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Title: As Circumstances Allow Summary: It's some time in the new millennium, and Mulder and Scully have settled down to live "Happily ever after, as circumstances allow." Unfortunately, circumstances can turn cruel. Terrorists at the Quantico Academy threaten the life of Mulder and his infant son. Lloyd Eversole had a lot of things to think about as he parked his milk truck alongside Highway 95. One of them was Sherry Lomax, who perched on the little jumpseat beside him, looking worried. "You still sure about this, baby?" she asked. He glanced over at her. Her dark eyes were earnest behind her too-thick mascara. "Sure I'm still sure. Aren't you?" he asked. He watched her chew her full lower lip and began to feel uneasy. The last thing he needed was her to start wavering on him. "I am if you are," she said. "Good," he said. He put the truck in park and leaned over to kiss her. "You be a good girl for Dale, all right? I'll see you when it's over." "All right," she said. "You be careful, Lloyd. You do what you got to do and get out." "You bet," he said. "You couldn't pay me to stick around those Fed boy buttfuckers a second longer than I had to." She smiled at him and got out of the truck. Lloyd watched in his side mirror as she ran back up the road to Dale's waiting car. Lloyd liked watching Sherry's ass when she ran. God willing, he'd live to see it again. Suddenly Lloyd cursed himself and offered up mental prayer. It was bad luck to be thinking about death at a time like this. Don't think, he told himself, just act. He put the truck in drive and headed up the small military access road to the Quantico Marine Corps Base. He was glad that the road was paved so smoothly. He had 500 pounds of chemical explosives in the back of his truck. Mulder wasn't even supposed to be at Quantico that day. One of the National Academy teachers had ended up in the hospital with a ruptured colon, and the panicked training supervisor had called Mulder in at the last minute. He'd said okay, so long as he could bring his 19-month-old son, Walt. Mulder didn't trust baby-sitters, even had it been possible to find one on such short notice. Walt slept through most of Mulder's class, curled in a collapsible playpen in the corner. He woke up about ten minutes before the lecture ended and slithered effortlessly over the playpen's wall. He proceeded to scamper up and down the tiered aisles between the students' desks, batting his big blue eyes at people. At least he was quiet. Walt was usually quiet, because he hated having his pacifier taken out of his mouth. Mulder casually introduced his son and kept giving his lecture, although he was really more interested in watching the students' reactions to the little boy. The National Academy students were older than the FBI recruits. Most of them were supervisory-level police officers, and several were from foreign countries. Two detectives from Japan looked a bit at a loss. Mulder pictured them wondering if all teachers hauled their babies around with them in America. A man from India kept waving at Walt and seemed vastly entertained. Walt's clear favorite was Sergeant Debra Schultz of the Chicago PD. He stood and stared wide-eyed at her while she glanced up at him, smiled, then went back to her notes. She'd make eye contact with him every 10 seconds or so, which kept Walt entranced. Suddenly he looked up at his father and pointed at her, obviously wanting an introduction. This got a general laugh. "That's Sergeant Schultz," Mulder told him. Walt looked at Sergeant Schultz and then back at Mulder, then pointed at her again. "It's still Sergeant Schultz," Mulder said. "She's been Sergeant Schultz all morning. Where were you?" The students laughed again. Walt's blue eyes crinkled up as he smiled behind his pacifier. "He likes you," Mulder explained. "I can tell," she said. Mulder thought maybe he could turn this into an object lesson in profiling. "As an exercise in observation, can anybody pinpoint the reason why Walter decided he liked Sergeant Schultz so much?" The students looked startled and shifted in their seats. There was no answer at first. "Come on," Mulder said, "he's just a little kid. His motivations ought to be pretty easy to figure out." One of the guys in back said, "Well, she's the only woman in the room." This provoked a murmur of nervous laughter. Mulder wondered who would be un-PC enough to point that out. "True," he agreed. "But why would he have found that so interesting? Before you answer that--remember he's only 19 months old." This got another round of laughter. "Well . . . probably he's used to women taking care of him and . . ." the guy in back seemed to get a little embarrassed and then shrugged, letting the sentence trail off. "Actually, I'm with him at least half the time," Mulder said. "His mom works in D.C. three days a week, so he's stuck with me a lot. Aren't you, Pugsley?" Walt gave him a big grin and then ducked his head down, deciding to be shy. Schultz chuckled and ran her hand over his fuzzy red hair. Class was officially over so Mulder decided to just hand them the answer. "She looks at him," he said. "She'll look at him, smile, and then look away again. That's classic flirting behavior. Sustained eye contact is aggressive, but that peek-a-boo thing is cute, it's inviting. Women do it more than men. Women smile more than men, too. Body language is important," he said, as the class began to fidget and gather papers together. "Gender and cultural differences in body language are important too. Remember that." Mulder carried Walt into the men's room to change his diaper. When they came out, he was surprised and touched to find some of his students waiting to help him wrestle the baby's copious amount of gear down the stairs and into the car. He attributed their interest to Walt's cuteness and charm--he was much like his mother--rather than to any likable qualities in himself. Once the students had gone Mulder stood looking down at his child, wondering if he should feed him here or at home. "You hungry?" he asked. Walt uprooted some grass growing in the cracks of the sidewalk and offered it to his father. "Oh, thank you," Mulder said, "I always wanted grass." Then Walt held his hand out to ask for it back and Mulder gave it to him. Handing objects back and forth was one of the little boy's favorite games. "You want lunch? Yes, no?" Mulder was used to these one-sided conversations by now, and he didn't expect an answer. Walt was usually hungry when he woke up from his nap, and home was 40 minutes away. Mulder figured he'd better feed him here. "Come on, you," he said, and scooped the little boy up. Walt pushed himself up on Mulder's shoulder so he could look around. Mulder grabbed the bag of baby stuff from the back seat of the car and slung it over the shoulder