(Headers and Disclaimers in Chapter One)

Chapter 4 of 20

Scully thought she'd feel better in her own apartment, but
she didn't.  She thought a shower would wash away the feeling of
dread, the helplessness, the panic. Mulder's clever mind-over-matter
parlor trick didn't work when her self-generated fears and 
doubts created the upheaval.  The sickness of doubt,
guilt, regret, resentment, fear never left her no matter what
thoughts she put into her head.

This morning she discovered a new torment: the more she depended on 
Mulder, the more she needed distance between them; the more she 
realized how much he meant to her, the harder it was to be around him.  
She knew it was not the case -- that was her nature.  When she finally 
emerged from the bedroom, showered, dressed and ready for her 
appointment with Waters, Scully felt no better than when she arrived.

Mulder met her outside the bedroom door tossing a couch
pillow between his hands.  "You said slept at my apartment - why?"

To be near you, she thought, to be somewhere close to you. God, to 
smell you on the bed and feel safe for one minute.  "I thought someone
was in my apartment," she said aloud.

"Were they?"

"I don't know," she said.

"That's what we FBI agents might call another clue," he said.

"To what?"

"That's the question."

On the drive over to Water's office she said, "Mulder, on
the face of it do you think there's enough evidence to convict
me?"

"I don't think that's the face you should show a jury.
We've got lots of time before it comes to that."

She didn't, Scully knew.  She felt as she had with cancer,
as though time was being pulled away from her like the weave of a
sweater.  Her level of dread rose with the elevator to Water's office.

They sat for a time in the dusty waiting room.  Water's
secretary worked on her computer and filed a broken fingernail.
She worked on the nail under the desk where no one could see
such unprofessional conduct.  Scully concentrated on the potted
plant in the corner of the office.  It needed water.  It needed
sunlight.  It was probably already dead.  A crash followed by a
howl of fury startled the three in the outer office.  Almost
immediately the buzzer on his secretary's desk rang.  "You can go
in," she said to Scully.

Mulder whistled under his breath.  Water's untidy office
looked ransacked.  Waters nursed the fist he'd obviously slammed
into the desk.  "Who is this?" he snapped to Scully.

"My partner.  Fox Mulder."

"Out, Fox Mulder.  You're too damn late to join the party."
Scully scowled and Mulder put his hands on his hips.
Waters had black circles under his eyes.  "Anything said
between client and attorney is privileged.  Anything said between
us in the presence of a third party is not.   Your partner goes."
************************
Skinner had expected Mulder all morning.  He even thought about 
warning his assistant, then discarded the idea. But he knew he made 
a mistake the moment Mulder threw open his office door and Skinner saw
his assistant's frightened face.  He should have told her.  As it was 
he only shook his head at her unspoken question.

"I forgot the files, but I'll bet you guessed that,"
Mulder said.  "You want to fill me in here? I know you didn't do
this to Scully - but I bet you know who did."

"Sit down, Agent Mulder."

"Gee, I'd like to stay and talk, but I have to pick her up
at her attorney's office.  Did you know your playmates drugged
her again last night?" Mulder came at Skinner head on.  The AD
ducked and locked Mulder's arms down in an embrace.

"Get hold of yourself, agent!"

Mulder shook off the arms and back away.  "How do you look
at yourself every day?"

"The same way you do," Skinner said.  "With both eyes open."
"What does that mean," Mulder said.

"I think it's clear Scully's in over her head-"

"Did you shove her in the water?"

"You are way outta line," Skinner said.

"I'm real short of tact right now."

"Keep your voice down!"

"Scully's innocent."

"I can't stop what's happening.  Neither can you."

"I can try."

"Use your head, Mulder.  Use what's been given to you!"

For a moment Mulder considered what the AD said.  In the
context of the two files in his apartment it made a certain
amount of sense.  Skinner let him go.

"Not all the work's been done on either of the cases I
gave you," Skinner said.  "There may be more out there."

