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[XFVCU] 1x07 Prism
An XFVCU Collaboration
Copyright 2003


DISCLAIMER: Characters not ours.
ARCHIVE: Yes, just keep our names, headers, and footers.
RATING: PG13.
SPOILERS/TIMEFRAME: Set eighteen months after The Truth.
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Post-series, casefile, XFVCU.
SUMMARY: A killer with a penchant for games poses a challenge to
the entire team - and a crisis for one of their number.
VIRTUAL SERIES SITE: http://xfvcu.deslea.com
AUTHORS' SITES: See the notes at the end.
FEEDBACK: xfvcu@deslea.com


NOTE: This story is a collaborative effort by Deslea,
CindyET, Emily M, Eodrakken Quicksilver, Lara Means, and
Maidenjedi. The "Prism" of the title is twofold - the different
view of the perpetrator by each agent, and the different view of
the agents by the authors. Writing credits are listed in full at
the end.



Her name was Yolanda.

He will think of her at odd moments throughout his life.
Sometimes he will see himself as her victim, held tight in her
embrace as she draws his life away. Sometimes he will be her
cohort, watching as she takes one life after another, basking in
horrified delight and imagining that one day she will derive from
it the union she craves. Sometimes he will be her lover, sinking
into her, filling her with his seed and wishing it would take
root inside her and make her human once more.

Sometimes they will be what they really were - adversaries,
locked so deep in each others' heads it was as though he was
inside her. Those times, he will think of her that last day, and
he will know that it was the only thing to be done, but he will
never accept that it was right. It was wrong, and he will log it
with a thousand other wrongs and never forget that it was wrong.

It is a miserable excuse for integrity. He knows this. But
when she reaches out to him from within the recesses of his
faltering mind in the final moments of his life, he will be glad
that he held fast to it anyway. He will thank her for
strengthening his resolve.

And then he will take her hand, and he will meld with her once
more.


[2]


Somewhere, a cellphone was ringing.

"It's not mine," Diana mumbled.

Jeffrey groaned. "It's five a.m.," he protested. "Who the fuck
wants me at this hour?" He pulled himself up out of bed and
picked up his jacket off the floor. The ring grew louder as he
got it out of his pocket. "Yeah," he said, stumbling back into
bed and pulling the covers around him.

"It's Brad. Where are you?"

"Diana's," he said. "She says she hates you."

Follmer made a sound of amusement. "We've got a case. Body
found up in Baltimore in the water. Want me to swing by and pick
you up?"

"Thanks," Jeffrey said, pleasantly surprised. They were on
easier terms these days, but still, they tended to keep their
boundaries up, even now. "That would be good."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes." He hung up.

Diana was already up, pulling on her dressing gown. "I'll make
coffee," she said.

"Oh, Diana, go back to sleep," he said, knowing it was useless.

"I'm awake now. May as well get moving."

He made a gesture of defeat. "Thank you," he said, and he
showered and dressed as quickly as he could.

By the time he emerged, she was dressed, the kitchen smelled
appealingly of coffee, and she was typing on the computer,
smiling in the light of the screen. "Alex says hi," she said
over her shoulder.

"Just Alex?" he said, gulping his drink down.

"They had a late night. Some kind of political dinner. And
Marita's not a morning person - especially now."

"That VA fundraiser. Yeah." He nodded, taking his cup back to
the kitchen. "What's on the agenda for you two today?"

"UFO sightings in Alabama. Almost certainly a false report -
we've been there before."

"Hack work, then."

"Pretty much. We're taking it easy, heading out on a nine
o'clock flight."

"Think of me while I'm slumming it in Baltimore," he said as
headlights shone in through the windows. "There's my ride."

"Will do," she said, kissing him when he leaned down on his way
past.

He let himself out.


[3]


"So. What is it, and why is it ours?"

"Similarity to a case we had a couple of years ago," Follmer
said, keeping his eyes on the road. "A man drove his car over a
drawbridge into the Potomac. Witnesses say there was a woman
with him. She wasn't found, but when they fished him out, there
was bruising on his ankle. As though he'd been pulled down."

"Do we have an ID?" Jeffrey wondered.

"Going by the licence plates, guy's name is Andrew Gawler. He
works for the Environmental Protection Agency. He's been in the
news a bit lately, speaking out about clean water."

"Where's the connection?"

He looked at his partner, askance, but then the lines of his
face eased out. "Sorry, Jeffrey. I forgot. This one came down
the pipe while you were...away." He cleared his throat. "It's a
carbon copy of a case a couple of years ago. Guy named Carl
Wormus, also an EPA guy, also with a bee in his bonnet about
water purity, murdered in identical circumstances."

"We didn't catch the killer?"

"Not in any formal sense. But according to Monica, it was
Shannon McMahon. She admitted to it pretty openly. Something
about averting contamination of the water supply. I'm not clear
on all of the specifics - I wasn't in on the operation until just
after that - but she's emailing us the report."

Jeffrey frowned. "Shannon's gone respectable these days,
though, hasn't she? She was court-martialled for breaching her
security clearance if I remember rightly."

Follmer nodded. "They backed down and gave her an honourable
discharge, I think. But we know she gave information to Knowle
Rohrer about the Buchanan case. She's not above suspicion."

"But something this blatant-"

"Oh, I know. I don't think it was Shannon. I think someone's
gone out of their way to create an X File." He pulled in to a
gas station. "I need to fill up. Want anything?"

Jeffrey shook his head. "Thanks."

Follmer took his time paying, and stocked up on candy while he
was there. Despite his refusal, Jeffrey had a sweet tooth, and
Brad was trying very hard to get along with him. Fighting simply
took too much time away from the job, and these days, they needed
all the time they could get.

"So are we going to have any problems with the local P.D.?"
Jeffrey asked when he got back in the car.

"Doesn't look like it. The diver who fished out the body also
worked the Wormus case. He was the one who suggested it might be
one for us. The local precinct is swamped, and they were happy
for an excuse to palm it off."

Jeffrey shot him a look. "It's too easy."

Follmer gave a single nod, but he didn't reply.


[4]


"Medically, it's an open and shut case," the coroner said,
peering up at the crane that worked even now on pulling the dead
man's car from the Potomac. "Hardly worth getting out of bed
for."

"Someone could have mentioned that," Jeffrey muttered.

"Has an autopsy been performed?" Follmer wondered, suppressing a
grin.

"Nope. Accident happened at two-thirty. By the time I got
here, the decision had already been made to call the feds. He's
halfway to Quantico by now. But I can tell you right now, it's
not rocket science. He went in the drink, someone held him down
by the ankle, and he drowned." He shrugged. "Going by the
pattern of the bruising, I'd say your suspect is a very strong
woman, or possibly a man with very small hands. That tallies
with the witnesses - they say there was a woman riding with him."

"Surely the perpetrator would have drowned in normal
circumstances, too, though," said Follmer. He wanted the coroner
to suggest a hybrid perpetrator before he did. That would go
down better with Jeffrey.

The coroner held up his hands. "I stay out of that creepy shit.
As far as I'm concerned, your perp was a scuba diver. If that
makes me a fool, it also makes me one who can sleep at night."

Jeffrey was smirking.

Follmer gritted his teeth. "Well. Thank you."

"No problem. I'm going back to bed. Detective Portia over
there will tell you anything else you need to know."

"Very smooth, Brad," Jeffrey said as an aside as the coroner
departed.

Follmer shrugged. "Just covering all the bases."

"It could be a scuba diver, you know."

"Yeah, she pulled a tank out of her pocket and put it on while
the guy wasn't looking. Come on."

Jeffrey shrugged, mimicking him. "Just covering all the bases."

He ground his teeth again, but said nothing.


[5]


"We were lucky," Detective Portia said, leading them to the
wreckage of the car. "Usually there's virtually nothing useable
at a water scene. Hair and fibre is lost or contaminated,
fingerprints washed away. But this time...we got lucky."

"There's a surprise," said Jeffrey, with a sidelong look at his
partner.

Portia was oblivious to the sarcasm. "It was. We got an
earring. It was caught on the upholstery."

"A distinctive design, by any chance?"

"Quite. A garnet set into silver. The sort of thing you'd pick
up at a flea market. Thirty bucks at a guess."

Follmer nodded in recognition. Monica used to buy things like
that. "Can we see it?"

Portia nodded. "Right this way."


[6]


"Your name is Shannon McMahon, you're thirty-eight years old,
and you're formerly a Master Sergeant in the USMC, honourably
discharged last year, is that correct?"

The dark-haired woman before them sat back, crossing her arms.
"Honourable only in name. I'm pretty disreputable in enlisted
circles these days. They don't take too kindly to breaking
ranks." She shrugged a little. "What's this about?"

Follmer leaned forward. "Miss McMahon, two years ago you
disclosed to Agent Doggett that you killed Carl Wormus." Her
easy expression faltered, but she merely waited for him to
continue, and he didn't press her. She'd been careful not to
admit to the crime before witnesses, and there was no forensic
evidence. That was a case they'd had to forfeit even after she
resurfaced. "I am not going to ask you to comment on that
incident at this time. However, are you aware that an identical
murder took place overnight?"

