Hole in the Black
by PD

ARCHIVAL:  Gossamer, no thanks. Stories will be housed at 
my site only. If you'd like to link, I'd love it, but 
please drop me note with a heads up.

DISCLAIMER:  Can I borrow the keys to the franchise, Chris? 
I won't go to any FBI balls, I promise to make a full stop 
at most clichés, and I will try not to dangle my 
participles at the nice couple in the unremarkable house.

CLASSIFICATION: SRA, MSR, IWTB, TMI, ASAP

RATING:  R

SPOILERS:  Through The X Files: I Want To Believe

SUMMARY:  "I wasn't in the group, Mr. Mulder. I was a 
tangential part of the project - in league with those few 
who were adamant on the subject of developing an antidote 
and a vaccine. He was our man on the inside, but we were 
not on the side of complicity with the colonists and that 
meant we were on the outside. Fringe element. We were not 
highly regarded. We weren't even invited to the group 
barbecues." He caught himself and smiled. "Ah. No pun 
intended."


~ Chapter 14 ~
 
Mitchell Mesa
Monument Valley, AZ

"You're not supposed to be out here without a guide," the 
man declared. He peered at Mulder through the sights of his 
shotgun.

Mulder blinked and smiled. "Do you normally get shot for 
that?"

The man snickered. He lowered his gun slightly. "Who are 
you? What are you doing here?"

"Isn't this where the Super Secret Alien Fighting 
Installation is?" Mulder asked and one of men chortled and 
glanced around at his companions.

Scully had to hand it to Mulder. Wording it that way, if it 
was true, they'd certainly get a telling reaction. If it 
wasn't, they'd think he was crazy or high or both. 

The other men lowered their weapons completely. That was 
certainly a telling reaction.

Scully stood and, her arm around William's shoulder, they 
moved beside Mulder. The man with the shotgun looked from 
Scully to William and back to Mulder. He slowly lowered his 
gun completely. It dangled at his side as he slowly 
digested the situation. 

"Oh, my God," one of the men said.

"It's them," said another.

Mulder looked down at William. "Guess we're in the right 
place after all."

~:~:~

The entrance was ten feet away in the ground. Buried under 
brush and earth, metal storm cellar doors swung upward to 
reveal steep, metal grate steps leading down, right under 
the mesa. The corridor of steps was lit with bright 
fluorescents so they could see all the way to the bottom, 
easily two hundred feet to their destination: a puddle of 
light. 

"Hang on to the railing, William," Scully said. The trio 
was bracketed above and below by the quartet of men. 
William walked between Mulder and Scully, dead center.

"I'm all right," William said. 

Their feet echoed on the metal as they descended. Scully 
was relieved when the men made no move to retrain their 
weapons after recognizing them. It also bolstered her sense 
of security that one of men had nearly genuflected as they 
were ushered into the mine. 

"I know it feels like a long way," said the lead man. 
"We're almost there. You all right, William?"

"I'm fine. This is neat."

The man turned and smiled as he walked and peered around 
Mulder's body. "Wait'll you see the rest. Way neat," he 
said and William smiled.

Mulder lifted a brow and looked back at Scully to find her 
matching his expression. 

"So," Mulder started, "is this, or was this an actual 
mine?"

"Was," the lead man said. "But not really here. The actual 
mine shaft starts at the rocked up entrance up top and 
moves more laterally than we are here."

"What about radiation?" Scully asked.

"Well, no, magnetite isn't radioactive."

"So, it's *not* uranium," Mulder said.

"No. Uranium was the cover story since about 1951 when the 
mining of it hit a peak. The mine itself was excavated in 
1948."

"Oh," said Scully. "Coincidental date?"

The man chuckled. They were approaching the bottom. 
"Hardly."

They each stepped into the pool of light and the lead man 
approached the door at the bottom. He swiped a keycard, 
punched in a series of numbers and impatiently drummed his 
fingers above the keypad as he waited for the light to 
change from red to green. When it finally did, the lock 
sounded with a *snick* and he pushed the door open.

They stepped into an oddly comfortable atmosphere that 
looked more like the lobby of a modern office building as 
opposed to the refinery look that Mulder had been 
expecting.

One thing that Mulder hadn't been expecting was Roy, his 
head cocked at them from a bank of comfortable looking 
chairs in the middle of the room. 

