Machines of Freedom (6/12) 
by Amal Nahurriyeh
  
Email:  amalnahurriyeh@gmail.com
Pairing: On the gen/MSR border, with mentions of slash
pairings.
Rating: R (non-explicit sex, language, adult subjects)
Warnings: None for major triggers, but includes some
descriptions of violence (in a R-rated movie kind of way).
There are also people under the age of 15 in this story; be
forewarned.

Summary: The end of the world is coming. And they're
doing everything in their power to stop it.
Timeline/Spoilers: Post-IWTB, seasons 8 & 9 compatible;
exists in my post-IWTB universe, which also includes
Whiteboard, The Keeping of Secrets, and Five Times
Mosley Drummy Wishes He Never Met Fox Mulder, but not
necessary to have read those first.
  

Chapter Six

December 10, 2012 
5:47 PM Mountain Time 
Stark, Montana 
 
Mulder stirred in the dark, strange room, unsure for a 
moment where he was, what had happened, why he was curled 
against Scully completely clothed. But then he had heard a 
soft "Um" from the doorframe. He opened his eyes. William 
was standing in the doorway to their bedroom, his head 
bowed. "Um," he said again. 
 
"What is it, Will?" he asked groggily. 
 
"It's just, it's 5:45, and that woman, um, Monica, she said 
you had a meeting at six."  
 
Mulder groaned slightly. "Thanks. Hey, Scully. Scully, we 
gotta go to our meeting." Scully made a noncommittal noise. 
"Come on, Dr. Scully. Time to save the world." 
 
"I'm up," she groaned. She pushed herself to a sitting 
position and groped on the small bedside table for her hair 
clip. "Jesus. I don't want to sleep in a car ever again." 
 
"Yes. Yes, I will agree to that."  
 
He watched her stand and walk over to Will. She ran her 
hands over his head, and he wanted to remind her that the 
propensity for head trauma wasn't hereditary, though Sadie 
was providing increasing evidence it might be a learned 
behavior. She patted his shoulders. "Do you want to come to 
dinner with us?" 
 
"I don't need to." He seemed--shy? No, awkward, and damn, 
who wouldn't be?  
 
"No, come with us." She curled up her hair and pinned it in 
place. Her ability to do that without a mirror was scary. 
"Besides, I don't think we have any food."  
 
Will had seemed embarrassed when they saw that the box of 
photo albums had been opened, and that they were splayed 
around the table. Mulder leaned over the open one. One of 
his, from his childhood, open to a picture of him and 
Samantha. He was eight, she was five, and they were on the 
beach. He smiled. Sadie looked like Sam, just a little; it 
was funny, she was built more like Scully, little and 
light, but her face was all Mulder, poor kid. "Is that your 
sister?" Will asked. 
 
"Yeah," Mulder said. "Samantha." 
 
"Is she coming here too?" 
 
Mulder cleared his throat. "She died. A long time ago." 
Will ducked his head, obviously embarrassed. Mulder put his 
hand on his shoulder. "Let's go get dinner." 
 
They had let William work the elevator; Level 2 was noisier 
than Level 3, with people standing in the hallway chatting, 
the doors to room standing open, or closed with notes 
tacked to them: "Your lab time is between 2-4 AM"; "We're 
watching *Doctor Who* in the shelter at 11 tonight"; "I got 
your box of organic groceries, it's in my quarters"; "I 
want you to double check today's Spanish translations." A 
few of the people seemed to recognize them, and there was a 
little hushed whispering. Mulder felt a little like a rock 
star. It was not a bad feeling. 
 
The dining room was big enough to seat twenty, maybe; there 
was a buffet in the corner with steam trays of food, and a 
tiny kitchen in the back, where two young women were 
leaning over a sheet of paper and debating the finer points 
of ammunition design while the dishwasher ran. Monica, 
Doggett and Isabel were sitting at a large table in the 
middle; Doggett saw them come in, and waved. "Dana! 
Mulder!" He stood and walked over to them. Mulder 
suppressed his customary ping of jealousy when Doggett 
kissed Scully's cheek, and accepted his warm handshake. 
Then Doggett put his hands on his hips and looked at 
William. "Well, there, Mister William. You certainly are a 
sight for sore eyes." He glanced up at Mulder and Scully. 
"It is still William, right?" 
 
"Yes, sir," William said politely.  
 
"He goes by Will," Scully said, putting her arm around 
Will's shoulder.  
 
"Sounds good," Doggett said. "My name's John, Will, and the 
last time I saw you, you could just about stand up holding 
onto your mom's couch. Seems you've grown some since then." 
 
Will smiled this time. "Yes, sir." 
 
"Well, get yourself something to eat, and come on. We're 
just talking, nothing formal." He gestured to the steam 
table. 
 
They settled in at the table with food. "Not that I'm 
complaining," Mulder said, "but are we really going to be 
eating boxed macaroni and cheese for the next few weeks?" 
 
