From: xffscinut@aol.com (XFF SciNut) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: NEW: "Transfers" 4/10 Date: 24 Mar 1996 14:37:11 -0500 Comments to the author. lcbx5me@aol.com ++++++++++ (see disclaimers part 1) "TRANSFERS" part 4 by L.C. Brown The travel alarm read 4:57. Scully concentrated her attention on the clock, blocking out everything else. She couldn't let him see her pain, couldn't let him enjoy it. Her body ached, and the cut on the inside of her lip throbbed, but she pushed the feeling ruthlessly away from her. He would be quick to notice any show of discomfort and act on it. His attention wasn't on her at the moment, though. He was dressing, his back to her. She didn't want to look at him. He might feel it. It might turn his attention back to her. There was still time for him to come back to her one more time, and a tremor shook her at the thought. She couldn't go through this again. She focused on the clock once more. The sun would start rising in less than an hour. The sky was already beginning to lose its utter blackness. There was a lightening of the shadows in the room. Keep it simple, Scully thought. Simple thoughts. Simple concepts. Simple words. No feeling. No expression. "Scully?" She shot a wary glance at him and quickly looked away, not wanting to hold his attention by holding his gaze. "Are you all right?" Her flesh crawled. "Fine," was all she could manage to say. His fingertips brushed her cheek as he leaned over her, and she clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. "Scully, you were holding back on me," Mulder explained softly. "I told you that you couldn't do that. Didn't you believe me?" "I guess not." "You should have." "I will now," she said slowly, meaning it. "Good. Tonight will be better. I promise." Scully shut her eyes to block him out as he bent to kiss her. When the door shut quietly behind him, she could taste blood on her mouth. Gagging, she shoved the bedclothes away from her and staggered to the bathroom. When the nausea finally passed, she turned the shower on as hot as she could stand it and stood under the spray. It took a while to summon the energy, but she finally managed to reach for the soap, her hands shaking, and began to wash. She scrubbed herself from head to foot, every inch of her. She washed away his touch, his smell, and his taste from her body. And when she was clean again, as clean as she could ever be, now, only then did she begin to cry. ***** It was almost 7:30 and he would be getting ready to go to breakfast. Scully sat on the side of the other bed, the one that was still made, and looked at the door. Clinical detachment, she told herself. She was a doctor. She was an FBI agent. She had been trained over many years how to view a case with detachment, without emotion, without becoming involved. She could do this. The sun was up and she was safe for the moment. She hoped. She had to do this. Deliberately, she drew her gun from its holster and put it in the pocket of the heavy terry bathrobe that the hotel supplied. Taking a deep breath, she got up and forced her reluctant feet to carry her to the door and then outside to the hallway. The door to Mulder's room was across the hall and down a few feet. It seemed like a mile away, and it took a minute for her to gather the courage to knock. Clinical detachment, she reminded herself. The door opened suddenly enough that it startled her slightly, and Mulder was there, still buttoning his dress shirt. "I overslept and you're early --" he began and stopped when he saw her face. "Don't say anything," she told him, having to work to get the words out. "Just back up. Away from the door." He couldn't move for a minute, his eyes on her face. What the hell had happened to her? Her eyes were red and puffy, her mouth was swollen, and her expression.... "Mulder, move away from the door," she said again. He backed up obediently, putting some distance between them, since that seemed to be what she wanted. She pushed the door shut behind her, making sure that it wasn't locked in case she needed to get out quickly. "Scully, what's going on? What's happened to you?" He took a step toward her but stopped short as her hand came out of the pocket of her robe with her weapon held ready. "Don't," she said simply, and the even, expressionless tone of her voice would have stopped him in his tracks, even without the gun. "Don't come any closer." "Okay. I won't," he agreed, backing up a step or two. "What's going on? What's this about?" "Don't talk, Mulder. Turn around." He did so slowly, moving slightly to one side so he could see her in the mirror over the bureau. "Now, take off your shirt and your undershirt. I want to see your back." "My back?" he echoed blankly. "Scully...." In the mirror, he saw the gun come up. Her hand was shaking, but her face was calm and controlled, and he knew from the look in her eyes that she was prepared to pull the trigger. And this time she wouldn't be aiming for his shoulder. The muzzle was pointed at the back of his head. "All right, Scully." He unbuttoned his shirt again and took it off, keeping his movements slow and deliberate. "I'm doing what you want," he told her, keeping his voice low and soothing, trying to buy time as his mind raced. She didn't look feverish. A drug, maybe? "I'll do whatever it is you want. Just tell me why you want to look at my back." She watched him drape the clean shirt across the back of a chair, relieved that she felt this detached. "I want to see if you're scratched," she said calmly. "I scratched him last night so that I could see if it was you." For an instant his eyes met hers in the mirror, then he suddenly realized what this was about, what had happened, and the color drained from his face. "Oh my God." He stopped thinking about the gun she held and pulled his undershirt over his head hastily, remembering the way his back had stung in the shower this morning; he had thought the water was too hot. Half turning quickly to look in the mirror, he could see four red parallel lines across each shoulderblade. There was no mistaking them for anything but what they were. "Oh my God," he