The lighting in the tube station was a harsh white that made everyone look pale. As she watched the washed out reflections of travelers in the polished steel of a support post, Scully mused to herself how long it had been since she'd taken herself to wait for someone, anyone, coming home from a journey. But David had been gone three weeks now, and she was anxious to see him again. It had been a frustrating time. There was so much work to be done, and suddenly she found herself not only without David's input on the research, but without his help on the classes. Her own time in the lab had been severely curtailed in his absence, and he'd been gone so long that the midterm break of the third trimester was almost upon them. Well, it's not as if it could have been helped, she thought, resigned. When David's attempt to locate the missing girl suggested she'd gone camping in the Appalachians and gotten herself lost, the logical course of action had been to go look for her. None of them had anticipated the urgent message David had gotten from his grandmother on his pad just before nightfall. After the day's searching, they'd planned on taking shelter in a small, abandoned mountain town, but David had been so agitated about the crisis at the ranch that she'd given him her solar torch and assured him she'd be able to hike out alone in the morning. The girl had reappeared a few days later, dirty, and sporting a variety of abrasions and contusions. She had no clear memory of the time she'd been missing, but her doctors had attributed that to the concussion and were unconcerned. In class, the girl had smiled shyly from under wispy brown bangs at classmates who fussed and clucked over her adventure, warming gradually to the unusual attention. Scully had followed suit, inviting Amy to her office, ostensibly to help her catch up on missed work, but prying consistently and gently into her memories of the abduction. For that's what it had been, Scully was certain. It fit the pattern she had learned 200 years earlier, as well as the premonition of her most recent dream. Mulder's terse warning, "It has begun." It amazed her that she hadn't correlated the African tracking data with the Grays immediately. She and David had shared a few brief correspondences over the nets in his absence, but she'd been unwilling to expose her suspicions where they might be observed. So she'd had to wait for his return. A faint vibration in the station floor alerted her to the tube's imminent arrival. Minutes later, she heard the hiss of pressurization in the enormous lock, and then the great doors slid open and the train of cars glided smoothly into view. She waited for the spill of people pouring out the six equidistant doors to thin, and stood when she spied David's loping stride crossing the platform toward her. He smiled broadly when he saw her, and surprised her by stooping to engulf her in an unabashed hug. 'This is nice,' she thought to herself, aware for a moment of the ongoing thawing of her heart. "Missed you, Grams," he whispered in her ear. She pinched his ribs to make him let go, and rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Don't call me that," she admonished him. "Can't call you Nana," he grinned. "Hmm. Bubbe, maybe?" "Dr. Charles will do in public," she exhorted him, but she was smiling faintly at his playful mood. "What's gotten into you?" "Just glad to see you," he shrugged. "Come on," he jerked his head toward the stairwell, "let's get going." As they walked, Scully filled him in on her suspicions about Amy. "So, she really was in Africa." David commented. "That's what I suspect," Scully replied. "I'm not sure what made you think she was in the Appalachians." David ducked his head. "I guess I was off a bit. I'm not really very adept except with people I'm especially close to," he inveigled. "How's it been?" she pressed. "Any more headaches?" "No. Actually, I seem to be hearing a lot less than three weeks ago." "The ability is fading?" she asked. He merely nodded. Jerry had carefully muted Scully's perception of David's skill while David watched and listened. He understood the importance of maintaining that perception, but already he found lying to her difficult. He hoped it wouldn't be necessary for long. "I wish I could get a current blood sample from Amy," Scully remarked, returning to her train of thought. "I need to know what they did to her, what they're trying to accomplish." David hummed against his teeth for a second. "I might be able to help with that, if you can spare me for an evening." "You just got back," Scully complained. "I think I could persuade her if I could spend some time with her. I'll tell her it's for an independent research project I'm working on. It's not entirely untrue. And anyway," he nudged her gently with an elbow, "I haven't been on a date since I started working with you. People are talking," he joked. Scully wondered at the change in David, this new quietly confident and lighthearted face he was showing her. Despite his relaxed demeanor, inwardly David's mind was occupied with the next step of his immediate project. He had to bring Scully back to the