"You're living in an underground compound, populated nearly 
entirely with geeks. You're lucky it's not the 
microwaveable kind," Monica said, spearing an overcooked 
piece of broccoli. 
 
"We have twelve cases of Spaghetti-Os hidden under a tarp 
on the storage level," Isabel said, rustling through a box 
next to her. "If anyone knew they were there, they'd be 
gone before the apocalypse. Hi, by the way." 
 
"Nice to meet you in person." Scully and Isabel had met a 
few times, but Mulder only knew her as a quiet presence on 
the conference calls. She was a little more energetic in 
reality. 
 
She began placing black, shiny objects on the tables. 
"These are your phones now--actually they're basically a 
half-phone, half-walkie-talkie thing, with a lot of bells 
and whistles. We hacked the iPhone 5G base. Which wasn't 
hard." She handed Scully one, then Mulder, then William. 
"We use the walkie frequency to communicate within the 
compound; it's shared, though, so you do the whole 
identify-by-ID code routine to call people." 
 
"I think we do it because it makes us feel cooler," Doggett 
said. 
 
"Has anyone formally complained about the lack of *Star 
Trek* doors yet?" Mulder said. 
 
"Yes. Also light sabers," Doggett grinned. "Honestly, 
Mulder, this is the strangest place I've ever lived."  
 
"I keep telling Josh they're totally impractical for the 
kind of hand-to-hand conflict we're anticipating--" Isabel 
looked up suddenly, realizing it wasn't a serious 
conversation, and cleared her throat. "Anyway. If you want 
to call from your own cell phone numbers, that's the green 
call icon; if you want to call from the secure identities, 
that's the orange call button; walkie-talkie is the blue 
button. Plus you can use them to access the person-locator, 
and most of the work that's happening in the compound; it 
doesn't have a lot of processor speed, but you can at least 
read results."  
 
Scully sighed. "I think I have to go call my mother."  
 
Six-fifteen here meant eight-fifteen in Baltimore; Mulder 
snorted. "Do you really want a report from bath time?" 
 
"I would be willing to take bets that Sadie will arrive in 
Montana not having bathed for a week," Scully said, and 
stood up. "I'll be right back." 
 
"So, Mulder," Doggett said conversationally. "What do you 
think of the place?" 
 
"Haven't seen much. Apart from the vague sensation that 
I've moved into an MIT dorm or possibly a really low-rent 
space station." 
 
"Funny," Monica said, "I'm pretty sure that was exactly the 
vibe we were going for." She glanced over at Will's plate; 
it was scraped clean, and he was trailing his fork through 
the remnants of cheese sauce. "If you're hungry, Will, go 
get more. Trust me, there's plenty." 
 
Will looked up at Mulder, and he couldn't help smiling; 
yes, actually, I am the person you should be asking whether 
you can do something. "Go on," he said. Will climbed out of 
his chair and walked back over to the steam table.  
 
"Mulder," Monica said quietly as soon as he was out of 
earshot. "What happened?" 
 
He sighed. "Is the girl, what's-her-name, Casey, talking?" 
 
"Yeah. I've got one of the security officers down with her 
now; she's giving a fairly thorough account of her actions, 
from what he said," Doggett said.  
 
"Well, if it includes cornering us in a back alley with 
William's address and then letting us nearly get shot up by 
a bunch of black-hat commandos, she's pretty much told you 
what happened." He took another bite of his macaroni. "OK, 
is there some sort of kitchen rota I can be put on? Because 
I'm too old to eat like a twenty-year-old anymore." 
 
"Once she's debriefed, we'll send you her statement to 
verify." Doggett flashed Monica a look. "I think we'll be 
confining her to quarters while we check the story out, but 
I'm not terribly worried about her as a security risk." 
 
"I'm glad someone isn't," Monica muttered. She stabbed her 
last piece of broccoli.  
 
"Mon--" 
 
"Never mind." She pushed the plate away from her. Will was 
back, his plate again buried in macaroni and cheese. With 
three token pieces of broccoli on the side. Mulder found 
himself thinking that he should remember to thank the Van 
de Kamps, and then realized that there were so many things 
wrong with that thought he wasn't even going to begin to 
deal with them. "So, seriously," he said, "I know Scully's 
going to be in the labs, but what is there to do around 
here?" 
 
Doggett shrugged. "We can pencil you in to take a couple 
shifts at the control level instead of me or Monica; I 
could use some more time to work on the supply count, I 
know that. Apart from that, there's a supply run happening 
tomorrow, if you want to be on it. I know your place is a 
little bare right now. And, well, there isn't a lot of 
competition for spots on the cooking schedule, so I guess 
you could take some of that on, if you really want." 
 
"Is it wrong to start calling this the restaurant at the 
end of the universe?" 
 
"Seems right to me," Isabel said. "Anyway, I'm going to get 
back to the lab. Can you tell Dr. Scully to come up when 
she's done with dinner? I want to run her through all the 
systems, and I know Matt wants to talk to her." She 
gathered up her box. "You have any technical problems, you 
call me on the walkie." 
 
