Archive of Our Own

FBI Agent John Doggett saw the bomb. The red digital numbers counted down from three minutes. He swore, and continued swearing as he turned and ran back the winding route he had taken through the building that had originally appeared to be a decaying gas company plant in the Philadelphia outskirts, but was actually a rather swanky science lab. Everything in the lab was on and running. Something was actively being done inside the nondescript walls. Not that he could stop to examine anything now.

Once again a midnight tip had him running for his life.

Goddamn X-Files.

The lab lay in the bottom level of the building with the boilers. Doggett took the metal grate stairs two at a time back up to the main level. Reaching a walkway, he judged which way out would be easier, chose left, and ran hard. His footsteps on the grates made a ton of noise if anyone was around to hear. Thank God he’d kept up with his morning running routine even as the enormity of his new assignment at the FBI had consumed the last few months.

There’d been a time when his life was pretty normal. Not anymore.

Reaching the loading bay, he felt relief when he saw that the garage door he’d propped open was still open. From the ladder to the truck bay would be an easy sprint to the door and then he’d be outside.

A door on the other side of the loading dock burst open.

A woman was running at him. No, she was going for the ladder same as he was.

He felt strange. Heavy. His pulse quickened.

All he saw was red. She wore a red dress with a long skirt. What the hell?

They met at the ladder, and a wild feeling rushed over Doggett.

The woman gave him only a second’s glance. “Go!” she yelled.

Not about to argue, he went down the ladder and she followed right behind. Side by side, they crossed the truck bay and ducked under the door into the rainy night. The fresh air hit Doggett in the face and he sucked it into his lungs. Knowing the explosion and heat would come, Doggett’s feet pounded against the asphalt to put as much distance and dark night as possible between him and the building. The woman kept pace.

A split second of silence. The building exploded. A stories-tall fireball followed by three more roared forth from the base of the building out every direction. The force blew them both forward onto the pavement and sent a wave of heat that Doggett felt through his clothes as he lay with his hands over his head and his face against the asphalt.

The noise shook the earth, and then it passed.

Doggett rolled onto his back, breathing hard. Every day felt a little more dangerous. He had literally been killed and regurgitated at one point and he was still going, but the end was coming at him quick and every day it became a little more obvious that eventually he wouldn’t be able to outrun it.

But he had not been killed in an explosion this night, so he sat up to look at the fire. Whatever had been in that lab, whatever the voice on the other end of the phone had called him to come check out, was obliterated now. As he got to his feet, he wondered about the tipster’s intentions and if he, too, was supposed to be ashes and embers now.

The woman on the ground next to him moved an arm and pushed herself up. She wiped away some blood from a scrape on her jaw. One of her bare arms was also bloodied. Doggett had a moment to really look at her. Her chocolate brown hair had golden pieces and was in a long braid. She was an absolute knockout.

The feeling from before came again and he felt flushed. It was out of place at that moment, but he knew it. He’d felt it many times before. This time, it was harder and faster and far more intense.

Attraction. Desire.

So strong that it blurred the sides of his vision and roiled his stomach.

Absolutely insane in that moment. Also, dangerous.

“So much for that.” The woman stood up.

When she faced him, and he saw the way the glow of the fire hit her bare shoulders, he could not stop his hands from grabbing her by the arms. He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t understand why he did it. Every rational part of his brain screamed to stop.

The woman slapped him so hard he stumbled back. The world spun.

She came closer and peered into his eyes with curiosity. “You are not yourself right now. Can you understand me?”

“Yes.” He blinked rapidly to clear the dark edges of his vision.

“Good. Listen to me. There was a chemical compound being made in there and it’s in the air and it’s gotten into you. You need to stay outside. Get away from here and breathe fresh air. In an hour or two you should be okay. After that, go home and shower and throw away the clothes you’re wearing because it’s in them, too. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Repeat back what I said.” He did. “Good. Now go.”

“Wait…”

But she was already running off, lifting her red skirts to go faster. He noticed she was barefoot and that made his heart pump again but he fought it with a groan and watched her vanish into the darkness where parking lot lights didn’t reach.

Something was very wrong.

His last few months had been a swirl of strange. Hell, he’d come to the factory that night hoping to learn about a government operation to create supersoldiers that had already put his life in danger several times. As crazy as it sounded, supersoldiers were real. Was the barefoot woman in red another experiment?

He was far too groggy to pursue her. Barely, he recalled he’d parked about an eighth mile away from the site in an area where there weren’t lights over the vast parking lots, and walked that way.

Never could he recall feeling quite so bone-tired. He reached his car and sat down, leaving the door open. Leaning back in the driver's seat, he downed a whole bottle of water in a few gulps.

The woman had told him this would pass.

Ignore the splitting headache. Breathe in, breathe out.

He was in no state to drive, so he dug his cell phone out of the jacket pocket on the passenger seat and dialed the only number he could think to call.

It rang four times, and Doggett was about to hang up when a man’s deep voice answered. “Skinner.”

“Sir. It’s Doggett.”

“Agent Doggett? Are you alright?”

“Yes, sir. But I got a story for you.”

He gave the FBI’s Assistant Director a run-down of the events of the last two hours of his life. By the time he was done, the strange feelings subsided a little. Walter Skinner mostly just listened, and asked only specific and pointed questions. In the end, Skinner’s directions were clear; keep this quiet and do not come to work in the morning. Doggett had been working under the man long enough to know when he shouldn’t push, and he was too damn tired to argue. Skinner hung up after telling Doggett to wait for his call the following day after he set some things in motion.

John Doggett drove home, slowly. When he reached his house, he showered and tossed the clothes he’d been wearing into the trash can as the woman had said. She had warned him, given him helpful advice, but why?

Two of his former Marine buddies, Knowle Rohrer and Shannon McMahon, had been drafted out of Bravo Company to become the first two supersoldier experiments. Rohrer had gone on to join the Department of Defense and, after at first pretending to be an ally to Doggett, had only recently been revealed to be working against him. Shannon had saved Doggett's life and wanted his help to expose the program and stop it. Now both were dead at the bottom of a river and Doggett was having a hard time trusting anyone.

He slept for ten hours.

When he woke again, it was to his cell phone ringing. And when Skinner and John’s partner, FBI Agent Monica Reyes, arrived at his house the following evening, he felt pretty normal again. Unsettled, but okay.

Monica showed up with Korean food. One look at him, and concern washed over her beautiful face. “John, what happened?”

The mystery woman ate at him. Who was she? Why had she been there?

“What’s going on, sir?”

Tall and broad-shouldered, Walter Skinner looked at the two agents through his glasses. “Hang tight. I called in some help.”

FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner never called The Lone Gunmen unless he had no other options. So when he called the trio, asked for a favor, and ordered them to come to Agent John Doggett’s house the following evening, the three journalists jumped to work.

They didn’t trust the feds, but they trusted ex-agent Fox Mulder. Mulder trusted Skinner, and that was good enough.

Skinner asked them to snag all the security footage from a fire at a factory outside Philadelphia the previous night, and then to make sure no one else would ever see it. Hardly the weirdest request Richard Langly had ever handled. Corporate security was so antiquated it took him less than an hour to locate all the cameras on site, steal their feeds, and replace them with a static screen like a cable station off the air. Anyone would assume the explosion wrecked the cameras. Done and done. Easy as pie.

“Got it,” he called to his comrades as the massive video file finished uploading. Melvin Frohike and John Fitzgerald Byers came over to watch. Langly fast-forwarded past hours of footage of what appeared to be an empty factory until two people appeared, running as fast as they could.

“That’s Doggett,” Byers pointed at the man on screen. Now it was interesting.

“And that’s...” Frohike didn’t finish his statement. He didn’t need to.

It was Jen Alden.

The two people on the tape flew forward. Momentarily the screen went dark as smoke and debris went by. Langly didn’t breathe again until he saw them getting up off the ground.

There she was. Just over five feet of wild hair and curves. She was ok. Wearing a dress. That was weird, but weird wasn’t really weird with Jen.

For the last few years, the reporter and environmental activist had been like a spectre he’d see in his periphery but couldn’t catch for very long. There’d been a few precious hours a year earlier when she’d needed Frohike’s help, a few meetings here and there, and then she’d been in Vegas for DEFCon and they’d had one hour.

A drink and one slow dance and an almost kiss.

Seconds and shadows were all they’d ever had.

After Vegas, she disappeared completely. He hadn’t been able to find her for months, despite hacking into her emails and phone logs, checking out her apartment, and watching to see if her passport took her anywhere. All he knew was that she had gone to Austria and then come quickly back to the U.S. and he’d lost her. A few months earlier, Fox Mulder had vanished. Maybe she’d gone with him, or gone to ground because of him.

Now, Walter Skinner had called and Jen was on tape outside Philadelphia.

“What the..?” He rewound the moment where the FBI agent grabbed for Jen and she slapped him, and ran off in one direction before Doggett went in the other.

“Yep, that’s Jen,” Byers said.

“What the hell happened?” Frohike asked, putting on his leather jacket. “Never mind. Boys, get your bags. Something tells me we’re gonna have a weird night.”

The other two men walked away. Langly stayed at the computer and watched the footage over and over.

The Lone Gunmen knew John Doggett. For a fed, he’d always struck Langly as an upright and by the book sort of dude. A flat footed NYPD cop turned FBI, now stuck with the thankless job of leading the FBI’s least wanted department. The home of all things spooky and weird. The X-Files.

Something in the moment when Doggett grabbed Jen was off. Langly zoomed in. Doggett’s physicality changed as he grabbed Jen. The man usually moved with an almost sleek confidence, but this was an impulsive, awkward lunge. After the slap he stepped back and it was like he came back into his body. Despite facing a man who could easily overpower her physically, and though he knew how much Jen hated the Feds, she didn’t appear afraid. Langly wondered if the two of them had met before.

Maybe he didn’t know who John Doggett was at all.

Maybe you could never truly know someone.

He’d thought he knew Jen. Gorgeous Jen, who had befriended The Lone Gunmen when she’d come looking for Frohike while writing an oral history of Timothy Leary’s experiments with psychedelics. Jen’s work mostly focused on mycology, the study of mushrooms and fungus and their importance in the world’s ecosystem, and it had led her deep down a hole of strange cases that were once thought to be oddities or conspiracies. The Leary Harvard studies, the Concord prison experiments, and MKUltra. Frohike had run in the same circles, and no one was better at figuring out what was actually a conspiracy, so he and Jen had hit it off like old friends. Most people thought The Lone Gunmen, with their newspaper, investigations, and wild theories, were crazy. Not Jen.

The first time, Frohike had gone to meet her for coffee. The next, he’d brought Langly and Byers along and she’d handed them a scoop about a forest in Utah being cleared to build a data center that would pollute the nearby community’s water table. Then, Langly had gone in Frohike’s place to meet her in a diner in New Jersey to exchange folders and they’d had time for coffee before parting. There’d been a quick meeting here, a folder or disc slipped to them as she uncovered way after way in which the rich and powerful were killing the planet for profit and as they learned they were allies.

Somewhere in between all those moments, Langly realized he liked her. He liked her laughter and her near-insanity over her research and how she would, while talking a mile a minute about scientific discoveries, wad her mass of wild curly hair up in a bun but there would always be a loose piece. Sometimes her green eyes changed, flickered. Sometimes it was like he saw pieces of another Jen. That was the woman he sought now. The Jen who was probably real. On that day in the diner, she’d been obviously tired and half-distracted, so the mask had slipped a little. They’d talked about unimportant things - their preferred caffeine sources, favorite movies, bands. (She liked Hole, but he forgave her that sin. No one was perfect.) There was a darkness to her, and sometimes when the sparkle slipped, that’s when he saw the truth. When she and Frohike were absolutely nerding out about psychedelics, or when she was talking to the staff at a diner and making immediate friends. That was when her genuine and luminous beauty struck him hardest.

In Las Vegas, he’d realized it was more than just liking her.

He had no idea how to get to know her more. She never stopped running. Like The Lone Gunmen, she was fighting power for truth, unwilling to stop or compromise even if it put her in danger. Unlike Langly, she didn’t have friends at her side every step of the way.

Jen had been at the factory that exploded and there had to be a reason. Driven, Langly worked through the day bringing up all the real estate, financial, insurance, utility, and all other records he could find on the now-destroyed factory. Jen was wrapped up in something now. It seemed like Doggett was, too. If he could help them, he would. He’d stay cautious and keep his eyes open. He sent Skinner the footage for review and readied to go wherever this led.

They arrived at Doggett’s house at 8:00 as directed. The weary FBI agent opened the door looking like hell. Clearly, he had not been told they were coming, and he sighed, “I should have known.”

“Someone order expertise?” Frohike aimed for a joke but it didn’t land.

“John,” Byers greeted.

“John,” Doggett replied. He liked Byers best, big surprise. Most people did. Byers dressed like a 60s bureaucrat and possessed the admirable ability to appear a normal person.

Once the door closed, Walter Skinner appeared and seemed actually relieved to see them. An interesting development, considering the last time he’d encountered The Lone Gunmen, they had accidentally almost wrecked a stake-out he was running.

“Skinman,” Frohike greeted.

“Don’t call me that,” Skinner replied. He was irritable, cagey. That wasn’t good.

Langly spoke up. “Jen Alden is on that tape.”

Skinner nodded. “Make this a secure place to talk and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Understood,” Langly replied. “Boys.”

They went to work. Frohike and Byers scanned the whole house for bugs and unplugged most electronics and checked them for cameras. Langly installed a jammer on the phone and the connection to the satellite dish. Doggett watched them go through his house and his, Doggett, and Reyes’ phones and looked deeply irritated. Langly didn’t say a word to him, remembering the moment on the tape. He did, however, take a Coke from the fridge just to spite the man.

Something was weird. Something was always weird.

The Lone Gunmen knew how to work in the weird.

They told the truth and they helped their friends.

Whatever it took.

Last night, she nearly died in an explosion while wearing a rented dress.

This evening, she had been summoned by the Assistant Director of the FBI.

Jen Alden wondered what normal people did with their days.

She pulled her car up to the curb outside the address A.D. Walter Skinner had given her in the rushed phone call she’d received just three hours earlier. He’d given her an address, instructions to settle what she needed and pack a bag for a few days, and little more. There was a terrifying edge of sharpness to his tone, and Jen did not argue.

The house and neighborhood around it seemed perfectly normal. Whose house it was, she had no idea. She grabbed her worn Jansport backpack and leather messenger bag, locked the car, and walked up to the door. The early May night was a little chilly so she’d chosen a teal sweatshirt that fell off one shoulder, jeans, and Doc Martens. Her poor cut-up feet hurt like crazy from the barefoot events of the previous night. It had been stupid to not change before she’d gone to the factory from the gala she had been attending, but there’d been no extra time. Beneath two pairs of socks, her feet were covered in band-aids. If she had to run for her life again tonight, she could do it in Docs.

Her hunch had been proven right. The substance was real.

She wondered about the strong-jawed man with the steel eyes from the night before. Whoever he was, she hoped he’d made it home and was alright.

Walter Skinner opened the door of the house before Jen even knocked. The big-shouldered man, bald and spectacled, wore his default stern expression. Did he know he low-key smoldered? If Jen had been into older men, Walter Skinner would have been tops of her list.

Sexy came too easy to her now, a suit of armor she could bring up in a flash. Different posture, smokier voice, bite your lip a little and flip your hair back and flirt. Boom, men were captivated. Boom, the target was putty in her hands. So easy it was boring. The saddest discovery of her adult life as a journalist was how effective flirting with men was when it came to getting information. All that aside, pretending to flirt with Walter Skinner was completely unnecessary so it had become just a fun game. Someday, she would make him break, blush, something. But he was a tough cookie.

“Miss Alden.”

“Cut the formality, please.” He let her in and closed the door. “I’m never really surprised to hear from you, Walter, but a secret meeting? Very exciting.”

“Believe me, you’ll wish I hadn’t called you.”

Crap. It was serious. His jaw was too set and there was no trace of his dry humor. Whatever he wanted her for that night, it was serious. Dropping the act, she nodded. “I’ll help if I can.”

As they went into the living room, Jen saw a very pretty dark-haired woman in a well-tailored suit standing by the fireplace talking to a man who wore a gray sweatshirt and jeans. When the man turned around, Jen gasped. It was the handsome man with the blue eyes from the factory explosion “Hello again,” she greeted without smiling.

“You.” The man came around the sofa toward her.

Walter stepped between them. “Agents Monica Reyes and John Doggett, this is Jen Alden. Jen is the environmental reporter for The Herald. The FBI has brought her in to consult a few times on cases involving mycology.”

“Mycology,” Agent Reyes raised an eyebrow. “Mushrooms?”

Jen folded her arms. Most people thought of mycology as fairly silly and she was used to defending her work. “Psychedelics, mind control, unheard of medical possibilities. But yeah, it really is all mostly about mushrooms.”

“Cool.” Ok, Agent Monica Reyes was alright.

Jen turned to Agent John Doggett. Now that she knew he was a Fed, his bearing and his presence at the factory made far more sense. Immediately, she disliked him. All the Feds ever did was ruin lives. “I should have known you were FBI.”

“Agents Doggett and Reyes are The X-Files now.”

“Oh.” Shoot. That was a wild development. Based on the stories she had heard about Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and The X-Files, Jen did not envy the agents who had the thankless task of taking over the branch.

Agent Doggett spoke bluntly. “Why the hell were you out there last night?”

Walter sighed. “Miss Alden - Jen - has a Mulder-like habit of popping up where she shouldn’t be.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me, Walter.”