"Identical in what sense?" Shannon wondered.

"Same place, same M.O., same victim profile. Can you account
for your whereabouts last night?"

"I was a speaker at a fundraising dinner for medical relief for
test subjects in Washington. It went late. Several hundred
people can vouch for me until eleven p.m. Even a couple of your
own people, in fact - the Kryceks were there. Marita was a
speaker as well."

Follmer glanced at Jeffrey, wondering whether they or Diana had
mentioned the event. Jeffrey gave a slight nod. "What about
after that, Miss McMahon?"

"A group of us sat up in the bar, drinking. Gulf vets, mostly.
It was your standard war stories bull session - how we worked
hard and fucked hard and don't we have balls of steel. All that
crap. At least a dozen people could vouch for me until five this
morning."

"Can you provide their names?"

Shannon nodded. She rummaged on her desk for a notepad, found
one, and began to write, consulting her PDA from time to time.
"So am I a suspect?" she wondered. She didn't seem particularly
concerned about the idea.

Follmer glanced at Jeffrey. Gave a single nod.

Jeffrey took the lead. "Assuming your alibi checks out, no,
you're not. Our thought is more that someone is trying to create
a case matching yours - possibly with a view to framing or
discrediting you. Do you have any enemies?"

Shannon laughed. "Agent Spender, I'm a test survivor who
advocates for veterans victimised by our government. I have
about two hundred million enemies in this country alone. You of
all people should know that."

Jeffrey flushed, and the nerves in his cheek made his last,
residual scarring flicker, but he went on regardless. "Anyone
specific?"

She shrugged. "No-one springs to mind. Anyone active in the
test survivor community would have known about the dinner, and
that rules out just about everyone. If the objective was to
frame me, they didn't do their staff work."

Follmer frowned. It occurred to him that it might be a job from
within - a clumsy, easily disproven attempt to frame Shannon that
might then be blamed on her enemies to discredit *them*. "Who
would we talk to for more information about the dinner? Who
organised it?"

"Lots of people, but you could start with my aide. She's my
eyes and ears. Her name is Yolanda Wainwright." Shannon glanced
down at her watch. "You can use this office to speak to her if
you wish, but I need to leave you. I have a meeting upstairs."

Both the partners nodded and rose. "Thank you," said Follmer.
"Before you go, can I just ask if this is familiar to you at
all?" He pulled the evidence bag with the earring from his
pocket and handed it to her.

Shannon's eyelids flickered.

"Not at all. Sorry."

Follmer shrugged. "It's not a problem," he said easily. "Could
you have this aide of yours sent in to talk to us?"

"Of course," said Shannon. Her face was bland. Inscrutable.
She looked from one to the other one last time, and then she left
them.


[7]


"What do you think?"

Follmer looked down at the earring. "She knows where this came
from. Beyond that, it's hard to know. I can't help thinking, if
she was part of this she'd be smarter about it."

Jeffrey nodded. "So what are we looking for here?"

"Either someone very stupid, or very smart, depending on what
they were trying to achieve."

"Either way, it has to be someone who knows what Shannon did to
that guy two years ago."

"Right."

They were interrupted by the door opening behind them. "Agents
Follmer and Spender?"

They turned. The voice belonged to a woman, standing patiently
in the doorway. Dark hair, not as solid as Shannon. Younger -
maybe ten years younger.

"Ms Wainwright?" Follmer said.

"That's right. Miss McMahon said you wanted to see me. Sit,"
she added. They complied, and she did the same, coming around
Shannon's desk to sit at the seat her employer had vacated.
"What's this about?"

"How long have you worked for Miss McMahon?" Jeffrey asked,
bypassing the question completely.

"Twelve years, on and off. She was my commanding officer in the
first Gulf War," she said. "I got a medical discharge last year,
after the news broke, and I needed a job. Shannon had just
started working for Veterans' Affairs, and she gave me one."

"You're a test subject?" Jeffrey said kindly.

Yolanda nodded.

"What sort?" Follmer said roughly. He didn't like to do it, but
Jeffrey didn't leave him much choice. Damn the way he lost his
edge with them. It happened every goddamn time.

He'd expected coldness from Yolanda, maybe defensive anger, but
she looked at him with sudden warmth. Almost as though she
approved. It puzzled him.

"I'm a supersoldier," she said. "Version 2.0, Shannon calls it.
The Gulf War model. That was what prompted her to tell Marita
to start with, you know. She found out what they were going to
do in the fall of 1990, and she talked until she found someone
who would listen. Marita started digging, told your deputy
director, and the rest, as they say, is history."

Ignoring Jeffrey's look of warning, he said, "Ms Wainwright, do
you have pierced ears?"

She laughed. "Agent Follmer, that's a trick question with our
kind. Piercings heal up, you see." She smoothed back her hair,
baring an unblemished earlobe for emphasis. "But I have been
known to pierce them for special occasions."

"Such as the fundraiser?"

She inclined her head.

"Agent Follmer," Jeffrey cut in, "can I see you outside for a
second?"

Follmer stifled a sigh, and nodded. "Can we use the outer
office for a moment, Ms Wainwright?"

Yolanda was transparently amused. "Go ahead."

"Way to kill a perfectly good interrogation, Jeffrey," he hissed
when they got outside.

"We shouldn't even be interrogating her! I saw how you went
after her when you heard about her medical discharge. You're
only after her because she's a test subject."

"Yes, I am. You know why? Because only a test subject could
have done this one. Not to mention the fact that she almost
certainly knows about Wormus." He made an exasperated sound.
"You know, sooner or later, you're going to have to start seeing
these people as suspects, or one of them's going to get the drop
on you."

Jeffrey opened his mouth, clearly ready with an indignant reply,
but they were interrupted by Yolanda. She opened the door to
Shannon's office and cleared her throat.

"You *do* know that enhanced hearing is part of the package with
us, right?"

Both partners shifted uncomfortably. Follmer coughed.

"Well. If that's all, gentlemen, I need to get on with things.
We've got a stack of photographs through from last night and I
need to sort out the best ones for release to the media." She
passed between them and went to her desk. "Here's one with your
people," she said, picking one up and holding it out. "Have it
as a souvenir."

Jeffrey took it, nonplussed, and Follmer looked over his
shoulder. Marita and Alex were there, standing back on the left,
Marita's free hand perched on the top of her belly as she sipped
orange juice from her glass. Alex was smiling at her. In a
huddle near them, Shannon, Yolanda, and two men were talking.
Follmer vaguely recognised one of the men as a senator, but it
was not this that drew his attention. It was Yolanda, in sharp
focus on the extreme right. Her dark hair was drawn back, and
she was wearing those silver-and-garnet earrings.

"Ms Wainwright," he said, pointing to the earrings in the
picture by way of explanation to Jeffrey. "I'd like you to
accompany Agent Spender and myself to Baltimore Field Office for
questioning."

If she was disturbed by this, she didn't show it. A smile
played around the corners of her mouth. "Am I under arrest?"

Follmer glanced at Jeffrey. They didn't have enough, and they
both knew it. "Not at this time."

"Then no, I don't think I will." She rose from her desk. "But
I'll tell you what, Agent Follmer. Why don't you come for a walk
with me? You can ask what you want to ask, and maybe I'll
answer. Meanwhile, Agent Spender here can go and pump all my
colleagues for information about my movements and research my
background and whatever else he needs to do while you keep me
occupied."

Not for the first time that day, Follmer had a nagging feeling
that he and Jeffrey had been played from start to finish.

"Why not?" he said, more confidently than he felt. "Agent
Spender?"

"Whatever you want," said Jeffrey, looking from him to Yolanda
in apparent confusion. He could see the connection he seemed to
have made with Yolanda, Follmer could tell, and it bugged him
because he was outside it.

Not that Follmer understood it any better himself.

"Then it's settled," said Yolanda. She nodded to the door, and
started walking. "Agent Follmer?"

He followed her.


[8]


"Why did you do it?"

Yolanda laughed. "I gave you more credit than that, Agent
Follmer." She looked younger, laughing there in the morning sun,
and it occurred to him that she must have looked like this when
she was changed. She was, what, seventeen back then? He tried
to imagine it - tried to imagine going off to war in the first
place at that age - and he couldn't.

"Oh, I know you wanted to give us an X File. You knew about
Wormus, but you admire Shannon and you didn't want to implicate
her, so you handed us a carbon copy on a night when she had a
cast-iron alibi." He frowned. "But that doesn't explain why you
did it. Why you wanted us. The motive beneath the motive."

"That's poetic. More poetic than I'd expect from a man like
you." She sighed with seemingly genuine regret. "I can't answer
that one, Agent Follmer. If I did, it would defeat the purpose."

He frowned. "I don't understand."

"No, I know you don't," she said reflectively. "But you will."

"How?" he demanded. "You handed us this, Yolanda. On some
level, you must want us to solve it. So throw me a bone here."

Yolanda was smiling. "Tell you what. Let me make you a
proposition."

"It's a bit early in the day."