Mulder nodded at her as she left, balancing a plate of 
food, probably for Matt, on top of her box. "Any other 
excitement, folks?" 
 
"I think you're the excitement." Doggett smiled at Will. 
"Congrats. You're the first kid to arrive." 
 
Will smiled politely. "Do I have things to do?" He looked 
up at Mulder. "I mean, like, is there anything I'm here 
for?" 
 
"Just to keep you safe," Mulder said. And also because 
possibly you can psychically perceive aliens, but that was 
a conversation he had to work up to. "You want to come on 
the supply run tomorrow?" 
 
"OK." He took a small bite of broccoli. "Um. Can I call my 
parents?" 
 
No, and you're never going to call them again. I'm your 
father now, he thought, and then forced his hands to 
unclench.  
 
Doggett cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, I don't think 
you can do that, Will. If the bad guys knew where you 
lived, they probably have your folks' phone tapped. We'll 
try to get them a message to let them know you're safe, but 
you can't call them; it might be traced. I'm sorry." 
 
Will looked down at his fork. "OK. Sorry." 
 
"Don't worry about it," Mulder forced himself to say. 
Because Scully was right, she usually was when it came to 
things that didn't involve aliens or zombies or something. 
That didn't mean he had to like it.  
 
Scully walked back into the room. "Love you too, Mom. Talk 
to you soon. Uh huh. Uh huh. OK. Bye." She sighed and hung 
up. "Well. Sadie did, in fact, take a bath tonight, though 
it was at five PM, for some reason. She is refusing to talk 
on the phone, or to allow Grammy to talk on the phone 
uninterrupted." 
 
"So, standard," Mulder said. 
 
"Basically. Where's Isabel?" 
 
"Lab. She says to meet her there."  
 
Scully looked down at her plate of cold, congealing 
macaroni and cheese. "You know, maybe I'll just head up." 
She looked over at Mulder, and he could see the question--
are you OK? 
 
He nodded. "Have fun with your new toys." 
 
"Thanks." She pushed her plate over towards him, and then 
stood, brushing her hand over Will's head on her way to the 
door.  
 
Will was engrossed in pushing the buttons on his new phone. 
"Cool," he said. 
 
"What?" Mulder leaned over to see the screen. 
 
"It's got Space Invaders on it." The little ship bounced 
back and forth, firing up at the descending attackers.  
 
Mulder looked pointedly at Doggett, who just grinned. "Like 
I was saying," he said, "this is the strangest place I've 
ever lived." 
 
*** 
 
10:46 PM Mountain Time 
 
Will was slumped on the couch with Mulder's copy of *I, 
Robot* in his hand when Mulder came out of the bathroom. 
His face was slack in sleep. OK, their sleeping children 
all looked like Scully; good to know. He sat down at the 
foot of the couch and watched him. They had spent the 
evening unpacking, placing the two boxes of books and all 
the photo albums on the small shelf in the living room. 
Will hadn't asked any more questions about the photo 
albums, and Mulder wished his first question hadn't been 
about Sam, hadn't been about his family at all, that he'd 
picked some cheerful, yet recent photo of the Scully clan, 
one that didn't have a dead sister in it but contained lots 
of cousins.  
 
After all that, Mulder had gone to be a responsible grown-
up and unpack his and Scully's clothes, and then stock the 
incredibly small bathroom with the toiletries Scully had 
sent ahead, while Will read. (He'd never read *I, Robot,* 
but had seen the terrible movie version; Mulder had almost 
delivered a little imperious monologue on the subject of 
bastardizing Asimov for profit, and then guessed that was 
not such a good idea to come across as hopelessly pedantic 
on his first day of fatherhood.) 
 
He sighed, and fought the temptation to carry Will to bed. 
He was a kid, nearly a teenager, old enough to want 
autonomy; the fact that all his parenting habits were set 
to preschooler was unhelpful. He reached out and ran his 
hand across Will's hair. "Will? Hey, buddy?" Will twisted 
into the arm of the couch for a moment, and then opened his 
eyes and blinked. "You should go sleep in bed. Couch's a 
bad habit to start."  
 
"Oh. Yeah, okay," Will said, and rubbed his eyes. 
 
"You want to come with me on the supply run tomorrow? 
Probably beats sitting around here doing nothing." He 
rubbed his shoulder gently.  
 
"Okay. Sorry about the book," he said, looking down at the 
new bend he'd put in the spine. 
 
"Meant to be read. Come on, go sleep." 
 
Will stood up and wandered towards the bedroom, but then 
stopped at the door, and looked a little embarrassed. "Oh. I 
didn't bring pajamas." 
 
For the first time, Mulder thought of Will packing--what 
had he thrown into that backpack? How had he decided what 
to bring? He sized Will up. "How tall are you?" 
 
