7:46 AM. Apartment 42.

Seilman's poem was more Ashbery: bright blue highlights of "Ditto, Kiddo" from page thirty-three:

"How brave you are! Sometimes. And the injunction

Still stands, a plain white wall. More unfinished business.

But isn't that just the nature of business, someone else said, breezily.

You can't just pick up in the middle of it, and then leave off.

What if you do listen to it over and over, until

It becomes part of your soul, foreign matter that belongs there?

Until those times when driving abruptly off a road

Into a field you sit still and conjure the hours.

It was for this we made the small talk, the lies,

And whispered them over to give each the smell of truth...

There was room. Yes,

And you have created it by going away. Somewhere, someone

Listens for your laugh, swallows it like a drink of cool water,

Neither happy nor aghast. And the stance, that post standing there, is you."

Mulder sat on his couch, heedless of the dried splatters of blood, and reread the poem. Sauceda stood in the living room door watching him. Out in the hall, Mitchell and Gregg were arguing in harsh whispers like some long-married couple trying to hash out the divorce without waking the kids.

"Marty?"

Mulder didn't hear apparently. He hadn't heard the first two times Sauceda'd spoken, either. But Sauceda could blame those failures on the fact that Mulder was concentrating on the poem.

But the poem was on the floor, now. On the floor where it had slipped unnoticed from the profiler's hands, the hands still posed like the paper was there between the fingers. And Mulder's eyes still roved left to right like there was something there to read.

Sauceda was praying like he'd never prayed in his life: he prayed to be somewhere else, any place but here, watching Mulder's slow slide into oblivion and knowing his part in the process. He prayed that Purdue would get back here to tell him what Baez had said, tell him what to do to make it better. Somewhere between the two requests Sauceda respectfully suggested that God do them all a favor and let some thug put a bullet in this bitch's brain. The prayer he wished most earnestly, though, was that Marty would just come back from wherever it was he'd stepped out to.

Mulder blinked slowly and finally seemed to notice something was missing. He just didn't seem to remember what. He eyed the coffee table blearily. The morning sun through the window illuminated the smears of fingerprint dust no one had bothered to remove. There was this morning's newspaper, too, an ashtray with too many cigarette butts, a Bic pen. The phone was near at hand, still smeared with dried monkey blood. The television remote sat next to it.

In seconds, the TV was on and blaring. Mulder huddled on the couch, still in his suited finery, hugging his knees to his chest. The hand with the remote worked furiously. Channels flipped by at warp speed, washing neon colors across his face: pale green, electric blue and crimson. Mulder scarcely blinked, his concentration frightening in its intensity.

"Marty?"

"Hum?"

*Thank you, sweet Heart of Jesus--* "You want something to eat, kiddo?"

Mulder's head shook almost imperceptibly, wide eyes staring at the screen. Sauceda waited until the finger on the control had stilled before stepping around to supervise the selection. Opening credits to "Son of the Creature from the Black Lagoon." Mulder's expression was impassive but the hand holding the remote trembled violently.

"Marty, you cold?"

No response.

"Marty, you gotta eat something. How about some warm soup? Maybe some juice? Something."

Mulder's brows furrowed, intent on the opening dialog of the film.

"Sure. Great," Sauceda wasn't above filling in the blanks for himself on occasion. "So. Juice sounds good, you think? Good deal."

The pathologist trotted to the kitchen to stare into the refrigerator, grateful for a reprieve from the oppressive presence in the living room. He scanned the shelves, chewing his lip. Decisions, decisions.

The selections were V-8 and apple juice: good nutritious stuff, right? Sauceda grabbed the V-8, but stopped with the jug still on the shelf. He stared at it, considering the dull red tomato juice and how it looked in the clear bottle. Sort of like the stuff he'd scraped off the couch and put on slides for the lab.

Sauceda blinked, considering the possibility-- Nah, Marty couldn't have just spilled juice. The jug was still sealed. Besides, Sauceda wasn't stupid enough to confuse tomato juice and blood. The smell alone--

Sauceda grimaced, thinking about that coppery odor, the odor of life spilling hot from the veins, the fragrance of impending death. It had been all over Marty. And all over the kid's clothes when he'd pulled them from the hamper: that still unidentified substance, dark red and sticky, drying to crusty black on Mulder's jeans and briefs...