"Very funny." She went on, "You get your team to question me.
Each one of them, one on one. If you can figure out why I did
it, I'll give you a confession. Signed, sealed and delivered."

"You've got to be kidding."

She shook her head. "It's no joke. I'm interested to see what
you come up with. Seriously."

Follmer shielded his eyes against the sun. "Do you have any
idea how overworked we are? I can't send for them all for
something like this. What guarantee do we have that you'll live
up to this bargain of yours?"

"My word. As a Marine." Her expression was suddenly grave.

He thought about it. If nothing else, it was a unique
opportunity to do some fact-finding about supersoldiers from the
source. To separate the fact from the mythology. Deep down, he
knew perfectly well that most of the agents would jump at the
opportunity. Scully and Doggett might quibble about it, but
their partners would bring them around.

"All right," he said at last. "You've got yourself a deal."


[9]


Krycek met her in a churchyard on the high ground of the city,
where Baltimore started to turn into Baltimore County. It was
historic, this place; people of interest were buried here. But
today it was too grey for tourists - heavy warm smog, and
humidity threatening to become rain. On sunny days the churchyard
was historic; today it was just old. The noise of cars gliding
back and forth on the cracked road was a muffled white roar, but
there were no people, no one to hear them.

As he walked up, she was standing with her coat held around her,
peering down at a set of graves. She would have looked absorbed,
but he could somehow tell that she was paying close attention to
his approach.

"A mother and her son," she said. "His wife is on the other
side. Do you think he loved his mother more?" She sounded
bemused.

"I thought we were here for an interrogation," he said, "not a
eulogy."

She looked up at him evenly. "First, turn that thing off."

Krycek flinched. "What?"

"I can hear the tape recorder in your pocket," she continued
patiently. "It makes a high-pitched humming noise, and I can hear
it. It was almost covered up by the sound of the myoelectric
mechanisms of your arm -" she gestured to it "- but not quite."

Krycek looked at her for a moment. Then without a word, he took
the little recorder from his pocket, held it up, and clicked it
off.

"Cheaters never prosper, Agent Krycek." A smile played about her
lips, and she turned to stroll further up the hill.

He followed her. They walked carefully around the little stone
church, using the square stepping stones in the slick, muddy
grass.

"So what's the game here?" he asked. "You're playing Spender and
Follmer for fools, I can see that much." They paused in front of
a set of stone tombs. "Playing Roadrunner to the authorities'
Coyote. Paint a yellow dotted line, and watch us run our faces
smack against the wall." He placed his palm flat against the
incised letters on the front of one of the tombs, and leaned
against it a bit.

"I'm not toying with Agent Follmer," she said.

Krycek raised an eyebrow at her.

The corner of her mouth twisted. "I intend to keep my word to
him," she amended. "Divining my motive will earn you my
confession."

He shrugged. "But what difference would it make if I tried to
question you? You're the one who set up this game, and you're
holding all the cards. I question you, I don't question you -
you've already got it in your head whether you're going to sign
that confession or not, and if it's part of the plan that you
tell me why you killed Andrew Gawler, then you'll tell me."

He observed her reaction carefully. She squinted into the sky
with an unreadable expression and tucked a strand of black hair
behind her ear. "That's an awfully defeatist attitude. It must do
tremendous things for your case clearance rate." She leaned her
shoulder against the corner of the church. "You're here - you
obviously intend to question me. And why wouldn't you? Aren't you
curious about me?"

"Of course," he said.

The wet wind blew some of her hair into her face. She jerked her
head to flick it aside. "Then why not ask?"

"Because I think you're going to lie to me."

She laughed. "Sometimes we tell lies so often that we start to
see them everywhere. Don't you find that to be true, Agent
Krycek?"

His eyes narrowed. "You want to make this about me?"

She shrugged carelessly, pushing off the church wall and walking
out among the cracked and weathered gravestones. "Why not? If you
won't play my game, I'll just have to change the rules." She
glanced at him over her shoulder to see if he was following. He
was. "I wonder about you too, you know."

He breathed a short laugh. "So do a lot of people."

"I suppose that's true enough. But here's what I want to know."
She stopped and turned to him. "When you look at me, do you see a
beautiful woman? Or a beautiful machine?"

They stood there in the wet grass between the tombstones for a
minute, looking at each other. The wind blew her hair across her
face again; this time she didn't brush it away.

"I see both," he said.

She nodded. "That makes sense. You're an expert at seeing both
sides, aren't you? And you know the line between a man and a
monster-" she broke off. "They made me what I am. And they made
you too. That's what they do: manufacture killers. Maybe they
just haven't seen enough horror movies - they don't realise that
the monster always turns on its creator."

He didn't let himself feel her words. "Did you ever actually
read 'Frankenstein,' in school?" he asked casually. "What the
monster really wanted was a mate."

She closed her mouth tightly.

"What do you want?" he asked. "You want to be arrested?
Convicted? You want that? Do you realise -" he stood closer to
her, and lowered his voice, though there was no one to hear. "Do
you realise that prison isn't the worst thing that can happen to
you?"

She paused. A flicker of some feeling passed across her face.
"Follmer doesn't know that."

"No," Krycek said. The mist was starting to condense into rain
again. "But there are people who do."


[10]


Diana sat in her car outside the diner, chewing a mint and
trying to determine just how to go about this. The woman waiting
for her inside was a piece of work, and what she'd gone through
certainly hit home. Considering what Jeffrey had endured in the
conspirators' abortive bid to make him what this woman had
become, Diana was not without sympathy for her, but it was muted
by antipathy and unease.

It wasn't that she was a killer. Diana worked side by side with
killers. She considered one of them her closest friend. She
trusted him with her back every day.

But in a way, that was exactly the problem. Watching Alex, all
these years - watching him struggle with what he'd done and what
he'd become - she couldn't find it within her to sympathise with
this woman. Her cavalier attitude, her callous murder of a man
simply to get their attention - it appalled her. It made a
mockery of the integrity Alex had strived for when all around him
seemed hell-bent on taking it away.

Diana crossed her arms, frowning. Whatever her feelings, she was
going to have put on her game face and handle this like any other
case. Any other suspect. Fastidiously, she checked her hair in
the visor mirror, touched up her lipstick. Game face, she thought
again. This is business.

She'd worn a pair of slacks, and refrained from wearing a
jacket. She wanted to create an image that Yolanda could trust,
something more feminine than what she might have come up against
thus far. Diana was practical; she realised that it hardly
mattered, because a suspect will either talk or she won't.
Clothes certainly wouldn't swing the situation. But it couldn't
hurt.

Looking in the window as she walked to the door, and seeing
Yolanda dressed nearly identical to herself, Diana had a sinking
feeling. Here was a woman who knew how to play the game, who
would fall for no subtle diplomatic gestures. It'd been a long
time since Diana had done this on her own, and she was
questioning whether she could play the heavy.

Yolanda didn't look up when Diana took the seat across from her.
She was reading a newspaper, and picked up a mug to take a sip of
coffee. She immediately made a face.

She looked up then, and a Mona Lisa smile graced her face as she
locked gazes with Diana.

"I never put in enough sugar." Her smile widened slightly as she
reached for another white packet. "You're Agent Fowley, I
presume."

Diana nodded, returning the smile. "And you're Yolanda
Wainwright."

A waitress came up to the table, smacking her gum loudly. "What
will you have?"

Diana didn't take her eyes off Yolanda, who did likewise.
"Coffee would be fine."

"Decaf?" The waitress' voice was far away and echoed reflexively
in Diana's ear.

"Regular's fine."

The waitress walked off, and Diana folded her hands on the table
in front of her. The formica top was sticky and grains of sugar
littered it in places.

Yolanda tapped her newspaper. "I see I've yet to make the front
page."

"I didn't think you did it for the attention." Diana heard the
edge in her voice and dug her nails into the backs of her hands.

Yolanda's gaze flickered down, and she looked at Diana again,
not smiling at all this time. "I did it for the attention I got.
Not all of us can afford to make up stories and hide in plain
sight. Not all of us can claim miracles."

Diana didn't let her irritation show this time. Yolanda might
not have been trying to bait her with that slight about Jeffrey.
But she'd known so much about Alex, known the buttons to push and
how far and when. It made Diana wary, and that was making her
lose her usual cool.

The waitress came back, still popping her gum, and set a hot mug
down in front of Diana. She didn't bother with sugar, and took a
deliberately long sip, burning her tongue.

"What is this about, Yolanda? You want sympathy?"

"I want you, all of you, to pay closer attention. There's more
at stake than you might have guessed."

Diana thought of the scar on Jeffrey's cheek, of the half-hidden
accusations on the editorial page of the Post and the blatant
ones on tabloids that made him swallow hard and clench his jaw.
"I doubt that very much, Yolanda."

"Agent Fowley," she said it deliberately, demanding some proper
use of titles, a little less familiarity. "I'm not unaware of
what your colleagues have endured. But it isn't over. And you
still haven't asked the right questions."

"Are you in danger?"

Yolanda swallowed some of her coffee, grimacing again and trying
to pull her lips into a smirk. "When haven't I been? For that
matter, when haven't you?"