Walt wasn't occupying. He started walking over to the cafeteria, a couple hundred yards away. Lloyd got through the armed checkpoint without too much trouble. He'd staked out the base for some weeks, and knew that they were expecting a dairy shipment today or tomorrow. He'd chosen the cafeteria as a blast site because there would be a large number of personnel from various departments there, all feeling at ease. Sherry had been instrumental in choosing Quantico as the site. She'd been bothered by memories of the Oklahoma City bombing, and she was adamant that they pick somewhere without civilians, without tourists, without kids. The lunch rush at the cafeteria was thinning out, so Mulder didn't have too much trouble finding an uncrowded table. Most adults did not like eating next to an infant who smashed food into his hair, and life was stressful enough for the FBI and DEA recruits who trained here. Mulder tried to be sensitive to that. Walt pressed his fist into a small pile of cut-up strawberries and then sucked the pulp off his fingers. Mulder watched with a quiet sense of satisfaction. Now on the far side of 40, he no longer had so much in common with the ambitious, slightly frantic young people who came through the Academy. He took little notice of them as passed by him on all sides, hurrying to class or to the firing range or wherever. Mulder had once been among the most frantic of them all, spending sleepless nights over cases, suddenly going AWOL to investigate reports of UFO sightings in Puerto Rico, ending up in the hospital a lot. In those days, he used to wake up at night with a crushing feeling of emptiness, a sense of having no real purpose in life. His response at the time had been to work harder. Mulder no longer had those feelings. He had learned, very nearly too late, that life was something to be experienced rather than conquered. It was about things like watching a one-year-old smear strawberry juice all over his face. Mulder grabbed a paper napkin and gently dried off Walt's hands. Private Luis stood in the checkpoint guard's booth, trying to be vigilant. The Marines' motto was "Ever Faithful," and Luis tried to live up to that. It was just that sometimes being faithful meant being bored out of his skull. He heard the sound of a truck coming up the road and felt a little relieved to have something to do, even if it was just looking at someone's clearance pass. A milk truck rounded the bend and headed up toward the gates. Lewis frowned. That was weird, he thought. He'd just sent a milk truck through. An unwelcome realization hit him. He mouthed the words, "Holy shit." Lloyd parked the truck in back of the cafeteria and got out. All he had to do now was make his way to the wooded spot where he and Dale had cut a small hole in the fence and worm his way out. Dale and Sherry would pick him up alongside the road. Then, Lloyd would make two calls from his cell phone and enter the history books as a patriot. Walt flung what was left of his peanut-butter sandwich on the floor and Mulder said, "Okay, I think you're done." He wiped up the worst of the mess on the baby and the table and then hoisted Walt off his booster chair. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up." He carried the kid toward the bathroom, thinking that for an un-toilet trained child, Walter managed to require a lot of time there. Two Military Police Officers came up to Lloyd before he got out of the parking lot. "Sir, we need to talk to you for a minute," one of them said. Lloyd turned aside sharply and did not acknowledge them. He kept walking, his mind beginning to whirl. He had to make a decision right now: go through with the plan immediately or try to talk his way out of this. "Sir, I'm going to ask you once. Stop right now," said the MP. Lloyd turned on his heel and faced them. He smiled and said, "I'll be with you fellows in just a moment." He pulled his compact cell phone from his jeans pocket and punched in a seven-digit code, which closed an electrical connection in a pager in the truck back. That primed the charge. He hung up and dialed a second number. The MP's caught up with him and one of them grabbed his arm. "I'll have to ask you to come with us," said the officer. "Sure thing," Lloyd said. He hit "send," and flung himself on the ground as the explosives went off. ** As far as Mulder could tell, the lights and the floor went out at the same time. There was a rushing sound and air swept by him as if someone had opened a portal to outer space. The next thing he knew he was lying on a wet floor, listening to Walt scream. The bathroom was pitch dark. Mulder reached out toward the sound of the baby's voice and grabbed his arm. He pulled the child close but couldn't tell if he'd been hurt. Mulder dug his keys out of his pocket and struggled to switch on the pen light attached to them. He got it lit despite his shaking hands and shone the thin beam at his son. Walt's face and hands were marked with small cuts, and slivers of ceramic tile were lodged in the folds of his sodden overalls. One cut on his forehead sent a steady trickle of blood down the bridge of his nose, but it didn't seem deep. Mulder used his own soaked shirttail to wipe Walt's face. He found himself saying things like, "Hush, baby, you're going to be all right," although he had no particular reason to think that was true. He shone the pen light all around Walt's head and into his eyes, praying that he hadn't gotten a concussion. Walt did not very much want to be examined. He shrieked and clung to Mulder's wet shirt front, trying to press as close to his father as possible. Mulder picked him up and used the light to find the door. He ran his fingers all along the jamb, attempting to make sure that there weren't any stress cracks that could cause the walls or ceiling to collapse if he opened the door. It felt solid enough, so he pushed it open with one foot. Some light filtered in from gaps in the rubble that had been the far wall. Plaster, insulation and torn wiring lay everywhere, intermixed with the half-buried limbs of people. Some stirred as their owners groaned. Some lay still. Mulder stood in the doorway, having a vague recollection that you were supposed to do that when a building fell down. Absently, he started rocking the baby, hoping to give comfort where he couldn't promise protection. Dale and Sherry were waiting in the car as they'd been told. Dale fiddled with the radio dials, trying to get some kind of tolerable station. Then they heard the blast. The ground rocked beneath the tires, sending the car bouncing. They looked at one another. The bomb wasn't supposed to go off until Lloyd was in the car and safely away. Something had gone wrong. "He wanted us to beat it if something happened," Dale began, but Sherry was already shaking her head. "We can't leave him," she