Bridges
by Elizabeth Rowandale

Feedback:  Email: bstrbabs@gmail.com
Rating:  Mature
Relationship:  Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Additional Tags:  Angst, Romance, An X-File Case, Mytharc

Summary: A family in a small town in New Mexico appears to 
be suffering the ill effects of an encounter with Black 
Eyed Children. While in the desert to search out the truth, 
Mulder and Scully find themselves confronting more than 
they bargained for, both in the investigation and in their 
personal relationship. Early Season 11, turns AU after 
"This." Past and eventual present MSR.

Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully and the search for the truth 
all belong to Chris Carter and Co. I'm just borrowing them. 
I promise to return them in no worse condition than Chris 
would.

Beta thanks to Annie, without whom I would probably 
still be sitting in a corner feeling sorry for myself and 
refusing to post, and to Erica who has been a wonderful 
addition to the beta team - I owe you both so much!


Copyright (c) 2018

Chapter 6

The pizzas came. Scully met him at her door and took her 
vegetarian and left him his pepperoni. She smiled, and 
thanked him, but she closed the door to eat on her own.

Mulder downed his carnivore supreme and a warm soda. Then 
an antacid. Scully might have had a point about age and 
life on the road. He remembered a time when he could have 
run on fast food and little to no sleep for days before 
feeling the effects. Tonight, he surfed restlessly through 
the sorry selection of analog stations on the small TV 
before finally muting the sound and listening for movement 
in Scully's room. He heard the shower running. A thump that 
might have been her suitcase against the wall. He pulled 
out his laptop and ran through some more research on 
strange phenomena in the area. He tried to stream Netflix, 
but the motel wifi was too slow. Mulder changed into sweat 
pants and a t-shirt and stared at the wall for a good ten 
minutes, before he snatched the key cards off the top of 
the television and padded in his socks through the night 
air to Scully's door.

He had a key to her room, just as she did to his. They had 
made that a standard practice a long time ago. A few life 
or death situations, and you really didn't want to be 
shooting out locks and smashing windows while your partner 
screamed for help when asking the desk for two keys at 
check-in was a viable option.

He considered knocking rather than risking pissing her off 
again, but they had lived together a long time, and he 
really wanted to appeal to that side of her right now. She 
had started entering his house without knocking, lately. 
So, he listened at the door for a moment, heard nothing, 
then slipped the card into her lock and edged the door 
inward a few inches.

"Scully?" he called tentatively, poking his head through 
the narrow crack.

She was seated on the bed in blue silk pajamas, legs tucked 
up to her chest, forehead resting on her knees. She lifted 
her head as he opened the door, but she didn't seem 
startled or even annoyed by his arrival, instead treating 
his presence as though he had been expected. Her face was a 
little pink, whether from fatigue or her shower, he 
couldn't tell. The room smelled of her coconut shampoo.

"Hey," she replied. Her earlier distance seemed to have 
been washed off with the day's dust. Her hair was down and 
loose and still just a little bit wet. He loved her longer 
hair. He had expected her to cut it when she returned to 
field work. But she was hanging onto the length, and he was 
enjoying the way he got to brush against it when they 
walked together. 

Mulder closed the door behind him, slipped both key cards 
into his pocket and padded further into her room. She 
hadn't turned on her TV, and her laptop was still on the 
table across the room. No book, no phone. It was too early 
even for Scully to be turning in for the night. Which meant 
her brain was spinning.

Mulder took a seat on the bed, close by where her bare toes 
were tucked beneath the edge of a blanket. She unballed a 
bit, body language warming to his offering. He rested a 
hand on her thigh and gently massaged. Scully cocked her 
eyebrow, as if questioning where he might be going with 
this, and he gave her a reassuring smile, making it clear 
this was not about that.

"Tell me, Scully," he said softly.

"Tell you what?"

"Whatever it is you're NOT telling me about this case. 
About you and this case."

She stared at him for a long time, breathed more deeply. He 
waited her out, a little afraid she would shut him out 
again.

"Why don't you like looking at the pictures?" he prompted, 
voice low and tender. He caught the small flinch that told 
him she hadn't known he had noticed.

Scully took a breath, started to speak a few times, but 
couldn't seem to find what to say. When she did speak, all 
she had was, "I'm not...It's not...I don't even..." She gave 
a sigh somewhere between frustration and pain and closed 
her eyes.

He could see where this was going. Or rather wasn't. Mulder 
nodded his head, expressing a firm internal decision. "All 
right."