"Five feet," Will said, which Mulder guessed was a 
rounding-up type answer. 
 
"Hold on, I'll get you something," Mulder said, and went 
into his room. Scully had packed a few pairs of sweatpants, 
and thankfully wasn't prone to girly colors; he found a 
pair of black ones and carried them out. "We'll buy you 
more clothes and things tomorrow when we're out," he said, 
and handed them over. 
 
"Thanks," Will said, and smiled up at him, a little 
awkwardly. Mulder contemplated hugging him for a moment, 
but then Will said, "Well, good night," and turned and went 
into the bedroom. Missed opportunity, but there was time to 
figure it out, he supposed. 
 
He lay down on the couch himself--yes, bad habit, but at 
least he was too old to be expected to break them. Besides, 
he was waiting up for Scully, he told himself, as he picked 
up the book Will had creased and began to read. 
 
He woke from his doze to the feeling of someone climbing 
all over him. He was a breath from saying "What do you 
want, Sadie?" before he realized that, first, Sadie was in 
a different state, and second, this person weighed a little 
too much to be Sadie. Scully rested her head on his chest. 
"Hi," he said. "What time is it?" 
 
"One thirty," she said, and kicked off her shoes. 
 
"Hmm. How was it?" 
 
She sighed, put one hand on his shoulder. "It's all a mess, 
Mulder, you wouldn't believe. I mean, Isabel's brilliant, 
and Matt's been doing amazing work, but it's like no one 
with any organizational sense has ever been up there." He 
made an affirmative noise. "It's bad enough that I'm 
thinking about getting Wendy out here, honestly. We just 
need more hands." 
 
"Sounds good." 
 
She paused and stroked her hand down his side. "Is Will 
OK?" 
 
"Yeah. He stole your clothes, though." 
 
She tipped her head up. "Are you OK?" 
 
He kept his eyes shut. "Why wouldn't I be?" 
 
"Yeah, fine." She pushed off him and stood up. "I'm going 
to sleep in the bed. God, I can't believe I'm this stiff." 
 
"Sadly, I'm pretty sure we're old," he said, and groaned as 
he rolled himself off the couch. 
 
*** 
 
December 11, 2012 
9:45 AM Mountain Time 
Montana Route 93, Northbound 
 
Mulder hated pickup trucks. He'd driven one for a few 
months when he was in hiding; it had been good cover, and 
convenient, but they were uncomfortable as all hell, and 
just seemed uncivilized. He realized this made him an 
unforgivable snob. He was OK with this.  
 
Will, on the other hand, looked perfectly comfortable in 
the cab. How far had his life in Wyoming been from what it 
would have been in Virginia, with them? Don't think that 
way, he lectured himself. Life with you would have been 
life on the road and in danger. He was safe. He's happy. 
But it didn't stop him from driving faster than he really 
should, and wondering what Will was thinking every time 
they passed a ranch. 
 
They had been driving an hour and a half, and were nearly 
to Polson, a resort town north of Stark. There was a large 
and elaborate rotation schedule for who went where on 
supply runs; no one had been to Polson in a while, since it 
was so much further than Missoula and there was too much to 
do at the shelter, but since Mulder didn't have a real 
schedule yet they wanted to take advantage of it. At least 
they were doing something useful, he thought, reflecting on 
the giant shopping list he had in his phone. They were 
maybe half an hour out, and neither he nor Will had spoken 
since they'd gotten on the road.  
 
Time to break the silence, he supposed. Mulder cleared his 
throat, to give Will some warning. "We need a cover story." 
 
"A what?" 
 
"I mean, I don't think anyone is going to be watching us. 
But just in case, we need to have a story about who we are 
and what we're doing." 
 
"Oh." Will looked out the window. "So what's the story?" 
 
Mulder tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. "My 
first thought was father-son camping trip, but the shopping 
list has too many electrical things for that to be 
plausible. So I'm thinking, new cabin, having to set it up 
for vacation, staying through the holidays." 
 
Will thought for a minute. "What about your accent?" 
 
"What do you mean?" 
 
Will gave him a look as if the answer were obvious. "You 
don't sound like you're from around here. I do." 
 
He chuckled. "That's a good question." He thought. "I'm a 
professor in Bozeman. Married a local girl. Never lost the 
back-east accent. How's that?" 
 
"Works." Will grinned. At least he liked playing spy. The 
truck grumbled on while Mulder tried to think of other 
things to say. 
 
Will's voice was sudden and quiet when it came. "You said 
you drove all night." 
 
Mulder startled. So this was where they were going. Well, 
he'd used the locked-in-a-car effect on Scully for years, 
he might as well be prepared to have it used on him. "Yeah, 
we did. From Baltimore." 
 
"Is that--is that where you live?" He was studiously 
staring out the window, avoiding eye contact. 
 
"That's where your grandmother lives. Scully's mom. We left 
Sadie with her." He flickered his eyes over Will, but then 
made himself turn back to the road. "We live in Virginia. 
Scully works in Richmond, but we live out west of the city. 
In the middle of nowhere." 
 