*Okay. Apple it is then--*

"Here you go, Marty." The pathologist's eyes looked desperate behind the brilliant smile. "Here's your juice."

Mulder frowned, considering the liquid. A quick tour of his short-term memory located no record of such a request. In fact, he couldn't honestly say he could recall how he'd wound up on the couch. His frown deepened with his efforts to assess the situation, but too many areas of his brain seemed unwilling to participate in the process. He watched Sauceda's face do a slow slide into desperation and found that he was also completely unable to form simple words like "no" anymore.

Well, hell, it was just a little juice, right?

He reached out to accept the glass. Sauceda, too-joyous smile returning, pulled it away to hand him a pill, instead. A little yellow pill. Valium, five milligrams. Mulder definitely didn't recall ordering this and he'd be damned if he'd take it, no matter how pathetic Sauceda managed to look.

He opened his mouth to inform his partner of this decision but stopped mid-breath. Sauceda's lips were moving, and try as he might, Mulder was hearing no sounds. He knew his eyes were wider suddenly, and knew Sauceda could read the fear there. The older man swallowed hard, moved his lips again, and Mulder heard the words.

"I'm praying for you, Marty. It'll be okay."

Mulder considered his options once more, a tedious and disappointing process given his current condition. "Lenny?" he asked slowly.

"Yeah, kid."

"If I take the pill will you stop praying?"

Sauceda squinted at him. "No. Of course not."

"I don't want it then."

Sauceda looked like he wanted to cry. "Aw, Marty, its just five milligrams. It won't hurt anything."

"I don't need it."

"I do, Marty. I need you to take it. Please."

"If I say no, you're going to force me to take something, aren't you?" Mulder eyed the door, considering the two men beyond it: two well-trained, well-fed, completely-sane men with orders to protect him. Even from himself. That, at least, was one fact he was still clear on.

Sauceda waited for Mulder's focus to turn back to him. "No, Marty. I won't do that," he assured, face set to convey absolute sincerity.

Mulder nodded. "Good." He turned back to the TV and just like that, Sauceda and the juice and the little yellow pill winked out of existence, lost in the melee of black and white images running rampant before him.

They just didn't make films like this anymore, Mulder realized after a bit. Considering the dialogue, he could understand why. The plot was about the most inane thing he'd seen in years. A distressing fact considering he seemed to be unable to keep track of most of it. He shook his head, trying to knock loose some rational explanation for this lapse.

A big-chested blonde squealed, running through the forest on the screen. Mulder counted to four before she stumbled over the obligatory stump. The creature, scaled and reptilian, reached for her, music swelling in the background before the screen dissolved into a commercial. A cat food commercial. Damn Friskies Kitten Chow with their little yellow tabby with big green eyes and fuzzy face...

"Lenny. Lenny? *LENNY!*"

Sauceda trotted from the bedroom, his hair rumpled, unfastened belt buckle pinging like a dinner bell with every step. His eyes were wild and snapped to frantic when they turned to regard Mulder.

Mulder laid his hand across his face to shield himself from the fear in Sauceda's eyes. He was shivering again and hating it, hating the tears he couldn't make stop and couldn't hide.

"I'd like that Valium now. Please." His teeth were clenched to keep them from rattling and the words were slurred but Lenny seemed to comprehend well enough. The older man nodded, vanished, then reappeared, comforting and cooing. Confident hands removed Mulder's suit jacket, slipped off his tie and wrapped him in the warm refuge of an old blanket. Finally, a little pill was pressed into his hand. It was a different color this time: the soft blue of a ten milligram and Mulder sighed his gratitude. But his hand was trembling too hard and half-way to his mouth, the tablet fumbled away. Salvation, however temporary, disappeared into the folds of the blanket gathered across his knees.

Mulder wailed his disappointment. It was a sound thin and pitiful even to his own ears-- horrifying. It wasn't his voice. It was, instead, that of a terrified child. Samantha's voice. Samantha's squeal, heard in one of his dreams, and Mulder choked it down frantically, desperate to flee before the horror finally caught up with him, became him. He slapped Sauceda away, struggling to escape the blanket. *This was not happening. It couldn't happen to him. It wasn't possible. He couldn't let it--*

Mulder lashed out blindly as Sauceda reached for him. He was struggling against a stranger, struggling against himself. His panic rose as his vision blurred, darkened, refocused with the mind's eye of a young child: a room full of men, shrouded in searing light, a needle, pain and pulsating flashes of heat. A dispassionate voice: "He remembers nothing," the most frightening memory of all--

The pain altered, becoming more solid suddenly, assuming another kind of urgency. Mulder jerked his eyes open and his panic was instantly overridden by reality. He paused, panting, taking a long minute to realize that it was Sauceda that was holding him, pinning him to the couch, each fist held fast, his body held down by the older man's hip.

