Текст книги "X Files: Fight the Future"

Автор книги: Chris Carter

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The X Files

Fight the Future

Screenplay by Chris Carter

Adapted by Elizabeth Hand

HarperPrism

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The X-Files trademark & © 1998 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1998 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover aftwork courtesy of and © 1998 Twentieth Centüry'Fox Film Corporation First printing:July 1998 Printed in the United States of America Visit HarperPrism on the World Wide Web at http://www.harperprism.com

PROLOGUE

NORTH TEXAS 35000 B.C.

The desolated landscape stretches from hori-zon to horizon, all snow and ice and vast gray sky. In the distance two tiny figures appear, running desperately. They are manlike, with matted hair and coarse features, their bodies hidden beneath rough garments made of leather. They run across the white waste-land, bodies bent as if they are scanning the ground underfoot for prints. The trail they seem to follow leads to a crevice, a triangular fissure between slabs of ice and collapsed stone. At the mouth of the cave the prints dis-appear. One of the primitive men stoops to peer inside. They enter the cave.

Inside, the cave walls spiral; they are ribbed with ice that glistens faintly. The first primi-tive lights his torch. As he holds it up, his companion grabs his arm and points to where the cave twists a few yards ahead of them. There a soft patch of virgin snow bears the imprint of what they have been following. The torch sputters, and as though in reply a distinct scrabbling echoes back to them from the dark-ness ahead. The two primitives move quickly now. Ahead the cave splits into two tunnels. Wordlessly, they each choose a different fork.

The first primitive moves quietly through the tunnel. At the far end he finds an opening barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through. He thrusts his torch into the opening, twisting it back and forth. He propels himself through the hole and drops into the next chamber.

It takes a moment to catch his breath. When he does, he raises the torch and peers around. He is in a roughly circular cavern per-haps thirty feet across, its walls shimmering ice nicked here and there by rocky outcroppings. One of these is larger than the rest. Gazing at it, the primitive frowns, then steps toward it.

Inches away from the outcropping he halts and reaches to touch what he sees—the body of another man, clad in furs and leather, a skin of ice encasing him from head to foot. Before he can reach it something powerful strikes him from behind.

With a cry the primitive falls, the torch hurling from him to drop sputtering to the floor. He curls into a ball, one hand clenched against his chest with the knife pointing out-ward; but something is already there, claws tearing at his clothes, shredding the thick pro-tective layers of fur and stiff leather as though they were dry grass. The primitive cries out again. He rolls to one side, shoving his elbow into the creature's face, and strikes blindly and desperately with his knife. It shrieks; he feels something warm and viscous spurt onto his hand. With a groan the primitive pulls away, staggering to the wall. He hears it thrashing in the darkness at his feet.

The primitive roars and strikes at it again, feels his knife shear through its skin. But there is no reassuring bite of bone and muscle beneath his hand; it is as though his knife is mired in the body. With a grunt the primitive yanks his knife back.

Too fast. The next instant he loses his bal-ance and falls, and the thing is on him, its claws tearing at his thighs. His knife skids across the floor. Before he can reach for it a shadow fills the chamber.

The cave seems to spin as light radiates everywhere, finally coalescing into the torch held high by the second primitive who has just appeared in the chamber. The creature looks up. The second primitive raises a knife and with a cry drives it into the creature.

A deafening shriek as the thing sprawls backward. A moment and the primitive is upon it, driving the knife into it again and again as it tries to escape. With shocking strength and speed the creature throws the primitive to the cave floor.

Dazed, the primitive comes to his feet poised to attack, but the creature has vanished. He pauses, gasping for breath, and gazes down at his fallen companion. Blood soaks his gar-ments, and his eyes are already clouded. He is dead. The primitive turns away, searching for his enemy. His eyes dart as he moves through the cave. In a nearby chamber he comes upon the fallen body of his enemy. Warily he approaches waving the torch at the creature's head. Slowly its eyes open. For a brief moment the gaze of the hunter and the hunted meet.

The primitive raises his knife to strike the final blow. Before his arm drops the creature swiftly attacks.

In one motion the primitive drops the torch and with his other hand brings his knife forward, so that it slides through the creature's upper body. He withdraws it and stabs again, harder this time, while the crea-ture writhes and the cavern resounds with its cries; he strikes it until it lies motionless upon the floor.

