Title: The Taking V: The End and the Beginning  
Author: Jenn Chiprich
Email feedback: ipomea@msn.com
Category: SR
Rated: R
Overall Content: 3
Distribution: Anywhere
Summary: This particular part of this story serves as an end of one
journey, the end of one problem and the beginning of a whole other
journey.
Thanks to everyone that has kept reading and there will be more parts
if y'all want them...I kinda leave it hanging at the end.

Timespan/Spoilers: The story itself occurs in the future. There may
be
mention of episodes from all four seasons.

Disclaimer: Well, all these fun folks from The X-files (Mulder and
Scully)
definitely do not belong to me(No matter how much I wish it). They
belong to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting
and are used without permission. No copyright infringement is
intended and no profit is being made from their use

Author note: The other parts are already posted to Gossamer through
another list. This is a continuation from where the story is there.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"This is crazy."

Jerry looked up from his desk to see Scully standing by the paper
that he had given her to review. Her face was brighter than it had
been as of late, and her stance was one of a happy woman. He knew
that Fox Mulder had begun his seduction of her, and, actually he was
very happy for them. "What's that?"

"This." Dana whispered loudly. "This sequence. There is barely enough
nucleic acid in this to be affective on the chromosomes. It looks
like a protein carrier..." she bit her lip and grimaced. "with a type
of gene virus..."

"That is crazy." he agreed. Nucleic acid was normally transmitted in
a virus coat, as was done with gene therapy, but a simple protein.

"This is going to be harder than I thought." Dana whispered. "But at
least it is sequenced. Must have something to do with the spatial
alignment of whatever gene it is attaching to...the tertiary
structure, that is, of the protein..."

He nodded, turning to the desk again. Outside the door of their
office, they heard footfalls. Dana shoved the paper into the file that she
was working on. Moving silently, she lowered into her chair. "Fox is
getting a modem today, he said. Sometime soon, we should be able to
download the information and get in touch with others like us."

Jerry nodded and shifted in his seat. Dana laid a hand on his
shoulder. "Thanks, you have done a great thing here, Jerry."

"There's a lot more to do, Dana, darling." he hissed back. She
inclined her head in understanding. "Once we get the information..."

The door to the hallway opened, admitting a smallish woman and one of
the Guardians. Jerry jumped up and rushed to the woman, opening his
arms. "Kate!"

The younger woman smiled and opened her arms. She smiled and nodded,
knowing without a doubt, what the question that he would ask would
be. Jerry laughed and lifted her off the ground. Dana herself smiled.
"Congratulations, Kate."

Jerry hugged Kate close. "This is great news."

Dana turned back to the screen in front of her and grimaced. In the
world she knew, an impending birth was a cause for happiness. Now...
she thought, now an impending birth, to those who knew, was one step
closer to the end. That was on a large scale, for the population. On
an individual scale, Dana felt that it was a death sentence for the
soul of a mother. Her hands gripped tightly and flexed to fall on the
keyboard in front of her. Jerry and Kate had left quickly, the
Guardian allowing Jerry to take his sick mate home. She was alone
except for the being behind her. They never left them alone...never.
She sighed and typed on the keyboard allowing her mind to delve into
the realm of daydreams.

------
Maggie brushed off her hair and smiled as she surveyed the room. With
the two blankets that she had knitted recently, the room looked like
a nursery.

Closing her eyes she could see the small nursery that she and Bill
had had in their small house in Maryland where all of the children
had been born. The sun always had entered the filmy curtains in the
afternoon, usually right after the children's nap. She had spent
hours there, watching each of her young ones sleeping, curled in a
rocking chair. The rocking chair that she had left in Annapolis; the
chair that she had kept for years, sitting vacantly waiting for
grandchildren. She sighed and moved to the chair that was in the
corner. A new rocking chair, one that a woman had seen fit to donate.
This chair, this very chair would be the one that saw her
grandchildren; she felt that.

As she approached the corner, she saw the clock on the steeple nearby
through the window. Four in the afternoon, the home stretch. Fox
would be pocketing the phone about now. Tonight was the night for
their night maneuvers. Tonight was the night that it would all begin
in earnest; at the dawn they would have an idea of whether or not
anything would happen. They would not make contact and lose their
lives, make contact and lose their lives, or make contact and live. Those
were the only choices that fate was allotting them and they all knew
it. Either they would have a possibility for life, or a sentence of
death.

**
**

Dana K. Scully shook the hair out of her eyes and pressed herself up
against the wall. The building that she was pressed against was that
of the psychological project; plain brick and full of hideous plans.
The harsh siding dug into her back and she shoved her hands closer to
the stone. It had been years since she had been on an exercise of
this nature and magnitude; one false move and....