"I hope I don't find you played a part in this." Mulder's
voice was dangerously quiet.  His body fairly quivered with
controlled violence.  "I hope I don't find you could have stopped
it."  Skinner said nothing.  When Mulder slammed the door Skinner
let out the breath he'd been holding, took his glasses off, and
rubbed the bridge of his nose.  Then he picked up the phone.
**********************
Water's office looked no better than the first time Mulder
saw it.  Scully sat in a wobbly chair with her hands resting in
her lap.  She tipped once, but regained her balance quickly, a
small island of serenity in the middle of chaos.

"Did you wait long?"

She shook her head.  "We just finished.  Waters went to file some 
papers.  The, ah, the handwriting expert's report came back. I signed 
those fraudulent reports.  It's my signature," she said.

"It only proves they have woven a tight web," he said.

"It makes me wonder..."

"If you could have done what they say? If you've lost your mind and 
done something like this? " He knew he'd guessed right when she pulled 
her lips together.  Mulder shook his head.   "You are the most honest, 
honorable person I know.  Even under the most extreme conditions you 
could not be anything less than you are."

Her smile was a pale shadow of what it could be.  "Just checking."

"Don't doubt yourself.  Don't let them do that to you."
Mulder said.  "If they cause you to question who you are then
their plan has succeeded beyond expectations."

She only moved enough to take a deep, cleansing breath.
"Someone's gone to a great deal of trouble to send me to
prison." He nodded in agreement before she went on.  "I've decided to
find out why and the only way I know to do that is to give them what 
they want."

"Which is?"

"I signed the plea bargain," she said.

Shock seemed to steal his usual snappy response.

"After the agreement is accepted it's customary to wait at
least two weeks before sentencing.  Waters will negotiate for
more time.  That should be sufficient to-"

"Use yourself as bait?"

She shrugged.  "It seems to make sense more than what I've been doing."

"You might have talked to me about it," he said.  His mouth set in a 
hard line.

"We can't crack it from without, perhaps we can from within," she said.

"We haven't had a chance yet."

"It's a risk, certainly."

"It's a big risk," Mulder said.

"Most of the investigation's ground work's been done-" She watched in 
stunned silence as he stood up and stared at something over her 
shoulder.  "You want to know the terms of the agreement, what's at 
stake?" There was little force behind her words; she knew what was at 
stake and so did he.

Mulder glanced down and watched her balancing act on the chair before he 
shrugged," I don't have anything on the line."

Scully absorbed the blow, but it made her flinch.  She hadn't 
accurately judged how much she hurt him with her unilateral decision to 
bargain.  An undercurrent ran through all this that she couldn't 
identify; she felt the same tug this morning in his bedroom and his 
kitchen.  It went beyond the usual banter, the sexual tension that was 
a part of their partnership.  If nothing happened, what did go on last 
night?  Something, she knew.  This was unexplored territory.  All she 
did know was that she had to fix what seemed broken here.

She considered her words carefully, hoping to save the
best ones for some future date when the world was in its right
order.  "I've known for some time how significant-that you are
essential to ...  I never told you-I thought there would be time
-- a better time-.  You've become- vital, really." God, she was
doing this badly.

"You are important to me too, Scully."

"And the work." Shit! She'd done it again. She saw it in his shoulders, 
his lips, the lines across his face.

He stared at her in thinly veiled dismay, hands back on his hips.

"Mulder, I need my partner and friend with me.  You'll be my only way out
once I'm-" She couldn't bear to say it, "-inside." She dared to look at 
him and flashed a quick, tiny smile.  "God, I can scarcely say the word."

Somewhere on the street a car honked its horn.  An emergency siren 
screamed its alarm.  A child cried.

"It's a gutsy call," Mulder said finally.

"It's the right thing."

He nodded.  "It buys us some time and you some safety.  The
pressure is off them.  And we have a week or two to work."

"Aren't you curious about the terms?"