The primitive draws back, breathing hard, and leans upon his weapon. In front of him his prey lies dead. Something black oozes from the creature's wounds. In the torchlight it seems to thicken and pool.

As he stares at it, the primi-tive frowns.

There is a tiny fissure in the cavern floor.

The black, oily substance moves toward it. Not naturally like water seeking its level, but like something alive. He watches, mesmerized, as the oil fills the crevice almost to overflowing, then disappears down the crack. It is several moments before he notices something else.

Across his chest are dark blots where the creature's blood has spattered him. The primi-tive's gaze is drawn to a single oily drop. He stares at it, brows furrowing. His expression changes, from annoyance to curiosity to hor-ror. There are drops of black ooze everywhere upon him, crawling up his torso, along his arms, across the tops of his thighs, and over his chest. He grunts and begins brushing at them, but they will not move. He opens his mouth to scream but no sound comes out.

<>

CHAPTER 1

BLACKWOOD, TEXAS PRESENT DAY

Without warning a boy plunged through the roof of the cave.

"Stevie? Hey, Stevie—you okay?" a voice called from the opening above him. Three other boys stood there, peering nervously through the hole. For the last few days they'd been building a fort there, digging and hammering at the ground. Behind them, sun glared off the hard-baked earth. Miles to the east, the glittering contours of the Dallas skyline reared against the horizon. In the near-distance stretched a housing develop-ment, identical buildings scattered across a dun-colored landscape.

On the floor of the cave, Stevie lay winded. "I got—I got—I got the wind knocked out of me," he gasped at last.

Relieved laughter. Jason's face appeared alongside Jeremy's. "Looks like you were right, Stevie," he called down. "Looks like a cave or something."

Jeremy jostled the other boys, trying to get a better view. "What's down there, Stevie? Anything?"

Slowly Stevie got to his feet. He took a few unsteady steps. In the darkness something glis-tened, something round and smooth and roughly the size of a soccer ball. He picked it up and tilted it very carefully, so that the light struck it and it seemed to glow in his hands.

"Stevie?" Jeremy called again. "C'mon, what'd you find?"

"Human skull," breathed Stevie. "It's a human skulll"

Jason whooped. "Toss it up here, dude!"

Stevie shook his head. "No way, buttwipe.

I found it. It's mine." He stood, looking around in amazement. "Holy cow. Anyways, there's bones all over the place down here."

He took a few steps back toward the pool of sunlight. He looked down, and saw that he was standing in some kind of oil slick. When he tried pulling his foot up, the ground sucked at the sole of his sneaker.

"Shit," he murmured, clutching the skull to him. "What the—"

And then he saw that the oil was every-where, not just beneath his feet, but seeping up from cracks in the rock. And it was moving. Moving toward him. Black oil oozed up beneath his foot and wriggled down and into his sneaker. The skull fell from his hands and bounced across the stony floor as he tugged at his shorts and stared at the exposed skin of his leg.

Beneath the flesh something moved; a writhing thing as long as his finger. Only now there was more than one, there were dozens of them, all burrowing under his skin and moving upward. And there was something else, some-thing just as frightening: where the black oil passed, his limbs were left feeling numb and frozen. Paralyzed.

"Stevie?" Jeremy stared down into the darkness. "Hey, Stevie?"

Stevie grunted but did not look up at him. Jeremy watched, unsure whether this was some kind of joke. "Stevie, you better not—"

"Stevie?" the other boys chimed in. "You okay?"

Stevie was definitely not okay. As they stared, Stevie's head fell backward so that he seemed to stare straight up at them, and in the glaring desert light they could see his eyes first filling with darkness and then turning com-pletely, unnaturally black.

"Hey, man," whispered Jason. "Let's get outta here."

"Wait," said Jeremy. "We should help him—"

Jason and the other boy pulled him away. Jeremy went with them reluctantly, his foot-steps echoing loudly against the dusty ground.

Sirens wailed counterpoint to the rush of wind over the plain. In the housing development doors slammed as people began to file onto their front steps a few at a time. At the end of one driveway, a spare figure in jeans and dark T-shirt hugged her arms as she scanned the horizon, then began to walk down the street out of the development.