said. Dale ran his tongue over his teeth. He was not a quick thinker, and in situations like this he found himself at a loss. "Come on," pressed Sherry, grabbing her rifle from the back seat. She got out of the car and headed for the tree line. After a moment, Dale grabbed his own gun and followed her. Unlike Lloyd, the two MP's hadn't hit the dirt and they were knocked down by the force of the blast. Both looked stunned as they lay on the fragment-covered asphalt, and Lloyd disarmed the more insensible- looking one. He took a quick look around. Hide or run for it, he wondered? He decided that he'd get only one chance to take advantage of the confusion and made a dash for the wooded area which concealed his secret exit. Halfway there he met Dale and Sherry, coming from the other direction. "What the fuck are you doing?" Lloyd shouted. "You're supposed to be in the car!" "When the bomb went off and you weren't back, we got worried--" began Sherry. Lloyd called her half the names in the book, starting with "stupid." "If I tell you to stay somewhere, then you stay there, God damn it!" Dale looked ashamed; Sherry looked as if he'd slapped her. "Shit," said Lloyd, looking around again. There were still people running everywhere, so there was a chance they'd make it to the perimeter in time. "Come on," he said, and started running toward the fence. Dale and Sherry followed. Before they got far Lloyd heard dogs barking--he recalled that the DEA kept K-9 units at Quantico. A man in gray and black with two dogs straining at their leashes came up over a hill, skirting the edge of the fence. Lloyd knew he was running out of options fast. The man with the dogs pointed at Lloyd and shouted something. Lloyd turned around and ran back the way he'd come. Dale and Sherry ran alongside, and Sherry shouted, "Where are we going?" He didn't answer her. He wasn't sure what they were going to do, and he figured it would serve the bitch right to be left wondering after she'd disobeyed him. Lloyd and Sherry were all right for a good run, but chubby Dale was wheezing by the time they got back to the ruined cafeteria. People were standing all around and some were shouting things, apparently trying to organize everyone. Lloyd made a beeline for a gap in the cracked wall. He figured that if he charged in purposefully enough, no one would challenge him. No one did. Under the ruined building it was dark, and it smelled of dust and burning wires. Sherry looked around wide-eyed. "What are we going to do in here?" she asked. "I dunno. You should have thought of that before you left the car," Lloyd snapped. More quietly, he added, "At least they're not about to run in here shooting at us." Someone outside seemed to have begun to wonder what those three people had run under the building for, and a man's face appeared in the space of one of the cracks. "Get out of there," he called. "This building's unstable." "No shit, Sherlock," said Lloyd, and he aimed his stolen pistol at the man. His face vanished quickly. There came the sound of rubble shifting, and running water. Above it was the high, piercing wail of a child. "Lloyd, is there a kid in here?" Sherry asked softly. "A bit late to worry about it if there is," he said, but he wasn't happy about it. This was supposed to be clean--a quick in, kick the Feds where it hurt, and quick out. Instead, it was getting messier by the minute. "We gotta find someplace where the ceiling's not going to collapse," said Dale. Lloyd had to admit that he was right. He glanced around at the fallen concrete and twisted metal. The place looked a lot more like the belly of some half-decayed beast than a building. "Let's get over by one of the walls," he said. Ceilings collapsed in at the middle of rooms, didn't they? Lloyd hoped so. The way to the left was almost completely blocked by wreckage, but the outside wall and ceiling seemed reasonably intact toward the right. Lloyd led the way deeper into the building, wishing he had a flashlight. He groped his way along the wall, hearing human groans and choked sobs intermixed with the sounds of rubble settling. There was an open space near the back, and as Lloyd's eyes adjusted he was able to see that there were living people back here. Most seemed relatively unhurt, but all looked disoriented as they struggled to creep out of the ruins. By the sound of things, the shrieking kid was toward the very back corner. Lloyd was no fool--he knew he had to take control now, before these people knew what hit them. They might look helpless at the moment, but they were still Marines and Federal Agents, or at least Federal Agent wannabes. Most would be armed. "Bring your rifle up," he muttered to Dale. Dale looked incredulous. "*Do* it," Lloyd snapped. Dale obeyed and after a moment so did Sherry. Lloyd stood in the middle so they made a triangle, and held the MP's pistol out in front of him. "All right, everybody who can hear me!" Lloyd announced. "Put your weapons on the floor and back away from 'em, and nobody will get hurt." "Nobody'll get *hurt?*" demanded a guy in dust-coated military fatigues. "The fucking building just fell down." "Shut the fuck up!" shouted Lloyd, pointing his pistol at the man's face. He got the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. "Nobody says *anything* without my permission, all right? You don't speak until you're spoken to." Lloyd looked around the open space, making eye contact with as many people as possible. Most looked away. He added, "That goes double for you, smartass," and pointed at the military man. The man did not look away, but he did keep his mouth closed. "All weapons out on the floor. Come on," Lloyd said. Most of those who seemed conscious began groping for holsters. "I'm gonna send Dale and Sherry around to search you in a minute, and if they find anything on you, they'll shoot. Got that?" He looked hard at Dale and Sherry. Even in the dim light, he could see that they'd gone pasty-faced pale. "Gather up all the weapons you can find," he told them, "I don't care if the guys wearing 'em are knocked out or dead. I want all of 'em." They hesitated. "Got it?" he snapped, and then they moved to obey. Lloyd cursed under his breath as Dale and Sherry walked around what was left of the room, picking up guns. Sherry was Lloyd's girlfriend and Dale was his cousin, and supposedly they were the people most loyal to him in the world. Too bad they were such a couple of freaking idiots, he thought. Walt hung on tight to Daddy in the dark. He kept crying, "All done, go home," but nothing happened. His head hurt and his ears hurt and he didn't understand why Daddy didn't take him out of here. All Daddy would say was, "Shh, it's all right," over and over. That was a stupid thing to say. Walt's head hurt and his clothes were wet and it was dark and that mean man kept shouting things. It was *not* all right at all. Daddy had always helped him before, why didn't he understand? He heard a lady say "Put him down." She had a mad voice. Daddy set him on the floor and stood up without holding him. Walt screamed loud and grabbed Daddy's pant legs but Daddy did not pick him up or comfort him. Walt wailed and collapsed in a heap at Daddy's feet. Then the lady crouched down and patted Walt all over. These weren't nice, gentle pats, they were more like little slaps, and he didn't like them at all. He tried curling up into a ball and batting his hand at her to make her stop. When she finally quit she put her hand on his head and stroked the hurt part on his forehead. That was a gentle touch. "Don't cry," she said. Walt looked up at her while he clung to Daddy's pants. "Don't cry," she said again. When she spoke to him she used a nice voice. Walt wanted her to be nice, he wanted her to understand. "Go bye-bye," he told her. "He wants to go home," Daddy explained. "Yah," Walt agreed. "Go bye-bye, go home. All done." The lady seemed sad and looked away from him. "All done," Walt insisted. He wanted her to look at him. He wanted her to see that he was sad and to understand he had to go home now. "All done," he repeated, starting to whimper again. She got up and walked away. Walt clung to Daddy's leg and cried, feeling rejected and all alone. Daddy picked him up and cuddled him, but unlike all the times before, the fear didn't go away. Professionally, Dana was still Dr. Scully, which was why she was surprised when a couple of agents met her outside the Hoover Building Lab and addressed her as "Mrs. Mulder." "I'm sorry to have to tell you this," said one, "but there was some kind of explosion at the Quantico Academy this afternoon. So far, your husband and son are among those not accounted for." Dana just looked at the man, not quite grasping what he was implying. "Fox isn't at Quantico on Wednesdays," she said. "He was called in as a last minute substitute for Dr. Prince," said the man. "His students say that he had the boy with him today. Rescue efforts are--" Dana found herself tuning him out. She pulled off her lab coat and the rubber gloves she used for serology work. She handed them both to the closest agent. He took them but looked confused. Dana pushed past them and headed down the hall. They followed, one of them saying, "Ma'am, can we do anything for you? Is there someone you need to call . . . ?" "Just get out of my way," she snapped. She tried to get herself to fall into her ice-cold crisis mode, when she did her clearest thinking. She felt the tide of panic rising anyway. She didn't know what she would do if she lost Fox. She didn't think she could survive losing another child. Mulder sat on the floor with his back against a fallen section of wall, holding Walt in his lap. The poor little guy had started on a good crying jag and was unlikely to stop until he exhausted himself. The baby's nonstop wailing was not having a salutary effect on anybody, particularly not the gunman. "Would you shut that fucking kid up?" he snapped. "I can't, he's scared," Mulder said. He said this partly because it was true, and partly to try and force their captor to see Walt as a person, as a frightened little boy instead of just another nuisance. "Shut him up or I'll shut him up for you," replied the gunman, brandishing his pistol at them. "Lloyd!" gasped his female companion. "Don't start, Sherry," he warned her. Mulder didn't have very high hopes that Lloyd would come around and decide that his hostages were all nice folks who really ought to be let go. The moment Lloyd had ordered that no one speak until spoken to Mulder had known what kind of individual he was dealing with. Probably for the first time in his life, Lloyd was feeling that he had the power he thought he deserved. He would renege on negotiation terms, drag out talks with the authorities as long as possible, maybe even stage a "suicide by cop," all so he could hang on to that drunken sense of omnipotence. Such people were very, very dangerous around children. They were the sort of men and women who beat their babies to death when they discovered they couldn't command them to stop crying. With a guy like Lloyd there wasn't much you could do but pray and try to keep him from escalating. "Can I get up and walk with him?" Mulder asked. Lloyd appeared to consider this request. < "All right," Lloyd said at last. "But stay along the back wall." "You bet," Mulder said. He knew Lloyd would have preferred, "Yes, sir," but he'd be damned if he'd give it to him. Mulder got up and walked back and forth along the back wall, making hushing sounds at Walt. This quieted him some. Mulder took advantage of the opportunity to have a better look at some of his fellow captives. There were perhaps a little more than a dozen of them, sitting or lying in a cleared floor space about as big as two good-size living rooms. In places huge chunks of wall and ceiling had come down, and some people were forced to crouch under dangerous-looking overhangs. A few seemed badly hurt, and Mulder knew that they wouldn't make it long without medical attention. He doubted Lloyd would let them get it. Others seemed more or less unharmed, and Mulder could tell by the uniforms what some of them were. There were five or six Marines, a few DEA trainees, and the rest were probably new Bureau agents, although as a colorblind man in the dark, Mulder couldn't have told the blue Bureau shirts from the red National Academy ones. The current FBI training session had only just gotten underway, which meant that most of these newbies wouldn't be prepared to handle a situation like this. Most would be twenty-something kids with law or accounting degrees, which at the moment was of no use whatsoever. On the whole, though, Mulder was more worried about the Marines. Everyone in the Bureau was required to take a few credit hours of Behavioral Science, but that was not the case with the Armed Forces. Mulder was afraid that some of these young soldiers would live up to their reputation as "the few, the strong, the brave," and try to force a tactical solution to their problem. This would very likely result in people getting shot. Mulder walked by the Marine who had made the snide comment at Lloyd earlier, and the young man shot him a questioning look. Mulder did not have time to explain to him the complex dynamics of a hostage situation, so he simply made a "keep it down," gesture with his hand. The Marine looked dissatisfied and glanced away. Mulder looked over at Lloyd and saw that he was distracted, speaking heatedly with Sherry in hushed tones. Mulder decided to risk speaking. "Never pressure a maniac," he murmured. The Marine looked up at him again, but appeared unconvinced. Dana made it to Quantico in a record - - and illegal - - twenty-five minutes. She forced