Agent Reyes smirked. Jen knew she would like the woman. On the other hand, Agent Doggett stared at her like she was both enemy and mystery. She wondered what he actually remembered of the previous night and considered asking, but held back because sometimes offering information before it was asked for led to trouble. She had not risen to where she was in her journalism career by not learning to read situations and people. This agent was wary of her, and so she would be wary of him.

“The house is secure, but unfortunately everyone in a two block radius is gonna have some issues with their prime time cable…” A familiar gravelly voice spoke and Jen saw a face she was always glad to see. When Melvin Frohike saw her, he grinned broadly and held out his arms. “Holy shit.” If she’d been the type to easily tear up, she would have done it then as the stout older man, her equal in height and wearing a leather jacket as always, embraced her. “Good to see you, kid. There are not enough hot women who can talk about psychedelics in the world.”

“No one gets me like you, Melvin,” she replied.

The bearded and adorable John Fitzgerald Byers stepped into the room and almost tackled her in a brotherly hug she returned. She had missed them so much, and felt awful about leaving town for so long without at least letting them know what she was up to. But if anyone could understand someone dropping out, it was The Lone Gunmen.

But there were only two, and they always came as a trio. “Where’s….?”

“Hey, Jen.”

At the sound of Langly’s voice behind her, Jen sucked in a breath. She was not a woman easily rattled. Men were mostly pieces on a game board she used as needed, and she could count on one hand the ones who had actually ever meant something to her. Of all the men she had ever known, it was Richard Langly, hacker genius and rock’n’roll weirdo, who always knocked her off-step.

She turned around to see him. Tall and lean with long blonde hair, he wore a Motorhead t-shirt (How many band shirts did he own?) and his familiar sharp confidence. It wasn’t cockiness. No, Langly carried himself like someone who figured he could handle most anything that came at him. Byers and Frohike were easier to like; goofier, more affable. Langly was a little more abrasive, more combative, a sharper tack. Now, he stood in the doorway with his arms folded and something in his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses that told her he knew something was off.

Jen followed his eyes. Langly knew Skinner but the two agents were new. The woman seemed friendly, but Agent Doggett raised her hackles. Not just because of the incident the previous night but because of the way he looked at all of them now.

The last time she’d seen Langly was at a hotel bar in Vegas after DEFCon, where they’d been in town for different reasons. She’d been attending with a CEO she was pretending to be interested in so she could get into his room and steal his computer to get some proof and try to stop the clearing of an old growth forest. Jen and Langly had shared one slow dance and almost kissed before she had run away. Since then she’d been halfway across the world and back.

“You disappeared,” he said as if they weren’t surrounded by people.

“I’m sorry. He told me not to contact you three.”

“Mulder?” Skinner asked.

“We are all just orbiting the sun that is Fox Mulder, aren’t we?”

“You two know each other?” Byers asked Skinner and Jen.

Jen nodded. “Walter probably wishes we didn’t. I’m yet another of his problem children.”

Langly understood immediately and she knew they’d talk more later. “I’m glad to see you.”

Agent Doggett broke in. “While I’m glad you’re all getting a reunion, would anyone like to explain to me why you are all in my house right now and why you were at that factory last night running for your life in a ball gown?”

The last part was aimed at her and accusatory. “It was a cocktail dress. Obviously not ideal for running but I was at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner when I got a tip to get to the factory and I didn’t have time to change. Had I known what was happening, believe me I would have.”

“You were barefoot.”

“Also not my best choice. My feet are killing me right now. But, it was still better than heels on metal grate steps.” So he remembered seeing her and running with her. That was interesting. Clearly, the memory didn’t immediately vanish when the switch happened.

“What is going on, sir?” Agent Reyes stepped forward to calm the mood.

“Sit,” Skinner ordered as if he were actually talking to a room full of his kids. They all obeyed. Facing each other around the coffee table like a board of directors gathered for an earning’s report. Jen sat on the sofa with Langly on one side and Byers on the arm of the sofa on her other. “That explosion last night didn’t come out of nowhere. You and you,” he pointed to Doggett and Jen, “start talking.” Everyone looked at him. “If anyone thinks I don’t pay attention to everything you’re all doing constantly in case things get messy, you’re an idiot.”

None of the idiots volunteered to go first.

Agent Doggett kept his hard eyes on Jen. He didn’t trust her. Good. She didn’t trust him either. Very few Feds were worth any sort of trust and there was every chance the government was behind all of this.

Skinner sighed. “Jen, do me a favor and go first.”

She pulled out her laptop and started talking as she brought up the image of a painting of a bright blue mushroom with tiny white fibers. “Last year, I was looking at the MKUltra experiments for a fifty-years-on kind of oral history piece examining the legacy and outcomes. Figuring he could point me in the right direction, I called my pal Walter. He sent me to Mulder, and when I tell you he hooked me up and talked my ear off about the whole thing. Then, about five months ago, Mulder emailed me out of the blue to ask me questions about a legendary South American mushroom fabled to be the aphrodisiac of the gods. Best anyone had figured, it would have to be a psilocybin mushroom that was probably eradicated during Cortes’ arrival and Spanish colonization of the Aztecs and Mexico.” She clicked another image and a scan of tiny filaments under a microscope came up. “Mulder asked to meet me and he had spores in a double-glass box. I took them and had them tested and they are very probably the same species.”

“Where’d he get them?” Byers asked.

“Didn’t say.”

Byers raised an eyebrow. “Scully could have tested them.”

“Unless Mulder didn’t want anyone inside the FBI to know about them,” Langly answered.

Reyes leaned forward to look at the image. “So an extinct species isn’t extinct. That’s incredible, but why does Mulder care?”

“I wasn’t sure. Then, he disappeared, leaving me with the spores and a hell of a scoop about looking into the recent cases involving Senator Hirsch and Representative Grohl. Mulder stopped answering my calls and emails and I haven’t heard from him since and I’m guessing no one else has either. But, almost immediately after he left, the Speaker McConnick scandal broke.” The whole sensational story - three Congressmen who all, in a span of just a few months, had been accused of attacking women on their staffs - seemed to be all the 24 hour news channels were talking about and that print media was running.

Byers spoke. “A politician violating a young staffer isn’t anything new, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately not. But, McConnick insists he didn’t do it, and don’t get me wrong he’s a racist piece of shit but watch him in the press conference. He is utterly convincing. As are Senator Hirsch and Representative Grohl.”

Reyes frowned. “Liars lie brilliantly.”

“They passed lie detector tests. All three of them.”

“Those can be gamed.”

She shook her head. “Senator McConnick is not lying. As far as he knows, he did not attack Gretchen Gamble.”

Doggett scoffed. “The footage shows him attacking her.”

“Do you remember grabbing me last night?”

“That didn’t happen.”

The man was very annoying. “Are you certain?”

“I’d remember that.”

“Would you swear it under oath?”

“Yes.”

“Langly.” It was all she had to say. He spun his laptop around and showed Skinner, Doggett, and Reyes the moment. They rewound it and watched it a few times, watched her slap him and how he shook it off.

Doggett watched and his eyes got bigger. “I don’t remember that.”

Jen studied him. He was being honest. “You couldn’t. Because I suspect the chemical that was being manufactured in that facility was in you just like it was probably in Speaker McConnick and those other men. He absolutely did attack Gretchen Gamble, but he was influenced to do so and he absolutely does not remember it. Agent Doggett, I don’t know you. I assume based on the people you surround yourself with that you’re a good man. But if you’d been in that building ten minutes longer, neither I nor an exploding building would have been able to stop you from attacking me, and you’d have been none the wiser come morning.”

Everyone was quiet. Doggett took a moment. “I remember feeling strange.”

It was impossible not to feel sympathy for him. “I’ve been able to speak to McConnick and Grohl. From what I’ve gathered, you feel strange for just a few moments and then…it’s like a switch is thrown.”

“I apologize.”

“No need. Weirdly, you were a perfect example. Proof. I’ve never seen it happen before. Your eyes changed. They were totally white. You were in the facility for, what, ten or fifteen minutes?”

“Max.”

“I was the same but I was going through the buildings and inside and outside a lot, which likely minimized my exposure. And it was raining and I was wearing that stupid dress so that might have washed away the skin contact. There’s no odor either. Totally invisible.”

Frohike leaned forward. “Psilocybin?”

She shrugged. “Probably, but mixed with something else to create aggression.”

“Do you have a sample?”

“No. That’s what I was hoping to find last night.”

“What’s the endgame?” Doggett asked.

“Mind control,” Frohike realized. “The Nazis wanted a truth serum and tried in the forties. The US government decided that’d be a swell idea and they should get to it first, but they haven’t really managed it yet. Maybe they figure this is a good way. Not the truth, per se, but if it can get you past a lie detector test….”

“Easy to administer, too,” Jen said. “A spray of gas or a few drops slipped into someone’s coffee and no one’s the wiser.”

Skinner sat back on the couch. “But why take out McConnick, Hirsch, and Grohl?”

This was the part Jen knew for sure. “I’m guessing that’s why Mulder gave it to me. McConnick stepping down means James Shwarmer becomes Speaker. He’s far more friendly to the idea of clearing National and State Parks and wildlife refuges for private development and oil drilling. McConnick is an old-school Roosevelt type. He has a herd of Bison on his ranch in Montana, for god’s sake.” In the world of Environmental activism, sometimes allies on one issue could be villains on another. McConnick sucked on many issues but his record on voting in favor of environmental protections was admirable at least.

Langly was watching her, taking it all in. “Replace the people in your way by ruining them. Less dirty than assassination.”

“And those women they attacked are just collateral damage. The repercussions are horrifying,” Reyes sat back with wide eyes.

Byers nodded. “It brought down a Speaker. It could bring down a President.”

Frohike sighed. “It could bring down a whole government,” he said.

“Mad Hatters and March Hares,” Doggett muttered quietly, then looked at Jen. She wouldn't give this man the satisfaction of thinking he could intimidate her. She looked right back at him, steel eyes of her own.

Even the most ardent believer in the mythology of America as a Manifest Destiny golden light on a hill bullshit had to admit that the US government had done some shady shit throughout its history. Slavery, eradication of the Buffalo, Internment camps, the Chinese Exclusion Act, letting Nazis escape consequences because they were good at building rockets. The list of atrocities went on and on.

Doggett wasn’t a naive cadet. He knew about MKUltra and the experiments on prisoners and other participants willing and unwilling. Gerald Ford’s Church Committee had exposed the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence coordinating with the Army’s Biological Warfare lab and their experiments on humans in an effort to figure out mind control. “We’re still doing that shit?”

After a long moment, Skinner rubbed his eyes. “Officially, the United States government doesn’t take part in mind control research anymore. After Ford’s executive order prohibited experimentation on human subjects without completely informed consent, supposedly everything stopped. And then under Reagan it changed to no human subjects at all. And, almost all the Church committee files were destroyed in 73. Believe me, Mulder looked.”

Langly cocked his head. “And you believe the CIA?”

“I barely believe the FBI half the time,” the A.D. admitted. “But is this government or private?”

“Who owns that factory?” Reyes asked.

Langly clicked a few times. “It’s owned by a shell company that goes to a subsidiary of StarCorp.”

“The utilities company?” Reyes asked. Everyone in the greater DC Metro paid some sort of bill to the giant company.

“To be clear, you didn’t blow up the factory?” Skinner asked Jen.

“I’m flattered you think I could pull that off,” she replied.

“You said you got a tip.” Langly asked her. “Phone or email?”

“Email.”

He took the laptop she handed over and went to work. “This is the worst virus protection I’ve ever seen. Seriously.”

Doggett watched as Jen smiled at the hacker. “I missed you, too.”

Doggett attributed a large part of the success he’d had in his career to his ability to watch people and note things about them and extrapolate from that. He noted the way Jen Alden folded in with The Lone Gunmen easily. Clearly they went back a long way, but Byers and Frohike had exuberantly greeted her and Langly held back. It was the physical distance of two people trying not to let on how much they cared about each other. If she was a honeypot, Langly was the target.

But if she was a super soldier, Doggett would be ready.

Yet, as she’d talked about mushrooms and science, her knowledge was awfully deep and specific. Maybe she was just a hot nerd. Stranger things had happened.

“It’s from a free anonymous account,” Langly finally said. “Anyone could have made it. Who do you think sent it?”

Jen rolled her ankle in her boots. Doggett guessed her feet hurt, but super soldiers seemed largely adverse to pain. He’d shot one several times, for Christ’s sake, and it had kept advancing.

“My first tip came from a man named Roland McFarland.”

That name struck everyone around her. “What?”

“McFarland is dead,” Byers said quietly.

Jen closed her eyes before she said. “I’ve been gone for a few months. I didn’t know.” She took a breath. “I’ve had a new source in the facility for a few weeks. A low level researcher named Candace Walsh. She reached out to me and we’ve been emailing and we met up once, but she dropped off last week. I assumed, and I suppose I hoped, the tip was from her and that she’d be there. I didn’t find her.”

“I didn’t see anyone either,” Doggett offered.

“Someone likely tried to kill you, Miss Alden,” Reyes said and turned to Doggett. He hadn’t figured she could possibly look more concerned, but by God she’d done it.

Langly pointed at Doggett. “What about you?”

“I was also following a tip.”

“Phone or email?”

“Phone,” Doggett said. “An unknown number.”

Frohike shook his head. “So both of you were called to one building at the same time on the same night and it happened to explode while you were there. Kill two pains in their asses with one explosion? Convenient. Of course, none of this explains why Agent Doggett was at the factory last night. I assume you’re not neck deep in the possibilities of fungal networks, sir.”

Doggett replied, “Super soldiers, actually.”

“What?”

The Lone Gunmen almost exploded with curiosity, but Skinner pointed at all four of the journalists. “This is all obviously off the record.”

Frohike blew air out his cheeks. “Way to ruin our fun.”

Reyes spoke to Doggett, ignoring the others and skipping over a lot of explanation they didn’t all need to know. “Do you think it could be Shannon?”

“She’s dead.” He wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but it was the official word. Shannon McMahon had been stabbed through the chest too hard to possibly be alive. At least, for a human.

“We thought Knowle Rohrer was dead and look what happened. The site where you met Shannon McMahon was a water reclamation facility. This was a former natural gas site. Both would be easy ways to distribute a substance to a large swath of people. And both would have the ability and space to work on manufacturing something you wouldn’t want people to see. Hiding in plain sight. No one looks at an abandoned utility company building. It’d just be ambient visual noise.” Reyes glanced at the others for agreement.

Byers backed her up. “Manufacturing enough of a substance for the manipulation of the populace would take up space, for sure.”

“Maybe there’s more super soldiers around.” He moved his eyes to Jen quickly to clue Monica in on his suspicion. She didn’t even flicker in reaction.

Skinner stood up. “We have to assume whoever tipped you two off did it with ill intent. One or both of you was supposed to be in that building when it blew up. Langly erased the tape, but they’re not stupid and they won’t find any bodies or traces of you. You need to disappear. You’re targets.”

“Hell no,” Doggett got to his feet. “I’m not running.”

Jen stood, too. “I can’t just disappear.”

Skinner indicated her. “I know Ned Nelson at the Herald. If he has an issue, he can call me.”

“Power moves look good on you.” Her attempt at lightness didn’t work. Doggett saw the fear on her face and wondered if his own was showing. Trusting a stranger wasn’t one of his strongest skills. Especially one that might be hiding more than he could yet figure. Something was up with Jen Alden. He'd figure out what it was.

Byers put a hand on Jen’s shoulder. “Where are we going?”

Skinner scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Byers. “Drive here. Don’t show the others. Reyes and Doggett, you’re with me. Jen, you going with them?”

He meant the Lone Gunmen, and Jen nodded immediately. “There’s no one I trust more.”

As instructed, Byers drove and said nothing about where they were going. Frohike and Jen rode up front with him and Langly sat on the floor in the back, plugging into the portable network in an effort to dig deeper into the records he’d found awe well as to call Jimmy Bond and let him know that they wouldn’t be back for a while and to keep an ear out for anything interesting or suspicious. He wanted badly to pull Jen aside and talk to her, but it wasn’t the right time. For now, they all had to get to a safe place. He kept his eyes on the computer but his ears on the conversation.

No one said much until they were out of the DC Metro and headed north on the highway. An eerie tension sat heavy over the collective, and Byers turned on the radio but no one really paid attention to the music. Finally, Frohike started talking. Someone had to, and the oldest Lone Gunman was uncomfortable with too much silence. “Alright, young lady. Where’d you go after Vegas?”

“The International Climate Symposium in Vienna. Which is actually just a gathering of rich assholes pretending to care about the planet purely for PR. Their private jets alone cause more damage than most regular people ever will."

“While we’re all out here cutting our plastic soda rings to save turtles,” Frohike agreed.

“Abolish billionaires,” Byers muttered.

Jen continued. “But rich men are the easiest marks. All you have to do is flutter your eyelashes and agree with them that they’re the second coming. So all I had to do was wear a short skirt and giggle a little and I got to overhear all sorts of diabolical bullshit which I have forwarded to several contacts to dig into further.” She brightened her tone. “Don’t worry, boys. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to honeypot anyone.”

Langly swallowed hard. He knew they always said whatever it takes, but the idea of Jen giving herself to someone she loathed for a scoop or a steal sent a pain into his stomach. He looked down to grimace unseen. He had no cause to feel possessive of her, and yet…he knew she’d followed a bad man from Vegas to Vienna and knew in his gut that it hadn’t been as inconsequential as she described.

Like a true Dad, Frohike pushed on. “And where have you been the last few months?”

“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Working with activist groups and local communities to try and stop an oil company with a government permit from drilling in and destroying pristine natural areas. Not always winning, unfortunately. It was very off-grid. Like being on another planet sometimes. Incredibly cold. Sorry I left without word.”

