The Genesis Breed

Summary: It is 2009, three years between the agents and the looming date of the invasion. An assassin is assigned to hunt them down and kill them and their children, Meredith and William. Unfortunately, her ties to the past make the job rather difficult. Mix this with mind games and secret alliances and you have the makings of a jolly good X-File.

Author's Notes: This is the longest time I have ever spent pondering a story. The government assassin thing struck me summer 2000, and I have been considering a proper story ever since. Now, because I have finally worked in at least most of my loop holes, I can officially announce that The Genesis Breed is ready to be unleashed.

It is a four sided room with no windows and a door that only opens one way. It is a prison in every sense of the word, with no bed to sleep upon and no sound. The floor is concrete and cold, the walls made of thick stone, and an entrance of titanium provides people to walk in. The second it shuts, however, it cannot let people out.

The darkness surrounds her, the small and fragile body of a seven-year-old trapped in despair and melancholy. She is a number, not a name; nothing but a small and innocent angel amidst the white clad devils of hell. They dress her in white, burning three numbers in dark ink on her wrist under a bar code.

Her ears are pounding constantly. She yearns to hear something other than the silence swirling around her head. She dreams of the voices in her past, the sweet and tender voices that comforted her, the laughter and the tears that came in her wake, and the smiles that she failed to give under such circumstances.

She is curled in a position on the floor, head lowered onto her arms bent over her knees. Her hair is gone, replaced with fuzzy bristles of strawberry blonde that used to curl around her fingers childishly. She can remember the way the sun hit it and the way someone used to play with it, twisting it and braiding it. Another memory wasted uselessly. Along with the memory of eyes watching her, gleaming with inner happiness and broken with inner turmoil. It was saddening, those eyes, making her heart break under her small chest.

"Crying is a weakness." The teacher said as she paced at the front of the makeshift classroom, dark, sadistic lips pouring lies into the small children's ears. They were to sit up straight and watch her without complaint, but their eyes continued to focus on the thin, flexible wooden rod in her fingers, the one that she was bending in her fists threateningly. "Emotion is a weakness." A boy started to sob, afraid with the tone she was gaining.

"YOU CANNOT BE WEAK!" She snapped in her cruel voice, slapping him again, this time across the chest. He was thrown back to the floor, unable to breathe now, choked sobs coming from his throat with ragged coughs.

So she doesn't cry. She doesn't emote. She's an empty shell in the darkness, the flame of her innocence going out like a candle.

It is the first night she will make them happy. In her darkened cell she laments, the voices whispering things in her ears that she can understand but cannot act upon. They tell her they know how to keep the people happy. They know how she will continue to survive, empty or not. There is instinct and meaning behind their words of wisdom, their whispered truths that only she can hear. They know how she can live while other die and how she can endure anything these teachers throw at her.

The ideas continue in her ears and mind, clearing the mess in front of her vision. She relaxes her tensed muscles in her legs and arms, realizing that the darkness is no longer eating her away. It is no longer chopping away her soul with a rusty knife. Oh no, it is different now. She is eating at the darkness.

The voices in her head say that this is good, and that this is what must happen for her to make them happy. She must give them what they want?

"What do they want?" Her childish voice asks, along in the pitch black recesses of her mind.

The door squeaks and she stares straight ahead, making no attempt to look into the bright light that floods in from the hallway. The man in white and the female teacher have no smiles on their faces. They have no emotions in their actions. They wait for her to stand and come forward. The stick in the woman's fingers, curving sadistically, threatens pain for punishment. She doesn't look at it. She concentrates on the voices now, listening to what they tell her to do.

The boy she is to fight is larger than she. He is stronger than she as well. But she fails to notice these things. He comes forward to her and punches her across the cheek, making her jaw snap. His kicks her in the stomach without mercy and stamps on her shoulder.

The bone is dislocated. The pain makes her black out for seconds, but when she awakens, she sees her chance. He has turned to face the teachers, awaiting approval. But they do not give him it, and will not from that day forward.

She is seven and she can kill, she knows this now, leaping onto his back and pulling her arms around his neck. He is choking, flailing his arms at the parasite that clings to his back and tightens her grip on his throat.

He is dropping, and the voices are happier. The teachers are watching with gleams in their eyes.

She feels him go to his knees and drops off. The gleaming eyes disappear prematurely as she walks around and hurls her foot into his groan, causing him to open his mouth, choking more. But she is not finished. She will never be finished until he is dead.

Her shoulder is making her eyes burn, but she spins around and smashes her foot into his cheek, causing another crack to radiate from his face. With her last bout of strength she stomps on his throat and holds her foot there until his body goes slack.

John Doggett thought as if he had lost the chances to have a child when Luke died. He locked himself up inside, seeing his friends and family members having their own children. He felt as is he had confirmed the saying, always a bridesmaid, never a bride. His of course was more along the lines of always an uncle, never a father.

That was before he had married Monica Reyes. She was sure that he would see fifty with at least ten children.

They had welcomed their first and only on October 6, 2002. Because of the complications with the birth, it was declared that Monica would bear no other children besides their daughter, Meredith Angela-Marie.

It was worth every second, in John's opinion. A daughter was much different than what he had experienced with Luke. Sons and fathers are often expected to get along. Daughters usually shied towards their mothers, something that bothered John a little more than it should have.

He looked through the glass and into the nursery at the baby sleeping soundly in the plastic cradle, curling up with her blankets. He could have sworn that she was smiling as she did so, even though the doctors had all ruined his dreams and said that babies can't smile at that age. She was paler than her mother, inheriting most of her father's looks from his light hair and blue eyes to skin tone. But she had Monica's mouth and chin, there were no doubts there.

It looked like the perfect setup for him. Dana and Fox with their baby, he and Monica with theirs. It was returning to normal, although he knew there had to be something waiting to ruin all this. It was the way of life for them.

Still, he couldn't help but ignore the instinct every time he picked up his daughter.

"Sure, she did John," she replied, looking across the room at the crib. They laughed a little while longer before falling asleep. Softly, the music from the mobile started to play as the small animals turned and danced above the baby's head.

Brad Follmer was not a religious man. He had lost his faith at the tender age of twelve, following his father's murder. He never looked back at the church.

Still, he found himself praying as he walked into the subway station, checking over her shoulder with a paranoid look on his face. It contorted into an expression of fear as he came down the steps, the colour drifting from his skin and making him look as white as a sheet. His palms were sweaty and shaking, trembling from the adrenaline pumping through his body. He tucked them in his pockets and hung his head low.

He was in fear at the presence that was looming behind him, the leather trench coat dancing in the cold, night breeze. The way the eyes of his pursuer were attached to him, memorizing every look of fear on his face while displaying none on their own. Red hair was the most distinct point of the woman who was keeping a close trail on him. It was sleek and straight, dancing on the rush of air that radiated from beneath the train.

The AD of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reaching for his weapon. He took note of its presence, the metal handle under his jacket in the holster. He prayed he wouldn't have to draw and fire.

She had come after him in the building, and to shake her he had attempted the subway station. Now he was praying he had just gone to the parking garage and ran her down with his car. It would have been easier than trying to keep tabs on a woman who could be there one minute and gone the next.

But Brad could still see her, coming through the smoke that came from the tracks and billowed upward, her pale demonic face completely emotionless. He saw the glint of black metal as she drew forth her weapon, her fingers curling around the handle and bringing it out into the open.

Her accuracy could be fatal, but the people bustling around made it more difficult to aim. She took her first shot as Brad was drawing his gun. He was hurled back by the bullet moving through his shoulder blade, blood spattering on the people passing by and in puddles on the floor. She had fired two more rounds to his shoulder and waist as he took two, striking her dead in the chest. The second struck her right ear, embedding itself in her skull.

Her finger tightened on the trigger again, this time taking a large amount of his ribcage with it. Blood spewed from her lips and she coughed it out onto the ground. The people were in a panic as the woman still stood, her gun outstretched at the body before her.

Brad collapsed in a heap of his own blood. The woman staggered for a moment, the pain finally setting in, and she too collapsed.

The phone was ringing at midnight, an hour at which most seven-year-olds were sleeping. But it was Meredith who shook her mother awake, holding the portable in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Monica shook her dark head of hair, gasping at the sight of her pale daughter giving her the phone.

"It's a man named Skinner." Meredith said in her sing song voice. "He said that it was urgent and that someone named Brad Follmer had just been shot and was in critical condition. He also mentioned that the woman who shot him was in critical condition as well and that he wanted you and daddy to go check it out."

The seven year old practically skipped out of the room, clutching her teddy bear and holding her mug of coffee with care. Monica just stared in surprise at the way her daughter retained information, and her ability to stay up so late. She pressed the phone to her ear.

"I think John's been teaching her interrogation tactics again." Skinner said, slightly unnerved.

"She refused to give you the phone unless I told her who I was working for, what I was calling about, and to stop playing mind games and tell her the truth."

Monica looked over at her sleeping husband and shook her head with a small laugh.

"He should quit while he's ahead. Next thing you know she'll be learning military defense tactics."

"Don't get me started on the way she plays chess." Monica said, her mind drifting from the topic of Follmer to her daughter in some attempt to block the thoughts of her ex shot in cold blood. "What's happened?"
"Follmer's been shot," he said, looking back at the paramedics who were loading up the gurneys. "He's lost a lot of blood and they're saying he may not make it through the night."

Monica gave an exasperated sigh. She dropped her head into her hand as Skinner continued. "Ne'er as I can tell he got a few shots into his attacker. She may not make it through the night either."

"Don't ask. There was no ID on her," he said. "Look, I know this is awkward but I need you and John down here to work the scene and get some information on this mystery woman."

"Meredith?" She called, summoning the small girl to her. She already knew she was awake, and the seven-year-old climbed the stairs, coffee in hand, bear in the other, looking curious to why she had been dragged away from late night cartoons. "Get me some coffee."

"Daddy too?" Meredith asked. Monica looked over at John, who hadn't stirred the whole time. She nodded once more.

Meredith trotted back downstairs as her mother woke her father with a kiss, breaking it only to call the babysitter.

Louis Chavelle was running through the empty hallway, reaching his destination in under five minutes. He took a moment to catch his breath, badly, and was still red in the face as he knocked on the door and opened it.

He hung his head low, bending his whole body over and breathing heavily. The chair behind the desk was facing the window, not at him, and he decided he had better just say his news and leave before he ended up in the same position as last month's secretary.

"Mi…" He began, taking another moment to catch his breath. The chair didn't move. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. Still, Louis was finally able to speak.

The man in the chair lowered his hand into his folded hands, looking out at the night. Louis wasn't sure if he had heard him, and was about to repeat himself, but was interrupted.

"Yes, sir…" Louis said, leaving the room. The door shut and the man in the chair snarled, looking at his reflection in the window.

John answered the door with his coffee in one hand and his coat being zipped up by the other. Phoebe Nameth was wide awake for someone at two o'clock on a Saturday morning. She looked like Meredith, eyes shining and smiling giddily. Her hair had lengthened, her body straightened and becoming more of a woman's. She was 22 now, far from the fifteen year old in San Francisco, studying English Literature at Washington University.

"Morning," she said, almost happily as she stepped inside, looking him over. He looked terrible. "You're looking good John."

"Shut up," he said, zipping up his jacket. "I don't know how you can be so awake."

"Coffee," she said. "Coffee mixed with school work and the inability to get a moment to myself thanks to my full time job with…you know." Phoebe stopped herself, knowing he had more to deal with than the memories of his dead son. "Where's Meredith?"

"Awake." Monica said, coming out of the kitchen, looking equally as worn. "As usual."

"I threaten, Mrs. Doggett, never promise." Phoebe said, taking off her shoes and stepping off the front mat. "Go and have fun. I'll behave myself."

There was a lump in Monica's throat that wouldn't go away. She was sick to her stomach as she thought about what Skinner had told her. Follmer…shot…might not make it…John could tell she was torturing herself, the way her face displayed no emotion of any kind and simply stared straight ahead.

"John?" She said, irritated with his persistence. "I'm fine, alright? I just want to get this over with. Honestly, it's not like I married the man." He tried to hold back a smile at that, knowing that if Monica had married Brad he would have screamed. "I'm tired, John…"

"Join the club." John replied, constantly looking ahead of him and into the dark night. Meredith had natural stimulants in her body or something. Monica assumed it had something with her knowledge of coffee that gave her an edge. "We really should get her off that stuff."

"Please, John. It's like smoking to her," she said, shaking her head as the red and blue lights of the crime scene flashed across her tanned skin, making the lump in her throat reappear. "Jesus."

The whole station was packed with ambulances and police cruisers, people bustling everywhere. The talking alone was deafening. John turned off the car and opened the door, stepping out with a shocked expression on his face. Monica followed, hair blowing in the night wind playfully. She couldn't be bothered.

The crime scene looked like a bloody battlefield, pools of red liquid and clumps of flesh and bone were lying on the walls and pooled on the floors. Most was from Brad, Monica knew that. The other was blood from his assailant.

The crime scene investigators placed tiny numbers near the clumps of bullet that had gone through the victims bodies. They were very precise about what they marked and what they didn't. She watched them pile around a bullet and converse about something before marking it off. They had six numbers on bullets, but she caught the last part of the conversation. There were seven gunshot wounds between the victims.

They called this information into the ambulances. The paramedics found the remaining bullet in the skull of the female victim, but couldn't remove it with the limited supplies they had.

"This was planned." Doggett stated, looking at the pile of coagulating blood on the floor of the subway station. Small yellow numbers marked off splatter and pieces of flesh that had been blasted from Follmer's body. "Apparently three agents saw the woman leave the building following Follmer. She'd been in his office asking questions too."

"Does anyone know who she is?" Monica asked, feeling sick to her stomach. Usually, blood didn't make her feel queasy, but it was the fact that this was her ex-boyfriend's blood, and that this was his death bed that made her queasy. She stood up, her leg cracking a little.

"Nope, no identity and no wallet. Just some mysterious woman." John said, standing up with his wife. He could tell she wanted to leave.

The ambulance was speeding. It could do nothing better. They had been relocated at the last moment and told to drive to Georgetown for assistance with the gunshot wound to her head. It didn't matter. She was already thinking.

She counted turns, the maps in her head telling her she only had a tiny amount of time left. Immediately she willed her heart to slow to a brief throb, and slipped back into oblivion as if finally stop, leaving a long hum on the heart monitor's.

They jumped into action to stop her heart attack, preparing to do CPR. While distracted, she brought herself back and listened for a brief moment, establishing where everyone was. Three, she thought, and a driver. No wait, two drivers.

She punched to her left with all the strength she had and broke the skin on the medic's stomach in a ring around where her fist had struck. The paramedic slumped on her. She tossed him off and ripped off the oxygen mask and the IV needle. With inhuman speed she thrust the IV needle into the neck of the approaching medic and grabbed a handful of syringes from the box on the shelf. The third medic came for her, but was kicked back and into the wall, dropping medical supplies over the floor of the ambulance. She ripped open two syringes and yanked off the plastic covers with her teeth, combating the one driver by slashing into his throat with the needle. The second driver had no time to react as she impaled his trachea on the second and left him twitching.

The ringing in her ears was making her eyes water, and the drugs were making her whole body ache as she moved. The bullet wound in her chest was still bleeding, and covered her torso with sticky blood. She ignored the pain, focusing on the ringing in her ears and jumped out the back of the ambulance, rolling over to the side of the street.

It struck a telephone pole before smashing into the wall of a building in a furious mass of flames. There was a loud boom as it exploded, taking all five bodies with it.

She ran her fingers along the bullet wound in her skull, biting her teeth together to subdue the pain a little. The wound was failing to heal as it usually did, and grew smaller, but the flaps of skin at the back refused to close completely.

Monica and John were completely silent as they drove to the hospital. She didn't want to speak, too uncomfortable about the whole situation of trying not to be emotional over someone who had meant so much to her.

But he had. Monica and Brad was a different relationship than Monica and John. Monica and Brad could make out in offices and have sex after expensive dinners. Monica and John could make out in closets and have sex on the kitchen floor on a whim (before Meredith anyways). Two very different Monica's, two very different feelings, and now they were coming back to bite her in the ass.

"I could drop you off at home." He offered to her protectively, seeing how this was hurting Monica. "You don't need to prove anything to me Monica."

"I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm tired, John, there's a difference between that and attached."

"Fin…" John never finished. He glanced at the road as the black silhouette of a human darted across it. Even though he slammed on the breaks, it was knocked down at the caves and hurled back onto the street.

"Hey!" John called. "You okay!"
The figure didn't even turn around. It made it to the sidewalk and continued walking, limping slightly in the left leg.

"Jesus." Monica said, looking a slight distance ahead. John saw it too, the remnants of the ambulance hidden within a veil of cloud. Small flames were crackling on the clothing and flesh of the drivers and paramedics. He looked back at the figure, running as fast as she possibly could. He and Monica bought grabbed their firearms and took off after her.

She looked behind her at the approaching agents. Shit, she thought. Already her mind was beating her up over her mission failure. She was sinning against everything she had worked to gain. She had been injured in the line of duty, an act which had compromised the mission greatly. She would face death before she faced the day when her mission remained incomplete.

She looked senseless, almost like she had no idea what was happening to her, as if she didn't notice that both agents were armed as they approached her. It was like the guns were props in a play that they were acting in. As if they weren't even there at all.

Her red hair was matted with blood, dark spots running from her ear and down her neck. The pain was blinding to her, the shapes of reality blurring in front of her in a macabre ballet.

They didn't have time to shout for her not to move. She wouldn't have listened anyways. The voices of a million people shouted in her mind, but they had come to the same conclusion. They were compromising the mission. Their presence was destroying her ability to complete her mission.

John had a quick reaction time on good days. Her leg swung upward and twisted around his outstretched arm, throwing the gun aside. Monica moved in, trying to get a clean shot as she lifted herself off the ground using John as support. She twisted over his arm and booted Monica to the ground. Her strength was wearing thin, and she found herself on the pavement before she could recover from her jump.

He went for his gun, while she grabbed his partner's and got to her feet. She aimed it at Monica's head, the barrel touching Monica's scalp and making her freeze. John looked over at her, holding his own weapon.

Her green eyes were bloodshot, locked with his. John couldn't move, watching Monica lying under the hand of the inhuman bitch who held the ability to pull the bloody trigger or not.

She didn't say anything, threaten pointlessly, or mention anything that didn't need to be said. What could she say that Doggett didn't already know? I'll shoot your wife if you don't drop the gun and hand it to me. Her cruel voice was already echoing in his head. But no, she was completely silent from lack of saying anything original.

John took a deep breath, setting the gun on the ground and sliding it to her over the pavement. Her eyes never left his for a moment, one hand driving the gun into Monica's head and the other reaching for the gun on the ground in front of her. Monica didn't dare move, transfixed on the way she grasped the handle of the weapon and pulled it to her.

Everything happened in slow motion as she straightened her legs and stood up, guns still trained on both John and Monica.

And then the ringing in her ears started again. The throbbing, the painful sting of the breed starting to feel the pain of the bullet blinded her. She fought against it until she could bear it no more. Finally she shoved the gun back in her coat, the other hanging from half limp fingers as she turned and walked away from them, back down the street.

"Jesus Christ," she said to him, fixing her hair a little, turning for a moment to see the silhouette moving off into the night. John looked back at the car. "Where do you think she's going?"

John looked after her, holding Monica close to him. He had never been more scared than seeing her with a gun to her head, seeing her so close to death. He sighed deeply, and that's when the idea dawned on him.

"She's going to finish the job," he said. Monica felt sick to her stomach again.

Kyle Stevens was very good at what he did. He was a personal assistant to David Ridder, a good little rat for the leader of fourth level. At the same time, however, he was a little backstabber with a different agenda to Fox Mulder, and reported as religiously to the psychology professor as he did to David Ridder. Of course, Ridder knew nothing about his relationship with Mulder.

Louis came into the headquarters and shouted out to everyone that the mission was a failure, and that they were to bring her back in, alive. That triggered Kyle's 'cigarette' break, and he slipped easily to the private confines of the alley and grabbed his private cellular device, one that division couldn't trace.

Mulder was awake on his couch, watching TV. He could see Scully through the bedroom door, ajar, her sleeping face painted with the white moonlight that streamed in through the window and the yellow light that beamed in from the TV room. Next to her bedroom was William, his own sleepy face easily seen through his open door near him. The red curls shimmered with light in an angelic halo around his head. Mulder smiled with boyish delight at the face of his son. The words sounded foreign to him. His son, as if it were an object. As long as William was his, Mulder was happy.

He knew how Doggett felt now, never being able to understand the unruly behaviour whenever Luke was mentioned. But now he could imagine himself taking that stand, beating the shit out of anyone who would dare try and hurt William.

The phone rang, awakening him from his thoughts. He grabbed it before someone could hear it. Without acknowledging the person on the line, Kyle started talking anyways.

"I've got news that is going to make you so happy." He said, and Mulder's attention was completely fixed. "Just got a call in, and it was a mission failure."

"Assassination, I know that much. They sent someone into the field and she hasn't come back yet. Division's going insane though. They're calling out every agent in the field to track her down and bring her back in alive. But there's a problem."

"Something's wrong, and no one's telling me what. I know for a fact she was wounded, I have no idea what everyone's talking about. Something called 'the breed'."

"Me too, but who knows these days. Ridder's starting to suspect something. I better go."
The phone died and Mulder shook his head, turning off the phone at his end of the line and set it on the table. He looked at the television, the late night infomercials trying to sell him rotisserie barbeques. His next move was crucial. Go out looking for the assassin?

His eyes wandered back to Scully. She had turned over again in bed. He looked at the TV, moving his eyes back towards his son.

For the first time in his life, Mulder was making a choice that was against the truth.

David Ridder had found her when she was twelve, a soldier amidst children. At that point the casualties committed by her hand exceeded all at her age. She understood death as a science, understood what it did to a body, but did not grasp the emotions involved with murder.

He didn't care where she came from. He didn't care that she was the product of an experiment intended to be bought and paid for. He didn't care that she had been locked in a room since the day she arrived, tortured and beaten into submission, and was labeled with a number instead of a name. He could care less whether she felt or bled or breathed. All he cared about was the missions he assigned to her. And that was the extent of his 'love'.

Now he was worried. The mission was a failure. She was out in the open, exposed to thousands of factors that stood to destroy all that he had worked to build. She could be used, with difficulty, to completely destroy him.

And they couldn't find her. With the 'breed' injured, they couldn't trace her any longer.

He swore at himself, running his fingers through his sweat drenched dusty blonde hair and called Louis on the phone. He needed some good news, and at that point he would take anything.

But he would find her. He knew that much. Dead or alive, she would belong to him again.

She looked back, seeing the Agents still eyeing her with an interest that made her lean over and grow weak in the legs. She grasped hold of the lamp post, tilting her head foreword and began to vomit blood on the ground. They were watching her, seeing her weakness. She tightened the grip on the gun as a lifeline. It was her protection, her insurance to be rid of the situation.

"FUCK YOU!" She shouted into the night, going down on one knee. She grabbed hold of her head.

The memories were flooding back. The happy ones, the light ones, the ones filled with smiles and happiness and laughter and people and faces…sunlight. She looked into the sky, the moonlight shining down on her. No, she thought. No more, this is weakness. This is evil.

Monica was panicking. Finishing the job, she heard the words play over in her head. She was finishing the job. Brad had been reduced to a job to both the women, for different reasons. He was nothing but a job.

She watched her continue on with persistence, fighting against the pain in her chest and head.

"Come on." John said, pulling her gently back to the car. He grabbed the cell phone and called the police.

He's nothing but a job, she repeated to herself. She stopped in the middle of the empty street, leaned over and vomited.

Meredith climbed outside on her roof, her slender body sliding easily through the window and out onto the 'tower' shingles. She could see the stars that night and faced the sky with her pale face, blonde curls braided to make them more manageable when she woke up. Her blue eyes were lit up by the moon that night, her skin like snow. Her night gown was fluttering on the wind, the flaps of her white kimono hanging open over her infantile body.

She reached up to the stars, wanting to touch them. She could feel the breeze on her face and closed her eyes in pure bliss, reaching up to the sky and smiling with glory. There was a presence in the wind that she could feel, something that felt like William. Something that reminded her of him but was somehow…different.

John hugged Monica tightly, watching the police move up and down the street, looking for a girl who had come and gone with virtually no trace. The vomit was one thing. The blood was another. They sent those both to the lab. But the girl had vanished.

"We've doubled guard at the hospital." The officer told him and Monica. "Nobody's going in or out of there without going through some form of security. We've got officers going through the area with a fine tooth comb. As far as we're concerned, nothing is going to get in there."

"Thanks." John said, dismissing him. Monica leaned against him, eyes closed. "You okay?" He asked her. She shook her head.

"Suddenly I know I'm not sleeping.
Hello. I'm still here,
All that's left of yesterday."

Monica hadn't said a word. John tried to stop looking over at her, tried to keep his eyes on the road. It was impossible. He may not be able to empathize with her, but he could at least try to be supportive.

She had been there for him with the shit with Barbara. Why shouldn't he be able to return the favour?

But no, Monica Reyes was an independent woman, frequent reader of Chatelaine which supported her inability to have men run her life. She was in a man's world after all.

Meredith's first audition involved a satire of her mother's actions. She had said the 'F' word for the first time in this audition, much to her mother's dismay. Meredith was perceptive, like her father. A little too perceptive he liked to think.

So John Doggett did something that shocked even Monica. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and put it into park, removing the keys from the ignition.

"What's wrong?" he demanded now because he was sick of being on the sidelines when she was angry and obviously upset. Monica shifted away uncomfortably. "Come on Monica. I know something's wrong."

"Okay then," he said, crossing his arms immaturely and leaning back in the seat, refusing to move. Monica waited for him to just give up and go home. But he didn't. He just sat there, staring out the window, pretending to whistle a little as other cars passed by them lazily. She wanted to scream. That's all she wanted to do.

"Fine…" She finally said and reached for her door handle, opening the door and walking out onto the sidewalk. John cursed at himself. Things just didn't want to go his way. He followed her outside.

"Come on Monica. You know you can tell me."
"It's not that simple, John. You know it's not."

"Look, you do what you want. Come back to the car when you're ready to go home."

Monica stood her ground, still sulking. She hadn't expected John to wait for her like he did. But he had that look in his blue eyes, the persistent look. The one he got on a big murder case or when he was playing chess with Meredith, the look that made her smile suddenly and laugh and little at the way they were behaving. She crossed her arms and walked back to the car, slamming the door behind her.