Sauceda's face was twisted in torment. Mulder turned away, seeking some place else to be, some place that required no explanations and kept no notes. He collapsed back into the cushion, limp and unresisting, face turned to the window, surrendering whatever ground Lenny might feel necessary to claim.

Sauceda loosened one wrist tentatively but Mulder remained quite still. Sauceda's voice was a guarded whisper.

"You okay now, Marty?" Mulder considered the question before nodding. He made no further motion, however, willing his body to relax. Sauceda released him slowly, sitting down on the couch beside him, watching him closely all the while. "You sure?" He licked his lips as Mulder blinked a yes. "Where the hell did you go just now, kid?" Mulder opened his mouth but words would not obey him, would not even form in his mind, and he shook his head finally, locking his jaw down tight.

"You still want that Valium?"

Mulder nodded, his head turned resolutely to the window. He squinted at the top of the sun-washed tree beyond: another world entirely. The room was silent; he could hear the clock tick even above the rattling of the pill bottle. A light pressure on his hand and he looked down, accepted the pill, and placed it carefully in his mouth. Sauceda stepped back, allowing him to sit up before presenting him with a glass. The juice was cooling, reassuringly real down his throat and Mulder drank greedily, juice sloshing onto his chin. The pill slipped down obediently, the sensation so endearing that he continued swallowing until the juice was gone.

"More," he whispered, still refusing to look Sauceda in the eye. The old man rose to obey and Mulder found himself repeating the word to the empty room, something to keep him company in the silence, reciting it into the blurry hum of a mantra, blocking out the fear that gripped his heart without reason. And finally, the glass was back, back in his hand and full again and there was Sauceda's steady grip on his numbed fingers, like God's, delivering comfort in a glass, flooding his being with munificent grace.

His thirst sated, Mulder curled up back into the couch, eyes falling back to the television. Sauceda pressed the remote into his hand and he gripped the familiar object, his talisman, his sole measure of control in this world. Thus arrayed, he waited, unblinking as a sphinx, for the pill to convince his soul he didn't hurt anymore.

Another girlie scream from the television and Sauceda glanced back over to observe the action. He shook his head. It must be Creature Feature day or something, he decided: one long string of old B-movies full of babes with pointy boobs. Well, hey, maybe the kid was on to something. Sauceda grinned at the thought, looked back to his partner's wall-eyed stare and felt himself slide back to thinly veiled panic.

"I don't know, Marty," he whispered. "Maybe it'd be easier on the rest of us if we *did* just stick you in a hospital--"

Mulder lurched to life and Sauceda jerked guiltily. The young man flailed aimlessly, fighting with his blanket. No, not fighting really, Sauceda decided, just struggling to push it aside. Mulder got loose just as Sauceda freed himself from his lapful of files. Finally vertical, Mulder swayed above the coffee table, tipsy as a drunk on a binge. He flinched as Sauceda grabbed for him.

"Easy, kid," Sauceda peered into eyes that didn't quite manage to focus. "Just trying to get you steady." Mulder grunted and shrugged him off absently. Sauceda allowed it, keeping his expression friendly. "So, where're you going, Marty?"

"I gotta pee," Mulder's voice was soft and distant with a petulant quality that reminded Sauceda of his six-year-old grandson.

Sauceda nodded agreeably. "Okay, Marty. That's fine, just let me help you--"

"Not in your best dream," Mulder growled, slapping him away, a rough backhand against his chest. "Hot Sauce, my ass."

Sauceda blinked at the abrupt transformation. The phone rang, however, interrupting his protests. He swore, releasing the profiler to reach for the receiver. He eyed Mulder's belt warily.

"All right, Marty," he warned. "But you take it slow getting there. And don't lock that damned door. You hear?"