"Oh." Another long pause. "What do you do?" 
 
Mulder consciously relaxed his hand on the wheel. "Scully's 
a doctor, a neurologist these days, though she was a 
pathologist when we met. I consult for the FBI a little, 
but mostly I stay home with Sadie." Will seemed prone to 
long pauses; was it nervousness, or a generalized shyness, 
or something else? Mulder wondered which of the obvious 
questions he'd go for.  
 
"What did you do at the FBI?" 
 
This was a story. "I started out as a profiler for a while; 
that's what I do now, sometimes. But your mother and I--" 
He caught Will's little tense at that but plowed on 
forward. "We worked together in our own division. We worked 
the weird cases. Anything people couldn't figure out, they 
sent to us." 
 
"Like that show *Fringe?* Really?" 
 
He smiled. "Less Leonard Nimoy, and your mom's hotter than 
Anna Torv, but basically yeah."  
 
Will smiled to himself, fleetingly; Mulder caught it in the 
reflection in the side view mirror. He spent the next ten 
miles trying to work up the courage to do something 
fatherly, like ruffle his hair, but then the turnoff for 
the Walmart was here. 
 
They parked, and Mulder checked the clip on his gun and 
reholstered it. "Like I said, I'm not expecting trouble. 
But be paranoid, when in doubt. Stick by me, and if anyone 
bothers you, or you get a bad vibe, let me know. You 
ready?" 
 
"Yeah." 
 
Mulder reached for the door handle. 
 
"Wait," Will said. He gestured at Mulder's hand. "You 
married a local girl. But you don't have a ring." 
 
"Good catch." Mulder dug through his pocket, and pulled out 
his key chain. On one of the rings was a plain gold band. He 
twisted it off and put it on. 
 
"You don't normally wear it?" 
 
Mulder grinned. "I'm not married." 
 
Will looked a little shocked. "You aren't?" 
 
"It's a very long story. I'll tell you it sometime. Come 
on, the car's freezing." 
 
The Walmart was a little surreal. The list was short, but 
then Will needed more clothes, and he thought they should 
probably get some stuff to keep them occupied in the 
compound besides two boxes of books and whatever Will had 
packed, and suddenly, as if in a fugue state, he found 
himself at the cash register, hoping that Sam Anderson's 
card didn't have a limit, because he was pretty sure the 
flat screen TV would have maxed it out if the Wii 2.0 with 
extra gameplay functionality hadn't. Will grinned at the 
cart like it was suddenly Christmas, which, well, it almost 
was, and he hadn't bought him any Christmas presents in a 
decade, so to hell with it. 
 
At Radio Shack, he bought all the little fiddly bits on his 
list ("lots to fix at the cabin," he said to the clerk) and 
was waiting at the counter when Will appeared with a radio 
controlled car and a hopeful look in his eye. Mulder sighed 
in as put-upon a manner as he could manage, and said, "Go 
get another one for your sister." Will grinned, dropped it 
in the counter, and brought back what appeared to be a pink 
camouflage 4x4. Mulder shook his head. And handed over the 
card. 
 
Will had opinions at the hardware store, which was 
pleasant, since his few experiences taking Sadie to Home 
Depot had resulted in carnage and a lot of disgruntled 
employees. And going through a grocery store with someone 
old enough to have impulse control was a totally foreign 
experience, though Mulder was pretty sure the three pound 
bag of peanut butter M&Ms in the cart was Will's doing. On 
the drive back to the compound, they put the bag between 
them, and a tube of Pringles, and munched in companionable 
silence.  
 
*** 
 
3:37 PM Mountain Time 
Stark, Montana 
 
Back at the shelter, they had unpacked, set up the 
technology, and then Mulder had left William to his own 
devices, which he was fairly certain was going to include 
figuring out how to work the Wii. He'd put a few lasagnas 
in the oven, including, against his own better instincts, a 
vegetarian one, the need for which he had derived from the 
six boxes of something called "buffalo nuggets" and three 
different brands of soy bacon on the list. Honestly, it was 
a crime against humanity, but he bought them, because he 
was a good little soldier these days, apparently. Having 
then found himself with nothing to do, he'd ended up at the 
gym. He'd been surprised that the gym was on the lab level, 
but Matt had explained, sheepishly, that it was because the 
gym was functional; the treadmill, the bikes, the 
elliptical, even the weight machines were all converted to 
charge batteries, generally commercial-grade standard 
batteries to run small electronics in case of a broader 
power failure. They tried to discourage folks from going 
for jogs on the surface, to avoid being too visible, and 
they needed the stored power; this way they killed two 
birds with one stone. He pushed himself into his third 
mile. It wasn't so bad, running inside, but he'd go crazy 
if he had to do it for the next two weeks. 
 