"I'd kiss you if my breath didn't taste like vomit." She said, leaning back in the seat. He started the car and said nothing, but he had started to smile a little.

She was resourceful. It was the second lesson. The first was to kill. The second was how to go about it. They would set up the gymnasium with every challenge a child could think of. Adult guards, child guards, motion sensors, mines, ropes, ventilation shafts, pressure switches, retina scans, everything. So many casualties were from that single challenge. Only five actually made it through without a scratch. She was one of them.

The hospital was treated in the same manner. Every step could be her last. Every breath could be her last. Every twitch, every reaction, every breath, every heartbeat, everything had to be working the way she commanded it too. There could be no other mistakes.

She had been cocky in the subway station, and now the ringing in her ears wouldn't stop. But now, she wasn't being cocky. She would be careful.

The first thing she did was break into an empty apartment, stealing a coat and a shirt, as well as a pair of scissors from the kitchen, a needle and thread from the sewing kit in the bedroom, and a roll of bandages. In the darkness of the alley she cut her hair, tossing the blood soaked locks into the trash and ran her fingers through it. She felt naked without it, but it would change her appearance. With the 'breed' damaged, it wouldn't grow back for a few hours.

She threaded the needle and stitched herself clumsily, then changed her clothes.

But now was the hard part. Getting in and getting out would be two very different plans.

Phoebe had only one thing to complain about with her job with Meredith. The tiny seven-year-old could disappear anywhere. She could be sitting in the TV room one minute and then simply vanish the next. Phoebe understood how spirits could do this. She understood spirits. She understood ghosts, demons, apparitions, and the occasional poltergeist that took up residence in her home.

She moved through the front foyer of the large house, looking around through the shadows.

"Meredith?" She called. The house could have very well been empty. There was no giggling sounds or shouts back. Phoebe looked up the stairs to the landing and the loft. "MEREDITH!" She called again, still receiving silence as her answer. She sighed deeply and climbed the stairs quickly, looking through the bathroom, the linen closet, all the way down the hall to John and Monica's bedroom. She didn't dare enter, feeling strange about searching through their bedroom without permission. She turned, instead, and headed in the opposite direction to Meredith's room.

And thus, Phoebe loses her job. And her parents find that she is irresponsible. So ends Phoebe's life in Washington.

"Meredith if you're out on the roof…" She didn't complete the sentence. What could she say? She only threatened when the person she needed to intimidate was bigger than her. Meredith was barely the height of her hip. She looked up the coiling staircase and found the light was on, faintly.

"Meredith?" she asked again, and this time received an answer. Meredith jumped out from behind the boxes in the attic and shouted boo.

"You scare too easily," she said, striding past Phoebe as she walked down the stairs. Phoebe groaned loudly. Meredith made it to her bedroom when she suddenly stopped short. She stood still, completely rigid.

"Meredith you can't pull two on me in one night." Phoebe said. But that's when she realized that Phoebe wasn't joking. She could hear someone coming into the house.

"Stay here," she said, walking out of the room. She could hear Meredith behind her, ignoring the warning Phoebe had given her and following along, watching out for anything and everything. They moved to the stairs and looked down into the foyer, seeing nothing. Phoebe started down the stairs.

She was always looking ten moves ahead of her, eyeing the foyer carefully. They would call up, wouldn't they? I mean, they know Meredith is up. They know I'm awake, so wouldn't they call?

"Phoebe…" Meredith whispered and trotted after her. They huddled there on the stairs, looking at the foyer with widened eyes.

She moved into the hospital awkwardly. The guards were looking at her strangely, but she kept her cool and pretended not to notice that they were checking her identity and seeing if she was the possible murder suspect. Room 132, she saw the white board on the wall. Follmer was all that was written in a scrawl. So she quickened her pace just to be sure, and slid into the public washrooms without much trouble.

The panels on the ceiling of the bathroom were easy to push and crawl into. She jumped up from the back of the toilet and pulled herself inside. The drugs were wearing off slowly, and she could feel her normal strength returning. The shaft was hugging to her skin, but she managed to slither through like a snake, moving through with the only thought of completing her mission in mind.

She stopped listening to them, stopping when she hovered over the bed of Brad Follmer.

So I won't shoot him, she thought to herself coyly. He deserves something more…special.

There were two fireplaces in the house. One was downstairs in the dining room. The other was in the loft upstairs, where the second TV was. Phoebe grabbed the fire poker from this fireplace and moved down the stairs, Meredith clinging to her arm.

They moved down the stairs, quicker this time, moving with hearts pounding to the kitchen. Phoebe stopped for a moment and pushed the door open with the poker and stood face to face with…

The fire poker dropped to the ground and Meredith shrieked a little as her mother walked through the door.

"What are you two doing?" She demanded, picking up the sharp metal rod off the chipped tile. Meredith let go of Phoebe's leg. Phoebe shrugged and smiled.

"God, we thought you two were robbers or something." She said, taking a deep breath.

"She was more scared than me." Meredith added. Phoebe looked at her and just shook her head.

The sun was just barely up and Monica couldn't sleep. Meredith had gone to bed not long ago. She was worn out, the caffeine rush from 2:30 catching up with her. John had put on some movie in the loft and she was curled up on the couch. But Monica was thinking, lying on the bed in her cotton pajamas thinking about Brad in the hospital, and forgetting that she was married.

She brushed her right hand over her left and felt the diamond wedding band on her ring finger. It made her smile softly, reminding her that she was a bride, a wife, a mother, but amongst that list wasn't Brad's girlfriend.

There was the sound of glass breaking. She pushed herself off the bed and bolted to the bedroom door and to the rail over the foyer.

John was already halfway down the stairs, shocked, looking at what had rolled through their window. There was a bloody trail where Brad Follmer's head had rolled to the center of the floor, eyes open, watching them.

"Nothing's fine I'm torn,
I'm all out of faith. This is how I feel,
I'm cold and I'm ashamed, bound and broken on the floor."

There was the sound of footsteps moving over the mosaic tiles outside the front door. Then they disappeared into the night. Monica couldn't breathe, watching the eyes of her ex staring at her, eating her alive. John had the same feelings it seemed, but he moved quickly to the bedroom and grabbed the extra guns they had in the chest of drawers. Monica darted after him.

"Jesus Christ, John," she said, catching the firearm he tossed to her. He was already on the phone to the police.

"Close all the blinds, Monica," he said, putting his hand over the mouth piece. She did so, shutting the curtains and the blinds, running down the hall and following suit with the other rooms.

She was on the landing, at the rail, when she heard the back door being kicked in and the glass shattering from the windows. Her heart skipped a beat, listening to the silence that followed. Silence, she thought to herself. Whoever was coming inside obviously had no intention of being seen or heard.

"They're in the house." Monica said quietly, her voice a shaky whisper. John nodded, looking over the rail and stepped back a few steps, pressing his back against the wall. She followed suit, back against the wall. They kept quiet, listening for the sound of anything. Eventually, the person had to give themselves away, right?

"Meredith." John said quickly. Monica nodded, sliding down the wall to the TV room, finding Meredith asleep on the couch, curls spilled over the pillows like an angel. She turned back into the hall, looking into the foyer as it filled with light. John nodded to her, moving after her.

"One of us stays up here," he said. Monica nodded. "I'll go downstairs and try to get a shot at them. Whatever you hear…"

She didn't know why she felt another presence in the house. There was the man and the woman that was true. But there was something else, something…

She couldn't verbalize it, or maybe didn't want to or feel the need to. But she did feel like she was missing something as she planned out the deaths of two of the house's residents.

The man would be injured first. She could see his pain, how much his family meant to him. He would watch the woman die, and then he would die but decapitation. She opted against the use of a gun. It was too quick and too painless. He needed to die painfully, in pure agony.

FUCK OFF. She made it perfectly clear now that they should be quiet, but the ringing in her ears persisted.

Ignoring it now with the drugs in her system flushed out, she moved to the drawers and snatched up a sharp knife, the handle fitting in her hand like it was made for her.

John was very cautious as he moved down the stairs, back facing the wall, gun extending towards the archways into the kitchen and living room. His eyes traced through the darkness, softly illuminated by the sliver of sunlight that had peaked its head out from the horizon. The white tiles in the kitchen gleamed with a dull light, the pieces of glass twinkling like stars near the back door. He kept his guard up, however, remembering how quick she had been to attack in the street, assuming that it was she who was breaking and entering.

He stepped past the head, looking from door to door. Cockily, the woman strode in front of the kitchen door, standing still, a knife in one hand dangerously hanging at her leg. She looked so deadly now, cruel and beautiful, ear dripping blood down her red locks of now short hair. She looked familiar somehow, like John was having deja vu.

But he didn't have time to think about who she reminded him of. She stepped towards him, boots connecting with the floor and echoing into the vast room that lay before her. John was still aiming his gun eyes not moving.

His finger pulled the trigger. The bullet hit her in the left shoulder, throwing her off balance for a moment. While recoiling, she lifted up her own weapon. It never fired, as John had fired again.

This time she was ready, and with inhuman speed she dropped, the bullet zooming over her head. The action caused her ear to bleed green fluid down her skin, making long lines of burned flesh. She ignored the pain again and ran straight for him.

The two bullets he fired had no effect, and with a crack, she disappeared, reappearing behind him. She spun around, kicking him to the ground and landing with the knife to his throat. Green blood streamed out now, making her head spin. Just as quickly she felt her heart pound and the woman opened fire on her in the foyer.

She slashed John's chest with the knife, jumping over him and running out behind the house, taking off quickly.

Monica forgot about John momentarily and ran to the windows, breaking through the screen and landing two more shots before the woman was into the woods behind the house.

STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! THAT WAS PATHETICALLY STUPID! You could have killed them both.

No, but you did require our help. We provided a service, so you must in return provide us with a service.

You were so bold in the kitchen. You were so sure of yourself. What happened to you? You're thinking about those people again aren't you?

We can see everything you think of, silly. What's this? You have been trying to remember those two, haven't you? You're trying to remember your mother.

Too late really, we're already here. Let's look through some of these other memories. Oh! Look what we've found: Your first kill. It seems as though you were bound to be a killer. But now look at you, running from those Agents like you're afraid of them or something.

William Scully was shy around other people. He was a small redheaded boy with large green eyes and freckles, cute and kind. He was a year older than Meredith, even though he had less self-confidence. Meredith was bubbly with a lot of boy and girl friends. He was sullen and withdrawn, preferring to be on his own rather than with other people.

"Will?" His mother called him, alerting him from watching the small Japanese fighter fish swim in the tank by his bed. He looked to the doorway as she stepped inside. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing." He replied simply, turning back to the fish as he dropped a few flakes of fish food onto the water's surface. William wished he was a fish. Sometimes, if he imagined hard enough, he could be inside that fish tank. Unfortunately, he came to his senses before long.

"Monica's bringing Meredith over for a while and Phoebe's going to baby sit, okay?" William nodded without complaint, not questioning where his parents were off to, understanding that it was probably personal business with his aunt and uncle. He would be stuck with Meredith all afternoon. At times it was fun to have someone younger around. The problem with Meredith was that she was a girl, and that she wasn't about to be bossed around.

And she probably has cooties, he thought childishly, smiling to himself as the fish swam around in the tank.

He had once been taunted about Meredith. Some of his friends had decided it would be hilarious to belt out "William and Meredith, Sitting in a tree!" It had gotten considerably worse when they found more sexually orientated variations, including, "William and Meredith, sitting in a bar. Are they humping, yes they are!"

It was his first display of violence. Other than that William was a lover, not a fighter. Meredith had joked with him, saying that he was Will from Pirates of the Caribbean and she was Captain Jack Sparrow, taking it upon her self to mock him as a eunuch whenever she could.

"What is a eunuch anyway?" he asked her one day. Meredith tapped her chin, deep in thought for a moment.

Police were swarming the house. There wasn't much she could do but watch, perched in a tree like a wild animal, watching the people move below, speaking in code and ordering the woods to be checked with a fine tooth comb.

The blood had stopped dripping by now. It didn't matter anyways. The dogs couldn't pick up the scent on her blood. It was far too smartly designed to be followed by mangy dogs.

She had only killed two police officers, this she admitted without pride. She could have taken on two precincts at that point with how much anger she was feeling. She failed two missions that day. She failed not one but two missions.

She lowered herself onto a branch, hidden, by the thick leaves. It didn't take long for her to lose consciousness.

By the time the police had left, there were still two cars parked on the street in front of the house. John hated the idea of them watching his family through the night, but there were really no other options he had left. It was obvious that the woman, whoever she was, was ready to kill them. It was also clear that she was not entirely human. It made him feel like a traitor as he neglected the sensible beliefs of a soldier and turn to the far fetched escapades of a man like Fox Mulder.

And why should he? Simply because the woman displayed some physical traits that made her slightly inhuman?

No, it was because he had seen all this before and heard this song and dance so many times before. It was because he had nearly been killed by several of these 'super soldiers' before hand.

And he knew it was triggered by Follmer. It had to be. They were the one who interfered in her assassination of Brad Follmer. She had a reason to be angry.

But then why did she kill Follmer? The thought made him frustrated with how he couldn't determine why Follmer was a target. It would take a little digging for information, and files that he still had access to.

He took Monica with him, dropping Meredith off at Phoebe's apartment for what he said would be a couple of hours.

"There's something cold and blank behind her smile.
She's standing on an overpass in her miracle mile.
You were from a perfect world.
A world that threw me away today…"

"Alright." Monica said, slumping at the desk and dropping a large, leather bound book onto the desktop. John lifted an eyebrow, looking at her opening the covers, eyes peering onto the pages covered in jagged writing. It was messy. Just from his glance he determined the owner was a male.

"How'd you get that?" he asked. Monica looked at him giving him that, How do you think I got the schedule?

"We're investigating an assassination, John. That's a box of personal effects and Brad's mail from the past week or so in that box over there." She pointed at the filing box on the chair in the corner. John folded the old file he was looking at and set it on top of the filing cabinet.

"Skinner sent it down," she said, flipping through the pages of Brad's day timer. Okay, Brad, let's see what you had lined up all week.

John lifted the box and put it on the smaller desk on the other side of the room. He went back to the filing cabinet, grabbing the file off the top. Monica glanced up from her work, looking at him as he slumped down about four feet from her, looking through the file with his interest peaked.

"What's that?" she asked, pushing away from the desk a little. John looked at her.

"An old case file," he said, shutting the folder. "Just the one from Antarctica."

"No, never, although Leyla Harrison signed this file out for inspection about a month after our little escapade together." Monica rolled her eyes, looking back at the day timer, pouring through the days, the hours, the minutes, every second of his life marked down in an orderly fashion. May 7 was a lunch date with Rachel, whoever that was. This was a surprise since May 4 was dinner with Sheila, and according to May 5, she was still over for breakfast. Monica shook her head, flipping the page again to May 8, the day before his murder.

"Found something," she said, pointing to the cell where the small note was written quickly, so quickly she could barely read it. "Dinner with 'R' at 6 pm followed by a number: 195426 and an X."

"Postal code would have letters and an address wouldn't be that long unless it was in the country." Monica said, looking over the cell again.

John considered this, looking back at the desk. He eyed the numbers on the case file he had been looking at, and his brain slid into investigation mode.

"Look, a six digit number," he said, grabbing the file from the desk and emphasizing the number on the top flap. "Followed by a letter." His finger moved across the top where the division affiliation was. Skinner, who had filled out the file, marked an 'X' in this slot. "And C…" He opened up the drawer at the top of the filing cabinet and searched through it. Monica stood and helped him.

"Enter the next piece of evidence. A missing case file," he said. Monica sat down at the desk again.

"This is going to take all day," she said, going through the rest of the day in the ledger. John shrugged, going to the door.

"Phoebe." Meredith said as she brought forth the velvet bag she had discovered in the babysitter's disheveled bedroom. Phoebe looked up from the counter where she was sitting cross legged and drinking tea. The seven-year-old climbed up on the chair, yawning sleepily and produced the bag. "What are these?"

"Read mine!" Meredith said, holding the deck up to her. Phoebe folded the newspaper up and set it aside, dumping the deck of cards out on the counter and shuffled them. A piece of paper dropped out, a picture with charred edges. Meredith had it before Phoebe could take it from her.

"Who's that?" she asked, pointing to the small boy in the picture. Phoebe's brow furrowed.

"Who's who?" Phoebe took the picture and looked, the boy looking away from the camera. She looked from the picture to Meredith and back to the picture. Meredith was getting impatient.

Walter Skinner had become used to people barging into his office. It seemed to be a daily occurrence that someone would simply 'forget' to knock, march right to his desk and expect to talk to him.

But he hadn't expected David Ridder. Not in a million years would have expected David Ridder.

Ridder was an intimidating man, standing at about 6'3 with blonde hair and blue eyes that could pierce even the strongest man's soul. He was like the 'Smoking Man' with his frightening appearance, cigarette tightened in his fingers that day as he waltzed in like he owned the place. He closed the door so as not to be disturbed. Skinner had no hope of being disturbed. Ridder's first rat Louis was guarding the door.

"What do you want David?" Skinner asked in a low voice, not even bothering to mention that there was no smoking in the building. David continued with a sadistic smile.

"I know Follmer had the file damn it!" He shouted, pounding his hands on the table. The ash from the cigarette flew off to the side. "I know he did, because he was running that night. Where he put it is what I want to know."

"I didn't." Skinner put it sharply, making the conversation fall short for a moment. David was hardly going to keep quiet though. He knew Skinner knew more than he was saying. "I don't know where he put that file. Maybe you should check out his office."

Ridder was close to punching Skinner, turning to him and stopping his fist and inch from Skinner's cheek. Walter didn't flinch as David pulled his hand away.

"Don't you think I've tried something like that? Don't insult my intelligence, Walter. I had her in here the day before, don't you remember?"

Skinner stopped trying to figure out what David had said. He thought back to yesterday, the day going by backwards, like someone had hit rewind. And then he saw it, the brunette agent, the one claiming to be CIA.

No, that agent checked out. She had even showed up with her superior, a friend of Skinner's.

"She doesn't emote very well." David added. "And she had to poison Follmer's secretary. I sent her some flowers, how is she doing?"

"Now, now, that language is uncalled for. Unfortunately as talented as my agent is she is now missing, along with the file that could incriminate everything I have been doing." David was scared now, that Skinner could note. He was a man of very little fear, but that file had something very important inside it. "File number 195426. Seen it anywhere?"

"The only division that matters, Walter, the X-Files," he said dangerously, the cigarette burned to the butt now. Ridder thrust the tip into Skinner's desk making smoke curl from the orange embers and around his hand.

"Let me put this into a language you understand, Walter." He said, walking around the desk, the cigarette dropping to the floor. "You see this file is a danger to my way of life and my department. If it gets into the wrong hands like let's say…agent Mulder, than my life and yours is at stake. Do you understand?" He looked down at the old AD, blue eyes vivid with rage.

"There's a good Assistant Director." David said, leaving the room as quickly as he came. Walter took a deep breath, hurrying to the front of his desk and picking up the cigarette butt.

John's cell phone rang a couple minutes into the indulgence in his second cup of coffee and the third page of the R section in the address book. He opened the cellular device and saw Nameth written on the LCD screen. A rush of panic moved through his body.

"Where's Meredith?" he asked quickly, alerting a caffeine-high Monica to look at him stunned. Phoebe rolled her eyes, trying to not say something sarcastic.

"She's asleep, John. Relax. I can see her from here." That wasn't the whole truth. Phoebe had taken refuge in the closet in her hall, and could only hear the TV but not see Meredith. Just to be sure she opened the door and looked, seeing her hand lazily dangling over the couch. "There's something else I called you about."

"You're not going to believe this," she said, pressing her back against the wall. "Meredith pulled out a picture I took of your…Luke, and she could see him in the picture."

"What did you tell her about Luke?" he demanded. Monica closed her eyes, hanging her head a little.

"I don't care. I don't want it happening again!" He hung up quickly. Phoebe pressed end on her phone and threw it against the closet wall, the whole receiver breaking and shattering on the floor. She retreated from the closet, Meredith still asleep on the couch.

John didn't want to talk about it, and Monica respected that. He was still hurt about his son, especially with Meredith at the same age Luke was. Luke would have been eighteen now. She didn't want to think about the details.

He got up and walked out of the room without another word. She stood up and walked after him.

"John Doggett you stop walking away from me," she ordered, hands on her hips. "You demanded me to let go of my problems and you've had a long enough time to let go of this."

"I don't want Meredith knowing about Luke!" He said. "I don't want it to happen!"

"What happened?" Monica asked. John was silent. "Come on John, you can tell me."

"You don't tell me anything." He sounded like a child. Monica lowered her head. "You couldn't talk about this morning."

There was something soothing about the wind that was blowing that night. When she awoke, the blood had coagulated around her ear and she was feeling a lot stronger than before. It would be easy to take care of the agents now, without the weakness of the ringing and the pain of the bullets and the stupor of the drugs.

She hopped down out of the tree, finding blood streaming down the sides. The investigators did not see this, something she found very advantageous. She couldn't smell them, but her sense of smell was not as good as it had been before the shooting. She debated on how to remove the evidence without leaving more of her flesh or saliva around for people to find. Finally, she ripped off a piece of her shirt and wiped the blood away.

Her fingers ran through the hair that had now grown back to its original length before she had slashed it off. With a final inspection of it she walked to the house, her leg completely healed from the car accident she had been involved in earlier.

She discovered the house empty, but found something she hadn't expected: a child's room. So they have a kid, she thought. But where is she?

She looked through all the papers in the house, finding no phone number to a babysitter's house. She went back to the child's room and sniffed, following the scent of perfume down to the main floor and into the kitchen. The strongest portion of it came from the living room, where the woman had sat. Ralph Lauren, she thought, running her fingers along the seams of the couch. So she's fairly rich. Might be a person with money or worker. Or it was a gift…

The ideas were limitless. She needed another idea. She inspected the girl's room again and found her clue, the picture slid inside the frame of the vanity mirror.

The brunette with a grin, sitting out on the lawn in flip flops, hair flying in the wind. She extracted it from the mirror, flipping it over. Phoebe, September 2005, The fine cursive had written.

Phoebe…she thought, looking through the other pictures. There was only one of the female. She looked through the contents of the vanity, through the costume jewelry and make up, finding no other clues as to whom the girl was. She put the picture back and moved to the parent's room, searching their room for photo albums. She found an older one, a smaller one filled with small area of light in no correlation. This was sorted amongst things that the male probably never wanted found, along with pictures of a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes.

She came across one more photo of the girl, this time marked with a last name. Phoebe Nameth was written on the back of the graduation picture inside the photo album with the light pictures.

She knew she would have smiled at that moment, but couldn't bring herself to do so.

John didn't even look at Phoebe when he picked up Meredith. Phoebe avoided him, hugging Meredith goodbye and waving to her specifically. John stood for a moment, pondering what to say, but he left angrily, not saying anything. She slammed the door behind him, biting her lip so hard red marks appeared under where her teeth had imprinted.

His daughter was staring out the window, curious about the world as always, unafraid of the people walking. She used to wave at them, no matter who they were. To Meredith there was no colour and no age. There was just this big world of people to discover.

"Mommy's at work," he said, watching the road, glancing at his daughter. She smiled at him and looked back out the window.

He was about to say something again, something forgettable, when his cell phone rang again. He groaned and grabbed it, not looking at the number.

"Agent Doggett?" The man's voice said. "This is Lieutenant Michael Bentley, one of the men watching your house."

"The woman left here quickly. We tried to stop her but she's on the run in one of our cruisers. She's heading somewhere in the city."

"Yes, that's why we're calling. Your room was broken into, we know that much. She left them all around the room. We were wondering if you might know where she was heading."

John stopped to think. The photo albums in his room had nothing important, family and friends…

"I can be there faster than you," he said, pulling a quick U-turn. "I'll meet your men there."

Monica Reyes could not express her boredom in words. She had tried John's cell phone and found it busy. Just to spite me. God, John, you can be so immature at times. She moved back to her work on the day planner, moving to the day that Follmer was murdered.

The whole day was filled with appointments with Agents, phone calls and numbers, but no mention of R's identity or any mention of a file either. She was beginning to think that it was just the incoherent babble of her ex, writing down his day and his weeks without any real purpose.

She was taking notes now, marking down people she could call to check up on him and notify of his 'mysterious' assassination. But that one question was still on her mind. Why was Brad gunned down? What did he do to possibly deserve that?

Sure there was the government, but everything in their small office was blamed on the government. She was getting sick of the same reason. And besides, Brad didn't have anything to do with hiding the truth. He was just another pawn, like Skinner, like Kersh, and even themselves. What could he have possibly done to deserve death in such a horrible manner? Even Brad did not deserve that.

She looked over the phone numbers in the back of the book again, looking through the R's. Many of them were Agents with the CIA, the FBI, and the DoJ…nothing special just agents that he had worked with or was currently working with.

But the initials D.R. were incomplete. There was a Washington number, but no address, and no cell phone. It was a business line too.

Either way, it fit her description of a possible suspect: Has an 'R' in his name and appears very shady.

Dana Scully found William in his bedroom again, looking out the window without anything to do. She felt rather sorry for him sometimes. William seemed so lonely; it was depressing to watch him looking out the window at absolutely nothing. She had insisted that they move to a house in a nice neighbourhood with lots of children for William to play with. Meredith was only available every so often. She was a stage child, always at an audition, dance lessons, music lessons, acting lessons…there wasn't an art in the world Meredith couldn't do and beat the crap out of everyone else.

He would sit and draw for hours on end. Dana had found the picture hidden under his mattress, done in crayons and in markers and pencil crayons, whatever he could get his hands on. Meredith and her parents, she and Mulder, animals and landscapes, angels, devils, demons, muses, everything a boy could imagine about in the confines of his bedroom.

She closed the door quietly, walking down the hall with the laundry basket balanced on her hip. Mulder was on the couch, sleeping as usual, feet up on the table, and 'relaxing' for a few hours. This is the life of a teacher, she mused, laughing quietly to herself as she went to her bedroom and set the basket on the bed.

The second the phone rang she jumped to it, snatching it off the bureau and putting it to her ear.

"Dana? It's Monica." Scully leaned against the bureau sighing deeply. "Sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?"

"I got a lead on Follmer's case." Monica said, looking at her notes. "I found a phone number in his day timer and got an address on it. I was just going to go over and ask some questions and was wondering if you would come with me?"