"Irrelevant," Mulder said.

"Interesting - and generous.  The plea is changed to nolo contendo - 
no contest.  The prosecutor's giving away the store - apparently with
the approval of the Attorney General's office. Five to 10, no bar to 
parole," she said.

"Never come to that."

"They wanted elocution, but I refused.  I won't stand up in open court 
and confess to something I haven't done," she said. "They'll accept it.  
They have what they want."
********************
Mulder insisted on getting something to eat.  Scully snapped at him and 
ragged at the waitress.  If she had been a child Mulder would have sent
her to her room.  She ate ravenously and the glint in her eye spoke of 
more conflict to come.  They argued about what they should know first.

Scully wanted to focus on those who were her primary
accusers in the conspiracy charge.  Mulder promised they would do
that, right after they interviewed the wounded bank guard and
his partner.  The former was at home, the latter in jail.  Scully
thought it a waste of time to interview bank guards on a case so
unrelated to her own.  She felt certain it was a dead end.  Even
if it wasn't, she had another reason for not wanting to
interview the accused guard.  She started to tell him, but in the
end he had to guess:  she didn't have any desire to go near the jail 
where she had so recently been a prisoner- and might soon be again.

To her obvious relief Mulder drove first to the apartment of the wounded
man, Charlie Duncan.  His mother opened the front door of the duplex and 
peered at Mulder's ID.  A little belatedly Scully remembered Skinner had 
her badge and gun.  Mulder introduced her as a consultant.

Although his arms and lap were full of books, Charlie tried to welcome 
them when they walked into the modest study.  It was a cozy place, a 
student's hole, his space.  Scully's mouth opened as she took in the 
entire room.  It was dominated by a huge desk and surrounded by posters, 
cut out pictures, drawings, photographs and art works that depicted 
angels.  Angels hung on all the walls, dangled as bookmarks, and were 
pressed under the glass of the coffee table.

"'Xuse the mess," he said.  "I'm trying to make up work
from last semester, from, you know, when I was shot." He waved
them to a love seat, hastily picking up papers from one of the
cushions.  "What can I tell you? You're about the 20th person I've
spoken to about this."

"There are parts of your story-" said Scully.

"I know.  The woman who took over Andy's body-You think I'm
some kind of nut, don't you?" He ran his fingers through his
hair.  "I'm getting letters from everybody from Jerry Falwell to
the KKK.  Everybody wants a piece of this.  That's the craziness."

"In my experience people-in your situation often feel
strange things, see extraordinary things," said Mulder.

"Sometimes our bodies come to the rescue when we're injured," said 
Scully.  "Endorphins kick in - we don't know how - and-"

"How do you explain the angel?  She was as real as you are.
She saved my life," Andy said.

Mulder felt Scully tensing to lash into Charlie so he said 
quickly, "Tell us."

"I told the other FBI guys -- Scully thumbed through the file 
in the hand with the jerky motions of someone very annoyed.   
Charlie's story was sketched in.  Mulder knew the file and he could
imagine the men who wrote the cryptic words and what they thought of 
Charlie's assertions.

"Maybe they didn't think it was worth mentioning in their
reports." Charlie said.  "I know what I saw.  I know she healed me."

"What about your partner," said Mulder.

"Andy?" He looked at Scully when he said it.  "You think
I'm making this up? It was his body, but it wasn't Andy in it.
For one thing, Andy was talking like a black woman.  I mean, he
never did that kindda thing for fun or a joke or something.  It
sounded so weird coming from him." Charlie snickered. "Everything 
that night was weird."

There was a distinctively heavy silence in the room.

"What are you studying, Charlie," said Scully.  Her eyes
swept the room.

"Ah-h, management.  I'm a business major." His look zeroed
in on Scully again.  "I'm a realist."

"I can see that," she said.

Charlie rewarded her sarcasm with a small sigh.   "I've
been trying to find out everything I can about angels, you know."