Mulder didn't answer, apparently too busy concentrating on weaving his way across the room. Sauceda frowned. Ten milligrams of Valium shouldn't cause a man Mulder's weight to walk like that--

But voice on the line was insisting on its share of attention. It was the lab with test results on the monkey blood from this morning's little episode. Sauceda listened, his frown deepening.

Damn. The Valium.

Really now. This couldn't be happening. Yet, there it was: the certain evidence of his own body's betrayal. Mulder decided that right now, he really needed only one thing in this world, a single, simple necessity: the reassurance of his own sanity. He'd been promising himself that all he had to do was hold out for a bit. Just hold on and all the missing pieces of his brain would come home and he would be all right again. Like when Samantha disappeared: Mulder had disappeared then, too. Not physically, just into the consoling recesses of his mind, locked in a coma for three weeks while all hell broke loose around him. Then when he woke, it had been okay again. Not good. But okay. Sort of.

Only now, his body refused to shut down, refused to bring the comfort of coma, refused him even the comfort of drug induced solitude. It had left him, resolutely, on the front lines of a fight to hold his own or to die, apparently oblivious to the results of either choice.

Mulder swayed uncertainly, trying to comprehend it all. But what could he do, really? There was certainly no way to alleviate the immediate situation.

He turned to the sink and washed his face, trying to drown the roaring in his head. He couldn't scoop the water fast enough, however, and finally just stopped trying. His fingers were numb and he left them under the water, letting them warm beneath the faucet while he stared at the intruder in the mirror. The man regarding him, however, had no answers, met his eyes with only bewildered resignation. Mulder looked over the man's shoulder, staring hard into the space behind him, seeking he knew not what.

It was a trick of his own mind, surely, but Mulder felt suddenly that someone else had stepped up behind him. Someone warmer than he, someone softer, someone invisible in the glass. Someone fragrant and gentle. He could almost feel her breath against his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Kay."

The words came without thought, only barely heard above the running of the water. Mulder's chest constricted unmercifully but he was beyond tears, the sorrow locked in too tight to express itself so easily. If he could simply believe that she had heard the words-- if he could know that much-- then he could surrender in peace. Just lay down and wait for death. Like the man in the Suffolk woods. Just sit and wait to die. Mulder wondered if that man, too, had sought forgiveness. If he had found it, somehow.

The numbness had spread from his hands and into his brain, finally. He shut the water off solely out of habit, and weaved his way back to the living room. Sauceda's back was to him, the pathologist grunting monosyllabic responses into the phone. Mulder rubbed his arms-- to be so emotionally numb, he seemed to ache an awful lot physically-- and remembered how happy just swallowing all that juice had made him. He padded resolutely off to the kitchen.

Midway to the refrigerator, though, Mulder suddenly lost all forward momentum. For the life of him, he couldn't remember what he'd come for.

The realization was bewildering and not a little frightening, and he felt his heart begin to pound. Mulder forgot things very rarely and the experience was traumatizing, an intimate violation, an assault upon his soul. When Samantha had disappeared, half of Mulder's childhood had disappeared with her: huge gaps of data, the minute details of the past eight years, were suddenly a garbled, nonsensical maze or, worse, simply missing altogether. The prospect that the rest of his life could disappear as easily was a recurring nightmare-- when he wasn't otherwise busy dreaming up corpses.

*It's just a trip into the kitchen, Fox. Don't panic. It'll come to you--*

There was a familiar clump from the living room: the sound of the receiver settling back on the phone. Mulder hugged himself comfortingly and waited for Lenny to find him. It didn't take long.

"Whatsamatta, Marty?"

Mulder lost himself in the activity on the man's face. Sauceda's wary eyes seemed to be configuring Mulder's position, triangulating his trajectory. Sauceda finally settled on the refrigerator and his face brightened visibly.

"Hey, kid. You want some more juice?"

The words sounded familiar enough but Mulder found he was having difficulty registering the question. Sauceda's expression clearly said the older man was expecting a reply, however. Mulder decided he had only a fifty percent chance of being wrong if he stuck to "yes" and "no" answers and nodded after what he hoped was an appropriately sedate pause. It must have been the correct response. Sauceda got a broad grin and instantly transformed into Mr. Mom. Mulder watched him pull out a clean glass and shoo him over to the refrigerator to present a wealth of options.

*Oh, yeah. Juice.*

Mulder leaned down to examine the selections. He frowned at the bottle of red stuff, quickly looking away to other jug as his stomach began churning. He dragged the apple juice across the shelf, trying to get it as far as possible from that gross looking stuff in the other container.