"Where's John?" She hadn't meant to sound as dodgy as she did, but usually John liked to be with his wife. Monica rolled her eyes.

"He's stormed out of here." Dana nodded and flopped on the bed, listening. "I just didn't want to go alone."

"Okay." Monica was about to hang up, but she hesitated. "Have you heard from John at all?"

Dana said no, making Monica start to worry, despite Scully's attempts to convince her not to. "He looked so angry when he walked out of here, that's all. Like someone had tried to kill Luke again. And now he hasn't called and I'm just worried about him."

John Doggett had been at the top of his driving class. He was an excellent driver, even and especially under pressure. It was unfortunate that he forgot himself the second he had the incline of danger, and the sense that someone he knew was about to be killed. It felt like he was driving to Luke's crime scene, the tress swaying in the springtime wind, the green leaves rustling across a flawless blue sky.

And then Monica's face turning and her eyes meeting his, and the officers were parting around the corpse of his son. He was standing in shock, looking at his seven-year-old son lying dead on the ground.

Meredith noticed the way her father started to lose his cool. He looked like several actors before they went on stage, trying not to cry as they faced facts and came to terms with their fear and their inability to make mistakes if they practiced.

She had been in 14 productions as a star now, 32 as a secondary character, and had modeled for several agencies. It wasn't an official career yet, she didn't have an agent aside from her parents, but she was known for her adorable stage presence and her lack of fear.

Right now, she was scared too. Her father didn't look like himself, and it was beginning to worry her.

John always thought that Meredith was a new start. He thought that she was the one thing in his life that wouldn't go wrong. His marriage with Barbara had ended rather badly. Barbara got the house and half his money, including his son's room and the nicer car. He remained in New York, just a shadow of his former self in a small apartment looking out on the rugged city. His son had been murdered, his wife no longer spoke to him, and he had been in an apartment that was much too small.

But that's beside the point. Maybe I'm just looking for closure and I'm reaching for the first things I can get my hands on.

JESUS CHRIST JOHN YOU MARRIED THE WOMAN AND YOU WANTED THE KID! There was no replacement there was closure and there was movement. THAT'S ALL.

He pulled to a stop in the parking lot and reached for his firearm unconsciously, trying not to frighten Meredith. It wasn't like she hadn't seen it before. She fired Nerf guns and water pistols with William all the time and was quite the shot. She hated the noise of real guns through.

"I have to talk to Phoebe for a minute," he said, debating on whether to leave her here or not. I can't take her up there. What if she's there?

"Meredith, I want you to stay in the car and keep the doors locked." His daughter nodded, taking off her seat belt. "If anyone comes, honk the horn, okay?"

Another nod. John gave a lasting look at his daughter and got out of the car quickly.

Phoebe hung up the phone with her parents, stopping the conversation early before they could will her psychically to come back home instead of living her own life. She slumped on the couch with the TV remote in her hand, biting her thumb nail. It was a bad habit she had gotten into and didn't seem to be getting out of it any time soon.

She decided there was nothing on TV and flicked it off, relaxing on her couch for a moment or two. Her eyes closed she focused on the sounds around her. The wind beat against the windows and the tea kettle in the kitchen wailed with a shrill shriek. She got up from her place on the couch and went to the small island in her kitchen where her textbooks were. A small mug with chamomile sat unattended, the powder inside it smelling sweet as it hit her nostrils.

The hallway creaked very loudly in her apartment. It was easy to hear when visitors had come for her neighbours and when John and Monica showed up with Meredith.

And John had just been here, and didn't look like he would be coming back anytime soon.

John had raced from the car and up the stairs just to be certain. The second he hit her floor he was hit with the creaking sound of the wooden beams that threatened to fall out from under him. Once or twice he was convinced that there were holes simply covered by carpet in the building, and even though Phoebe had assured him there weren't, there was a spot by apartment 403 that made him think otherwise. The carpet curved over a floor that wasn't there.

He reached her apartment slowly, giving himself time to get his gun. He wasn't expecting Phoebe to scream. On the contrary, he was assuming her to die quietly.

He raised his hand to the door and knocked, waiting to hear any signs of struggle before he intended to knock the door down.

The sounds of a shrill his made him jump. He prepared to boot the door in when the scream stopped, and the locks clicked open.

Phoebe was hardly amused with John preparing to boot her door in. She lifted an eyebrow, leaning against the door from and stared at the tense position he had assumed in a public place. There was silence for a moment, John unable to verbalize why precisely he was here.

"You know if you fire me at this point it doesn't really matter," she said, but John just looked around her hallway, peeking into the rooms further down, trying to see a window open or a black clad figure preparing to shoot his babysitter. "And I know it was stupid of me to leave the picture where she could find it but honestly," Phoebe began, trying not to acknowledge his odd behaviour at her door, "It's not entirely a bad thing since she should know that she had a brother John what the hell are you doing?"

She had finally decided to notice that he was behaving strangely, turning his head and such. John finally swallowed.

"Has anyone come in or out of this apartment since I left?" He asked, keeping his gun low. Phoebe eyed him strangely.
"No," she said, very confused. "Should there be?"

"Aside from the gun-wielding maniac outside my door? No, nothing I can think of." He didn't notice her sarcasm as she said that. John finally put away his gun, satisfied that she was alone. There was no way to climb up to the windows on this building. No fire escape, no vines or telephone poles. Even a super soldier would have trouble getting in without the front door.

"Can I ask why?" Phoebe asked, crossing her arms. John continued to look over his shoulder, paranoid he would see a red haired woman stalking him down the hall with a gun.

"Alright…" She said, sounding satisfied that he was okay. "I have classes all next week but if you and Monica call beforehand I can probably work your schedule into mine."

There were the sounds of a car horn from the parking lot. John's eyes went wide as he darted for a window in Phoebe's apartment and looked down at his car.

A flash of red glinted with sunlight caught him off guard. He bolted before Phoebe could say anything.

"I just feel stronger and sharper
Found a box of sharp objects what a beautiful thing
Do you want a song of glory?
Well I'm fucking screaming at you…"

The building was elegant and completely new. Monica could smell it as she and Scully walked inside, looking around casually through the metallic lobby and the metal detectors nearby for the scientists and doctors in procession to the labs and examination rooms down the hall. The receptionist was a mousy looking woman with a pointed nose and rhinestone glasses, who pretended not to notice him. She seemed so out of place in her colourful clothing instead of the whites, grays and black displayed by the others coming inside.

The two agents moved to the receptionist, the small blonde looking up over the sparkling rims of her glasses with a look in her eye that meant something along the lines of a sassy little, "And what do you want?"

"Yes?" She said in the same sassy tone the two would have expected from someone like that. They removed their badges from their pockets and held them to her, giving her another sassy look on her face, masking the surprise that could be seen in her eyes.

"We're Agents Reyes and Scully of the FBI. We're here looking for information on a murder case," she said confidently. The receptionist chewed on her pen lid.

"Do you have the suspect's name and occupation?" She asked. Scully looked at Reyes who put her badge away.

"I see, well, there's plenty of DR's checked in today. Hang on a moment please."

She walked into the back room while Scully looked at Reyes and around the room. She was getting uneasy in government funded buildings like these, especially after her own experiences with them that she would rather forget. Reyes swallowed hard.

"I think she's going to come back with an excuse." Reyes replied. Scully could only agree. Most government employees were pretty shady about other employees.

The receptionist was an angular woman of 26 named Rachel Brant. She was the daughter of some civil litigator and an anesthesiologist, just another woman who needed a job and got one at the first available spot. Eventually she was dealing with the head executive directly, a man who she knew only as Doctor Ridder, but everyone else knew as David or strictly Ridder.

She had always been intimidated by him, there were no doubts there. But she was a good little receptionist, always making his dinner reservations and flights personally. In some ways, she could be called trusted, but Ridder was a man who trusted no one.

The back room was empty at this time, still smelling like cigarettes from the other secretaries who worked there. It was there that Rachel started to get scared. What could she do? The FBI could hurt her deeply, but not as much as Ridder could. Should she call up and interrupt his possible board meeting with his other shady executives? Or should she take a message and tell them to call back later? Either way, her decision had to be quick.

There was no doubt in her mind they had come looking for David Ridder. The staff list reported three DR's working in the building, including David Ridder. There was Daniel Router, who was a geneticist in the back laboratories. And there was Darlene Radshaw, a woman with no noted career. She too was as frightening as David, if not more so. She had a nasty habit of carrying around a thin wooden stick that she claimed was for decoration and not for abuse. It bothered Rachel nonetheless.

But she still had to make up her mind. With a pounding heart she dialed Ridder's extension in the phone.

Her mind only became at ease when no one answered. She hung up, smiled and walked back out to greet the agents with her usual snotty attitude.

Louis had been on a computer for longer than he could remember. Ever since his father had taken up a job at Dell, Louis was typing on a keyboard. His fingers were the fastest any had ever seen, flying over the keys at an amazing speed. He could hack any system in the world, proven by his job. He was what they called a collared tech, someone who was arrested for breaking into the system, and now worked to save their lives. If he got caught breaking protocol in any way, he would be shot on sight.

And Louis was too much of a coward to accept death so soon. If the right reason came up he may have risen to the occasion, but so far, no such reason had arisen.

He was recruited to Ridder's division immediately, privy to the most top secret information in the world and living inside quarters with Kyle within Ridder's huge mansion outside of Washington. They were also aware of the beautiful assassin living there as well; personal hit man for David Ridder and what they assumed was lover as well. That was the only information he wasn't privy to: David Ridder's personal life.

And it was he who was running the task force to reel in the possible lover in David's life. He had hacked the cell phone company and tried to trace 'the breed' that way. It was a way that always worked in test runs of the system, but now it wasn't. He tried looking with cable signals and satellite signals, each time turning up dry. It was unfortunate that 'the breed' didn't send out some kind of signal themselves. It wouldn't have helped anyways. Louis was convinced that they were injured somehow. The offspring in the lab were starting to die away, or so the scientists said. They needed her brought in or they would lose the whole cargo.

He stood in front of the television map and watched the signal flicker and die again, this time at a parking lot. It seemed to come and go every now and then. He called out the troops, timing their arrival down to 12:01:57 if they avoided traffic. If they ran into traffic problems and had to break a few laws, it would add an additional five minutes. If the technicians under his control got into the traffic system soon, they could be looking at a ten minute window to get in and get out.

Meredith Doggett wasn't an idiot as some people perceived. She was vigilant, like an actress should be. She was also very perceptive, like an investigator, always questioning even those older than her. So when the red haired woman moved out of the police cruiser, Meredith didn't have to think twice about honking the car horn.

Something about the woman frightened her. It was something so simple that she couldn't put her finger on it. Before the woman could reach the car, Meredith opened the driver's door and ran off into the parking lot and into the fence that lined the property. It was a secret where the wire fence had been broken and hung loosely, barely attached to the pole that was just large enough for a child to crawl through. She could hear the footsteps behind her, and before the red haired woman would reach her, Meredith had crawled through to the other side and was already off and running.

John's heart was pounding harder than it ever had before. He should have known better than to have left Meredith in the car. He should have known better! He should have thought about strategies the woman might have, if any. He should have considered the fact that this woman was fairly intelligent. Why go for me when my daughter's waiting in the car?

He skipped the elevator and practically jumped down the stairs, taking his gun out of his holster and leaving his finger off the trigger. The second he reached the base he jumped over the rail and moved out the door to the right, heading out into the bright sunlight.

He stopped, looking around the roofs of the SUV's and cars parked in the lot. Somewhere he knew he would find the familiar red hair, like fire burning on a pale scalp, living in his memory forever as something that could threaten everything he had worked for thus far.

Beyond the cars was the red hair covered in sunlight, blowing in the wind. The green eyes lashed at him, a thousand scream of her victims coming forward into Doggett's mind.

So help me if you've touched her…he thought, his grip tightening on the gun handle. It seemed like she was just going to stand there and give him a chance to shoot. His chest was still sore from the gash, burning under the bandages the paramedics had put on him. He lifted the gun from his side and aimed quickly for her head.

She had a gun aimed at him before he could get a quick shot at her. He was certain of his aim as he fired and immediately dove out of the way. He could hear the bullet whiz by his ear from her weapon, his own skimming by her bleeding ear again, making her shriek.

It was like hearing a demon yell out in agony, the sound of the bullet so sensitive on her inhuman hearing it made the gun drop from her fingers and her grab her head in pain, screaming at full force with all the air in her lungs.

John half expected windows to start cracking as she just crouched down and screamed. He had to hold his own ears, but he could still feel his ear drums ringing from the noise that was let out of her throat. Finally she stopped, still holding her head in pain, hand clutching her wound so hard flesh globs of blood had started to drip, only this time the blood was black and thick and inky, drizzling down to the pavement over her shoulders and dripping off her elbow. Tiny half moon fingernail marks were left on her skin.

He finally regained composure, listening to her falling silent again. She was shaking softly, still crouched over on the ground, listening to whether or not he was going to move or not. John didn't and started approaching her slowly, looking from her to the gun by her feet. His footsteps were crunching the small pieces of stone on the pavement, signaling his presence. Her green eyes opened, listening to him as he came closer to her. She watched his shoe moved towards the gun and kick it away before her hand could reach it.

She was trapped there under the barrel of his weapon, the sound of the metal vibrating in the air making a shrill whistle as it touched her fiery scalp and scraped across her skin. He pushed the gun further from her on the ground, her eyes washed over with fury at the powerlessness of the situation.

The ringing that started in her ears made her grasp her head in agony, clenching her teeth so tightly she thought they were going to crack. It almost made her sick to her stomach as it engulfed every heightened sense that it had gifted her with, causing her eyes to tear and her ears to bleed again, dribbles of red blood flowing from her uninjured ear and black to flow freely from the other.

John wasn't sure what to do, eyeing her in severe, debilitating pain on the pavement, her fingers tightening on her bullet wound while the other balanced her on the pavement, tightening under the finger pads were white with the pressure being applied.

Meredith moved next to him, holding onto his hand. He glanced to her, pressing her against him and moving a hand around in her blonde hair. She looked at the woman on the ground, gasping for breath as the pain shot through her skull.

He couldn't help but feel sorry for someone like that, a haunted woman. She was starting to look like Shannon McMahon more and more.

"Don't give into the pain,
Though they're screaming your name,
God knows what lies behind them,
Never sleep, never die…"

Walter Skinner wasn't very happy about the current situation. It was one thing for Brad Follmer to become involved with David Ridder. Quite frankly if Brad Follmer wanted to keep close contacts with high government officials and controllers of the conspiracy as long as he was not involved. He had spent too much time playing both sides of the X-Files and the government, and had long been kept as a personal slave to those with higher positions than he. But he had turned from that path a long time ago, and just because Brad Follmer went and got himself killed didn't mean Skinner was inclined to.

He had stowed into the office without an excuse. No one wanted one. Skinner was an AD, and a fairly powerful one that was still edging on promotion. He wasn't planning on ever reaching it of course. The FBI gave promotions to those who deserved them and didn't turn away from the controllers of the conspiracy, and he was getting close to being assassinated himself.

The agents on duty said nothing about files found. Walter groaned and went back to his office.

He was shocked at the raven haired agent standing in the room, casually moving through the room and looking around. She was tall and slender in a black coat and pants, not classy but definitely not casual. She looked up at Skinner through a pair of dark sunglasses.

"Can I help you?" he asked her. She didn't smile, but turned and looked right at him.

"Yes if you can tell me about the Brad Follmer case." She said, assuming Skinner would simply tell her.

"And who are you?" he asked, still standing by the slightly open door. The woman said nothing, hands hanging at her sides by the pockets of her coats.

"Just a concerned party," she replied simply, putting it bluntly. "I'm actually here about his assailant."

"You're concerned about the state of government property too?" He said sarcastically, moving to his desk.

"I don't think you get the severity of the situation here Mr. Skinner," she said cruelly, voice twisted and disgusting, as if it were suggesting killing someone. "800 billion dollars of government property is now missing and my employer is getting very angry. I don't think you understand…"

"What I don't understand is why you think I know something about this." Skinner said, voice amplifying and cutting her off mid-statement. "I'm not a little rat for David Ridder or anyone else in that building anymore so stop suggesting that I know something about the condition of his property."

"I find that very hard to believe, Mr. Skinner." She said, unmoving like a soldier should. "I think you know something about the state of our cargo and you're not saying anything because you're protecting someone."

"Person?" She said, repeating the word so Skinner could hear how wrong he was. "She's not a person, Mr. Skinner, she's property. That's all she is. If you are implying that there is a shred of humanity left in her than you are sorely mistaken."

The words burned into Skinner's mind, and the dark haired woman stared at him a moment more, thin lips pursing from the growing anger that she was beginning to feel.

"I'll be in touch, Mr. Skinner," she said, walking out of the office and straight past the secretary who had now returned. The blonde haired secretary looked a little shocked at the dark haired woman, who shot her a look of pure venom. They said nothing, and within a moment, Skinner's uninvited guest was gone.

He grabbed his car keys and coat, booking off for the rest of the day. He had to go talk to John Doggett before Ridder started sending spies to his house.

The black haired woman was not part of the same experiment. Her name was Morgan Warren, another of the government's personal hit-women. She had been trained in the same program as the other, but had earned her name and hank much more quickly than her red haired counterpart had. She was more important that Ridder's corporation, running errands for the Federal Emergency Reserve instead of smaller departments like Ridder's. Everyone was so quick to assume that Ridder was at the top, but he was just a piece in a much larger puzzle.

The second she was on the street she grabbed the cell phone from her pocket and dialed the private line to her employer, Senator Ryan Trent. He was another man like Ridder, far less manipulative, and wider in the waist and shoulders. He was a big man with dark hair and a mustache and blue eyes. She hated him about as much as she hated Ridder. But he held the power on her paycheck, and he also handled the rest of the assassins under his power, including the red haired one.

It was their fate that they had held grudges against one another since the beginning. Morgan was more adept at hand to hand combat, while the other was better with weapons. When they met for the first time they were eight, ready to kill. By the time their fight had ended, they were at an impasse, each with their hands around the others' throat, each with the evil look in their eyes as they prepared to end the other's life.

But they never did, and now they were trying to prove who should really have won.

Morgan left a few identifiable marks on the other, but she was sure they were gone now. Unlike her other, Morgan was not a part of 'the breed' experimentation on humans. She didn't need it. She was cunning and deadly enough as it was.

"Trent," he said in his gruff voice. She was sickened by the thick sound in his throat, made worse by the large cigars he would smoke when he thought he was alone. Morgan continued walking, bypassing the Agents coming back from lunch or just coming in for the day.

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked, coughing with his gooey sounding choking. She didn't show her disgust, but inside her organs were convulsing at the sound of the phlegm.

"I'm going to lay low for a little and keep an eye on him. Eventually the file will turn up." He coughed in response.

"Don't worry about them. Just have my check ready for when I come back in." She shut the phone and shoved it back in her pocket. Things were going to get messy, she knew that. And she was beginning to think her other and she would have another run-in, and this time, there would be no teachers to impress and no governments to live for. It would come down to Morgan and the other, a single gun and bullet, and one of them wouldn't walk away so safely.

Monica was silent in the car, sitting there and wondering what to do. She knew this man D.R. had something to do with Brad. She was very aware that he was hiding away and buying his time in that building, plotting things about other people and intending for other people's deaths. But without cooperation from snotty little receptionists, she and Scully were stuck on the sidelines waiting to get back into the game.

She had tried to call John. He said he was a little busy at the moment and would call her back when he could. He had hung up pretty quickly. At least he didn't sound mad anymore, she thought to herself, putting the phone away.

Dana had pretty much the same thoughts as Monica. They were stuck at the beginning. What would she and Mulder do in the same situation? She thought, looking back at the building.

They were parked across the street now, watching who was coming in and out, and waiting for the secretary to go out for lunch and try again to reach D.R. It was coming close to four o'clock. Great, only 2 more hours of waiting, Monica thought bitterly, still watching.

It was four-thirty when the angular receptionist emerged in a long coat and her hair down. She met a man in a convertible with a smile, her glasses replaced with contacts and her whole appearance changed. The man opened the door for her, dressed in his Armani clothing including sunglasses, and walked around to the driver's door. They waited until she and her friend had taken off and went back inside.

This time the atmosphere was growing more quiet, the scientists inside the labs working quietly and the technicians moving secretively in and out of the lobby. The front desk was controlled by a man this time, young and brunette. He was maybe 25 or 26, but definitely did not look like he was working at the desk. He had a laptop out and was charting things silently, head phones in his ears and music coming out from the volume. He was boyish almost and nicely dressed for someone so young.

Monica tapped on the desk, the man immediately alerted. His brown eyes focused on the two women and he switched his music off, pulling the head phones from his ears.

"Sorry, I'm just supervising so I don't think I'll be much help," he said. The two women pulled out their badges.

"We're Agents Reyes and Scully from the FBI and we're looking for a possible murder suspect in the building." His eyes widened.

"No, I'm a JS, actually, Jason Sharp." He replied. "But I can't help you there. There must be plenty of DR's in the building."

"Could we maybe talk to your supervisor?" Scully asked again, suddenly working at getting back into business. Reyes suddenly felt stuck on the sidelines.

"I'm not sure. He usually doesn't take visitors." He replied. "I could call up and see if he'll talk to you. I'm not promising much."

He grabbed the phone and dialed up, his fingers moving quickly over the number pad. Reyes already knew he was a technician. He had to be. He was too young to be a scientist and too open to be a full member of a government division. He was probably just a hired computer tech: someone who knew nothing but how to organize data in computers.

There was no answer again, as Jason had suspected. The two Agents were bumped back to their mental sidelines again, stuck there until the supervisor of the building started showing up at work.

"MOMMY!" She shouted and ran to Monica. Meredith was greeted by her mother, hugging her tightly and laughing giddily, grabbing her hands and yanking them upstairs. "Come on, I have to show you something!"

"Not now, Meredith, where's your father?" Monica pulled herself from the grip of her daughter, only to have the seven-year-old snatch her wrist again and yank her twice as hard. Monica groaned. "Meredith I have had a very long day, please tell me where your father is?"

"NO! I have to show you something!" She pulled Monica into her room and sat her down on the bed. Stepping away she stood in front of her and took a deep breath, readying herself.

"Okay. I will now touch my nose with my tongue," she said loudly, and proceeded to stick her tongue out as far as it would go and tip it up to her nose. It was too short and barely touched the tip, hovering about half an inch from it. Monica would usually be amused with such antics from her daughter but now was not the time. She and John needed to have a heart to heart. She got up to leave.

"No mommy wait! I can do it!" Meredith yanked her back to the bed and sat her down, trying once again to touch her tongue to her nose. Monica shook her head at the persistence on her daughter.

"That's great Meredith but I need to talk to daddy." Monica started walking out the door as Meredith fainted on the ground. She looked back at her daughter, lying with her hand to her forehead and sighed deeply.

"You locked your knees." Monica said, crossing her arms. "Now, no more games Meredith, where is your father?"

"He's dead?" Monica asked. Meredith gave her a sincere nod, starting to cry slightly. Monica knew she was faking when she buried her face in her hands and started to sob. "Fine, I'll just find him myself."

"No! Wait mommy! I'll tell you where daddy is." She said, wiping the crocodile tears from her cheeks. "Daddy is outside taking in a walk in the woods."

"What's he doing in the woods?" Monica asked, tapping her foot. Meredith was reaching to answers. Monica started to walk away.

"Ummm….badger! See, I asked him for a pet badger and he said that if he could catch one, he'd give it to me." Monica didn't look convinced. Not even Meredith's acting could save a sorry lie like that from being ignored. She walked away from her daughter's room. Meredith met her at the top of the stairs.

"And why not." Monica said, backing Meredith down the stairs, one stair at a time. Her daughter was thinking faster now, reaching for excuses, and Monica knew why. John was up to something, and she was going to be fooled about what it was. He would tell her, or she would find out.

"Daddy has a surprise for you," she said, still backing down to the foyer. Monica didn't look convinced. "He said you had to wait upstairs for it to be finished."

Meredith over shot the last step and landed on her butt, Monica checking to see that she was alright before walking away. Meredith thought about fake crying and getting her mother to pay attention, but that hardly worked anyways. So she relied on the only thing that always got someone's attention.

Now Meredith had taken singing lessons since she could talk, and she had a fairly nice ranger. The 'scream' range was almost three octaves above middle 'C' and made her mother turn around and look shocked at her daughter. Meredith stopped screaming and got up off the ground, running out of the room and through the living room entrance.

"DADDY, MOMMY'S COMING!" She shouted, bolting through the living room to the kitchen and down into the basement. Monica chased after her but found the door held shut by something. It took a moment for her to finally twist it enough that Meredith let go, but by the time she had the door opened Meredith had ran off into the empty basement.

The basement was fairly empty. It had a laundry room and a furnace room and a guest room connected to a large main basement area. Inside were a television and a couple weights, a ratty couch and some DVD's. The lights were pretty dim, even for fluorescent bulbs.

It was then that she saw John, standing outside the guest bedroom with Meredith holding the door handle and pushing herself against the door.

"Do you want to tell me why you're keeping me away from here?" Monica said, hands on her hips, not amused by being dragged around the whole house. John looked at Meredith who let go of the door and allowed her mother to come through. He didn't say anything as he opened the door, allowing her to look inside.

There was little light in the room; John had made sure of that. There was a single window that had been boarded up recently. The door was equipped with a lock now, one that locked from the outside. There were several packages on the ground that told Monica he was adding more.

But she could see it even without the light, hiding in the shadows of the wall in the corner, dressed mainly in black. It was breathing rapidly, coughing every now and then with its knees bent to its chest and arms wrapped around them protectively. The red hair was stained with black and red liquid, pasted to her scalp.

Monica stepped back and looked from John to Meredith, who had stopped smiling. She felt sick to her stomach again.

"Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams.
Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me.
These wounds won't seem to heal,
This pain is just too real.
There's just too much that time cannot erase."

The first day was pain. It bled out of her with a burning and stinging sensation that made her dizzy and washed her in vertigo. She was barely focused on her surroundings, head bobbing on her shoulders with no strength to hold it up. The darkness was eating at her again, the wounds festering with infection as white puss develops around the open skin. It dripped out of her at a steady rate, like a second heartbeat pounding in her ears.

She didn't wince though. Her whole body had become numb with shock of blood loss and pain.