“It happens,” Byers answered.

“Oh!” She reached for her leather bag. “You might be interested in this, though.”

“Is this an X-File?” Frohike gasped as if she’d handed him the Holy Grail.

“Sure is.”

“Operation Midnight Climax,” Frohike breathed in awe. “From Mulder?”

“I assume it was a parting gift,” she answered.

Frohike turned to his younger comrades. “The CIA lured men to a warehouse with prostitutes and drugged them and studied them without their knowledge or consent. The 50s and 60s were absolutely wild.” He went silent as he got lost in the reading. Things went quiet again. Langly glanced up to see Jen staring out the window. For a moment just watched her reflection as she stared, troubled, out into the darkness. No. He needed to focus.

“How's it going back there?” Byers asked.

“It looks like the shell company that owns the Philly factory has two other locations they own. One is in California, but there’s one…outside Newark.”

“Might be fun to go get a look,” Byers replied.

“Detour?” Frohike asked.

“No,” Langly said. “Do what Skinner said for now.” Getting Jen far away from the threat was first priority, and he didn’t need to explain any further.

Two hours later, after a lot more thoughtful silence and a few scattered conversations, the van pulled into a gas station. Jen went into the bathroom and when she came out Langly noted she had tied her hair up and reapplied her makeup. Trying for normalcy in order to appear calm when he could see her biting her lip, freaking out on the inside. He met up with her at the register as she was buying a bottle of water, Combos, and Skittles. She looked at his choices; Corn Nuts, Good & Plentys, and Mountain Dew. “Road trip finery.”

He feigned offense. “Hey, they’re classics.”

They walked out of the store together. In the parking lot, she stopped and suddenly blurted, “Sorry you have to go into hiding because I don’t know when to stop.”

She was blaming herself for everything. “Could be worse.”

“How could it be any worse?”

“Running for your life with friends is better than running alone.” He hoped she took it the way he meant it, as reassurance, safety. Jen shook her head with a wry smile. In the van, Langly tossed Byers a pack of Hostess Cupcakes. “Fuel for the driver. How much further is it?”

“Maybe two more hours. If you all want to sleep, go for it.”

“Hey, if you’re awake we’re awake” Frohike said. “All for one and all that jazz. Langly, take my spot. I’m coming back to do some reading. Midnight Climax. Amazing.”

Langly knew Frohike would soon fall asleep no matter how much he intended to stay awake.

“So tell me about all the adventures you’ve had while I’ve been gone,” Jen said, offering Byers the red pack of Skittles.

“Oh hell. Where do I even start?” Byers told her about all the strange cases they’d had lately, of the near-death moments and strange people and Tango competitions in Miami and their new allies Jimmy and Yves. Jen listened rapturously, groaning when the name Morris Fletcher came up. Like The Lone Gunmen, she’d encountered the smarmy sneak before. And she giggled when they told her how they’d derailed an FBI sting and, after Jimmy had disguised himself as Skinner, faced the A.D.’s wrath.

By the time they pulled off the highway and turned onto a dark straight county road that turned to gravel after a few miles, it was a chattering gathering of old friends. Frohike fell asleep, as expected, but the three in the front talked about conspiracies and cases and weird occurrences and terrible people. At one point Langly realized Jen’s leg was against his and neither of them was shifting away from it. He stretched an arm around the back of the seat behind her and she leaned cozily against him. Having her so close was incredible, but also absolutely maddening.

“Can I ask you something?” Langly tipped his head to her.

“Anything.”

“Do you know where Mulder is?”

It seemed like she chose her words carefully. “Conceptually. He left me some…puzzle pieces, clues. Should I need him, or should you guys need him, I can fairly easily put them together and reach him. But, right now under threat of torture or mind control, I can’t give anyone any useful information.”

“Why you and not us? Skinner? Scully?”

“I’m peripheral. You’re all close known associates. I’m just some reporter he emailed.”

“Little do they know you’re as weird as the rest of us,” Byers leaned forward to see in the darkness.

“You flatter me, Byers. No one’s as weird as you guys.”

“That’s the exit.”

Following Skinner’s directions, Byers turned onto a dirt road that was invisible in the thick forest. The headlights of the van cut through a one-way dirt path for about a mile until a small log cabin and Skinner’s car came into sight. As they parked and got out of the van, the A.D. came out to meet them. Without headlights, the night was so dark under the thick tree canopy only a few stars were visible.

“Where are we? This can’t be an official site,” Langly questioned.

“No,” Skinner said. “It’s my grandfather’s old hunting cabin.”

It struck Langly that Skinner was more scared than he was letting on. Not only had he ordered them all there, but he had come along. The A.D. continued. “John and Monica are inside looking the place over. Check it out for yourselves, gentlemen. It should be secured.”

“At least there’s electricity.”

“You might be surprised how good the internet access is,” Skinner said. Despite his serious face, he winked at Langly specifically.

“So we’re hiding in a cabin in the woods,” Byers sighed.

“Porn starts this way,” Frohike said.

Jen clapped his shoulder as she carried bags past him. “So do horror movies.”

Skinner went to the van to help with bags. “In the morning, a couple of us will go to town and get what we need. For tonight, make sure it’s safe and we’ll all get some sleep. Plenty of bunks.”

The agents and the real experts went to work checking the cabin and surrounding area while Jen helped Skinner pull out sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows for everyone to take a bunk. The men would be in the biggest bunkroom and the women would share a smaller room off the kitchen.

Skinner hadn’t lied. Langly literally whistled when he connected to the internet. The A.D. had clearly enlisted someone with skills to make sure the cabin’s tech was up to date. For what reason, Langly didn’t ask. It made all the sense in the world that someone like Skinner, who chased danger so often and had so many people to keep safe, might need a place like this. A real cozy nest for a real Mother Hen.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Jen left the cabin. Langly almost panicked thinking she had disappeared again. Instead, he found her standing on the edge of a dock by a small pond enveloped in the dark. Only a slice of the moon made any reflection on the still water, and there was almost no noise apart from a wee ripple and a chorus of crickets.

“Too damn quiet,” he said by way of letting her know he was there.

“It’s unnerving isn’t it? Being stuck in a remote cabin deep in the woods.”

“Like a horror movie. If the birds tear off, be ready to run.”

Eyes on the trees, Jen leaned toward him. “The Birds scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. I’ve never trusted birds. The CIA looked at bird migration patterns as a possibility for chemical warfare at one point, you know.”

“Of course they did. I don’t know anything about birds, except that cardinals are ostentatious and always sound like laser guns. And that I hate chickens.”

“I forget you’re a farm boy.”

“I’d like to forget it myself.”

“Is Agent Doggett always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Staring lasers. Distrustful.”

“Despite the stick up his ass, he’s alright. Something’s up with him, though.”

They stood quietly for a minute before she spoke again. “For what it’s worth, I wish I’d have stayed longer in Vegas with you. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

Langly reached for her hand in the dark. “Did you get in trouble in Vienna?”

“I’m always in trouble.”

“You know damn well what I mean.” She’d followed Simon Booker to Vienna, though he’d asked her not to. He ran his thumb over her wrist, where there had once been a bruise.

“I got out of it quickly and ran as fast as I could to Alaska, alright? I’m fine.”

She was not fine but she wasn’t going to tell him any more about it, so he started talking. “Vegas was a mess, if it helps. After you left, I went to what I thought was a D&D game but was actually an ambush and got a mind control implant in me by folks who were going to use me as an assassin, but Susanne Modeski found it and we staged a whole thing and used it to expose Grant Ellis giving the formula to the government, and we saved her life.”

“Oh my God,” she breathed. “I knew Ellis was a snake. Where’s Susanne now?”

“We wiped her identity. Byers is in love with her, by the way. She’s somewhere else now. Somewhere secret.”

“Oh no.” Jen’s eyes were wide. “Is he alright?”

Langly shook his head. “Probably not, but he doesn’t talk about it. After you left, I kinda hoped you’d gone to hide, too. Maybe wherever Mulder is. Just that you were safe somewhere. And then there you were on the tape with Doggett narrowly escaping death.”

Jen kicked one of her Docs against a small pebble and sent it into the water. “Yeah well, we always come out ok.”

“Someday we won’t,” he said. It was a fact he’d accepted a long time ago. Their sort of work didn’t usually equate to long lives and peaceful retirements. “But, that could be tomorrow or twenty years from now.”

“It’s hard to build anything in uncertainty.” She meant them. The two of them and if they could build something.

Langly’s heart thumped and he faced her. “People build houses on fault lines all the time and they know the risk. Sometimes it works out okay.”

Jen sighed. “That’s why insurance companies exist. To make money because too often things collapse and people die.”

“Damn the man. Eat the rich.” She was so close to him he only had to whisper.

Jen rose on her tiptoes to kiss him.

The whole whole world stopped, and Langly stopped her. Jen’s face questioned why. “We don’t have to rush, Jen. I’m not going anywhere.”

She didn’t take her hand from his. “You always surprise me.”

He bent and put his forehead to hers. “Yeah, I’m full of surprises.” Her perfume smelled like lilacs, and he wobbled in his resistance. Probably he’d wake up tomorrow furious at himself for letting the moment pass by and not taking advantage of it, but it didn’t feel right. “We need to get some sleep.”

“Sleep?” Those eyes pulled at him. If he asked, she would go with him.

The acknowledgement of mutual attraction made his mouth dry. “Yes, sleep. If we wind up running for our lives in the morning, we’re gonna need it.”

“Fine. Be reasonable.” It was a tease, but she gave in and took a step back from him. Langly kept hold of her hand as they went back inside. Everyone had clearly bedded down, and they parted to their separate rooms after he squeezed her hand once more.

Goddammit, he’d been reasonable and rational and now he had to let go of her and go into a different bedroom and not sleep beside her.

He was unsure how to tell her his truth. That he, age 32, was still technically a virgin though he certainly had some experience and understood all the mechanics involved in sex. A virgin, not an idiot. Not that Jen would judge. But she might hesitate or second guess, neither of which he needed or wanted. Until her, he had been too internal, too focused on the work to consider handing over his entire self to somebody.

And now…As he slipped out of his clothes and into his sleeping bag, he felt an overwhelming urge to throw his laptop into the lake, take her by the hand, and run deep up into the mountains and hide forever. He dreamed of shapes moving in the dark of the forest. A terror haunted his sleep. Which were just trees, which were dangerous, and which were just her shadow as she slipped away again?

Despite everything, perhaps due to knowing there were three armed FBI agents in the cabin with her, Jen slept very well nestled into the sleeping bag on the pine bunk. When she woke to sunlight blasting in through the east-facing window, she remembered the previous night and buried her face in the pillow for a moment to groan quietly to herself like a schoolgirl with a crush.

She’d tried to kiss Langly and he’d stopped her. What the hell?

It hurt a little. It was not what she’d expected to happen. She rolled onto her back. What version of her did he want? The sexy reporter she played so well or the real her, full of insecurity and too much ambition and not enough common sense? Not that he’d ever really even seen her when she turned off the confident, sexy act. She felt almost possessed by that character sometimes. Most men wanted that version.

Langly was so unapologetically himself, no matter what. He could have had her, and he had held back. Maybe she didn’t have to pretend with him.

Birds sang outside. A Daddy Long Legs crawled on the window outside.

Even if someone was trying to kill her, Jen was in the woods and that electrified her. That was the real her, happier among the mud and trees of the natural world so many didn’t care to protect.

Monica was already gone from the top bunk. Someone was moving in the kitchen. Jen pulled a pair of jeans and a gray tank top and a black zip-front hoodie from her bag and threw them on along with a gray Greenpeace beanie because did not want to even imagine what her hair looked like. When she emerged from the bunkroom, carrying her sneakers under her arm, she found Agent Doggett in the kitchen pouring himself a travel mug of coffee.

“Morning,” he said. It wasn’t a warm greeting.

“Morning. Where’s Monica?”

“She went for a run. Byers and Skinner went to town to grab some supplies.” She crouched to tie her shoes. “You going somewhere?”

“Into the woods. Walter said it was fine as long as I stay close. It is early spring in these mountains, and if you think I’m not going in search of morels you’re out of your mind. Besides, those two will sleep till noon.” She found another travel mug in the cupboard and prepared her own coffee, and took a paper bag with handles from a pile of bags on top of the fridge. It would work for collecting the delicious mushrooms she hoped to find.

“Mind if I join you?”

“If you don’t mind the mud.”

When she walked out the door a few minutes later, he followed. She noted he was armed, If that was because he didn’t trust or, or because of the looming danger that might be around them, she did not inquire. Either way, she wasn’t mad about it.

The morning air was crisp with the remainder of a chill. Recent rain made everything smell like dirt and earth. Petrichor. There was no better smell in the whole world. She scanned the area and found a place that had once been a beaten path into the woods, and followed it. Doggett didn’t talk for a long time, and that was fine with her. She was looking for poplar or ash trees, especially decaying ones. Morels were picky about where they’d pop up.

“You always been into mushrooms?”

“My Dad was obsessed. With mycology, psychedelics, the whole scene. He was your classic Berkeley sixties professor dude. When I was a kid I thought he was ridiculous and then as a teenager I had to admit it was all I was really interested in.” What Chuck Alden would think of his daughter now… she had to stop herself from thinking about it before it felt like a bowling ball settled in her stomach. Her Dad had been driven, too, and it had landed him in a federal prison for his experiments because the government was small-minded about things they didn't control. It had ruined her family. And Jen was just like him, and it had led her to where she was now. Even thinking about it hurt.

“Can you get a degree in mushrooms?”

“You can. Like a biology degree with a focus. But, I went to school for journalism.”

“That’s a jump.”

The agent was sizing her up. “Figured someone needed to speak for the fungus. Like The Lorax speaking for the trees.” She looked sideways at him to see if he caught the Dr Seuss reference.

“I know The Lorax.” Ok, so he was human. “Can I ask you something? What’s with the flirting with Skinner?”

Jen raised her face to the sky in mock prayer. “Someday I will rattle him. I swear.”

“He’s not easily rattled,” Doggett replied.

“He’s rattled now. It’s why we’re all here.”

If Doggett thought she was a fool and not fully aware of the precariousness of the situation, he had misjudged her. “Truth be told, I’m still not sure why you’re here and why he didn’t just put you into protection.”

Jen stopped walking. “My first time being called in by the FBI was after I wrote an article about weird events at a logging site in Olympic National Forest. Locals told me all sorts of weird things about insect swarms and deaths and eco-terrorists. The Herald published it and the next thing I know I’m being called in to the FBI and a very stern Assistant Director is on my ass about my sources because apparently the whole thing was supposed to be hush-hush. I was twenty-four.”

“Did you give up your sources?”

“No.” As if she would ever do that.

Doggett seemed to respect that answer. “Ok.”

“And then a couple months later he showed up again when I wrote a story about an elephant in Idaho. And a few more times before he realized I was not about to put other people at risk for simply telling the truth of what they knew and saw. Even if the incidents happened to all fall under one certain branch of the FBI.”

“Was Mulder one of your sources?” Jen did not answer the question. He could read into her non-answer whatever he wanted. “Do you know Dana Scully?”

“No. But, between you and me, I respect anyone who takes on The X-Files. It can’t be easy. I know a little about what it’s like to not be believed.” She watched as he processed the almost-compliment. “How’s her baby?”

Doggett blew air out his cheeks and spoke as if he’d needed to say the words to someone. Maybe the forest gave him cover. “Possibly a super soldier.”

“Oh shit.” There it was.

“Yep.”

Jen bent down to look at the base of an ash tree. They were in a perfect area for morels and she needed to keep her eyes open. “So that’s why you’re doing all this. I wondered how a seemingly normal man could wind up in the bowels of the spooky and strange.”

“Thank you for thinking I’m normal. I was just supposed to find Mulder.”

“And you did it.”

“Yep.”

“And then you found something else.” His eyes darted to her. “It seems like the XFiles is a big web cast wide and we’re all just flies in it.” Doggett actually chuckled. He had a nice smile when he actually eased up. “Do you believe in aliens and spirits?”

He cast those blue eyes up to the branches overhead. She knew his thoughts were far away when he answered. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“And your very attractive partner?”

“Monica? She believes in everything and then some.”

The poor man was facing a crisis inside his head. A battle between brains and belief. He wasn’t rude or mean, just struggling to keep up. Recognizing it, Jen spoke more gently. “Personally, I don’t know that I believe in the supernatural or even in some of the conspiracy theories Langly and the others buy, but I also know that there’s some truth behind most everything. Science and nature are weird enough that I will never claim to know everything about anything.” Just then, she saw her target and dropped down to her knees before a patch of strange-looking mushrooms at the base of a tree. “Except where to find the best tasting mushrooms on the whole planet.”

Doggett came over. “Those are morels?”

“Ever had one?”

“Nope. Mushrooms always look weird to me except on pizza.”

“Fungi is weirder than any alien species I can imagine.” She knelt down to cut them with a utility knife from her pocket and carefully put them in the bag. “Hell, maybe they’re aliens. I don’t know.”

Only the birds made noise as she cut the rest of the morels, shaking them to let spores spread for future hunters to find.

“I suppose you could poison us all with mushrooms.”

Jen laughed as she looked over shoulder at him. “What a way to go. Listen, I understand you’re suspicious of me and I don’t blame you. I’d tell you I’m not your enemy but it won’t matter. That said, can you cook, Agent John Doggett?”

“I can.”

“Good.”

When Doggett and Jen returned to the cabin, Monica and Skinner were sitting in chairs on the deck. Immediately, Monica was curious about the morels and after showing them off, Jen excused herself to go inside to clean them.