breathed again, looking at the scratches and then at her face. He knew that expression, now. He had seen it the faces of too many rape victims. And she believed that he had done it -- and the scratches proved that he had. So though his first impulse was to go to her, he couldn't -- couldn't try to help her or touch her. He needed to keep a distance between them to keep from inflicting any more pain on her. His mouth was suddenly dry. "It's not a shapeshifter. It's got to be some kind of possession," he said at last, forcing his mind to think, forcing his thoughts away from what she must be feeling. "Possession?" she said doubtfully. "Scully, I don't know what went on last night. I fell asleep in that easy chair while I was working on the profile. I woke up there about half an hour ago." "What about the night before? Where were you then?" "Both nights....?" He swallowed hard. "Scully, I didn't know anything about it. It wasn't me." She regarded him steadily for a long minute, the gun still held ready. "His eyes," she murmured at last. "His eyes were always different. They were dark. Almost black." "Good. You'll be able to tell the difference, then," he said almost eagerly. "Keep me covered. I'm going to stand in the light from the window. Look at my eyes and tell me what color they are." She came forward reluctantly, cautiously, lifting the gun slightly. She didn't get too close to him, but she looked into his face intently as the sun shone in his eyes, making him blink involuntarily. "Hazel," she said. "They're your eyes again. Not his." "That's right. It's me, Scully. I'm not going to hurt you. You know that." Oh, God, how could she possibly believe him. "I'm not going to do what he did." She didn't look convinced, and he couldn't blame her. "Look, you don't need the gun. I don't want it," he continued quickly as her grip on it tightened. "I want you to hold onto it. But you can put it away, now." He kept his voice as quiet as he could; she wasn't completely back with him yet. She looked at him mutely. She could no longer trust external evidence. She had to trust her instincts. But she had turned off that part of herself, the part that could feel and be hurt. She had no way now of knowing whether he was telling the truth. He shrugged, his hands gesturing helplessly. "It's me." It was the only thing he could think of to say. She had heard him say that so many times. The right inflections in his voice. The right words. He was upset, worried about her. He hadn't known about the scratches. He wasn't making an effort to touch her, wasn't making an effort to take anything from her. She had always trusted Mulder. She would have to trust him now and hope she wasn't making a terrible mistake. She compressed her lips, careless of the cut, and nodded briefly. Putting the gun back in her pocket, she turned away to sit down in the chair at his desk. Her legs were trembling. Mulder made a careful detour around her and, ducking into the bathroom for a second, brought out a couple of tissues that he handed to her at arms' length. "There's blood...on your mouth." Scully pressed the tissue against her mouth. She didn't know what to say to him now. "I guess we know now what happened to those women," she mumbled finally. "I guess we do." He sat down on the end of the unmade bed, watching her warily for any adverse reaction. "Scully, when does this possession take place? When did I change? Is this an intermittent thing? Are you in danger now from this thing?" "I only saw him at night. Late. He would leave just before dawn." She tried to keep her voice steady. Mulder nodded. "Then we should have the rest of the day ." "What about tonight, Mulder?" Her voice shook despite her effort to control it. He rubbed his hand across his jaw, looking around for inspiration, looking anywhere but at Scully. "Does he have my memories? Does he know what I know?" "Oh, yes. Yes," she said bleakly. Making himself sit still and not go to her was harder than Mulder would have believed possible. His imagination was reading things into her stark affirmation that he had to make a conscious effort to thrust away from him before they ruined his control completely. "Then he'll know what's happened, that you figured it out," he said, and saw her head jerk up to look at him, stark terror in her eyes. He caught her before she was halfway to the door, turning her back, holding her carefully. "Scully! Scully, listen. You've got to stay with me here. You're safe, Scully," he insisted, allowing her to break his hold on her. "See, I'm letting you go. I'm not holding onto you." He watched her gain control of herself again and when she had stopped shaking he said gently, "It won't happen again. You'll be okay tonight. We can make sure of that." "How?" she wanted to know. "I don't know how to keep you out." "I do," he said grimly. "We'll use your handcuffs to immobilize me. You can cuff me to..." he looked around for a likely spot, "...to the handle of the sliding glass door. We both know that I don't have keys to your cuffs, Scully. You'll be safe." "Mulder, I can't --" "Yes, you can," he told her. "But we'll worry about that later. First, we need to get you to the hospital." "No," she said flatly. "You're obviously hurt -- you've been raped. You know as well as I do that you've got to see a doctor --" "I said no. I'm not going to have this on record here," Scully said with finality. "The local police will be involved by the emergency room physician and what am I supposed to tell them -- that my partner raped me?" Mulder winced and she continued, her voice hard. "And if you deny it, how are you going to explain the physical evidence -- the clothing fibers, the blood, the hair, the semen. I won't go to the hospital, Mulder. I don't need it for me and I don't want it for you." She wondered if he would realize that she had rid herself of the physical evidence as quickly as she could. Apparently, it didn't occur to him. When he found his voice after a long minute, it sounded strained. "How badly are you hurt? What are the extent of your injuries? I can find a private doctor...." "Like the other women, I'm not seriously