XxXxX Chapter Six XxXxX Mulder sat up straight, gasping and blinking in the darkness as the blanket slid from his legs to the floor. Purple ink blot images expanded and shrunk in his memory, and the sound of twigs snapping gave way to the soft burble of his fish tank. A dream. At last. It slipped like a shadow from consciousness even as he dug his fingers into the couch in an effort to hold on. There had been branches hitting him in the face...he was running...Irene was there, but he could never get close enough to see what she looked like...Scully. Still breathing hard, he lay back and let the couch cushions rise up around him. His phone prodded painfully at his hip, so he picked it up, hitting the first memory button. It was ringing her number by the time he held it to his ear. "Hello?" she mumbled a moment later, her voice thick with sleep. He raised his head enough to see his clock read five- oh-six. Oops. "Hey, Scully," he said, keeping his voice soft. "It's me." "Mulder, what's going on? Are you all right?" He heard the covers rustling on her end. "I'm fine," he assured her. "I just had a dream." "Oh," she replied, sounding confused. Then she said it again. "Oh! See, I told you they would come back." "Yeah, okay." He smiled into the receiver. "I guess you deserve an 'I told you so' every once in a while." "Usually I'm just too polite to say it," she answered, and he snorted. "Usually you're just not in a position to say it." He heard her shifting under the blankets again and imagined her curled up in bed with the phone pressed to her ear. "You're awfully cocky for someone who woke me up at five in the morning." "Scully, I'm all kinds of things at five in the morning." "Yes, and the continued success of our partnership depends on you refraining from phoning to share them." The emerging dawn cast gray light into living room, reflecting his possessions in long, thin shadows on the walls. Trees, he remembered, with white light shining through them. The cold, crawling feeling from his dream returned, and he realized that his main reason for calling was to hear her voice. To make sure she was okay. "Mulder?" she said, as he was listening to her breathe. "You didn't fall asleep on me, did you?" "I'm still here." When he didn't say anything further, she prodded him again. "You never told me about your dream." He sat up and swung his feet over onto the hard floor, rubbing his morning stubble with one hand. "I don't really remember it that well." Running, leaves crunching, trees and white light. He felt his neurons stretching with spindly arms, trying to recapture the important part of the fuzzy memory, but there was only empty space. "Well, give it time," she said gently. "Yeah," he answered, thinking that time was the one thing he didn't have. Two dead girls in the space of one week meant that the killer had not enjoyed his time off. Mulder touched the tender skin at his hairline. If there was a clue somewhere, short-circuited in his sparking brain... "...crazy, but I was reading last night that..." "What?" he interrupted. "About the anomalies we found in Beth Kinney's visual cortex," she said, with a touch of impatience. "I remembered I had actually seen similar patterns in *stained* cortex from a monkey study a few years ago, so I dug out those articles last night and reviewed them." "Back up to the part about you being crazy." There was a short silence on the other end. "Not me, Mulder. The..." She hesitated. "Theory." Despite his nagging worry, her words made him relax into a grin. "You mean *your* theory, Scully? You have a crazy theory to share with the class?" "You want to hear what I found or not?" She sounded annoyed now, so he decided not to push it. "By all means, lay it on me." She sighed. "I can't explain it, and it may not even be related, but results from animal studies have found radio- labeled neurons in the visual cortex that correspond to recent patterns of visual activity." "Animals with radio-active brains? What?" "It's a way to see what cells were active during a set period of time," she explained. "Cells use glucose when they're active, so if you give a monkey radio-labeled glucose, the cells that are active during that period of glucose administration will light up later." "Okay, I get it. So in visual cortex, you would see which cells were activated by the monkey looking at things." "Exactly. And studies have shown that the images the animal sees can actually be reflected on the brain, kind of like a fun house mirror. In any case, the staining patterns in these experiments are similar to the discolored neurons in Elizabeth Kinney's brain." She paused. "Only without the radio-active label." As what she was saying sunk in, Mulder got up and began to pace the room. "Scully, you're telling me that we might have a picture of what Beth Kinney was looking at right before she died?" "Well, I wouldn't go that far; we still don't know what caused the discoloration of her neurons. Plus, even if there were a discernable pattern, there's no guarantee that we could accurately reconstruct it." "Can we try?" "It's a long shot, Mulder. And it's just a theory, remember?" He smiled. "But crazy enough that it might just work." XxXxX Scully stepped into her closet, scrunching her toes on the cold wood floor as she considered her choices. The overhead bulb illuminated her army of black suits. She selected one that was still encased in plastic from the dry-cleaners, pressed and neat, and combined it with a pale blue shell and her new black leather ankle boots. It seemed the more ridiculous her life was, the more serious her clothes became. And it was definitely a three-inch-plus kind of day. The kind of shoes that gave a person the necessary authority to ask the tech boys to find out what a dead girl had seen before she died. She hung her robe on a hook but stopped short in her turn to exit. Her box of keepsakes hung over the edge of the top shelf, its lid displaced. Frowning, she pulled it down and rifled through the contents, unable to recall opening it recently. Everything was in order, so she replaced the lid and slid it back into its proper place. With a last, puzzled shake of her head, she smoothed the coat sleeve of the nearest suit and closed the door behind her. XxXxX Okay, he had made some mistakes. He could admit that. The park was too public a place to dump the body, and Lord knew he was still deep in shit over that little slip-up. But not for long; he had a new plan all in order now. He dug out his folder, the one with all the old newspapers in it, and went over the old kills one more