Doggett waited until she was gone to turn to his partner, but Monica talked first. “She’s legit,” Monica said. A step ahead of him. “I dug around and there’s a body of work. Articles going back years across a number of publications before the last few years at The Herald. If it’s an act, it’s a long game.”

Skinner raised an eyebrow.

“You trust her,” Doggett asked him.

Skinner nodded. “I do. Mulder does, too. Tomorrow, the three of us will head back to the office and see what we can dig up and discover about StarCorp and how it wraps into all this. We’re more useful there. If Shannon McMahon is alive and looking for you, she might be around.”

“You wanna leave them here with her?” Doggett had a horrible image of the three nerds dead on the floor of the cabin, while a woman and her mushrooms slipped off into the forest.

“I want Jen to stay here for a few days. And I know if she’s here, they won’t leave her.”

“Whats with that? With her and Langly?”

“Two ships, probably,” Reyes said with a quiet smile. “They’re cute.”

Doggett ignored that and spoke to Skinner. “Did you talk to Scully?”

“I’ll go see her tomorrow. I might suggest we take her and William off-grid. The boys could help with that. Wipe records, scramble calls, the like.”

Doggett sighed. “There’s a center to this maze and I think we all know where it is. Sir, is Mulder the father of Scully’s baby?”

“John…” Monica seemed surprised he voiced the uncouth question.

Skinner dropped his voice. “I don’t know. Nothing would surprise me. The baby even existing is a miracle and those two have been through enough that the answer may be even wilder than yes or no. There are parts of the story you don’t know, and that I don’t even know, and several people who are gone now who I’d like to punch but I wish I could ask them questions.” Doggett knew he was talking about Alex Krycek specifically, but also more men whose stories he had never even heard. All this had been going on long before he’d come to The X-Files and he figured he’d be long dead before it was over.

“Was Mulder abducted by aliens?”

“Yes. I saw it with my own eyes.” Skinner believed what he said.

“Was Scully?”

Skinner’s gaze went towards the trees. “No. She was taken, but not by aliens. Everything that has happened to Dana was because of men who operate in the shadows and who, frankly, scare me a hundred times more than any aliens. And I cannot explain how angry I am that her baby, the baby she wanted more than anything in the world, might be bringing her right back into all this again.”

Because the baby might be a super soldier.

The horrible truth shot Doggett in the gut again. More than anything on earth, he hated the idea of Dana in danger. Maybe his affection for his former partner and always friend was too much, but he couldn’t deny it powered him toward the answers and resolutions needed. That was how Doggett worked, pushed forward by a deep need to help those he held closest because one time he had not been able to help the one that mattered most to him.

He couldn’t think about his son, Luke, at that moment.

There was nothing he could do to bring Luke back. Scully’s baby, on the other hand, was an innocent child he could keep safe. “We can stop this. We can find a way.”

“How can you stop the weather?” Skinner asked. “It’s a system, bigger than any of us know. And right now it wants to knock you and Jen out because you’re both poking at it. Which means you’re on to something. Your super soldiers and her serum or compound or whatever. It’s all the same story and you’re getting too close to the truth.”

“You gonna tell me to stop?”

“I know you wouldn’t listen to me. If you want off this-”

“I felt it, sir. The substance or whatever it is. I’m seeing it through.” Doggett knew in his gut how horrible things could have been had he been fully dosed at the factory. He had almost lost control of himself before in his work, and there was nothing so chilling.

With a creak of the wooden chair, Skinner got up. “I’ve got calls to make.”

Monica kicked the chair Skinner had vacated. Doggett knew she wanted him to sit down for a minute and to take a breath. The lovely woman calmed him like no one else. They were vastly different (a believer and a skeptic, what a ridiculous team) but they worked as one brain. She frequently saw what he didn’t.

“What are you thinking?”

Monica gathered her words. “I’m thinking about mycorrhizal networks. They’re the fungi and plant roots that connect a forest. Everything is connected out here, John.”

“You read all the articles, didn’t you?”

“It’s fascinating stuff.” Monica tried to explain. “I’m thinking about how much control is exerted on all people for so many reasons, through religion and culture and how it gets twisted into cults, and how I’m not at all surprised it levels up and up until it gets to something like a serum that controls desire. How much money is spent on convincing women they’re not pretty enough or need to lose weight or if they buy a certain lipstick everything will be better and men will desire them and then they’ll be complete and happy ever after.” She caught him looking at her and shrugged. “I’m not saying I don’t have a subscription to Cosmo, same as every woman, but…it’s not hard for me to accept a lot of things, I suppose.”

“You don’t think she’s hiding something?”

“I do, but I don’t think it has anything to do with this case and I certainly don’t think she’s a part of any big government operation. Everyone has secrets and stories, John. Everyone is entitled to their privacy.”

“I’m supposed to be the rational one.”

“Well, you’re falling down on the job, pal.”

“Once we leave here tomorrow, stick with me, alright?”

“I’m going back to work, John. I’ll be fine.”

“I know. It’s just…Someone is out there with this formula. And I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt.”

“I’ll shoot anyone who looks at me funny,” Monica said, setting a hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about me, John.”

He always worried about her. The woman was more than beautiful. She was brilliant and funny and so empathetic it frequently baffled him. A fairy, sweet and flitting and sometimes otherworldly. The world they moved through was no place for someone like her. Their world was ugly and dark more often than not. Monica Reyes was someone he could not bear to lose.

The rest of the day was fairly quiet, spent mostly on computers and phone calls. There was a lot of talk about chemical compounds and someone mentioned ergot fungus and the Salem Witch Trials and that set off a huge conversation about historical conspiracies and mysteries, and then they droned on about different internet systems that Doggett didn’t understand much of the technical aspects of and didn’t need to.

The devil was in the details, but all around him incredibly smart people were looking at details, so it fell to him to look at the bigger picture.

If this was all a web, where and what was the spider and how could they squash it?

He kept an eye on Jen as she dug through a worn field guide to mushrooms and joined Byers, Frohike, and Langly in their conversations like she was the long-lost fourth member of the group. Langly alternated between hanging on her words and diving into his computer, only coming up for air and conversation seemingly when he had questions or hit roadblocks. Doggett stopped even noting the glances that passed between Langly and Jen. Whatever kept the two of them from falling into their obvious attraction to each other must be something big.

Monica was right, though. It wasn’t his business.

As evening rolled in, Jen ordered Doggett to help her with dinner. While he originally agreed to get another chance to size her up, he had to admit that he found some relaxation in the pleasant distraction of whipping up his famous pasta in a lemon garlic sauce and topping it with the morels Jen prepared and sauteed with butter. The smells in the air brought the others to the kitchen one at a time. Beer, and a couple bottles of wine Byers and Skinner had bought in a run to town appeared. For a little while, locked safe in the forgotten cabin with the curtains all drawn, they all could almost pretend it was not a life or death situation.

When dinner was served, the dish was so heavenly everyone went momentarily silent. Jen smugly raised her glass to him.

Maybe she wasn’t planning to kill them all. At least not that night.

“Better than chocolate,” Skinner complimented.

“If we’re comparing it to aphrodisiacs, it’s certainly better than oysters.” Monica sat forward and folded her arms on the table.

“As possibly the only person at this table who has done Magic Mushrooms….” Frohike let that hang in the air while he scanned the faces around him. When Skinner scoffed, Frohike feigned surprise. “Et tu, A.D.?”

“What? Don’t forget I was in Vietnam,” Skinner shrugged.

When Frohike’s gaze landed on Jen, she blinked modestly. “Sir, those have been illegal since the 70s. And there are three FBI people at this table, if you didn’t remember.”

Monica fake gasped and everyone laughed. “I’m impressed,” Frohike nodded in respect to his two compatriots. “Ok, as the resident expert in psychedelics, I must tell you that it’s more than just an aphrodisiac. It’s a whole all-sensory experience. It can last 8 hours and some people see colors and when you come out of it it truly feels like your brain has been rewired. It could be groundbreaking in treatment for mental health. But, it is not at all as delicious as a morel.”

Monica looked from Frohike to Jen. “I’ve been thinking. Does the serum work on anyone regardless of what they’re attracted to in the real world? Like, Jen and I are both women and, I assume, attracted to men. Would it have the same effect if we were both attracted to women?”

“Or both?” Frohike raised an eyebrow.

Byers swatted him. “Don’t dwell on that image.”

Jen answered, “I don’t know if it has any sort of biological or reproductive imperative. But if not, attraction is attraction so it follows that if it were given to two people of any sex attracted to each other it would work the same. I don’t know if it accounts for things like societal convention or existing relationships. Like, if two people were sworn blood enemies, it might very well still work. It’s not like you’re thinking clearly or stopping to contemplate consequences.”

“Can confirm,” Doggett sighed.

“What about more than two people?” Langly asked. “Like if you pumped it into a convention or something?”

“You’d have a good old fashioned Roman orgy,” Frohike said.

“Possibly. Probably?” Jen agreed. “The only real research that’s ever been done, says psilocybin and cordyceps work by reducing inhibitions and the other more mental things that stop people from indulging their desires while at the same time heightening senses so they’re more prone to want to. That’s Magic Mushrooms. And that’s probably this formula. Harold Seamus believes psilocybin is a miracle pill as far as sexual function goes.”

Frohike. “I know Seamus. We spent some time sharing a jail cell. Just a couple weeks.”

“Harold is a legend,” Jen agreed. “He was friends with my Dad.”

Byers sat back in his chair. “Gas masks won’t stop it?”

Jen shook her head and indicated Doggett. “It can be breathed in, but it seems like there’s also a residue that will seep into skin or hair.”

“Hazmat?” Skinner asked.

“That could work,” Monica replied. “Are you thinking about the second facility?”

Skinner stabbed a piece of morel with his fork and stared at it for a minute. “I’m thinking this substance needs to not go any further than it already has.” Then, he ate the mushroom.

It took most of the day but he figured out a way into the back systems of StarCorp and matched payments to incoming and outgoing accounts which he then traced to several offshore accounts and shell companies. Corporations were like monsters eating up everything they could get their hands on. StarCorp not only ran most utilities for the east coast but was expanding into Canada and Mexico. How many more facilities were being used for awful purposes and terrifying scientific research?

By the time they all stopped working and got to sit around a table for an exquisite dinner while their brains rested, Langly’s head practically hurt from processing information. The pasta helped. Somehow, through a walk in the woods and dinner prep, Jen had eased Doggett’s distrust a little bit so they weren’t glaring at each other. That plus their collective exhaustion softened the overall mood. At least they were all on the same page. Langly sat next to Jen at dinner and put his arm around the back of her chair at one point.

What were they? What could they be?

There wouldn’t be an answer that night.

“I can’t believe you’ve done mushrooms,” Langly said to Jen as they sat on the chairs outside the cabin after dinner had been cleaned up and everyone else had headed off to bed. He’d put his black track jacket over his t-shirt and she had a plaid blanket over her legs. Two empty wine glasses sat between them on the wooden deck, and he knew they were both lightly buzzed.

“Really? I’d think I’m the most likely person you know to have done mushrooms. Frohike excluded, obviously. They’re literally my job.” Jen pulled her legs up under her and sat back, looking up at the dark canopy. Seeing that he was waiting for more explanation, she continued. “It was for an article, I swear. But I couldn’t find a way to write about it afterwards. It was too…personal, I guess.”

“Did it rewire your brain?”

“I think so. I realized some things about myself I wasn’t happy with.” Because the topic was getting personal, she smiled at him. “And you. How long since you’ve had a break?”

“I’m not great at not doing something.”

“Me neither. Ok, you talk for a while. How's it been?”

“I’ve almost died several times since we last met, I’ll have you know.”

“I’m proud of you and glad you didn’t die.”

“Thank you. Oh, we stopped a guy up in Washington who was poaching grizzly bears. Byers really wanted to tell you about that one.”

A hand went to her heart. “My heroes. Fuck poachers.”

“We do our thing and we get by.”

“I worry about you guys.”

The feeling was very mutual and he didn’t need to say it. Jen went quiet. The only sounds were crickets and the occasional noise of something disrupting water. Only a light wind blew the trees. Langly hadn’t ever really liked the outdoors. There wasn’t internet in the outside world, so he hadn’t cared much. Here, despite everything, he kind of understood why so many people would fight to save the environment. The idea of a world without quiet, dark places like this was terrible. Even as a troubled kid back in Nebraska, he’d gone outside to watch the stars and daydream about Star Trek adventures in a world different from his real life.

Everyone was up pretty early to see the FBI three off.

Skinner ordered those staying behind to stay at the cabin. Everyone promised they would. For a couple hours, they all behaved themselves. But as the afternoon arrived, Byers pulled Langly into a huddle with Frohike.

“What’s up?”

Frohike grinned. “Now, I know Skinner told us to stay here…”

Langly should have seen it coming.

“We’re just saying that, thanks to your excellent skills, we know there’s a StarCorp corporate park about thirty miles from here and we figured why not go over there this afternoon after the staff clears out for the day and see if we can learn something,” Byers said.

“And you don’t think you’ll need me?”

“Could be there’s nothing much to it at all. Don’t want to waste your talents when you could be far more useful here.” Frohike nodded towards the bunkroom where Jen was changing after returning from walking around in the woods again.

Langly recognized they were trying their hardest to push him and Jen together. Not that he was against it. “Subtle.”

Frohike pointed at him. “Langly, we’re doing you a favor.”

Langly looked to Byers for help but the bearded man was already smirking.

Jen came into the main room holding some books and raised an eyebrow when she saw the gear on the table. “Ooh. Where are we going?”

“Apparently to break into an office,” Langly said.

She set her books on the table. “Cool. Let’s go.”

“No ma’am,” Frohike held up his hands.

“Oh, come on.”

“Young lady, absolutely not. Keeping you safe is priority number one. Also, if Skinner found out we let you leave he’d throw us all in Rikers. Byers and I will go, so you two stay here and do what you do best - dig up the truth.”

Jen either didn’t catch the double meaning of his words or just chose to ignore it. “Ugh. Men are so bossy. Whatever.”

Langly threw a kitchen towel at him but helped his friends load their gear into the van.

Once the van was out of sight, he went back inside.

Jen sat in one of the tall stools at the kitchen bar, laptop starting up. “I suppose I should actually write this article. You know, the one that might be putting my life in danger. It’ll give me something to think about other than… that. Are you going to destroy StarCorp from the inside?”

Langly chuckled. “I…am going to see what I can find that Skinner can actually use.” He sat at his computer at the table near her. “I might wreck a few things while I’m in there. You never know.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

They worked in the kitchen almost back to back, Jen at the bar and Langly at the table. Neither spoke. An hour passed. Then another. Frohike called Langly at one point for a tech request but it was handled quickly and they went back to work. Jen went to the fridge to grab a soda and set one by him on her way back to her computer, knowing he ran on sugar and caffeine just like she did.

“Thanks.”

“I was hoping for an Orange Crush but c’est la vie.”

Another hour passed as Jen fell into the work of crafting an article that answered the who, what, where, when, and why of the serum and the explosion at the factory and what they’d learned. What she had so far was just the bones of a story. She didn’t know all the Ws yet, but she would.

Their typing together sounded like a duet. It was a nice sound.

She really did like him. More than like him, if she was being completely honest.

Now was not the time to feel that attraction again, to remember the way he’d held her in Vegas for those blissful few minutes and how he’d run his hand down her back.

Relationships needed more than singular seconds and simple moments, didn’t they?

Langly had seen the bruise Simon Booker had left on her. That was completely humiliating. Booker had gotten out of hand, and she’d bailed on Vienna almost immediately when he’d attempted to be rough again. It was over and she locked that away and did not want to think about it ever again.

“So this mushroom is Central American,” Langly suddenly said.

“Mhmm. Why?”

“Whoever is making the serum has to be getting the psilocybin from somewhere. Figured maybe I could trace it.” He had some shipping companies records up on half his screen, and a map of routes on the other.

“Start with Mexico and the mountain forest areas. There’s a pictographic manuscript from Oaxaca and Puebla that shows gods and other figures taking part in rituals with mushrooms probably as early as 3000 years ago. The Nahua call psilocybin mushrooms Teonanacatl, or ‘flesh of the gods.’” She brought up an image of the pictograph on her computer and he turned around in his chair for a closer look. “It describes the whole ritual. They served them with honey. It sounds beautiful.”

“And then Cortés ruined it?”

“With the aid of the Catholic Church. But people don’t stop rituals, not really. In 1957, Life magazine published a piece by R. Gordon Wasson who went to Mexico and met with a Mazatec woman who was carrying the rituals on. Turns out, several groups still do the rituals.”

“Imagine a bunch of repressed Europeans arriving in the new world and seeing an orgy for the first time.”

Jen grinned at him. “I bet the Aztecs offered to share.”

“Yeah. Apart from the human sacrifices they seem cool.”

“No society is perfect.” She tried to ignore how close he was to her as he got up and shifted to see all the pictograph pages she showed him. He noted to the travel guide beside her computer. “Hawaii?”

“Hopefully. I’m working on a proposal for a long form piece where I go chasing the path of the legendary Dictyophora.”

“Legendary.”

A flush raced over her as she explained, “There’s a questionable story that suggests if a woman so much as smells it, she will have a spontaneous orgasm.”

“What? Really?”

“I mean, I doubt it's that simple. But, obviously I’m gonna go try and find out.”

Langly folded his arms. “So mushrooms really are aphrodisiacs. It's not just talk.”

