Part 3 of 3
 

She was standing outside the building again, observing the same flat gray
sky and the ever-present day workers across the street. It didn't feel
like much had changed since yesterday - except that today, Mulder had
followed her outside.

"The computer guy thinks that the virus came from an IP address that
Interlink uses," he said softly.

Damn him and his convictions. "That doesn't prove anything."

"How about the fact that there was no way the virus was forwarded from an
Interlink computer, because of the heavy virus protection software they
have?"

That did make her stop and think. "Jack Witt did say Shelley had been
having problems with the virus protection interfering with some
applications she was trying to run. Saying something like technology had
turned against her, and life just sucks when that happens.  Something
like that." She shook her head. "But what you're proposing is utterly
ridiculous. A sentient virus?"

His coat rustled like the wind when he shrugged. "No stranger than
aliens." She arched an eyebrow.

"It's still all based on the supposition that the virus targets
friendships under stress - and we've only seen one example of this."

"Two," he muttered. She sighed, and looked out upon El Camino again.

"Look at them, Mulder," she said, gesturing towards the huddled day-
workers. "They're out there on a miserable day, hoping and praying that
they'll get picked up for the day and make enough money to feed their
families. This can't be a life they chose to live. But they're stuck
here, going back and forth along the street and making no real progress."

Their voices were a touch too soft to overcome the rushing of the cars
flying by them, but instead of speaking louder, Mulder moved to stand
even closer to Scully, leaning down to place himself firmly within her
personal space. "Maybe they think it's worth it," he offered. "Maybe they
think they have a chance of getting better work, or going to a different
climate. I don't think they've given up yet. Not if they're still out
there, trying."

She smiled, a thin twist of her mouth, and thought fondly of all the
previous times that he had thought things could get better. "Trying takes
a lot of work."

"But they're not running away from it, Scully." The words sent chills
through her. Were they still speaking in metaphor? It was easier than
being brutal and honest about what they were thinking. But even so, it
became confusing. Maybe it was better just to be honest. Though that,
too, took a lot of work. She just didn't know what to say - didn't know
how to make that one all-important sentence come out.

"Do you think I'm running away from you, Mulder?" she finally asked.

His eyes widened at the candid statement, and he stumbled over his words.
"I think...you might be."

She shrank into her coat, looking at him with greater understanding. "And
that scares you. I never wanted you to be scared."

He still had that wild, panicked look in his eyes, wary of the woman who
was suddenly being honest. It hurt her to see that. "You didn't tell me
about the chemo, Scully. I didn't know what was happening yesterday
morning. And I need to know. You're my partner, and I want to know what's
happening to you."

Across the street, a truck pulled up to the corner where the day workers
stood, and they watched as a few lucky ones hopped in the back and waved
goodbye to their friends. One of the remaining men pulled out a paper-
wrapped bottle as the truck drove away, passing it around. Everyone got a
sip or two.

She couldn't explain this urge to share that was flooding through her.
Maybe it was a reaction to having kept so much of it hidden away for so
long. Maybe it was just the relief of being able to talk to her closest
friend again. "You know what's funny?" Scully said at last. "When I got
the test results, I had this thought that maybe the cancer would make
things easier between us."

His face tightened on that, tense with what she hoped wasn't guilt.
"Easier how?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. "Maybe I thought we would be able to
share things more easily. Be able to talk about things not related to
work. We would just be able to talk."

"We could do that, Scully," he said, after a moment. "But you need to
tell me things about the cancer. So that I can help you."

"I don't want you to think of me as weak - someone who needs protecting,"
she murmured.

"I'll be honest with you too, Scully. Then we can both be weak." His
smile, a tiny ray of sunshine, peeked through the cloud cover.

She attempted to smile back, and made a promise. "I'll try."

-------------

They stood outside the entrance to the holding cells, Scully leaning
against the wall and watching uniformed officers pass up and down as he
listened intently to the crackling voice of the Interlink data retrieval
specialist on the other end of the line.