Fox waved to her from the next door way and she pushed away to join
him in the alcove. He nodded and lifted his eyebrows. She answered by
a nod. She held up five fingers and counted backwards and then
launched herself to the exterior door that lay in the next alcove.
The phone was tucked into her waistband, and made a metallic clang as
she hit the wall. Mulder followed immediately and gulped for air as
he placed the hard drive down next to her.

"Getting old, Scully." he hissed, leaning into her space, panting
from exertion. She smiled and shushed him. She got down on one knee and
began to fiddle with the lock. Skinner had fastened a lockpick from a
knife and some extra wire. Mulder leaned around the corner and drew
back quickly. "Dana?" he bent down and grunted.

"I'm hurrying, Mulder."

"Hurry quicker; the welcoming committee is right around the corner."
he hissed back.

Scully grimaced and fiddled with an increased speed. She tried to
remember the class from the Quantico academy all those years ago:
Working Under Pressure 101. She sighed as the tumblers aligned and
the door pushed inward. She grabbed the hard drive with one hand,
helping Mulder get it in the door and shut it with the other hand.
Both of them leaned back against the closed portal as the sound of
footsteps fell outside the door.

"Good job." Fox said, leaning to kiss her mouth. Scully ducked out of
the way and sighed. "Business before pleasure, Agent Mulder."

He grimaced and sighed in response and bent to pick up the hard
drive. "Why the hell couldn't we make a lighter model?"

Dana was already down the hall, following the map that she had
committed to memory. She stopped at the hallway intersection and
waited for Mulder to join her. "What do you remember of the personnel
on the night shift?"

For a second, he closed his eyes and licked his lips. "Not much of
personnel on night shift, basic skeleton crew. Two for the front
doors, three to comb the halls, and one manning the security
cameras....."

Dana stopped dead in her tracks and scanned her eyes along the wall
to look for the cameras. "I forgot...."

"Relax, haven't seen any yet. My office is right down the hall on the
right. The camera is on the next bend. Let's get this get up in there
and see what we can do...."
------

Maggie tossed in the pile of sheets that clung to the bed. She had
been exhausted when she had come home, and besides her nervousness about
Dana and Fox being on a dangerous mission, she had taken Skinner's
advice and went to bed. But now....

The landscape of the dream was desolate, dark and foreboding. A
heaviness hung over the land like a lead laden fog. Maggie stood
alone on the hill that overlooked the remnants of Washington DC. The
founders truly knew what they were about when they had built this
town this way. A light breeze kicked her short hair around her face
and she instantly knew it to be spring. Turning her head to the side,
she confirmed her suspicions by seeing trees in bud. Nearby, down the
slope a few yards, Walt and Mulder had their heads together, deep in
conversation. Every once in a while, Fox would lift his head to make
eye contact with Dana, who stood a few feet beyond. Around their feet
lay various backpacks and bags. Mulder broke from the talk to reach
Dana's side, wrapping his arms around her. Maggie gasped as she
realized that Dana was very pregnant...

The scenery changed in her mind to her bedroom in her old house. It
was warm out; September she guessed by the light chill that entered her
window. A letter from Bill was clasped in her hands; the last one she
had received from him. The light paper slipped from her fingers to
rest in the bedsheet. Someone was knocking on her door. Then she
remembered: a friend of Fox's was stopping by to leave a package.

The knocking became constant as she approached the door. Looking
through the peep hole she gasped and threw open the portal. Dana, her
red hair a mess of curls and her eyes bloodshot red from crying,
stood on her doorstep. "Mom? Oh God, Mom."

Maggie grabbed her arm and went to shut the door as Fox jogged up
from behind Dana and entered the house, a grimace on his face. Maggie
tried to slam the door on him, knowing beyond a doubt that her
daughter's grief lay solely on this man's shoulders. "Please, Mrs.
Scully."

The overwhelming sorrow in the man's face sealed her mind and she let
him in. Obviously, whatever sadness Dana suffered from, Mulder was
sharing it and not causing it. "Come in, Fox."

Dana was standing next to the front window, her head hanging. Mulder
moved to hug her and Dana stepped away. They were closer now that the
bees had begun, but they were still partners in the FBI, or what
remained of it. "What is it, dear? What's wrong?"

"Mom. I've never done this before...I...I"

She turned eyes to Fox who took a deep breath and met her eyes. "My
friend, that was coming by here to drop off the package, won't be
here. He's dead."

Maggie squinted at the tightness and sorrow in Fox's voice and waited
for him to continue.

"Mom? Don't look at him like that. I was the one that made the
decision on our parts to go through with this. Frohike, well, he made
the decision to be the one and well..."

"Well?"

"I killed him." Dana's eyes began anew their irrigation. "The
Guardians were beginning to...they...the Lone Gunmen...security breach...needed
to have leak plugged. Frohike volunteered to be the one....Guardians
wanted Mulder or I to be the ones to plumb." she sobered as Mulder
laid a hand on her arm. "It had to be done, Mom. I've committed cold
blooded murder of one of my friends because of them. We couldn't let
the facade slip."