Jen turned around on her stool to face him and it almost put them at eye level. “Definitely. Experiments with micro dosing in controlled environments are making big strides in understanding and fixing sexual dysfunction especially when it’s rooted in insecurity or stress.” The way he watched her as she talked about her favorite subject nearly took away her ability to speak coherently. She felt a warm flush, but soldiered on. “And there’s so little research on female sexual response, it could lead to incredible discoveries.” Lord, why couldn’t she stop talking about sex? The room felt hotter than it had before.

Their fingers were entwined again. When did that happen? Langly brushed her palm with his thumb. “Are you seeing anybody?”

“That’s not easily quantifiable. Seeing? Here and there. Seriously? Hardly. My relationships are so often wrapped up in the work it’s hard to draw lines.” As she spoke, she realized it was happening again, the way the rest of the cruel world slipped away and electricity charged the air when she talked to him and when they made physical contact. “It usually doesn’t mean anything.”

This. This would mean everything. He touched her cheek. How she wanted his hands all over her. The thought came suddenly. Too suddenly.

“Wait.” Something was off, but Jen leaned into his touch. “I feel strange…”

Langly bent down and whispered into her ear. “So do I.”

In the same moment that she thrilled at the warmth of his breath on her skin and reached to take hold of his shirt, she recognized what was happening. And also that she could not stop it and neither could he.

The substance. Somehow…

But they were kissing. Jen felt her skin ignite under his touch. Grabbing for him in desperation even as her rational brain faded and the edges of her vision blackened. She must have lost a few seconds because time jumped and she had locked her legs around him. Caught in the rush, she argued with herself that this was not them choosing but a force they couldn’t fight. The words to warn him would not make their way to her lips. “Langly...”

“What?” he muttered.

What did she want to tell him again?

Her sweater came off. The warmth of his skin on hers was a rush.

“What’s happening?” His lips were against her jaw as he struggled, too.

The edges of her vision were blurring, just like Doggett had said.

In a last moment of clarity, she peered into Langly’s eyes.

They were white. That meant something, didn’t it? What did that mean….? Who even was she? Was he?

The edges of her vision went dark and the whole world went away.

As the hacker of The Lone Gunmen, he was unfortunately the one who had to attend most of the panels and talks at DEFCON to gather information. It was all just so incredibly boring Langly could barely keep his eyes open. A man in a too small coat droned about security guardrails and expensive systems that promised protection from hackers and nefarious actors. Langly resisted yawning. He’d bypassed the expensive guardrails the man was trying to promote months ago. So he watched the crowd, looking for two people in particular.

That’s when he’d spotted Jen. The crowd was mostly men, so she stood out. Leaning on the wall to the side of the filled chairs, she seemed to be trying to listen and take notes while also trying to listen to an attractive gray-haired man who, Langly felt, was standing way too close to her and talking quietly to her at the same time.

Jen’s hair was down, pushed back behind her ears, and she wore jeans and a brown tailored blazer. There was a press pass on a lanyard around her neck. That she, the nature and environment reporter, would get the DEFCON assignment for The Herald struck Langly as not likely. She was probably up to something. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t get in the way. Besides, he was watching for Susanne Modeski.

After the panel, everyone filed out of the room and he fell into step with Jen.

“Come here often?”

She smiled and swatted his arm. “Of course you’re here. Hi.”

“Surprised to see you.”

“Yeah well, sometimes you piss off your boss and get the assignments no one else wants.” From the way she said it, he knew it was a lie. Her eyes darted around the men coming out of the room like she was looking for someone specific. Langly watched as Susanne Modeski and her husband, Grant Ellis, passed them by. Crap. He needed to follow them. “Byers and Frohike here too?”

“Somewhere.”

“How have you been?”

“We’re ok. You?”

“You know me, Langly.”

“Do I?”

She grabbed his sleeve. “I have to go. Meet me at the hotel bar at like…11?”

“11,” he agreed.

They split to follow their own missions.

Many things happened in Vegas. Langly was a few minutes late getting to the bar, but she was waiting with a glass of white wine and her Blackberry.

“Sorry. Things got complicated.”

“Everything alright?”

Langly slumped onto the barstool next to her. “There is literally no way to explain everything, except that Dana Scully is probably going to kill us by morning so it’s been nice knowing you.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“We faked being Mulder and told her to come.”

“Oh yeah. She’ll kick your ass.”

“Not tonight she won’t. Jimmy Belmont is dead and Scully just finished doing the autopsy. She is super jet-lagged, too.”

“That poor woman needs a vacation.” Jen saw his exhaustion and stress and set a hand on his knee. Did she have any idea how much her little touches meant? Probably not. She was just being a friend. “I’m buying you a drink. Maybe two.”

Over two drinks, he told her everything about the assassination technology and Jimmy Belmont and their suspicion that his death wasn’t a suicide at all. When he mentioned Grant Ellis, Susanne Modeski’s husband, she wrinkled her nose. “Be careful with that one. Ellis is an absolute snake.”

“What about you? You’re not really here on assignment.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there is nothing here that interests you.”

She gave him a flirty smile. “I wouldn’t say there’s nothing.”

“Jen…” More than anything, he wanted to say she didn’t have to keep up the act with him. Maybe she read it in his eyes, because she leaned in and spoke quieter.

“Fine. Do you know a man named Morris Fletcher?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Well, speaking of snakes…”

“Hey, there she is!” Coming across the bar aimed right for them was the gray-haired man from earlier, only now he was obviously very drunk. Langly smelled the alcohol on him as he grabbed Jen’s arm to pull her off her bar stool. “Come on, gorgeous. Dance with me.”

Langly got up from his chair. “Hey, dude. Chill.”

Jen tried a softer approach. “Simon, go back to your room.”

“Come with me.”

The way the man said it rankled Langly. It wasn’t drunk flirting. It was an order, with an edge of menace. Langly put himself between Jen and the man. “Back off. She said no.”

The bartender appeared. “This guy bothering you, ma’am?”

“I’m just asking her to dance.”

“And she said no,” Langly replied. “Get lost.”

He was taller than the drunk man, and Simon had enough sense not to keep pushing. A dark expression came to his face and he left. Once he was out of sight, Langly saw Jen down the rest of her glass of wine as if she was going to follow. “My glamorous life.”

The amount of sadness in her voice nearly killed Langly. “Dance with me,” he said quietly. Jen took his outstretched hand and they joined the few other couples on the dance floor.

“Is it killing you to dance to a top 40 song?”

Sixpence None the Richer. Radio friendly jangly pop. It could have been worse. Langly slipped one hand around her waist and took her other hand in his. “Not a lot of slow dance songs by The Ramones.”

“Can you imagine?”

“Deal with guys like that a lot?”

“What are you really asking me?”

He was asking how far she’d go for her work, if she was keeping her heart and her head separate, if she was lonely in her quest. The sort of work they did was often solo, often the sort that didn’t lend itself to close relationships. He’d lucked out with Byers and Frohike, but Jen moved though her world alone without the guardrails and firewalls of friendship, and it terrified him. “Only if you’re being safe.”

“I deal with men like him far more often than I’d prefer,” she sighed. “Unfortunately schmoozing is necessary. That was Simon Booker, CTO of HTB. They’re pretending to be an eco-conscious car company on the verge of releasing an electric car, while at the same time lobbying to destroy a ton of old growth forest in California. I’m here unofficially with him trying to find out which Congresspeople he’s bribing and working with some others to try and stop all that.”

“With him?”

“With him,” she confirmed. There was no happiness in her confession.

The soft scent of her perfume surrounded him as he dropped his head closer to her and held her a little tighter. Seeing how sadly she said it made him want to find the man and shove him down a laundry chute, or worse. “Want me to plant some terrible stuff on his computer? I know some FBI folks, you know.”

She set her cheek against his. “You’re sweet, but I’ll handle it.”

Her sleeve had slipped down and he saw a bruise around her wrist. “Handle it how?” Did he want to know the answer?

Jen realized what he saw and tried to pull her hand back, but he didn’t let her go. The Lone Gunmen were already going to help Susanne Modeski escape from bad men. What was another damsel in distress? Byers and Frohike wouldn’t mind if he brought Jen back with him, nd would probably be angry if he didn’t. “Don’t go back to him. We’ll get out of this town tomorrow, and we can help you bring his whole company down and you won’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Come with us.”

“Langly…”

“I’m telling you I’d like to kill any man who lays a hand on you.” The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them. Those pretty green eyes met his and he thought she might start to cry, but Jen never did what he expected.

After a moment, she whispered. “You surprise me.”

He would have done anything to make her smile at that moment. “I’m full of surprises.” He slipped a hand into his pocket and pressed a button. The delicate pop of Sixpence None the Richer was replaced by The Ramones’ pulsing Sheena is a Punk Rocker played at an incredibly loud volume. A laugh burst from Jen as she put a hand over her mouth and fell against him.

Absolute chaos broke out. The bartender scrambled, patrons got to their feet and shouted and spilled drinks, a group of young drunk bros with convention passes rushed the dance area and started moshing, one of the two couples on the dance floor with them started dancing wildly. Langly grinned. He’d been so bored earlier he’d started messing around with the hotel’s sound system. This was the result.

Chaos, as intended. Chaos was beautiful.

Jen’s smile among the madness was everything, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She met his eyes and he knew they were going to kiss. He knew it in his heart and in his bones, and he also knew that the second they did everything would change forever. She bit her lip a little and he desperately wanted to bite it, too.
He could show her something different. They could be their own galaxy if she’d just run with him.

All the rock n roll chaos stopped as the lights in the bar came up full. The young drunk dudes who had taken over the small dance floor pushed and shoved and swore. Langly only took his eyes away for three seconds.

When he looked back, Jen was gone.

When Langly woke, the light coming in through the cabin window was so bright he thought the bartender had turned the neon overhead lights on again.

He saw Byers and Frohike staring at him. He was not in a casino in Vegas.

“Uh, whoops,” Byers said, backtracking out the door of the bunkroom.

Langly quickly gathered that he was naked in a bunk with Jen and only a rumpled quilt covered them. Jen bolted upright before she was really awake, and it took her a second to put together where they were. When she realized she was naked, she clutched the quilt to cover herself. “What the fuck? What happened?” Jen asked.

“I don’t know..” Why were they in bed? They’d been in the kitchen.

“We…”

“I don’t know…”

“Oh no,” Byers put it together first. “You mean you didn’t…”

All four of them realized what had happened at the same time.

Jen lurched to grab some of her clothing off the floor. “We have to get out of here. It could still be in the air. Go!”

“We’ll get your stuff.” Byers grabbed bags and backpacks as he went out the door.

Langly didn’t move.

“Get dressed!” She jumped from the bed and searched for her clothes, frantically wriggling into leggings and her bra. Langly saw her panic rising while his whole world spun. Fuck, his head ached. He found his jeans and t-shirt and tossed them on, grabbing his sneakers. Jen snatched her backpack and phone and charger and left the bunkroom. Langly followed right behind, and passed Frohike who grabbed both their laptops from the kitchen.

The foursome met outside at the van. Byers put his jacket on Jen, who was so out of it she didn’t even remember she was wearing her bra.

“Jen..” Langly reached for her, not caring if the other two were there.

“I don’t understand.” She winced at the bright daylight.

Nothing had ever scared him as much as the expression on her face when she looked at him, as well as the full realization of what they had done the previous night. What they must have done. Without either knowing or remembering.

Frohike shook his head. “They found you. Even here. Nowhere.”

“They must have tracked us or followed us. “Come on,” Byers moved Jen into the van. “We’ll call Skinner from the road.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere that isn’t here.”

“Wait.” Langly didn’t get in the van. Though the searing pain in his head, he thought. How were they found? When they’d arrived, they’d swept everything, and the signal jammers were brand new. The tracker had to have come in on something they’d brought. Langly had gone through Jen’s computer but…there were other bags in the van he didn’t recognize. “Who’s computer bag is that?”

“Doggett’s.”

As if that guy was good at tech. Langly snatched the laptop from the black FBI issue bag and turned it over. He popped off the back panel and found the tiny metal circle inside the back panel.

“Son of a bitch.” He quickly backed all Doggett’s stuff up onto a thumb drive.

“Is that it?” Frohike asked.

“Yep.” The little piece of metal was what had brought the malicious actor to them, what had put them in danger. They looked at each other, and he wished he knew what she was thinking. Frohike snatched the laptop and the tracker, walked to the pond, and chucked both into the pond.

“Gentlemen, let’s go,” Byers called from the driver’s seat.

They slammed the van door and tore out of the woods.

There was no sign of Candace Walsh. That alone made Doggett suspicious.

When Doggett started calling around about StarCorp it was like a brick wall went up. No one seemed to know anything. That no one in any branch of the FBI or its brother agencies knew anything about a multi-state utilities monopoly with international ambitions was the biggest load of bullshit he’d ever heard, and he was getting very familiar with bullshit.

“John..” Monica walked in the door of the basement office where The X-Files had been stuck. One look at her serious face and Doggett was out of his chair. In a professional tone he knew she was struggling to keep up, Reyes told him what Byers had told her about Langly and Jen, and within an hour they had looped Skinner in. Within two hours they were back on the road, heading north from DC this time to a motel outside Harrisburg where Skinner had directed Byers to take them.

The whole mess had gotten messier.

The roadside motel was a dive, but it was empty when they arrived. All it took was Skinner talking to the hostess and showing his badge for a few minutes and handing over the FBI credit card and she gave them keys to all the six rooms and put up the No Vacancy light. Once she drove her truck up the hill to her small house, they had the whole place to themselves.

When the VW van pulled up, Doggett intended to start yelling at people.

The sight of their faces stopped his words. Frohike shook his head a little in warning, but Doggett didn’t need it. Jen came out of the van, Langly followed, and they were not looking at each other at all. Confusion. Devastation. Also, fury.

Skinner quickly handed out keys to rooms and Jen went into hers without a word.

Langly tossed a thumb drive to Doggett. “They tracked your laptop. I backed up all your stuff before we tossed it.”

“What?”

“It was you they were tracking,” Skinner realized. “Who had access to your laptop?”

“No one,” Doggett said. “It was at work with me and then I took it home and it stayed there until we all took off for the cabin.”

“Someone was in your house. Someone followed you from the factory.”

“We swept the house.”

The factory. He’d been so out of it in the aftermath of the explosion.. “I left it in my car. It never came back inside.” Langly shot him a look full of knives.

Skinner aimed his anger at Byers and Frohike. “You two left. I told you not to leave.”

“And it’s a good thing we did. I’m not gonna imagine what would have happened if we’d been there, hell if we’d all still been there. I’m not saying it’s a good thing it happened but I am saying that maybe, just maybe, the least bad bad option happened.” Frohike held up a hand between Doggett and Langly

“Oh, come on,” Langly argued. Just because he and Jen had a connection or liked each other or maybe more, whatever it was, didn’t mean there was anything positive about what had happened. They’d been manipulated. Their consent had been ripped away from them. Now, he didn’t even know what to do or say to her or anyone else. Knowing you weren’t in control of your body was more horrifying than any horror movie could ever portray. The violation, the intrusion, felt like a nail in his gut.

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Frohike replied.

Doggett stopped the squabble by addressing Langly. “You feel alright? I felt like shit for hours and I didn’t get as big a dose as you probably did.”

“I’m alright. My head hurts like a bitch but it’s getting better. Coffee and Tylenol.”

“Good. Go shower right now in case the residue is on you. And throw your clothes away in case it's in them, too.” Take some time to yourself and feel all the things you need to feel, he didn’t say out loud but hoped the message carried. Too broken to argue, Langly grabbed his bag and went into one of the hotel rooms.

“What do we do now?” Monica asked.

“Well?” Skinner looked from Byers to Frohike. “If you left after I told you not to, you better have learned something.”

“Listen, big guy, we went to a corporate park not too far from the cabin and through some methods I will not detail because they might be slightly…”

“Illegal?” Monica asked.

“Creative,” Byers replied.

“We learned that there are employees at that supposedly shuttered Newark facility. About thirty of them, and well-paid per the StarCorp payroll.”

Skinner still looked displeased. “Scientists?”

“Like Candace Walsh, maybe,” Monica said. “I tried tracking her down but there’s been no activity on her charge cards or on her license plate and the toll readers and she’s not answering her phone. Maybe StarCorp figured out she was feeding Jen information.”

Doggett nodded to Monica. “Think they killed her?”

She shrugged back at him. “Whoever they are, they blew up a factory. Wouldn’t put it past them. But they could have also moved her.”

“Gentlemen, I assume you have some more…creative ideas.”

Frohike nodded. “We can get into her email and phone logs, no sweat.”

“We could stake out her apartment. It’s in Cherry Hill,” Monica said.

Doggett saw that Skinner had been half-listening. “Sir?”

“Go now. Gather what you need. Do it. Be back by dawn. Tomorrow morning we’ll bring Jen into the FBI and get her into official protection. You too, John. But you’re staying here tonight. The rest of you, go see if you can find Candace Walsh. Take Langly with you when he’s ready.” It was a dismissal and Skinner started walking away from the group.

Doggett fell into step with him. “Sir.”

“You’re staying.” Skinner’s hand flickered like he was going to reach for his gun. “Monica and the Three Amigos can handle a stakeout.”

“I’m more helpful on a stakeout, sir.”

“If they come for Jen, I’ll need you.”

“You think they will?”

“They found her at the cabin. It feels like there’s eyes on us. It’s you and her they’re after. Let’s get the others out of the way and see if we can shine a light and scatter some cockroaches. I mean, I hope I’m wrong and we all have a quiet night...” Skinner scanned the fields around the motel and the empty miles across the street. Their position was good, but Doggett had been in war zones. Never assume you’re safe.

Doggett glanced at the door Jen had gone into. He didn’t blame her for wanting to hide.

