Maybe this whole thing was. For all she knew she'd fallen into the lake and was now suffering from a coma, dreaming the entire thing up. It would sure explain a lot. Then again, when had she ever been so lucky as to wake up from the nightmares they found themselves in? When it came to their lives, the old adage was true: reality was far stranger than fiction. Feeling the freezer-burned tickle that she now associated with another coughing fit, Scully asked Mulder to hang on. "You okay?" he asked, resting a hand on her shoulder as she leaned against the wall to catch her breath. "Yeah, just give me a second." Mulder fought the urge to pace back and forth. There was nothing worse than knowing Scully was in danger and being completely helpless to stop it. This wasn't something he could shoot at or make a deal with--his life for hers. All he could do was stand by and watch his partner slowly deteriorate. There had to be *something* he could do. "This doesn't make sense," he thought out loud. Voice hoarse, Scully asked, "What doesn't?" "We were both in the water, but I'm the one with the open wound." He motioned to his leg. It still throbbed but was no longer bleeding. "Yet I'm not sick. Agent Michaels was in the water but not as long as you and he died within hours." "In his case it seems to have been the heat." "This algae," Mulder said, referring to the luminescence glowing on the other side of their hidden tunnel walls. "Do you think it could be some form of something we've seen before?" Scully started to answer but fell into another coughing fit, and Mulder caught her before she could fall. "Scully..." "I know." It was getting worse. They had to figure something out fast. "Whatever this is," Scully said, forcing herself to continue the current conversation and forget about her impending doom, "if we have seen it before than that's a good sign, right?" She forced a smile to her tone. Bless him, Mulder agreed. "Just like old times." A shiver shook her violently and Scully resisted the urge to lean into her partner. If heat activated this...algae, virus, whatever it was, that would only make it worse. So she forced herself to back away from him even as chills danced up and down her spine. Her hands and feet were so cold they were numb. "We should get moving," she said only seconds before the screams began. ~*~*~ SAC Cook came to with a pounding headache and two flashlights staring her in the face like bouncing headlights on a car that had been split in half. "What happened?" she croaked, trying to sit up and finding out what a bad idea movement was. "You fell into a hole," someone said, straight and to the point. "The line caught you before we could lose you, but it took everyone to pull you back out in that wind." "You took a pretty nasty hit to the head," Agent Winkley said, clicking off one of the headlights to look at her. "But you'll be all right." "A hole?" "A pretty big one." "As in a shed-sized one?" she asked, wincing as she felt the bump on the back of her head. Carefully, she moved to sit up on the couch. Someone had removed her cumbersome coat and other winter gear, and the heat from the fireplace felt good. "Could have been," another agent answered. "The whiteout made it impossible to find out." "Was anyone else hurt?" Her answer was a series of gunshots from upstairs. ~*~*~ Both Mulder and Scully instinctively reached for guns that weren't there. The screams echoed down the dark tunnel like tortured souls, unseen but definitely heard. They bounced off the smooth surfaces, chasing each other out some exit they couldn't see. "Can you walk?" "I think so." "I think it's coming from this way," Mulder said, and together they started back down the long tunnel at a faster pace. He had no idea what they would do when they found the source of the screams, but it was better than sitting here in the dark imagining what might be happening. "Is it just me, or does it feel like we're running in circles?" Scully asked after what felt like hours had passed. She didn't want to tell Mulder, but moving was making her hot, which it turn was making it feel like her ribs were too tight and her skin was sunburned. She glanced down at her hands half expecting them to be glowing. Thankfully they weren't. Yet. "The only question is, what's waiting for us at the center?" The screaming had stopped but a low rumble on the other side of the wall was enough to tell them that whatever was happening wasn't over yet. Wishing she had some water, Scully reached out to touch the coolness of the wall. If Kaya had found one secret way in, there had to be others, right? Lost in this thought, she took a step and ran right into Mulder. "Sorry," she whispered, then turned to see what he was looking