injured. It just feels worse than it is. It's okay, Mulder; the doctors can't do anything for bruises anyway. I'll just take an aspirin." She paused, shoving the bloodied tissue into her robe pocket. "I'm much more concerned about how to get rid of this...this thing permanently. We obviously can't live like this." "It would help to know what it is," he said thoughtfully. "And if I can figure out how it got into me in the first place, maybe I can figure out how to get rid of it." "I think I know that much," Scully said, surprising him. "I think the senator passed it to you that first night we were here. His wife's was the last attack, and it started for me that night. If you didn't know you were carrying it around, he may not have known that he was a carrier either. That's why I thought there was something wrong with his photo. His eyes were blue in the picture, but they were dark when I met him in the bar. They should have been blue." Mulder listened to the controlled anxiety in her voice and wondered how long she was going to be able to hold onto her self-control. Not much longer, he thought. She was exhausted and hurt and talking about it right now wasn't doing her any good at all. "Scully, don't think about it any more," he interrupted her. "Have you gotten any sleep at all?" She shook her head. "Not since I talked to Skinner." "You haven't slept for three nights running and you've eaten next to nothing since dinner that first night. I'm going to call down for room service and have something sent up to you. Then you're going to get some sleep." He was picking up the phone as he spoke. When he had ordered breakfast for her, he got another shirt out of the closet and finished dressing. "I'm going to do some fast checking around to find out about any local attacks, and I'm going to see if I can find out what this thing is." He hesitated as he pulled on his jacket. "Will you be all right here by yourself?" "I'll be fine," she said, not looking at him. "I just need some rest." "Liar," he said, a faint smile quirking his mouth. "I'm going to call you later to check up on you. I'll try to be back mid to late afternoon. Nowhere close to dark," he assured her. She didn't say anything. "Listen, Scully, if anything happens so that I'm not back by nightfall, you get out of here. I don't want to know where. And if he finds you somehow, I want you to shoot him." She lifted her gaze from the floor to his face, but she didn't argue. "Don't be late. Curfews are hell." As he left, Mulder didn't have a doubt in his mind that if he showed up after dark, he'd be greeted with a bullet. He'd make it a point to be on time. ***** (continued part 5) =========================================================================== From: xffscinut@aol.com (XFF SciNut) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: NEW: "Transfers" 5a/10 Date: 24 Mar 1996 14:46:31 -0500 Comments to the author: lcbx5me@aol.com Posting complaints to me please :) ++++++++++ (See part 1 for disclaimers) "TRANSFERS" part 5a by L.C. Brown It was hard picking out the kernels of truth from the stories he was told, but by 3:00 Mulder had some information to go on. Scully would call it subjective and unsubstantiated, but it was all they had. He hailed a taxi and directed the driver to the hotel, a thirty minute trip, according to the driver, so he took out his cellular phone and dialed the hotel's number. He wanted to let Scully know that he was on his way back, but the phone in his room wasn't being answered. Mulder frowned as his listened to the repeated ringing. He had thought she had understood that she was to stay in his room, not to go back to her own room where everything had happened. When the call finally switched back to the operator, he asked for Scully's room number, then sat forward in his seat a little, as if the movement would somehow impel her to pick up the phone. This time when the call switched back to the operator, she wanted to know if he was Mr. Mulder, Ms. Scully's traveling companion. If so, the assistant manager would like a word, if convenient. "This is Mr. Addams-Leigh, the assistant manager," said a cultured voice after a moment, sounding more than a bit British. "Is this Mr. Mulder?" "Yes, I'm Fox Mulder," he said impatiently. "What's wrong?" "We are having a problem with Ms. Scully's room. The plumbing in her bathroom must be malfunctioning," Mr. Addams-Leigh said carefully. "Our building engineer tells me that the shower in that unit has been running since early this morning, but Ms. Scully has us denied us entrance so that repairs could be effected." "I'm on my way there. I'll make sure everything's all right," Mulder said hastily, knowing what could happen if the hotel management entered Scully's room in her present unstable state of mind. "I'll take care of everything when I get there." He broke the connection and told the driver to hurry. The narrow coast road back into the city was lined with lemon and orange trees, with sea grapes tumbling over the low fence bordering the road. Mulder looked out the taxi window and didn't see any of it. It was almost impossible for him to believe that this thing was inside him. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't detect any difference in himself. But the proof was on his back -- and in Scully's face when she looked at him. Mulder shut his eyes against the thought of what her face had looked like this morning. He had seen that expression over and over again in the eyes of women whose files and photos he'd studied in the Violent Crimes Unit. He had never imagined he would see that look in Scully's face. Or that he, however indirectly, would be the cause of it. He *wasn't* the cause of it, he reminded himself firmly. But it was up to him to keep Scully safe long enough for them to get rid of this...entity. After that had been accomplished -- somehow -- then the real problems would begin. There were more problems than he wanted to think about, so he stopped trying. All he could handle right now was one problem at a time. ***** When the cab finally arrived at the hotel, Mulder went straight to the front