He stood and scooped her up into his arms before she could 
stop him.

"Mulder, what the hell are you doing?!"

He dropped himself onto the bed and settled her between his 
legs. He leaned his back against the head of the bed, 
wrapped his limbs around her so she was comfortingly 
cocooned yet spared from facing him. He reached out and 
flipped off the bedside lamp, leaving only the faint glow 
from the bathroom light.

"Mulder, this isn't...we can't..." Her protest was sincere, 
but her voice was thin, her tone surrendering to the tide. 
She understood what he was doing.

This was something they had done when they had been 
together -- to help her talk, to help her open up when she 
was scared or uncertain. Back when everything had been more 
intimate between them. But they weren't intimate, now. Not 
really. And in a way, they were at work where the rules 
were supposed to hold.

"Humor me, Scully," he said into the back of her coconut 
hair. "Let's just pretend for a few minutes that you still 
like me, shall we? And let me do this for you."

"Mulder." Scully tucked a little closer to him, head turned 
over her shoulder, gaze firmly directed downward. Her voice 
grew quiet and honest in a way she rarely allowed anymore. 
"Mulder, I still love you. You know that."

Mulder took a moment to breathe, to untie the knot in his 
stomach. For a quick beat, he tucked his face into the 
curve of her neck. "I like to think so," he said. Because 
she kept doing that. Dangling little confirmations that 
tore out his heart. He lifted his head and inhaled. "All 
right, come on. Talk to me."

"I...I don't even know if I have-"

He rubbed her arm vigorously, brooking no argument. "Come 
on."

He felt her long exhale as her back shifted against his 
chest. All was quiet for a long moment, and he knew she 
needed the extra beats to connect, to open to him. But he 
grew concerned when he felt her trembling. It was subtle, 
but he knew her, knew her body, and it was there. "I don't 
know if it means anything," she said, "but I remembered 
something. When you showed me a picture of what the Black-
Eyed Children are presumed to look like...I don't know if 
it just...reminded me of something. But...I think I'm 
remembering something...from during my abduction." Too many 
"somethings" in that sequence for a woman of such precise 
language. She was whispering, voice thready and tremulous. 
Mulder was subconsciously pulling her in tighter, trying to 
meld with her in silent support. "When I saw that 
picture...," she continued, "I felt something...*bad*...in my 
stomach. And I remember...a place, like a concrete 
stairwell. The light is a sickening yellow. And it's cold. 
I'm really cold. I don't know."

"You think these sightings of the kids are related to 
whoever took you?" He kept his mouth close to her ear.

"I can't tell. I don't know. It's so hard to remember. God, 
Mulder, it was over 20 years ago... It shouldn't still bother 
me this much."

"Of course, it should. You're a doctor, you know better 
than that." He paused a moment, then let himself add, "It 
sure as hell still bothers me."

Scully caught a quick breath. She was surprised. She was 
always surprised to hear he worried about her, *for* her. 
Damned if he ever understood why.

"Do you think Sheriff Aster has an abduction scar? A chip 
in his neck?" he asked.

"He has *a* scar. It could be anything." She was quiet a 
moment, then, "Do you know where people claim to have been 
seeing lights?"

"I found directions online. Looks like there's a hot spot 
just north of Verdad."

She didn't say more. Mulder refrained from asking if she 
wanted to check out the site. Her body was gradually 
sinking more heavily against his. She really was tired. And 
in all fairness, it was later in D.C.. Scully had always 
needed more sleep than he did. And she was likely feeling 
the elevation.

He could feel her brain working, rearranging the pieces, 
struggling to form an outline of the picture they sought. 
Her nails scratched idly at his knee, and he willed his 
body not to respond to the fact she was leaning against his 
crotch with only his worn sweats and her silk pajamas 
between them.

He drew a deep breath, and she shifted in his arms as his 
chest rose and fell. Mulder combed his fingers through her 
hair. "You want to see if we can find something on TV? Turn 
off our brains for a while?"

"Oh, is that why you watch so much TV?" she said with a 
promising note of playfulness in her voice.

"If you find the right bad sci-fi film, Scully, you can 
shut down your higher brain function entirely. You should 
hook me up to machines sometime, test the phenomenon."

"No, I believe you already."

"This you believe. None of my brilliant and innovative 
theories of the universe. Just my ability to deactivate my 
higher brain function."

She smiled briefly. Then after a pause, she said, "I'm all 
right, Mulder. You can go back to your room." Her words 
were a little lazy, soft and slurred. Every part of him 
wanted to stay right where he was until she fell asleep.