"How well did you know the man who was on guard duty with
you that night?" said Mulder.

"Andy and I worked together a couplea times.  No great
smarts, you know.  But a nice guy.  Real straight shooter." He
touched his chest gently.  "Maybe that wasn't such a good thing."

"Do you think he shot you?"

Charlie seemed surprised by Mulder's question.  He turned
his hands over a couple of times.  "No.  I think it was the
angel's friend."

"Angel's friend?" Mulder said.

Charlie continued to wring his hands slowly.  "I never said this 
before - I mean, nobody believed me about the other, so I never-.  
But I looked up from the floor after the angel stopped the 
bleeding in my chest.  Andy-"

"She made the bleeding in your chest stop?" Scully's voice carried a 
tone that hinted of disbelief.

"That's what they told me."

"Who?"

"The doctors at the emergency room.  They said somebody
made the bleeding stop," Charlie said.

"Could it have been the EMTs?" said Scully.

"I wasn't bleeding when they got there," he said.  "Ask."

Scully gaped.

"About Andy?" said Mulder.

Charlie related the strange dance he witnessed and the
monologue written in the file.  "He just got out on parole-"

"Bail?"

"Yeah, bail, sorry.  I called him-"

"You shouldn't have done that," Scully said.

"Legally, maybe.  But he's in trouble that's not his
doing," said Charlie.  He stuck out his chin.  "Sue me."

"I think we'll visit him too," said Mulder

"Want me to call him for you? We've gotten to be close."

As they got into the car Scully said, "Angels don't rob
banks, Mulder.  And if every word of his story is gospel, then
that angel was in there to rob the bank too."

"I never said she was an angel," Mulder said.

"What is she then?"

"Maybe she's a missing person."

Scully slapped the file in her lap shut.  "Missing from where?"

Mulder shrugged.
********************
Mulder had become distant since the visit to Water's
office.  Scully realized she was succeeding in pushing him away,
so far away it might be impossible to bridge the gap.  No bureau
to fall back on, no friends to speak of, her family sick or far
away.  No Mulder.  The thought was chilling.  It was like being
deprived of gravity; she floundered and flayed, seeking something to
hold to until she discern up from down again.  She used the 
handrail to plod up the stairs to Andy Paige's apartment. 

"You okay?" Mulder asked.

Paige lived in an apartment above a grocery store.  The
studio apartment smelled faintly of onions.  Paige was a
tall man sliding into his 30s.  He wore his hair slicked back.  He
had just gotten out of the shower.

"I shouldn't be talking to you people without I first talk
to my lawyer," he said.

"Call him," said Mulder.  He nodded toward the phone on the
nearby table.

Andy threw up his hands.  "Nah, that won't make it any
different for me." He sounded morose.  Andy sank down on the
frayed couch, then remembered his manners.  "Please, sit down.  It
isn't pretty, but it's clean." Scully sat beside him on the edge of the sofa
and Mulder took the opposite chair.  Andy tried to smile.  "You want to 
know where I put the bonds, who I was working with, why I did it.  I
gotta tell ya.  I don't have the bonds, I wasn't working with
nobody and I didn't do anything.  Have any more questions?"

"Tell me about this woman in your head," said Mulder.

"Why?"

Mulder shrugged.

"Why should I waste my breath? Nobody believes me."

"Try us," said Scully.  Andy regarded her with some
suspicion, then spread his hands out.

"Yeah, okay, why not.  Charlie's the only one who believes
me and he saw an angel," Andy said.  "So that's my only defense -
a guy who sees angels.  This whole thing's makin' me clairvoyant.
I can look into my future and see prison bars.  Miles and miles
of bars."

Scully shifted uncomfortably. A lump rose in her throat.

"What happened that night?" said Mulder.