level of understanding she'd had that night in the mound, without, for the moment, confessing his ability to hear the Grays. Amy's disappearance had something to do with hybridization, she had said, and of the two of them, Scully was the one experienced with the implications of that. Jerry's telepathic tutelage had been thorough, and David was able to open his mind lightly now, and seek out a Gray voice to listen to. But it wasn't like the entire race spent all day every day thinking about their plans for humanity any more than he spent his entire day thinking about his big left toe. It could very well be some time before he pieced together anything that made sense, and in the meantime, they needed Scully's experience focused in the right direction. The walk had carried them more than halfway home, and the bright afternoon sun was beginning to angle toward the horizon. David prodded her gently. "Even without a blood sample," he began, "you must have a guess about what happened to Amy. Based on what happened before, I mean. What did they do to people they abducted?" "Different things, to different people," she replied. "Medical tests. Harvesting ova. People rarely remembered anything specific besides the pain, and even if they did, few would have had a sophisticated enough scientific background to even begin to guess the purpose of it all." "But there was a purpose ultimately, wasn't there?" Scully thought back, remembering the days before the resistance. "At least some of the research was toward trying to create a hybrid. I told you about that, that night at your grandmother's house, didn't I? How is she, by the way?" "She's fine," he answered absently, steering the conversation back on course. "What was the point of a hybrid?" "It was a deal with the devil. The syndicate bargained with the Grays to postpone colonization until they could produce a hybrid. They offered themselves, their families, as hybrid slaves to the colonists in return for survival. It was a nasty business." "Do you think that's what they were doing with Amy?" Scully pursed her lips, and squinted. After a few steps she answered. "I don't see why. They didn't get their hybrid 200 years ago, and they started a war anyway. They've got their colony and half the planet. It can't have been all that important to them." David sighed, frustrated by the different conclusions Scully was drawn toward, lacking the key bits of information that he couldn't tell her. He kept trying. "But what if that is what they're trying to do? Would it mean anything? Would you be able to tell?" "Ok, for the sake of argument, suppose they were trying to hybridize Amy. Why now, after all this time? And why was she returned? Why isn't she still in Africa, bleeding green?" David shrugged as casually as he was able, but he was tense with excitement. She was getting close. "I don't know," he said, "maybe she didn't work out." "David, with all their technology, if they wanted to hybridize Amy don't you think they'd just..." she trailed off. "What?" he prompted. "Unless they couldn't, for some reason. Unless their science wasn't..." Suddenly, she shivered violently. "Are you ok?" David asked, concerned. Scully rubbed her arms, nodding reassuringly. "I just had the strangest sense of deja vu," she said. "What were you going to say?" David pressed. "About their science?" Scully continued, excited now by her theory. "What if they didn't -- don't -- have the science? If what they wanted all along was a hybrid, then that would mean that they manipulated those men into offering them exactly what they wanted. That would explain why they were willing to wait. That never made sense to me before, but it would fit, wouldn't it?" David drove toward the final realization. "But if their science is so lacking, then what were they doing with Amy?" Scully deflated visibly, and David mentally berated himself for the phrasing. He hadn't meant to make her doubt her previous perception. He tried again. "Well, maybe they've been studying," he offered. She smiled at him, thinking he was joking, but her face grew suddenly serious. "That's it, David. That's why biology is the most pursued science on the planet, they've been influencing us in that direction so that they could learn from us." They had reached the old house, and were starting up the steps to the front porch. She stopped, with her hand on the doorknob. Her expression darkened from serious to graven. "Oh, my God. What if it's our research, David? What if they took that girl because of us?" "Then we'd better figure out what it all means before they do," he asserted, "because it's too late to take it back." She nodded, stepping inside, but she put her hand on David's chest, stopping him from following her. "You've got the night off, David. Go get me that blood sample." ------------------------------------------------------------- In spite of a twinge of guilt over the false pretenses of the date, by the end of the evening David found himself having a good time. Amy was bright, which he had known, and possessed a biting wit, which he hadn't. She was painfully shy in large groups like her classes, hiding her