He released a long sigh. "All right." Scully sat forward, 
accommodating him as he made his way out from behind her.

"Waffles and bacon at 7am?" he asked as he moved toward the 
door.

Scully narrowed her eyes. "Coffee and some fruit?"

"To-may-to, to-mah-to," he said.

"Tomato's a fruit no matter how you pronounce it," Scully 
countered.

He stopped for a moment by the door, hand on the knob, and 
held her gaze. "You'll tell me if you remember anything 
else."

He didn't like the hesitation before she nodded. But she 
did nod.

"Sweet dreams, Scully," he said as he stepped out the door.

"You, too."

The door snapped closed between them.


//////////

She is distracted all through dinner; quiet and 
internalized. She is warm and kind when he speaks to her, 
returns the kiss he sneaks in on his way to grab more 
mashed potatoes. But she sinks back into her own thoughts 
the moment he ceases to actively engage her. 

She reads for a while after dinner, in her favorite chair 
by the fire. She rarely has time for such indulgences, 
these days. Her job keeps her busy during most hours not 
used for eating and sleeping. But she has a couple of days 
off going into the weekend this time, and it affords her a 
little breathing room. 

At ten, she heads down the hall to get ready for bed. 
Mulder says he will follow soon; maybe they can watch a 
movie in bed. He waters the plants on the shelves of the 
living room wall. Then he remembers the wilting fern by 
their bedroom window. He takes the watering can down the 
hall and finds Scully taking off her earrings and dropping 
them into the ceramic dish on her vanity. 

She hovers at her dresser, watching him work with the 
precarious plant. He's gotten a little better at keeping 
things alive since they came to this house. For all of her 
scientific knowledge, Scully is not the one with the 
gardening potential. He has found he may have a bit of a 
talent for it himself. 

"Mulder?" Scully says. 

"Yeah?" He sticks his finger in the soil to see how deeply 
the water has been absorbed. 

"I was just wondering...I mean, if..." She fades out, sighs 
softly. 

Mulder wipes his finger on his jeans and turns to look at 
her. "What? Wondering what?" 

Scully draws a breath and tries again. Her fingertips 
flutter against the dresser top. "I just wanted to know 
if...if you could...maybe..." But she sags, losing the 
thread, or her nerve, and looks down at the toes of her 
shoes. "Never mind," she says. "It's nothing." She turns 
and crosses to her closet. 

Mulder sets down the watering can and takes a few steps 
across the room. "Scully?" 

She shakes her head, pulls her nightgown from the closet 
and tosses it across the bed. "Forget it," she says. 

Mulder moves around the bed. He catches and stills her 
fingers as she attempts to unbutton her blouse. She is 
still dressed in her work clothes. She is a little 
distractingly gorgeous. "Hey," he says, knuckles moving 
lightly over her the skin of her breastbone. "You want to 
ask me something? Just ask me." 

She stares down at his hand, shifts her weight. The 
tenderness seems to appeal to her, and she takes a breath 
and tries again, but the effort goes nowhere. 

"Scully?" 

He watches the tension in her neck muscles as she forces a 
swallow. She shakes her head. 

"Okay, let's try something," Mulder offers. "Let's make 
this a little easier for you. Come here." 

"Mulder, what are you--?" 

"Just trust me for a minute, Scully. Come on." 

He leads her by the hand, settles her on the bed. He slips 
off her shoes, and he nestles her between his legs, leaning 
against his chest. He turns off the nearest lamp, bathing 
them in shadow, and pulls a blanket over her lap. The 
effect is warm and comfortable and he hopes she feels the 
same. The deep breath she draws in time with his shows 
promise. 

"Now," he says, "you don't have to look at me. Nobody can 
see your face. You can pretend no one's ever gonna know. I 
just swept the room for listening devices this morning. All 
clear. No one can prove you said it, whatever it is. 
So...ask me what you want to ask me." 

She chuckles softly at his over-the-top efforts, but 
there's still tension in every line of her body. 

He gives her a long pause of silence to gather her thoughts 
and her nerve. He presses his lips to her hair and 
whispers, "It's me, Dana." The intimacy gets to her. 

"I have my annual MRI tomorrow," she says softly. She 
swallows again. "It's just routine. Making sure I'm 
still...healthy. Cancer and tumor free. It's just that..." 