Andy clasped his hands in front of him.  "I just punched in
my nine o'clock round, Charlie had opened his books - I mean,
that guy studied all the time - and I felt this breeze on my
neck.  Cold.  I took a look around to see about it and it was, ah,
well all I saw was eyes.  A pair of eyes in the air.  Like
somebody wuz trying to play a Halloween joke.  A pair of eyes
hanging in the dark with no head or body." Andy paused to gage
his audience's reaction.  They were both still and attentive.
Encouraged, Andy went on,  "This woman's eyes - or somebody --
called my name, real soft and gentle over and over and over.  The
eyes got bigger."

"What did she look like?" Mulder asked.

"She didn't look like anything.  She did all the looking."

"What color were the eyes?" said Scully.

Andy seemed surprised by the question.  "Well, they were
brown.  Big and brown.   And some woman kept saying my name over
and over and suddenly she was in my head." He turned to Scully.
"When I say she was in my head, I mean she was me.  We were one
person.  I drew my gun- I don't know what I was going to do with
it.  Shoot myself in the head? She was walking inside me and what
I thought and did was her too." Scully became paralyzed.  He
touched her fingertips on the seat of the sofa and  she felt a connection.
He whispered to her, for her. "She saw things inside me-private things." 
His last words were desperate and still, "Things I think!"

Scully jerked her hand away.  She became dizzy, sick, her palms sweated.
She knew she was the color of chalk and she shrank back into the pillows 
of the sofa as though they would hide her.  

Andy appealed to Mulder.  "I went to a magic show once and this guy 
hypnotized me. Had me quackin' like a duck.  It was like that -- only 
times ten."

"Most of this isn't in the report," Mulder said.

"I never told anybody that part.  I-I didn't remember it
for a while.  I woke up in jail and I was sick.  Throwing up sick.
My head hurt like a three-day drunk.  By then everybody thought
Charlie and me was crazy, I figured, what would they think of that?"

"They would think you were trying for an insanity
defense," said Scully.  Her voice was shaky and her eyes darted
away from Mulder to Andy and around the room.  There wasn't much
to see, to hold onto.  Nothing extraordinary.  No angels on the
walls.  No eerie eyes peering from portraits or voodoo masks or
books on mysticism.  She wondered if she opened a cabinet jars of
black spiders would fall out.  "Mind if I look around?"

He shook his head and rubbed both hands on his face.  "I
can't remember much about what happened in the bank.  In the
hospital," Andy said.  "Police, my attorney - everybody asking me
questions and I couldn't remember anything.  It was like somebody
came and washed the blackboard clean! And every time I tried to
remember, it just made me blow chunks."

"You seem fine now," Mulder said.  He pointed in the
direction of the file in Scully's hand.  "It says you were a
handful in the hospital." Scully felt Mulder's eyes on her as she 
peered into shelves, opened desk drawers.  She was searching, but 
she was listening too.

"Man, I was scared.  Fighting scared.  I was so scared I
was crawling the walls and everybody who came near me was out to
get me.  Now, it's like a bad dream.  Sometimes I think it is, you
know? The kindda dream where somebody's standing in shadows
watchin' and when I try to move I feel like my pockets got sand
in them - I can't move ---"

"Mulder, " Scully headed to the door; she needed air. She needed to get
out of this apartment.  "I'm done here.  Thank you for your time, Mr.  
Paige." And she was gone.

Mulder got up slowly to follow.  Andy grabbed his arm.  "Do
you believe Charlie?"

"About his angel?"

"Yeah, but I never saw or heard Zelda."

"Who?"

"Zelda - that's her name -- the angel that Charlie says
saved him."

"From 'The Great Gatsby'?"

"I never saw her.  I felt something like a rush of wind
around me, but I never saw her.  I knew her name, called her
name.  I asked her to help me too.  I was weak -" He looked at
Mulder and his mouth popped open.  "Say-you believe me!"

"I don't think you're wrong."

Andy shrugged.  "Listen, Mr.  Mulder.  I don't have any
family - my mother died a year ago.  I don't have a lotta friends
and Charlie's the only person in the world who'll talk to me
now.  I thank you for whatever you can do.  Hell, I'm glad that
you don't think I'm crazy."