sense of humor along with the rest of her personality in a bid to avoid too much notice. David found he enjoyed drawing her out, found some of her pointed barbs against a few of her more conceited classmates hilariously fitting. At the end of the night he kissed her, because he knew she wanted him to, but declined her invitation to come inside, because he was afraid he would disappoint her. Scully was napping in the study when he returned, but she had already hacked the data from Amy's most recent medical appointment prior to her abduction, so David left her there, and retreated to the lab. He wouldn't need her for the initial work. It was simple, something any second sequence medical student could do. Compare two blood samples looking for the telltale traces that would pinpoint interference with the genetic structure, and then study the changes. It was the sort of thing that was standard procedure for checking on the progress of any course of genetic treatment. The trick would be in reverse engineering the intent of the changes. He would wake Scully for that, when he was ready. Of course, this all presumed that whatever had been done to her was genetically based. If it weren't, they'd have to talk her into allowing a physical exam, somehow, without frightening her. He grinned foolishly to himself for a moment, considering the possibility that he'd passed up one opportunity to give her a physical already tonight. He shook his head at the adolescent way the thought had presented itself. Something about her made him feel fourteen and giddy. He looked forward to seeing her again, for a real date, without any subterfuge. Almost without realizing it, he reached out lightly with his mind, just for the comfort of checking on her sleep. Had it not been for Jerry's training, what he found might have left him weeping in pain. Instead, it left him weeping in remorse. They had her again. He spied on them all that night, sensing the way they immobilized her telepathically. Shielding himself from her terror, and concentrating on the procedures he saw through the eyes of the Grays attending her. Dancing delicately around their thoughts and straining to perceive their goals through the confusion of their alien thought forms. And as it became gradually clearer, his faith shattered off him in shards and sheets, like the icy face of a glacier. For he felt nothing of compassion from them, felt even less regard from them for Amy than he himself had for Scully's little white mice. By dawn he knew what they were trying to do. What he still didn't know, was why. ------------------------------------------------------------- Scully woke early, stiff from having dozed the night on the couch. She'd only meant to nap until David came home, but now the soft pink light of early morning cut across the study, casting long shadows across the floor and desk. She stretched slowly, rising out of the sofa and shuffling toward the doorway. She was surprised that David hadn't come to her yet, and wondered briefly if he had spent the night with Amy. Scully realized that she liked the girl, and thought she might be a good match for David, but she and Mulder both had experienced the anguish of loving an abductee, never knowing for certain when they'd be taken, and she couldn't wish that for David. Lost in thought and early morning lethargy, she didn't see David sitting in the shadows by the cages in the lab until he moved. "Oh!" she exclaimed, clutching her chest. "David, you startled me." "Sorry," he whispered. He didn't look up at her, focusing steadily on something in his hands. Finally, he held the little creature up to his face, considering it nose to nose, before rising and setting it terribly gently back down in its tiny home. "Have you ever thought of setting them free?" he asked. "The mice?" Scully responded, puzzled. "They wouldn't survive, David. They're bred for the lab." "That's wrong, you know?" he said, his back still toward her, fixing the lid of the cage. "Breeding life for captivity, I mean. Making it dependent." Finished with the clasps, he turned around. "And anyway, they might. They might adapt." Scully was shocked by the deep circles revealed under David's eyes as he turned to face her. He seemed to have aged since he left her last night. "David, how long have you been here?" she asked. "All night," he answered. The flat affect of his tone worried her further. She crossed to him, leading him gently into the light, and to a seat. "David, what's happened?" she asked quietly. "I know what they're doing to her," he said. "You were right. It *is* our research. Or at least, it's mine." He shook his head, sliding his arms forward onto the lab bench, sinking slowly until his face was pillowed in crook of his forearm. "What's the first thing every kid learns about comparative genomics?" he asked. His voice was muffled by the fabric of his sleeve. "David," she responded nonsensically, rubbing his back with soothing strokes. "Less than three percent separates humans from apes," he answered himself. "Those statistics aren't too far off from the separation of humans and the third species we've isolated from the