Mulder tries to ignore the sudden sick feeling in his 
stomach. The ever-present fear of that time lives beneath 
his skin like an invisible cloak. Nothing ever scared him 
so much in his life. He works to keep the fear and tension 
from manifesting in his body in any way she can feel. "Just 
what? Is something wrong? Have you been having symptoms?" 

She is blessedly quick to reassure. "No, no, nothing like 
that, I'm fine. I promise." Her voice is open and 
comforting, and she squeezes his hand as she speaks. His 
stomach untangles a little. "It's just that..." She sighs, a 
note of self-deprecation in her tone. 

He draws his fingers down her cheek and she leans into the 
touch. "You're afraid of the results, anyway?" 

"Actually, no. I mean, it always crosses my mind, 
but...I've had enough clear results now, I don't 
really...expect it back." 

"Then tell me." 

He can't clearly see her face from this angle, but he feels 
it in her body and her breath when her eyes fill with 
tears. "I just hate the test," she whispers. She lets go a 
breathy and self-deprecating laugh laced with dampness. 
"It's just...it doesn't hurt, it just...the sound and the 
feel...it sucks me back into that time, and I don't ever 
want to relive that." 

He cradles her close, presses a long kiss to her temple. 
"Oh, Scully...of course it's hard. Why would you feel bad 
about that? Those memories scare me, too." 

"I'm sorry," she whispers. 

"Why on earth would you be sorry?" 

They are quiet for a long minute, but there is intimacy and 
connection in the quiet. He says softly, "What did you want 
to ask me?" 

She takes a long time to reply, and he realizes this is it, 
this is the hard part for her. It nearly breaks his heart 
when she says simply, "Would you come with me?" 

His sigh is audibly pained. "You've been doing this every 
year?" he asks. 

"Yes." 

"And it's been hard for you every year?" 

She hesitates, sniffs. "Yes." 

"And you've never asked me to come with you? Or meet you 
afterward and take you for ice cream?" 

She gives a sad laugh. "No." 

"Scully, of course I'll come with you. You should have 
asked me seven years ago." 

She closes her eyes and leans more heavily into him. "I 
just...I feel like I should be able to handle it. It's 
something positive, it's taking control of my health, being 
responsible. I'm a doctor, I know what these tests mean, 
how they work. I've always handled my health needs on my 
own." 

He squeezes her hand hard, rests his open palm on her 
stomach. "I know you have. And I know you can. But I'm 
here. And I love you. And if having me there, even if it's 
just out in the waiting room or in the parking lot, would 
make it a little better...what could possibly be wrong 
about that?"

He feels her gradually accepting this. One elegant leg 
stretches out a bit in the darkness and she releases a slow 
breath. At last she whispers, "Thank you." 

"Always." The word rolls naturally from his tongue, and of 
all the promises with which he does not trust himself, he 
knows this one vow to be the truth. 

She surprises him when she says, "Now you. Make it fair, 
you tell me something intimate. Something you're afraid to 
admit." 

He thinks for a long moment, then decides to take the leap 
for her, because she asked for raw honesty, and with her 
relaxed and beautiful and trusting in his arms, he can't 
deny her. 

"I'm afraid you're smarter than me," he says. 

"It's 'smarter than I.'" 

Mulder groans and buries his face in her neck. "Oh, Jesus 
Christ, Scully, are you just trying to kill me?" 

She laughs, and the genuine sweetness in the sound is worth 
his own humiliation. "Come on, Mulder, I'm teasing you." 

He draws a deep breath, but doesn't reply. 

She feels it. "Hey," she says softly, shifting and turning 
into him. "You don't really think that, do you?" 

He moves his hand soothingly up and down her leg. Soothing 
himself as much as her. Her skin quiets him. 
"Scully...you're brilliant. You know so much about science 
and history and...everything....sometimes, I feel like...you 
should be with someone who can debate those things with you 
better than I can. Who can keep up." 

Scully shakes her head. "Mulder, I'm not smarter than you. 
You're just as intelligent. We've both seen each other's IQ 
numbers, you know this. You graduated with honors from 
Oxford. I'm just more academically focused. I store facts, 
and I hold onto them like security blankets, and I use them 
to try to make sense of my universe. I look for patterns, 
and I fall back on precedent. But you...you take the 
information and...you see something new. You make leaps. 
You discover things, you innovate. I don't have your kind 
of vision. And sometimes I feel like I'm holding you back." 

Mulder sighs into her hair. "Well. Then...maybe we make a 
good team." 