Sauceda fussed gently, "Here, Marty, let me get that."

Mulder didn't argue. The jar was one of those economy sizes and still too close to full to make simultaneously standing and pouring a viable option. Mulder frowned at the realization. Jeezus, had he suddenly gone so far south, he couldn't even manage a jug of juice? The thought made the drink bitter in his mouth. He swallowed it anyway.

When he lowered the glass, Sauceda was frowning and reached up to blot his chin. Mulder noted the tell-tale flecks of powder blue on Sauceda's cup towel. Sauceda's brows lowered suspiciously.

"You keep that Valium down, Marty?"

Even confronted by the evidence, Mulder nodded his lie. He didn't know why exactly, except that he just didn't feel like explaining. If he'd shaken his head the other way, Sauceda would want to know about how much had come up and that could get complicated. Mulder imagined a whole series of debates on granule sizes and just imagining the ensuing argument was exhausting. He slumped against the refrigerator, allowing Sauceda to finish blotting his face. Sauceda clucked like a hen, busy making what he no doubt thought were helpful noises. All the fuss made Mulder's head hurt, though, and he really just wanted to be alone...

"Lenny, I'm going to take a shower. Okay?" That brought the helpful noises to an abrupt halt.

"Marty, you just had a shower a couple of hours ago."

Mulder looked at Sauceda and read trouble there. When Hot Sauce got that look in his eye there was just no winning without breaking out some major hell and Mulder didn't have that kind of energy right now. Or that kind of mental capacity.

"Can I watch the TV then?" he asked sweetly.

Sauceda paled and shook his head, his jaw working with wonder. He looked downright disappointed.

Mulder frowned. Hell, he wasn't being sarcastic. He was even asking permission, for crying out loud. He'd let Sauceda blot his face and hadn't even punched him out for it. You'd think the man would look happier. It was just TV, after all. And *his* TV at that.

You just couldn't please some people...

Sauceda finally stopped chewing his lip and nodded. Mulder smiled, so grateful he didn't even protest when Sauceda steadied him on the way back to the couch.

Sauceda was very quiet as he got Mulder settled in. Mulder didn't even have to listen to those little cooing noises as Lenny tucked him under the blanket and handed him the remote. Mulder was thankful enough that he didn't even protest when Sauceda asked him to remove his belt.

Mulder was still installed in front of the TV when Purdue tapped and opened the door. Sauceda rose from the dining room table where he'd posted himself. Purdue stared at the profiler a few minutes before following Sauceda into the kitchen.

"Jeezus, Hot Sauce, what did you give him? I've seen guys strung out on smack with more on the ball than he's got right now."

Sauceda planted his back against the refrigerator. His voice was weary. "Ten milligrams of Valium. Not all of which has managed to stay down, thank you."

Purdue frowned. "Well," he said slowly, "at least you didn't let him argue you out of it."

"Argue? Hell, he asked for it. Damned near panicked when he thought he wasn't going to get it down. He's scaring me, Reg. Manic, depressed, worn out, even drugged, Marty prides himself on being uncooperative. It's a matter of principle. And here he is: meek as Mary's lamb. Man's said 'please' twice in as many days, for Chrissake." The attempt at levity failed to amuse either of them and Sauceda scrubbed at his face. "Look, Reg, I've seen Marty and Post Traumatic Stress. I've seen Marty and Valium. This ain't it." He choked briefly and cleared his throat. "We heard from Baez, yet?"

"He's in some hotshot conference in Geneva or some such. He called about an hour ago though. Dispatch got him patched through downstairs. We had an, ah, interesting chat."

"Is he going to hospitalize him?" Sauceda hadn't intended to sound so hopeful and dropped his head.

Purdue seemed willing to let it pass. "Baez doesn't want to hospitalize Mulder for the same reasons we don't. And more."

"What 'more'?"

"He says at this point, hospitalization would be all Mulder would need to push that last button that says 'self-distruct.' Apparently institutionalization is Mulder's biggest fear. Baez says he's probably pretty much diagnosing himself at this point and thinking his odds aren't so hot. He wakes up in restraints, that may just be the last straw."

Sauceda chewed his lip a minute. "So what do we do?"

"We've got to find this woman, Hot Sauce."