herself to be patient and find a legal parking space, because emergency vehicles might need to use the roadsides. The view of the Academy buildings was a shock. Much of the complex was glass, which had shattered with the force of the explosion. The corridors between buildings, the glassed-in Quad in the Academy's center, all looked as if someone had taken a giant sledgehammer to them. The building with the dining hall in it was about two-thirds collapsed, and what still stood did not look very stable. As she approached the site of the disaster some MP's tried to turn her away, but she snapped that she was a Bureau agent and a medical doctor and they let her pass. As she got closer to the blast site, she saw agents leading dogs that sniffed in the ruins. Her blood ran cold at the sight. DEA animals didn't do that. These were cadaver dogs. Looking around her, she saw yellow plastic sheets spread over mounds in the grass, indicating that bodies lay underneath. Dana had to kneel down on the lawn. She scanned the crowd, looking for some sign of Fox or Walt, but saw nothing. Eventually she did see a member of the Hostage Rescue Team that she recognized, and she called out to him. "Agent Wyeth!" she shouted, waving her hand. She told herself that she ought to get up and go speak to him like a normal person, but she wasn't quite sure she was up to that. He heard her, and bless his soul, he hurried over. "Agent Scully!" he called out. When he got close he added, "Sorry--I suppose it's Agent Mulder, now." Dana managed a smile. "That still sounds bizarre," she said. "Have you seen Fox or Walter? Some men came to talk to me at the lab, they said there had been an explosion . . ." Wyeth helped her up and let her keep her hand on his forearm for support. "As far as anyone can tell, it was a truck bomb that went off in back of the cafeteria," Wyeth said. "We've got some nut inside the building now, holding the survivors hostage. Needless to say, the rescue efforts are going slow." "Oh, my God," Dana said, putting her free hand to her forehead. She tried to force herself to think. "Have . . . have they tried talking to the man in there? Has he made any demands? Has he said who he's holding hostage?" she asked. Wyeth shook his head. "I've been in there twice myself, offering the guy a phone, but he won't take it. He hasn't made any demands. I don't think he knows what he wants. I'll be honest, a lot of my team members favor the sharpshooter route, and I'm starting to agree with 'em. I think the SOB in there is just yanking us." "Who's on-site commander? What does he say?" Dana asked. "The Base Commander put Aberdeen in charge of the rescue operation," Wyeth said "Last I heard, and this is *not* official, Aberdeen was going to offer our gunman an ultimatum. Pick up the phone or we start lobbing in the tear gas." Dana was horrified. "He wants to use tear gas on the hostages?" "Don't shout that," Wyeth said. "I don't know if the decision is written in stone or not. You've got to admit that we don't have a lot of choices. Tear gas is bad, but the rest of that building could fall at any moment, which is even worse." Dana groaned softly. "Let me find you someplace to lie down," Wyeth said. "No," said Dana, "let me help. Let me do something." "I . . . don't think that's such a good idea," Wyeth said. "If I just lie still and worry I'll go insane. I can do first aid, for God's sake, I don't care. Just--I don't want to pronounce people, all right? Not while--" she choked on the words, "Fox and Walt could be found dead." Dana had been tough enough to do a lot of hard things in her life, but she didn't think she could withstand being asked to pronounce her own husband and son. "Not while I still don't know," she finished. Wyeth's look of compassion nearly froze her to the bone. Clearly he wasn't holding out much hope. "Sure," he said. "Sure, we'll find something for you to do." Sherry looked at Lloyd and thought, <> He had always been tough, authoritative, unsentimental, and she'd loved him for that. She'd never seen him act like this before. She knew he was frightened--they all were--but he'd refused to let the wounded people or the little boy go, and he wouldn't say why. When she asked, he just cursed her. She could think of nothing better to do than to follow him around as he paced, trying to catch his eye, trying to get some sign of reassurance or even sanity from him. He did not acknowledge her. "Lloyd," she said at last, "please, let me know what we're going to do. Tell me what to do and I'll do it. I'll--" "Just shut the fuck up," he snapped at her. Sherry could see the tendons standing out in his neck. She backed away a step. She had never doubted that Lloyd could kill. He was so passionate in his beliefs, so full of hate for the bloated, corrupt Federal government which he accused of trying to take control, of trying to steal the manhood of the nation. But it had never occurred to her that Lloyd might be capable of killing innocents, or those who loved him, like herself. "Please," she repeated, half-crying now. "You're scaring me." "You want to surrender to those motherfuckers outside?" he shouted. "You want to let them shove their big, hairy fists up your ass in a body cavity search, or knock you up and sell your baby on the black market for body parts? That what you want?" "Lloyd, stop it," she pleaded. The guy with the baby came forward from where he'd been walking along the back wall. "Did I tell you you could move?" Lloyd demanded, pointing at him. "Sherry just told you, you're in charge now, Lloyd," said the guy. His voice was quiet and calm. Lloyd looked suspicious, and Sherry feared the guy was going to try and pull some trick. Lloyd would shoot him for sure then, and the kid as well. "What's it to you?" Lloyd asked. "She says that if you don't want her here, then she'll go. Isn't that right, Sherry?" the guy asked. Sherry nodded. "Yeah, well, I want her here," Lloyd said. "News to me," Sherry said. Lloyd shot her a poisonous look. "There will be less to worry about if she goes. Less to worry about if the wounded people and Walt go," the guy said. "Walt?" asked Lloyd. The guy reached up and ran his hand over the baby's hair. "His name is Walter," he said. He seemed to find it very important that Lloyd know that. "Walter what?" Lloyd asked. "Walter William Mulder," the guy said. "That . . ." Lloyd began, "that is the most horrible, putrid name I have ever heard given to a baby. You're a sick, sadistic bastard, Mr. Mulder." There was a flash of anger in Mulder's eyes, and Sherry got the impression he wanted to snap something just as nasty back at Lloyd. Then he seemed to master himself, and all he said was, "It's the name of a friend of mine. I like it." The crunching sound of boots came from the passage to the outside. That meant that another one of the FBI guys would