"It's been a long time," Diana sighed and put her hands in her
lap. She had the feeling that she knew this woman better than she
wanted to. "Why did you do it, Miss Wainwright?" She tried to
make the concession clear.

Yolanda looked out the window. "You'll find out, Agent Fowley.
In the meantime, go home and make him feel loved. He needs it,
because that scar on his cheek isn't the only one he escaped
with."

She didn't look at Diana as she dropped a five-dollar bill on
the table and left the diner. Her long dark hair swung slightly,
and Diana imagined what her neck might look like underneath it.

She turned the newspaper around so she could see what Yolanda
had been reading.

It was the editorial section of the Post. There was no reference
to Jeffrey, but a caricature of a Marine, being guarded by a
troop of grays on one side, and doctors on the other.

Diana went home and called Jeffrey, and let him know he was
loved.


[11]


"I hope you don't mind me coming here," Jeffrey called, peering
at the framed pictures on Yolanda's wall. He could trace the
years with the patches on her arm.

Yolanda came out of the kitchen into the lounge. "Agent
Spender, I'm your prime suspect in a first-degree murder case.
I'm hardly in a position to object to you coming to question me."
She handed him his coffee and paused at his side.

"I thought you might feel more comfortable at home." He pointed
to one photograph, the oldest. "That one of you and Shannon
McMahon - was that in the Gulf?"

She nodded. "Basra. It's very important to you that I feel
comfortable. Why is that?"

Jeffrey shrugged. "Your kind, as you put it yesterday, haven't
had the best experiences with law enforcement."

She snorted. "My kind are not served by preferential treatment,
either."

He was taken aback. "Who says it's preferential?"

"Agent Spender, I read the transcripts of your testimony to the
Congressional inquiry, and Agent Mulder's as well. You were a
hard-ass back then. I'm assuming you still are, otherwise you
wouldn't have a job. But not with us. Wouldn't you call that
preferential?"

Jeffrey frowned, drinking from his mug to mask his confusion.
This was a discussion he'd had many times with Brad, of course,
but it was the first time he'd encountered it in a fellow test
subject. She seemed to have some objection to his solicitude,
and he hadn't the faintest idea of what it could be.

"It isn't preferential to tailor your responses to the
individual," he said at last. "Not if you tailor them for
everyone."

"And you just happen to tailor them for us on the basis that
we're misunderstood nice guys. That's certainly what Shannon's
PR machine would have you think," she said, nodding at the most
recent picture, of herself and Shannon in civilian clothing.
"Let me let you in on a little secret, Agent Spender. Not
everyone they did this to was a good person. There are plenty of
assholes who went to war. And there are plenty of people who
weren't assholes when they went off to war who sure made up for
it when they got home."

He wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. "What do you think
of Shannon?" he asked abruptly.

The question seemed to jar her. "I - I admire her," she said at
last.

"Why?"

She glanced at him sidelong. Wary. "She was the first," she
said after a moment. "She and Knowle. I had her there to guide
me after it happened. She didn't have anyone. I don't know how
she did it."

"Must have been nice to have her there." Too late, he realised
that the warmth suffusing his voice was a mistake.

She made a sound of disgust. "Jesus. I can't believe they let
you out without a guardian. You wouldn't last five minutes in
the NIS." She turned on her heel, calling over her shoulder,
"Come with me, young Jeffrey. Let's talk."

He had the discomforting image of a dog trotting at its master's
heels when he followed.

"Just for a minute," she said, passing through her front door
onto the porch, "let's suppose that you were going to do some
investigating during your sojourn through Yolanda Wainwright's
early life." He felt his face grow hot with humiliation. "Why
do you think I did it?"

"I think it was a cry for help." He leaned against the wall,
aware too late of splinters from the wood cladding, but
determined not to give up any more ground with her by showing
discomfort.

She seemed unimpressed. "Really."

"I think you're grasping desperately for anything that might
help you figure it all out. You did it to Shannon, and now
you're doing it to us."

"I think you're projecting," she said over the top of her mug,
leaning back against the railing. "I think you do it to *us*.
Probably to your girlfriend Agent Fowley there, as well."

He didn't rise to the bait. "Why else would you have started
this ridiculous charade?" he demanded, as though she hadn't
spoken. He thought he saw a flare of approval in her eyes. "Why
else would you have handed it to us on a platter?"

"What if you're wrong?" she snapped. "What if all this is just
for kicks? What if I'm a fucking psychopath and I do it again
and again and again?"

"Are you?" he wondered.

She held him levelly with her gaze. "You tell me."


[12]


"I just don't know."

Follmer didn't think he'd ever heard Diana betray doubt before.
She exuded confidence and poise, and Yolanda had rattled her. He
had no idea why.

"There was a lot of double-talk," she went on at last. "A lot
of stock lines about us missing something important, about it not
being over - as though she had political motives. But I don't
think that's what's really going on here."

Krycek shook his head, sitting down on the arm of the couch
beside her. "Neither do I. She speaks of being made into a
monster, but it's personal. It's about her, not about them."

"She said I was asking the wrong questions," Diana said, "but I
don't know what she wanted me to ask." She shook her head. "I
got the feeling I wasn't really who she wanted to talk to."

"Going through the motions?" Follmer wondered.

"A little. As though she already knew she wasn't going to get
what she wanted from me."

Follmer frowned. "But what does she want?"

Jeffrey spoke for the first time. "I don't think she knows. I
don't think this is a test we have to pass, where she knows the
answer and we have to guess. I think she's waiting for one of us
to say the right thing, and she'll know it when she hears it."

Krycek sat forward. "Follmer, do you really think she's going
to give you that confession?" He seemed genuinely curious.

Follmer shrugged. "The odds are against it. But I think she
has a sense of fair play. Stranger things have happened."

Krycek's tone was careful. Measured. "Have you considered what
you'll do if she does?"

"Oh, it'll be a political football when we charge her, but that
goes with the territory."

Krycek opened his mouth, glanced at Diana, then shut it again.
He said mildly, "I suppose."

Follmer filed away that look in his mind, and he asked Jeffrey
about it later, but Jeffrey was as mystified as he.


[13]


Doggett tugged once, twice at his suit collar before giving in
and pulling down his tie to undo the top button of his
over-starched shirt collar. The air was heavy with humidity, and
uncomfortably warm even in the shadow cast by the abandoned
factory building in the late afternoon sun. He leaned back
against the hood of his car, thinking too late that his pants
were going to get filthy.

He saw her in silhouette at first. The sun was at her back,
making him squint and casting an eerie glow around her. He
relaxed a little as she stepped into the shadow and her features
became clearer. The hard soles of her heels echoed against the
buildings in the mostly deserted industrial park.

"Agent Doggett." She stood next to him, close enough that he had
to crane his neck to look her in the eye.

"Ms Wainwright. I don't like games."

She laughed. Her laugh was light and pretty and seemed
incongruous with the person he believed her to be. "A game
perhaps, but there is a tantalising reward at the end. A signed
confession must appeal to a cop such as yourself. And surely you
enjoy the art of a good interrogation."

He shrugged. "This ain't exactly the sort of interrogation I'm
used to."

She simply smiled and leaned back against the hood as well.

"You know," Doggett said, "I never got what they were thinking
with you guys. It seems like a damn stupid thing to do in my
opinion."

She looked at him, genuinely curious. "What's that?"

"Creating something that can't be killed. Anything with that
much power is bound to be a hell of a lot more trouble than it's
worth."

She nodded. "Desire - for anything, money or power or sex - it
clouds judgement."

"Yeah, that's true," Doggett said. "So what clouded your
judgement? You strike me as the sort of person who'd be after
power."

She raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think my judgement was
clouded?" she asked.

Doggett said nothing and looked out across the deserted parking
lot. He wondered how sure they were that no one was listening.
Krycek had told him about the experience with the recording
device, so he supposed her hearing would tip them off to any
eavesdroppers, but the idea was still there in his mind.

"You were a Marine," Yolanda said abruptly.

Doggett looked up at her apparent non-sequitur. "Yeah," he said.

"Does it occur to you that you could have been me?"

Doggett flinched. He rested his hands against the car hood. The
metal was cool against his palms. "Sometimes." But just on days
ending in 'y', he thought.

"I think you think about it more than 'sometimes,'" she said.

"I think we're talking about you and not me," Doggett said. How
had he ended up on the defensive?

She nodded in apparent agreement, but asked "Do you believe in
aliens, Agent Doggett?"

He frowned, annoyed with himself for allowing her to get control
of the conversation and lead the topic away from herself. "It's
kind of hard not to these days."

"I mean, do you believe that the aliens are the ones who created
us?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't."

"Neither do I."

Doggett felt his eyes widen. "No?"

"No, I believe that the government used alien DNA, but I don't
believe that they had any hand in what happened to me and the
others," she said.

"There aren't many people who think that way any more."

"But you do. And I do. We aren't so different, you see."

He stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "We share the same
theory and a job - a former job in my case. That doesn't make us
the same. I don't list murder as one of my hobbies. I like to
take my anger out on punching bags instead of people. You get
angry?"