Langly came out about twenty minutes later, freshly washed and in new clothes as directed. “She hasn’t come out,” Doggett told him. “Skinner wants you to go on the stakeout, but…”

“I’ll go,” Langly said in a voice softer than Doggett had ever heard. “I need to do something.” He understood the restless feeling, the need to solve one’s hard emotions with physical action or productivity. Langly’s heart was hurting but he could use his brain to make it right again. Probably he loved Jen and if he didn’t do something with the turmoil of that love he might bubble over. Doggett recognized and empathized maybe too much.

The VW van headed away from the hotel.

Doggett dropped his things into the room next to Jen’s. He’d share with Skinner, not that either man was going to do much sleeping.

The morning’s bright sun faded as clouds rolled in.

Doggett sat down in a metal chair outside the hotel room. He could see every direction.

The two men traded off taking naps.

Night would come soon, and they would handle whatever happened.

Skinner went to a roadside place and came back with burgers around dinnertime. He tried to speak to Jen, but whether she was asleep or just refusing to open the door, he wound up leaving the burger outside the door.

“Anything?”

“Not a sound.”

“Want me to break down the door?” Doggett half-joked.

Skinner sat in the metal chair.

“Maybe it’ll be a nice quiet night.”

“We couldn’t get so lucky,” Skinner replied.

The lights in the small parking lot and outside the rooms lit the area quite well, so it would be easy to see anyone approaching. And from where they sat, they could see the only road that led up to the hotel should any cars arrive.

Jen stepped out of her room. She wore a blue tank top and leggings and flip-flops and looked like absolute hell, empty eyes and nervous.

“You alright?” Skinner asked.

She nodded. “I’m going to the vending machine for caffeine. Need anything?”

Skinner held up a Coke. “I’m alright, thanks.”

“Agent Smokeshow?”

Hard to tell if the nickname was intended as flirtation or fury. “No thanks.”

Jen nodded and went around the corner. Skinner glared at Doggett. “You know, if you weren’t so determined not to like her the two of you might actually get along.”

“It’s not that I don’t like her. I just don’t trust her yet.”

“Everyone else does. Just look at the last 48 hours. We’re all playing the same game, John. Everyone is using their skills and talents.”

“And it may turn out that I use my talents to save all your asses.”

“Monica says you think she’s a super soldier.” Doggett did not answer that. “She’s a regular woman. Just a reporter who doesn’t know when to stop. Like someone else I know.” Suddenly, Skinner held up a hand. “Hang on.”

Everything was too quiet. There should have been a sound from the vending machine, which was just around the corner.

Jen appeared again and headed for her room. Doggett sat up immediately when he saw how she was walking differently, and her hand rubbed her neck.

Also, she wasn’t carrying anything.

Skinner clocked it as well and arrived at her door right after she went inside. Doggett followed behind him. “Jen?” Skinner asked.

She faced away from the door, still as death.

Skinner stepped inside. Jen turned to face them.

Her eyes were white. They landed on Skinner.

“Oh shit,” Doggett breathed in the heartbeat before everything went wild. Jen lunged at the larger man, but Skinner saw it coming and held her back. Reaching, she tore at the buttons of his shirt and was not to be swayed no matter how many times he shouted at her to stop.

Skinner spun her around and held her against his chest so her blows couldn’t land. Even as she tried to bite him, he wrestled her onto the floor and pinned her legs with his. Although he was much bigger and stronger than she was, she dug her nails into his shoulders so hard Skinner sucked in a breath.

“Someone got to her,” Skinner called. “He’s out there.”

“Sir…”

“Go!”

Leaving them locked in their struggle, Doggett tore out the door and unleashed his gun as he went around the corner and took in the vast rural darkness. The innkeeper’s house lights cast a low glow over part of the field, and he saw a shape go running toward the trees at the edge of the property.

He gave chase.

He couldn’t lose the man.

The woods were thick and full of poky brambles. He ran hard, jumping fallen trees and rocks he could just barely see in the limited moonlight. When the man stumbled, Doggett flew forward and tackled him to the ground. He knocked a silver gun from the man’s hands and landed a few good punches, the last of which took the man cold.

He had to stop himself from killing the man outright.

Doggett pulled the mask off. He was just an ordinary looking man. Red-haired, stocky, dressed all in black. Doggett reached for the silver gun and saw it contained a glass vial that was now empty, presumably because it had been injected into Jen.

Jen. He’d left Skinner fighting her.

Breathing hard, he got the man over his shoulder and trekked back to the motel. He popped open the trunk of the sedan and dropped the man’s body inside, reaching in for a length of cord and tying the man’s hands and feet probably too tight. If the asshole woke up, he’d have an uncomfortable night ahead of him but Doggett didn’t care. Villain secured in the trunk, Doggett rushed back into the hotel room, carrying the rest of the cord.

Poor bleeding Skinner had Jen face-down on the floor and was kneeling on her back and holding her wrists behind her. Doggett stepped forward to help but wasn’t sure how to. He couldn’t knock her out. She wasn’t intentionally doing this, and when it wore off he didn’t want her hurt. “We’ll have to tie her up,” Skinner shouted.

Jen screamed and the sound was like a rabid animal or a banshee, otherworldly.

A siren’s scream from the bowels of hell. Maybe it’s where she felt like she was.

“Shit,” Doggett muttered. The woman was no super soldier.

Jen proved stronger than expected, struggling and screaming as they tied her hands behind her back and her feet together and carried her to the bathroom. Doggett tied the bathroom’s doorknob to the bed frame. Though she pulled hard at the door she couldn’t open it, so at last the two men could stop to breathe.

Doggett slumped on the ground with his back against the bed. “They found us at the cabin because of my computer. How did they find us here? What the hell is happening?”

Skinner slid down the door and rested his head against it. “This will wreck your life eventually, John. Decide right now if it’s what you want and if you don’t there’s no shame in it.”

“With respect, sir. I’m in too deep to walk away.”

“Tell me about it.”

A half-hour passed. The noises coming from the bathroom grew a little quieter, but Skinner hadn’t moved. “She stopped screaming at least.”

“Will she fall asleep?”

He shrugged. “Langly said it was like they blacked out.”

“There’s a man in your trunk now.” Doggett held up the injection gun and tossed it on the bed. “Looks like he straight up shot it into her. There’s a little left in the vial. Figure the boys’ll know more about that than we do when they get back.”

“Call them.”

“What's the point? It’s not like we can go anywhere until this works its way out of Jen’s system. I’m no scientist, but I’m guessing the dose they gave her is stronger than gas. Might take a while.” Skinner rubbed his shoulder. There was blood on his white t-shirt. “I’ll guard her. You go clean that up.” Ordering his boss around felt odd, but Skinner left the room. Doggett took up the same position as if he could hold her in and keep both of them safe.

“Hey,” Doggett spoke at the door. She probably couldn’t hear him. Even if she could, she probably couldn’t process who he was or what he was saying, but he did it anyway just in case a fiber of her was awake inside the maelstrom. It was too real now. Jen Alden wasn’t lying to them or tricking them. He felt terrible for not believing in her earlier. “Don’t know if you can hear me, but you’re gonna be ok. Do yourself and me a favor and sleep it off. I’m staying right here.”

Skinner returned shortly and left the door open for fresh air.

Two more hours passed before Jen quieted and all sounds of movement stopped.

“Think she’s asleep?”

Doggett hadn’t heard a thing for a while. “Should we check on her? In case she’s hurt?”

“I hope she’s not. But it’s too risky.”

So they waited.

Monica and the trio returned just before dawn. “What happened?” Monica asked, gun in hand as she came in the open door and sized up the scene. Doggett could only imagine it through her eyes. Two strong and experienced FBI men brought to the ground.

Skinner handed the injection gun to them and Frohike took it. “There is a man in my trunk and he got to Jen. She’s okay. She’s in there.”

“Let her out,” Langly ordered, ready to fight.

“If you’d seen her, you wouldn’t say that,” Doggett replied. “She went after Skinner and we might as well have been fighting a hurricane.” Before Langly could reply, Doggett shook his head. “It wasn’t Jen. Not one bit. I swear.”

Byers took the vial Frohike handed him from the injection gun. He held it up to the lamp light. “There’s enough in here to test.”

Doggett couldn’t meet Langly’s glare. He knew he hated him and also knew it was fortunate the gunmen hadn’t been there when the bomb went off. Siren Jen would have overpowered them and their affection for her too quickly and could have done real damage to bodies and hearts and minds at the same time. “She’s quiet now. Probably sleeping it off.”

“And she’s staying in there until she wakes up and recognizes us,” Skinner said, standing up. He looked at Doggett. “We’ll take turns guarding her.”

“I can relieve you,” Monica said. “I’ve had way too much coffee tonight to sleep anyway.” There was so much concern on her face Doggett wondered what he must look like. He ran a hand over his face and nodded, standing up. A couple hours of sleep sounded heavenly.

“I’ll stay, too,” Langly offered.

Skinner matched him height to height. “You’re too wrapped up in this right now. She is…as fine as she can be for right now. You’re far more use finding me some information about who tracked Doggett’s computer. Monica will stay with her.”

“I’ll stay as well,” Byers said. That was all it took for Langly to nod.

“There’s probably a weird monster movie on some channel. We’ll be ok. The second she’s awake we’ll come get you all,” Monica said. “All of you, get some rest.”

Skinner, Frohike, Doggett, and Langly left the room, and the minute Doggett got to his bed he fell on it and was asleep in moments.

Langly’s dreams were full of flickering images he saw like he was watching a movie. But he was in the images, the moments. So was Jen. They were in the cabin and they were...

Skinner shook him awake in the weirdly uncomfortable chair at the table in the hotel room where he’d worked for hours before falling asleep.

Sun shone through the open curtains.

They’d made it through the night.

What was that dream? Was it even a dream? Maybe the serum was still inside his head. Regardless, he rubbed his eyes and bolted for the other hotel room.

Several soda bottles, junk food wrappers, and a TV Guide showed how Monica and Byers had spent the rest of the night. Both were drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and had dark circles under their eyes. Immediately, Langly went to listen at the bathroom door. He heard quiet sobs. “Jen?”

“Langly?”

When she said his name in a ragged voice, he thought of breaking the door down. Jen was back. “Let me go in.”

Doggett stepped in front of him. “Hang on…”

“Do it, Doggett,” Skinner was tired and grumpy now. “For Christ’s sake…”

“You think she’s a super soldier,” Langly realized. That was what was behind all Doggett’s weirdness around Jen, why he didn’t trust her and why he kept watching her like a hawk.

Doggett shook his head. “No. Not anymore. I’m trying to make sense of this.”

Rage the likes of which he hadn’t ever felt before rose in his gut. Langly faced off with the agent. Maybe they’d come to blows, but maybe it had to come to that. “Nothing ever makes sense. How long are you gonna be on The X-Files before you accept that the world is a lot weirder than anyone ever expected and conspiracies and crackpots frequently turn out to be true? Mulder has been proven right over and over again and he’s still considered a wild man. Everyone in this room has had unexplainable experiences. So with respect, Agent Doggett, cut the crap, tune in, and open the goddamn door or I’ll break it down.”

Byers and Frohike stepped up behind their friend and Langly knew if they were gonna fight, they would all fight together. Doggett’s eyes stared him down for a second before they softened. “Fine, but I’m going in with you.”

“Do whatever you need to but open the door.”

The sight of her broke Langly’s heart. Jen’s wrists and ankles were tied. She had gotten herself sitting up against the side of the bathtub. She was wearing a blue tank top and her leggings and the white tiled room was cold, so Langly rushed to grab a towel to wrap around her shoulders as he slid down to the floor next to her. As terrible as he felt, he could not imagine how two doses of the serum in thirty-six hours must feel just physically. Emotionally, she must have felt like a cracked mirror. That she was upright was a miracle. “Jen…”

Doggett knelt and started untying the ropes on her ankles. Langly started on her wrists. She was rubbed raw where she’d fought against the ropes and he remembered the bruise on her wrist in Vegas. As soon as her wrists were free he took them in his hands and rubbed them gently.

Jen leaned against him. “What time is it?”

“About 6am. How are you?”

“My head hurts.”

“I’ll get you something,” Skinner said from where he stood by the door, blocking them to give Jen some small privacy. Jen saw his black eye and the blood. Like a TV turning on, she seemed to fully realize what had happened. “What did I do?”

Better it come from Langly. “A man injected the serum directly into you.”

“When?”

“Vending machine,” Doggett said.

She stared at Doggett like she was remembering pieces all at once. “Oh my God, did I attack Walter?”

“He’s fine.” Jen folded her head to her knees and Langly rubbed her back. “We’re going to split up. Frohike and Byers and I will take you back to our place and hide out. I’ll get into the StarCorp back end and–”

“I can’t do this,” she whispered.

“Hey…” Langly tried to pull her closer but she didn’t budge. “This isn’t the right moment to decide that.”

Pushing her hair back off her face, she scrunched her eyes closed. “When is? When I attack someone else? When someone gets hurt again?” The idea that she thought she’d hurt him was overwhelming. “They’re after me. They want me to stop and oh my god, I’ll stop. They used my work against me. They hurt you, Langly. You. Jesus, it’s not worth all this harm.”

“Stop it.” Doggett wore a grave expression.

“Shut up,” she told him.

But he didn’t. “No. You can’t give up. Not now. What we’re on to, wherever it leads, is something so big they’re exerting incredible effort to keep us from finding it. I’m not a guy for conspiracy theories but like you said, every one contains at least a nugget of truth and the truth here is that there are people working hard as they can to manipulate people, most people, all people who the hell knows? Super soldiers and mind control and scandals and Senators, it’s nefarious and we might be the only people in the world who are putting it together. So I don’t accept you giving up. You fought Skinner like a wildcat, and you almost won. Keep fighting.” As he spoke, Langly found himself impressed. Doggett put a hand on Jen’s knee for just a second, then got up and went back into the main room to address everyone else. Langly held Jen close and listened. Doggett addressed his FBI colleagues. “We’re going to the Newark facility. Fast. We need to raid it before they can destroy it.”

“The facility might be dangerous,” Byers spoke up.

“We’ll wear Hazmat. We’ll stay smart and we’ll stay together. Sir, I expect we can utilize the full resources of the FBI.”

“And if someone gets infected?”

“The rest of us subdue them. Rope works pretty well.”

Jen got to her feet and went to the bathroom door, setting a hand on the doorframe to steady herself. Skinner immediately shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. You’re not going with us.”

“Like hell.” Jen argued while Langly held her arm. She wasn’t as physically steady as she wanted to be, but no one missed the fury in her eyes.

“No.”

“I’m burning that facility to the ground, Walter. I’m so done.”

Skinner overrode her. “Three times you’ve been strangely lucky. Your luck will run out and I’d rather it didn’t run out while we’re so close. Besides, the two of you need to go to ground. Langly, there’s gotta be tons of data and proof out there and we’ll need it in hand if I’m gonna convince Kersh there’s something here. And Jen, you need to get the truth out. Finish the article and send it to Ned Nelson. And if he doesn’t go to press with it, maybe you go a more independent route and these guys blast it all over the world.”

Reyes agreed. “Where can you go?”

“There’s a place,” Frohike shot a very pointed glance at Langly.

The bunker. Langly didn’t need to react or respond.

“Don’t say another word,” Doggett said. He looked right at Langly. “You take her there. Frohike, Byers, come back with us and we’ll get that vial tested. No contact at all until it’s done.”

“I’m gonna have words with the man in my trunk,” Skinner said as he glanced out the door.

“He’s still in the trunk?” Monica asked.

Doggett didn’t answer that. “We’re leaving in twenty minutes. If we hurry, we can get a raid set up by tomorrow night at the latest.” He rushed off with Monica.

“There are burner phones in my bag,” Langly said to Byers. “We’ll take some with us.”

“We’ll call you when it’s safe,” Byers replied.

Skinner joined the trio. “You know, John Doggett isn’t the problem.”

Langly felt a lot of empathy for the A.D. “At some point you might want to consider that The X-Files wrecks everyone it touches. Look at you. Stuck out here with a bunch of crackpots hanging on to your last bits of respectability.”

The big man actually chuckled. “Through the looking glass, huh?”

“White rabbits and evil queens,” Byers said. “What about Reyes?”

“She’s an actual believer,” Skinner admired his newest agent. “You think Mulder’s the oddball. Just you wait.” Clapping Langly on the shoulder, Skinner went to join his agents as they opened the trunk of the sedan, no doubt checking on the mercenary.

“I need to change,” Jen muttered, not meeting his eyes. She needed more than that, and he took his friends out of the hotel room to give her a few minutes alone.

The Lone Gunmen went to the parking lot and faced each other.

“Splitting up never feels right,” he said.

“Jen has to hide and you have to go with her. We’ve got a load of stuff to do. Never give up, you know,” Frohike said.

“Whatever it takes,” Langly replied.

Frohike set a hand on Langly’s arm for a second before handing him a set of keys and walking over to the van. Jen came out of her room with her hair in a ponytail and wearing a black hoodie, carrying her bags. She went immediately to Frohike and they had some sort of conversation that made her frown deeply.

Byers bumped Langly’s shoulder with his own. “How are you doing?”

There were too many things to say about what had happened the previous night and the hundred thousand emotions rushing through him. Langly couldn’t even figure out where to start. “I have no idea.”

Byers nodded. He wouldn't push more. He knew Langly would talk when he was ready to. “Take care of her. They did this to hurt her.”

“I’m not a romantic hero.”

Byers raised his eyebrows and faced his friend. “Says who?”

“Senators and Billionaires want her.”