desk. "I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI," he told the desk clerk on duty, showing her his ID. "I need the key to Agent Dana Scully's room." "Sir, it is not the policy of this hotel --" "Yes, I know," he broke in. "But Agent Scully is my partner and we're here on business. The key, please." The woman eyed Mulder's ID and then disappeared into the office behind the main reception desk. After only a moment, a tall, distinguished-looking black man came out with her. "Ah," the man said, nodding. "Mr. Mulder? I am Mr. Addams-Leigh. Here is the key to Ms. Scully's room. Please let me know if there is anything else that we can do for you." Something in his voice made Mulder look more closely at him as he took the key and pocketed it. "Mrs. Allingham's room had similar problems with the plumbing during her stay with us," the assistant manager continued smoothly. "We hope that Ms. Scully has not been inconvenienced by any such problems." Mulder was sure now that the man knew something about what was going on. His tone was a little too pointed, his eyes looking a little too directly into Mulder's, as if he were trying to communicate something. "I hope so too," Mulder said slowly. "Look, I may need to talk with you later, if you don't mind." "Certainly, sir. At your convenience." Mulder nodded and headed for the stairs, disdaining the elevator. Their rooms were only on the fourth floor. The hallway on their floor was quiet. Scully's door was locked when he tried it, but he could hear the water running inside. He started to insert the key into the lock but stopped suddenly, mentally cursing the need for haste that had brought him upstairs without thinking first. If he walked into Scully's room unheralded, he could count on being dead in short order. He couldn't use the damn key without her knowing about it -- unless she was unconscious, and even then.... A quick investigation of his own room proved that Scully wasn't there and, in fact, hadn't stayed long enough to eat the room service breakfast. The tray was sitting untouched on the desk. Pausing long enough to call room service to have the tray retrieved, he took it with him to leave outside the door on the floor, before going back to Scully's door. He stood indecisively for a moment, biting his lip as he reviewed his options. It took several minutes of knocking and calling her name before she responded to the din he was creating outside her door, but he wasn't stupid enough to use the key unless she was completely non-responsive. "Is that you, Mulder?" Her voice was so soft that he could barely hear her. "Yeah, it's me, Scully," he told her, leaning against the door. "I'm back. Can I come in?" "No." He sighed. That was blunt enough. She must really be having a hard time in there if she didn't want him coming in. "Okay, no problem," he said aloud. "Were you taking a shower?" "Yes." "Well, finish up, will you? We've got some work to do." He tried to sound as matter-of-fact as possible. "What kind of work?" she wanted to know. "I need to ask you some questions. You know the drill," he said casually, listening hard. "Mulder, I'm tired...." "I know, Scully. I know." He thought fast. "Look, you go on back and finish your shower. I'll wait in your room until you finish. I can be checking out the notes on your laptop while I'm waiting. It'll save me some time." There was no answer from the other side of the door. "Go on, Scully. When I hear the bathroom door close I'll come in and wait." After a moment he heard the door bolt being unlocked and then the sound of a door inside shutting. He slid the key card into the lock and turned the handle when the green light came on. The curtains had been drawn against the outside light, but the lamps were on, throwing light on the bed that was still demurely covered by its spread and on the other bed. It's mattress was half pushed off the boxspring, as if it had been pulled out of place when the bedclothes had been torn off and dumped on the floor between the beds. Mulder's gaze rested on the bed and bedclothes for a moment before noting the empty holster on the nightstand. He controlled his too-active imagination with an effort and, avoiding the blue tee shirt crumpled in the middle of the floor, went over to her desk. The laptop on her desk was dark and the few notes that she hadn't given him were stacked neatly beside it, her reading glasses resting on top of the paper. He stared sightlessly into the blank computer screen. He thought he had a fairly accurate picture of what had happened here last night, as much as the evidence here could tell him. Scully had finished working on her computer, turned it off, and had probably gone straight to bed. There was no book in sight to indicate bedtime reading. At some point later on, she had opened the door to someone she thought was her partner and that's when everything had happened. The nightshirt had been discarded some distance from the bed. It must have started when he entered the room. Wrecking the bed was probably something that Scully, herself, had done either this morning or later when she came back to the room. "Finish up in there, Scully," he called, prodding her, wondering how long she had been in there. All day? "You're going to turn into a prune." It took another few minutes of patient coaxing to get her to shut off the water. When she finally came out of the bathroom, she was wrapped in the hotel's terry robe and looked damp and somewhat dazed. Mulder looked her over briefly but comprehensively and then turned away, going to stand at the balcony door, parting the curtains slightly in a pretense of looking at the view. Scully's body was there, but that was all. Sometime during the day, she had done what he had seen other victims of rape do -- disconnect herself from her surroundings, her memories, her pain. He needed to get her back. He had to give her back a sense of connection, a sense of normalcy, a sense of herself. "Hurry up, Scully. Get dressed." "But...." "Work, Scully. Remember? Sorry, but you can't hang out in your bathrobe all day when we've got work to do. Come on. Hurry." He could hear her moving around and knew she was probably