Sauceda didn't bother to point out that that much, at least, was obvious. "Don't suppose this place has surveillance cameras?"

"Damned things don't appear to work half the time. And nobody saw anything. Christ. How many times have we been here, heard this?" Purdue sighed, shaking his head. "There's some evidence that she might have climbed in through a window." He slumped against the cabinet and picked up a half-empty glass of juice from the counter, studying it blankly. "I got a sketch artist to work up a composite of the description Mulder left for us. Local PD's doing the canvas. So far, no one in the area remembers seeing anyone matching the sketch. The bartender didn't get a name and she paid cash. Just to cover all the bases, I checked Mulder's phone records for incoming and outgoing calls since he got back to DC."

"Yeah? You got something? Sisyphus made a call while she was here?"

"No." Purdue slid his thumb across the glass, staring into the sugary liquid. "But something significant otherwise. At least for me, anyway. Enough to know Mulder was managing to hold it together longer than I was giving him credit for."

"Hell, the fact that he managed to get that description written out before we showed told me that much."

"Yeah." Purdue set the glass down with a soft clink. "It seems that right before Mulder called me, he put in a call to his father. I spoke to *him* this morning, too." He noted Sauceda's grimace. "You've met the man?"

"Once. I made the mistake of calling Marty's mom when the kid was shot last year. She didn't show at the hospital but his old man popped by and gave me the what-for about calling. Said Marty was a grown man and if he wanted to go and get himself shot it was Marty's business and not my place to go bothering her about it." Sauceda shrugged. "Still, he stayed with Marty at the hospital all night. Refused to leave until Marty came to and told him he'd be okay. Hell, Marty's never complained about his parents, not that he talks about them much one way or the other. I don't know, maybe I got just got Dad on a bad day."

Purdue sighed. "Well, apparently I got him on the same day you did."

"So, I don't get it. Why would Marty call his old man?"

"Apparently he was worried Sisyphus might be digging a little deeper in his personnel file; he was afraid she'd find his parents' addresses and pay them a little visit. Stands to reason: if she found Mulder, she could find his family, too."

"So Marty called to get mom and dad on the alert? Shit, Reg. What'd I tell you? With everything Mulder's got going on head-wise, he's still five steps ahead of the rest of us--" Purdue's raised eyebrow stopped him short. Hell, Sauceda wasn't even fooling himself.

"Baez says to give Mulder time. What about it, Len? Think you can handle him a while longer?"

Sauceda shrugged. "Yeah. Sure." He sighed, remembering how Marty'd let him help him to the couch, even let him put an arm around his rib cage. Sauceda had felt bones there that shouldn't have been that close to the surface. "I don't know about all Baez's hare-brained theories but I know he pulled Marty through Shreveport. If he says Marty stays out of the hospital, then dammit, he stays out." He ran fingers through his hair. "Marty's just really fragile right now. If we can just keep him calm, maybe make him feel safe, he could relax long enough to get some perspective."

Purdue smiled humorlessly. "He's got a serial killer ripping out people right and left for his personal benefit. If that fact upsets him, I think his perspective is pretty much dead on target." He rubbed at his face, let his hands fall to slap against his thighs. "All right then. We're moving. I've paid cash, reserved rooms under an alias. Hotel suite with a kitchenette, and two more suites on either side. It'll do until a safe house becomes available. It's quiet, not too large to keep surveilled. Some place Mulder can settle in, have some peace and quiet."

"He doesn't have peace and quiet while she's killing, Reg. And these days she's always killing."

"And she'll get tired and start making mistakes. She might have forgotten her shower cap this time, Lenny. We found it near the head of the bed, slipped down beside the nightstand. And we got a strand of hair. Red. Hell, it's probably Clairol Number Six. But it's something. You got anything on that monkey blood business?"

Sauceda grimaced. "Yeah. The lab called. It's blood and it's *his*, all right. No thinners, no preservatives. Just Marty, fresh out of the vein."

"How the hell--"

"And he's anemic." Sauceda looked defeated. "The kid musta been puking for weeks. His electrolytes are shot all to hell. I've order B-12 injectables. He needs Feosol, too, but all that damned iron would just tear his stomach up even worse than it already is--"

"So where'd the blood come from, Hot Sauce? He just, what, coughed and--?"