Gray genome." "I thought you had fifteen percent still incomplete," Scully said. "Did you finish?" "No, and it's a good damn thing, too," he remarked bitterly into his sleeve. "Or I doubt we'd be seeing Amy again." He pushed himself upward and took a deep ragged breath, suspiciously like a sniffle. "I know what they're trying to do to her, and it's not a hybrid they want. It probably never was." "What then," Scully asked, concerned. Whatever David had found, it had upset him deeply. "Come and look," he said, scooting his chair over to his console. He brought up the display, showing the telltale signs of genetic tampering from Amy's blood sample. "I've isolated the locations on Amy's genes that they were concentrating on. Look here, and here," he pointed. "These areas, which show the most abuse, line up here, and here," he flipped the display, "and here." Scully looked at the readout. They had wondered often over the past months about this third species that seemed to be so close a cousin. The Grays had clearly been manipulating several areas that where the human genome differed markedly. Taken individually, it would have been incomprehensible, but against the pattern of the other species, there was only one possible conclusion. "Whatever that is, that's what they want," David said. "And I don't think they much care how they do it." Scully leaned forward, touching the display with light fingertips. "There's more," he said. "I got to thinking it was kind of a weird coincidence that it just happened to be someone from South Eastern that they took, someone so close to us that we'd take note of it. So out of curiosity, I ran a search on recent tracker requests. I read the report summaries on them, and there are about two dozen that I found that are remarkably similar to Amy's situation." He put the list up on the screen. The locations were quite dispersed. Enough so that it was unlikely that anyone involved in one of the incidents would be likely to hear of another. "I think it's like the story you told us that night at my grandmother's house. They're taking human subjects for experimentation." Scully sank onto a nearby stool, her breath whistling slowly out between her teeth. "Well, we've got some time," she concluded. "Time for what?" "They're obviously trying to keep a low profile, based on the scattered pattern of the abductions. So they can't be very far along in their experimentation, or they'd be bolder," she reasoned. "We've got to focus our attention on *why* they want to create that species." "What difference does why make?" David exploded. "This is wrong! It needs to be stopped! We have to tell people the truth about what's happening!" She felt the memory of Mulder in David's conviction, remembered that once her role had been to contain that energy, help him to channel it so that it had the chance to do some good. "We can't yet, David." "Yes, we can," he insisted. "No, we can't," she repeated earnestly. "David, no one will believe us." "But we have proof!" he gestured at the display. "The facts are meaningless to people who don't want to believe, David. It didn't take me even one lifetime to learn that." She tempered her voice, working to convince him. "Very few people outside this room have the capacity to understand what seems obvious to you. All that is obvious to them is that the Grays are the benevolent providers. Not long ago you were trying to convince me of that yourself," she reminded him. "The only way to widely disperse such information would be over the nets, and all that would accomplish is to tip our hand. We don't control the nets." "We don't control anything," he muttered, rubbing his hand over the long healed scar left when Scully had extracted his tracker. "We're tagged and monitored like zoo animals. Lab rats." His tone was rancorous. "How could they?" he ground out, and this time she recognized the bright, sharp edge of his sense of betrayal. There were few things harder to control than the zealotry of a new convert. It worried her. It would make him rash. "David, listen to me. *Why* they want this is the most important thing we can learn right now." He started to interrupt but she silenced him. "Two hundred years ago we hinged our survival on immunity. It was the wrong answer to the wrong question because it only postponed the disaster, it didn't end it. They're -- still -- here." She enunciated each word. "The right question is why do they want this? And the right answer is to eliminate the benefit they expect from having it. Because as long as there's something for them to gain by turning us into that, we're just too valuable raw material to ever be left alone. Three percent," she reminded him, "versus starting from scratch." The fury receded from his eyes, replaced by grim determination. "So how do we do that?" he asked. "By finishing the research," she said. "We can't do that. Anything we do just facilitates their progress. They're obviously observing the work." "Then we don't do it here. You'll use the lab in Seattle. We'll leave as soon as the break starts and get things set up so that you can go back as often as possible. The rest of the time