be coming in here, and Sherry prayed that Lloyd wouldn't goad him into a firefight. "Let her take Walt out," Mulder said, inclining his head at Sherry. "You won't have to worry about her anymore. You won't have to listen to Walt cry." Sherry could see Lloyd was tempted. He looked at her, then toward the ominous footstep sounds in the passage. Part of her wanted to cry out, "Don't send me away," while another part was pleading to go. "I'm not any good to you here," she said, and she meant it. "I just make you angry." For the first time since they'd met him running across the field, Lloyd looked at her and really seemed to see her. "Sher, . . ," he said. The beam of a flashlight appeared on the far wall. "Mr. Eversole?" came a voice. Lloyd had introduced himself to the FBI using his last name. "What?" Lloyd said, turning around. "I told you I had nothing to say to you." A man in a blue shirt and black fatigue pants stood in the entrance to their clearing. He held a flashlight in his left hand and a telephone tucked under the same arm. His right hand was free to go for the gun at his belt. "Mr. Eversole, our Agent in Charge has authorized me to offer you a third and final chance to negotiate by telephone. If you refuse, our tactical team will start spraying in the tear gas." "You *what?*" asked Mulder. He looked as shocked and angry as Lloyd. "You *what?*" Lloyd echoed. "We've got a child in here, for Christ's sake," Mulder said. "We've got . . . people bleeding out and in respiratory distress. When you've got a room of wounded hostages, you don't send in the God damn tear gas. Did you tell your Agent in Charge that?" "Sorry sir, I just report what I'm told," said the guy with the phone. "Get the flying fuck out of here, I don't want to see your face, or the faces of any of your buddies. Got that?" Lloyd said, aiming his pistol at the guy. The phone guy pointed his flashlight straight in Lloyd's face and drew his gun. "Mr. Eversole, I'm armed," he said. Sherry could hear the tension in his voice. "I can and will use deadly force against you." "Lloyd, put the gun down. Please," she begged. Lloyd slowly lowered the weapon and took a step back. Sherry started to relax, and then Lloyd grabbed Mulder's shirt collar and jammed the muzzle of the pistol into his neck. Lloyd pressed in close to Mulder, his face resting against the baby's head. Sherry knew the man in the entrance would never fire at him like that. "Lloyd!" she shouted. She looked over at Dale, who seemed equally horrified, as if he hadn't known what his cousin was capable of either. "Back out of here slow," Lloyd told the man with the flashlight. "Put your gun away." The man obeyed him. "You go back and tell your boss to stick his phone where the sun doesn't shine," Lloyd said. The man backed out of the entranceway. Suddenly, something hit Lloyd from behind, knocking him forward. The next thing Sherry knew, the smartass Marine was on top of him, trying to wrestle the pistol away. Mulder and Walt had been shoved off to the side. Lloyd struggled beneath the Marine, twisting the gun around to find an opening for a shot. The gun went off, and the Marine cried out. Debris rained down from the ceiling, and everybody started shouting. Sherry ducked down and covered her head. Dana was tying off a row of stitches in a young agent's leg when Wyeth came up to her. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked. "Sure," she said. "Keep the wound clean," she advised her patient. "Change the bandages at least once a day, and tell your instructors I told them not to run you too hard." The wounded agent nodded and smiled. Dana walked away at Wyeth's side. "What's going on?" she asked softly. "Andy Davis was just inside, offering the phone to our nutcase. He says he saw your man and your little boy in there, alive and unhurt." "Oh, thank God," she said. Her hands went up to her face. Eyes flooded, she touched her forehead and then sketched the sign of the cross. < "Not more than ten minutes ago. There's something else," he said, and from the way he bit his lower lip she knew it wasn't good. "What?" she asked. Her head felt swimmy, and she asked God for strength. Heaven knew she was running out of her own. "As he was coming out of the building, Andy heard a gunshot." The Marine's breath was coming in short, rattling gasps. His eyelids fluttered and Mulder thought he might have been conscious, but the spreading pool of blood beneath him told that he wouldn't be much longer. "Somebody find a plastic sheet," Mulder said. His tone must have carried authority, because people got up and scrambled to look. At the moment, Lloyd looked too shaken to challenge him. "What do we need the sheet for?" asked Dale, although he was already digging through piles of rubble. "He's got a sucking chest wound," Mulder said. "We need to plug the hole." Dale's eyes widened. "You a doctor?" he asked. "My wife is," Mulder muttered. He looked around for someplace to put Walt. Unfortunately, even under the best of circumstances he wouldn't have put the little boy down in here. The ground was covered in sharp little particles that Walt just might put in his mouth. The poor baby had lost his pacifier, and had plugged the middle two fingers of his right hand into his mouth instead. He was looking over at Sherry, who looked back at him, an expression of grief on her face. "Would you hold him?" Mulder asked quietly. She looked startled. "Me?" she asked. She'd been kind to Walt before, and Mulder wanted to encourage that. Walt's best hope of getting out of here safe was of his captors developing a soft spot for him. Walt gazed into Sherry's eyes, and then turned to his father, pointing at her. "That's Sherry," Mulder explained. "He only wants to be introduced to people he likes," he said. Apparently, that did it for Sherry. She set her rifle down on the floor and held her hands out to accept the baby. "Jesus, Sher, leave that kid alone," Lloyd said. "I'm just holding him," she said. Mulder noticed that she stepped across the rifle, to keep anyone else from touching it. Mulder didn't like turning his back on Sherry and Walt, but he did it briefly to have a look at a couple of the wounded people who'd been covered up in jackets and tablecloths. He felt for a pulse on one woman's neck and got nothing. She was a Bureau trainee, judging by the style of her uniform. Mulder put his fingertips on her eyes and closed them. He wished he could do better by her. He pulled the suit jacket, tablecloth and scraps of plastic bag off her body and carried them to where the Marine lay. Frankly, the young man's chances of survival weren't good, but Mulder felt he had to do something. He spread the cloth layers over the Marine in an attempt to keep him warm and out of shock. "Does anybody have any tape? Anything?" Mulder asked, as he fished in his pocket for his