Mulder handed him a card.  "If you think of anything else-"

"I think sometimes that all this happened-to do something
for me," Andy said.  He turned the card over and over between his
fingers.  "Maybe like to make me wake up-or see things
different-or be different."

Scully waited, arms crossed, in the foyer of the apartment building.  
The cracked white tile in the foyer beneath her feet needed a good 
scrubbing.  She picked up her gaze and saw her reflection in the glass
front door.  She bit her lip.  What had that guard really seen, she 
wondered. His story frightened  her.  Something that scared him seemed 
to be working in her too. She discarded his story of possession as 
impossible, but deep within her Scully knew she couldn't throw out 
everything he said.

In the door glass Scully saw her partner come down the front steps 
into the foyer.  She tried to seem impatient - that would be normal
and, something else.  What else did she feel? Startled? Thoughtful? 
Mulder took the steps one at a time, regarding her curiously as though
he couldn't decide what to make of her. Was she frightened? Scully 
would admit that even to herself; Mulder's face grew annoyed. 

"Paige -you know, don't you?" Scully recognized the accusing tone in 
Mulder.  "You know exactly what he meant.  It's happened to you too."

"I don't know that for certain," she said.  "I never felt
possessed, nor the 'presence' he described.  I had the sickness,
the memory loss, and the rage- But those symptoms could be
caused by a dozen different things, all of them very much of
this world.  Stress, for example-"

"You weren't going to tell me, were you?"

"I knew you'd do just what you're doing - link the two,
thinking of ghosts and spirits and phantoms instead of something
real!"

"This is real! He is real!"

"He's a young man who made up a fantastic story to explain
why he tried to kill his partner and escape with millions in
bearer bonds," she said.

"What about Charlie?"

"He was nearly killed.  You and I both know what that can
do to you."

"Andy's guilty, then."

"It appears so."

"It appears you're guilty too." He flung the words at her
on his way to the driver's side of the car.

Her cheeks flushed.  God, this was familiar territory.
Wearisome, familiar ground.  "I grant you some similarity between
the cases.  I'm telling you there is no ghost in my head, no
mind-reading, no-"

"Didn't you learn anything?"

"What was it I was supposed to learn?" Outrage dripped
from her mouth.  "That fantasy is an acceptable way to avoid
facing your own fears, your own guilt? That-that chasing ghosts
and visions is easier than living in the real world with actual
human beings?"

Her words seem to sting him.  "Open your mind to ---," he said.

She gave the car door a vicious slam and stalked across the street 
toward a bus stop.

Mulder watched her go, hands on hips. Out of the corner of her eye
Scully saw him torn between his resentment at her stubbornness, his 
own pain, his desire to soothe her, and his fear of what gripped her.
Neither of them appeared able to end the current stalemate.  The 
D.C. Transit Authority made the decision for him.  A bus stopped 
and Scully suddenly and inexplicably climbed aboard.  Mulder jumped in
the car and followed at a distance.

How had it come to this so quickly, Scully thought.  What was she doing, 
where was she going?  Running physically this time instead of mentally.  
Scully sat on an aisle seat holding onto the handrail as tightly as she
could.  They had this argument hundreds of times, but never so bitter, 
so hurtful.  Just when she needed him, when she ached for him, they
leapt down each other's throats.  Perhaps that was the heart of
the problem - this situation brought her dependence on Mulder
into sharp relief and she hated it.  Until now she always thought
of them as equals, freely given and freely accepted.  Now she was
his dependent.  She hated knowing that.

Scully rode the bus to the end of the line nursing her
guilt and frustration.  Her greatest fear she shoved into the
back of her mind until at last she knew she had to examine it.
It had nothing to do with Mulder -- and everything.  Scully had
reason to doubt her own abilities and he bore the brunt of it.