His phone kept chirping, with little announcements--Doggett 
checking the security rotations, Monica coordinating with 
the translation and international relations staff, the 
science geeks passing results back and forth. At least half 
of those calls seemed to be directed to DKS-4671, or 
originate from her; he loved hearing her voice over the 
little speaker, calling meetings, asking for copies of 
progress reports, redirecting people. There was something 
terminally warped in him that loved her as the queen of a 
fleet of mad scientists. 
 
He rinsed his face in the gym sink and stared in the 
mirror. Will really didn't look like him much; Scully was 
maybe right about the cheekbones, but that was it. The 
phone chirped again: "DKS-4671 to IRY-8345. I'm going to be 
in the med lab, and I need a little time to work through 
these reports. Can we hold off for a while?" 
 
Isabel's response was quick. "That's fine, Dr. Scully. How 
about at four-thirty?" 
 
"Sounds good." There was just the slightest tension in her 
voice. Now would probably be a really great time to go 
bother her. 
 
The labs started just down the hall from the gym. They were 
little sealed rooms, but the doors had been taken off of 
most of them, so people could yell across the hall to each 
other. Which they seemed to do. There was music blaring 
form about half of them. A dark-skinned woman walked out of 
one of the open doors and right into him. "Sorry," she 
said, not glancing up from her phone, where she was poking 
a file.  
 
"No problem," he said. "Where's the med lab?" 
 
"1F," she said, gesturing down the hall and wandering away.  
 
He could see why Scully had picked it; it still had a door, 
and the lab next door was quiet. He opened the door and 
poked his head in. "FWM-8201 to DKS-4671," he said. 
 
She was leaning over the workbench, eating a granola bar, 
with her face in profile to the door. She didn't even 
glance up. "How was your supply run?" 
 
"Four hours of driving through nowhere, punctuated by a 
trip to Walmart. It was fascinating. I picked up some 
stuff. Oh, and more frappacinos." Better to foreground the 
thing she'd be interested in. He shut the door behind him 
and went to stand behind her. She was flipping through a 
stack of paper reports. Designs for the aerosol 
distributors of virus-neutralizer; analysis of different 
levels of sound waves that have the ability to disrupt the 
viral distribution patterns; test results for various 
chemical compounds against the cloned alien tissue samples 
they had; schematics for switching signalers for keeping 
the frequencies of the entire network clear. 
 
She ran her hand over her neck. "It's frustrating. 
Everything's at eighty to maybe ninety percent of done, and 
they're just...fiddling. It's like no one here's ever done 
applied research. I don't care if you've got the most 
elegant possible solution to the problem, if it's not ready 
by December 19th, we're all *dead,* so just finish the 
goddamned structural components." 
 
He leaned back against the workbench and watched her tired 
face. The lines by her mouth were set, but her eyes were 
soft despite their focus. "Did you get lunch?" 
 
"No, and I'm starting to doubt I'm going to get dinner 
either." 
 
"We'll bring you something." 
 
She sighed and kept turning pages. "What did you make?" 
 
"Lasagna." 
 
"They'll be glad to have you." 
 
"At least I'm good for something." 
 
She looked up at him then, and reached out a hand to rest 
on his chest for a moment. He covered it with his, and she 
smiled. "Did John find you?" she said, turning back to her 
pile, turning pages one-handed. 
 
"Not yet." 
 
She pulled out a file folder from beneath the stack of 
reports. "They're keeping this classified to just the four 
of us--they aren't even sending it to Skinner. It's what 
that girl brought out of the Consortium compound on the 
memory sticks. I haven't read it yet, but it needs to be 
gone through. You up to it?" 
 
He took the folder. "You got chairs in here?" 
 
Twenty minutes later, he closed the file and sighed. He had 
found a folding chair, and was sitting with his feet 
propped on some sort of large centrifuge-looking thing. 
"They've gotten really stupid lately." 
 
"Really?" She looked over at him from her position at the 
workbench.  
 
He dropped the file to the floor. "There are sixty pages of 
technical specs that I can't follow, but I don't think they 
look like anything we haven't figured out from testing of 
the samples we got. Probably you'll be able to narrow your 
focus a little better, but that's it. There's no big battle 
plan with an X marking the spot of alien invasion, so 
that's a loss. They're on to us in Andorra and Canberra, 
but nowhere else, which is insane, because our security is 
so lax in Africa that it's like we're holding a neon sign 
saying Alien Counterinsurgency At Work." 
 
Scully snorted. "Europe and Australia. Why would we protect 
the developing world? I think they're the type who think 
it's expendable." 
 
"Well, joke's on them, I guess. Andorra is highly 
compromised; nobody's inside yet, but they've tapped 
internal communications. We should have a staff meeting 
about how to handle that. They've got a series of shelters 
set up, but they're only going to have about two hundred 
and fifty people in them. And there's a snippet of 
something high level that seems to imply that only one of 
the shelters is actually going to survive, that the rest 
are cannon fodder, though I can't be sure about that." 
 