Light streams in through the small cracks in the boards at the window. He nailed them into place, she knew this only by the sound the nails made as they splintered into the wood and the hammer against the nails. She wished they were crucifying her, digging into her hands and splintering the bones, hearing them crack like the wood.

The voices and ringing had faded under the pain. The breed had finally succumbing to some form of dormancy. She could tell by her senses that they were finally gone from her, if only temporary. The magical glow the world always had was now gone, faded off somewhere in her mind. Her nocturnal vision was gone, and her human eyes had to adjust to the light normally, for a human anyways.

She never had to adjust her eyes. They could see perfectly though the dark as they could through sunlight. But that was when the breed was being nice to her, returning the favour for taking up residency in her ears. Now, they were playing unfairly, making her human once again just to piss her off.

They didn't answer. They were too busy plotting ways to kill her when they had regained their energy.

They would release a poison into her system. That was their way, silently, painfully, and torturous. She would feel it in her head first, freezing through her veins and into her face. Her whole face would be filled with excruciating pain as the veins started to break down and the blood began to clot prematurely. Then down her neck and into her shoulders, immediately attacking the muscles and causing the tissues to break down over her arms. It would move to the heart and immediately move through it, making it beat faster with increased adrenaline to prolong the feelings of death. The lungs would constrict, the diaphragm paralyzed, leaving her gasping for breath.

So she would wait until they awakened and then she would die. This didn't make her feel any differently. The poison had a twelve hour kill time.

*Twelve hours. I've had worse news.* She thought to herself, separating herself into two parts. She found herself imagining a second of her, the stronger one; the powerful one that she had been so long ago, too long ago to remember.

`Pathetic` She said cruelly, standing up from the floor and walking to the door, her hand gripping the knob and finding it locked and bolted. `That's all you are, you know that? Controlled by every little injury you receive`

`Oh please` She walked back to herself, looking down. `You lack that ability to persist. All you do is roll over and die`

`Everything, you moron, I'm you, remember? See this face? It's your face. See this hair, it's your hair. Everything you are is in me, understand?`

`You see this?` She said, lifting her hand up to meet her face. The double moved the fingers over the soft skin, the pale complexion. The wounded one sat there and tried not to stare. The double pulled the hand away and stood back up.

`You still don't understand this, do you` She spoke with such malice that the wounded one was drawn back by how she sounded. `You never could. It moves too deep for you, deeper than those bloody bugs`

Meredith hardly ever heard her parents fight with raised voices. There were the times when they would argue and cuss about something trivial and that didn't mean very much. But today it was something that meant something. She could tell by the way her mother's jaw tightened and eyes flared with anger. She knew her cue: run upstairs and pretend not to listen in. But eavesdropping was a favourite activity of hers that she engaged in whenever there were hushed voices.

"What are we supposed to do? Keep calling the police?"
"John that woman killed at least five people this morning!"

Meredith leaned into the stairs a little more. They were in the kitchen, where they usually shouted.

The fighting died down for a moment, and both her parents took a couple of deep breaths. John spoke first.

"I don't think that she's going to hurt us, Monica. I don't think she has the nerve anymore."

"I think that the bullet to her ear did something. I don't know what but I think that Brad hit something that made her killer instinct go away."

Monica looked at John now, his face suddenly filled with compassion and sincerity. He meant what he said. It was written in his stare.

But she was still uncertain about this. The government would never allow something like that to happen, would they? And in that case, at any moment she could want to kill them again and simply do so without a thought. It was clear that she wasn't one to give up so easily.

Unless he was wrong, in which case she could kill them on a whim, like she had tried to do this morning.

But there was something that tried to make her feel sure, and she knew she could trust it.

"Fine." She said. "Fine. But I swear to God if she even thinks about trying something…"

"Trust me. If she tries something I will die before I let anything like that happen."

Louis was going to die before 24 hours had gone by, he knew that now. He was watching the monitor and waiting for the captain of the teams they had sent out to tell him what had happened. But no one was answering, almost like they knew what would happen if they told him the news.

Finally, someone told him. The breed wasn't there. She was gone. There was only trace amounts of her blood on the ground, and that was it. It would degrade soon and disappear like the samples with the FBI. But until then, they were cleaning up and keeping people calm.

He took off the head set and tossed it to the ground. He needed some cameras there. He needed to see what she saw and replay it, but the people in communications said the satellites were out of range, and it would take hours before they were up and running again at their fingertips.

Ridder was going to find out. And when that happened, it was game over for everyone in his division with a pulse.

Morgan was following her instinct. Think like a killer and you'll find a killer, she thought to herself, walking down the street to the apartment buildings at the end of the street. The teams from Ridder's division were finishing up with their investigation and she was ready to do some poking around of her own. Whatever drove the other to the apartments had to still be there, seeing as how Darcy had not left in the best shape. Morgan was getting closer. She could smell it and sense it with every fiber of her being. Every inch of her was tingling with anticipation.

She started looking around the apartment lobby, watching the people sitting around on couches and looking at the landlord's office with blank stares. They hardly noticed Morgan, but she noticed them, eying them with the same amount of suspicion you would eye a serial killer with. But no one noticed her, too busy looking off into space to care.

Footsteps came down the stares and Morgan turned as a young brunette pushed a purse onto her bar shoulder and played with the white scarf at her neck. Morgan watched her suspiciously, the way she moved and walked. She looked scared at something, frightened, running.

But she was unsettled by the girl. Morgan walked after her outside, seeing her get into a car with two other males who drove away quickly.

Morgan walked back into the building, the same sedated behaviour greeting her. She went immediately to the stairs and started to climb.

She started to count the days between consciousness and unconsciousness. She realized that it had probably been less than six hours, but it counted as two days. It was the longest time she had ever been imprisoned for.

The first time was in Tunisia for the assassination of a government leader with a name she couldn't pronounce. She wasn't paid to pronounce names though. She was to kill them and that it.

The prisons in Tunisia were filled with sweat and heat and men and woman. It was intoxicating, like a drug, like she was at some kind of rave. They had tried to break her, rape her, torture her, and beat her. But she survived, the scars having faded on her inhuman skin. Every injury had started to display itself again, something she assumed was the breed's subliminal anger, trying to show her and scream at her. You see what you get when you disobey us…

She sat there for God knows how long, looking at the floor, tears moving over her cheeks and cutting through the blood that had been rubbed on her face. She coughed up mouthfuls of it, spitting it onto her long coat at the tails. She can feel the fever coming upon her, making her ache all over and the pounding in her head grow worse.

She can't breathe without feeling and tasting blood. She can't move without making herself cry. She can't live without pushing herself further to death.

"Don't try to fix me I'm not broken.
Hello, I'm the lie living for you so you can't hide.
Don't cry."

How can I be sure I haven't found something when I don't even know what I'm looking for? This was the only question that was on Morgan's mind as she peeked about the apartment, looking through the rooms at the pictures and items around the girl's apartment. She got a strange feeling she was in the right home, judging by the scent from inside. Her nose was extremely sensitive to these types of things, an ability that needed no enhancement from any 'breed'.

She poked through the bedroom, the photos in the closet, and the Wicca handbooks on the bedside tables, the scented candles and incense all around the room. Morgan was proud when she discovered the blonde girl picture on the bureau amongst several other empty pictures of strange lights and dancing streams of electricity. She was intrigued by the strange photography, if only for a moment. It caught her attention briefly but then faded from her interest, as she continued around the apartment.

There was an address book on the counter, filled with study group's phone numbers, notes made by several other friends, family members sorted into a section that looked underused. It was a classic home for a university student, and it made Morgan sick to her stomach. She hated the thought of the clichés of society.

She discovered Doggett and Mulder in the proper sections, marked off with blue highlighter. Morgan grabbed a piece of notepaper and jotted down the addresses with a pen that was lying on the counter and shoved the slip of paper in her pocket. That saved her additional phone call to her boss, and that was good enough for her.

Morgan was out of the apartment before the girl even got back in the building. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed a number to division, this time not to Trent. He was probably at a Syndicate meeting, smoking cigars, lamenting over the oncoming invasion and the implantation of the 'breed' into a larger range of soldiers. His lover, an escort being paid millions of dollars to pose as a wife for him was at his house, enjoying his food and his space. Morgan had fought the urge to pull the trigger every time the brunette's face came into view. One of these days, she assured herself. One of these days…

This time she was calling up the other's handler. She had the operator hack her into Ridder's tight knit phone system and got on the line with Louis.

"I need a favour," she said quickly. He sounded like he was having trouble breathing. Morgan tried to ignore it. "You scratch my back, I scratch yours, deal?"

"No, I am. Because of your inability to bring her in without causing a stir I was sent into the field. I need you to get something from Ridder for me, and in return, I'll tell you where she is."

"Not those records. The other records. If you give them to me, I'll tell you where she is."
"You're lying."

The phone clicked. Morgan growled and put it back in her pocket. She would just have to check out her location without proof and give Trent a call later.

Ridder had only made one phone call in the past twelve hours. He had called the phone company and shut down all cell phones pertaining to division. They were all working blind now. All six of his agents were without back up, something he didn't need at that point in time. Unfortunately, he had no other choice. The FBI was going to track the numbers on her cell phone, and those numbers would put every one of his agents in jeopardy. For the time being, there could be no loose ends.

"Sir." Louis had opened the door. David lowered his head and turned from the twilight streets of Washington to his annoying little employee. Louis looked visibly shaken. "I just received a call from Morgan Warren, sir. She's been released into the field."

"Get Trent on the phone right now." He ordered quickly. The Senator had no right to rain on his already destroyed parade.

Scully had no idea what was so urgent that required she and Mulder at the house immediately. William was dragged along, silently as usual, only to be brought up the stairs by Meredith who was bragging about a 'crazy lady in the basement'. At that point they were expecting a rather good explanation from John and Monica.

"What seems to be the problem John?" Dana asked him. Meredith was smiling giddily from the top of the stairs, but she said nothing as promised and took William to play in her room.

She heard the footsteps but didn't move. What could she possibly do but stay still? Looking pathetic seemed to be her only defense in this case. Maybe she could snatch a gun off one of them. That was thinking to optimistically. They weren't as stupid as that, were they? She hoped they were. She was praying that they didn't disarm themselves.

Her training was neglected as the first lock was opened. She sat in the corner of the room, head low and covered with a thin layer of red hair. Small streaks of black and crimson shot through her eyesight as the limp locks shook with her shivering body.

The second lock clicked. She reached a hand up to her ear and pushed at the scabbing skin, probing it with her fingers a little. She had precious little time. Her only hope for death was this, and it was a stupid plan anyways.

The third lock clicked open and she dug her fingers into the half healed flesh. She suppressed her scream and reached deeper, grabbing hold of the pulsing form of the breed.

The fourth lock was unheard. The poison started to crawl into her veins. She reached to her wrist and started the twelve hour timer.

There was something familiar to Dana Scully about the girl in the corner, chest hammering for every breath. They stood at the door and watched, seeing her in real, visible pain. She looked like a demon, a vampire perhaps, with blood moving from her throat to her lips and dribbling over her chin.

It didn't matter how sinister the whole scene looked. It didn't matter how disturbing it was, the dark fluid moving from her ears and down her long lengths of hair. Scully knew the woman.

Morgan found the doings of other people fascinating if she allowed herself that much lenience to do so. She hid inside an empty house across the street, the one two officers had occupied for the sake of watching the Doggett house. They were now dead in the foyer, throats slashed and blood growing into a large pool beneath them. All the surveillance equipment was set up and ready, giving her a perfect position.

She slid on a pair of latex gloves and pulled plastic over her feet. The hair and fabric would be hard to trace, since she had taken the liberty of putting on a wig before stepping inside. The fabric was tight-knit and woven to prevent shedding.

The red haired woman exited, the man watching her from the window. "Follow, or stay?" This was the obvious choice, and for one reason or another, she chose follow.

Everyone hated each other. It was the way things were in FEMA and all corresponding divisions. Trent thereby hated Ridder, and all this associated with Ridder. This was not one way, though. Ridder hated Trent and all things associated with Trent. The two were terrible in meetings, worse than the other division leaders. Ridder had wanted the leadership position over FEMA for a while, and his persistence and ability to do everything within his power to get it triggered Trent's decision to enlist the help of Morgan. He knew that the other was equally as powerful, but losing one or two assassins was not unheard of, especially in a business where everyone hated everybody else.

"What the hell do you want, Ridder?" Trent had demanded. There was no hello or any greeting of any kind. He wanted to cut right to the chase. His brunette lover lay in the bed next to him, perched up on an arm and pulling the blanket slowly down her naked body.

"Why the hell did you send Morgan into the field? I have this situation under control."

"Well when you do I'll call her back in. You have 24 hours, Ridder. And I'm not joking." The phone died. Ridder slammed it back on the receiver.

Mulder watched Scully drive off and felt increasingly guilty. He didn't like this any more than she did, but what could he do about it? This was everything he had fought for, and it was sitting in the basement at that very moment waiting for him. He was once again faced with the choice of whether or not he could choose against the truth.

Scully got out at her apartment and took the stairs instead of the elevator. She never took the elevator. With the stairs, she could tell if she was being followed much easier. She wouldn't call herself paranoid. She just called herself cautious, and to her, that was much different.

They lived on the third floor in a small apartment with a nice view of a parking lot. The house was light coloured, painted in off white tones of yellow and blue. She entered and locked the door, going immediately to the bedroom and reaching into the closet.

It was here that she kept her private possessions and secret items that meant more to her than life itself. There were pictures William had drawn for her and pictures of Meredith, notes and letters from her father and mother, and things she couldn't live without.

It was buried under the carpet, and she yanked up the loose corner of rug and yanked out the manila folder. She ran her fingers along the edges, the frayed paper revealing the sacred case file within. She hadn't told anyone about her moment of weakness when she had snatched it from the office and dragged it home. It was her personal folder, the one that she would always keep with her.

Kyle walked outside into the smoking area. Several scientists were sharing a box of Morley's and talking about the day, discussing about their tribulations in the higher level labs. They were lucky. The other scientists weren't allowed above the surface of the earth, and if they so much as put a hair over the threshold they were shot on sight. But those were just the professionals working with the breed and other such nonsense. These were probably unaware of the trouble their department was getting in.

He moved through the alley to the fenced in parking lot and pulled out his cell phone, making occasional checks over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. He looked like a mental patient, twitching involuntarily at the slightest sound whether it was animate or inanimate. Ridder had spies everywhere, or at least that was the rumours going around. Everybody knew he was powerful enough to do so.

The news about Ridder's 'Gestapo' had been circulating since the arrest made seven years ago. One of their soldiers got too 'friendly' with an Agent in the FBI and released news of their Chloramine project. As far as anyone knew, she was serving time in a underground prison, submitting herself to testing of highly dangerous viruses and used as a product for (once again) the invasion. Her name was 227, but her old name was Shannon McMahon.

Ridder's secret police had been watching her for some time, monitoring her movements before finally believing that she could be trusted. And then she pulled the Agent from a tank, seduced and killed one of their most trusted officials in the water treatment business, and was later found in England, seeking the protection of government representatives. All this time, Ridder had someone watching her, tracking every footstep, moving in for the kill.

His assassin was too young to be doing stealth work seven years ago. She had been hired two years before, as a seventeen year old, but none the less a killer. At first she was handled by Jason Sharp, the lowly technician on Level One, but after she was decided to be trustworthy, she was released like a rabid animal into the city and had only Ridder for a handler since then.

Kyle had never been privy to her file, but he knew a couple things just from eavesdropping Louis in his office. He knew about a twelve hour poison that could have already been released, a possibility Louis was currently exhausting with his long reach across the city. They were coming up with nothing, and were slowly coming to the conclusion that the X-Files had something to do with it.

He hit the speed dial button for Mulder and got inside his car, keeping low. He lit a cigarette, more to calm him down than look more naturally. The phone rang and with every ring his heart kept pounding faster and faster. It was only subdued when Mulder picked up the phone.

"Yeah?" He was quiet, trying to avoid being heard by someone. Kyle took a deep breath.

"Louis is beginning to think that she's been poisoned." He said quickly. "If the breed is threatened inside her body, it releases a biological toxin that hits the body from the inside. It's slow, painful; I think it takes about twelve hours to kill her. If it's been released I'm not sure what you can do to stop it."

"Mulder I can't tell you enough how dangerous that is. She's not just some runaway guinea pig from a lab she's a bred killer."

"We're being careful, Kyle. I want to know how you can tell if the poison's in effect."

"I don't know." Kyle said. He looked around the car a little, seeing Louis and another operative walk out of the building, murmuring to them selves and hardly regarding each other. "I have to go."

The barrel of a gun was at his neck, pressed against his spine and pointing up, straight to his brain.

"One shot, and you're dead." The voice said. "I would suggest that you don't move until I say."

"Get up and out of the car slowly." Kyle could hear a second gun pulled from another holster the man in the back seat had strapped to his side. They moved out of the car, Kyle shaking and nearly pissing himself at the feeling of the gun against his head.

"Set the cell phone on the car." The man ordered. Kyle did so, and his only link to Mulder was taken from him.

She didn't say anything. Silence was her only defense at the man looking at her. She knew him of course. There was nothing she didn't know about Fox Mulder. Hell, she could probably tell him things he didn't know about himself. He was a graduate at Oxford, top of his class. His sister was abducted and cloned. His father was murdered by that moron Alex Krycek. He died temporarily eight years ago. And now he was watching her, asking her stupid questions about who she worked for.

There was something about him that seemed familiar though like the remnants of a memory coming back to haunt her. She prayed that the poison would take her quickly. She made a glance at her watch, looking at the timer displaying another eleven hours of nothing but Fox Mulder. She switched her thoughts to unconsciousness, hoping it would take her again.

But it didn't. The breed had awoken not long ago and prevented her from doing so.

He stopped talking. He had been on the phone a moment ago, speaking quietly. She couldn't imagine who he was talking to.

He hung up the phone. She looked back at the wall. It would be the longest day of her life, and it would only be eleven more hours, twenty-six more minutes, and a large amount of seconds that weren't ticking fast enough for her.

Morgan had followed the Agent to her house, but couldn't get close enough to get a good look anyways. She was left waiting in the parking lot, nothing to do but wait for her to leave and hopefully see her carrying something that would end this little escapade. She was hoping for too much, and she realized this, but it was always worth a try to hope that someone would throw her some kind of bone on a case like this.

Finally, the red haired Agent walked out of the apartments and into the parking lot, something held in the crook of her arm. Morgan squinted and saw the cream coloured file folder in the arms of the agent.

She grabbed her cell phone, called Trent, and told him to have her money ready by the time the sun went down. This would be the easiest hour of her life.

Ridder had Kyle in a chair in his office in a matter of moments. The man who had arrested him brushed a hand through his dusty blonde hair and smiled coyly, collecting a handsome sum of money on the spot for his work. Kyle knew who he was now. His name was Aidan Thompson, an agent in Ridder's division as he had been for the last four years.

Aidan left quickly and Ridder took the cell phone that had been collected from Kyle. He pressed the memory button and hit redial. Kyle's heart was pounding and he couldn't breathe.

"What?" The man on the other line said. Ridder hung up, eyes going a little wide as he looked at the number that was just dialed. He opened his mouth like he was going to yell. Instead, he kept his cool and reached into the desk drawer.

Kyle didn't even time to scream as Ridder took two shots at his head. He called in the secretary to dispose of it however she pleased. She called in two janitors who bagged it up and disposed of it in the dumpsters. While they mopped up the blood he called up Louis and set him to work tracing the cell phone number.

Jason Sharp was nobody in the eyes of the government, completely expendable in any case. He had been a handler, but those days were over now. His jobs were few, and they included purchasing air line tickets, clothes, guns, and any other necessities for Ridder's personal killer. They could have trained a chimpanzee to shop for trench coats and things like that.

He knew that Kyle was in trouble when Aidan walked him in. There was nothing worse than having Aidan Thompson walk you back into the building.

"What can I do for you sir?" he asked as he tried to give Ridder the impression he would do anything as long as it meant that Aidan didn't pay him a visit.

"Louis has just gotten the address for where she is. I want you to go and over see the operation and bring her back." Ridder said, but Jason said nothing. You never said anything to Ridder unless you were asked. You never interrupted him. And you sure as hell didn't hang up on him. Especially if you were as expendable as Jason Sharp. "Mark my words Sharp no one touches her but you. If anyone so much as lays a finger on her you won't forget to follow that order again."

And then Ridder hung up. Jason gave a sigh of relief. He would live for a little while longer.

Louis was already prepared and ready to go when he got news of Kyle's betrayal. Before he could leave, he got an additional order which he passed on to his men: Kill everything with a pulse in that house and then burn it. And if you don't, it will be your funeral.

Mulder was sure to lock the door when he left the room. Scully was already coming down the stairs, clutching the folder to her chest. He didn't know how to act around her now, seeing at how distraught she looked. She didn't say anything, holding the file like a lifeline. It looked like if she dropped it the world would end and her life would be over. But she didn't say anything until she finally handed him the file, releasing it with a longing look.

"Emily Simm," she said finally, breaking the awkward silence between them. Mulder opened the file and looked at the pictures and the case file, then back to his wife.

"Don't do this to yourself," he said to her, but she was ignoring him. "This isn't her."

"I'm serious Mulder that is her, in that room!" She seemed so certain, the tone of voice she was taking so strong willed and purposeful, tainted by the sadness that was creeping up on her. "I don't know how, but it is, and I'm sure of it."

She heard that name. She was sure she heard it, ear pressed against the wall as the pain started to build in her throat. She was crying and she didn't know why. It was that voice. It was that presence that called to her in the darkness, summoning her back to the sunlight and fluorescent bulbs of the hospital room.

I remember you. I remember you. I know I remember you! You're some where in my head, but…but…but…

The sounds of the door upstairs and the gun firing signaled Mulder and Scully from their conversation.

Doggett was on one side of the door and Monica was on the other, their backs pressed against the walls and their breath rapid. They were both armed now, taken by surprise at the dark haired woman who had waltzed in and started firing. They were thinking about the upstairs where Meredith and William were playing but summoned their thoughts back to the foyer where the woman stalked in.

The sun was setting and finally disappeared into the night sky, making the only light coming in from the kitchen and the living room. There was still a silhouette, quickly coming towards them with her gun drawn. They could hear the footsteps coming into the kitchen.

And then there was the sound of windows breaking, and darkly clad soldiers rushed into the house.

Scully could hear the footsteps upstairs now, but heard the door open quietly and footsteps come downstairs. She kept close to the wall, the basement fairly dark say for a few lamps lit on the walls. There was nothing there, but she knew there was something.

She turned back around and something tackled her into the wall heavily, knocking her senseless momentarily.

Aidan grinned, pushing her against the wall. He came close to her ear and whispered mercilessly.

"Where is she?" he demanded, pressing his gun against her head. Scully coughed and pointed limply at the locked door. Aidan grinned and knocked her out cold, tossing her to the floor.

Scully watched him unlock the door. He opened it slightly and was suddenly thrown back as a wooden board crashed against his head. There was a flash of red hair and the sound of growling as she leapt out of her prison cell and on top of Aidan, snatching his gun and firing two bullets into his body before standing again.

She briefly regarded Scully, green eyes flaring to life. Scully knew she was looking at Emily now, the intensity of her stare piercing through her. 'Emily' walked over to the fuse box on the wall, briefly over come with vertigo. With quick expertise she flipped the switches to the power in the house and everything was sealed in darkness.

"Now I will tell you what I've done for you.
Fifty thousand tears I've cried.
Screaming, deceiving, and bleeding for you.
And you still don't hear me…"

The whole house was completely black. Not even the moon could penetrate the darkness that loomed like a thick storm cloud inside the rooms of John Doggett's house. He looked around with widened eyes, his arms over his head with hands folded on the back of his scalp. Monica was breathing heavily as the lights faded and the guns that would have ended their lives didn't make any answering explosions. The whole group of invaders stood stunned, looking around the room.

"What the hell was that?"
"Fuses probably." Monica heard and recognized the voice. It was Jason Sharp, the tech they had seen at the government offices earlier that day. The leader who had been barking orders for the past while looked over at the younger man, his dark eyes flaring with anger as Jason moved towards the basement stairs. Monica stared after him, furrowing a brow as they walked towards the door. 'Leader' pushed past Jason and opened the door.

The action would prove to be fatal. Two shots were fired quickly, blood splattering onto Jason. He was spared as he stood there shocked as the red hair flashed by him and ignored him. There was no hesitation as she moved past him and into the kitchen.

"Kill them now!" He was dubbed second in command. Neither of the shooters had time to follow orders. There was the sound of glass hitting stone as a beer bottle rolled over the tiles. It was easily seen. A rag had been shoved into the mouth of the bottle and was ignited and alive with flame.

A flash of pale skin at the kitchen door and a bullet fired. The bottle exploded in flames across the floor.

There was nothing anyone could do. Whispered voices did not hear the following scream of the man who found himself at her mercy. She had walked in behind him, tossing her arm out. The crowbar from the basement flew from her sleeve and was grabbed by her hand. She swung her arm and hooked his neck inside it, twisting him around.

The sharp end of the crowbar broke through the skin and blood flew across the floor in long, thick streams. She pulled out the gun she had stolen from downstairs and shot in a circle, knocking them down to the ground. On the fourth shot she was met with an empty barrel, facing the last of the team who had come to pick her up. He smiled to himself and fired. She twisted the body with the crowbar and absorbed the bullet with the body. With her free hand she armed herself once more and fired over the shoulder.

The fight was over and it had barely begun. She ripped the crowbar from the man's neck, tossing the thick flesh she had torn from him aside. Pieces of bone scattered to the floor and broken veins squirted blood like a gothic fountain and poured it down his collarbones and chest. Her face, in turn, was covered in blood that looked black from the small cascades of moonlight. She wiped it with the back of her hand and sleeve and let the body drop.

John didn't know whether or not to lower his hands. Monica wasn't sure either. They stared at the assassin with widened eyes, testing their limits and understanding the power she had while holding the gun. She didn't say anything, and shoved the gun in her pocket before going about scavenging for a cell phone of some kind.

Jason Sharp wandered back into the foyer. She pulled the gun out of her pocket with lightning speed and aimed for him, keeping it locked on his head.

"Don't shoot," he said, raising his hands in the air and looking frantic. She stared at him vividly, the two locked in one another's eyes. Doggett looked down at the ground and took his chance, reaching down slowly and pulling up one of the hand guns from the ground.

The barrel of the gun was pressed on his temple. John released the handgun below him.

