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 17 ~
 
Sunday, April 20th
4:15 pm
Recreation Room
Mitchell Mesa Complex
Monument Valley, AZ

Monopoly won out over Trivial Pursuit in the end. Scully 
thought it would be unfair to William, especially if they 
both intentionally missed things in most of the categories, 
though Mulder was convinced that William was smart enough 
to hold his own.

"Smart, yes," Scully said while William was out of earshot 
in the bathroom. "Unusually smart. Knowledgeable about 
things he has no business knowing at his age, no. Do you 
really expect him to know who wrote The Green Hills of 
Africa?"

"He could be a Hemingway fan."

Scully cocked her head at him, the barest smile playing 
about her lips. After a moment, William came out of the 
bathroom and sat down at the table with them. His face fell 
as soon as he sat down. 

"What's wrong, William?"

"I'm still in jail."

Scully was about to kick Mulder under the table to prevent 
the "my kid is *hysterical*" chuckle she knew was coming when 
William glanced up and grinned. Gotcha.

When Scully finally put a hotel on Marvin Gardens, Mulder 
was nearly broke, and William had mortgaged most of his 
property. She tried not to feel guilty; she was good with 
money in real life, too.

It had been three days since they'd given blood, and they 
had spent nearly all that time either in their room or the 
recreation area. They'd even taken to eating their meals in 
their room simply because there seemed to be no end to the 
quasi celebrity status they held, and being unabashedly 
stared at was far more distressing than Scully ever might 
have imagined. 

Mulder slipped William two golden $100 bills from the bank 
and William took them happily.

"Mulder," Scully chided.

"He passed GO. Really, Scully. What kind of a man do you 
think I am?"

"Sorry," she said. 

"Besides," Mulder said, rolling the dice. "William knows 
that would be wrong. Cheating. Right, William?"

"I know," said William, absently. He was concentrating - 
counting the $1 bills in his pile. He suddenly looked up, 
happily. "My turn? I want to de-morgagize Park Place."

Mulder took William's money as the boy carefully counted 
each bill out into Mulder's upturned palm.

Scully tapped a fingernail on the hotel she'd placed on 
Marvin Gardens. "Sure you want to do that, William?" 

"Yes," he said, and glanced up at her. "Life is full of 
risk," he said, earnestly. "Sometimes you just have to 
close your eyes and leap."

Mulder and Scully glanced at one another. The degree to 
which they continued to find themselves completely leveled 
by William seemed to rise with each new day. Perhaps 
because he was special. 

Perhaps he's even more advanced than they know. Or perhaps 
he's just a boy who happens to be their son. 

Ten minutes later, William had landed on and bought 
Boardwalk, and both Mulder and Scully had landed on Park 
Place. Risks and leaps were apparently right up William's 
alley - just like his father. 

Yet as they played, distraction was being etched deeper and 
deeper into the boy's face as he seemed to be weighing and 
measuring something very carefully. They'd found William to 
be forthcoming about nearly everything, unafraid to say 
what was on his mind or question a decision, but this was 
apparently something that made him wary enough to question 
bringing it up at all.

Mulder noticed William's dilemma and nudged Scully under 
the table. With a single imperceptible glance in his 
direction, Mulder was assured that she also was aware of 
the internal struggle going on in the vicinity of Baltic 
and Community Chest. After some moments of silence, William 
looked up at them. He smiled, immediately understanding 
that he had their undivided attention. 

"This is going to be hard," he said softly.

Scully briefly touched William's hand. "You can say 
anything you need to, William." 

William nodded. "Harder maybe for you than me," he said to 
both of them.

"That's okay," Mulder said. 

William nodded again and stared at the top of the table in 
front of him. An eternity passed. "Why aren't you my real 
mom and dad?"

Scully had known it was coming. She had prepared for it. If 
she was being honest with herself, she would have to say 
she'd been preparing for it for six years. It still left 
her without a breath in her lungs. 

"Why did you give me up?" He sighed. He was obviously 
confused, but he was calm and in control of his emotions. 
"I know so many things. I know you wish you hadn't. I know 
you wish you had a do over. But I don't know this." He 
finally made eye contact with them again. "I don't know 
why."

It was all Scully's question to answer and she let Mulder 
know by grasping his fingers. Mulder squeezed her fingers 
back in encouragement.