"Okay," he said, sighing, as the other man eventually wound down, "that's
great, thank you. Can you have a couple of copies of that report made for
us? We'll get someone from the local PD to stop by and collect them, or
come in ourselves if we can. Thanks again for your help."

He pressed the disconnect button on his cell and met Scully's expectant
gaze.

"Looks like she's going down for this, Scully," he said, feeling
frustration start a slow burn in his gut. "They managed to retrieve a
fair amount of data from her hard drive and they can confirm that she did
receive a virus, one they didn't recognize, although the time frame's
uncertain - could have been as long as a week ago. They examined the
records for their internal company e-mail system, and it definitely
originated within the company intranet somewhere. However, they don't
recognize the message source as belonging to any registered Interlink
employee, and the combination of their internal virus protection measures
and the intranet firewalls should have made it impossible for this virus
to enter the system, let alone propagate."

"What can they tell us about what it did to her hard drive, though?"
Scully asked, turning to glance through the glass panel in the door at
her right at Shelley, sitting perfectly straight and still on her bed in
the first cell on the corridor.

He shrugged wearily. "It fried it to a crisp, although he used slightly
more technical terms than that. Everything she was working on appears to
be irretrievable. She would have experienced a complete systems shut-down
within seconds of the virus activating itself, probably."

She regarded him levelly for a second, and then laid a hand on his arm,
very lightly. "I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "I know you thought
there was more to this, and I'll admit that there are some unanswered
questions, but even you have to admit you don't have anything like the
kind of evidence you'd need to make this theory stand up in a court of
law. Anyway, I really doubt that any jury would acquit on the basis that
an evil sentient virus altered the murderer's state of mind."

He raised his eyebrows. "You'd convict, wouldn't you?"

"I would, yes," she said gently. "And I think you would too, even if you
didn't want to. She snapped under an extreme case of workplace stress,
arguably exacerbated by the effects of the computer virus that destroyed
all her work, and committed a startlingly violent, even brutal act. You -
*we* - can't prove otherwise. It's time to admit it and go home, Mulder."

He scrubbed a hand across his face and nodded. "Yeah, you're right. I
know you're right. I just - I'd like to speak to her, before we go."

She said nothing, but turned and buzzed the officer on duty to let them
into the cells. They strode down the hallway and came to a halt by
Shelley's cell, standing a few feet from the bars and watching the woman
sitting like a statue behind the bars.

"Shelley," he said, "do you remember us? Agents Mulder and Scully?"

She turned her head slowly and stared at him. "Are my kids coming to see
me soon?" she asked, speaking as if she was struggling to retrieve the
words she wanted from her mind and put them in the right order.

At his side, Scully bit her lip and turned away. "I don't know, Shelley,"
he admitted. "I'm sure if they can come to see you, they will."

Shelley inhaled deeply and squeezed her eyes shut, nodding. When she
opened them again and fixed him with her unrelenting gaze, he was struck
by the thought that they seemed bigger and emptier than before, somehow,
as if the woman behind them was slowly disintegrating and disappearing.

"I'm going to prison?" she asked, still in that slow-grind voice.

"You'll be formally charged with Mr. Patel's murder later today, and
there'll be a trial," he told her, ducking the question.

She nodded again and sighed. "Okay. Okay."

"Shelley, can I ask you about something? The virus you received, the one
that destroyed your work..." He trailed off, realizing that he wasn't
sure what he wanted to ask her, exactly, other than perhaps "did it make
you a murderer?"

Beside him, Scully put out a hand to steady herself against the cell
bars. He looked round quickly and saw that she looked unusually pale, two
spots of color burning high in her cheeks. "Scully, you okay?" he asked
her under his breath. She nodded and smiled, releasing the bar and waving
a hand at him to carry on, muttering that it was just a little close on
the cell block.

He marshaled his thoughts and turned back to Shelley. "The virus, do you
have any idea where it came from or how it did what it did to your
computer?" he asked.