They were interrupted by the scream upstairs. Meredith was clawing at the arm that pressed her head to a woman's waist, while William was nowhere to be seen.

"Drop the gun." Morgan ordered, pressing the gun closer to Meredith's head and keeping a tight lock on the girl's throat. "Drop the gun or the girl dies."

It looked like she wasn't listening, even though her eyes were locked with the dark haired woman's. They were staring at each other as she had stared at Jason, vividly and powerfully, as if her very being depended upon it. They never once blinked, always staring.

"Drop it please." Monica begged, looking up at her daughter on the landing, and looking back at the assassin. "Drop it please I'm begging you."

There were times when she forgot the way it felt to almost kill Morgan. It was the feeling of insignificance, as if everything she did was never going to amount to anything unless that woman lay dead. There was a flash (most likely brought on by the poison coursing about in her veins and onset of shock) of a memory that made her do what she did. The begging voice of the woman fell on deaf ears as they stood there at an impasse.

The dark haired woman laughed a throaty laugh and her finger muscles tightened, watching the red haired woman aim for her head.

She pursed her lips and put her other hand on the weapon. They still stared, and still Darcy had said nothing.

"I hardly think you're a position to make commands here." She said, pulling a gun on John, aiming it with an expert marksman's efficiency.

Mulder fired straight from the bedroom, the bullet striking her right shoulder and sending her a little off balance. Her own fingers pulled the trigger back and sent a bullet just past Doggett's ear. Amidst the commotion, Meredith opened her mouth up wide and bit down hard on Morgan's arm before freeing herself and running down the stairs to her parents.

Mulder hugged William to his leg, his hand on the back of his son's head, patting the red curls fatherly affection yet at the same time making him grow up to be in his opinion a man. William watched the blood pool under Morgan's body, flowing from the ripped fabric on her shoulder.

Darcy lowered her weapon and dropped it, along with the crowbar, tossing them aside. Jason watched on from the living room entrance where Scully emerged from, everyone silent in the pandemonium of blood and gore.

"Well, I'm glad to know nothing's changed." Jason said to Darcy. She sighed deeply and took a deep breath, feeling her throat constrict. Her watch read for another ten hours.

But now she had something to live for, and Morgan was within her reach. It would have made her smile, but she couldn't.

"Alright." John said, dropping onto the couch opposite Jason. He was handcuffed willingly and set there not long after they had gotten a few things straightened out. Darcy was back in the basement in the same room as Morgan (although Jason had openly protested that the living arrangements were not going to work, and that only one of them would emerge alive the next time they went back downstairs). "Start from the beginning, and you better not be bullshitting me about any part of this."

Jason sighed deeply and hung his head for a moment. The four agents were now his audience, watching on as he would recount everything he knew about the breed and the woman who bore it in her skull.

"Then why are you still standing?" John shot back quickly. Jason breathed heavily and shook his head to clear it. "I know you know more than what you're telling us."

"All I know is that she's merchandise." He said. "For the government. She's a billion dollar super soldier that's been trained since birth and implanted with something codenamed GENESIS."

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Jason continued, swallowing hard as he thought of the consequences for this. If Ridder found out…

"Look, all I know is that she's in danger of dying. The breed's been wounded and most likely released a contagion that could kill her. So if you let me go and help her, I'll tell you everything else I know about GENESIS."

"Would I still be alive if I didn't? I used to be her handler in division. She used to report to me."

"I'm nothing but a tech. Ridder trusts me with small jobs like plane tickets and clothing, nothing else. I'm completely worthless really except for one thing."

"I'm the only one she trusts." He replied quickly. John looked over at Monica. She didn't say anything.

She poked at Morgan's body once more. It seemed like the poison had leveled off for the time being, and the adrenaline from her battle in the foyer was keeping her in an almost pain-free existence. Morgan was completely out cold, but just to make sure Darcy had struck her on the right temple with a balled fist and left her in the corner bleeding.

Jason entered a moment later, his hands in the pockets on his jacket that he kept on. He was getting chills from the house, even though he knew it was a fairly warm night. She waited until the door closed before getting to her feet shakily and walking quickly to him.

Anyone would have assumed she would have pulled a gun on him (had she been armed, of course). But Darcy did nothing along the lines of attempted murder. She instead embraced him in a kiss, running her fingers along the back of his head and leaping up onto him, hugging onto his sides with her legs. He backed into the wall as gently as he could; knowing any noise would alert the agents to the possibility of his murder.

"They gave me enough shit to fix you up. That's all." Darcy slid off him and sighed deeply, her hand on his cheek.

"What makes you think I want to be fixed up?" She asked him. It wasn't rhetorical. Jason didn't even bother shooting that comeback at her. They stared at each other longingly.

Jason had first insisted that he and Darcy date when he had handled her. Now it was getting harder to spend time together, her hits starting to become last minute plans that Ridder sent to Jason and Jason sent to her. They somehow managed to keep up a healthy physical relationship though.

He begged her to run away with him. Maybe this would give them the initiative to finally do so.

Monica was silent and watching John, half crying. He turned around from the door to the guest room and looked at her. She wanted to scream. She wished she was armed so she could pull a gun on every fucker in the room. All she could see was Meredith nearly die over and over, only every time her mind played it back to her Meredith was shot over and over again, riddled with bullets by the time Monica could have gotten to her.

He would have let her slap him if she wanted to. He would have let her riddle his body with bullets before being satisfied. He just wanted her to be happy.

Monica did neither of the previous mentioned acts of violence. She ran to him and buried her head in his shoulder and cried.

"It never was and never will be.
You're not real and you can't save me.
Somehow now you're everybody's fool…"

Jason emerged from the room to an empty basement. He looked around, his hand covered in her blood and pieces of her hair. He smelled like her too, the mix of blood and bullets intoxicating. She smelled beautiful, regardless, her angry scent. The rage inside her boiled into perspiration on her skin and gave off the scent of power, intimidation, anger, and immortality.

It was the first thing he remembered about her, so young and innocent, bound by chains of the guilty and held down in hell because of who she was. He thought it was impossible to love her at first, to love someone so dangerous and sharp like the edge of a knife. It was stupid to think that she could love, her personality resembling a bullet. She hit you and it was euphoria. She left you and it was pain, adrenaline, and blood. Her kisses her poison like a serpent. Her touch was like sharp, serrated knives cutting into flesh. And her eyes were alive with energy, green with vigilance and burning with the fire of her spirit.

But she was in love. And she was happier than Jason had ever seen her before, as if death was something to be greeted with open arms and embraced with her whole being.

He left her there in the room with her mortal enemy, knowing Morgan would not last a chance once Darcy had regained the strength she once had. The breed had not been happy about their current situation to say the least, but after what felt like hours he had finally 'tweaked' them back into submission and allowed Darcy some sense of free will.

The agents were probably upstairs discussing his fate and Darcy's and Morgan's. Morgan was easy to take care of. She was just a bullet to the head. Darcy was a bullet to both ears. And he was another bullet to the head.

But would they go as far as kill him? He hoped not. He hoped that they would take what little information he had and allow him and Darcy to go free. Morgan was the least of his worries right now.

Jason walked to the stairs and the door opened. Dana Scully shut the door behind her, a little surprised to see him standing there, hands drenched in blood both red and black.

"How is she?" Scully asked, not trying to sound as concerned as she was. 'Emily' had nearly cost them Meredith's life with her little stunt.

"She's going to be fine." Jason said, shying out of the way for Scully to come down the stairs. He was surprisingly submissive for someone who worked in the government. "I do need to wash my hands though," he said, holding up the bloodied fingers, the blood on them starting to scab and grow stickier than before.

Scully nodded silently, not knowing what to say. She looked him over and looked back at the door. Her mouth went dry. She looked back at Jason.

"Could I talk to her?" She finally blurted out. "I have a couple of questions to ask her."

"You guys are in control here. I'm just here for her, that's all," he said, holding up his hands in some kind of defense. She thought he would walk away, but Jason waited until she walked to the room before going back upstairs.

She reached for the door handle and something heavy was thrown into the wall. The sounds of drywall cracking made her reflexively jump back.

Morgan woke up after Jason left, feeling like shit naturally. Darcy was against the wall, her face black and expressionless. From her position on the floor, Morgan was sure it was a mix of happiness and anger, finally concealing itself in a flat complexion that Darcy was infamous for. Darcy looked at Morgan and vise versa, their eyes glaring at the other with the same amount of malice. They were flexing the muscles that were working and avoiding the ones that ached. Darcy could hardly move her head and a piece of gauze protected her injured ear. Morgan was left on her own, the blood making her flesh stick together and the clothing paste to her flesh.

It didn't take them long to attack one another, running and meeting each other halfway down the wall. They said nothing and made no sound as the struggled together, much in the likeness of preteen boys fighting for play. The look in their eyes was much more deadly though.

Darcy kicked Morgan into the back wall, delaying the attack for mere seconds before Morgan tackled her into the wall, her head crashing into the drywall and leaving a circular crack. Darcy didn't wince at all, the breed once again back under her control and taking care of all her bumps and bruises. The seconds that it took to heal was too long, since Morgan took her by the front, one fist at her breasts and the other at her waist, pulling her off the floor and throwing her to the opposite wall.

There was the sound of bones cracking and healing, and Darcy was back on her feet. She heard the locks on the doors open and jumped into Morgan, hurling them both onto the floor where they slid into the back wall.

Morgan punched in her in the stomach so hard it knocked the breath from her body and tossed her back onto the floor. Darcy's tailbone broke and reconnected quickly, but once again, it was too slow. Morgan had the offense position in the fight and kicked Darcy across the face. Her head bobbed above the floor as Morgan drop kicked her head to the ground.

The skull broke this time, healing in much the same fashion as the rest of the bones in her body. Darcy breathed heavily and kicked Morgan out of the air before she could do it again. She pulled herself off the ground where blood and brain had met just moments before and stood up.

The last lock opened and Darcy punched Morgan in the same temple as before, knocking her out cold. She wiped the blood from her lips and kicked Morgan in the stomach before stopping.

Jason was seated back in the living room, his heart pounding in his chest. Ridder would kill him. No, he thought. Ridder wouldn't kill him. Ridder would throw him to Level 4 to live out the rest of his days as a lab rat. That would be his life from now on, testing vaccines for Hanta and Anthrax. He would be a no one, a number. That would be him. Number something, formerly Jason Sharp. Formerly technician. Formerly lover. Formerly allowed to live.

"Get talking." John said. Jason took a deep breath and sighed heavily. This wasn't a good idea, he knew that now. He wanted to kill himself on the spot. It would beat the alternative.

"I'm sure you're familiar with the abductions of 1992." Jason said. He looked at Doggett carefully, who was waiting for the rest of the story. "The women who were part of the experiment were used to create 'perfect' children."

"You're on a much smaller scale than you should be. These babies were created for one purpose alone. They were merchandise to the invading colonies of 2012."

"GENESIS was a project built in the 1980's, when the government discovered the fossils of prehistoric beetles lying dormant in an underground cavity in Roswell, New Mexico. The beetles were tiny, but what they discovered was that they were incomplete, and that they only had enough organs to just survive, but only just. They needed somewhere warm to live and they needed an organism to live inside."

"What they discovered was that they could become symbiotic with the human race and that when implanted in the ear cavities of a human host they could amplify brain functions and muscle capacity, increase healing speed and efficiency." He rubbed his eyes and hands together nervously. "In return they would drink nutrients from the host's blood, especially proteins. They would also assume control over the host body after long periods of implantation, explaining Darcy's compulsion to kill."

"I'm not sure about the date she was implanted but I do know that she was part of the 1992 harvesting of eggs and children used for hosts."

"Yeah. Darcy was the first. A couple of implantations of her specific breed were done before, but they wouldn't take in male hosts. They discovered that hers were the only females and required a female host." Jason said, finishing her story, almost. "She was assigned to Ridder's division and kept there."

"Morgan is an assassin, but she's hardly 'breed' worthy." Jason said quickly. "She was a potential for the experiment but too good a fighter on her own to ruin with a GENESIS. She and Darcy have been out to get one another since they were younger."

Scully opened the door and found the two women as they had been left. Morgan was on the bed while Darcy stood against the wall and watched her. Her red hair hung in her face and covered the anger in her eyes, the expressionless mouth and face. She opened the door a little more and Darcy's attention was unbroken, still fixated on the woman on the bed.

"I can feel you," she said as Scully was about to leave. Scully turned back and looked at the person against the wall, hands touching the drywall shakily, bouncing back and forth. "I can't remember you, but I can feel you."

There was silence between them. It was the most words Darcy had uttered to anyone other than Jason and Ridder perhaps. They were not the warmest or inviting of words, but she had never been a talker. She had always been silent. It was the way she was raised.

Have I seen you before? She seemed to ask, looking right at Dana Scully. They stood and stared there, Scully's insides churning. She knew it was Emily Simm now, looking in a mirror image of her creation. It was her eyes, she knew that. The same cheeks with an unfamiliar nose and chin watched her from the face. Neither had any idea what to say.

Scully was speechless. All this time she was thinking Emily was dead, and there she was, she was sure of it.

Darcy fell silent again, looking at the floor and out the window. She heard rain splatter against the glass. Their attention was diverted to the outside, both pairs of green eyes staring at the window where soft light drifted in through the single empty space on the glass.

There was silence again. Dana couldn't say anything, but she entered the room slowly and stood there with her daughter, just watching what she had become.

John looked in at her daughter, curled up on the bed with William next to her, a thick, feathery boa around her neck and white gloves on her hands. She was dressed in a loose dress that hung off her body, lying on the bed in a fetal position while holding William's hands. He was asleep next to her, protectively gripping her hand back to assure her of his presence. He was reminded on Luke every time he saw William.

He wanted a son. He needed a son. John Doggett was not a feminine person. He and Meredith had little in common except her interest in interrogations and chess. They would sit there for hours and just play long games. She was actually a pretty good player.

But she was a girl. He knew that and was reminded of it every time she was in a photo shoot. The agency they worked with was always dressing her in clothes that were meant for teenagers and adults. Her theatre roles were also very feminine. He was living in an estrogen soaked home with no escape.

Did he hate it? Sometimes he did. But he imagined most people felt uncomfortable in their skin every now and then.

He walked down the hall to his bedroom and found Monica on the bed, lying there silently with a pillow in her arms. He couldn't bear watching her suffer silently. She'd been through a hell of a day. First with Brad, then with Meredith, and then there was his distance and his new found compulsion to get the truth.

I'm starting to sound like Mulder he thought and shook his head, walking over to the bed.

Monica looked over at him as he got onto the bed with her. She felt his hand on her shoulder and his chest press against her back. She closed her eyes again, pretending to be asleep. He didn't buy it, giving her kiss on the cheek and sink back behind her.

"I'm still angry at you." She told him. John didn't say anything. He looked longingly at her, her brown eyes and dark skin looking more beautiful every second he stared at her. She smiled to herself. "But I guess I could forgive you."

The rain started to come down and they kissed each other again, the silence still between them, but suddenly John felt comfortable in his skin.

I'm bleeding for the pain.
I'm screaming for the sound.
I'm cutting for the realization that I'm still living.
You have my eyes and my mouth.
I look at you and see myself.
I'm scared because I know I belong to you.

But you're only skin deep.
You're only my face in a mirror.
You're not me and I'm not you.
There's no connection but our flesh.

I'm running for the rush.
I'm killing for a price.
I'm cutting to be sure that I'm still here.
You have my face and body.
I look at you and see what I wanted to forget.
You're scared because you know I'm yours.

But you're only skin deep.
You're only my face in a mirror.
You're not me and I'm not you.
There's no connection but our flesh.

Tell me I'm just dreaming.
Tell me I'm seeing what I want to see.
Tell me you're being what I want you to be.

But you're only skin deep.
You're only my face in a mirror.
You're not me and I'm not you.
There's no connection but our flesh.

I cannot believe I have failed this mission. I was asked to do something Ridder could have sent that moron Louis to do.

But instead I am wounded and without a way out. No doubt they will torture me, or she will. She always was so hard done by, always the more immature of the two. She would sulk and whine about everything, at least when she was human.

And even with that god damn breed she's still human, if not more so. She still feels the crushing weight of her failures. She bleeds as I bleed. She screams as I scream. She cries as I cry. We are the same, you see, bound by invisible chains that keep her as human as me.

We met on what I have come to remember like yesterday. Every time I recall it I can still smell the cold crisp air in the cement outdoors. I can taste the artificial flavour on the air. I can see nothing in any direction but high cement walls and chicken wire over the small play area. She was sitting in the corner alone, cross legged with her eyes closed. The other children were alone as well, but I figured she would be fun to 'play' with. She looked so pathetic there. She was younger than me and more fragile in her white robes.

So I walked over naturally. I wanted to taste her blood now, to rip her apart limb by limb slowly so I wouldn't kill her before my task was complete. I wanted to take her head between my hands and chew off her skinny nose and pummel her in the stomach until she couldn't breathe and was writhing in agony. Already I could sense the connection between us growing, and I knew this wouldn't be the last time we met.

What attracted me to her? Maybe it was her look. She always wore this expressionless face that gave an air of indestructibility. It was this look, I have decided, that called me. I wanted to wipe it off by rubbing her face into the cement and break her beautiful, flawless skin without much effort. I had decided she would not be that hard to break and when it was over I would earn something special for killing off another of my project.

But fate it seems wanted to be difficult that day. She could hear me somehow, amidst all the other footsteps, heart beats and breathing, she could hear me and sense me move towards her. She could pick my scent up on the wind, the smell of my insecurities and my fear of something like her. I could sense nothing from her, not even the slightest amount of fear even though she was much younger than I. She continued to sit completely still until I was within reach of her and I extended my arm, moving for her shoulder.

Her hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed my wrist forcefully. I didn't have time to scream before she promptly broke it, snapping the bones as if they were paper she could simply rip in two without much effort. I bit my teeth and balled my fist, immediately punching for her tender scalp. She dodged it and leapt to her feet, landing smoothly in front of me and absorbed her blow with her stomach, flexing what I discovered to be an unnatural amount of muscle mass to defend herself.

Thus the fight began between us, the two children as we were starting a fight over her emotionless stare, her tightened and rigid composure, and my nerve to act upon it. As usual there was no one to stop us, and although some of the other children wanted to join in, she and I were still moving much too fast to keep up. She was quick and agile, but I beat her with size and power. Her movements were like blurs, but they barely made marks on me. My own covered her with immediate bruises, but she looked like she couldn't feel them either.

We could still be out there if we hadn't knocked each other unconscious. I woke up with a concussion and a broken arm, and she marched out with a tutor to serve what I was told was punishment. But I knew she wasn't serving punishment. She was going to get commended for her battle strategy, most likely a 'treat' of some kind. I knew I had broken one of her ribs at least, but she showed no discomfort. There was no recognition of pain in her eyes.

And that's when I saw the injector gun marks by her ears. And I gave a whimsical smile because I knew that I had at least touched what the government had called an 'Untouchable'.

Ridder could not have been more furious with the situation. He slammed the phone receiver back down and threw it off the desk. It landed on the ground, the cord ripping from it and the whole object shattering on the hard floor. He screamed with rage, throwing the paper from the top of his desk against the glass window, wanting it to shatter with the sound of his voice, yield to his terrible anger. The secretary jumped up from her seat as he pounded on the desk and causing the solid top to crack with the force he was applying to it.

He couldn't believe it. He'd not only lost his assassin. No, that wouldn't be fitting enough for David Ridder. He would have to lose Ryan Trent's assassin too just to make sure he would be dead by the time the day ended. He could be forgiven for losing Darcy. Ryan Trent would probably submit him for testing for two months and then send him loose into the world. But Morgan was worth more than Darcy, mainly because she was all human and required no chip to make her valuable. She could probably kill Darcy without much effort.

But the value of losing both was catastrophic. He'd be dead before the day ended, he knew that.

With a scowl on his face he got his cell phone out of the top drawer and called down to Louis.

"Get me a car." He ordered quickly, hanging up. He knew what to do now. He had to get the Agents to hand over both of them now. Knowing them, they most likely moved his property to avoid further detection. He gave a small fragment of a smile over the next part of his plan. He would have to bring them to him, and to do that, he was going to take something that was equally as important to them.

The night brought rain clouds in slowly from the west that had the sky covered in shadow in less than a moment. The lightning flickered like a dying lamp on the horizon and thunder began to grow in the throat of the storm. John and Monica lay sleeping through it, but Meredith couldn't sleep at all. She lay awake on her bed and closed her eyes every now and then, but was summoned back by the lightning and the booming of the thunder.

Not that she was afraid. She refused to be afraid of noises. But it was irritating to have to try and sleep through something she found to be obnoxious. Shakily she got out the bed, jumped over William in his sleeping bag on the floor and walked out of the room, going downstairs to the kitchen for some coffee.

She trotted down the stairs in her loose pajama pants, the feather boa discarded at the top of the stairs out of inconvenience. Her blonde curls were matted and knotted, and her fingers couldn't slide through them without getting caught. She tossed them over her shoulder and twisted them into a knot, getting into the kitchen only to find the pot of coffee already on.

Dana walked back into the kitchen to check on it, finding Meredith on the counter to get herself a mug. She leapt down, clutching the cup to her chest and set it on the counter.

"Hi Dana," she said, going to the fridge to get the hazelnut Coffee Mate. Dana waved slightly, a small smile on her face as Meredith poured herself a full cup of coffee and added the hazelnut flavour liberally. Once it was to her liking, she put the hazelnut away and took a large sip. Dana just had hers black, and the two sat at the kitchen table saying very little. Meredith made up 90% of the conversation.

"I can't wait till I grow up." She admitted with a wild smile on her face. "I can't wait to get out of this town and go to New York. You know they have the largest theater based community in the United States?"

"Yeah, and I'm going to have my name in light and everyone's going to know about me." Meredith was imagining, Scully could tell by the dreamy look that clouded over her stare and made her look up and at the ceiling. She was actually kind of angelic as her skin was tinted with the blue night time outside and made her whole complexion glow with an unrealistic light.

"What's going to happen to the crazy lady?" She asked. Scully didn't understand. It finally occurred to her and she nodded.

"We could sell her to a third world country." Meredith said. "There are some parents who still do that nowadays."

"Is too! If you're so bad and your parents don't love you anymore they send you away to a sweat shop where you're whipped and told to work and if you don't you're killed."

"Well that's not true. Parents just can send their children away to third world countries."

"Yes it is. Because of those animals we can find the cures for so many diseases and learn more about the human body than we ever have before." Scully couldn't believe she was getting aggravated with a seven-year-old. Still, Meredith didn't seem like she was backing down that easily.

"But still how would you feel if you had your vocal cords slashed out and your eyeballs held open so you could watch bad movies?" Meredith said, crossing her arms contentedly with her argument.

"Yes. It. IS," Scully said, not realizing she was trying to get the last word in an argument that didn't even matter. Meredith started laughing and giggling, taking another drink of her coffee as Scully held her serious expression a moment more before she too was laughing.

Darcy watched the sky change from clear to cloudy, the storm moving in slowly and surely, covering the moon from her eyes and the stars from her sight. She pulled her arms around her body as a chill moved up her spine, her mouth frozen in an emotionless line.

There was a feeling that she had seen it before, that it had touched her skin before. It was in a time and a place when her mind was free, when her thoughts were her own, and she wasn't torn between her own morals and the morals of an alien entity.

"I don't have morals of my own." She thought to herself. "I've always been someone else's…thing."

That was all that was on her mind. It was mixed with the conscious sounds of Morgan's ragged breathing from the bed.

Darcy looked out the window as the rain started to fall down the glass, drizzling slightly. She sighed deeply and stood up in front of it, knocking through the wooden boards and the glass in one smooth stroke of her fist. Her knuckles started to bleed and sting as the rain hit them, the cuts filled with shards of glass.

The rain water trickled down her arm and started to wash the blood away. She closed her eyes and listened slowly just too every singular drop of rain.

Then her senses prickled. She heard footsteps, and then she heard the click of a door. She could hear someone coming into the house.

The kitchen was a mess. Scully pushed herself up and pressed a hand to the back of her head as she watched John come in.

"They've taken Meredith," she said. John clenched his fist and pulled his gun from his holster. Now he was really starting to get pissed off.

"Lie to me
Convince me that I've been sick forever.
And all of this will make sense when I get better…"

It's actually a fairly amusing question. Most humans feel the need to ask you it once or twice in your lifetime, and I have heard it too many times to ignore it now. I can't say I've always answered, though. Most of the times it has been asked of me I would pull out a gun or a knife or my fist or foot and beat it out of their system for trying to ask me who I am. No human can fully comprehend who –or rather what- I am. None of them would ever be able to understand the awesome power within my grasp.

So who am I? Am I just an abused child or an unwanted human? No, I don't believe so. Abuse is in the eye of the beholder. To me, my childhood was a strengthening experience. Everything that happened made me smarter and faster and stronger, and never ever broke me. As for an unwanted human, that never will be. As long as I can shoot, stab, berate, maim, injure and kill, I will always be wanted for something.

It's rather amusing really, to remember small fragments of a past where someone cared about me for a reason other than money. I've a price tag on my head, you see. Last estimate was 22 billion, and no doubt that price has gone up since last I checked. I have been killing since I was twelve. First for work, and then after about the fifth or sixth time, it was a sick pleasure of mine.

At thirteen I was in Japan, taking care of an underground crime leader by the name of Taka Yurishima. He beat his wife and two children to the point that they would eat their own excrement on command. It angered me to see a woman in such a position, and so, to punish him, I spent four hours with him, and every hour I chopped off another of his limbs with a rusty and dull knife. When he had fallen silent I proceeded to cut out his inner organs and hang them from his window.

Covered in blood, I went back to the United States and realized that I no longer cared whether or not human life was being lost. I enjoyed it now. I was addicted to the bloodshed like a human becomes addicted to smoking. I felt like I could tell myself to stop at any time, but I couldn't.

My next mission was in Russia. The one after that was in Roswell, New Mexico. Following that was a blur of blood puddles and gun shots, explosions and knives. I could drive by age thirteen, carried a gun permanently by fourteen, self-diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic by fifteen, number six in the top ten government assassins by sixteen, a government experiment by nineteen, number four in the top ten government assassins by seventeen, in love with a tech at eighteen, and now, a prisoner of four human agents at nineteen for the first time in my life. Humans say that we are shaped by the events that happen in our life, and I suppose that stays the same for one as torn as I. Inside me is a symbiotic alien species, yet outwardly I am a human. I am bought and paid for like Ryan Trent's lover/whore. I am human cargo for an invasion that I seek to protect and hate as much as I hate the humans I wish to protect.