getting dressed on automatic. "I talked to a lot of people today. Interesting stories." He waited to see if she would pick up on that. "All subjective?" she asked finally, and he felt real relief that she was coming back slowly. "Or could anything be substantiated?" "You know better than that, Scully," Mulder smiled. "Nothing I ever investigate has a hope of having substantiation." "How true," she agreed dryly, beginning to sound more like herself. "So what do we do now?" He shrugged. "Now you listen to my unsubstantiated stories that I have, by now, personally biased, and then I will listen to your entirely subjective, extremely biased evidence, and then we try to figure out what the hell is going on here." "We're inside the case, now," she said doubtfully. "Maybe we shouldn't --" "Shouldn't what? Investigate it ourselves?" he finished for her. "Absolutely right, Scully. Very much according to the book. We're both so personally biased by this situation that we don't have a prayer of being able to stay objective. But investigating it ourselves is slightly more acceptable to me than the thought of calling Skinner and asking for help because I raped you while possessed by an entity of some kind." "Hmm. You've got a point there," she agreed. "Okay, I'm dressed." "Good." He turned around and looked her over. The taupe pants suit was the only normal-looking thing about her. Her damp hair was pulled carelessly back to the nape of her neck with a barrette and she hadn't bothered at all with makeup. Just as well, Mulder thought. Makeup wouldn't be able to disguise her swollen lip or her puffy eyelids. And there were a couple of dark bruises showing up on her jaw now. They looked like finger marks. "Get your night stuff together," he said out loud. "You can stay in my room tonight and I'll stay in here." Scully silently collected what she needed and preceded him across the hall to his room. A waiter was there picking up the tray and Mulder stopped to have a brief word with him, handing his key to Scully and gesturing for her to go on in. The room was relatively neat again. The queen-size bed had been made and the room tidied by the maid, but the papers, notes and photos scattered carelessly across the desk, the bureau, and even over the laptop keyboard definitely gave Mulder's signature to the room. His study habits never changed, and that was comforting somehow, Scully thought. Something familiar amid the unreality of what was happening to her. Mulder watched her as she stood, staring blankly at the litter of paper, and shut the door behind him. "I ordered you something to eat," he told her. Scully looked around, half startled. "Mulder, I couldn't --" "I know," he interrupted her. "But you're going to." "I really can't. The thought of food makes me sick," she protested. "So when you eat it, you can be sick. The bathroom's right there," he told her hardheartedly. "Then you can come out, eat some more and be sick again. Eventually something will stay down." "You're not my mother," she said resentfully. "No," he agreed, clearing out the top drawer of the bureau with a sweep of his hand and dumping the contents into the next drawer down. "I'm your partner, your best friend and, if we can ever get out of this hellish mess we're in, I still have faint hopes of becoming your husband. Put your stuff in here and then have a seat. We need to talk." Scully had been dreading this talk all day, but put her overnight things in the drawer and sat down in the easy chair near the balcony door. They would have to go through this some time and common sense dictated that it be while the memories were fresh. She just wished she felt more in control of herself. Mulder sat down at the desk and extracted a pen and notebook from the drawer before putting on his reading glasses in what he knew was a vain effort to distance himself from the coming interview. It was going to be a waste of time trying to maintain objectivity, but he was going to give it his best shot for Scully's sake. "There's no sense in trying to conduct this by the book, Scully," he echoed his thoughts for her benefit. She nodded agreement. "You were pretty strung out in your room a little while ago," he observed, looking at her closely. "Are you going to be able to hold it together here?" "I'll try. You have to know what happened." "Okay." He took a deep breath. "Let's start with your physical condition. It's not too late to go to the hospital if you need to," he reminded her. "I really don't need to, Mulder. Really. The physical injuries are basically superficial -- like the other women's. I'm bruised and I ache, but it's nothing that a couple of aspirin and some rest won't take care of." "How about your lip?" "It's sore, but it doesn't need stitches. It's stopped bleeding." "All right. Then let's go back to dinner that first night. I stayed to take care of the check while you went on upstairs. As far as my conscious movements are concerned, I went to my room, looked over the case notes, read for a little while, then fell asleep." He paused for a moment. These were questions that he didn't want to ask, answers he didn't want to know. But he had to ask. He had to know. "Tell me what happened after you went upstairs." Scully's gaze was fixed on something beyond him and she didn't say anything at all for what felt like a long time. "I was tired, but I was thinking about what we'd talked about at dinner," she finally said, her voice barely audible. "And I was reading, trying to stop thinking so I could fall asleep." She paused as there was a knock at the door and Mulder got up to answer it. When he came back, he had a room service tray that he put down on the table at her elbow. "If you eat and talk about what happened at the same time, you really will throw up," he said matter-of-factly. "Want to eat first or talk first?" "I'd rather do both," she told him. "It'll give me something to do with my hands. I can't just sit here and do nothing while I tell you these things, Mulder." "I know it's hard to talk about, Scully. It's almost as hard to sit here and listen to it, believe me." She nodded and, turning the chair slightly, she