This time he got a head-shake, and then Shelley said in a thick voice, "I
know something about it, though." She paused, and for a moment he
wondered if she had lost her train of thought, shaky as her grasp on
events seemed to be. "It's *in* me," she said suddenly, almost in a
whisper, as if imparting a momentous secret, and with that she settled
back on to the bed and closed her gray-ocean eyes with their untold,
decaying secrets.

-------------

Traffic on El Camino, and the world outside Scully's window was going
mad.  Mulder indulged in one long angry honk as the car in front of him
refused to move an inch.

"We're almost there, Mulder," she murmured, leaning against the cool
glass next to her.  There was a haze around her thoughts that had been
growing since Shelley's cell, and resting her head against things seemed
to help.

He rubbed a hand over his face.  "I know, I know.  I just want to get out
of here.  When's our flight again?"

She leaned up and tried to focus, though the weight of exhaustion was
heavy and all-consuming.  "Eight.  And it's only five now.  We have time
to pack and get there.  Besides," she pointed through the windshield, at
the looming turrets of the Glass Slipper Inn, "we're almost there.  Just
one more block."

One more block that El Camino Real did not give them easily.  The stop
and go was a rhythm that ground away at her resolve and strength, a one-
two beat that did not leave her feet tapping, left them instead flat on
the floor.  But they made it.  They always made it eventually, Scully
knew.

Mulder sighed with relief as he pulled into the hotel's parking lot,
under the arch, and got out of the car.  "C'mon, Scully, let's get
going," he said, before closing the door.

She was able to open her door, and unfastening the seat belt wasn't as
hard as she had thought it would be, the gentle click of the catch giving
her an extraordinary sense of freedom.  Getting her feet moving took a
little effort, but a little exertion and she was standing by herself.
Walking, though...

First it was a stumble, then it was resting on her knees, then it was a
gentle, graceless fall to the ground, her conscious mind doing everything
it could to fall in the right position, avoid hitting her head.  She felt
like water leaking out of a paper cup, first with a drip and then, when
the bottom gave way, with a splash.

Mulder's face was soon looming overhead, and an old man's pain twisted
the corners of his eyes into agony.  "Oh, Jesus, Scully...  Are you okay?
Can you get up?"

"Fine, Mulder...  I'm fine," she gasped out, hating the rebellion of her
body, hating being weak in front of him, wanting it to be true so badly.
She would be fine, with some rest - that was all she needed, a silent,
easy descent into slumber.

"Scully, please," he implored, interrupting her thoughts of sleep with a
harshly pleading tone.  "Let me take you to the hospital.  Please."

She would be fine, she just needed some rest, nothing the hospital could
do for her...  But she looked at him.  The eyes that begged her and the
bent frame that had huddled around hers that afternoon, so that he could
be heard when he told her to try.  The face that filled with hurt when
she shut him out.  She had promised him she would tell him when it hurt.
No more false promises.

She found herself nodding, and he knelt down, his arm going around her
waist, supporting her weak frame against his own.  The lobby clerk,
rushing out to see what the trouble was, got assaulted by Mulder's
impatience.  "Where's the nearest hospital?" he nearly barked at her.

She shook her dark head and started pointing in random directions.  "On
Grant Road.  Take this little side street over here, don't bother with El
Camino, there's too much traffic..."

No more El Camino.  She didn't attempt to listen to the directions after
that, putting her trust in Mulder, just this once, to take them down the
right path.

They were getting off the road at last.  Thank God.
 

END
 

Author's note:

This is my first story, though I've been lurking for over a year now - I
probably should have tried something more simple for my first, but this
was interesting nevertheless. I've been living and working in the area
described for a while now, and I've taken some liberties with the setting
- stuff that's in this story may not have been there three or four years
ago.

Except the Glass Slipper Inn. That's timeless.

I'd like to thank my friends Chester, Raoul, and Colleen for their
invaluable help with editing and titles and all sorts of important things
- I couldn't have done this without you. I owe you three a dozen
cheesecakes (four each).

Please let me know what you think at tallulahw@bayarea.com . So far, this
has been a quite a ride - hopefully, you found it worthwhile.
 

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