John Doggett had never struck a woman in his entire lifetime, and that was saying a lot for a man who had fought for life, liberty, and freedom in some of the foulest places on the planet. He had never once even considered hitting Monica ever and he would kill himself if he did anything to harm his daughter.

The fistfight began with John who grabbed her and forced her up against the wall by her throat, his gun at her chin. Irritated at his attempt to make her a prisoner of a tighter prison, Darcy started to fight back, eventually working their way outside the guest room and into the main room of the basement. She had disarmed him and was enjoying the challenge of beating someone much larger and stronger than she, but never got the chance when someone fired a gun from the top of the stairs.

The bullet hit her in the neck and exploded to the other side with an exit wound the size of a tangerine. She looked up at Monica who was scowling, obviously aware of the situation now.

"Shut up back there!" Louis Chavelle shouted into the back seat irritably, turning back around to focus on driving. Ridder cocked a gun in the passenger seat, making occasional glances into the back seat at the blonde child sitting angrily with her arms crossed. There was silence again for a few precious moments.

Louis reached for his gun and was met with the barrel of Ridder's weapon in his face.

"She's seven years old Louis. Ignore her." Louis let go of his gun and focused on the road. Meredith yawned, growing bored of the situation. She looked out the windows with an uninterested glare.

Louis's hands tightened on the steering wheel. He was trying very hard to resist the temptation to shoot the damn kid. Ridder glanced over at him, watching his patience waver.

"Okay, that's it!" Louis grabbed his gun and flipped around in the driver's seat, ready to fire. It only took a moment for Ridder to rip the gun from his hands and disarm him, pushing his focus back to the road with his firearm trained on Louis's head. He breathed heavily, his heart slowing.

"If you kill her, so help me Louis, by the time I am finished with you your carcass will look like road kill."

Silence followed Ridder's stern warning. Louis glanced up into the rear view mirror and saw Meredith's stern face, her eyes meeting his as she stuck out her tongue immaturely.

Meredith was pleased with herself. She smiled smugly and got horrible thoughts to further annoy her captors.

"I want some coffee," she said loudly. There was no answer. Her smile faded and another means of manipulation popped into her head.

The whole basement went quiet as the fight stopped. Darcy's throat healed after she was brought to her knees, coughing up mass amounts of red blood to the floor. The skin closed with no visible scar and the blood stopped dripping and spewing from the cuts. John retrieved his gun from the ground and held it above her, execution style.

"WHERE IS SHE?!" he demanded loudly, the gun pressed against her ear now and nearing where the breed was contained in her skull. Darcy wiped the blood from her lips, tasting it on her fingers, licking it off her swollen lips that slowly decreased in size.

"TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!" He grabbed her neck and forced her to face him. Her eyes met his and she held her face emotionlessly.

She was completely quiet, her mind wanting to stay silent and defy him with everything it was worth, but she found herself breathing deeply and her muscles relaxing, giving her the ability to speak to him.

"He'd kill every one of you," she said, leaning closer. "You're human nature is too naïve to comprehend what kind of a killer this man is."

"So you can do what? Run in, guns blazing, just so daddy can be the big hero at the end of the day? I don't think so. You'll be dead before you can get within a mile of him."

"You think that I can't see right through your eyes,
Scared to death to face reality,
No one seems to hear your hidden cries,
You're left to face yourself alone…"

Jason could see her from the bed in their tiny hotel room. The streets of Morocco were filled with strange words and foreign voices that flooded into the small room. Cinnamon and spices filled the wind, soft and warm. It stung Darcy's nostrils as she breathed in through her nose. She pulled her hair up out of her face and into the hair elastic that she plucked up from the sink.

He never once stopped staring at her, fixating on every muscular curve on her body. She was wearing a bed sheet, true enough, but it clung to her like it was the evening gown she had worn the night before. The black lace traveling around at her thighs was hypnotic, the black garter underneath carrying her singular gun. His orders were to stay by the wall and that was it, but his eyes kept moving over her, the only redhead in the crowds at the gala event taking place in the ballroom.

She peeked over her shoulder but said nothing when she realized his blue eyes were still locked on her.

"Let's go out," he said initiating a conversation he knew wouldn't go very far.

"I can't," she replied quickly. The conversation should have ended but he persisted.

Darcy didn't even dignify him with a response. She pulled the sheet down and picked her bra up off the toilet seat. He walked over to the bathroom, a sheet hanging around his waist like a skirt. She was halfway through pulling on a tank top before he appeared in the doorway.

Her eyelids were covered in a dark mist of pewter eye shadow and her lips were the colour of black cherries. She was getting ready for a kill, and by the looks of it, she was intending to sleep with the man before doing her work.

"I don't want you to do it," he said. Darcy said nothing and dropped the sheet, wearing nothing but her black panties underneath. She grabbed a pair of black flares off the toilet and pulled them on. They clung to her hip bones and practically hung off her figure.

"It's my job. I don't have a choice." She turned to push past him but he held her there, covering the doorway with his body and limbs.

"Don't." He begged her, his eyes pleading slowly and childishly. Darcy pushed by and hung her head, the thick red locks falling over her shoulders and hanging in front of her face. She considered it. What was at stake with this? Not very much, obviously, since Ridder was only offering what she considered to be a small fee for the hit. And why shouldn't she enjoy herself? It was only fair.

But she grabbed the gun off the night table and checked the clip before grabbing her bag.

"I'll be back later," she said, leaving the hotel room. Jason took a deep breath and heard the door close behind her.

Darcy looked through her purse as she stepped out and into the hall. She hesitated a moment, not feeling her gloves inside. Quickly she whipped around and found him standing in the door with the pair of black leather gloves held out for her.

They stood for a moment. As she took her gloves she moved in and kissed him, leaving his lips dark with her oily lip colour before walking away from him.

She had never been held at gun point by an FBI agent. She had only ever been held at gunpoint a select few times in her life, and she hated it as much then as she did now, perhaps more so because of the man behind the gun. Instead of being a man with intention to kill her but did not know how, this man did know how, and she knew he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger. He had Jason on hand anyways. They could just revive her and kill her over and over like her life was on a continuous loop.

And even still: they could always let her die. Jason wouldn't vouch for her in public, and even the red haired woman she knew she remembered was going to be no help if John were to pull the trigger.

They were outside, her on the ground with the gun over her head and blue eyes focused on her, almost willing her to move so he could blow her brains out. She decided to sit there calmly, her whole body unmoving as she waited for him to start to calm down a little.

Her peripheral vision was more advanced than humans. She could see him quite well without moving her eyes.

"You tell me how to get her back," he said. "Or I start shooting. And they will be things you will miss."

What an idiot. Do you know how fast your flesh can heal? Kill him, Darcy. Kill him and make him pay.

He fired a shot into her foot, splattering blood all over the ground. She clenched her teeth as the skin healed around the bullet.

She was silent again. Doggett shot her in the thigh. When she still said nothing he reached down and dug his fingers into the wound.

There were visible signs of pain in her face as her body failed to heal. He got closer to her, keeping an eye on her hands unmoving behind her back. The handcuffs would hold her at least, he hoped they would.

Darcy was silent again, her lip quivering as Doggett kept his hand buried in the wound. She winced, biting down her lips and breathing through her nose.

Doggett pulled his hand out of the wound and shook off the blood before preparing to take another shot. He lost his patience and aimed for her ear.

"I can get you close to him," she said at last in a voice almost too quiet for him to hear. He stopped and waited for her to finish. "But you had better give me a damn good price."

"Fine," he said. "You get me near him and you get to keep your sad excuse for a life for another day."

"Oh please," she said, looking at him finally. "You think I haven't been threatened before? I'm not afraid of you. From this position I could kill you in over thirty different ways just involving a broken neck."

She stopped before she started, unable to justify her reasons for keeping him alive. Why did you let him live? You could have killed him at any point in time, and still you let him keep firing at you?

"Fine." She finally said. "But you had better listen to every word I have to say and you had better follow every order I give you, otherwise you won't be granted the same mercy you're giving me."

Meredith sighed deeply with her large coffee in her hand, sipping it every now and then, smiling sweetly and sadistically at her captors who finally gave into her screaming. They had lasted forty seconds according to her watch, and by that time even Ridder was starting to lose his nerve. Louis was forced to run into a local coffee shop and grab her large coffee before getting back into the car.

She had watched him carefully, remembering that he could have slipped sedatives or something equally as irritating into it. But she knew he was too frightened to do that. Besides, she had them right where she wanted them. She could have had anything at that point in time.

The coffee was black and definitely not as good as her hazelnut mixture back at home, but it kept her wired enough to think ahead and plot out a means of escape. The car had no handles to open the door in the back, and she knew the only way out were the windows and the front doors of the car.

They pulled to a stop outside the back a building. The car stopped and the two men got out, Ridder telling Louis not to let the kid out of his sight. Meredith's smile disappeared. She looked around and saw the street nearby and cars rushing around there. She watched Louis come around to the back door and open it.

She tossed the steaming coffee in his face and Louis screamed almost as loudly as she had. With Louis distracted she ran out the back door, hopping onto the pavement in bare feet before running off down the alley.

"LOUIS! YOU IDIOT! GET HER!" He recovered quickly, his face still burning, but the pain drove him to run faster than he ever had before after the kid.

"I realize you're afraid,
But you reject the whole world.
You can't escape…
You won't escape…
You can't escape…
You don't want to escape…"

Meredith was fast, despite not only her age but her body size. She was agile as well coming from her time spent running through the woods behind their house with William. She treated the situation like a game she and William would play. Starting at the edge of the woods, the two would bolt down different trails, keeping the other within sight. Whoever could run the farthest without stopping, slowing, or turning back to the house would be claimed the winner. In the beginning, William had claimed the glory as victor. But as she grew, she had developed a winning streak that up until that point had lasted for seventeen rounds.

She treated the current situation in much the same manner, her mind reinforcing the fact that this was only a game, and that she was just running to keep up from William. She was looking over in the corner of her eye and seeing his red hair fly by like the wind, stopped temporarily by a thicket of trees. She imagined she was a horse or a cheetah, speeding after her prey with extreme swiftness and speed.

The street was so close to her now. She could hear the cars and the sounds of the people on the sidewalks, the noisy music blaring from the clubs her mother claimed with distasteful and evil. She ignored the leather clad women and their chained and leashed boyfriends as she took to the right and down the street.

Her heart was beating so quickly she felt like it could jump out of her chest at any moment. She didn't look behind her to see if Louis was still coming. She could hear his ragged breaths coming up her rear.

She looked over her shoulder, eyeing the dangerous barrel of metal with a frightened look in her eyes. Meredith didn't reach to wipe away the tears and took to the left, across the street as the light turned green.

The cars honked at her and swerved to accommodate her tiny frame on the street. Glass shattered in the parked car next to her and Meredith screamed at the explosion of bullets from the other side of the street. She dove behind the car and clutched her knees together with her arms, hearing the cars honking and screeching as Louis no doubt came across the street. Meredith buried her face in her thighs and she shook gently, praying to God that they would stop chasing her.

A hand hit her shoulder. It caused an immediate reaction. Meredith grabbed the person's wrist and bit into it so hard the person screamed.

"OW! GET HER OFF ME!" The male screamed. Meredith didn't recognize the voice until she opened her eyes and released her bite on the flesh of the man's wrist. Brian grabbed the tender and bruised flesh, grimacing in pain at the tooth marks she had left behind. He bit his lower lip as Phoebe arrived across the street.

Meredith didn't even recognize her babysitter with her hair streaked black and make up covering her entire eyelids. It was like looking at a completely different person. Day Phoebe with Tarot cards and chamomile yielded to night Phoebe with eye shadow and dark, gothic corsets just as the sun yielded to the moon. She and Brian were dressed to match, since he too had assumed very much that same attire.

"Watch your language, Brian." Phoebe warned him. "Meredith what the hell are you doing here?"

"Is he still following me?" She demanded quickly, looking over the roof of the car.

"Is who still following you?" Phoebe asked suspiciously. Her question was answered as Louis shot out another of the car's windows as he tried to hit Meredith.

Meredith didn't have time for a witty comeback. She took off down the street in the opposite direction to the man with the gun.

"Shit." Phoebe said, chasing after her, running awkwardly because of her heeled shoes. Brian looked back at the man with the gun and shrugged, running after the two others and quick on their heels.

Ridder got into the car and started it, backing up and driving out into the street. He was completely furious with himself. 1: He could not hire even half decent people to do a half decent job for him. This included, of course, his bloody billion dollar assassin who was God-knows-where, buying her time with Agents. And then there was Louis, who was certainly not the sharpest crayon in the box, who could not even keep an eye on a seven-year-old girl they had kidnapped. 2: Most of his plans in the past 24 hours had all failed miserably, first with the assassination attempt, then the 'rescue' mission, and now his kidnapping scheme was going the way of all the plans before it. 3: He had lost Ryan Trent's assassin, something that was even more unforgivable than losing his own, considering Trent could have him dead in less than 24 hours if he wanted.

Ryan Trent was not as dumb as many assumed he was. Ridder knew a couple of things about Ryan that were privy to only him and a select few of his staff. The first thing was that Ryan was not without various other weapons. Morgan was just the first of 7 assassins trained specifically for him. Although it was never confirmed that the other 6 were in existence, there were rumours of what most called "Trent's Wives", an elite assassination squad that were only used in the most important circumstances. None of them knew the other existed, and that was the way Trent liked it, or so Ridder assumed.

When he sped down the street, it was easy to follow where the girl had fled too. Louis had left a trail of small car accidents and broken windows like bread crumbs on a trail for Ridder to follow. Expertly, Ridder rolled down his window and extended the gun out the window, the sight of the white pajamas coming into view not far from him. It was followed by three others: one female, one male, and Louis trailing up the rear. His gun had been dropped after her ran out of bullets. With his expert eye he hit the girl in the leg with a dart, watching her fall quickly to the ground. He swerved the car around, just in time to roll down the other window, switch guns, and aim the car at the other female who had skidded to a position at Meredith's side.

"Don't move." He ordered. Phoebe slowly raised her hands into the air and Brian stopped running, the two frozen still. Louis gasped for breath as he finally caught up. Ridder did not even have to give the order for him to make a move for the girl. He did so without being asked.

Louis grabbed Meredith off the ground. Phoebe was torn, looking at Brian on the ground, unmoving. Ridder kept the gun trained on her at all times as Louis tossed Meredith into the back seat and got into the passenger seat.

They sped off into the night. Phoebe grabbed her cell phone, making a mental note of the license plate numbers before calling an ambulance.

John wasn't expecting the call as he ushered Darcy back into the house. He pushed her into the kitchen and sat her at the table, his gun to her head before grabbing the phone.

"Your daughter's been kidnapped John." Phoebe said, leaning against Brian's shoulder heavily, her leather coat doing very little to sop up the blood. If anything, it was making it worse. "The car had the plate LL8Y 643."

"Outskirts of town near a club called Blood Rush. She was running away from some guy with a gun and got drugged or something on her way down the street."

He felt his heart skip a beat for a moment and his eyes burned. He resisted the urge to pull the trigger at the woman in front of him.

"Not really. The guy sped away pretty quickly." Phoebe gave up with the coat and began ripping pieces of her cloth shirt, wrapping the pieces around his shoulder like a tourniquet before tying them tightly. He heard her groaning as she tightened them.

"Just follow the sirens," she said. John had no idea what that meant. She hung up quickly and shoved the phone in her belt.

"Get up." He commanded. Darcy did so slowly, watching his eyes instead of his gun. She was unusually attached to his eyes for some reason, searching inside them. John couldn't hear her heart beating. He couldn't hear her breathing heavily. Every muscle in her body was tensed except for her face. She could have been doing anything at that moment but she was fixated on his irises, watching the way they grew and shrank quickly as he walked her out to the foyer.

"You better pray that she's alive," he said quickly. "So help me God, I'll kill you over and over if she's dead when I find her."

"You're too late for that, John." She spat his name as if she were mocking it. "Knowing Ridder he's probably removed a limb by now."

There were plenty of sirens to follow. Already, an ambulance was pulling out of the lot and off to a designated location, the patient within critical enough to put the sirens on. Police were surrounding the area, taping off cars and labeling piles of shattered glass with yellow numbers. John didn't take the handcuffs off Darcy. He just expected her to behave herself, although it wasn't to be expected seeing as how just hours earlier she had been trying to kill him. Darcy seemed to finally want to be realistic, and actually waited for him to escort her into the travesty of police officers.

"Special Agent John Doggett." He flashed his badge to the officers on duty. The officer shone a flashlight, comparing the picture to the face before nodding him through. Immediately his attention was on Darcy, the light in her eyes making her growl with primal fury.

"She's a suspect in a case I'm working on directly related to this." The officer hesitated, and then nodded as John gruffly pushed her ahead. His hand on the cuffs immediately made her want to defy him. The effect assured the officer on duty of his intentions and actually reassured him somewhat.

Darcy's muscles tightened as he pushed her through the crowds of officers. He finally found who he was looking for, although didn't recognize her at first glance. Phoebe did not look like Phoebe at all. Her face was sunken and pale with the make up applied to her eyes and cheeks. Her lips were dark with liner and her hair was lined with black streaks that were rushed to be applied. She breathed deeply to herself and looked up at him before getting to her feet, standing up slowly from the curb.

"Phoebe?" He had to ask, just to be sure. She nodded mutely. Darcy was completely silent and went ignored by Phoebe.

"I already told them everything I know," she said. "I saw her running down an alley being chased by a mad man and screaming. By the time I caught up to her she was on the ground on the verge of a nervous break down."

"The guy with the gun had brown hair." She closed her eyes, trying to remember. "Brown eyes, his nose was too big for his face. He was clumsily shaped with square shoulders and a lean body." Phoebe didn't open her eyes. She focused on the car, the sound of the bullets that erupted from her memory. "The guy in the car was more blonde. He was muscular, baby faced almost with thin lips and puppy dog eyes."

Her eyes opened, streams of salty tears running down her cheeks and leaving small lines of mascara down her cheeks. She breathed deeply.

"That's it." She finished, wiping her eyes quickly. She rubbed her fingers on her pants before wiping away the other eye, fixing the lines of make up on her lids. John nodded.

Darcy was never much of a talker. She had learned through years of experience that talking gets you nowhere. So much time was wasted on speaking that it left no time for pulling triggers or stabbing blades. It was just easier to act what you mean than say it, at least in her world. She refused to say a word to Agent Doggett anyways and fiddled with the handcuffs as they drove in silence down the road.

He couldn't bring himself to say anything to her. He was too angry with her and himself to say anything that wasn't a threat or an insult to someone with a reputation as disgusting as hers. He didn't know where he was driving. He just knew for some reason or another, that she would tell him where to go.

On the best of days, John Doggett didn't have much patient with criminals, especially ones with a reputation like Darcy. He would trust her as much as he needed to, and after that, he would most likely kill her for her trying to kill him. She wasn't able to be trusted, but he imagined a government trained assassin would be quite useful to have on one's side, considering she could slit someone's throat in over thirty different ways simply from the position she was placed in.

The streets were passing by in a haze of colour. They were starting to blur. He wiped his eyes and continued on as he glanced occasionally at the passenger seat to see that she was still there and not trying to break out of her handcuffs. The silence was deafening.

His patience was beginning to wear thin. Her silence was purposeful. Was she trying to piss him off or just being her genuine self in not speaking? Whatever she was doing it was beginning to take large chops at him like a rusty blade. He was beginning to feel as if her behaviour was deliberate.

"Turn left here." She finally said. Doggett did so, turning down the street of quaint houses and slowly his speed, looking carefully from one side of the road to the other. The parked cars morphed into enemies at every side.

"Stop here," she said. He pulled to the side of the street she was looking at, stopping quickly and leaving the car running. Darcy waited, believing she got her point across when she shook the handcuffs irritably. He finally released her.

Darcy grabbed the handle of the door and gestured her hand for her to follow. They walked up to the house together, her arms crossed over her stomach and her coat drifting on the wind. She looked like a shadow, and her footsteps were convincing him that she was just a mirage in the darkness, something that was there one minute and gone the next.

However she did not disappear. She stayed on course, reaching down to the 'WELCOME' mat in front of the door and snatching up a key. She slid it into the lock and opened the door. Again, she gestured for him to follow, and instead of refusing, Doggett continued, his hand resting on his firearm.

He didn't know what compelled him to enter the house, but he knew for some reason she didn't mean him any harm.

"We are the nobodies.
We wanna be somebodies.
When we're dead they'll know just who we are…"

Ridder had first dibs on Darcy. The second she was implanted he had her assigned to his division, by means of competing with Ryan Trent and his seven female assassins. Each of them was exceptionally beautiful and trained, much like Darcy. Unlike her they got tired and needed sleep. They could move faster than the average human and were definitely much stronger, but lacked Darcy's inhuman abilities such as strengthened intelligence and healing abilities. Unlike her, they were much more human than she, something each of them loathed.

The first was Morgan of course, seeing as how she was the United States operative and the one Trent could depend on the most. She was the only one without another agenda as well, others having jobs with other employers of their own countries. Another reason he liked her was she was trained by Darcy's company, and had the same battle tactics as her 'sister' did. Her morals always told her to kill first and never ask questions, a philosophy he enjoyed. She got the job done without delay.

Of course the major problem with her was she never stopped to think about her actions. Morgan was not methodical in any way. She was quick and imaginative to manipulate the situation in her favour, but she made no plans before hand.

Which brought his second 'wife' Olga Tatiana Alexander (or what most called the 'Russian Black Widow') into the picture. To her name she had murdered off six of her husbands before the age of 25, and never once had the police laid a finger on her. She was a sadistic woman who always carried four weapons: two throwing knives and two guns, one on her thigh and one in a holster at her waist. Ridder liked her because she was tough. Blood and pleading did not make her change her mind, especially for male victims who would not only sleep with her before the night was out, but also end up dead in the morning and Olga taking off with their wallet for her bank account.

Her weakness was female victims. Few as they were, she did not relate well to her own gender. To compensate, Ryan had his third wife.

The lovely and beautiful Sophie Desjardins had been a 15 year old French prostitute when she had her first brush with death. Her pimp had been abusing her, drunken as he was and she was sick of being pushed around. She took off her stiletto boot and gouged at his face until the twitching of his nerves stopped and she had cracked his skull. After that she was in the French government working for Ambassadors before Ryan Trent made her an offer she couldn't refuse.

Her strengths? Sophie was a bisexual. She could seduce and sleep with either sex, no matter if they were straight or not. Her weaknesses? She was obsessed with money, and she often did a sloppy job with her victims. This was also related to the fact that Sophie liked discrete methods of killing, ones that didn't always work.

His fourth cancelled out every time that Sophie had every screwed up. Megumi Lee, a Japanese-Canadian and an army brat, was her foil, the one who made up for every time she had failed because she didn't add enough poison to the champagne. At five she witnessed her mother's brutal murder by the hands of her father in their home in Tokyo. When she recovered from the shock she started training to kill her father with a sword master Fujiko Takamo and his daughter Riyu. When she was 14 she started working in the Japanese Underworld as a teenaged assassin, rising through the ranks of her father's empire. When she was 16, she murdered her own father in front of his council and took claim over the Japanese Underworld, not only too young, but a female.

Megumi was a weapon's expert. She could wield anything from a sword to a gun of any shape and size. Her downfall was hand-to-hand combat of course, which resulted in her foil, the young Riyu Takamo.

The daughter of a sword master, she became much like Megumi's younger sister when the two started training together. Although much younger than Megumi, she is an expert at hand-to-hand combat, thanks to her father. She is the youngest of Ryan's wives, but what she lacks in age, Megumi made up for in her insanity. At the age of ten she murdered four girls in her class by shoving pencils into their throats simply because they were eyeing her the wrong way. Instead of losing her life to prison, Megumi broke her out with her new control over the Japanese Underworld and made her a personal bodyguard and apprentice. By this point, Ryan was already busy tracking them down.

Her only fault is her insanity. She loves the taste, smell and feeling of blood. Her victims' bodies are desecrated to a point beyond recognition and most often she keeps some of the blood in a Tupperware container in the fridge to drink when she feels powerless. She believed she could assume her enemy's power by drinking the blood of another.

Number 6 was much less insane than Riyu. Katherine Bell was born in Britain but was stationed in Rome at the time, taking down another Government Representative. She was raised prim and proper in a strong Catholic family, but at the age of 17 she doubted the existence of Christ completely and longer for a life free of the boundaries set by her parents. After graduation she studied medicine and became fascinated with death and the ways it could be enforced on someone. She studied methods of catching criminals and finally, at age 25, killed someone for the first time. The police never caught her once.

Obviously her strength was stealth. She knew everything the police looked for on a crime scene and what mistakes to avoid. Her weakness was the painstaking effort she put into her killings, making sure they were done 'perfectly imperfect' and that each was different from the last so they would not be tied together.

His last bride was an army bitch named Francis Collins. She was the oldest and the most experienced, ranking in as 34 and looking damn good for her age. She was the epiphany of what Ryan looked for in an assassin. She had Morgan's quick nature, Olga's power, Sophie's subtle killing, Megumi's weapons skills, Riyu's hand-to-hand combat, and Katherine's intelligence and attention to detail. She was nearing the age of retirement but had a few good years left before she was required to leave the business. She was doing as many jobs as she could to prepare for unemployment.

At the time that Morgan went quiet Ryan was ready to reel her in. The two closest at his fingertips were Megumi and Riyu who had come to the United States for the weekend to talk about a possible raise in pay. The deal had been a success, seeing as how they were more important to him than life itself.

Ryan Trent dismissed himself from the bedroom and went to his office, grabbing the phone receiver. Riyu answered quickly in Japanese, holding the phone against her shoulder as she put another coat of red nail polish on.

"Riyu. You and Megumi are going to find Morgan," he said. "I promise full payment and double it if she's alive." Riyu got a frown on her face. "You can kill anyone who stands in your way."

The sixteen year old gave a deranged grin and laughed girlishly, hanging up the phone before looking at her mistress.

Darcy looked proficient around weapons. She moved through the cupboards of the upstairs rooms, picking through a variety of different firearms. She grabbed two handguns and several clips, accessorizing herself like a preteen in costume jewelry. Throwing knives were slotted in her boots, strapped to her calf. The guns were carried in holsters at her sides, always within reaching distance. A folding knife was slotted in her boot buckles and a smaller gun was strapped to her inner thigh, going unnoticed in the loose fitting pants she slid into.