"Close enough." Scully took off her glasses and rubbed the 
bridge of her nose. "They were smarter than this back 
before El Rico, right?" 
 
"Definitely. Remind me to send the faceless guys a card for 
New Year's."  
 
His phone crackled, but then there was a slight pause as 
the line remained open. "Um. WVK-7520 to...." 
 
He and Scully reached for their phones simultaneously; she 
got to hers first. "Go ahead, Will." 
 
"Um. Sorry, I know you're working." 
 
"That's fine. Are you OK?" 
 
"Yeah, I'm just. Um. Lost." 
 
"Lost? Are you still in the compound?" 
 
"Yeah." Will paused again. "There's a tank?" 
 
Mulder snorted and pulled up the person-locator program on 
his phone. He put in Will's number, and a little blinking 
dot appeared in the middle of a set of squares, labelled 
STORAGE B, R7. He nodded. Scully said into her phone, 
"We've got you on the locator. Mulder will come find you. 
Just stay where you are, OK, Will?" 
 
"OK. Thanks. Sorry." 
 
"No problem."  
 
He brushed his hand over her back as he went to leave. 
"We'll bring you dinner. And you have to sit down and eat 
it and be social." 
 
She leaned back into the touch. "Sounds like a plan. Maybe 
around 5:30? I should be done with Isabel by then." 
 
"Deal." He kissed the side of her head, and caught the 
faint smile at the corner of her mouth as she opened the 
folder to find the technical specs. He slipped his phone 
back into his pocket, and went to find his lost son. 
 
The storage levels had ceilings thirty feet high, no 
interior walls, and floors marked in a big grid pattern 
with electrical tape. The phone beeped out little 
directions to where he was going, but he didn't need them 
after a few minutes, because there was a dull metallic 
*thump thump thump* resonating through the space. He 
followed it, until he found Will, bouncing a baseball off, 
yes, a tank, and catching it in a gloved hand. Mulder stood 
back and watched him for a moment. "Nice form," he said 
finally, unable to keep still any longer.  
 
Will turned around. "Thanks," he said, and twisted the ball 
in his glove. 
 
"Do you play?" Mulder asked. 
 
Will nodded. "My coach says I can pitch next year." He 
threw again, a high arc, and the ball ricocheted off the 
angled side of the tank towards Mulder. He caught it, the 
sting of the leather against his palm sharp and sudden. It 
had been years since he played ball with anyone, longer 
since he played without a glove. He threw the ball in the 
air and caught it again, then threw it casually back to 
Will. Will looked at him for a brief moment, considering, 
and then pitched it back to him, slow and straight. 
 
Mulder caught it; a little off center, but pretty clearly 
in the strike zone. "What position did you play before?" He 
lobbed it back; really, a gimme pitch, but Will had the 
instinct, put his glove right where the ball would be. 
 
He shrugged. "Shortstop."  
 
The next pitch was harder, and closer to center. Mulder 
returned it a little faster. "How's your batting?" 
 
Will had a struggling-not-to-brag look on his face. "I was 
team MVP last year." He threw the ball in the air once, and 
then back at Mulder. 
 
"Not bad." He threw as fast as he could; his shoulder 
twinged, and the ball went a little wild, but Will managed 
to get his glove around it. "I played right field." 
 
Will seemed to consider this for a moment, and returned the 
ball with a slow, gentle curve. "You gotta have someone in 
right field." 
 
His laugh was involuntary. "You are exceptionally polite," 
he said, twisting the ball in his aching palm. 
 
"I'm from Wyoming." Will blinked, as he realized what he 
had said.

Mulder looked down at the ball. "I suppose you are." When 
he looked up again, Will was watching him warily, trying to 
gauge just how badly he had screwed up. And as much as 
Mulder wanted to somehow assert his paternal authority, he 
couldn't do that to this kid standing in front of him, this 
kid who didn't even know him. His next throw started off 
wildly off center, but Will stepped into it, and it somehow 
found his glove. They passed the ball back and forth for a 
few beats. He had to say something. "Did your dad teach you 
to play?" he finally choked out. 
 
Will stared at the ball. "Yeah."  
 
Of the many minor betrayals of William's adoption, this was 
the first to be made concrete, and Mulder felt it. Sure, he 
was the conquering-hero father, but another man had taught 
his son to play baseball. And was, apparently, good at it, 
judging from Will's performance. It was just wrong, and he 
didn't have any words to make it right. He looked up again 
at Will, who seemed pleased to, at last, be able to throw 
the ball, rather than standing there waiting for this--he 
should admit it to himself--this stranger to be ready to 
catch. His returning pitch this time wasn't even close to 
well-aimed, and he felt something in his shoulder crackle 
as he threw. It arced over Will's head, and bounced away 
behind the tank. "I'll go get it," Will said. 
 