The fire engines were already there. Two men in full rescue mode jumped from the hook-and-ladder vehicle, disengaged a ladder, and hurried toward the hole left by the boys. Several other men followed them as the cap-tain pulled up in his car and hopped out, radio in hand.

"This is Captain Miles Cooles," he recited. "We've got a rescue situation in progress."

He stepped toward the hole. The three lead firemen had already slung the ladder down there, and one of them quickly stepped down it. His helmet gleamed in the sunlight, then winked from view as he reached the bottom and stepped away from the ladder.

"What you got down there, J.C.?" Cooles yelled after him. There was no response, and a moment later the second and third men fol-lowed the first into the darkness.

Outside, the sun beat mercilessly upon the growing circle of parents and children that had gathered.

Captain Cooles stood silently, his weathered face taut with concern as he stared at the sinkhole. After a moment he sent two more men down.

Cooles glanced up sharply. A low ominous whomp whomp echoed through the torrid air, as a helicopter mysteriously materialized from the glowing sunset. Around him more and more peo-ple were slowly appearing, parents and children all staring at the western horizon. Faster than seemed possible the helicopter approached the huddled group, banked sharply, and then hovered above them. People clapped their palms over their ears and shaded their eyes as clouds of dust rose and the unmarked copter landed gently on the parched earth.

What the hell? thought Cooles. The heli-copter's side door flew open, and five figures jumped out.

Swathed in white Hazardous Materials suits, their faces hidden behind heavy masks, they carried a gleaming metal lit-ter capped by a translucent plastic bubble, like an immense beetle carapace. They headed immediately for the hole. Cooles nodded and started after them, but before he had gone two paces another man debarked from the heli-copter, a tall gaunt figure in white oxford-cloth shirt, his tie flapping in the propellers' back-wash.

"Get those people back!" the man yelled, pointing to where the crowd was drifting curi-ously after the paramedics. A plastic tag round his neck identified him as Dr. Ben Bronschweig. "Get them out of here!"

Cooles nodded. He turned to the line of waiting firemen and shouted, "Move them all back! Now!"

Then, hurrying to catch up with Bronschweig, he said, "I sent my men down after the boy. The report is that his eyes went black. That's the last I heard—"

Bronschweig ignored him and made a bee-line for the sinkhole. Already the figures were clambering back up the ladder, bearing the limp body of the young boy on the bubble litter. At sight of this Bronschweig finally stopped, star-ing as the rescue crew bore it back toward the chopper. The crew followed, and as the gath-ered crowd watched in silence, the helicopter lifted back into the air, its blades sending bil-lows of red dustlike smoke across the plain. A minute later and it was only a black smudge against the ruddy sky.

"Is that my boy?" a woman's voice asked from the back of the crowd. "Is that my boy?"

Bronschweig walked toward the develop-ment, Captain Cooles close behind. In the near distance a line of unmarked heavy vehi-cles barreled along the highway, turning into the access road leading to the little rows of identical houses. Unmarked cargo vans and squat trucks were driven by blank-faced men in dark uniforms. At the front of this threatening caravan were two huge white tanker trucks, devoid of any logo or advertising, gleaming ominously in the dying sun. Bronschweig stopped, arms crossed on his chest, and watched them with a tense expression.

"What about my men?" Captain Coole's loomed angrily at the doctor's side, his face red. "I sent five men down there—"

Bronschweig turned and walked away with-out a word.

Cooles waved furiously back at the sink-hole. "Goddamnit, did you hear what I said? I sent—"

Seeming not to hear him, Bronschweig walked toward the approaching trucks. A few of them had parked in a line in the cul-de-sac.

Official-looking personnel were already pulling tents and tent poles, satellite dishes, banks of electric lights and monitoring equipment from them. The townspeople stared in bewilderment as the first of a myriad of refrigeration units were yanked from the backs of trucks and mus-cled toward the sinkhole.

Drivers continued maneuvering the huge trucks, efficiently form-ing a barrier blocking the scene of action from the crowd's view.

Bronschweig disappeared into the melee. When he reached the tanker trucks he ducked between them and surreptitiously withdrew a cell phone. His face tight, he punched in a number, waited, and then spoke.

"Sir? The impossible scenario we hadn't planned for?" He listened for a moment, then replied tersely,

"Well, we better come up with a plan."