Doggett watched her cautiously from the doorway. She tossed him a gun after sliding the clip back in.

"Ridder will most likely call you with a tedious set of demands." She began. "But I don't want to wait that long. Ridder has a home he does most of his dealings from across town which is where you'll start."

He nodded mutely, listening as she continued her voice quick on the words as if she didn't like speaking at all.

"I'll take care of that," she said, pulling her hair up and out of her face, tying it with elastic to keep it from falling back down. The knots were still covered in blood, both black and crimson on her red scalp. "You just worry about getting your daughter. I'll take care of the rest."

She slammed the door on the gun cabinet shut, locking it once again. She looked more like a warrior than a young woman, her hair out of her face and hair covered in blood. The guns were an added touch, along with the folding knife in her boot that just made the feelings of murder grow larger exponentially. She looked like a contract killer.

Darcy walked by him, going back down the stairs, her boots making loud clomps with every step she took. She saw the phone in the living room and debated calling Jason before opting against it. She couldn't compromise her current situation by someone finding out about her and Jason.

She didn't believe in love. It was a human emotion. How could she partake in a human feeling? Instead, she was in lust with Jason. It was nice to feel his hands and lips on her, taking away all the feelings of pain and resentment against the world she bottled up and hid from the people who worked around her. He was pure heaven to her. Every taste of him was wonderful.

But her footsteps lead her into the living room again anyways, and her hands poked through the tool case that served as a medical kit. She dug through the glass capsules of pain killers and sedatives. She grabbed the morphine from the top and opened a syringe packet, checking over her shoulder.

His cell phone rang promptly after Darcy left the room, heading downstairs. He couldn't hear her, but he could see the top of the stairs from his place in the hallway. He had just enough time to press the phone to his ear after pressing SEND when David Ridder started talking.

"There's no time for you to start making any demands, so here's the deal. I have your daughter. I am willing to kill your daughter if you fuck up in any way shape or form," he said with his cruel and malicious voice. "You have something of mine, and it's something that I am willing to murder a seven-year-old over. So listen very carefully John Doggett because I am only going to say this once: You fuck with me and I pulled a trigger into your daughter's head."

"Where do you want me to meet you?" he asked, but Ridder didn't get the chance to answer him. Darcy dug the needle into his bicep and injected the morphine, stepping back and pulling out her gun on the falling agent.

"It's me," she said proudly. "I'll meet you back at Division. Bring the kid to me. I have John Doggett with me."

"They'll never see,
I'll never be,
I'll struggle on and on to feed this hunger burning deep inside of me…"

>Megumi Lee waltzed from their hotel room, dressed in her somewhat ceremonial white kimono, a large red bow wrapped around her slender waist while her jet black hair was pinned in classic tradition, two chopsticks sticking out from the left side of her scalp, holding her beautiful jet block locks still. Her katana was on her back, hung from the sash about her waist and ticked into the bow, but always within reaching distance. The whole hotel staff dared not approach her and her entourage.

Following close behind was Riyu, dressed in her classic Japanese school girl attire, her red nails clashing horribly with the dark blue colour of the skirt and the jacket. Her almond shaped eyes followed every person standing in the lobby off the hotel, her hands clutching a small wakasashi, the traditional suicide blade of the samurai. In the backpack she carried was her secret weapon, the long mace she could wield as a whip when she wasn't using her hands to inflict pain.

On Riyu's right side was their personal lawyer and shopper, Rin Hotaru, a proud pure blood Japanese who handled all legal and fashion affairs. It was she who was responsible for making them look as great as they could at the cost of Ryan Trent and the payers back in Tokyo. She was also in charge of taking care of the Tokyo affairs, making sure their legacy and other delegates of their Underground business were behaving themselves in Megumi's absence. She was very good at what she did as well.

Behind them were eight of her samurai guards, following close in pairs, making frightening looks at the men and women in the lobby. The hotel manager did not even try to stop them. He simply watched the party leave to the limousine outside, all eleven ready to begin their massacre to win back Trent's other 'wife', Morgan Warren.

Of course, Megumi had no idea of Morgan's purpose in Ryan's life. She was under the impression that she and Riyu were the only women in Trent's life and that Morgan was just another mislead agent. To her, Morgan Warren was only not being killed off because Ryan had told her not to, and had Ryan's hand not handed her paychecks so often, she would be sure that Riyu would be slurping her blood within minutes.

They marched into their limo, she, Riyu and Rin sharing one and the other eight trailing on motorcycles behind her. Rin grabbed her ringing cell phone, answering quickly and smiling at the sound of her lover's voice. She spoke about how happy she was to hear from him but that she was very busy at that time and couldn't talk long. When he continued pushing the conversation, Rin did something that was very unexpected, stringing together a thousand obscenities in a row before finally hanging up. She brushed a lock of hair from her face.

"Bastard." She spat in her native tongue. Riyu laughed to herself, sliding her blade out of the sheath.

Monica had debated it over and over again before she cocked her gun and walked to the basement with every intention of ending the black haired bitch's life in the basement before the day was through. She marched angrily to the stairs, the only though in her mind of her daughter and her husband, one being held against her will by a killer who was more terrible than she felt a human being could be, and the other was following a assassin who was possibly the daughter of agent Scully. The day, in her opinion, could not get any worse.

She grabbed the door handle when she heard the doorbell ring. Her eyes moved to the sheer curtains on the door, the silhouettes of several people standing outside. She ignored them anyways, but they rang again. The second ring issued a frustrated conversation in Japanese, one she could not possibly understand. She could distinguish a female voice however, giving a stern order for one of the males to follow. There was a moment of silence before the door was kicked open again.

Megumi walked in calmly, her feet soft on the stone tiles of the floor and making barely any noise. Riyu followed, the wakasashi in her hand and the sheath in the other, fully ready to make use of the weapons she held with a bloodthirsty gleam in her eye. Rin waved the men through the house, still on the phone with whoever she entertained with her time, talking with a large grin.

"Rin." Megumi said clearly, halting the conversation. "Get off the phone or I'll cut out your tongue." Rin's smile faded and she immediately hung up without saying goodbye. Megumi smiled softly, lips together as she called out to the empty house.

"Bring us the woman you are holding captive and I will let you keep your lives." Megumi said in English that was thick with her Japanese accent. "If not, I will kill you all."

There was nothing the resembled a response from the house. Riyu was growing impatient and thirsty, licking her lips so they were glossy with saliva. Megumi stood very still, drawing her sword. The blade hummed as if touched the air, ringing shrilly as she moved it from its home and held it with both her hands. She switched back to Japanese.

Monica ripped open the door in her basement, meeting the dark and sadistic stare of Morgan Warren who had regained consciousness and was perched on the bed, giving up in the process of opening the door. She didn't have much time or energy to do anything as Monica aimed quickly, tightening her finger on the trigger. She jumped off, tackling into her captor, knocking the gun from her hands.

They scrambled for a moment, punching one another with all their strength. Morgan bashed her forehead into Monica's collarbone, satisfied when she heard the bone snapped. The adrenaline was so high in Monica's bloodstream that she barely noticed the pain and quickly flipped Morgan off her and into the wall, causing the dry wall to crack from the force. She wasted no time in getting to her knees and crawling to the gun, taking aim on her assailant with dead accuracy.

Two of the samurai raced down the stairs, catching sight of Monica and immediately rushing for her with sword drawn. Angrily, Monica killed them both with deadly shots to their heads, pieces of skull blasting off behind them in their wake. Their bodies fell and more arrived, surrounding her and Morgan.

"Get off the ground!" They ordered Morgan in Japanese. She nodded and followed orders, easing herself to her feet. Monica sneered and tripped her, Morgan's head slamming into the wall and knocking her out cold.

By now, Monica was beginning to grow very angry. Already today her home had been broken into twice, her daughter was kidnapped, her husband was God knows where, and she had a broken collarbone. She vowed right then that none of the men would live to see their mistress again, and she would take all their lives and the lives of the women upstairs before she would allow herself to die.

Riyu slumped on the stairs, picking her nails with her sword blade. She glanced up at her mistress, kneeling in the centre of the floor in traditional position, waiting for the deed to be done downstairs. Rin returned from upstairs empty handed, shrugging at the absence of residents in the home. Riyu finally got to her feet, storming off angrily.

"Riyu." Megumi's voice stopped her in mid stride, causing her young apprentice to turn slowly. All the while, Megumi's eyes had not opened. "You will stay here and wait."

"You will." Her mistress's eyes were burning in anger. "You will stay here or I will collect your head."

"Empty threats," she said, turning on a heel. Megumi growled and swung her sword to point at her apprentice.

"They are promises, Riyu, if you disobey me." She growled like a beast as Riyu turned back and slid the wakasashi back into the sheath. She stormed back into the foyer just as Monica came up and stood in the archway, immediately shooting at Rin who was coming down the stairs. She turned her gun to Megumi but found the clip empty and tossed the infernal weapon away, drawing the stolen katana from the basement on Riyu who came close to her. The teenager laughed, mocking her in Japanese. Megumi silenced her, coming forward.

"Then you won't mind if you fight my apprentice," she said coyly, moving away from the battle to over see from upstairs. Monica held the sword awkwardly, having no experience with it but knowing it was the only weapon she would get her hands on for now. Riyu was young anyways, right?

The small girl giggled and dropped the small dagger on the ground, pulling off her bag and grabbing the chain from inside, lifting the heavy weapon from inside and coiling the chain from her hand. Monica took a very deep breath, her shoulder in agony, the adrenaline starting to wear off.

It kicked back in as Riyu started to spin the mace, gaining momentum. Monica breathed heavily and didn't wait for a warning before she attacked.

Ridder was waiting in his office, Meredith handcuffed and asleep on the couch, the drugs still wearing off in her small body. He looked at the clock on his desk, glancing back at the door, and then back to the clock. He was growing worried and impatient, seeing as how Darcy had left no time for conversation when she called. She had said what she needed to and hung up, leaving it at that.

He looked at the girl on the couch, her blonde hair pasted to her face and around her head like a great golden halo. David Ridder was not a pedophile like others in the business. He was a respectable gentleman when it came to woman. He was intrigued by the girl, her angelic features as only genetic engineering could produce. She resembled nothing of her mother, her skin too fair and hair too light. As for her father, it was in the way he had heard her speak, her methods of 'persuasion' that he had noticed John Doggett. She was forceful and resourceful, working off her surroundings. He thought that perhaps he could use her when it was all over, hiring her on into the 'family' as Darcy's protégé. Of course he'd have to rid the world of John Doggett and his wife first, but that wouldn't be too hard.

Oh please, Ridder. You just lost your best assassin to them. You're not invincible.

I AM INVINCIBLE. He reminded himself. I am Invincible and I am immortal. Agents like John Doggett come and go, but I will always stay the same.

Darcy opened the door and tossed in her cargo, John Doggett landing on his knees and hands, his wrists bound with rope that Darcy had found lying around. Her red hair swung around her back, the blood covered locks touching her skin and clashing terribly with her white face. Ridder got up and smiled, seeing blood dripping from John's head.

"I thought for a moment you were lying, but you really have outdone yourself this time Darcy," he said, nearing her with the air of a father instead of an employer. She did not allow him to touch her at all. "And here's the man who has been giving me a hard time all day. Did he hurt you at all?"

"Good. Where's Morgan?" he asked her. Darcy cocked a brow. "Yes, where's Morgan? Trent has been breathing down my neck all day about that bitch so where is she?"

Darcy didn't answer. Ridder groaned. She was ordered out of the office and not to return until she had retrieved Morgan. Ridder looked down at John Doggett and to his daughter, and instead of ordering them to be sent away together, he called for John to be taken down to the prison cells in Level 4 until the drugs wore off or he ordered otherwise.

They did so, but Darcy followed close behind, stalking them with a gun in her hands.

Riyu laughed girlishly at Monica's awkward stance. She swung the ball and chain faster.

"I am going to enjoy watching you die," she said in Japanese, making Megumi smile at her apprentice's skill. Monica's lips curled into a snarl.

"Whatever, bitch," she said, rushing up to meet the chain. As if she were doing a dance, Riyu swung the ball to the sword, grabbing hold of it like a whip and tossed it away, swirling the ball in a figure 8 position in front of her, making Monica run around the room, unarmed.

"How do you expect to win?" Megumi called. Monica looked up and Riyu let the ball fly to her chest, knocking her back a few feet, winded but not finished. Riyu snarled, flipping the ball around her neck and letting it soar once more, this time into the waiting hands of her opponent. Monica absorbed the blow with her palms and jumped to her feet, the ball ripped from her hands. She caught sight of the katana not far from her, and darted to it, spinning it up just in time to block off the attack of the mace once more.

It sun at the blade, slashing at it with blades that grew from the sides quickly, before returning to Riyu. Monica got to her feet, batting off all of Riyu's attacks. Riyu smiled to herself spinning the ball around her back and catching the sword once again, catching it and Monica's throat at the same time. It wrapped around Monica's neck once, cutting off air. Riyu grinned and stepped closer, wrapping the chain about her arms and holding it taut.

The katana was still in front of Monica's eyes, held to her face by the chain at her throat. She pulled it from the chain and stabbed forward, getting Riyu in the stomach.

Riyu fell forward onto the sword, her grip loosening. With the next breath of air Monica screamed and slashed Riyu's throat, splattering herself with blood and flesh from the stroke. Riyu fell to the side and Monica stood up, looking at Megumi.

"You cannot depend on luck to defeat me," she said, clearly and confidently. Monica smiled softly.

"Fine, I won't." She looked just over Megumi's shoulder to the kitchen. Megumi turned and the bullet hit her between the eyes, knocking her over.

Walter Skinner walked out of the kitchen. Monica pulled the cell phone from her pocket and dropped it on the floor, dropping the sword with it as she looked around the foyer. Again it was painted with blood and death, and she collapsed to her knees in despair.

John couldn't breathe when they tossed him inside the metal cell. He recognized the smell of rotting corpses from other cells next to him and he cupped his hands over his mouth, trying to pry his wrists apart.

His surroundings were dark and gloomy, much like the prisons of medieval era or somewhere around there. He could hear soft voices from somewhere off, weeping of women or children. He coughed and tried to push himself from the wall, unsure of how long he had been out cold.

That bitch…he amused himself with thoughts of Darcy's death at his hands for a moment, anger boiling inside him. He heard what he thought was her voice at the end of the dungeons, and if he listened carefully he could hear the sounds of a gun being fired.

She opened the door to his cage and walked inside proudly, standing above him with the gun pressed to his forehead. She slammed the tip of a needle into his bicep, injecting the contents quickly enough. John felt the drugs wear off, but he was forced to suppress the feelings of rage as she held the gun to his temple.

"Get up," she ordered gruffly, stepping back. He got to his feet using the wall behind him for support. Darcy handed him the gun.
"Let's go," she said.

"What the hell do you mean? You get me caught only to let me go again?" He turned the gun on her.

"Who the hell are you working for?" he demanded. Darcy looked behind her at the passage into the prison.

"Who do you work for?" he asked again. This time, footsteps answered him, along with Ridder's voice. Darcy breathed heavily and pushed him outside the cell.

"Go down that hallway and through the door. Take the elevator to the top floor, grab your daughter, and take the elevator to the basement where you can get out without being seen." She pushed him. "GO!"

Doggett didn't have time to ask her whether or not she was lying to him. He watched for a moment more, grabbing the handle on the door and shutting it behind him just to hear the sounds of limbs hitting flesh and gun shots.

"I took their smiles and I made them mine.
I sold my soul just to hide the light.
And now I see what I really am,
A thief, a whore, and a liar.
I run to you.
Call out your name.
I see you there, farther away…"

Ridder looked down at her, remembering her, eyeing her in the way he always did. She looked more beautiful with the blood on her face and the bruises on her body. They soon faded, leaving the skin fresh for new beatings of course, and he would be happy to administer them, seeing as how she had let the agent go.

It was unlike Darcy to have conflicted feelings about a mission. She was nothing but government property. She thought only what she was paid to, did only what she was ordered to, and killed anything she felt would damage her chances of doing so. And yet here she was setting an FBI agent free for some reason or another. He dismissed his two guards, sliding a hand under her chin and pulling her head up to face him. They had chained her to the wall during her moments of weakness, keeping her from doing more damage to Ridder than he had done to her.

"You know…I know what you're thinking," he said. "Why is he doing this to me? Why is he touching me? Why? Why? Why?!" Ridder yanked it hand out from under her chin and punched her head against the wall, knocking her nearly senseless. He grabbed her chin again, blood spewing out from between her lips. "Why is such a human question Darcy!" He grabbed her by the collar, holding her head with his knuckles, making her watch him. "But that's what you always were, right? A human girl who was given something that made her expensive. Just a whore for power."

"If I'm a whore…" She began weakly. "YOU MADE ME THIS WAY!" He punched her again, striking the side of her head against the wall. Her arms were pulling on the chains, longing to be set free so she could do something in her defense. By that time, anything would have looked better than allowing herself to be Ridder's punching bag.

"I MADE YOU A KILLER, DARCY!" He shouted, his face inches from hers. "I MADE YOU A SURVIVOR! I MADE YOU EVERYTHING ANYONE COULD EVER ASK FOR!"

"YOU MADE ME A WHORE, RIDDER!" He punched her again, grabbing her throat and forcing her against the wall with a tightening fist. Darcy choked, blood dripping from her cracked lips and down to his hand. Ridder slammed his hand against the wall.

"I OWN YOU!" He shouted. Darcy felt his fingers tighten again and black spots appeared in front of her eyes. She slumped backwards against the wall and Ridder stood up, releasing her.

Doggett hit the button on the inside of the elevator frantically, waiting for the doors to slide closed. At the end of the hallways he could several of Ridder's men push in through the door, opening fire on him. The elevator finally closed off, and shielded him temporarily from the oncoming barrage of bullets. It started to move upwards to the top floor. He breathed heavily. His senses were heightened by whatever Darcy had injected him with. He imagined it was stimulants of some kind or adrenaline to counter act the effects of the painkillers she had given him. He could feel his heart racing and breathing quickened, while every fiber in his body seemed to speed around, constantly looking like a paranoid maniac.

The elevator seemed like it was taking forever, but he knew that wasn't the drugs. It was the impatience that came with knowing his daughter was in the hands of a maniac and he had allowed it to happen.

All it would have taken was a bullet to the head. Than he could have gone home without the rest of the day's events playing out in front of him the way they did. He could go home and have his family there with him instead of having to look over his shoulder at another intruder wanting to break into his house.

So maybe it was just my fault. It was a saddening thought, but Doggett knew he more than likely had no one else to blame. He had brought Darcy home with him. He had insisted that she stay and give them answers. And now he was paying for it with his daughter, his wife, and his life, although the latter of the three paled in comparison to the previous two.

The elevator came to a stop in an office he remembered and recalled but he couldn't place at some point in time. The carpet was the most familiar from when Darcy had kicked him inside with so much force it left a bruise on his back. Her idea of helping people was obviously not as good as the average human being's. Of course, he had no idea who she was really helping when it came to their current situation. First she had promised him a way in. Then she drugged him and took him to her boss. And then she had let him go again. He could look at it like she was actually attempting at assisting him in the rescue of his daughter or she was changing her mind about things very, very quickly.

The office was wide, with windows that opened the outer walls to most of the city. It was carpeted in navy, with black leather chairs seated in front of a mahogany desk with papers piled everywhere and pens tossed about frantically. He looked around for his daughter anywhere, walking around to behind the desk where he saw a small lock of blonde hair stick out from the bottom. He moved over too quickly, reaching his hand down to the floor as he lowered to her only to have his sink her teeth into him and raise a letter opened threateningly at him, preparing to kill him.

"Meredith!" He said quickly, his heart pounding and arm aching from her teeth marks. His daughter stopped, not recognizing him for a moment before she dropped the leather opener and bit her lip, starting to cry.

She moved over to him and curled up next to him like a cat, burying her head in his shoulder. He picked her up and walked out, not expecting to come back.

"She never was and never will be.
You don't know how you betrayed me.
And somehow you've got everybody fooled…"

There was an agonizing silence settling over the car Mulder was driving in. Jason sat in the passenger's seat, breathing deeply, trying to think of anything but his involvement in the case. He was not looking forward to Ridder discovering he was spilling his guts on years of government research. It would happen eventually, he knew that, but he doubted whether Ridder even knew if he was missing yet.

"To see some old friends." He replied, changing lanes as they moved out of the populated district of Washington and into the residential sector, finding their selves surrounded by high apartment buildings that loomed over Jason. They reminded him how deep he was in this and how fast he was continuing to sink. He wanted to run away now, break free from the corporate chains that were holding him in place and disappear with Darcy. He knew the chances of that happening were slim. Ridder kept tighter tabs on Darcy that Jason could even imagine. His levels of control exceeded the Syndicate's.

Mulder pulled into the parking lot of a rather old set of apartments, coming to a stop in the first available spot. Jason found the building one of the cheapest in town, something he'd find teenagers living in just before and during University because they couldn't afford anything better. He got out of the car when Mulder did, following the agent across the pavement to the front door feeling nauseas with each step.

The sun was just up over the horizon, shining out like a beacon and giving him some kind of optimism. It was a small shred of optimism though, seeing as how nothing ever went his way. Darcy, the only girl he ever loved, was a contract killer with an agenda that matched her employer. If Ridder said, "Jump," she'd ask, "How high?" If he said, "Kill your self," she'd ask, "How?" If he told her to murder off any men she'd had sex with, she'd come looking for him without complaint. She was his and yet it was only in body. Her mind belonged to Ridder whether he liked it or not.

"What do you want me to do?" Jason had to ask as they got into the freight elevator and Mulder pulled down the gate.

"I brought her cell phone here when Agent Doggett called me," Mulder said, pressing the button for the fourth floor. "Unfortunately someone from your department cut off all contact for the time being. I want to know where those numbers go."

"I won't be much help. Only Ridder would know where those numbers really go. You're going to need to trace them over the phone grid in Washington and that could take hours."

"Which is why we're here." Mulder replied. "I have some friends working on the numbers on the grid right now, but you've got some inside view on where they go. I need a list of names."

"Okay." Jason said with a nod. Mulder found it odd that someone this close to the conspiracy was so compliant, but up until that point his information had not steered them wrong, and he had also saved the life of the super soldier they were trying to hold as proof. Mulder couldn't think of a better way to get the phone numbers they had found in her cell phone.

The elevator opened on the fourth floor and Jason was shocked. The whole hallway was cluttered with computer junk, old hard drives and motherboards lying idly all over the place. Wires shot out from out directions and places Jason didn't even think wires could exist. Boxes and boxes of old magazines with scantly clad women on the covers were stacked outside the doors, and the name MULDER was scrawled on the side. Mulder coughed nervously, saying nothing, but walked by and knocked on the first door to the left.

"Byers? Langly? Frohike?" Jason looked inside anxiously, finding the apartments in much the same shape as the hallways. Metal book cases were on every wall with cardboard boxes with splitting sides occupying the shelves. He found himself in a technician's dream, the whole room filled with computer magazines and odd machines that did every chore imaginable. Magazines lay scattered on the counter, each one from the 1970's or 60's with the letters PC on every cover. On the counters in the far distances of the apartment there were stacks of newspapers.

"Where did you think you were going?" The shortest one asked. He looked frog-like with a wide mouth and large eyes that were dilated by the thick Coke bottle glasses he was wearing. Jason was in shock.

His whole division was selling stuff to the Lone Gunmen. It was the most popular topic with Ridder to discuss what would be put into the public next, and most of it was bullshit the Men in Black created for kicks. They would subscribe by giving the addresses of the government's Safe Houses and read them while laughing their asses off doing something trivial that they tried to fill their lives with. Jason could hardly believe Mulder had taken him here.

"Jason this is Frohike…" He pointed to the shortest one. "Langly…" The blonde in the background had hair the exceeded Darcy's, curled at the bottom and hanging limply around his shoulders. "And Byers." The tall, bearded gentleman appeared from the small kitchen in the back, looking at Jason. "This is Jason. He's going to be helping out with the Cell Phone numbers."

"Don't tell me you brought us a rookie." Langly said, doubting Jason greatly by his boyish appearance. Jason took some offence to the tone in his voice.

"Sure." Frohike said sarcastically. "You've probably never even seen a computer."

"Down, Frohike," Mulder said jokingly. "I would not insult the grand mastery of hackers by bringing a rookie. Jason is a technician with the government."

"That doesn't change anything, Mulder." Langly replied. "I've seen techs with the CIA that can't even crack their own system."

"Actually the CIA system is based on grid levels, which makes it increasingly harder to crack with each year." Jason said as if trying to prove himself. "They add on a new layer every time their system is redone. Anyone can find that difficult."

"I'll give him credit for knowing something." Frohike added. "In a few years maybe we'll let him touch the keyboard."

Mulder was enjoying their little insult spew on Jason's behalf. Jason decided to end it.

"Of course all the real goods are on the FBI's website. If you can hack that system you're deemed a genius."

"Alright he has ruined his career as a hacker." Langly said. "The FBI system takes five minutes on a bad day. You can see every system by just typing three passwords and avoiding all detection, which you can do with an encryption box."

"Well than I'm sure you know all about the system labeled LL6Y." Jason said. He was getting odd looks from around the room, signaling that he was either insane or hallucinating. "LL6Y? The compulsive list of Undercover Agents in the world at any given moment? You have seen it, haven't you?"

The three exchanged a confused look, questioning whether or not they had in fact found such a system on their recent hacks of the FBI database. They looked back at Jason.

"But I suppose you weren't expecting a rookie hacker to know about that, were you?" he asked with a coy smirk on his face. Frohike shrugged.

It was blind to her, foreign and untouchable. It was terrifying to think of such unstable ground. Love was having your eyes covered and walking through a thunderstorm…

She curled closer to him, watching him sleep, his face relaxed and free of any of the day's pains and tribulations. She could see him in the mirror, watching her put on her make up, watching her try and cover up her tears and her sadness with dark colours to match her mood. He was so good to her, and what did she do? She scorned his feelings and his sacrifices. It never occurred to her that he could be gone one day. To her he was the only thing that continued and persisted. Male whores came and went in blurs of passion, but he remained, the only constant that stood still in a life that kept revolving.