Sauceda shook his head. "I want to tell myself that maybe he just bit his tongue in his sleep and didn't realize it, but there was just too much of it for that."

"You checked him out, right? You're sure you checked--"

"Hell, yes, I checked. It's like... Hell. It's like it just came out his pores, Reg."

"But that's not possible--"

"Of course it's not possible! But Jeezus God, it had to come from somewhere. This isn't a bad remake of *The Exorcist,* you know."

"I don't know *what* I know about this man anymore."

Sauceda's silence was an unwilling agreement.

Purdue sighed again. "Baez says Mulder's got the most formidable set of coping mechanisms he's ever seen. But that it may just be taking longer for them to kick in. He says Mulder has a history of shutting down mentally, while his brain restructures all those wonderful Polaroids he's been collecting in that mental gallery of his."

Sauceda's frown slid into confusion. "History, hell. Look, Reg, I was with Marty every step in Shreveport, even before Baez got there. I didn't see anybody shutting down, especially Marty. I swear, the kid was running the rest of us in circles mentally. Sick as a dog, and a physical wreck but mentally-- well, hell, he wasn't this bad anyway. Not then. And he kept on that damned profile, refining it so clear he could tell them what the next victim was going to look like. Hell, he even gave them a name before they started drugging him out of his mind."

"He's given us one, too. It's not his profile I'm worrying about."

"I'm telling you, Reg. Marty never shut down and this Baez is full of shit if he says otherwise."

"Earlier, Lenny," Purdue spoke slowly, watching him. "In his childhood."

Sauceda's confusion was getting thicker and a few internal red lights started snapping on. "Come again?"

"Medical history, Lenny. Mulder's medical files covering his childhood were sealed. Some nonsense about family members of State Department employees. Total bullshit. The Bureau got a court order to open them for Baez, though."

Sauceda sat down on a stool near the doorframe, face twisted with the effort to comprehend the implications and not certain that he was doing too well. "Who the hell seals medical records on a kid?"

Purdue shook his head. "I've requested the file. Even requested the Missing Persons file on his sister. Apparently no one at HQ knows what the hell I'm talking about. Baez admits only to seeing Mulder's file once. Hell, he sounded guilty that he'd even mentioned it. He swears he wasn't allowed to keep a copy, but... Seems damned odd to me." The two men were silent, listening to the roar of the TV and the oppressive silence sitting before it.

Purdue tugged at his bottom lip. "You ever known Mulder have any kind of selective amnesia?" Sauceda's face scrunched up and Purdue made vague motions with his hands, grabbing for words that wouldn't come. "Baez says Mulder's mind rearranges things, locks down events until he's practically convinced they never happened, at least not to him. Ah... how did he say it? It's like gluing photos in an album, then closing it and locking it away. And you can't get at it again until you have a specific key. He thinks that's what's happening now-- Mulder rearranging his memories so he can cope."

"Uh huh," Sauceda said slowly but without agreeing. None of this was making any sense. He could tell from the look on Purdue's face that Reg was having similar problems. "Marty never mentions his childhood. I know about the sister, I've heard him talk about her in his sleep sometimes. She disappeared, kidnapped or just snatched, his parents divorced, but that's it. That's all I know."

"I know Patterson raised billy-hell trying to get his hands on the sister's case file. The Bureau said there wasn't one." Purdue was watching him intently.

Sauceda squinted. "The girl's father worked for the State Department and we have no file?"

"Maybe..." Purdue seemed to have to force the words out. "Maybe mom and dad just didn't want to lose *both* kids. Maybe they got Mulder help. Maybe they hoped it was in time--"

The look on Purdue's face was enough to get the pieces in place for Sauceda. His shoulders set, his fists clenching of their own accord. "Hold the goddam phone here. The sister disappeared and they investigated Marty. That's standard procedure, Reg. The family's always the first investigated. It doesn't mean they thought he was guilty, dammit."