<>

CHAPTER 2

FEDERAL BUILDING DALLAS, TEXAS

One week later, fifteen agents in dark wind-breakers emblazoned with the letters FBI watched impassively as another helicopter hov-ered above them. They stood in seemingly ran-dom formation on a rooftop, their eyes shielded by reflective sunglasses, faces uniformly expres-sionless. At the sides of a half-dozen of them, leashed Dobermans and German shepherds lolled exhausted, tongues hanging out as they vainly sought relief from the shimmering heat of midday. When the chopper touched down, the dogs flattened their ears against their skulls, but otherwise took no notice. A moment later the helicopter's side door was flung open, and a single man emerged. Hatchet-faced, his eyes narrowing as he took in the men and women waiting on the roof, Special Agent-in-Charge Darius Michaud paused, then walked authorita-tively toward them.

"We've evacuated the building and been through it bottom to top." One of the agents met him, cell phone in hand, and motioned at the sweep of gray roof around them. "No trace of an explosive device, or anything resembling one."

Michaud looked at him, his mouth tight. "Have you taken the dogs through?" The agent nodded.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, take them through again." For an instant the agent stared at him, unable to hide the weariness in his face. Then, "Yes, sir," he replied, and turned back to his charges.

Behind him Michaud turned and scanned the horizon, his hands linked behind his back.

For a minute or two he stood like this, register-ing the familiar silhouette of the Dallas skyline, the flat silvery expanse of cloudless sky beyond and the dull array of ladders and turbines and concrete atop the adjacent skyscraper.

Suddenly he stiffened. Shading his eyes with his hand, he walked slowly to the edge of the roof, leaning against the barrier there. He said nothing, but the line of his mouth grew even tighter as he stared to where a solitary fig' ure emerged from a door on the neighboring roof. Even from this distance, he could see the resolve with which the slender form moved beneath its FBI windbreaker, and the glint of sunlight on her shoulder-length auburn hair. Michaud's hands clenched at the edge of the wall.

On the other rooftop, Special Agent Dana Scully winced as the door slammed shut behind her. Her finger jabbed at her cell phone as she stepped carefully down the stairs and onto the roof, looking around warily.

"Mulder?" she said urgently, the cell phone cool against her cheek as she paused. "It's me."

Mulder's voice echoed tinnily in her ear. "Where are you, Scully?"

"I'm on the roof."

"Did you find anything?"

She brushed a drop of sweat from her nose. "No. I haven't."

"What's wrong, Scully?"

Scully drew herself up and shook her head impatiently, as though Mulder stood in front of her and not somewhere on the other end of a cell phone. "I've just climbed twelve floors, I'm hot and thirsty and I'm wondering, to be hon-est, what I'm doing here."

"You're looking for a bomb," Mulder's un-flappable voice replied.

Scully sighed. "I know that. But the threat was called in for the federal building across the street."

"I think they have that covered."

Scully grimaced even more impatiently. She took a deep breath and began, "Mulder, when a terrorist bomb threat is called in, the logical pur-pose of providing this information is to allow us to find the bomb

. The rational object of terrorism is to provide terror. If you'd study the statistics, you'd find a model behavioral pattern in virtu-ally every case where a threat has turned up an explosive device—"

She paused, and drew the cell phone closer, choosing her words as carefully as though she were explaining something to a rather slow, stolid child. "If we don't act in accordance with that data, Mulder—if you ignore it as we have done—the chances are great that if there actu-ally is a bomb, we might not find it. Lives could be lost—"

She paused again for breath, and suddenly realized she'd been the only one talking for the last few minutes. Her voice rose slightly as she said, "Mulder… ?"

"What happened to playing a hunch?"

Scully almost jumped out of her skin: the voice came not from her cell phone but from two feet away.

There, in the shadow of the AC unit, stood Fox Mulder. He raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly as he cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth, tossing the spent husks to the ground as he clicked off his cell phone and stepped toward her.

"Jesus, Mulder!" Scully moaned, shaking her head.

"There's an element of surprise, Scully," said Mulder evenly. "Random acts of unpre-dictability."