“Senators and Billionaires are terrible," Byers scoffed. "Do you think any of them ever look at her and see anything more than a knockout? Langly, you love her. Really love her.”

“I do.”

“So don’t let her go.” Byers was speaking from a deeper place than his words explained. Nothing in the world could break the bond The Lone Gunmen shared, but if Byers were ever granted another chance to go with Susanne Modeski, even if it meant disappearing, Langly wasn’t sure he wouldn’t take it.

“I won’t.”

Byers hugged him tightly. “We’ll call you when it’s done.”

They all split their separate ways, leaving only dust.

It only took a few minutes to get on the highway. Langly turned on the Blazer’s radio and searched for a rock station. The options were pretty pathetic but he found a classics station playing The Who and he left it there.

Jen spoke for the first time. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer her, and even resisted making an If I tell you I’ll have to kill you joke because it was absolutely not the right time. She didn’t push farther, but pulled her legs up so she was sitting cross-legged and pulled sunglasses from her bag. Instead, he asked, “How do you feel?”

“Like I got run over by a truck. And humiliated. Not a great combination.” For a moment she went quiet. “I’ve been flirting with Walter for years trying to rattle him.”

“He’s rattled now.”

“I’ll never be able to look at him again,” she groaned. “What a mess. I’m so sorry you guys got dragged into this.”

“We’re exactly where we need to be.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Mostly alright.”

“I don’t just mean physically, Langly.”

Queen’s Don’t Stop me Now filled the empty space for a minute.

“While we’re admitting things…”

“You can tell me anything.”

“That was my first time.”

“You were a virgin.” It was a realization, not a question.

“Yep.” Weirdly, it felt good to say it out loud. Now she knew. Now he didn't have any more secrets.

“Shit. Langly I’m sorry…”

That she was sorry it had happened stung. So was he, but probably not for the same reasons. Without the substance, they would not have chosen it. Which meant it might never have happened, and that was a strange thought because it was a horrible thing that had happened to them and yet... “I wish I could remember it is all.”

She set a hand on his thigh and her head back against the seat. “Me too.”

Probably she fell asleep somewhere on the drive to wherever they were going next. All the jumbled thoughts in her head spun and swirled and finally her brain gave her some grace from the anguish and let her sleep.

She’d spoken to Frohike before they left. He was still thinking clearly, and she wasn’t. Too angry about everything, especially about having to leave it all in the hands of the Feds, she almost tried to figure out how to get away from all of them. Frohike had nodded to her as she had left her hotel room and when she walked over he asked, “Contemplating the state of the world or despairing over it?”

She had shaken her head. “You’re trusting the FBI?” With the life Frohike had led, to see him side by side with the Feds was weird enough, but everyone made compromises.If he truly trusted the FBI, though...

“Never. But I know we’ll need far greater resources than we have to contain this.”

Jen understood the rationale but still didn’t like the plan. “Mulder left this with me because he wanted me to find the truth. People need to know about this.”

“I don’t disagree, kid. But you can’t do this alone, and you don’t have to.” He meant The Lone Gunmen. She had allies. Friends, even.

“I always work alone.”

“And your work is terrific. I keep up, you know.”

“Thank you.”

“But how’s your heart?”

She had not answered him because she had not known how to.

Her heart was one part of her she didn’t let anyone touch.

When she woke, it was to Langly gently touching her knee to wake her while he pulled onto a very normal looking street. Maybe she’d expected a secret government facility with guards or something extreme, but Langly drove the Blazer into the driveway of a suburban house surrounded by trees with a For Sale sign in the front yard. Langly punched some numbers on a cell phone and the garage door opened. He drove in and closed it immediately.

Jen rubbed her eyes. “Honey, we’re home?”

“This used to be an FBI safehouse but was decommissioned.”

“And now?”

Langly turned off the vehicle. “We recommissioned it.”

“You three?”

“Mulder, long may he reign, gave us the keys, and has a set too. I wiped it from all the FBI records and the basic payments are arranged through some … shenanigans. So it has power and water. And cable. Come on.”

Bags in hand, they went into the house and she followed him immediately down stairs to a basement level where a big steel door greeted them. “Either you’re about to murder me or there’s a literal bunker in suburbia.”

“The latter.” He let her watch as he punched a code. The door opened. Once they were inside, he punched a different code and she heard a loud latching sound. “8894. Now that we’re in and I locked it, no one else can get in even if they know the code. Not even Frohike and Byers can get in without us letting them in. Same code to get out. 8894. We’re breathing fresh air from outside right now but it has oxygen tanks we can activate if we need to and they’d last two people about two weeks. And, there’s at least a month worth of shelf-stable food.”

“You’re mad geniuses. It’s pretty cozy. Nicer than my first DC apartment.” As weird as it was to be in a bunker, the space was clean and pretty cute, with light wood paneled walls, a concrete floor, pocket kitchen, small living area, and doors she assumed went to a bedroom and bathroom. “Have you had to hide here before?”

“Couple times, only for a day or two. It’s alright.”

Why did the idea of him having to hide hit her so hard like she wasn’t fully aware of the life he lived? The Lone Gunmen were frequently in danger as they dug into secrets dangerous people and organizations wanted to keep quiet.

Her heart surged with care for him. And her head still throbbed.

Knowing you had been intimate with someone but not knowing what you had done or how you had done it was…horrible. Had it been rough, tender, had the boundaries she’d always held for lovers held or had her guard been dropped completely? Had she had an orgasm? Had Langly done that for her - given her that and now she didn’t even remember? Was he a good lover? She figured he would be based on how attentive he was to her and the way he’d touched her in their fleeting moments, but had he wanted it, really?
All they’d ever shared really was a dance in Vegas and he’d held her so close then her head had been spinning when she’d slipped off - and it had kept spinning when she’d thought of him ever since.

Because she was an absolute mess of a person, and she loved him.

It was too big of a realization.

“What?” He was next to her in two steps, probably thinking she was going to faint.

“I just realized how much I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Ever.” After she said it, she felt incredibly stupid and went to put her bags on the sofa when she felt his hand on her shoulder. “This happened to both of us. They hurt both of us. I’m sorry you got sucked into this and they hurt you because of me. I’ll burn them down, I swear.”

“I have to tell you something.” She didn’t turn around. Couldn’t. But she set her hand on his and listened. “I had a dream last night, when I actually slept. And you know I don’t put stock in dream dictionaries and dreamcatchers or whatever. And maybe it wasn’t so much a dream as a memory. Because we were at the cabin and we were together.”

Jen closed her eyes. She believed him, for he never lied to her. “Oh God.”

He made her turn around and look at him. “No. It was - it wasn’t anything bad, or violent, or scary. It was just images of us, two people being...passionate. Maybe this serum heightens what people already feel, want, are.”

“I tried to fuck Walter.”

“He’s an attractive guy. Maybe deep down you have a Daddy issue and want to jump him a little. I get it.”

“God…” She covered her face but laughed. “What about when Doggett grabbed me?”

“An aggressively straight, slightly repressed man ran for his life with a hot woman. His adrenaline was pumping. It was like an action movie.” She laughed again and he moved her hands from her face so she saw his crooked smile as he spoke earnestly. “I’m saying that if you’re worried about how we were when we don’t remember, maybe you don’t need to be. Because we’re crazy about each other and I don’t think we could ever hurt each other. Because I, at least, love you.”

Boom. There it was. The words. “Langly…”

He kissed her. For a second she didn’t know what to do.

A gentle touch was not the same as being loved. For Jen, sex had become a mechanical act, a transaction. She couldn’t remember the last time it meant anything. Pulling away just enough to speak, she touched his face. “I want you. And I think it’s authentic and not the lingering effects of last night or the night before. But I need to be sure. So, I’m going to go take the hottest shower a human has ever taken and scrub myself until I bleed, and then when I come out you’re gonna kiss me again and we’ll take it from there. Deal?”

“Actually, no.” He folded his arms. “When did you eat last?”

What time even was it? Days were melting together. “Oh, I never ate that burger...”

Langly shook his head. “You’ve been dosed with this stuff twice in two days. You need to eat something, and you need to really sleep.”

Uncomfortable with his caring for her, Jen replied, “I thought you wanted me, too.”

“Believe me, I do!" Langly exclaimed, smiling although she knew he was totally serious. "But like I told you...we’re not in any rush, you and me. Besides, tell me your head doesn’t still hurt.”

It did. She still felt pretty terrible in several ways. How could she explain she wasn’t used to men caring about her? That her bar for decency in her partners was so low that simply by handling her basic needs and not taking advantage of her vulnerability he was a shooting star among mud puddles. “What?”

“I don’t know what to do with you. Girls like me usually wind up with creeps.”

“Girls like you don’t exist. There’s only you. Singular. And…I’m yours if you want me.”

“I do. I do want you.”

The way he beamed warmed her heart as he stepped forward and set his against hand on her cheek for a second. “Tonight, though, you’re resting. No arguments. Go shower until you bleed or whatever. Towels are in the closet in the bathroom.”

She took a shower so hot it almost hurt and her skin turned red before putting on jean shorts and a gray tank top with lace edges that went down over her hips. Her curls would be wild without all her usual products and process, but she didn’t care.

Langly loved her.

Could they be together? For real…forever?

When she emerged from the bathroom, Langly was at work in the kitchen and The Ramones played from the stereo. He picked up a plate and handed it to her with a flourish. Her stomach rumbled when she realized just how hungry she actually was. “Pancakes?”

“And coffee. Lots of it. And scrambled eggs. Well, they’re from powdered eggs but there’s hot sauce at least.”

“A Michelin starred restaurant couldn’t have done it better.”

“You’re lying but I’ll take it.”

“I’m not, I swear. This is the sexiest thing a man has ever done for me.”

“You should stop hanging out with losers.”

They sat on the floor and used the small coffee table. Jen took a forkful of pancakes and syrup and closed her eyes in utter bliss. “What do you think the others are doing right now?”

“I assume Byers and Frohike went back to our place. I didn’t ask.”

“Your secret base?”

“It’s a warehouse in Maryland. It’s not that mysterious.”

“Should you have gone with them? Don’t they need you?”

“We have allies. There’s a woman, Yves, and she’s as good a hacker as I am though I hate to admit it. She’s annoying but she’ll help. And there’s a guy, Jimmy. He’s… he’s like a golden retriever but he hits hard and means well.”

“I’m glad you have people you can trust.”

“My Dad never got me, and he didn’t even want to. I grew up a farm kid who watched way too much TV and daydreamed. The second I got my hands on a computer, and the internet, everything changed. There was so much music I’d never heard, and there were so many people like me, and the fibers of the web connected us, like cosmic fibers. Like your fungal networks.” Jen smiled at that. He’d listened to her rambles. “I left the first chance I got and slept on people’s couches and saw bands and then I met Frohike, and then Byers and Mulder…and then I wasn’t alone anymore. You’re not alone anymore either, Jen.”

“That’s what Melvin said.”

“Well, he’s usually right. Don’t tell him I said that. Like it or not, you’re surrounded by weirdos just like you now.”

“Don’t do that. You’re my heroes. You’re authentically yourselves no matter what, and you accept each other completely. They should build statues of you.” Langly genuinely laughed at that. “Seriously. How do you know you’re on the right path?”

“How do you sleep at night?” he replied with a shrug. “I’d rather fight alongside my friends than be alone and safe. You could join us, you know.” She knew she wouldn’t even have to ask and the three of them would surround her and bring her into the fold. It was such a pleasant thought she felt a warmth in her heart. Langly linked his fingers in hers, and she watched how they wound together. “What stops you from saying yes?”

“You don’t know me, Langly.”

“I know you plenty.”

“I started out with ideals. Really, I did. And now I hate everything I've become. Funny how I didn’t realize that until I was at a literal ball in Vienna.”

Langly squeezed her hand. “Sometimes you get lucky and find yourself in a weird place. I was miserable in Nebraska. The first chance I got, I left. And it didn’t happen overnight. But you find people, and they find people, and next thing you know you have something to live and die for and even if it’s two dudes in a warehouse in Maryland, it’s something.”

They had moved closer together bit by bit until her foot was against his calf and her shoulder was under his arm, as if they could keep merging. Langly stroked her ankle lightly and she rubbed her thumb against his hand as she spoke in a near-whisper because only he needed to hear her and he was so close.

“I still can’t believe you’re a Korn fan.”

“You like Hole. Your opinion is invalid.”

“I’m more likely to blow myself up chasing a story than I am to remember a date night.”

Slipping her thin silver band off her middle finger, Langly moved it to her ring finger and then kissed her hand. “I know we aren’t meant for mortgages and school plays and dinner reservations. Still, it would be nice to go to the movies with you.”

“What movie?”

“Probably The Thing.” She almost snort-laughed. “There. Now you’re laughing again.”

Jen lightly set her lips to his. “Sleep with me tonight.”

She could tell he was tempted to give in. “You don’t have to…”

“No, I mean, sleep next to me. Please.”

Langly jumped up and his eyes shone. “Oh! Wait there. One minute.”

Rolling her eyes with a laugh, she took their plates to the kitchen while he went to work on something. When he called her into the bedroom a few minutes later and told her to lie down on the bed, she raised an eyebrow. “Is this when I get murdered?”

“Yep. Right now.” He turned off the lights and moved next to her in the dark so her head rested on his shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“I have no idea how to answer that.” He pointed a small remote at something on the wall and the ceiling of the bedroom lit up with stars. “How on earth…?”

“I remembered there was a projector we left behind.” And then she was crying, feeling the safety of him holding her. Maybe he cried, too. She couldn’t tell in the dark. He let her cry until it was done, until she felt like a demon had left her soul and a strange sense of peace washed over her. This surprising and beautiful man cared enough to give her stars.

“I’m sorry it happened,” he whispered.

“I’m not. Not at all. I just wish it had happened authentically, of our choosing. And that we could remember.” She put a hand on his chest. “I’m sorry they took that memory from you. But I am not sorry it was you.”

“Me neither.”

“That’s not why I’m crying. I’ve never spent a whole night with anyone before.”

“Me neither. What a couple of losers.”

They kissed then, sweet and simple. Nothing but love and starlight. Jen had a sudden thought and pulled back from him. “The Moon Landing was real, right?”

“Yeah. One hundred percent.”

“Good. I would have been shattered otherwise. What’s your pet conspiracy? Your white whale?”

“Elvis.”

“That he’s alive?”

“Yep. I thought we had him once. What about you?”

Jen thought of all the conspiracies involving science, but one immediately struck her. “I would love to know if there ever really was a functional water engine and if the government covered it up. Imagine the environmental implications.” Langly chuckled and closed his eyes while grinning. “What? Don’t tell me you think my conspiracy is crazy?”

“No. It’s not at all.”

“What?”

“Kid, have I got a story for you…”

When they fell asleep hours later, after conversations important and not, they slept wrapped together. Before she drifted off, Jen thought for one second about waiting until he was asleep and then using the door code to slip away. This was probably her last chance. She could get up and slip out and disappear and not have to face all the feelings that swirled around inside her body and heart from simply just touching him. But, his chest rose and fell in the deep breath of genuine sleep and when Jen listened for and heard his heartbeat, she simply could not move from his side. Letting go of him now was impossible.

Like a cave diver, Langly was deep in the code and systems, losing time and any sense of where he really was. Normally, he preferred spending less than half his waking time in the real world among real people. The digital world was easier. He was freer there. Code and keyboards had made more sense to him since he was a lonely kid and then an angry teenager back in Nebraska.

Byers and Frohike were out in the world. There were humans worth coming up for air for.

He would figure out how to solve this problem. He would do it so none of the people he loved were in danger anymore.

Deeper, deeper. Binaries swirled and his fingers flew across keys.

When he felt arms wrap around his shoulders, it was like a spelunker coming back above ground. The air smelled like Mexican spices and Jen held him with her chin resting on his shoulder. “Come back to earth for a little bit, ok?”

“What time is it?”

“After five. I was going to let you go as long as you needed but we’re no good if we’re not taking care of ourselves. And, frankly, I missed you. So…enchiladas?”

“Enchiladas,” he repeated. “That sounds like heaven.”

Jen kept her arms wrapped around him. “Don’t get too excited. Everything is shelf-stable but I think they’ll be pretty good.”

He kissed her hand. “Is your article done?”

“It’s as good as it can get. As soon as we’re out, I’ll send it to Ned.”

“Can I read it?”

“Of course. It’s pretty nerdy. Get ready.”

It was riveting, well-researched science writing. Without revealing anything the FBI would possibly frown upon, she delved into the nefarious uses of psilocybin and its potential for disruption and danger, mentioned StarCorp, and even dropped a little mention of the recent Congressional cases, leaving that up to the reader to decide for themselves. The approachable prose was efficient and snappy, not a wasted word in the whole article.

“It’s really good.”

“Coming from one of my favorite journalists, that’s better than a Pulitzer.”

They ate enchiladas standing at the kitchen counter after hours on their laptops. Langly stretched his neck, which had grown stiff over the course of the day. “Million dollar idea. We could open a diner but only serve shelf-stable food.”

“I’m trying to think of a canned or nonperishables joke. I got nothing.”

“What's the first thing you’re gonna do when this is done?”

“Laundry,” she rolled her eyes. “You?”

“I’m gonna get a cheesesteak.”

“Amazing. Still, I’ll be sad to leave this place. It feels safe.”

He understood. Sure, they were hiding in a bunker. But they were ok and together. It was the longest they had ever spent together, and he hoped she wouldn’t get sick of him and his eccentricities. As he thought it, she set a hand on his back for a second almost absent-mindedly, as if she was making sure he was really there with her. If they could make this place feel like home, maybe they could make it anywhere.