Maggie groaned and hung her head. Her baby.....

She struggled to consciousness as she felt Walt's hand on her arm.
-------

"Come on, Mulder." Dana whispered, as she returned from her last
glance outside the office door. Mulder waved a hand behind him to silence
his distraction and continued with his project. Scully sighed in
exasperation and lopped her hands on her hips. Mulder's dark head was
bent over the computer contraption that they had erected on the desk.
He had remembered almost completely the list of instructions that
Jerry and Skinner had told him about the connection to the network.
The cables were right and he was pretty sure that he knew the
passwords, all he needed to do was type them in. The monitor was
steadily humming now and he was happy to see that the mobile phone
was working properly as the modem connection. The unfortunate aspect
of all of this was that when he 'threw the switch' quote, unquote,
they would probably have five minutes tops to break down the
connection before it was noticed.

"Well?" Dana whispered in his ear.

"It's ready, Scully. We just need to make sure we get what we need
out of this as quickly as possible."

She nodded, nudging his shoulders. He gaped at her in confusion.

"What?"

"Move, Mulder. I type three times as fast as you do."

He sighed as he ascended from his seat and let her take it. She
rested her hands against the keyboard and looked to him. He leaned
forward and whisper the code words quickly against her ears.

Dana bit her lips quietly, drawing a red, red stain on them. The
screen  reflected blue against her blue eyes, creating an unearthly hue to
them. She waited patiently as the monitor hummed and showed the
access granted words. Mulder released a light breath ladened with
happiness and laid his arms over Dana's in a light hug. "Okay,
G-woman, let's get that information."

She nodded, letting her hands fly over the words that she had seen on
the original report on the human breeding project, as she and Fox had
come to call it. The connection was a good one and the information
was spilled out on the screen quickly. The file was found on the
mainframe, right where the report had said that it would be. Dana
whistled as she saw the size of the file.

"Think we can do it?" Mulder asked in her ear. "That is a big file to
download to the disk. Do we have the time?"

Scully was already typing the commands to move the file to the disk.
She made sure that the compress file was on and shrugged. "We don't
have a choice, do we, Mulder? We have to get this information."

He lowered his head to nod into her shoulder as they kept an eye on
their watches and waited for the file to download.
-----
"Okay. Okay. That's it! We've got it." Dana smiled as she saw the
done on the status line. Thank God for double density disks. "What's
the time?"

"A little over four minutes." Fox grimaced as he watched the second
hand. "Back yourself out of that frame and shut down."

Scully grunted, typing exit commands. "What about..."

"No time, Dana."

"But we need to send a message to them...there might not be another
chance..."

"We don't even know if they are still alive, Scully." Mulder's voice
had taken on the tone that he had used when they had worked together.
It was a tone that was not meant to be ignored. "If they are alive,
we don't know if they've even remotely had a chance to do this like
us. Now get your ass out of there."

The monitor already showed the disconnection. Dana scowled as she
shut the power off, throwing the room into the semi-darkness again.
Fox grunted and started pulling cables. He was definitely less
graceful then he had been to begin with. Dana joined him in pulling
connections and stashing the cables in his desk. The phone was pulled
and again shoved in her waistband.

Mulder was tucking the remaining cables into his upper drawer when he
heard it. His head turned slightly to the side as if to make sure
that he was hearing the noise correctly. The dull throbbing high
pitched hum was quiet, but he knew what it was all the same. "Fuck."

Scully's head flew into an upright position and met his eyes.
"Mulder..."

"Just drop it, Dana." he hissed.

"No."

"Drop the damn cables. Let's go." he grabbed the hard drive and moved
to the door. As he opened the door, the pitch of the alarm grew
louder in volume.

Dana's eyes widened as she saw the hallway bathed in red light. She
scrambled into the corridor and pulled the bulk of the clumsy drive
with her. Fox nodded toward the end of the hallway and another door.
She nodded and moved ahead of him to open the portal. Inside was a
janitor's closet, empty. Mulder quickly shoved the case in the room
and pulled the door shut behind him.

"This way." he whispered, grabbing her hand. They moved together like
waves on a dark sea, moving back to the door that they had entered a
shot time ago. "So far, so good." he hissed, squeezing her hand. Dana
squeezed in return and moved to the open the door. The sounds of
running footfalls outside made her hesitate. "Oh shit."

"Let 'em pass." Fox breathed in her ear. She turned her head to look
at his hazel eyes in the darkness. Scully saw the love that she knew
was there, and smiled slightly at the sight. He grinned. "Yeah. I
love you. And we're going to get out of here."

"Yup." she agreed.

The sounds stopped outside. Fox laid his hand on the knob and readied
himself. "One the count of three, partner; and I expect you to run
like the devil was behind you."

"One." Scully breathed.

"Two." Mulder kissed her forehead.

"Three." they said together, and threw open the door.