"When you were a baby," she began, "Mulder - your dad - had 
to go away." How much to say? "He was in danger - so I 
thought he would be safer if he left." Yet another decision 
she regretted. She took a breath and chided herself: one 
flogging at a time. "I was alone and I missed him. But I 
had you and I was happy. You made me so happy. I could 
never have imagined giving you up. I could never have 
imagined that there would be anything that would make me 
believe that giving you up was my only choice. But then it 
was *you* that was in danger and suddenly it *was* my only 
choice." She grasped Mulder's hand fully now and held it 
tight. "If I - William, if I could go back and do it again - I would 
change it all." She glanced at Mulder, unsure of exactly what 
he was feeling. 

"I would want to change it, William, but I can't." She 
sighed. "Even if I could..."

William nodded at the tabletop, considering this. His own 
emotional temperature had nothing to do with his feelings 
for his adopted mother and father. He loved them. They were 
his parents. Still...

"My mom and dad - they won't understand - not any of this. 
Nobody else, ever, would ever understand any of this - 
except you. They don't even ask anymore," he revealed. "I 
guess it's better that way - when I do something weird they 
don't ask, they just know I can't explain it. And even if I 
could, it would be..." He trailed off, uncertain of what 
his next words should be.

"That sounds lonely," Scully ventured.

He sighed in obvious frustration and his voice was suddenly 
hoarse. "What am I supposed to say about this? 'Sorry, Mom, 
I'm busy saving the world. Back in a few days,'?" 

Mulder couldn't help it and he chuckled softly. Scully shot 
him a searing look.

"No," William said. "It's all right. It is funny. It's - 
it's -" Irritated with himself and the world, he slapped 
his hands on the table. "I don't know the word!"

"William," Scully soothed. 

He suddenly glanced up at her. "You should have been my 
mother," he said, a revelation. "That's the way it was 
supposed to be." He hesitated. "I know I was in danger. I 
asked why you gave me up."

Mulder closed his eyes against the sudden waves of pain 
rolling off the woman next to him. It was the same question 
he asked years ago that was nearly their undoing. "William -" 
Mulder started and Scully put her hand on his arm.

"I was afraid," she said, "that I couldn't keep you safe. I 
didn't want to wake up one morning and find you gone. Or 
dead." She shook her head. Her eyes were welling with 
tears, so she closed them hoping to keep them from 
spilling. When she opened them again, William had turned 
his head away. "The end of you would have been the end of 
me, William."

William had allowed a tear to escape so he wiped his eyes 
and dropped his palms back on the table. "You were afraid," 
he echoed. He glanced at Mulder and back to Scully. He 
sighed, resigned. He could not change anything either. None 
of them could.

"You should have been my mother." He said it softly. It was 
just a fact, not an accusation.

"I know," she said. 

William and Scully both turned to Mulder making his 
inclusion implicit. Some moments of emptiness passed before 
they each took another's hand and they simply sat, silent, 
sharing the regret between them.

An unaccountable amount of time later, the door to the rec 
room opened and Roy was caught by surprise since it looked 
like either a s‚ance or a prayer group.

"Hey - oh," he muttered as the three of them turned. 
"Sorry. Am I interrupting?"

"Yes," Mulder said.

"Okay," Roy said. "When you've got a minute, come down to 
the lab. We've got it."

~:~:~

When Mulder, Scully and William walked into the lab - 
slightly ragged and emotionally exhausted - Roy, Joan and 
the other technicians were huddled around a sealed chamber. 
A white rat sat immobile as a fine mist was sprayed onto 
its body. It sat, at first, like an oily residue on the 
tips of the fine hairs before it began to absorb through 
the hair and down into the follicle itself. After a short 
moment, the rat twitched and staggered to the opposite 
corner of the cage. In the next heartbeat, tiny worm-like 
particles of black oil oozed out of the rodent's orifices. 
Scully dropped her hand protectively on William, as the 
worms trailed across the bottom of the chamber, slowed and 
finally eroded from the inside out. What remained were bits 
of blackened ash. 

The group around the chamber murmured their awed delight. 
One of the men, stepped back, took off his glasses and 
wiped his eyes. He noticed the three new arrivals just 
inside the room and smiled at them. *Thank you,* he mouthed. 

Roy turned and beckoned them to join the others. "William," 
he said. "Come on over here."

"You infected a rat?" Scully confirmed as she stared at the 
chamber. She leaned in and peered at the dried virus.