He popped another sunflower seed into his mouth as he went on, "If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of unforeseen possibilities, we find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced…"

As he spoke he walked toward the edge of the building. At the wall he leaned over, sail-ing his sunflower seeds off into the air and then dusting his hands off. For a moment he paused, staring thoughtfully, almost wistfully, into the nether distance, then turned to Scully and said, "What are we doing up here? It's hotter than hell."

And before Scully could make an exasper-ated reply he was off again, striding gracefully toward the stairs where Scully had emerged a few minutes before. She stood and watched him, then stuffed her cell phone into a pocket. Hiding a grin, she followed him, grabbing his arm and steering him up the steps.

"I know you're bored in this assignment," she said. Any faint vestige of humor leaked from her face.

"But unconventional thinking is only going to get you into trouble now."

Mulder looked at her impassively. "How's that?"

"You've got to quit looking for what isn't there. They've closed the X-Files, Mulder. There's procedure to be followed here. Protocol," she added, giving the word a threatening emphasis.

Mulder nodded as though weighing her advice. Then, "What do you say we call in a bomb threat for Houston," he suggested, tilting his head to one side. "I think it's free beer night at the Astrodome."

Scully set her mouth and gave him a look, but it was no use. Sighing, she hurried past him up the stairs, took the last few steps until she stood at the top, and grabbed the doorknob. She twisted it, once, twice, futilely; and looked back at Mulder.

"Now what?" she demanded, her face grim.

Mulder's impish expression vanished. "It's locked?" he asked edgily.

Scully looked at him and wiggled the knob again. "So much for anticipating the unfore-seen…"

She squinted up at the sun, then gazed at Mulder. Before she could say anything else, he lunged past her, yanking her hand from the knob. He turned it, and the door opened eas-ily.

"Had you." Scully smirked, leaning against the wall.

Mulder shook his head. "No you didn't."

"Oh, yeah. Had you big time."

"No, you didn't—"

She slid past him into the stairwell, ignor' ing his protests as she headed for the freight elevator. She punched a button and waited for the welcoming ping as the doors opened.

"Sure did," she said smoothly, still grinning as Mulder shouldered into the elevator before her. "I saw your face, Mulder. There was a moment of panic."

Mulder stood with forced dignity as the ele-vator dropped. "Panic?" he said, and shook his head.

"Have you ever seen me panic, Scully?"

The elevator drew to a halt. Refreshingly chill air pooled around them as the doors opened on to a busy lobby: suits with brief-cases and sheaves of paper, deliverymen, uni-formed couriers, and a bored-looking security guard.

"1 just did," Scully said triumphantly as she sailed into the lobby. Before her a group of schoolchildren parted, heads turning excitedly at sight of her FBI jacket.

"When I panic, I make this face," said Mulder, staring at her completely deadpan.

Scully glanced at him. "Yeah, that's the face you made. You're buying."

Mulder followed her, heedless of the teacher now trying futilely to herd her charges into an adjoining elevator. "All right," he said reluctantly.

Scully stood with her arms crossed and stared pointedly at a door crowned by a sign that read SNACKS/BEVERAGES. Mulder dug in his pocket, fishing for change as he asked, "What'll it be?

Coke, Pepsi? A saline IV?"

"Something sweet." She flashed a victory smile. Mulder rolled his eyes and headed for the lounge. He walked slowly, sorting through a handful of change, as someone else elbowed by him on his way out of the room. A tall man in a blue vendor's uniform, hair close-cropped. His gaze passed briefly and casually over Mulder. Mulder glanced back, then hurried inside to catch the door before it closed.

Inside the windowless room he bypassed the ranks of snack and candy machines for a large, brightly lit monstrosity displaying soft drinks. He counted out the correct change and one by one plunked the coins through the slot, waiting for the reassuring chunk as each one hit bottom. Then he hit a button, leaned back on his heels, and—

Nothing.

"Oh, come on," groaned Mulder. He beat his fist against the front of the machine—still nothing—and finally rummaged through his pocket for more change. Slid it into the machine, stabbed the button—nothing.

"Damn it."

He stared at the cheerfully glowing display of cans, then pounded it with both fists; after a moment he gave one last jab at a button.

Nothing.

Swearing under his breath, Mulder stepped away from it, glared, then moved around to the back of the machine. There was perhaps a hand's-span of space between it and the wall. He crouched and peered there, frowning.