"You know we do. We always have." He believes she means her 
words, but she also knows better than to take his 
acceptance at face value. "Where's this coming from?" 

He takes a long time to respond and she affords him that 
time. They have never been separated by silence. "Scully, 
I'm just a guy in a house in a field with a lifetime of 
crazy conspiracy theories, a proclivity toward irrational 
and sometimes unhealthy obsession, a failed career and a 
history of getting the people around me abducted. You're a 
brilliant doctor helping kids every day. You have a family, 
friends I'm sure miss you. Why are you here, Scully?" 

He feels her deepening breath. She is looking at him, 
wanting eye contact even in the dimness, but he can't seem 
to look up from her thigh. "I'm here because this is where 
I want to be, Mulder. Because when I'm with you...I feel 
like I'm not a disappointment. Like...I'm worthwhile." 

He didn't expect that. "What are you talking about?" 

She exhales through her nose, closes her eyes for a brief 
moment. "Mulder, if you haven't noticed, for all my bitchy 
attitude and arrogance when it comes to science and 
medicine and FBI procedural protocol, my self-esteem as a 
person can be...pretty low. I need people's approval. A 
lot. You don't. You believe in yourself. Even when the 
world seems to be against you. And you believe in me." 

"Scully, it's just that I gave up a long time ago on 
getting anyone's approval because it was never going to 
happen. Until you showed up and for some reason...you 
stayed. But that's not true for you, Scully. I'm not the 
only person who sees how amazing you are." 

She shakes her head. "On their terms, maybe. But it's not 
the real me. Not...the me I want them to love. That's only 
you," she whispers, a little of the self-consciousness 
bleeding back into her manner. Her concern for him 
temporarily emboldened her. "I'm here, because you make me 
believe in myself when I can't on my own. Because you can 
make me smile when no one else can. Because you're the best 
man I've ever known." 

Mulder doesn't speak; he can't speak. Somewhere inside him, 
the little boy who felt like his parents spent a lifetime 
wishing he had been the one to disappear drinks in her 
words like life-giving water. He feels both broken and 
healed by the utter sincerity in her clear blue eyes. He 
pulls her tight against him, tucks his face into her hair, 
and pretends his eyes aren't hot with tears. Scully. What 
the hell did he do to deserve her? 

Scully shifts and turns her head. She nuzzles at him until 
he lifts his face to hers and lets her capture his lips. 
Their kisses are slow, tender, and drenched in emotion. She 
tastes like salt and ginger ale and mint candy on his 
tongue. When they part for breath, Scully breaks into a 
soft smile. "You want to watch a movie, now?" 

"Hmmm..." He waggles his eyebrows. "I might have a better 
idea." 

She shrieks and laughs when he scoops her up and tosses her 
onto the mattress, flopping down half on top of her. 

//////////


Dana Scully listened to the faint murmur from the 
television on the other side of the wall.

She couldn't quite keep her eyes closed without images of 
blurry and half-realized memories flickering behind her 
lids. Finally, she pushed back the covers, grabbed her suit 
jacket from the back of the desk chair and wrapped it 
around her shoulders over her pajamas. She slipped into her 
shoes and opened the door.

The night air was still warm enough to be comforting. 
Darkness and silence stretched out before her. She leaned 
her shoulder against the doorframe and gazed up at the 
numerous stars as she breathed. A warm desert wind caressed 
her skin, and she tried to let it symbolically wash away 
the images trapped in her consciousness.

For the most part, Scully had always been comfortable 
spending time alone. She found a certain stillness and 
security in her own company. She needed to retreat into her 
head periodically and reset her sense of self and purpose. 
The control of solitude was grounding. Growing up with so 
many siblings, Dana had forever been fighting for space and 
time to herself against the constant onslaught of busy 
human presence. She hadn't had a room of her own until 
Missy had gone off to college. But at the same time, Scully 
knew she wasn't truly as independent as she appeared (or 
liked to believe). She needed people, she just needed them 
on her own terms and by her own parameters. But she needed 
them -- quite a lot. For the past year she had been 
noticing more than ever how much she had identified in her 
head as "one of the Scully women." For much of her life, at 
the end of the day it had been the three of them: Dana, her 
mother, and Melissa. When Dana had been very young, her 
maternal grandmother had been part of the circle. And for a 
while her mother's sister Katie as well when Uncle 
Michael's work had brought them to California. But a stroke 
had taken Nana when Scully had been in middle school. Then 
Aunt Katie had passed away Scully's first year at the FBI. 
Then Missy. Now...her mother.