She hadn't been honest with him or with herself about that and
it was information he needed.  She was the last to get off the bus.
Scully planned to take a cab back to her apartment.  She
did not expect to find him waiting at a nearby corner when she
alighted.  He had not cooled down, she saw at once and she turned
to walk in the opposite direction.

"What else haven't you told me," he called after her.
People on the street stared.  She stopped and waited for him.

Heat from the cement radiated up her feet, her legs, her
stomach, her chest, her head.  "This is a new game we're playing,
isn't it? You run and hide, I play catch up," Mulder said.

"It's not a new game - but I generally do the catching
up," she said in a rush.  "I may go to prison in a few days for
something I didn't do.  All you offer me is more of the same.  I
hoped for more."

"No, you didn't.  This is exactly what you counted on." He got in her
face and when she turned away he followed.  "You depend on me to see 
what is too irrational for you to see. That's what I bring to the 
partnership.  It's not fair of me to expect you to do all the work 
here." She couldn't look at him.  She studied her feet, the 
neighborhood, the sidewalk.  "I won't let anyone separate us again, 
Scully -not them, not Skinner-not even you."

Finally she raised her eyes to him, her lower lip
quivering slightly.  "I can't tell you what I don't remember."

"Meaning-?" An unwelcome smack of panic caught Mulder in the midriff.

"It's not just those things the guard described.  It's not a-a 
blankness.  It's forgetfulness.  It's better some times than others." Now
that she started, Scully's words tumbled out of her in a rush. 

"But sometimes I have to fight to hold onto simple things- diseases or 
dosages of medicine or the names of poisons.  I can't remember who I 
interviewed yesterday or when my mother's birthday is.  I have to write
everything down." Her  recitation of the facts seemed to frighten him as
much as it did her.  "That book you found? When I can, I re-read old 
texts to remind myself of symptoms, diseases, the names of bones!  My 
medical books-- I take notes to recall things I've known by heart.  I 
wake up and don't remember where I've been or what I did last night, 
but my-my high school graduation is perfectly clear.  Lately I can't 
find my car keys, although I always put them in the same place.  I just
can't remember where that place is.  I can't read because-because I 
can't remember how." She licked her dry lips.  "It's a form of-f 
dementia."

"Could be that stress you mentioned earlier," he said.

"Could be."

"I don't sleep either."

"You mean you don't sleep well."

She said slowly, "I mean, I haven't slept more than two or three hours a
night in a month." Mulder's brow furrowed and she went on hurriedly, 
fearful she would lose her nerve if she stopped now.  "When I do sleep I 
wake up-I wake up, ah-I have these vivid images.  Pictures of a man 
whose face is never visible.  But something is clear--."

"His eyes?"

Her nod was almost imperceptible.  "He comes to me as a friend, I'm not 
afraid.  Then I see shadows of him holding me, pressing on me." She 
watched Mulder's expression and hastened to say, "As a - I don't know.  
I tell him to stop, to release me.  He says-he says I'm crazy.  And, 
I-I know I am.  I run to get somewhere safe." She slipped a quick look 
at Mulder out of the corner of her eye.  "I run."

He knows where she goes and it warms his heart.  "Who is this man of your 
dreams, Scully?"

"I don't think he's a ghost.  And I don't think those
guards saw ghosts.  I see a human face in this."

"Skinner's?"

Her shoulders moved up and down.  "I think he knows who is-" She gulped
and finished with a whisper "-who is stealing my mind."

Mulder tried to speak, but couldn't.  He jammed his hands in his pants 
pockets; his fingertips had become cold.  "We'll talk with Skinner," he 
said.  "Later."

As she fastened her seat belt it dawned on her.  "It's worse right after
the drugs." She brightened.  "Mulder, the drugs wear off."

He didn't bother to point out the obvious.  The drug screens she'd 
taken came up negative.  If drugs were involved they were not one of 
the Heinz 57 varieties covered by the normal full screen.  Mulder was 
relatively certain she hadn't been drugged.