On the floor snaked a heavy black electri-cal cord. The plug lay a few inches from Mulder.

The machine wasn't plugged in.

He picked up the plug, stared at it with growing comprehension. Then, very quickly and very carefully he set it back onto the floor, and lightly stepped once more to the front of the machine he had just been pounding at. He opened the front panel and stared inside in hor-ror. He grimaced at the memory of slamming his fist against the brightly lit surface, then turned and hurried to the door. He grabbed the knob, turned it—and met resistance.

"Shit," he murmured. He jiggled the knob, pulled on it, twisted it back and forth… but there was no longer a shred of doubt in his mind. He was locked in.

Frantically, he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number, pressed the phone tight against his ear as he stared at the soda machine. A moment later Scully's voice fil-tered through the receiver.

"Scully."

Mulder took a deep breath. "Scully, 1 found the bomb."

Outside the vending room, Scully paced the lobby and rolled her eyes. "Where are you, Mulder?"

"I'm in the vending room."

She nodded to herself, glanced down a short corridor, and headed down it. When she heard faint pounding she turned and found herself facing a door.

snacks/refreshments

"Is that you pounding?" she questioned, and tentatively turned the knob.

On the other side, Mulder cupped the phone against his chin and pounded even harder. "Scully, get someone to open this door."

Scully shook her head. "Nice try, Mulder."

Mulder twisted away from the door and started pulling at the front of the soda machine. "Scully, listen to me." A desperate edge crept into his voice as the hinged front of the machine swung open. "It's in the Coke machine. You've got about fourteen minutes to get this building evacuated.

Scully shook her head. She tried the door again—still locked. Losing patience, she said, "C'mon.

Open the door."

Her response met with even more hard pounding. For the first time, Scully felt a spark of fear.

"Mulder?" she breathed into the cell phone. "Tell me this is a joke."

Mulder's voice echoed in her ear. "Thirteen fifty-nine, thirteen fifty-eight, thirteen fifty-seven…" As he intoned, Scully bent to exam-ine the keyhole beneath the door's metal knob.

It had been soldered over. She pressed her thumb against it, felt the faintest warmth and pressure–recent work.

"… thirteen fifty-six… Do you see a pat-tern emerging here, Scully?"

"Hang on," said Scully. "I'm gonna get you out of there."

Inside the vending room, Mulder's phone went dead. He snapped it closed and shoved it back into his pocket, then squatted in front of the soda machine. Inside was a battery of cir-cuit boards and snaking wires, digital readouts and row after row of clear plastic canisters filled with fluid hooked up to what had to be bricks of plastique. In the middle of all this a blinking LED display registered the countdown. Mulder stared at it, fighting dread, and thought, It's gonna take an expert a lot longer than thirteen min-utes to figure out where to even start on this…

• 0 a

In the building lobby, Scully strode up to the security desk, barking orders as she swept her arm out to indicate the oblivious crowd of office workers.

"I need this building evacuated and cleared out in ten minutes!" She stabbed at the air in front of the security chief and yelled, "I need you to get on the phone and tell the fire department to block off the city center in a one mile radius around the building."

The security chief gaped. "In ten minutes!"

"DON'T THINK!" shouted Scully. "JUST PICK UP THE PHONE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!"

But people in the lobby were already run-ning out and she was gone before he could protest or command an explanation, already dialing another number on her phone.

"This is Special Agent Dana Scully. I need to speak to S.A.C. Michaud. He's got the wrong building—"

She stopped beside the front revolving doors and stared out to where anonymous vans and cars were suddenly screeching up to the curb. Agents in FBI windbreakers ran from the unmarked vehi-cles, Darius Michaud among them.

"Where is it?" he demanded as he rushed into the lobby to meet Scully. Around them workers streamed out of the building, their voices high-pitched with anxiety. The school-teacher shouted as she hurried her class past, the children crying out excitedly when the saw the mob of FBI agents. Scully paused and stared out the huge glass wall, to where fire engines roared up alongside the unmarked vans, fol-lowed by a phalanx of city buses. Everything suddenly had the feel of a situation that was verging out of control.

She caught herself before she could give in to that desperate line of thought and turned to face Michaud. "Mulder found it in a vending machine. He's locked in with it."