"Sometimes."

"Angry at the people who did this to you?"

"Would you be?"

"Hell yes. I'd be pissed off."

"Well then," she said quietly. He realised that she hadn't
really answered her question, but he doubted she would either.

"So do you kill people when you're angry?" Doggett asked.

She laughed.

"Right," Doggett said. "It's never that easy, is it?"


[14]


Baltimore was not entirely unlike New Orleans, Monica thought as
she made her way along the brick walkway down to the inner
harbour. A city with a lot of history, a sense of worldly
dilapidation. People had lived here a long time, not thinking
about what they were doing. Layers and layers of people and smog
and trash, all packed together. Rowhouses and landfills, and
sardine-tight graveyards in the middle of city blocks.

Yolanda was sitting on a bench near the aquarium, a building
that stood pressed up against the edge of the water. It was near
the landing where the water taxis stopped, and the skeletal old
trawler tethered there indefinitely, decaying under the
unseasonable holiday lights strung across its masts. The
afternoon was fading, and tourists trickled out of the aquarium
in threes and fours, dragging cameras and backpacks and children.
There was a knot of commuters on the landing under the bus stop
sign, looking irritable and thin.

Yolanda was watching them all with the intensity of a wide-eyed
child in front of the dolphin tank.

"Miss Wainwright?" Monica said quietly from behind her.

She barely turned at first, but then seemed to shake herself
from a reverie, and got up. "We'll need to talk where there
aren't people," she said in an oddly subdued tone, and started
walking towards the abandoned shipyards.

Monica followed, and they walked until the brick became sinking
gravel under their feet. They walked until the inner harbour was
just a glow of light.

"I'm not sure why you asked for this," Monica said cautiously,
trying to feel the suspect out. "And to be perfectly honest, I'm
not really sure what I'm supposed to do."

"All you have to do is figure out why I kill."

"Don't you know?"

Yolanda said nothing.

"If you don't, then I can't really find out by asking you, I
guess."

Yolanda still said nothing. They walked.

"You've killed others," Monica said.

Yolanda smiled. "What makes you say that?"

"Because you said 'tell me why I kill', not 'why I killed.' So
you've killed before. You make a habit of it."

"I've killed many times," Yolanda said neutrally, stepping over
a ground-down curb. "I was a Marine. It's part of the job
description."

"But after the Gulf," Monica said. "Since then, you've killed
more people. Civilians, like Andrew Gawler. He wasn't the
first."

Yolanda shook her head, and shrugged. "Everybody dies."

"You don't," Monica said.

"No," Yolanda answered with a secret smile, and something in her
eyes that Monica couldn't help seeing as pain.

They passed the skeleton of a warehouse, surrounded with parked
cars and covered with elaborate graffiti. There were some kids
on the upper level, setting up sound equipment. Their
conversation drifted down in blurts and snatches on the breeze.
When it was dark, this would be where the kids would come to
dance all night and do ecstasy, and drink endless cans of
Seven-Up to keep from passing out.

Yolanda paused in her tracks, sidled up closer to the row of
still cars, and continued walking. Monica glanced behind them,
looking for the reason. A full minute passed before she heard
the growl of an over-tweaked engine, and then saw a battered red
pickup truck carrying some equally battered teenaged boys.

"Hey ladies!" shrieked one as they roared past.

Once they were gone, Yolanda smiled again. "They wouldn't, if
they knew what I was."

Monica had no answer for that. "Is it hard to deal with the
heightened senses?" she asked instead, as they kept walking. "It
must have been a long time since you've experienced total
silence."

Yolanda seemed to hesitate, but nodded.

"A lot of the time it must seem like people are shouting. Would
it be better if I lowered my voice?" Monica asked, doing so.

For a moment, a war of emotions played out over Yolanda's face -
rage, delight, and grief. She settled on a stony look. "It
isn't necessary," she said in a strained voice. "I'm used to the
volume."

"You're used to people not considering your feelings," Monica
said. "I think that's sad. Hardly anything is *necessary*.
It's the unnecessary things that make life worth living...or even
bearable."

Yolanda tossed her hair out of her face. "Should I expect
others to accommodate me? Should I enjoy special treatment? As
a citizen, I already enjoy equal protection under the law."
There was an undercurrent of bitter sarcasm there. "If I demand
additional rights, it can be seen as seeking undeserved favour."

Monica cocked her head. "I didn't say anything about the law.
I don't think the common courtesy of speaking softly to someone
with sensitive hearing is going to turn supersoldiers into an
upper class immune to prosecution."

"It singles us out as different," Yolanda snapped.

"You are different," Monica returned gently. "But you're still
human."

They must have walked all the way around somehow, because they
found themselves on the edge of the harbour again. There were
water taxis were slowly puttering their way across, their
clusters of yellow lights like pinpoint constellations. The
water was deep brown and darkening with the coming evening,
scattered with floating debris and swelling like oil.

The water - the last thing that Andrew Gawler ever saw.


[15]


Follmer glanced sidelong at Yolanda. She was sitting in the
passenger seat, looking placidly out the window. Content to sit
and be silent. Her expression was serene.

The drive down to Washington was Mulder's idea. He wanted
Yolanda off her home turf, at a maximum of inconvenience to
herself. "Let's see what she does," he'd said. But so far
Yolanda didn't seem to be biting. She hadn't commented when he
arrived at her house half an hour late, and she hadn't complained
when he bypassed I-95 for the turnpike.

"I need gas," he said, pulling into a rest stop. "Want
anything?"

"Is that a trick question, Brad?" she asked with that calm smile
of hers.

"You proposed this game, not me," he said. "It's just a
question."

The smile faltered. "Sorry," she said, glancing away. "Soda."

"Okay."

He thought about it, frowning, while he filled up. Her guard
was up, but that was to be expected. She'd been questioned five
times in two days. That didn't necessarily amount to a chink in
the armour.

More disconcerting than that was the shift in himself. He was
conscious of growing sympathy for her, and it worried him. He
knew his own weaknesses, and like most men, he counted beautiful
young women among them. Had she tried to use it to her
advantage, he'd have shut down like a trap.

But she hadn't - that was the bizarre thing about it. She
fought against type - far from demure compliance, she was overtly
calculating. She abhorred the idea of herself as a victim - that
much was clear from her interview with Reyes. That probably
accounted for her choosing him as her opposite number rather than
Jeffrey. It was exactly that fact that made him wonder if his
sympathies were not so misplaced.

He was a killer himself - a fact he had spent two years making
peace with - and he worked with at least one other every day.
Diana believed that was different, Krycek was different, but was
it really? If he could excuse himself for his own brush with
darkness, if he could excuse Krycek for being a tool of a system
that nearly destroyed him, why not Yolanda?

But that was a progression that he wasn't willing to see to its
logical end. Because every perp had a reason. That wasn't the
same as being held accountable. It wasn't justice. Yolanda may
have been denied justice for the violations committed upon her,
but that did not absolve her for the violations she had committed
on others, any more than it absolved him or Krycek. He and
Krycek knew that, regardless of rulings of the courts. He wasn't
so sure that was true of Yolanda.

Sighing deeply, he allowed himself one last look at her through
the back window, and then he went in to pay.


[16]


Mulder led Yolanda to a set of low bleachers overlooking F
Street's outdoor basketball court. This was a favourite spot of
his; he used to spend lunch hours here, back in his earliest days
with the Bureau. Sometimes he'd join a game. More often than not
he just watched, letting his subconscious work out the details of
a case, while the ball bounced against the pavement, lulling him
with its comforting thunk, thunk, thunk.

Today a group of teenagers was playing three-on-three, and a
lanky kid on the Skins' team was dominating the game, hogging the
ball, roughhousing. Curses came from the Shirts when he ploughed
past them to slam-dunk the ball.

Mulder motioned Yolanda to sit, then settled on the bench beside
her.

"You don't dress like the other agents," she said, referring to
his jeans and sneakers.

"I'm lobbying for Casual Wednesdays."

"Today is Tuesday."

"Well, you know what they say about the early bird."

He withdrew a bag of sunflower seeds from his coat pocket and
offered them to her.

"No thank you." She waved him off. Her gaze wandered to the
opposite end of the bleachers where a young couple was locked in
an embrace, tongues embedded deeply into each other's mouths.

Across the court, an elderly man leaned against the chain link
fence and tossed French fries to pigeons. One of the birds was
missing a foot. Despite its deformity, it hobbled after the food
with as much determination as the lanky ballplayer, who was once
again skirting past the Shirts to sink a shot. It occurred to
Mulder that if Yolanda were to lose a limb, she could grow it
back, more easily than Leonard Betts could regenerate a head. It
also occurred to him that she could snap his neck with one hand,
if she were so inclined.

He glanced at her hands, which she held loosely in her lap. She
had smooth, flawless skin. Long, delicately tapered fingers. No
polish.

"Basketball is a great game...maybe the best game." He slipped a
seed between his teeth and savoured its salty taste. "The perfect
combination of physical skill, teamwork and fast action. You ever
play?"

"Yes, but I didn't particularly enjoy it."