began to spoon up the steaming vegetable soup, one deliberate mouthful at a time. The soup warmed her as she swallowed; that was all she could say for it. The homemade bread with it was still warm, but it tasted of nothing at all. Was this why the other women were so thin, Scully wondered? She forced herself to break off another bit of bread and eat it. "You knocked on my door," she picked up methodically where she left off, making her story as objective as she could. "I got up and let you in." There was no sense in burdening him with her very subjective thoughts and feelings at the time. Mulder sat down again slowly, listening. It sounded so unreal. She was talking about him coming to her room. It was unreal. "You had no idea that it wasn't me?" "None," she shook her head. "You were acting kind of quiet, thoughtful. You said you'd been thinking about us and you wanted to stay with me that night." Scully put her spoon down and pushed the tray away. Another sip, another bite would choke her. "It seemed to kind of loosely connect to what we'd been talking about. You kept offering to go. And every time you offered to go, the more I wanted you to stay. I know it sounds crazy. It doesn't make any sense now, and it was confusing at the time, but.... I don't know how to explain. "Things got confused after that. Some things I remember; some things I don't. If I try to look back as objectively as I can and really think about it, I think I must have subconsciously recognized that something was wrong," "What clued you in?" "Overall? I guess it was the sex," she said bluntly, her fingers pleating the napkin still in her lap. "We had sex. We didn't make love. I know it's a subtle -- and subjective - - difference, but there is a difference. And after we had just talked about getting married and loving each other, it was...well, it was physically satisfying, I guess, but emotionally jarring. It threw me off balance. "And there were other things, too," she continued doggedly. "You told me at dinner that night that you'd always had safe sex, but then you came to my room without a condom." Mulder put the empty notepad and unused pen back on the desk carefully in order to keep from throwing them. He couldn't take notes of this. He couldn't listen to any more of it. He felt sick. "What else?" he asked hoarsely. Scully didn't look at him, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward in a faint smile. "Well, I have to admit that I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about you in a more personal sense. But I know you as a person, and I did do a little thinking about the subject that night after dinner. I didn't have a lot of time to come up with expectations before you showed up, but I did have certain basic expectations of what sex with you would be like." The smile disappeared suddenly. "And you didn't do the things I expected you to do, or say the things I expected you to say. I think that by the time you left, I knew that I couldn't have misread you so badly. I just didn't know what was wrong." "No wonder you acted so weird the next day," he shook his head. "No wonder you said I was messing with your mind. So what happened last night? Why did it become violent?" Scully pressed her lips together. "Mulder some of it I can't talk about. I can't. And there's no point, because.... At any rate, it would only upset you." "Not any more than not knowing at all," he pointed out. "Maybe I'll be able to tell you everything someday. Not now. You're going to have to settle for what I can give you." She gathered her thoughts carefully. Talking about this was getting harder. "Most of it is pretty simple, on the surface. You came to my room. I didn't want to let you in. You became very insistent -- uncharacteristically so. You finally said that either I could open the door or you would." "What?" he said incredulously. "And you let him in?" Scully ignored him. "I felt like I had to let you in. And after I did, that's when the wrongness of the whole thing started falling into place for me. But I felt like I wasn't myself when I was with you -- like I had no willpower. I had to do what you wanted -- and I even wanted to do it. But something inside me wouldn't let go, wouldn't participate. And that's when I knew that it wasn't you. It was him looking out of your eyes, using your hands to touch me." Scully stopped with a shudder of revulsion and Mulder swallowed his nausea. He wanted to say something, but he had no words. Nothing he could say would help this, make it better. "That's when he knew something was wrong," Scully said shakily, tears slipping unnoticed down her cheeks now. "When I knew it wasn't you, I...withdrew. I couldn't help it. And he kept saying that I was holding back on him. And it was your voice. He said he wanted everything I had. And he kept taking and taking from me until I didn't have anything left. The rape was only part of it. I felt like...like my soul was being raped too, like he was siphoning pieces of me away. By the time he was finished, there was almost nothing of me left." Shutting his eyes, Mulder took a deep breath. Neither one of them said anything for a long time. Scully finally got up and retrieved a box of tissue from the bathroom and came back to sit down again. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose before she spoke again. "I scratched him during the night. I still had enough of myself left to be able to think to do that. It was the only thing I could think of to do, and I wasn't even sure why I was doing it." "It was a good move," he nodded, then hesitated. "Scully, I wish I had something to say. But I can't find a damn thing to say that will help. I'm just sorry." "I know, Mulder," she sighed, then sat up straighter. "What did you find out today?" He appreciated the change of subject. "Your story ties in pretty much with the local stories I heard today. All the women I talked to spoke about the same 'wrongness' that you did, but also experienced the same kind of irrational compulsion to continue. It usually took two or three nights for the rape to occur, but it took nearly a week and a half in the case of one woman I talked to." "How many women did you talk to?" "Eight. They were all in the same general neighborhood, and all knew each other, more or less." "They know each other?" She stared at him in surprise. "Sort of. Their kids go to the same school. In one case, there's a connection through a church. The woman who was attacked last told me that her husband is an assistant coach for a local soccer team. The first tourist that was attacked -- Ms. Hess -- had been to a soccer game with her boyfriend, who's a big soccer fan." "Eight interviews in six hours?" She raised her eyebrows. "You must have moved pretty fast." He grimaced. "Let's just say that none of those ladies were impressed by my charm. I didn't exactly use the appropriate finesse." "But how did you know where to begin looking in the first place?" she wanted to know. "The islands are only twenty two miles long, but that's still a fair-sized haystack when you don't know what you're looking for." "The assistant manager, Mr. Addams-Leigh, gave me a couple of names and a letter of introduction. He knows, Scully. He knows what's been going on." "How does he know?" "I'm not positive. He wasn't very forthcoming on the subject, but I got the impression that he'd been a carrier himself and hurt someone he cared about pretty badly. I don't think he wants to see that happen to anyone else if he's able to prevent it. He said that he might be able to find someone to help get rid of it permanently. He's going to get in touch with me tomorrow morning." "Mulder, have you figured out what this thing is yet?" "Well, I've narrowed it down. You might not want to hear this, Scully -- it sounds pretty incredible." "I'm living inside my own personal X-File, Mulder," she reminded him dryly. "It can't be more incredible than that. Is it a ghost?" "That's one possibility," he conceded. "Not very likely, though. Possession by a ghost has a different signature -- the possessed person behaves very atypically and has difficulty controlling gestures and movements, the theory being that the ghost has difficulty controlling unfamiliar flesh." "I think we can safety rule that out. He had no trouble controlling your body." "Okay, then. My working theory is that it's a type of incubus." "A *what*?" "An incubus. It's a spirit that's active only at night and it--" "I know what it is and I can figure out what it does, Mulder. But it's still something out of 'The Night Stalker.'" "There's been folklore for thousands of years throughout every culture about this type of spirit, Scully," he reminded her. "And there are excellent psychological reasons for people thinking that sexual dreams at night are caused by marauding spirits. What happened to me wasn't some kind of dream." "I know that," he held up a restraining hand. "Let me finish. The incubus can come in different types, depending on what it feeds on." "Mulder, that isn't funny," she told him, her face whitening. "What do you mean by 'feeds on?'" "I'm not joking, Scully. One particular type of incubus, the most commonly discussed type, feeds off of sexual feelings that it generates. It leaves its victims worn out, but alive. Another type carries it a bit further and the resultant exhaustion kills the victim. Some are strictly noncorporeal, some generate a temporary shape, and some use possession of living bodies to get what they want, what they need to feed on." "What does it want?" she asked almost soundlessly. "I think this one uses sex to generate a high level of psychic energy. It seems to have established a pattern of consensual sex until the victim begins to catch on and resist, then the rape occurs, and the entity moves on. Consenting sex would create a certain amount of psychic energy, but rape would generate a whole lot more. Enough to complete a transference to a new host, maybe." "That's why I feel like...why I thought that.... I felt like he was draining me dry." Mulder nodded slowly. "You said you felt like pieces of yourself were being siphoned away. In a very real sense, that's exactly what it was doing. And if, as I believe, it's able to keep a residual contact with its victims, continuing to get energy from them, then that would account for their continuing conditions." "How long does it go on?" Scully asked faintly. "From what I could tell in my interviews this morning, the connection weakens anywhere from six to eight weeks after the initial attack." Scully was quiet, vaguely surprised at herself for accepting Mulder's incredible theory without any real argument. She could insist that they look for a more concrete reason for her belief in him as her attacker, but it was too much trouble. Besides, it would be a waste of time. Her veneer of skepticism had been torn away, leaving her helpless to apply scientific reasoning to something so bizarre. She knew what had happened to her and she knew what had done it. There was nothing scientific or provable about it. "Scully?" Mulder's voice broke in on her thoughts gently. She turned her head with an effort to focus her attention on him. He seemed far away for some reason. "Finish the soup," he told her, and it seemed easier to comply than to argue about it. Mulder watched her spoon the soup and knew from the total absence of expression on her face, the automatic movements, that she was no longer there. She looked pale and exhausted, her eyes unfocused. He wondered with a frown whether the entity could actively draw on its victims during the day, and realized that in order to manifest itself when the host was asleep, it would need to use energy drawn from its victim. It was probably draining energy from Scully in preparation for tonight. (continued part 5b) =========================================================================== From: xffscinut@aol.com (XFF SciNut) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: NEW: "Transfers" 5b/10 Date: 24 Mar 1996 14:48:32 -0500 :::grovel, grovel::: Sorry about this... (this is real short... &*^% AOL anyway ) Comments to the author at lcbx5me@aol.com All parts posted 3/24/96 ++++++++++ See part 1 for disclaimers TRANSFERS part 5b by L.C. Brown Mulder got up, grimacing. If the entity had