Mulder's palm was burning from the friction of the ball, 
and his shoulder was making itself heard. He sat down and 
leaned back against the tank, closed his eyes. He heard 
Will's return, quiet and slow; he thought they'd just 
barely gotten past the unsure stage, but here it was again. 
He patted the floor next to him, without opening his eyes, 
and felt Will sit. When he opened his eyes, Will was 
fidgeting with the ball, scraping his fingernails over the 
stitching, and Mulder remembered what it was like to be a 
kid trying to fix his parents, and what a failure it was 
always set up to be.  
 
"None of this is your fault," he said quietly. "You 
probably know that intellectually, but that doesn't make it 
any easier to believe it. It's just that I have missed you 
for eleven years, every day, but in a sort of vague, 
imagined way, you know what I mean?" Will nodded, never 
looking away from the ball. "And all of a sudden nothing 
about this is abstract. It's all very real, and that means 
it's hurting. But it doesn't mean I'm not incredibly happy 
that you're here, and safe, and that you've been happy and 
loved." He cleared his throat. He wished he could ask Will 
for something, some sense that he, too, had been missing 
them his whole life, but that wasn't something he could 
demand. It would make him feel a shitload better, though. 
 
Will was quiet for a good minute, and Mulder suppressed 
every instinct he had to fill the space with talking, with 
something. When he spoke, finally, Will's voice was quiet. 
"I never knew what to think about you. Either of you. I 
mean--" He paused. "I didn't think about having another 
father." 
 
Sure, kid, twist the knife, he thought, but didn't say 
anything. 
 
"There wasn't a father listed on the birth certificate. My 
original one." He shook his head. "Which I'm guessing now 
is totally fake." 
 
"Scully needed to cover your tracks. Make sure you couldn't 
be traced back to either of us, if we wanted you to be 
safe." Which worked so very well, he thought, thinking of 
the sheer amount of bullets scattered across the Van de 
Kamp's front lawn yesterday morning. 
 
"I don't know, you think, no father on the birth 
certificate, mother giving up a nine-month old; something's 
wrong, something's really wrong with her, you know? Maybe 
she died, but it didn't say she died. Maybe she had cancer 
or something and was going to die and didn't have any 
family. Maybe she was, like, a drug addict or a criminal or 
something. Or--" And Will smiled slightly. "Or maybe she's, 
like in the CIA or something, and has to go undercover in 
Latin America for the next decade, and didn't want to have 
her baby raised in the jungle by people with bones in their 
noses and poison frogs and whatever." 
 
Mulder couldn't help the laugh, which started off short and 
barky but turned into a real laugh when he saw Will's 
honest delight in the fact that they were laughing 
together. "I mean, wrong government agency, and I think the 
worst we ever saw in our fugitive days was black widow 
spiders, but that one's not bad." 
 
"I just..." Will shook his head. "I never thought about 
having another family. Like, a real family, with parents 
and a sister and..." He threw the ball in the air and 
caught it. "History." 
 
He took a deep breath and forced the right thing out of his 
mouth. "You didn't have a choice in whether or not we found 
you, and if you would rather we hadn't, we can act like 
that." 
 
Will looked over at him, and arched one perfect little 
Scully eyebrow. Goddamn, their kid. "I'm in an underground 
bunker. With a tank." 
 
Mulder knocked his knuckles against the metal. "The tank is 
kind of awesome." He looked back at Will. His hair was 
hanging in front of his forehead, and, without thinking, he 
brushed it away. Will smiled at him, and that was it; 
Mulder put his arm around him and pulled him in close.  
 
Will pulled away after a moment, but didn't seem to be 
brushing him off. "Um. Can I ask something?" 
 
"Anything."  
 
"What's happening? I mean, why did commandos come try to 
kill my parents? My other parents? Or, well, all of you? 
And why are we in a bunker with a tank?" 
 
Mulder sighed. "OK, but this story is going to sound 
totally crazy, and you're going to want to go back to your 
normal parents immediately upon hearing me tell it." Will 
just nodded. Mulder thought for a moment about the best way 
to pitch it, and went for direct. "Aliens. Aliens are going 
to invade early on the 21st, and they have a plan that 
would basically wipe out the human race. The only humans 
who know are either working with us, or working with the 
aliens to try to save themselves. We're not going to let it 
happen. That's the short version." 
 
"Seriously?" 
 
"Seriously." Mulder waited for some sort of doubt, 
question, argument, something.  
 
Will looked around him, at the rows and rows of military 
equipment, as if assessing their odds. He nodded solemnly. 
"Awesome." 
 
He smiled. Will was eleven. Aliens seemed totally plausible 
at eleven. Plus, well, he couldn't discount that William 
had apparently had the spooky mojo back in the day, so this 
might seem extra plausible to him. He kept his arm around 
Will, wishing he never had to let him go. But then the 
boy's stomach growled, loudly. Mulder sighed. "Hey, I 
promised your mom we'd bring her dinner. You want to go see 
what's up in the labs?" 
 
Will nodded and stood up. He threw the ball in the air and 
caught it as it fell back down again. "Let's go."