time. SHOE KILLER HITS AGAIN! CAPITAL CRIMES: 8 DC MURDERS STILL UNSOLVED FBI PROILER TO JOIN MANHUNT Mulder, he thought as he studied the haggard man in the photo, knowing now that he must have gotten the message. He grinned. "Time to come out and play." By evening, she would be dead. And it would be Mulder's move. XxXxX Mulder returned to the basement, on his second cup of coffee before seven a.m. to find Grenier standing next to his desk. Mulder watched silently from the door for a minute as the other man lifted several of sheets of paper with one fingertip and peered at the contents underneath. "My shopping list," Mulder said eventually, and Grenier dropped his hand. "Oh, you're here." Mulder sipped his coffee. "Yeah, but I could go back out again if you weren't finished snooping." Grenier's jaw tightened and he stepped away from the desk. "You're working for me now, Mulder. It's not spying to wonder what my agents are doing with their time." "Golf, mainly," Mulder replied. "But I'm managing to work the case between holes." Grenier met his humor with stony silence, and Mulder moved to collect the papers on the desk. "You want to know what I'm thinking, Grenier, why don't you just ask me?" "You still don't take any notes," Grenier answered, frowning. Russell knocked on the open door even as she entered the room. "It would be a waste of paper, Adam." She glanced at Mulder. "How's it going? I heard Scully couldn't pull anything useful from the girl in the park." "No, the guy was wearing a mask. I talked to Scully last night, and we're going to pursue a slightly different angle." Off Russell's inquiring look, he said, "I've put out a notice to local departments across the country detailing the basic MO and asking if they've seen anything similar in their old files, particularly files from about 15 years ago. If we can find where this guy got started, we might be able to find out who he is." Grenier shook his head. "Jesus, Mulder, that could take weeks to get a hit." "Or days," Mulder pointed out. "It depends on how quickly people check their records. All I need is one crusty old detective to look at the sheet and say, 'I remember this.'" "It's a long shot at best," Grenier answered. "I say we push the mask angle. There can't possibly be that many places that sell Nixon these days." Russell nodded. "It's focused, it's on target. I like it." "I do, too," Mulder agreed. "I think you should stick with it." "But you're still going after cold cases," Grenier said. "Of course." Mulder smiled. "You've got the whole BSU at your disposal," he said. "You couldn't possibly need one brain-damaged agent, especially if he doesn't take notes." "Suit yourself," Grenier answered with a glare. "I'll be upstairs dealing with the mayor for the next hour, if anyone needs me." Mulder shook his head as the other man left. "Just like old times," he said to Russell. Her mouth twitched in a smile. "Not exactly, no. Adam's been gone a whole," she checked her watch, "thirty-three seconds, and we haven't laid a hand on each other." Mulder sank into his chair and scrubbed his tired eyes. "The last hand I remember is his, connecting with my jaw. Not that I blame him, after what happened." "You think that was about the sex?" she asked, tilting her head at him. "Oh, Mulder, for someone who has such great insight into the criminal mind..." "What?" She sighed. "I *wish* he'd been angry about the sex. Then we might have had some hope of rebuilding our marriage. But Adam was always about work; he saw nothing else, not even me. Not until the end, anyway, when I finally got his attention by screwing the FBI's Golden Boy right in the task force headquarters." Mulder looked away, and she moved to stand next to his chair. "I'm sorry," she said. "That came out wrong." "No, I don't think it did." Russell was quiet for a long moment. "If Adam couldn't see me, it was mainly because he was angry that Patterson couldn't see him. He studied hard, he took all the notes he could, but he could never make the pieces fit the way you can. None of us could." Mulder threw a pencil at the ceiling. "So the entire BSU was happy to see the door slam on my way out, is that what you're saying?" "Let's just say it was kind of like playing on the Bulls with Michael Jordan." He grimaced. "Sorry about that." "I'm not," she replied with a small smile. "I can say I got to play with the best." "Thanks," he said. "Me, too." After another moment, he cleared this throat. "I guess things must be okay if you can still work with him. I mean, considering..." "We took a break. I worked Violent Crimes for a year. Plus, we're both seeing other people right now, which helps." She ducked her head, trying to meet his eyes. "What about you? You seeing anyone these days?" "Uh, not...not like that, no." "Uh-huh." She held out her hand. "Let me see your phone." "Why?" "Just let me see it." He fished it out of his pocket and handed it over to her. "They were bulkier back then," she mused as she flipped it open. "But I seem to remember a period of several months when I was number one." Mulder's mouth went dry when he saw her hit the first memory button. "Amelia, no..." "It's ringing," she said, ignoring him. He grabbed for the phone, but she turned away. A second later, he could hear Scully's voice on the other end, "Mulder, I was just about to call you. My car won't start so I'm going to be a little late." He swiped at Russell again and missed. "Agent Scully, it's Amelia Russell. I'm sorry to hear about your car trouble. Can we send someone to pick you up?" He missed Scully's response because he was too far away. "Give me that," he mouthed. "No, everything's fine. I think Mulder's new angle on the case sounds promising. Yeah...okay, here he is." His hand closed over the phone before she could say good-bye. "Scully, what's happening? What's wrong with your car?" "I don't know. This morning I got in and the engine wouldn't turn over. I'm just going to catch a cab. See you in half an hour or so, okay?" "Okay, Scully." He clicked off to find Russell eyeing him with a triumphant grin on her face. Despite himself, he smiled back. "You think you're so clever." "So how long has she been number one?" Mulder looked at the floor, feeling something break open inside him at the prospect of admitting the truth. Amelia waited, and at last he met her eyes. "Since the beginning," he said simply. XxXxX End chapter six. Continued in chapter seven. All feedback is welcome at syn_tax6@yahoo.com Oodles of thanks to my swift and thoughtful beta readers, Alicia, Alanna and Jerry. I grovel before you in gratitude.