"No? What games do you enjoy?" He bit down on the seed,
crunching it loudly. "Besides mind games."

"You think I'm playing mind games?"

"I'm the sixth agent to question you - at your request. Yes, I
think you're playing mind games."

"You're wrong, Agent Mulder. I'm offering the FBI a chance to
earn my confession. It's not my fault you're all too inept to
ascertain my motives."

"Maybe your motive is simply to stop."

"Stop what?"

"Killing."

She dismissed him with a frown.

"Come on, Yolanda. The truth is you wanted to get caught," he
said softly, masking his impatience. "You knew the FBI would make
a connection between Gawler and Wormus. You counted on it." No
doubt she expected to walk away from her crime, too, like Shannon
McMahon. The Hybrid Protection Bill would help her.

On the court, tempers began to flare as the score neared 21. The
young lovers seemed oblivious to the players' name-calling; the
woman giggled when her boyfriend grabbed her breast and squeezed.

"Do you have a wife, Agent Mulder?" Yolanda asked, though she
could hardly have been ignorant of Scully and William. Her gaze
was fixed on the couple. "Children? A happy home to go to at the
end of the day?"

He had no intention of telling this self-proclaimed killer
anything about his family. "Aren't we here to discuss you?"

She continued to watch the lovers. The young man hauled the
woman into his lap without breaking their kiss. "When I was
little, I imagined I'd grow up to have a family...a doting
husband, two or three cute kids, a dog that would fetch the
paper. I suppose it's what every girl thinks she wants at one
time or another."

"You're a long way from a split level and a white picket fence."

"True," she said without apparent rancour. "But sometimes I
wonder..."

"Wonder what?"

She shook her head. "Immortality can be lonely, did you know
that?"

"Murdering people tends to shrink your social circle."

"I didn't choose to be what I am."

"But you're okay with using it to your advantage."

"You know nothing about me."

"Isn't that why we're here?" He spit an empty hull onto the
pavement and immediately replaced it with another seed. Across
the court, the footless pigeon lunged for a fry, only to be
chased off by the other birds.

She seemed not to notice the pigeons or the ballgame. Her focus
remained on the lovers. "During the War, my squad was hit by
friendly fire. A depleted uranium shell pierced our Bradley and
detonated." She spoke without emotion. "We should have died."

"What happened?"

"We were torn up, badly burned. My arms were black, the flesh
cooked, the fabric of my uniform was fused to my skin." Her
tongue swept across her lower lip. "Rescue arrived; the medics
looked horrified. When they tried to pull me from the wreckage,
the skin came off my hands like a pair of gloves."

Mulder's throat tightened as he tried to imagine what it must
have been like. "But...but you healed."

She held out her hands and studied them for a moment. "This
isn't me," she said at last, giving Mulder his answers.

Becoming a supersoldier had severed Yolanda Wainwright's
connection to her past. It forced her to abandon any hope of a
normal life. In essence, it killed her.

She suddenly laughed, surprising him. "On the upside, I'll
always be beautiful."

"But never human."

Her smile quickly faded. "You want to know why I killed Andrew?"

"I already know."

Her eyes widened and he thought he saw relief in them.

"Then tell me."

"Killing is an intimate act. You use it to bond with humans, to
experience the mortality that was taken from you."

For her, being a participant in another person's death was like
mating, he guessed. She killed because the act provided an
emotional union, impossible for her to achieve in any other way.
As insane as it sounded, killing made her feel alive, human,
normal...as close to her original self as she could get.

The basketball bounced out of play and she caught it. Standing,
she lobbed it at the hoop forty feet away. It passed through the
net without touching the rim. The teenagers gaped. The lanky kid
hooted with appreciation, which caused the lovers to break their
kiss and the pigeons to scatter...all except the deformed bird.
It grabbed a fry and gobbled it down.

"Interesting theory, Agent Mulder," Yolanda said.

"Interesting enough to earn a signed confession?"

"Interesting enough to make me think you may not be as inept as
your colleagues."


[17]


Fell's Point. An historic neighbourhood, spared from destruction
by fire and by progress. This little section of Baltimore's Inner
Harbour had weight, significance. A Place in Human History.

But that wasn't why Scully chose it for her meeting with Yolanda
Wainwright.

She stopped as she neared the waterfront and took a deep breath,
relishing the clean, salty sea air. She missed this. It reminded
her of her childhood. Of Ahab.

She wondered what her father would've thought of all this.
Above all else, William Scully believed in order, rules. Today's
world would sadden him, she thought. The lack of order, of things
a person could count on. She'd taken Them at their word that the
supersoldiers' abilities had been reversed. Everyone had. But
they'd been lied to.

No, a person couldn't count on much these days.

Scully spotted the dark-haired woman walking along the
Waterfront Promenade. She was reading the names carved into the
bricks, seemingly fascinated. Scully approached her.

"Yolanda Wainwright?"

The woman looked up at her and smiled. "And you're Agent
Scully."

"Are you psychic as well as a supersoldier?"

Yolanda shrugged. "You're the last one." She turned her
attention back to the bricks. "There are names on almost all of
these bricks. Why?"

"They donated money to complete construction of the Promenade.
Carving their names into the bricks was a way to honour them."

Yolanda smiled, a bit wistful. "That's nice." Then she focused
completely on Scully. "I would've thought Agent Mulder would tell
you everything you'd want to know. So why are you here?"

"Mulder had his questions. I have mine."

"You're interested in the science of it all," Yolanda said,
nodding. "How I came to be. What it's like, being a
supersoldier." She began to walk along the Promenade, and Scully
followed. "You don't know Shannon all that well so you can't ask
her, and your other encounters with our kind have been...violent.
So you thought you'd use our interview to fill in the gaps in
your knowledge."

"That's part of it," Scully agreed reluctantly.

"Well, I hate to disappoint you, Agent Scully, but I really
don't know much about how I was changed. I don't remember much of
that time." Yolanda seemed to retreat inside herself momentarily
- but it was only momentary. "As for what it's like...the
physical power is intoxicating. You get accustomed to using it,
to being stronger than everyone else."

"That's why it was so hard for you. Pretending to be normal."
Scully saw the younger woman falter, and pressed on. "Repressing
that need, that desire to be stronger, it's why you had to kill,
isn't it?"

Yolanda stopped and turned to her, smiling again. "Are you
trying to discern motive, Agent Scully? You're too late, Agent
Mulder already did that."

"Not at all. I'm just trying to figure out how far from human
you really are."

The smile left Yolanda's face as quickly as it had appeared.

"What was done to you," Scully continued, "was insidious. What
was done to *all* of us was monstrous. But none of us had to lose
our humanity in the process." Yolanda's eyes narrowed, and Scully
knew she was treading on dangerous ground. "You've said that you
admire Shannon McMahon. In a way, so do I. Without her, we
wouldn't have been able to stop Them. And even though she's a
supersoldier, even though she may be, technically, no longer
human...she's certainly not *in*human."

With that, Scully turned and walked away. She could feel her
heart pounding harder with each step, knowing how vulnerable she
was with her back to the supersoldier. After a few steps, she
stopped at the sound of Yolanda's voice.

"I could kill you in two seconds. You know that."

"Exactly my point."

Scully walked on, without a look back.


[18]


"It's all about sex."

Follmer blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Mulder stretched out at Doggett's desk - his old desk. "She was
seventeen when she was changed. She was a conscientious girl,
probably a virgin. Killing was the first intimacy she knew. And
now it's all mixed up together."

He closed his eyes. "Jesus." He sighed. "So what, she kills
instead of mating?"

Mulder shrugged. "She probably does both. But I think for her
the real bonding is in the kill. I doubt she's let anyone she
cared for stay alive long enough to find out that there was
another way."

"Giving them the thing she wants most," he murmured. He
couldn't quite keep the pity from his voice.

Scully shifted her weight, crossing her arms. "You're not
seriously feeling sorry for this woman. Plenty of our soldiers
went through exactly the same thing, and they aren't running
around killing people."

"Of course I'm not," he said. The assurance sounded hollow to
his own ears.

"Good," Scully said. "Save your pity for those of us who didn't
use what they did as an excuse to sell our souls."

He tried to see it her way. He even agreed with her
intellectually. But Mulder's roughly-written transcripts were
spread out on his desk before him, and he tried to imagine it -
tried to imagine this monstrous girl watching her comrades dying
around her, spared the indignity and the horror she had become.
Imagined her longing to die and longing to love and not being
able to do either.

He felt sick.

"I'm sorry, I have to go," he said abruptly, picking up his
briefcase, and he got to his feet and left them.


[19]


He knew she was there even before he let himself into his
apartment.

He had never been a believer in the paranormal, and despite his
assignment to XFVCU, to a large extent he still was not. But he
knew perpetrators. He knew what it was to hunt them and be
hunted by them. He knew the dance, the dark intimacy of the
chase. It was a different kind of paranormal - not the spooky
shit he dealt with now, but a heightened instinct, a heightened
sense of connection. It was primal. It was thirst and lust and
fear and want and need.