"We've infected a lot of things over the years. In the last 
three days since we've had your blood, we infected it 
without a host, and in a rhesus, rat, a pig and a human."

That got Mulder's attention. "You did human trials?"

"One, Mr. Mulder. We had to. Did you really think," he 
chuckled, "that it wouldn't come to human trials? Would you 
prefer if we had just dosed the planet without testing?"

Mulder was slightly at a loss. Scully brushed her hand down 
Mulder's upper arm. "Mulder. Of course they had to." She 
turned to Roy. "It was voluntary, of course." Her tone said 
it all: if it hadn't been voluntary, she would single-
handedly shut down this entire operation. Or something 
equally satisfying and less drastic, she amended to 
herself.

Roy smiled. "Yes, it was. Joan?" 

The technician who had withdrawn their blood stepped 
forward. She smiled at the three of them. "Voluntary," she 
assured them.

Scully was fascinated. "Side effects? How are you feeling?"

"Well, we did it twice. The first time, I was infected and 
then given the serum. It works as an antidote and a 
vaccine. I was a little groggy right after the injection. I 
felt a little numbness or tingling in my extremities - 
almost how you'd feel if you'd hyperventilated. The next 
day, I was dosed with the virus again. This time, I didn't 
feel anything except the sensation of the oil itself. It's 
a bit creepy crawly. It entered me and almost immediately - 
not more than two or three seconds later - it exited and 
dried when it hit the air."

"Was that because the serum was still in your system," 
Scully wondered and turned to Roy, "or was there a genetic 
alteration after the first injection?"

"There was an immediate change at the chromosomal level, 
Dr. Scully," Joan said. 

"How is that possible?" she whispered, awed.

"Have a look through the EM," she said indicating one of 
the two electron microscope stations. "Remember, the 
original mutation was alien. The biological effect of those 
resulting genes is what we've been trying to capture - the 
generation of cells that repel the alien virus. It is, as 
far as we can determine, 100% effective."

Scully looked up from the microscope in wonder. "Amazing." 

Mulder had suddenly appeared at Joan's side. She looked up 
at him. "You sure you feel all right?" he asked.

Joan smiled. "I assure you, Mr. Mulder. I'm not infected." 
She turned to Scully. "What you're looking at there, is a 
side by side example. My blood before and after the serum. 
You see the difference?"

"Uh, yes, I think so."

"My blood," Joan continued, "William's blood, yours, Mr. 
Mulder's - it would all look different from anyone that has 
not yet been vaccinated. Yours and Mr. Mulder's are not 
quite the same as ours though," she said, indicating 
herself and William, "in that the cellular change was only 
partial. When William was conceived, of course, the genetic 
mutation was completed." 

She smiled at William who's face had reddened. Mulder 
imagined it was probably the thought of being conceived, 
and he smiled. 

"So, what is the intended delivery system?" Mulder asked 
Roy. "You have considered that inevitability?"

Roy smiled, not quite offended, but almost. "Mr. Mulder, 
there's no need to be condescending." Mulder looked 
surprised and innocent when Scully frowned at him. "We have 
considered many means of delivery," Roy continued, 
"including an airborne scenario and putting it in the water 
systems. We'd also considered being more traditional and 
just hoping most of the population takes advantage of the 
offer."

"Well, that's problematic," observed Scully.

"Yes," Roy acknowledged. "I think we're looking at a 
probable combination of all three methods to be as 
effective as possible."

"It bothers me that you would treat people without their 
knowledge, but I have to agree that it would be the only 
way in most cases."

The adults in the room all nodded in agreement. 

William took a step forward. "What about when they come? 
What are you doing about that?"

Roy glanced around. "This is what we're doing about it, 
William," he said.

"But you expect everyone to die."

"Not from the virus," he said.

"And that makes it better?" William asked.

One corner of Mulder's mouth crooked in a smile and he 
cocked his head at Roy. *It's your show.* 

"I won't let it happen," William said. "I want to know how 
to stop it."

Roy sighed. "Maybe that's something only you can figure 
out, William. When you do, let me know and I'll be with 
you. We all will."

William sighed and looked at Scully. He frowned, 
disappointed and she kneeled down next to him. She brushed 
his unruly hair out from in front of his eyes. "We'll 
figure it out together, William." He nodded and leaned into 
her, his temple against hers.