keys. He flipped open the knife attached to them and cut away the Marine's shirt around the wound. Blood spilled from a round hole in the upper-right section of his chest. He slapped the plastic over it and felt woefully incompetent. He wished Dana were here, then berated himself for wishing such a thing. "I need something to hold this plastic on," Mulder said. People dug around in the ruins, but didn't come up with anything. "All right, I guess we get to take turns holding it," Mulder said. The Marine's eyes were dilated wide with fear and pain, but his breathing sounded a little better. He seemed to be trying to speak, and Mulder guessed what he wanted. "Can anybody get him some water?" he asked, and then realized that to Lloyd, this would sound like an attempt to usurp his authority. Mulder looked up at Lloyd and said, "He needs you to help him. Could you send Dale into the bathroom and tell him to soak a shirt, a tablecloth, anything, in some of the clean water coming out of the pipes?" Mulder was crouched on the floor while Lloyd was standing. He hoped that this would be enough not to damage Lloyd's fragile sense of control. Lloyd stood and appeared to be debating. "I'll do it," Sherry said finally, heading toward the bathroom with Walt in her arms. Mulder held out a hand to stop her. He didn't want her taking the baby out of his sight. "You stay here," said Lloyd. She stopped and turned around. "Go on, Dale," Lloyd said, inclining his head toward the bathroom. Dale started walking around, apparently looking for someone who didn't need their coverings any more. Mulder was starting to feel like they might come out of this all right, after all. The Marine groaned and thrashed around. Mulder caught his hand; it was icy. The young man was mumbling something, and Mulder told him, "Try not to talk." "Don't need his help," the Marine muttered, turning his head to glare at Lloyd. "Fucking baby killer." "Shh," Mulder told him, but apparently Lloyd heard. "Dale," he snapped, "forget it. He don't want our help." Dale stood up over the body of a man he'd been examining, looking confused. Lloyd looked disgusted and scuffed his boot across the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust at the dying Marine. Mulder sighed. He wondered why all brave people seemed to be so stupid. Dana sought out Aberdeen as the Crisis Response Team brought the pump truck around. If Eversole wouldn't negotiate, they'd use it to spray liquid tear gas into the ruined building. Dana knew Aberdeen slightly; he was a tall, thin man native to Texas, who'd made a name for himself fighting the drug lords in Miami. "Sir?" she called out. He was standing with his back to her, looking at the ruined building. He didn't answer her at first. "Sir? Agent Aberdeen?" she called out again, and then he turned. He frowned, then he seemed to recognize her. "Dr. Scully?" he asked. "Sir, I've got a 19 month-old child in there," she said. "Please, consider all your other options before spraying in the tear gas." She restrained her impulse to clutch at his arm. She wanted him to look at her and see a Bureau agent, not a terrified mother. Aberdeen's face, as Wyeth's had, grew compassionate. "Dr. Scully, I have considered the other options. This isn't a situation where we can dig in and wait the gunman out. The building structure is unstable and there are wounded people inside." "The gunman is unstable," Dana pointed out. "Please, don't panic him. Don't force his hand." From long association with Fox and his work, Dana knew that men like Lloyd Eversole seldom surrendered quietly when pressed to the wall. "We're taking every precaution," Aberdeen said gently. "I know this is an impossible situation for you, but you're going to have to trust us." "I can't," she protested, before she could stop herself. She was in tears now. Aberdeen put his hand on her shoulder and turned her around, then walked with her away from the building. Not knowing what else to do, Dana went. "Trust Jesus, then," he said, gesturing at the cross she wore at her throat. Mulder could hear the roar of a truck engine outside. He knew what that probably meant and pulled Walt closer. Dale was tending to the now-unconscious Marine. Mulder's clothes were soaked with the Marine's blood and it was all over Walt too, but there was nothing he could do about that. Mulder had been exposed to tear gas before, and it was about as unpleasant an experience as he had ever had. He didn't know what to do about Walter. The little boy would probably panic and start to scream, and therefore inhale more of the noxious stuff in. Mulder just rocked him. He told him it was going to be all right. The phrase, "Believe the lie," came to mind. "Mr. Eversole?" came a voice from the entrance way. "Go to hell," Lloyd snapped. A man in the blue-and-black uniform of the Hostage Rescue Team walked into the clearing. He had a full- face gas mask pushed up on top of his head. "You've got two choices, Mr. Eversole," the HRT guy said. "You can release the hostages and come out peacefully, or we'll pump in the tear gas and come bring you out ourselves. You get two minutes to think, starting now." The HRT guy looked down at his watch. There was dead silence in the clearing. "Lloyd," Sherry said softly. "Shut up," he told her. Mulder looked at him. Lloyd was a slight man, fair-skinned, with chin-length, dishwater-blond hair. He looked like a punk. A little, scrappy, angry nobody who dreamed of taking revenge on a world that treated him like trash. Mulder wondered how deeply that fantasy went. Would Lloyd do the sane thing and back down, or would he decide that he'd rather go out in a blaze of bloody glory, taking as many hostages with him as he could? "You've got a minute left, Mr. Eversole," said the man from HRT. Lloyd turned and looked at the people gathered in the clearing. They were all filthy, bloody and exhausted. He looked back over at the HRT man. Lloyd raised the pistol he was holding and fired at him. The HRT guy got knocked back against the wall. Lloyd turned and calmly fired another round into the chest of the nearest DEA trainee. Mulder dropped to the ground, curling his body around Walt. He heard Sherry shout, "Lloyd!" There was another shot, louder--the report of a rifle. Chunks of the ceiling started to drop. "Put the gun down!" snapped a man. There was silence except for the falling debris, then the sound of a weapon being placed on the floor. Mulder uncurled enough to look over at Lloyd. He lay on the ground, bleeding out from a massive wound in his chest. Sherry stood over him, her rifle at her feet, holding her hands up. The HRT agent was pointing his gun at her. Mulder recalled that HRT didn't go into the field without bullet-proof vests. "Put it down," the man repeated to Dale, who obeyed, setting his own weapon on the floor. Dana was sitting on the lawn