you'll be here, working slowly, and toward the wrong conclusions. You understand?" He nodded. "We can't stop, because that might draw their attention. So we mislead." "Right. I need you to finish the separation, David. You're more adept at it than I am, but I've got far more experience in comparative genomics. The answer is in there, I'm sure of it, but I need to see the complete picture." "What about Amy?" he finally asked. She shook her head. "There's nothing we can do for her right now. I'm sorry, you can't imagine how much." "Later, though," he promised himself, "later there will be." ------------------------------------------------------------- David felt the pressure of a deadline far beyond anything he had experienced preparing for an exam or a paper. Sometimes he found it hard to believe he had ever measured stress in terms so mundane. Working in the underground facility was less efficient than in Scully's South Eastern labs. The computers were older, and without the nets, he couldn't simply demand extra processing power when he needed it. He spent the long waits listening to the Grays for clues, and hardly slept. Bit by bit, he separated out the final fifteen percent, at last yielding the genomes for three complete species. It was a fascinating mosaic. Each species was largely unique, but he'd been forced to conclude that some segments of the original genome were duplicated in each, the traits shared. By the time he was ready to show the work to Scully, tracker reports had begun to show occasional small groups of people going missing, not just individuals. It was a race. Scully had made her excuses to the dean, and taken a week's leave to journey with David on his latest trip to the Pacific Northwest. She worried at the tiny cross, offering up a prayer that she'd be able to make sense of the third species, of its importance to the Grays. In her dream, Mulder had said there were paths where she missed the signs. There were limits to what she could understand of a species based on its DNA alone. That's why she had started her research, so long ago, it seemed now, with the tedious steps of building and studying proteins. She had an advantage in that the third species was so nearly human. It meant that there was a great deal she already understood. For his part, David fed her clues he had learned from eavesdropping on the Grays, disguised as flashes of intuition. He hoped that they focused her in the right direction. It was hard for him to judge what might be significant. "I found your old friend Eddie in the second species," he quipped. "What old friend?" she asked. Shaking his head, he said "Not really. My old ambition, remember? From the Smith's shape shifting abilities? Look here. The third species is closely human. The second species appears to be closely Smith. I didn't notice it before because I wasn't looking for it." With the separation complete, it was easier to examine traits of the different species, and he pointed out the familiar segments. Scully pondered that for a moment. "It certainly makes it seem not a coincidence that our two species of otherworld visitors are what they are, doesn't it?" David nodded, agreeing. "Have you ever wondered why every place where the Gray genome is documented, that it's this *exact* sequence?" he added. "Not really. Puzzling out the one sequence was such a huge undertaking, I never sought out variations." "Still," he continued, "when you read any kind of documentation on the human genome, there are always annotations remarking on variations of the different genes. Different reference works use different baseline examples. How else would you understand the significance of our genetic diversities?" Scully felt the tingle of a theory forming. In spite of the grim circumstances, the prospect of discovery was, as always, accompanied by excitement. "What if there's only one example because their genetic diversity has been severely curtailed, in some way?" "A reproductive problem?" David hypothesized. Scully stood and began a slow pacing of the lab. "Maybe. Maybe a very old one. Except..." she trailed off. "Except what?" David asked. "We've still got no understanding of why there are three species described here. If we assume genetic stagnation, would we have to assume it for all three?" It was a good question, one worth investigating. "Maybe you should concentrate on that," David suggested. "See if you can discover how this species' DNA ought to be recombining under normal circumstances." David had come to appreciate the frustration of reverse engineering from such basic information. His tone held a note of exasperation. "I wish we knew something, anything, about their gestation," he lamented. It was a long shot, but he asked anyway. "Can you remember anything from before? I mean, you saw them occasionally during the fighting. Did any of them ever appear pregnant?" A memory tickled at the back of Scully's mind, and she stopped her pacing to try to draw it out. It was a body, she remembered. Ravaged, gelatinous, a gaping wound in the chest. Mulder had been convinced that it had something to do with the alien virus. He'd described