"No, of course not." Purdue growled. "It's just-- Well, there was talk of a cover-up-- I don't know. It makes a certain kind of sense--"

"Like hell. There's nuts out there that swear the CIA killed Kennedy, too. Get a government official in a bad situation and everyone screams cover-up. God, Reg, would you listen to yourself? We're talking about a twelve-year-old kid hiding a body-- and no one's found one clue about it after fourteen years? It's ridiculous. But then, of course, it's the only goddam thing that you can pin on him that will lead back to this case, isn't it? A murder." Sauceda was off the stool and livid, his voice a hiss as he spat the words. "You think he killed Kay too, don't you? You son of a bitch. You think he killed the cat and that guy up the hall. Hell, he probably flew to Wheeling on his day off and hacked up those vagrants, too, huh? And the prostitute." Sauceda slammed his hand against the counter and silverware danced in the sink. "This is just freaking great. Just freaking--"

"Someone's hot to give the impression, Sauceda," Purdue closed the small distance between them. His face was less than a foot away, now, distorted in rage, voice very low. "*Someone's* dropping major hints, Hot Sauce. *Someone's* hot to see this case closed. Right now."

Sauceda stopped quite still.

"Yeah," Purdue sneered. "Tell me, Sauceda. Ever wonder who it was you and Patterson trotted out reports on Mulder *for*?"

"I don't--" Sauceda didn't bother to complete his lie. His mouth worked a moment. Anger finally overcame shame and slid his brain back into gear. "There's no evidence that Marty was at any of the crime scenes, Reg. We've got prints--"

"We've got prints that match nothing and we've got no evidence, period. Nothing but Mulder, in no position to defend himself against charges. They want to pin the last two murders on him, Sauceda. Barring that, they're working up a case for institutionalization." Purdue ground his teeth. "The only thing keeping them off his back at this point is me and Walter Skinner. And I've got my doubts about Skinner."

"They can't--"

"The cuffs on Seilman were Mulder's."

Sauceda thought he might never be able to breathe again.

"They're running Mulder's switchblade, too," Purdue growled. "They found traces of blood inside the handle. Fibers and blood matching Mr. American Lit, thank you very much. And Mulder's are the only prints on the goddam thing." Purdue was shouting now and Sauceda flinched against the violence staring him down.

"There's no way, Purdue. You can't let them arrest him. You son of a bitch. In his condition--"

"Like hell--" Purdue hissed, paced to the dining room, Sauceda hot on his heels.

"It's circumstantial evidence, Reg," Sauceda spun the ASAC around before he could reach the living room. "It's circumstantial," he hissed, "and that's all it's ever gonna be. If she could get into his room for a damned poem, she could get in here long enough to get his knife and back in to return it. Christ, Reg, you had two men posted outside his door all night-- you think Mulder could slip past me *and* the two of them to kill Seilman--"

Purdue kept his voice down, now too, mindful of Mulder in the room beyond. "Seilman's death is the only thing keeping Mulder out of jail right now. Sisyphus is doing her beloved a favor-- whether she knows it or not."

"See? The kind of so-called evidence they've got couldn't convict him. It wouldn't stand up in a court of law--"

"They don't need him in a court of law, Sauceda. They just need him right where he is: freaked out on his own damned couch, damned near catatonic. You think he'd pass a psychological examination? No. They'd institutionalize him tonight. And conveniently lose the key. Tell me why? Who the hell are they? And what is he that they're so damned scared of him?"

Sauceda's chest hurt too bad to even swear. "I dunno. But I know Mulder didn't do this. *You* know he didn't do this. And if they've got some kind of evidence he killed his sister, well, they've rigged that, too. I swear to you, Reg, he's not capable--"

"We're all capable, Lenny. I just don't think he did it."

"Damned straight he didn't--"

"And I want you to prove it."

"Say again?"

Purdue was obviously tired of whispering, tired of leaning down to make certain Sauceda could hear. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep steadying breath. "If someone in the Bureau's building a case against Mulder, then I want to know what they've got. And I want that dammed Missing Persons file."

"On the sister?"

"I don't know who's after Mulder. That damned cancer-mongering bastard you and Patterson kiss-assed--" Purdue looked like he wanted to spit. "--Blevins, or even Skinner himself. And I don't care. They're coming through me to get him. Guilty or not."

Sauceda flexed his shoulders, pulling himself to his full height. The effort still left him a good six inches shorter than Purdue. "You can trust me, Reg--"

"Like shit."

"But--"

"You look me in the eye, you little bastard." Sauceda obeyed, blinking painfully. "You screw Mulder over on this," Purdue growled, "and I'm taking it personally. You understand?"

Sauceda swallowed down grief. "Honest, Reg, I-- I'm not doing that. Not anymore."

"You want to stay employed long enough to retire, sir, you just make certain of that fact."