at. "You promised!" Scully's breath caught in her throat. Ivy was so close she looked like a pale ghost in the dark, eyes wide, frantic. She clung to Scully, hair a mess, and wearing what looked like a hospital gown. Broken tubes hung off her left arm. She was barefoot. "Ivy," Scully said, looking around for Mulder, "what are you doing here?" "They said if I went with them, she'd be safe, but she's not, is she? She's missing. I've seen her--at least I think--I don't know anymore what--" "It's okay," Scully cut her off, afraid the young woman was going to hyperventilate. Ivy focused her gaze on Scully like she was seeing her for the first time. She looked around suddenly and asked, "Where's your partner?" "I don't know, he was right here. Ivy, who's done this to you?" Ivy ignored the question and in a sudden panic again, she pulled Scully closer and said, "You can't trust him. He knows." "Who knows?" Was she talking about Mulder? The girl was burning up and Scully feared that any second she would be gone the way of Agent Michaels. Only half listening, Scully said, "These are going to get infected," she held up the broken tubes that were now covered in algae, giving off a faint glow. They looked like extra long glow sticks. "Is it okay if I remove them from your arm?" Since Ivy wasn't listening anyway, Scully carefully removed the medical tubes, wondering how long they'd been exposed to the algae. "He KNOWS!" Ivy hissed, grabbing Scully by the shoulders. "He was in on it the whole time. He was there to watch us, monitor how--" she broke off, staring off into space like she was seeing something Scully couldn't. "Ivy, I promise you that Agent Mulder--" "Not him. The other one, the doctor." The doctor? "Agent...Agent something, something with a--about an eye, I can't--" she winced, as if concentrating was giving her a terrible headache. "Sometimes I can't tell anymore what's real and what's--W, yeah it starts with a W." Trying to follow the girl's bouncing thoughts, Scully finally realized what she was trying to say. "Agent Winkley?" "Yes! Yes, that's the one." Ivy looked at Scully with wide solemn eyes. "He knows." ~*~*~ "Agent Stern!" Cook shouted from the doorway of the bedroom she'd taken cover in when the shots continued to fly. "Agent Stern, lower your weapon, that's an order!" "What's he shooting at?" Half a dozen FBI agents were crouched around Agent Stern's room, taking cover behind rustic lodge furniture as one of their own continued to shoot up his own bathroom. "It's official, he's finally gone crazy," someone else muttered, and it would seem so. "Bats!" Stern shouted through the open bathroom door. "Bats?" "Did he say ba--" "They're freakin' *everywhere*, can't you SEE them?" Cook counted three more shots and heard the bathroom mirror explode before the lights followed. "Agent Stern, we're going to approach the bathroom carefully." "Well do already, I'm running out of ammo!" SAC Cook exchanged a look with Agent Winkley, who was hovering near the door next to her. "What's wrong with him?" "Some kind of hallucinations." She wanted to say, 'ya think?' but bit back the sarcasm and said, "Caused by what?" Before Winkley could reply, Stern let out a war cry and burst through the bathroom door, taking them all by surprise as he crashed through the room, a naked madman, knocking down everyone on his way out the door. ~*~*~ "Agent Winkley? Are you sure?" Scully had a hard time believing any of the ramblings poor Ivy was nervously muttering. She'd go from a fast whisper to a sudden shout, all the while eyes darting in every direction like she was tracking some invisible insect. "I..." Ivy drifted off, then squeezed her eyes shut and seemed to focus once more. "You're partner," she said, meeting Scully's gaze again. "You have to get away from him. He's still alive, right?" "Yes." She spared a glanced on either side of Ivy, praying that it was true. "Then that's even worse. If he didn't die in the first few hours like that other FBI Agent, then--" she stopped, sniffing the air. "Do you smell that? It's like lilacs and mint..." "Ivy." Scully shook her a little to get her to focus. The girl stared at her blankly a moment, then seemed to fight her way back up through the haze enough to say, "They go crazy. All of them, only the men. I don't know why, I don't think the doctors do either but you have to be careful. If he doesn't--fresh cut grass...I miss the lake..." Seeing that Ivy was gone once again, Scully helped her sit down, leaning her up against the side of the tunnel as the young woman continued to mumble to herself. Feeling a building sense of dread, Scully looked around. Where was Mulder? xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To be continued...