in terrible detail the rows and rows of cryopods he'd found when he rescued her from Antarctica. He'd said some had been filled with human beings, but that others housed horrifying, hard-shelled creatures. Scully had still been clinging to another reality, then. She couldn't deny waking up at the bottom of the world, but she stubbornly resisted Mulder's account, attributing his theory to seeing the movie 'Alien' too many times. In retrospect, the irony was too stark to be amusing. "Maybe. Maybe there is something I remember," she mused. For several days, then, the conversation stopped. Scully descended into her work with an intensity beyond anything David had yet witnessed. When she resurfaced, it was with a theory beyond anything he could have imagined. "I have only shreds to support this," she began. "Proving it with any kind of certainty could be a lifetime's research on its own. But nothing I've found so far contradicts it." David was relieved to hear a voice again, besides those in his head. "Tell me." "Remember some time ago, you mentioned that you had only found mechanisms for donating genetic material, but not for gestating it?" David nodded, and she continued. "You were looking at the first species when you noted that. The Gray genome contains three species in compression, but I think the Gray life form as we know it is described by that first species you extracted. The second is Smith, or Smith-like, and the third is humanoid." She took a deep breath, struggling to explain clearly what she was barely coming to understand. "I think this is what happens. In order to create the full genome, the compressed combination of three species, the process begins by donating genetic material describing the first species, as you observed. But, in order to collect the genetic material describing the other two species, the gestation has to occur in the bodies of each of the other two species in turn. As gestation takes places, the body is consumed, and genetic information from the host is folded into the new life. The compression of the DNA sequence probably takes places as a function of maturation." She shrugged slightly at that. "I'm not really clear on that part." David took the next logical step. "So, they need to create this species in order to procreate?" he asked. "I think it's more complex than that," Scully said. "The other two species do seem to have coding that would indicate an ability for non-destructive gestation, but only of their own kind. Gestating a Gray seems to be destructive no matter what. I'm getting beyond myself into pure speculation now," she warned. David nodded, accepting the caveat. "If the essence of this life is colonial, perhaps the Gray is the dominant force in the colony. Still, it needs the other parts of the colony to survive and thrive, so it would have to be able to create them. I think that a mature Gray could generate as many Smiths and Humans," Scully simplified her phrasing, exposing her suspicions, "as it needs for its colony, by impregnating existing colony members with the appropriate subset of its genetic material. The original hosts might be donated or captured from another colony. But to create another Gray, it needs to consume a Human and a Smith. And to ensure genetic diversity of the offspring Gray, it has to gestate in a Human and Smith from a different Gray's colony. Not from its own." David let out a low whistle. "Unbelievable." "It's a reach," Scully agreed. "And you think somewhere along the way, they lost one leg of this trinity?" "Possibly. I don't know how, or when, or why. Disease, maybe. War? What if the Human element was the defensive arm of the colony?" "Expendable, you mean." Scully nodded. "Maybe that explains why we're so similar," David suggested. "Maybe they've been here, to Earth, long before, and left some of the third species behind. If they were considered expendable, it might have been like leaving behind..." he gazed at the ceiling, searching for an analogy. "Like leaving fingernail clippings," he concluded. "Only maybe some of them adapted, found a way to breed with the life on this planet, and became us." The missing link, Scully thought. One of the great mysteries of evolution, the outcome of another species' biological midden heap. "I saw a ship of theirs, once, before the wars, buried in the surf, in Africa. It was covered with symbols," she recounted, "symbols that appeared to be DNA sequences. I remember being so excited at the time. The original human genome project had years to go before completion, and I thought I had the answers right in front of me. So many years to discover the truth..." she trailed off. "I'm not interested in being devolved, Scully," David said. Scully shook her head. "Nor I." "What do we do next?" "We come up with an alternative. Make them not need us anymore. Find a way for them restore their genetic diversity that doesn't involve humanoid hosts." David was shaking his head. Scully misunderstood his objection. "I know it's a huge undertaking, David, but maybe this is the work I'm meant for. Maybe this is why I can't die. Maybe I'll take them to their next stage of evolution." "That's