He didn't really know why he'd never let himself settle into
this place. Now, locking the door behind him, he was glad he
hadn't. Somewhere within himself, he knew what was to come, and
it was right in a way he couldn't quite grasp that it should
happen in just another room, a waystation to be abandoned when it
was done.

"You needed an adversary," he said, not even bothering to turn
on the light.

She was sitting on his dining table, cross-legged like a child.
Hair falling around her shoulders. Eyes gleaming in the dark.

"You needed to make someone understand," he said, putting down
his bag and his coat on the table beside her. "Not an advocate
or a counsellor or a mentor or a friend. Someone who could judge
you or hate you or turn on you. You wanted someone like that to
understand it. Because then maybe you could understand it
yourself."

She looked up at him. Eyes even brighter. "Yes," she
whispered.

"You want it to stop," he said, holding her gaze with his own.
He couldn't look away. "But you don't know any other way.
You're outside, and you don't know...you don't know how to get
back in."

Her lips trembled. "Yes."

They stood there, gazes locked on each other in the dark.

She reached for him. Touched her fingers to the pulse point in
his throat. "Do you know what it's like for me to feel your
blood like this, Brad? To know that it's precious, and that it
carries something unique and finite that will never exist again
once it dies? Do you know -" her breath hitched a little "- do
you know what I would give to be precious like that?"

He wanted to say she *was* precious, it didn't have to be that
way, but it wouldn't come. He groped for the right things to
feel and say and all he could touch was her own loneliness and
helplessness and loss. So far in her head it was like being
inside her.

"No. I don't know," he whispered finally.

She tightened her hold on his neck.

He waited. Unable to bring himself to stop her. Held fast in a
grip of fascinated dread. He could feel the instincts rise up in
her. Warring for precedence. The craving for blood. For
understanding. To be *inside*. A host of things coursed through
him, hunger and pity and sadness all mixed together, and he
didn't know whether they came from her or from him. He waited
for her to slash his throat. She leaned in and kissed him
instead.

He parted his lips for her before duty or common sense could
stop him. Part of his mind clamoured for him to stop, but it was
muted and remote. She was much softer and nearer and beautiful
and broken and he wanted to - meld -

"This doesn't change anything," he whispered against her, and it
didn't, but god help him, he wanted her.

"No," she agreed.

"I'm still going to-"

"I wouldn't expect anything else."

His hand found her neck, the ridges that marked her as inhuman,
and he faltered.

She watched him. Waiting. Eyes grave.

He cradled her there, and he kissed her, and then he had her.


[20]


She was gone when he woke.

The sun was high in the sky. His body ached. He shielded his
eyes against the light and looked at his alarm clock on the
bedside table.

There was a sheaf of papers at his side.


[21]


"I got it."

Follmer's voice echoed down the hall, into the office ahead of
him. Jeffrey turned as his partner rounded the corner, a sheaf
of papers held high in his hand.

"The confession," he said, in response to the quizzical looks of
Doggett and Krycek. They exchanged looks in a rare moment of
accord.

Follmer's grimly satisfied expression faltered. "What?"

Jeffrey looked at Diana. She was up the far end, near the
basin, making coffee in that godawful smiling alien mug. She was
watching him. She could see the expectation in her face, and he
didn't want it. He didn't want to handle it, he didn't want to
explain it, he didn't want to help him through it. It wasn't his
fucking problem.

Krycek moved. Just a fraction, towards Diana. Reyes was
moving, too - leaning towards Doggett a little more.
Unconsciously gravitating towards their partners in preparation
for the coming storm.

That's what it's all about, he thought. He still didn't want
it, but it was part of the job.

Shit.

"We can't use it, Brad," he said at last. "We can't charge
her."

Follmer stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. "What are
you talking about?" he demanded. "It's - it's perfectly legal -
it's-"

"It's not the legality of the confession," Krycek said. "It's
the logistics. Don't you get it yet? It's the big secret - the
glue that's holding everything together right now."

Follmer looked like a kid who'd just found out he was the butt
of all the other kids' jokes. "What secret? I don't
understand."

"We can't hold her," Jeffrey said. "We have no way of
restraining these people. The only thing we have keeping them in
check right now is that they're as scared and confused as we
are."

Reyes was watching Follmer. "That's not going to keep for
long."

Diana shook her head. "No, it won't. But they can't know yet.
We're unprepared." She turned to Follmer. "Imagine what would
happen, Brad. Imagine if she killed her way out, or broke
through the walls. It would be plastered all over the news. And
then we'd have anarchy."

Jeffrey nodded. "And the ones that didn't revolt on their own
would be driven to it by the persecution of the people around
them. This is a bomb waiting to go off, Brad, don't you see
that?"

Follmer's face was growing increasingly red. Suffused with
anger. He burst out, "I swear to Christ, you people have been
selling out for too long. The whole lot of you. You're saying
we should just let her walk when we have enough to get her? Are
you insane?"

Krycek's jaw was hard. Diana saw it too - she moved to his side
and took his arm. He shook it off. "It's not selling out,
*Brad*," he sneered, "it's the battle you lose to win the war.
How fucking dare you question how we did our jobs when you got to
watch it from the safety of the sidelines?"

Reyes stepped forward, placing herself between the men. "Look,
that's not the issue. The issue is this case. And Brad, in
ordinary circumstances I'd agree with you, but what are we
supposed to do with her? What is the point of testing it when we
know we're going to lose?"

Follmer let out a sound of disgust. "I can't believe you, of
all people, would say that to me, Monica. How is the law ever
going to come to terms with punishing these people if we don't
charge them?"

"What's it to you, Follmer?" Doggett wondered. "This can't be
the first killer you've had to let go." Reyes shot him a look of
warning, and Jeffrey wondered what that was about, but his
ponderings were cut short by Follmer's reply.

"This is different. It's different because it's institutional.
I've lost perps, and I've made mistakes, but I've never said as
an agent of the FBI that it's okay to let a killer walk when
we've got enough to convict. And I never will."

"No one's saying it's okay," Jeffrey said. "We're just saying
we have no choice."

"We do have a fucking choice! We can charge them and let them
be judged. We can try to find solutions. Our job here is
supposed to be to handle the fallout, but I seem to be the only
one here who's willing to do any handling. The rest of you have
already given up!"

Doggett's face was hard with anger. "That's easy for you to
say, Follmer, you haven't had one of these things try to tear
your body apart with its bare hands. You haven't seen a pile of
blood and metal in a bucket get up and start walking. You're so
far out of your depth you don't even know it. You have no idea
what you're dealing with here."

Follmer turned to Jeffrey. "What about you, Jeffrey? Are you
just going to sit there? Are you going to prove every shitty
thing the New York Times said about you last year by letting this
happen?"

Jeffrey felt his hands tighten into fists and his face grow red,
but he didn't answer. Diana did, going to Follmer, touching his
arm. "Brad, that isn't fair. It's not that simple-"

"No, save it. Just take your diplomacy and your tact and your
reasonable voice and save it. Not everything can be solved that
way, Diana." He pulled away. "I'm charging her. And none of
you can stop me." He stormed out, slamming the door behind him
in a perfect fever of fury.

They all stood there, staring at each other for a moment, but
then Krycek moved. It was a fast movement, uncontrolled.
Expression dark. He picked up the phone.

"What are you doing?" Diana said.

"I'm stopping him."

Diana went to him, speaking in Arabic. Arguing with him,
Jeffrey thought. She didn't want the others to see her
questioning his judgement.

Her effort at presenting a united front was wasted. He all but
roared at her, "It can't be allowed!" He pulled away from her,
saying into the phone, "Marita Krycek. It's urgent."

Diana drew away, sighing. Krycek could be heard, talking in
Russian in a low voice behind her. Jeffrey rose and went to her.

"That wasn't called for," he said, frowning at Krycek across the
room.

Diana dismissed this. "It wasn't personal. Don't worry about
it. I'm not."

"But still, he shouldn't have-" and then he broke off,
understanding his mistake when the animation left her face.
Diana's partnership with Krycek was sacrosanct. They'd been
friends before he even met her.

"You worry about your partner, Jeffrey," she said coldly. "Let
me worry about mine."


[22]


Yolanda was sitting on her porch when he got there. She looked
like she was waiting for a bus.

Unbelievably, she was smiling.

"I wondered when you'd get here," she said, getting to her feet.
"Thought maybe you'd had second thoughts."

"I told you it didn't change anything."

"And you didn't disappoint." She came down the steps. "You
solved the case, Agent Follmer. Congratulations." She moved
past him, towards the passenger side of the car.

He grabbed her arm. "Was it worth it?" he rasped, pulling her
close, searching her eyes with his own.

They stood there. Gazes fixed. Caught in a single breath, a
single heartbeat.

Her face grew tender. She was suddenly, unexpectedly solemn.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, it was."

His mouth tasted bitter. His satisfaction was muted by other
things - softer, sadder things. He knew what needed to be done,
and he would do it, but how he wished-

"I'm glad," he said at last.

She pulled her arm away. Stepped back. Separating herself from
him. That smile rose up once more.

"Then let's go."