After dinner, he quickly did the dishes while she looked through a pile of VHS tapes stacked next to the TV/VCR Byers had moved over to the bunker after the first time they’d been bored beyond belief when they’d hid out.

“Elvira, Mistress of the Dark?”

“That one’s mine," he admitted proudly, then ran his eyes up and down her body flirtatiously. "Hey, I have a type.”

Jen stuck her tongue out at him.

Her Hawaii guide sat on the coffee table and he flipped through the earmarked pages. All the scribbled notes were about volcanos. She shifted so they were shoulder to shoulder. “I finished my proposal for a long-form article I want to write about the Dictyophora indusiata. If Outside magazine pays Jon Krakauer to write long form articles about climbing Mount Everest, I don’t see why I can’t stomp around Hawaii and do the same for The Herald. It’ll be cheaper and no one will die on my expedition.”

If she got what she wanted, she’d leave again. “How long would you be gone?”

“A month. Maybe two. I doubt it’ll happen. Ned is notoriously cheap. Still, it’s a nice dream. Stomping around in a rainforest and on a lava bed. You could come with me.”

“I’m not what you call outdoorsy.”

She stood up from the tapes and faced him. “But how do you feel about Hawaiian shirts and fruity drinks?”

“Now you’re talking.” The cutest smile came to her face. “What?”

Jen’s hands slipped around his waist. “Take me to bed, Langly. You and me, eyes clear this time.” She traced one finger over the Ramones logo on his shirt. “We’re in too deep to go back now.”

As much as he wanted to jump to agreement, the edge of an act lined her words. “You don’t have to put on an act with me, you know. Ever. I don’t want it.”

The mask slipped. “I told you I’m bad at real. This scares the hell out of me.”

“I don’t want you to promise me anything. I’ll never ask that.”

Jen brushed her lips against his. “I do love you. And I don’t care what happened before. This will be our first time together. Deal?”

“Deal.”

She led him into the bedroom and brought him down beside her. Nervous, his mouth went dry as she took off her clothes and he did the same. They slipped into the bed. When he flipped on the stars, she giggled and reached for him. Skin against skin. “What do I do?” he asked.

“Whatever feels good,” she answered.

The feel of her in the dim light urged him to take hold and kiss her fiercely. He kissed his way down her until she was almost panting.

“Breathe,” she whispered to him. He exhaled against her hipbone and then he gave her everything. Time both raced and froze, and then it danced as the rhythm built like pounding drums. Jen gasped into the darkness against his mouth and fingers. They found something together, lost among hands and mouths and kisses and feelings as they started to learn what made their breaths hitch and come faster. It was like being in outer space, a whole immersive world.

Langly hadn’t expected the laughter. The vision of what he’d expected had been formed by TV and movies when in reality it was so much better. Touch and soft spoken words and moans, and the sounds she made. Langly could have happily drowned in her softness.

She wound a hand in his hair as he pressed his cheek to hers. “Is it alright?”

“I’ll stay here forever if you want me to.”

“That’d be nice.”

They exploded like nebulas. They were the stars. In the afterglow, the world existed in two phases for Langly; before and after. After being with Jen like this, he could not let her go ever again. As they lay curled together afterward, Jen tried to get up to go back to work at one point, but he asked her to stay and she went back to sleep. Jen stayed next to him the whole night long.

He woke up in the dark with the ceiling stars still shining.

“What time is it?” Her sweet voice asked.

“4:12 AM.”

In the dark, she reached for him. They made love again. It was bolder. There was less laughter, and the feeling of a timer running out growing stronger. He gripped harder and she asked for, she demanded more. They both would never admit it but it crossed their minds that it might be their last ever chance to be together because the day could bring monsters.

Langly kissed between her shoulder blades. “I love you.”

She dragged her lips along his forearm as his hand held hers to the mattress. “I love you.”

Urgent. Necessary. Like Oxygen. They came together. One soul.

Jen drifted back to sleep, but Langly could not.

Finish the Fight.

He could do it. He could find the incontrovertible proof they needed and toss it to the FBI and end all of this. After that, they could go home and be together in whatever form that took. All that mattered was making sure Jen was safe.

Finally, deep in the back end of StarCorp’s vast, sprawling, and messy systems, Langly found encrypted communications he would have missed had it been two days earlier and had he not recognized the words Project Reiki. He opened the files and found locations, names, formulas, shipping orders, dates, reports, schematics… everything StarCorp was doing to create and distribute a serum called only RE1K1.

“Fucking Bingo,” he said. Evil men always wrote their shit down. “Arrogant douchebags.”

After a long phone call and several emails to Frohike in which he passed along a trove of information he knew would be shared with the FBI and which would unravel knots fast once it landed in Skinner’s hands, Langly closed his laptop.

He hated to wake her. “Jen..”

“What's wrong?” Quickly, she sat up as if they’d need to run again, but he took her hand.

“I got it. I found it.”

“I knew you would.”

“Harold Seamus.”

Now wide awake, her brow furrowed as she sat up. “What about Harold?”

“You know him well?”

“He’s a pioneer in psychedelic research. He’s been in the trenches for forty years. He went to jail in the 70s for a while for what the government considered illegal tests on college students. Just like Leary, but even worse organized and with more iffiness about consent.”

Langly winced at what he had to tell her. “And last year he suddenly got several million dollars richer. The account the money came from loops back to StarCorp. Did he know you were working on this?”

“He knew my Dad. I asked to interview him last month to see what he thought about a formula like this, and he actually sat down with me. He was so helpful and so curious about my work and… Ugh, you should never meet your heroes. Did you call Melvin?”

“Skinner probably already has everything I sent him.”

“I imagine the full power of the FBI will come down on them.”

Langly nodded. “As soon as they call us, we’re out of here.” What that actually meant was terrifying.

For a few minutes, they sat side by side in silence.

“What if we just pretend we didn’t hear the phone?”

“They’d come here,” Langly answered.

“Damn. Worth a shot.”

The world outside the bunker was ugly. Jen rested her forehead against his as if she could guard against it by touching him.

Doggett really hoped this factory wouldn’t explode.

Despite his lack of sleep over the past 48 hours, he felt wired ready to bring this whole ridiculous series of events to a conclusion.

After he, Monica, and Skinner had left the hotel, they’d gone a few miles down the road before Skinner careened the car down a road in some woods and parked to have some words with the man tied up in the trunk. The AD was so forceful and furious Doggett worried he was only partly playing the psycho, but he scared the man enough to give up some information in exchange for FBI protection; He’d been hired by a scientist to incapacitate Jen Alden or John Doggett, but specifically not to kill them, but rather to let them destroy themselves. Skinner had slammed the trunk again and kept driving until they were in the FBI DC parking garage, where the agents he had called ahead for were waiting and lugged the man into custody.

Doggett and Reyes caught some sleep in chairs in the X-Files office. It wasn’t comfortable. It didn’t matter.

In the morning, they heard that Candace Walsh’s phone had been found by the side of the road outside Newark.

Reyes started coordinating with a Hazmat team.

The following morning, the FBI’s finest gathered for a meeting to plan the night’s raid on the Newark facility. In the room were two men Doggett simply introduced as specialists - Frohike and Byers. Langly’s email containing everything he’d found about StarCorp had followed a chain from Frohike to Skinner and to the desk of FBI Director Kersh, who authorized the activity.

“I can take it from here, Walter.” Assistant Director Brad Follmer smirked as Skinner stood up to start the briefing.

“Appreciate that. But this one’s personal.”

Doggett tried not to smirk at the way Follmer sat the hell back down. The smarmy blonde bastard was an old fling of Monica’s so Doggett tried to keep his loathing for the man down deep.

At sunset, Doggett was in a facility like the one before, but this time he wasn’t alone and he wasn’t unprepared. There were lots of sets of trained eyes looking for bombs and countdown clocks and heat signals. Monica was beside him and Skinner was somewhere up ahead because he was not about to sit this one out. Byers and Frohike came in after the FBI agents with the science team who had taken the remnants of the substance in the vial and figured out it was psilocybin mixed with something called chloramine and a few other chemicals and hormones.

The team moved in on a building in the middle of the complex and burst in.

“FBI, get on the ground.”

Maybe it was his voice, maybe not. The ballet of training and coordination moved swiftly. The lab was bright white and modern, a sharp contrast to the brick and concrete of the other areas they’d passed. Everyone in the lab dropped to the ground, and the floor was full of workers in yellow suits similar to theirs.

“Candace Walsh!” Skinner’s voice called.

“Here!”

Doggett ran to her. She sat up but held up her hands.

“Jen Alden is alright. She told us to look for you. Are you alright?”

Clearly terrified, the young woman blurted, “I’ll tell you anything and everything. I’ll need protection.”

“Done,” Skinner agreed. “Get up.”

She did, addressing the science team. “The liquid serum is in those vats. They’ve distilled the gas into tanks they store in the north facility.”

“How do we destroy it?” Byers asked.

“I…” she hesitated.

Frohike urged her on. “In your expert opinion.”

“Heat it as high as you can,” she suggested. “It’s fragile. Delicate. Heat it, or throw all the bleach and other abrasive chemicals you can in it. Do not dump it in the water supply or on the ground. Maybe bury the tanks?”

Monica took Candace out of the facility quickly to move her to protection while the other workers were lined up, led out of the facility to waiting vehicles, searched, and questioned. The whole thing took the entirety of a night before specialized teams came to deal with the chemicals.

Out in the fresh air, Doggett got out of his Hazmat gear and met Byers and Frohike.

Frohike frowned, “There’s every chance in the world there’s another facility somewhere.”

“Langly found the one in California. West coast branch is raiding right now.” He saw their surprised expressions. “We can’t tell you guys everything, you know.”

“And Harold Seamus?”

“In custody in New York City.”

“Asshole.” Frohike was clearly disappointed that his former acquaintance had sold out.

Suddenly Doggett felt so damn tired he could have fallen asleep in the parking lot.

The threat was abated. The darkness that had chased him for the last few days had been lit up thanks to the hard work of a large group of skilled and smart people. Next time he felt alone in the world, which he often did, he’d remember the way they had all stepped together to work the problem without hesitation. Like Skinner had said, everyone was using their skills and talents. Jen had exposed a problem, and from that moment on everyone had done their best.

For that night at least, it was over.

He finally got to go home and sleep in his own bed.

After Frohike called Langly to tell them it was all clear, Jen debated mixing up the code on the bunker’s lock to delay their departure. It took only one look at her brilliant hacker partner to realize that would gain her at most ten minutes reprieve. So she went and repacked her bag and readied to face the real world again.

As they drove away from the safehouse, she looked back.

There had been starlight in that decommissioned bunker. No matter what fights the future brought, she would remember that.

They grabbed coffee on the road and met the others at an empty park on the shore of the Potomac. Langly immediately rushed to his colleagues, but Jen saw Doggett sitting on a bench a little bit away from the others, holding a cigarette, and walked over to him instead. She'd been wrong about him, and wondered where he would possibly go from here. There would be weirder cases, stranger people, greater danger. John Doggett was tough, but he wasn't actually made of steel. And now, after everything, it turned out she was worried about him.

“You smoke?”

He saw her approaching. “Listen, it’s been a wild six days.”

“Is that all it's been? It feels like a month.”

He patted the bench next to him and she sat down. “Sure does. You alright?”

“Sure. You?”

He handed her the cigarette and she took a drag before handing it back. “We raided the place, in Hazmat, thanks for that tip by the way, and saw it all for ourselves. The vats of the compound were confiscated and moved, the hard drives taken, and the building has been seized and will likely be razed next week once the FBI’s science folks see that the compound is in every surface. Like a meth lab. Condemned. I’m gonna pretend I didn’t see Frohike getting data out of the computers in the middle of it all.”

“Is it over, do you think?”

“It’s never really over.”

“Terrific. What are you going to do now?”

“I gotta figure out how a super soldier can be killed.”

“You said how. Don’t you mean if?”

“I’m hoping for how.”

“I don’t envy you.”

Doggett tilted his head to her. “What are you gonna do now?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“There’ll be eyes on you now. You could figure out where Mulder is and go there.” Doggett nodded his head over to where Byers and Langly were talking overtop each other about something and Frohike was rolling his eyes with Monica. “But, at the same time, you leave and that man’s heart is gonna break in a million pieces. There’s not much worse than loving someone you can’t have.”

He said it so seriously she knew he wasn’t only talking about her situation. “You’re speaking like you know.”

“I have too much experience in the matter. Stay with him. With them.”

The way he said the words, like they were a warning rather than suggestion, made Jen raise an eyebrow. “You’re a deeper river than I expected, Agent Doggett.”

“And you’re most likely not a super soldier.” A genuine laugh burst from her at the idea. “I kind of liked being called Agent Smokeshow. Good for the ego, you know.”

“Maybe Monica will call you that if you ask her nicely.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Takes one to know one.” Boldly, she winked at him.

Doggett held up a hand. “Can I have my XFile back now?”

She reached into her bag and returned it. “Call me if you ever need help with a mushroom alien.”

“Goddamn X-Files,” he muttered.

“Goddamn X-Files,” she agreed.

They returned to the gathered group and Jen ignored the curious looks Byers and Monica were giving her and Langly. The worst part of friends was their nosiness. And they were all her friends now. She wasn’t completely alone in the world anymore. They were all bonded together by one wild adventure.

Skinner came over and though she was mortified to face him, he spoke kindly to her. “You can go back to your life. I called Ned Nelson and told him I personally enlisted you on a matter of national importance, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

Six days, or maybe six years ago, she had tried a line on him that hadn't worked. She gave it one more shot. “Power moves look good on you, Walter.”

And Walter Skinner, FBI Assistant Director, actually blushed. Everyone saw it. Jen barely resisted gloating.

“It’s been a pleasure,” Monica said as the two women embraced. “Let’s get lunch once things are normal. Or, you know, more normal. Something with mushrooms. I’m still thinking about the morels.” As she looked over Monica’s shoulder, she winked at Doggett.

Doggett offered his hand. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“Don’t lie, Smokeshow,” she retorted as she accepted his hand.

“Boys,” Doggett said to the reunited Lone Gunmen. “I’m sure we’ll see you sooner rather than later.”

“Anytime,” Byers replied.

“See you later, gorgeous,” Frohike winked at Monica. She rolled her eyes, but smiled at the same time. “She likes me. I can tell.”

Skinner, Monica, and Doggett got into the two vehicles and the FBI branch of the gang drove off. Jen watched them go and decided that, fine, there were a few feds who were worth a damn. The river lapped the rocks on the shore and the breeze hit her face.

It was a new day.

It was a new life.

Jen watched the car drive away and didn’t say anything. Langly wished he could read her mind, because her expression was flat. Byers and Frohike subtly moved away to let them talk privately. “So that’s it.” Langly came to stand next to her. “We’re free.”

“I guess so.”

“You and Doggett best friends now?”

“Never. But, good news. I am not a super soldier.”

“You would be a terrible super soldier.”

“Dude, I know.”

The edge of a smile on her face faded quickly. They stood on a precipice now, and the next step was either sink or swim. Even if she loved him, she might not stay. Even if he loved her, he might not be everything she wanted. “What do we do now?” He gave her the decision.

Jen shrugged her folded arms. “There’ll always be a billionaire doing evil shit. The work never ends.”

“Of course it doesn’t. But what's it all for?”

Exasperated, she closed her eyes. “We’re saving the world, Langly.”

“We can do more together.” She didn’t argue with him, but she also didn’t agree. “I’d sleep a million times better knowing where you were at least most of the time.”

“I hate thinking about not knowing where you are or what you’re doing or if you’re in danger,” she answered. “I’m ashamed of so many things I’ve done, and you’re too good for me. You know that, right?”

She was giving him one last chance to get out.

“Bullshit,” he replied. He took hold of her wrist, letting his thumb graze where there had once been a bruise. There was no trace of it now. Bruises faded, and healed. “Everything in the past is done and over. I don’t judge you for doing what you thought you needed to do.”

“I’m scared.”

“Me, too.” Enfolding her in his arms, he softly whispered, “Let’s be scared together.”

There might not be a forever. Neither knew what fate awaited them. But there would be a tomorrow at least, and some days after that. And when Jen’s arms wrapped around him and she pressed her cheek to his shoulder, he knew she would stay.

Langly realized they were not alone.

“You know, before you go back to your apartment I’d feel a lot better if you let us sweep it and set up some stuff,” Frohike said as he stepped up to them. “I know the FBI went through it but they’re amateurs. So you should probably stay with us for a couple days.”

Byers spoke over Jen’s shoulder. “And, as far as your laptop security goes, obviously you’ll need better virus protection. I hear your firewalls are notoriously terrible. Good news is, we know a guy.”

Jen looked at the two accomplices. “Boys, deceit is beneath you.”

Byers shook his head. “It’s for purely selfish reasons. He’ll be in a terrible mood if you don’t come with us.”

“I have already taken up a week of your lives. I can’t impose anymore.”

“It’s not an imposition. It’s family,” Frohike insisted. “Besides, there’s a front page article to be written.”

“Front page? You know how to turn a lady’s head.”

“I thought that might appeal.”

She spoke to Langly. “We keep going, I guess.”

It was good enough. “Whatever it takes.”

The four of them stood quietly and watched the river.

“So, cheesesteaks?” Frohike asked.

“Oh my God yes,” Byers answered, his eyes closing in bliss at the thought.

“Please,” Langly practically begged.

Jen made a face. “At 9 in the morning? Weirdos.”

“Cheesesteaks are an anytime food.” Frohike linked his arm in Jen's and led her to the van. “You’ll see.”

THE END
(At least until the second part where I rewrite the events of “Jump the Shark” because that's literally where this all came from lol)