too many maybes, Scully. You don't know that their motivation is that simple. They could want the restoration of their colonies above all." He countered with his own suggestion. "If they're really suffering from a long history of genetic stagnation, then there's very likely a biological weakness we can exploit, and eliminate the threat entirely." It seemed to Scully an astonishing stance for David to take. "David, when you first came to me, the Grays were your heroes. You would exterminate them?" she asked. "What about you?" David demanded, equally baffled. "They wiped out everyone you cared about, and now you want to help them?" "I want to be left alone, David. I want people to survive. But if I'm willing to engineer the Gray's extinction for that, then I'm no better than they are. This is still an intelligent species we're discussing." If there was a peaceful solution, after all the blood spilled, she felt compelled to attempt it. David found her compassion misplaced. Angry, he said, "You go ahead and work on the carrot, then. But I'm working on the stick. I hear they're most persuasive when used together." ------------------------------------------------------------- Back at South Eastern, Scully had gone to bed angry. For weeks, she and David had been taking turns, alternating between maintaining appearances at the University, doctoring the carefully incorrect research, and spending time in Seattle, working on their solutions to the accelerating Gray incursions. They argued often, trying to persuade one another to focus on each other's approach. And now David was a day late returning. She had only a brief, cryptic net message that he was safe, but delayed. She tossed fitfully under the bedclothes, which tangled around her feet until she kicked them off. She fumed at the impedance to her own research, fumed at David's intractable attitude. Somewhere along the way she had suddenly lost her ability to convince, coerce, or control him. She had taught him everything she knew, and he was taking it and running with it in a direction she couldn't condone. The pillows suffered from her irritable state next, coughing out a plume of down as she tried to thump them a comfortable shape. It was no use. The bedroom was too hot, and she was too agitated. She stood, and grabbing a light blanket, stalked down the stairs and out onto the back veranda, sinking onto a lounge chair that faced out toward the corn patch. It was cooler outside, and the light blanket felt comforting, instead of stifling. Gazing up at the crescent moon, she willed herself to relax, concentrating on timing her breathing to the singsong of the crickets. "Everyone's going to lose, Scully, if you two continue working at cross purposes." Scully turned her head, strangely unsurprised to see Mulder sitting on the chair beside her. She studied his moonlit profile for a moment before responding. "He won't listen to me anymore," she sighed. "He's not the problem," Mulder said, turning to face her directly, "You are." She stiffened at his assertion, and he reached out to take her hand. The touch felt insubstantial, tingling. "Scully, it would take lifetimes enough to make your own seem fleeting to accomplish what you have in mind. There just isn't time for your approach. The answer lies with David. If you ignore him, you'll miss the signs." "I won't be a party to genocide," she insisted, "Not even of the Grays." "And what about of Humanity?" he asked, his tone intense. "A sin of omission is still a sin. You're strong enough to weigh the options, find the balance. You've done it before." The tingle moved up her arm, and down again. She found the ghostly caress soothing. Apprehensive, she asked, "What do you want me to do?" "Work with him, Scully, not against him. Don't cut him off. If you're his partner in this, he'll come back from the edge for you. I always did, didn't I?" She had never been able to resist him when he focused all the intensity of his soul on persuading her. She found the penetrating look in his eyes familiar, in spite of its long absence. "There is a third option, Scully," he murmured, "One you can live with. One you could die with. But you have to give up this plan of yours, and let David lead you to it. This is not the time for stubbornness." She searched his eyes in the darkness, vaguely aware that she could see the stars behind him shining faintly through the hazel. "Please, Scully," he pleaded. She sank back into thin cushion of the lounger, letting her eyes fall shut. "Okay," she whispered. The tingling sensation surrounded her, comforting and deep. She opened her eyes to see him kneeling beside her, leaning back as he released her from an embrace. "He's brought you what you need. The last piece. You need to leave as soon as you wake up." "Mulder, I'm awake now," she reminded him. "It always seems that way, doesn't it?" he said, with a gentle smile. "Close your eyes," he instructed. She hesitated, drinking in one more long draught of his beloved features before she complied. The tingling sensation settled into her lips, and when the long rays of dawn sunlight woke her, she could still feel it.