[23]


"Surely it's against Bureau policy for you to arrest a suspect
on your own," Yolanda said, stretching out in the seat beside
him. "Especially one of us."

Follmer shrugged. "There's so much about this case that's out
of order - what's one thing more?"

"You're not afraid of me, then? Because I could end it for you,
Brad, so easily. Just...put my hand on your thigh...push down on
the accelerator...Shannon did that to someone once, Brad, did
Doggett tell you that?"

"It must be nice to have someone to look up to," he quipped.
His mouth was dry.

The damnable part of it was, he *was* afraid of her. He wasn't
before, at her house, but now, things were as they had been.
This was survival, and he understood that he was fair game. He
found himself glancing around the deserted road. Looking for
signs of life. When had suburbia in the daytime gotten this
quiet? Why the fuck hadn't he sent a squad car for her?

But he knew why. He couldn't bring himself to send some
clueless rent-a-cop to do the job, knowing what might befall him.
Couldn't bring himself to dismiss her into the system like that,
either. And he sensed that if she would let anyone bring her in,
it would be him. The love they'd made in the dark made no
difference in the light of day, but the respect she'd accorded
him for meeting her challenge remained.

Yolanda was smiling. "I like you, Brad."

"I like you too," he said, quite truthfully, staring straight
ahead at the road. Determined not to look at her hand, to see if
she planned to follow through on her threat. He couldn't resist
a look at her face, though. "But I'm still gonna take you in."

Her smile didn't falter. She was beautiful, sitting there, and
it was easy to forget that she was a killer, born and bred. Easy
to remember the softness and the brightness and forget the ridges
on the back of her neck. In another life, he thought, it could
have been love.

"I know you will," she said, voice warm with approval. "That
was why I chose you, you know. I knew-" and then she broke off,
looking at the road ahead with a gasp.

"What is it?" he said, peering. There was a black speck - no, a
black car, turning the corner at the end of her street. "What is
it?"

"No," she whispered, grabbing his arm. "No."

"Yolanda!" he yelled, trying to get his arm away from her. They
swerved wildly over the road. He hit the brakes, pulling up with
a screech on the wrong side of the road, one wheel on the
pavement, inches from the world's ugliest mailbox. "What the
fuck are you doing?"

If he'd expected anything, it wasn't this. It wasn't fear.

"You sold me out!" she railed. "How could you? How *could*
you?"

"I didn't - what are you talk-" and that was when he heard the
gravelly sound of cars pulling up in front of them. Car doors
opening. He looked up, and he saw them, black fleet sedans. CIA
plate prefixes.

"Step out of the car, Agent Follmer," a clipped British voice
said from beside his window. He turned away from Yolanda and
looked. An old man stood there. Refined. Austere. Manicured.

He looked around the car, assessing the situation. Six agents.
All packing heat. A man watering his garden up the street looked
at the scene unfolding before him, and calmly put down his hose
and walked indoors. Suburban myopia, doesn't it just fucking
fill your heart with national pride.

Yolanda was deadly white.

Follmer let out a sound of defeat, and he did as he was told.

He was grabbed and pushed to the car while they pulled Yolanda
out the other side. She was shivering. All fight gone. She
looked agonisingly at him, her expression a plea.

"What the hell is going on? Who are you?" Follmer demanded,
looking over his shoulder at the Englishman. He was looking down
at a hand-held computer, tracing lines with a stylus.

Yolanda screamed, and he looked back at her. She slumped in the
other agents' grasp. That scream made the hairs on the back of
his neck stand up and his stomach twist and lurch. He watched
her, helpless, fighting down the urge to try to pull away and go
to her. The urge to protect.

"Just an international observer," the man said, and he looked
over his shoulder again. "There are means of control, Agent
Follmer. Just not ones we can justify to the legislature right
now. You would do well to remember that."

"She's an American citizen!" he cried in outrage. "She's a
fucking soldier! You can't do this to our soldiers!"

Amusement crept into the man's face, creasing the lines around
his eyes with warmth. "Krycek said you had spirit." Before he
had a chance to absorb the implications of this, he went on, "Not
every soldier is on our side any more, Agent Follmer. Some of
them are enemies from within. And some-" he cast a glance at
Yolanda "- are just caught in the middle. A bit like you." He
nodded to his agents, and they dragged the prone woman to the
closest sedan. "Good day, Agent Follmer."

They left him there, and he watched them go, and then he slumped
down against his car with his head in his hands, and he wept.


[24]


"You sold me out."

Follmer's voice was not so much angry or reproachful as deadly,
deadly tired. It told Jeffrey all he needed to know, even before
he turned around.

Krycek sighed, turning in his chair to face him as well.
Follmer was standing there in the doorway, the lines of his face
drawn and haggard, jacket held haphazardly over his shoulder.

"I didn't sell you out, Brad," he said. His voice was
surprisingly gentle. "I sold her out. And you didn't give me a
lot of choice."

"Did you know they had weapons?"

Krycek shook his head. "Not for certain. There have been
rumours. Experimental weapons, implants, nanotechnology - it's
hard to know what's real and what isn't. The way things are
right now - a case like this could get some of this shit pushed
through as law." He went on, "For what it's worth, I agree with
you about finding solutions. But not like that. Not an official
seal on violating the people they already violated."

Follmer slumped on the visitor lounge. "Do you know what
they'll do to her?"

"No. I just told Marita to make some calls and find a way to
stop it. I doubt she knows either. She'd have put the word out
and let it spread. She's very resourceful," he added with a
trace of pride.

Follmer made a sound that might have been agreement, or
amusement, or disgust. Or maybe all three.

"You okay?" Jeffrey said, moving closer in his chair.

"I'll live," Follmer said. Then, abruptly, "Jesus Christ."

"It gets better," Krycek said. Short. Brusque, even. As
though this was the very last thing he wanted to be discussing.
Diana came over and laid an approving hand on his shoulder as she
passed them, slipping unobtrusively into her chair. Apparently
all was forgiven there.

"I don't want it to get better," Follmer spat. "I don't want to
get used to this shit and take it in my stride. I don't want to
be like-"

"Like us?" Krycek queried. There was no rancour in his voice.

Follmer looked away.

Diana broke the moment. "Alex, can you come with me up to
Records?" she said softly. "We need to check some things. For
the Hollister case."

Krycek's eyelids flickered. "Sure."

Jeffrey watched them go. Diana shot him a supportive smile as
she left.

A note of weary amusement crept into Follmer's voice. "Diana's
rattled. She's usually more subtle than that."

"They had a fight after you left. I've never seen them fight
before."

"Damn, and I missed it."

They sat there a moment, looking at each other in silence.

"I'm sorry about Yolanda," Jeffrey said. "I know
she...mattered. Somehow."

Follmer looked away. Clearly struggling for composure. "Yeah."

"That was impressive today," he said. He got up and went to the
kitchenette. Looked down at the bench, clinking cups
industriously. Not looking at him.

"What, going off half-cocked and getting myself accosted by men
in black?"

"You stood up to us. Practically the whole team. And for
something like that. What you said about institutional apathy -
I didn't think you cared about stuff like that." He looked over
his shoulder at him, still sitting there on the couch. "I didn't
think you had the balls."

Follmer snorted laughter through his nose. "Well, it remains to
be seen whether I have any left after today." He managed a weak
smile. "But thanks."

Jeffrey mumbled, an awkward sound of acknowledgment, and they
got back to work.


END



AUTHOR'S NOTE: The concept for this story was that each author
would build towards the conclusion by writing the interviews
Yolanda requested for their specific agents, working more or less
blind. They knew where their own characters were coming from,
and they knew why Yolanda did what she did, but with one
exception, neither they nor I knew what would happen when their
agents and Yolanda got together. So it was an experiment of
sorts because these scenes determined how the case was resolved.
(They might theoretically have changed the ending, as well,
though ultimately that was not the case). It was a risk, but it
worked out so well. It was a great project to work on, and I'm
so honoured to have collaborated with these fabulous writers.
Though their individual inputs in word count were small, they
determined the path of the whole investigation, and that was a
huge challenge for me, to take what they came up with and run
with it. Without exception, they did a fabulous job. -- Deslea

Feedback for this story can be sent to xfvcu@deslea.com - it
will be forwarded to all the writers. The writing credits are as
follows:

CindyET: Scene 16 (Mulder)

[ cindyet@tdstelme.net ] [ http://cindyet.philedom2k.com ]

Emily M: Scene 13 (Doggett)

[ lyasandra515@hotmail.com ]

Eodrakken Quicksilver: Scenes 9, 14 (Krycek, Reyes)

[ eo@morosophy.com ] [ http://www.morosophy.com/sun/ ]

Lara Means: Scene 17 (Scully)

[ larameansxf@earthlink.net ] [ http://larameansxf.tripod.com/ ]

Maidenjedi: Scene 10 (Fowley)

[ texgoddess@yahoo.com ] [ http://users.pdsys.org/~maidenjedi ]

Deslea R. Judd: Scenes 1-8, 11-12, 15, 18-24, final edit

[ deslea@deslea.com ] [ http://fiction.deslea.com ]