He had not awoken when she came back into the room. The sun was up by then, filling their room with unnaturally white illumination. She dropped her bloodied gloves in the sink and sank onto the bed next to him, watching him vividly, memorizing him. Her hands were folded under her cheek as she lay there and dreamed about all that they had been through together.

"We cannot do this." She had once told him. He looked hurt at the words but the emotion was wasted on one who didn't understand pain. How could she? Pain was her ally. It told her she was alive. It gave her strength. Pain was useful to her.

"Ridder will find out." She told him, once again scorning his feelings for her with the tone of her voice. "And when he does he will have me kill you."

"Than what? Sleep with me? Fuck me? Love me?" She was curt with him because she had to be. He still looked like she was taking shots at him with a gun.

There was silence. She turned from him, looking out and into the welcoming darkness of the night.

"Besides…" She said, still not facing him. "I will fuck other men besides you. And the jealousy will drive you mad."

She stared at him on the bed, remembering that night vividly and accurately. Every drop of rain was catalogued in her memory, hidden away from the 'breed'. She couldn't believe he risked everything for her taste, for her touch, for her smell, for her love…

Love? You don't love him Darcy. You love the idea of him, but you are incapable of love. Look at you. The blood of thousands has brushed against your hands. You are invincible, but you are irrevocably alone.

Ridder was the first man in her life. He controlled her and she loved him for it. She needed the reassurance of control in her life.

This was how she would later describe her relationship with John Doggett, although she would never admit it to anyone but herself. John Doggett locked her away and held her at gunpoint. She hated loving him. She loved hating him. It was a cruel and vicious circle.

The scientists in Implantation searched the 'breed' for malfunctions, finding them completely in tact. They couldn't determine what was wrong with them.

Doctor Evan Admiral grabbed the phone and hit Ridder's extension. David picked up the phone and said nothing, waiting for an update.

"We've done all the scans we can do in this lab and we've found nothing wrong with the 'breed'."

"What about the state of her brain?" Ridder asked, knowing it could account for 'breed' malfunctions.

"We've just done both an MRI and a CAT scan and came up with only a mild increase in cerebral output. It's not significant enough to account for the changes you reported though. She should still be pretty docile with readings like this." Ridder was quiet while listening to Admiral. He breathed deeply.

"I'll be down in a minute to talk to her about it. Wake her up for me." Evan hung up the phone and turned around.

The examination table was empty, something he found quite odd since the IV was still hung above it from when they had brought Darcy down. He grabbed his keycard and slid it through the lock, pressing in the 4-digit access code.

He tried again, finding that once more, the lock was jammed from the inside. Ridder hit the locking mechanism before looking back up.

Darcy walked out from around the large machines inside, a scalpel held menacingly in her fingers as blood moved down her front and over her arms. The white hospital gown was stained with blood and pieces of gore.

"This answers one thing:" Monica said. "What Brad was supposed to get for his friend D.R."

"I've run a trace around Washington for those initials." Scully began as Skinner came up to them, the three inside the Doggett living room. "It's going to take a while to narrow the search."

"You two," he said, pointing at them. "I need you to come with me now. There are some things you have to know about Brad Follmer that I can't tell you in this house."

"I fuck you to fuck you over.
I fuck you 'til I find someone better.
I fuck you in secret.
I fuck you because I can't remember if I already fucked you before.
I fuck you out of boredom.
I fuck you because I can't feel it anyway.
I fuck you to make the pain go away…."

Marilyn Manson, Para Noir from The Golden Age of Grotesque

She pressed her hands on the glass, the palms spreading glossy lines of blood and sweat as she slid them over the windows and down towards her head and neck. The right hand was higher than the other, and Ridder could see a long gash clearly displayed on the palm. She had been cut, but nothing too serious. Even then he could see the skin healing itself quickly.

It was as if he were viewing a demon walking out of heaven itself. Blood dripped from the walls and he finally saw the mangled bodies of Dr. Admiral and his assistant, their faces shredded by the scalpel she had dropped somewhere in the mess of flesh and blood. Her lips had small droplets of the red fluid on them, moving down her chin as a lock of hair was stuck inside it, the tip of the oily lock drying into the crusted blood. The rest of her hair hung in her face and was clumped together by sweat, oil and more blood.

Ridder stopped in front of her, watching her, eyeing her carefully as her own green irises traced over him with a sinister glare. She looked at his blonde hair and blue eyes, his childish skull shape with a wide chin and his cruel lips. She wanted to slash off his face too, but she felt that she wanted something else more at that point.

"Who am I?" she asked him. David hesitated before answering.

"Government property." He replied quickly. She shook her head mutely.

"That's what I am, Ridder," she said. "Who am I?"

David was at a loss for words. Darcy's eyes beseeched him.

"You are a government experiment," he said bluntly. "You are a nineteen year old experiment."

"Who else am I?" She demanded. "Did I ever have a family or a mother or a father or friends? Was I ever anyone, Ridder?"
There was silence. David watched her, his whole body becoming stone. How did she find out about that? How the hell did she remember that? I knew I should have killed her when they brought her in. I knew her life was too good to be true. I knew I should have snapped her pathetic little neck.

"You were once a baby harvested during a government program." He replied. "Why does this matter?"

"It matters to me. Why it matters is none of your concern. Now tell me who my mother was."

Darcy sounded serious. For the first time since they had met she had wanted something other than money from him. For the first time she was actually a separate mind instead of a mindless follower, a hound he ordered around as frequently as he pleased. Now she was displaying something he had never seen in her before. She was showing him humanity, choice, and freedom.

"I don't know."

"Bull shit!" She slammed her palms on the glass causing him to jump back a little. "I know you know."

"I don't."

Darcy's lip quivered. She walked away from the windows and back into the lab.

"Come on Darcy, what does it matter? You're not a human anymore. You aren't the same person you once were." David looked around. Darcy had disappeared. She had completely vanished. He leaned into the glass a little more and peered around but found that she was gone for the moment. "Darcy?" he asked her loudly. "Darcy, come back here now." His voice changed and he was stern and direct with her trying to get them back into the regular work relationship they had. He wanted her to be his dog once again.

She finally reemerged from behind the shelves of medical supplies. He watched her lift up her right hand to her ear, aiming a scalpel at the soft flesh over the 'breed'.

David's heart skipped a beat.

"Tell me or I'll do it."

"You wouldn't."

Darcy didn't answer. She started pushing the sharpened blade into her flesh. Ridder's mouth opened in protest.

"Don't you dare…"

Darcy thrust the blade into the 'breed'. Her veins went cold as the poison was released into her system.

She threw the blade to the floor.

"You have twelve hours to loosen your tongue Ridder," she said, walking away from the windows. Ridder grabbed his cell phone. He called for a technician to come down immediately and open up the door.

"What is it?" Scully asked while crossing her arms. The wind blew across the lawn as the three agents stood out in the back yard as the police combed the house for evidence and clues. Monica sighed deeply, her shoulder hurting greatly. Skinner looked around one last time before continuing.

"Brad Follmer was out to dinner with a man named David Ridder the night before his murder." Skinner said quietly, his voice almost a whisper. Scully and Monica's eyes narrowed. "He was meeting with him to seal a business deal that could make him very rich."

"What kind of deal?" Scully asked.

"The kind that involves the robbery of a case file from your office," he said emphasizing 'your office' towards Monica, knowing Scully was still stationed in Quantico. "He was asked to bring the Emily Simm case to Ridder the following day but he never delivered."

"So Ridder had him killed?" Monica asked. Skinner nodded.

"How do you know all this?" Scully questioned him. Skinner breathed deeply.

"I have several sources inside Ridder's division, including one that recently went missing earlier today. He was also Mulder's source of information inside the government." He realized a second later that Scully had no idea the informant existed, the look on her face making him wish he had never brought up Kyle in front of them.

"Mulder had a contact inside the government?" she asked. Skinner nodded. "I'm going to kill him."

"Look just calm down, alright? Mulder probably didn't want you to know for safety reasons but either way it's irrelevant. The whole fact of the matter is that the assassin that David sent for Follmer is Emily Simm."

Monica's throat went dry. She had never heard much about Scully's alleged daughter from the file. All she knew was that it was believed Emily had died from a mysterious illness before her body vanished entirely. Skinner continued.

"Follmer was a part of the cover up," he said finally, watching Scully's face contort from horrified to exceedingly hurt and disbelieving. It was agonizing for her to think that the man she had sought to protect and believed to be a victim was now deserving of his death. "He was the one who retrieved her from the hospital and brought her to a government training facility outside of Washington. It was there she was bred into the ultimate of government assassins for a project known only as Genesis, one with records kept only in their offices underground."

There was silence. Scully's mind was reeling. My daughter was taken from me to become a killer. She was made into that thing in the basement by those bastards.

Correction: Mulder can die some other time. But I will kill those assholes by the time the day is over.

"I guess she had a purpose after all," Scully said. There was silence after that, only interrupted by Monica's cell phone. She left the conversation quickly, saying that she had to go pick up John and Meredith.

Jason looked through the printed list of numbers from Darcy cell phone. He scanned down the list finding that he recognized every couple of numbers. He named them off to the waiting Lone Gunmen who were looking at their computers and trying to find the telephone signals. They were having a hard time checking the directory with all the names Jason was giving them. Slowly but surely, Jason was learning about the beauty of aliases.

A name, he had learned once upon a time, gave someone power. It was what gave Darcy power. The men she knew had given her their names. They had given her their hearts and their money, and she had returned the favour with a kiss and a bullet. But their names gave her control over them. It gave her more power than their money or their hearts ever could.

But he hadn't understood how many employees actually used aliases. He didn't use one.

Maybe that's why I'm so damn expendable, he thought with a sigh, looking through the list some more.

"Are you sure you don't know anything about what their real names might be?" Jason shook his head.

"That's how I was taught about them. It was one of my only jobs," he said.

"How did you get all of this information?" Byers asked.

I slept with the boss's hit woman, he thought bitterly, remembering her lips on his hungrily, biting for more as her hands moved down his chest.

Her red hair was being ripped by her fingers as she kissed him again…

He was shaken awake from the memory by the watching eyes of the hackers. He prayed he hadn't said what he thought he said out loud.

Monica was out of the car before it came to a full stop. Her feet pounded on the pavement to her husband and small daughter on the street corner before she could breathe properly. She didn't give her husband any time to explain or speak before grabbing Meredith and him in a hug, kissing him and pulling his head to hers with her good arm. Meredith made a face.

"This has to be child abuse," she said spitefully. Monica laughed as she kissed John again and pulled her daughter closer. They barely breathed between each other.

Scully got out of the car frantically, hating to break up the reunion between husband, daughter and wife. She walked up to the circle of smothering affection and spoke quickly.

"Where is she?" John stopped and watched her, his body starting to wear down from the adrenaline's affects wearing off. Scully seemed at her wits end.

"She's still inside," he said. "I don't know where."

Scully's heart was breaking. She had come so close to having her daughter back. She had come so close to having her family again. But now she was painfully reminded of how it was not meant to be. Doggett closed his eyes slowly.

"I have to go to her," Scully said. John stopped her.

"It's suicide Dana."

"I don't care! Don't you get it!? She is my daughter, John. She means everything to me." Scully was on the verge of tears. "I lost her once and I never got the chance to see her again." She choked back her tears. The casket opened and only sand met her, the final reminder that Emily had ever existed. It was all just in sand…

John watched her and for a moment he knew how she felt. She was feeling as if nothing mattered anymore as long as her child was missing. He only knew because he had felt the exact same thing when Meredith had gone missing.

"There is no way back inside that building," he said. "It's crawling with guards."

"Well than we will have to find a way inside," she said, so sure of herself. "Where did Mulder take Jason?"

Chapter 25: Meredith is a Criminal, Scully's Plan, a...

"'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome,
And I don't feel right when you're gone away.
You've gone away,
You don't feel me here anymore…"

Seether feat. Amy Lee, Broken from Disclaimer

Doggett had not been to the Lone Gunmen's apartment in a long time. Meredith always enjoyed it because she signed onto MSN for the whole time and talked to her friends (while searching through files on their hard drive). William would sit next to her, watching her take over the conversations and take about silly nonsense with her girlfriends and laugh at them. He never was extroverted, even over the Internet. But Meredith had a vibrancy that didn't go out, whether she was on the phone or on the Internet.

He was growing tired and sick, and he felt physically ill when he noticed his wife's arm in a sling, her body broken and mangled from the day's events. He tried to apologize but she shushed him, leaning against him with Meredith in her arm, her head on his shoulder as she calmly accepted the moment and allowed it to exist within her life. She could feel her eyes burn at the scent of him again. She had imagined that she may never have seen him again for one reason or another, most likely for death.

Death seemed to like them that day, or death seemed to like Darcy that day. She wanted it to fuck off and leave them alone. What had they done to deserve such misery? Nothing. They seemed to want the best enough. They wanted what everyone wanted: A nice family, a big house, and a new car whenever possible. But death was enjoying them, and Monica prayed it would leave within the next few minutes or take her before shehad to endure any more of the day from hell.

Skinner was driving. He was growing too old for the job of reeling the Agents in, and now with Brad dead, he was likely to finally just retire. He had been a friend of the conspiracy for far too long to truly enjoy his life anymore. He was just wearing thin, and eventually he would be gone too.

Monica closed her eyes, wishing that day would never come. She prayed for a world without death. She prayed for a world where she could always wake up with John next to her, to see her daughter on a stage with an unrecognizable voice or sitting in the kitchen with a large mug of coffee in her hand. She wanted to always be there, in that moment, lost forever in the feeling of her husband's fingers on her back, traveling up the length of her spine as they fell asleep together. She didn't care if they ever reached a destination. They could simply be stuck together and she could be content for the rest of her days.

They came to a stop near the curb. Monica was shaken awake by her husband gently but she didn't want to move. She pulled her arm around his neck tighter to keep him there. Doggett smiled lightly.

"Come on Monica. The day's almost over," he said.

"This day will never be over." She moaned back to him. Doggett grinned a little, the door opened by Skinner. He told them to go on ahead and that they'd be up in a little bit. Scully and the old AD walked inside silently, leaving the family behind in the car. Meredith looked up from the seat.

"Can we go home?" she asked him. Doggett looked from the building to the car.

"We don't have any keys."

Meredith got up from the back seat and climbed over to the driver's seat, dropping down in front of the steering wheel. With her tiny hands she ripped the wires out from under the steering column and crawled between the floor and the dash. John shifted a little to see what she was doing. All he saw was her tiny hand reach up and touch the bare wires to the steering column and the car started to rev up. She removed them after a moment, crawling into the front seat.

"Let's go home daddy," she said. John stared in disbelief.

"Where did you learn how to do that?"

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Meredith answered quickly. "Let's go home."

He wished Meredith could drive them home. He moved out from under his wife but couldn't, her body a dead weight on his shoulder.

"Monica," he said. No response. "Monica." She was completely asleep. He rolled his eyes and gently lay her down across the seat. He got into the driver's seat and looked over at his daughter.

"Who were you watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with?"

"Mulder," she said. "But he told me not to tell anyone so don't tell him I told you."

John was silent. He picked up the cell phone and called to Skinner to apologize about his car being hot wired. Skinner groaned and gave a flippant comment about John's delinquent daughter.

Skinner hung up the cell phone.

"What is it?" Scully asked him as the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened.

"Your god daughter is becoming a criminal too quickly." He commented. Scully watched him leave the elevator and cocked a brow, unsure of what he meant by that, but knowing Meredith it couldn't be incredibly good. She had once taught William how to make a 'small' shaving cream bomb that she learned how to make from her father's old designs as a child. This 'harmless' and 'small' invention was set up in Fox's car and when he opened the door he received a large wad of shaving cream to his face, the rest exploding throughout the car. John paid for it to be cleaned, although he sounded as if he was laughing when Scully called him on the phone.

They walked to the first apartment on the left and entered without knocking, Scully such a frequent visitor that she didn't need to knock or shout before coming inside. Skinner was a little less frequent, but he found himself there when Doggett and Reyes were working on a case of some kind.

The apartment hadn't changed at all. Stacks of magazines that Scully no longer allowed Mulder to keep in his apartment were piled around wherever there was free space. Free space was simply another term for an area that was not filled with old computer parts and junk the guys did not want to see ever again. Their philosophy was that if one simply puts something in a deep enough pile of other things the thing will disappear, and no amount of reasoning from even a scientist like Scully could convince them otherwise. They were three hopeless computer nerds who, as Mulder had put days before, "Had not been laid since they were teenagers," and, he added, "Probably were not even truly laid then."

She had slapped him playfully for that comment, and he didn't 'get any' as she had put it later that night.

The guys were all scattered somewhere. She could hear Frohike in the kitchen calling out the various names of alcohol in their refrigerator. Langly was in front of the computer, his fingers flying over the keys as Byers hovered over his shoulder and pointed at names, an action which caused Langly to shake his head. Jason sat alienated, looking over the list once again while writing D's and K's together next to the names her didn't know. He picked up Darcy's cell phone and flipped it open.

4 new messages. He narrowed his eyes. He was about to check the voice mail when he noticed Scully and Skinner.

"Where is she?" he asked them. Scully seemed at her wit's end.

"She's inside your division and I need your help to get her back," she said quickly. Skinner had no time to speak. Jason's mouth went dry.

"She's inside division?" he asked, not getting anything but a nod. "Where?"

"We don't know."

He tried not to show his anger or frustration. As far as anyone knew, he and Darcy were not supposed to be in love or even linked to one another. Of course, that was as far as anyone knew, and people could know certain things without revealing them. He was worried that maybe Ridder had found out, and that maybe he was next on Ridder's hit list. It would be ironic if Darcy was sent for him next.

"Well I can't get you in there."

"Why not?" Skinner asked him.

"Because there's a security measures placed all over that building," he said. "I mean you don't simply waltz into division and are immediately granted access to the building. Hell, I've worked there for years and I haven't been granted access anywhere but the above-ground building."

"What do you mean by above-ground?" Scully asked him.

"There are about four levels that are subterranean laboratories that are only accessible from a private elevator in Ridder's office," he said. Scully looked at Skinner who was grabbing his cell phone from his pocket. "What?"

"Agent Doggett escaped using that elevator."

"Oh sure, but he probably got on from a floor inside the labs. To get in from the outside you have to go through the parking garage and the codes change daily to random number patterns."

"You mean like 827424?" Langly asked.

"Yeah, why?" Jason asked.

"Because I just hacked the system." He replied. "And I've got ten minutes to find out anything you need to know before they can trace through the encryption boxes."

Here I am.

She felt the irony of the situation start to sink in as Ridder tried to open the door. The tech and he were talking in voices that she couldn't hear from her position on the floor, curled up close to the surgical table with her thin legs pulled to her chest. She couldn't move otherwise, her body frozen as the poison caused the blood vessels in her eyes to burst and make the whites of her eyes completely red surrounding green irises. Ridder slammed his fist against the unbreakable windows, ordering something the tech obviously couldn't do.

A rotten Queen on my throne of rotting corpses.

She straightened out her arms and stretched her back, the muscles feeling strangely relaxed for one who was dying slowly.

Looking at my life as if I'm watching a movie.

Ridder shot the tech dead, looking through the window."

"Do you think you're smart, Darcy? You're going to die in there."

I've taken all and given nothing. I'm the creator of my own lies.

"Do you hear me?" He shouted. Darcy's eyes barely moved.

It's ironic. It's pathetic. It's weak and it's a lie.

She closed her eyes.

Don't you see Ridder? You can't kill me. I've already died.

It's short, but I'll write more in a bit!

There is an Ending

"The worst is over now and we can breathe again.
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away.
There's so much life to learn and no one left to fight.
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain…"

Seether feat. Amy Lee, Broken from Disclaimer

There is an ending. It's out there somewhere. I can feel it whenever I look back at my life and when I look at my son. I can feel it when war is declared somewhere else in the world, when my husband gets sick with the flu, when I find a gray hair, and when I find the photos of my son's birth.

There is an ending. It's out there somewhere. I can see it when I watch the stars in the heavens, finding that the sky is not the same as when I was child. I find it when I look at my god daughter on stage, her body growing and changing. I look at it when day becomes night and when night becomes morning, and the glorious sun and moon change places for the day.

There is an ending. It's out there somewhere. I hear it coming faster than ever before with new shapes and sounds that astound and change the face of the world forever. I could hear it when I heard your voice for the first time, and I still hear it when my son laughs and cries and speaks, whether he talks or the past, present or future or a time and a place where neither time nor places exist.

I thought you ended. I thought you were gone completely. It turns out I was wrong about that ending. It was too soon for you to die, much too soon. You were too young and I was too old to care about such things as the ending.

But I can feel the ending. And it spares no one, not even you.

Do you remember when I said goodbye to you for the last time? You looked at me as if you were ready to cry, but I knew you weren't. You were too far gone for me to hold anymore and for me to heal anymore. You were too broken and too twisted for me to heal as good as new. I wish that everyday you were beaten down I could have saved you from such an end. But that end was not meant to be. And our end together was never meant to be.

You were meant for other things. Maybe not better things. But you were meant for other things.

In my quest to discover what my life has meant to me I drew several conclusions about my past and those few days I spent fretting over you as a mother should. I found that in my life there were too many questions left to be answered to settle down. There were too many ends left to be met for me to have yielded for the men in black who try and cover up those ends so that none may rise up to meet them. There were so many other roads and paths to be discovered in the process of my life to have spent there, staring into your coffin of sand, wishing that we had so many more days before your end. There were so many other feelings and wishes and dreams and choices to be made to have been left standing there, watching the remains of my daughter, the product of a barren womb, the property of a government who would neither love her nor care for her, and in the end would leave her to rot before they would sacrifice anything to gain her happiness.

I curse everyday that I accepted that end. I hope you understand this, even though you understand so little of the beauties of the world. You still looked like a stone when we dragged you from that lab, still that iron clad composure that I remembered in myself when I was younger than you, but nowhere near the levels of desensitization that you have reached.

If you were here to see the end with us what would you say as you witnessed our cities falling and our lives being destroyed? How would you exist knowing that our lives have been played as pieces on a chess board working forward to this moment where the last of our race is being occupied and used by an alien entity that is eating out our insides and feasting on our bodies? You'd smile sardonically and pick up a gun again, fighting to the last, wouldn't you? You'd run in without thinking of the risks and destroy everything with a pulse.

I wanted to hold you a lot longer than I did before you had to leave. I knew it better than you did (or so I like to think) that you had to go. You weren't meant to stay around and wait for such an end. I imagine you now in Morocco or Spain or Hungary in a small café drinking coffee or perched high with a rifle in your hands using this letter for target practice. Either way, I have written this as a sign that I do miss you and that as short as our time was together, I loved you as much as a mother could love any one of her children (even though you had and still have a few edges to smooth out).

I know you won't write back. Even though it's been over a year I know you won't risk your cover that easily. So I'll leave you on this note: I will miss you Emily.

Sincerely,
You-Know-Who

John Doggett looked at his watch and raced up the steps to the Washington theatre. He was five minutes early to pick Meredith up for her audition, but he found that when he walked in the door it gave him a perfect advantage to sneak back and see his daughter performing while she was unaware of his presence.

The theatre was one of the older auditoriums in the district and was scheduled to be replaced by a newer model in the following year. He walked down the creaking wooden hallway, sliding past the stage mothers who were putting fake eyelashes on their daughters in preparation to face the director and the casting director of the new play: Elemental. There were infants crying who were waiting what seemed like miles away from the door which housed the auditions, unguarded by the stage director who was helping a mother get her daughter in costume. He found his way to the door but was blocked off by a strange woman peeking in at his daughter.

He was about to push her out of the way (GENTLY) but found that it was Monica. He crossed his arms.

"I thought you were going out to get more coffee?" He said in a whisper. She turned around quickly and laughed a little. Monica leaned forward and kissed him, her arms wrapped around his head, pulling her deeper into the kiss. There was silence for a time, the sound of children drowned out under Monica's touch before she leaned back and laughed again.

"John. You should have told me what you gave her for a monologue." He looked confused. Monica eyed him carefully.

"I thought you were going to find her one," he said. They stood silent for a moment before he pushed past her and peeked inside at his daughter.

Meredith (he thought so. He wasn't quite sure) was dressed in a black coat that was much too big for her. It was stolen from her mother's closet and would normally come to Monica's knees. On her daughter, however it came down to her ankles and trailed along on the floor. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and streaked with red food colouring, and she was speaking so quickly he couldn't understand a word she was saying. The directors were in awe, however, at her energy. She pulled up a chair from the back and got down on her back, talking about hot wiring a car (all by herself).

"And then came the best part." She announced, getting up to her feet. "We broke back into the division building and found the evil assassin in her home. But she wasn't ready to kill us anymore. Oh no. She was about to let her FOUR HEADED HOUND OF HELL ATTACK AND EATS US UNTIL WE WERE NOTHING BUT PILES OF DISGUSTING…"

The long list of disgusting organs from the human body made the directors cock a brow. They looked strangely at her as she pulled forth another tool for her monologue from the coat. It turned out to be a toy chain saw from William's old toolbox, one that made soft noises when one pulled the rip cord and caused it to hum and shake lightly. Meredith grabbed it and swung it down on the chair as she made sounds of screaming and gurgling noises. She jumped up on the chair and performed what John could only describe as the weirdest dance he had ever seen.

When he final stood up, Monica didn't look too impressed.

"I swear she gets that from Mulder not me."

Monica laughed again as Meredith continued jumping up and down on the chair.

The sunlight streamed through the windows of the apartment in Italy, the beautiful scents and sounds of the markets beneath them rising up to meet her with the afternoon wind. She looked over at Jason on the bed, his laptop open as he spoke to someone in Italian quickly over the cellular device. She glanced back outside at the small two year old running around with his nanny and his twin brother. She held herself slowly, tightening her grip on the letter she had just received.

Jason hung up the cell phone. He looked over at her and smiled as she walked back over to the bed, wrapped in nothing but a bed sheet.

"Are you going to write back?" he asked. She looked at the letter and shook her head.

"Not yet," she said. "Not until he's dead."

Jason was hurt by that statement and she knew it. He didn't like the idea of her killing again, but she couldn't get out of a habit that was bred into her.

"Don't do it," he said. "For them." He gestured towards the window, speaking of their twin sons. She shook her head again.

"I have to do it," she said. "For them."

There was silence again.

"So what should we do?" he asked her. She shrugged. "We have the whole day."

"Let's just sit here." She told him. "Let's just sit here and do nothing."

Jason lay back with his wife. It wasn't until he wasn't looking that Emily actually smiled.