Dana had always expected she might one day be the last 
Scully woman standing. She was the youngest, after all. But 
she had never expected it to happen so soon. And somewhere 
in the back of her mind, she had always expected there 
would have been a daughter. Or a niece. She opened her eyes 
and breathed deeply, pushing away a memory of the scent of 
Emily's skin.

Some days Scully's mother hadn't understood her at all, but 
Missy had gotten it. Sometimes Missy and her inherent crazy 
had completely missed the mark, but their mother had shown 
unexpected insight into the workings of her daughter's 
mind. But even when none of them had understood her, her 
circle of women had been there with her. A warm nest to 
which she could crawl home. A quick phone call. An email or 
a surprise greeting card. An unspoken trust that if she 
ever reached out a hand, one of them would be there. A hand 
of a soul that loved her without reserve. Sometimes the 
losses felt like too much. Like every warm body in her life 
eventually melted away. *Even her little ones.*

She loved her brothers, but they didn't really know her. 
Mulder still stood beside her. And that scared her on a 
number of levels. And kept her standing.

Scully checked her coat pocket for her room key in case the 
door closed behind her and took a few steps forward to the 
edge of the walkway. She closed her eyes for another long 
minute, feeling the wind and the vastness of the country 
around her. The endless views here simultaneously made her 
feel connected to the universe and like she was very small 
and alone in the night. Somewhere to the east a coyote 
screeched into the darkness.

When Scully opened her eyes, a flicker of motion in the 
distance caught her attention. She squinted into the 
blackness toward the solitary street lamp at the far edge 
of the parking lot. Two figures stood beneath the yellow 
light, one slightly taller than the other. From this 
distance in the silhouetting light, she couldn't make out 
sex or age, only human form.

The two looked very much like what she thought she had seen 
their first night in Verdad.

Scully strained to catch further detail, but the more she 
stared, the more the shadowy images lost meaning. She 
turned and looked down the length of the building toward 
the tiny front office. Not a soul was outside the rooms. 
Faint lights burned behind curtains of one or two windows 
near the far end of the building. She glanced toward 
Mulder's room, but all was dark.

When she turned back to the parking lot, the figures were 
gone from the circular glow.

They stood closer.

Scully straightened, senses on high alert, hairs rising on 
the backs of her arms. Her hand moved instinctively to the 
small of her back, but she was unarmed. Alongside a parked 
pickup truck, less than 100 feet from where Scully stood, 
two dark shapes huddled by the rear of the vehicle. It was 
too far for them to have moved so quickly. Especially 
without having made a sound.

Scully couldn't distinguish faces, but she felt in her 
bones that the figures were staring directly at her; the 
primitive sense of the predator stalked by the prey. The 
two figures stood unnaturally still, raised hoods giving a 
vaguely animalistic line to their outlines. Scully's pulse 
raced, adrenaline burning through her stomach. Her weapon 
was still in her motel room, and the small space between 
her back and the safety of her room felt like a chasm. Her 
mouth had gone dry and a creeping sense of wrongness 
crawled along her skin. The blackness of the figures seemed 
darker than the surrounding shadows, like an unearthly 
draining of light in the middle of a sunlit day. She felt 
like if she spoke, reality might crumble.

Scully turned for no more than a second to look once more 
toward Mulder's room, reaching out to her partner at the 
sign of danger, but his room was silent and black. When she 
turned back, the children were gone.

With a sharp gasp of breath, Scully took three rapid steps 
back toward the door of her room. She glanced over her 
shoulder, squinting at the relative brightness, making sure 
no one had slipped into the room behind her. She kicked the 
door fully open to assure no one stood behind it. Stepping 
in, she snatched her weapon from the small table, then 
moved back out into the night.

Gun raised, arms extended, Scully scanned the parking lot, 
the length of the building. She paced a few doors down in 
each direction, searched the open spaces. At last she 
called toward the parking lot, "Is anybody there?" But she 
was greeted by nothing but silence and starlight. The sense 
of dread remained on her skin.

Scully searched every inch of her room and bathroom when 
she returned. She locked and re-locked the outer door.

She set her weapon on the nightstand and sank down to sit 
on the edge of the bed. She was shaking, her already tired 
body now quivering with residual adrenaline. The vague 
feeling of wrongness in her stomach had not subsided, and 
Mariela's words echoed in her head -- *"All your instincts 
are telling you this isn't a safe place, that something 
here is bad or...toxic."*

*****

(end Chapter 6)