"Fancy meeting you here," Roy said. "How ya doing, 
William?"

William frowned and took Scully's hand. "Fine," he answered 
warily. "We tried to find you." He narrowed his eyes at the 
man. Clearly, he felt deceived. "You lied to me."

"Oh, William, you shouldn't say things like that to grown-
ups." He stood up and walked toward them. 

Mulder stepped protectively in front of William as Roy 
approached. "Be careful what you say to my son," he said, 
his voice low, quiet.

Roy stopped in front of them and smiled. He thought for a 
minute and looked straight at Scully. "He's not really *your* 
son, anymore, is he?" 

"What the hell is this?" Scully growled. "What is this all 
about?"

Roy took his attitude down a notch and relaxed his stance. 
"Look, I had to make sure that William was what he thought 
he was. In fact, some of his residual abilities may simply 
be that - residual. Without any of the necessary elements 
that make him as special as he was destined to be when he 
was born. He was - injected - by Jeffrey Spender at about 
ten months, wasn't he? He claimed it changed his genetic 
structure. That it made him *normal.* 

"We need to know exactly what that injection did to him. 
It's possible - hopeful - that Spender was talking out of 
his ass." Roy looked down at William. "Sorry."

William shrugged it off. "You didn't have to lie. You could 
have told me you didn't believe me."

Roy nodded, understanding. "You're right. I could have. 
Would you have trusted me to help you if I hadn't lied?"

William hesitated and before he could say anything, Roy 
spoke up. "That's what I thought. That's why I lied. I'm 
sorry, William, I really am." He looked back up at Mulder 
and Scully. "I'm not your enemy, Mr. Mulder. Our job is to 
develop a working, efficient, scalable vaccine against the 
alien virus that works at the cellular level. We have to 
alter the DNA of every living, breathing person and have 
the new mutation take and perpetuate as we repopulate."

"Repopulate?" Scully asked, puzzled. "You mean --"

"*Re*populate, Dr. Scully. We don't expect the human race to 
survive whatever the aliens have in store in about four 
years. Surely, you don't think they'll just unleash a virus 
and hope that does the trick. Dr. Scully, the aliens are 
coming. They are coming back to reclaim this planet. The 
only thing we can do is hope to remain as a species, lower 
on the food chain, surviving any way we can."

A long silence followed. Roy eventually motioned to one of 
the men who had guided them down the stairs. "Pete. Why 
don't you show our guests to the rooms off the lab." He 
turned to Mulder. "That is, if you plan to stay."

"If?" Mulder wondered.

"You're not prisoners here, Mr. Mulder."

"You mean," Scully said, "that you'd just let us walk out. 
No questions."

"I hope you won't. We have had some success without William 
- as you both well know. But it's not enough. If we have to 
move on without his help, we will. Remember, Spender - CGB 
- he was not an ally of this part of the project. He and 
all those associated with him are dead. The only part of 
that project that lives on is this one." He turned to 
Scully. "Bound and determined to save our souls, Dr. 
Scully."

William tugged on Scully's hand. She kneeled down and 
looked him in the eye. "Let's stay," he said. He looked up 
at Roy. "I don't believe the aliens will win, like you say. 
But I still want to help." He looked back at Scully. 
"Okay?"

After a glance at Mulder, Scully nodded her head.

~:~:~

They were led farther into the facility, through a series 
of corridors, down some stairs, up some stairs. It was a 
convoluted maze of a building, but Mulder expected nothing 
less. It was a requirement of covert alien subversion 
installations, wasn't it?

"In here," Pete said as he opened the door to their room. 
"The bio lab's down the hall," he said, pointing and they 
walked inside. "You should find everything you need here. 
It's kind of a suite, so off the living area here is the 
master bed and right through there's a bed for William. 
Bathroom," he said pointing, "little kitchenette, nothing 
fancy. We have a mess hall and a pretty good cook. I'll 
show you where that is. Your phone there on the desk won't 
get an outside line, and I'm pretty sure your cell phones 
won't work down here, but you can get any area of the 
installation. The directory is there somewhere. Okay?"

They were a bit overwhelmed. "Yeah, fine," Mulder said. 
"Thanks."

"You're welcome. And - thank you," he said, quite 
sincerely, "for staying."

Mulder offered him a half-hearted smile and Pete left, 
closing the door behind him.

"Well," Mulder said. "What shall we talk about?"