feeling helpless when she heard the gun shots. She shouted, "No!" and got up to run toward the building, hardly aware of what she was doing. Two MP's grabbed her by the arms and forcibly moved her back. She was not very compliant. She shouted about being a medical doctor and having a child inside the building, and then gave one of them an elbow jab in the solar plexus. The man grunted and pulled her arm up behind her back, then forced her to her knees. "You be quiet," he shouted at her. "You stay put." She cried after that. One of the MP's shouted at somebody to come over and sit with her. An officer she didn't recognize squatted down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. He spoke gently to her, but she didn't listen. All she could think about was Fox and poor, sweet little Walter. EMTs swarmed into the ruined building to tend to the wounded, and then the Hostage Rescue agents led everybody else out. They cuffed Sherry and Dale's hands behind their backs and held their heads down as they walked. Mulder managed to get up behind Sherry. "Thank you," he said. She didn't acknowledge him. "Sherry, thank you," he repeated. "Walt would thank you, if he could." When they exited out into the sunshine he got along side of her. She glanced up at him. There were tears on her face. "I didn't think it would be like this," was all she said. Mulder found Dana being restrained by a Marine officer. It was somehow very like her to have to be held down to keep from charging in and dealing with Lloyd Eversole herself. Mulder dropped down onto the grass beside her and she cried out at the sight of the blood on his clothes. "It's not mine," he explained. Walt tried to fling himself at his mother. "It's not his, either," Mulder added. Walt curled up into a ball in Dana's lap, howling even more loudly now that he was safe. Fox pulled her close, pressing his face into her hair. He didn't wail like the baby, but he hugged her so tight he could feel the bones of her shoulder pressing into his chest. Once she was home, Dana started to feel better. There was a lot to keep her busy; feed the baby, wash the baby, rock the baby to sleep. Pray constantly. Without her faith, she didn't think she would be sane. Faith allowed her to give meaning to events like this. It allowed her to believe that somehow, whatever happened, things would be all right. "God does not play dice with the universe," Einstein had said. Still, she was worried about Fox. He'd curled up on the couch and had fallen into something between a fitful sleep and a catatonic stupor. He'd always claimed to be too much of a pessimist to be religious. While Dana believed that God in his mercy and wisdom had spared her husband and son, Fox would look at the ordeal as a kind of persecution. While it hardly seemed right to ask for a further favor after the miracle of Fox and Walt's survival, Dana asked God to please spare Fox's sanity, too. Dana was busy putting the baby to bed when Mulder finally peeled himself off the couch. He was still in his filthy clothes and he wanted them off. He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The Mulders had a lousy water heater and he was grateful to find that there was warm water left after Walt's bath. He stripped and climbed in, then began absently running soap over himself. He still did not know how he was going to handle this. When he closed his eyes he saw the images of the blood and the wounded bodies. He hoped to God Walt didn't see the same thing. That thought cut to the heart of him. However much time passed, however old Walt lived to be, he could never un-live those few terrible hours. He'd had only 19 months in which to be innocent of horror. Now that experience would be with him forever. Why in hell had Mulder been so dense as to refuse to leave Walt with a baby-sitter? What delusions of grandeur had he been suffering from, to make him think the boy would be safe if only he kept him in sight? The bathroom door opened and the steam around the shower swirled. He could see Dana undressing through the pebbled glass of the door. Generally this was a sight he wouldn't miss, but at the moment he was too upset even for desire. She got in the shower and took the soap out of his hands. Wordlessly, she stepped behind him and started washing his back. It was a simple, caretaking gesture that not all that long ago Mulder wouldn't have let her make--even after they'd become lovers. It had taken her a long time to convince him that he could accept care, to make him consider the idea that he was worthy of it. He didn't feel very worthy of it now, but he didn't tell her to stop. He'd finally admitted to himself how much he liked physical affection. He needed it, in fact. That had been one of the few consolations of ending up in the hospital, once up on a time. Dana had always been there to hold his hand and stroke his hair. "You did the best you could," she said. He looked down at her as she gently washed dried blood from his arm and shoulder. "It wasn't very good," he said. "Nobody can ask for better than you can do," she said. "You love Walt. You take care of him--you'd die to protect him. You don't have to be clairvoyant, too. Nobody could have seen this coming." "I should have," he protested, "I--" his words were cut off by a wave of inconsolable grief. The pain went very deep for Fox, touching the loss of his sister, his fears of being an inadequate father. "He's so little," he managed. Dana held him while he cried. Later, Fox and Dana lay in bed, twined in each other's arms. He reached up to brush her hair with his fingertips and she stirred in her sleep. His mind was following the familiar track of worry and self- recrimination. He was unable to sleep despite his bone-deep exhaustion. He thought that Dana would tell him to let it go. She would say that the past and the future were beyond his control, so he should stop fretting about them. He curled closer to her, resting his cheek against her forehead. She would be right, of course. She usually was. Mulder closed his eyes. There was a time when he'd avoided living in the present because there was nothing good about it. Now he found himself not wanting to live in the present because he was afraid the good things might not last. He told the paranoid, obsessive voice in his brain to shut up. He had a baby that even terrorists fell in love with. He had a wife who loved him and put up with him and who treated him like he mattered. A sane man couldn't ask for better than that. He sighed and pressed Dana against him. He still felt frightened, but he decided he wasn't going to let the fear drive him out of his own life. He listened to the soft sound of her breathing, enjoying the simple, ephemeral pleasure of now. After all, he thought, now was all that anybody ever had.
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