his memories when it manifested itself, then it would know tonight that they were on to it and actively looking for a way to get rid of it. He thought he could count on it being pretty pissed. "That's enough, Scully," he said, taking the spoon from her and lifting her, unresisting, to her feet. "I think you should try to take a nap. Are you with me?" "Yeah. Sort of." "Look, sunset is at 8:24 tonight. I checked. I'm setting the alarm to go off at quarter of eight so we'll have plenty of time to get me immobilized for the night. In the meantime, I'm going to do some work on the laptop and you're going to take a nap on the bed where I can keep an eye on you. Okay?" "Okay," she nodded, letting him guide her over to the bed. "Mulder, you won't forget, will you?" she looked up at him anxiously. He sighed. "No, Scully. I won't forget. Kick off your shoes and lie down. That's right." He draped the extra blanket over her and watched her eyes drift closed. Her face looked like marble. He really had nothing to do on the computer, but he supposed it wouldn't kill him to start his report, such as it was. It would be the first time he had deliberately altered pertinent data in his report on the case in question, or left information out altogether. It smacked unpleasantly of something that Cancerman would approve of, but Mulder knew that he would talk Scully into altering and excluding certain information in her report, too. There was no need to mention that they, themselves, had been personally involved in the case they had been sent to investigate. Mulder turned on the laptop and cleared the papers from the keyboard. Setting the computer alarm for quarter to eight, he began putting together his report, keeping half an eye on Scully as she slept. ***** (continued part 6) =========================================================================== From: xffscinut@aol.com (XFF SciNut) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: NEW: "Transfers" 6/10 Date: 24 Mar 1996 14:50:59 -0500 Comments to the author. lcbx5me@aol.com ++++++++++ (See part 1 for disclaimers) "TRANSFERS" part 6 by L.C. Brown Scully could hear his voice calling her from a long way off, and it was almost too much trouble to respond. She was still so tired. But Mulder was being insistent. "All right, all right," she mumbled, forcing her eyes open. "I'm awake. Stop yelling." "Scully, it's taken me ten minutes to wake you up. Are you okay?" She frowned up at him. She didn't want him fussing over her. He was sitting on the bed beside her, his hand turning her face to the light so he could look at her more closely. Scully pushed his hand away impatiently and sat up. "No, Mulder, I'm not okay. As a matter of fact, I feel worse now than I did before I went to sleep." Mulder nodded, getting up. "I wondered about that. There's about half an hour until sunset and I think the entity will be needing energy to manifest itself tonight. It's getting that from you, Scully. And there's not anything we can do about it tonight." Scully rubbed her eyes as she stood up slowly. "You know, when I was growing up, I always thought that Mina Harkins was a gutless wimp, but I'm beginning to have a certain fellow feeling for her." Mulder smiled his appreciation at the reference, but shook his head. "I don't think you're a wimp, but I have to admit that you're not yourself. Are you ready to go across the hall?" "I guess so. When do I come back to get you?" "Set your alarm for 6:15. That's half an hour or so after sunrise, so I should be myself again, and you should be safe. But make sure before you come near me, Scully," he warned her, ushering her out and across the hall. The waiter Mulder had talked to had sent the maid to clean the room, and it looked neat and impersonal again as they came in. The beds were made once more and the drapes were pulled back from the balcony to let in the last rays of the dying sun. Mulder moved quickly to pulled them closed, seeing Scully's involuntary wince as she turned away from the light. Her photosensitivity was obvious, now, and getting worse. With the drapes safety drawn, Mulder dragged the easy chair over to the balcony door. He had changed into a tee shirt and jeans while Scully had slept and, with a book to help him stay awake as long as possible, he was ready to sit out the night. When he turned to look at her, she was taking her handcuffs out of the bureau drawer, her lips compressed. "You don't remember anything at all that happens?" she asked a little obscurely, sure that he would understand the question. "Nothing," he replied, holding out his hand for her to put the cuff on his wrist. "Your other hand," she gestured. "Left hand." He gave her his left hand wordlessly and felt the cool steel enclose his wrist with a click of the lock. "You know what's going to happen, don't you?" she asked, letting him seat himself in the chair before she snapped the other end of the cuffs through the handle of the sliding glass door onto the balcony. "I think so," he said quietly. "But at least it won't be able to get to you." She double-checked the locks automatically and then let her hand rest on his shoulder for a second before she turned away. Mulder appreciated the effort that it took for her to touch him, and watched her hand tremble as she pocketed the key to the handcuffs. "I'll be okay, Scully. Get some sleep." She nodded silently and retrieved her weapon from the nightstand drawer. "I'll be back in the morning," she told him, letting herself out quickly, not looking at him. The sun was starting to set. ***** The alarm went off at 5:30, bringing Scully reluctantly awake. Outside, the sun would just be beginning to edge its way above the horizon, but she had drawn the drapes against its intrusive rays. She got up and started the coffeemaker in the bathroom before taking a quick shower. Mulder had said to come get him at 6:15, so she had given herself some time to clean up, prepare herself for the day, prepare herself for what she might find when she went to release her partner. She tried to push all thoughts of him away temporarily as she dried her hair, looking at herself in the mirror. The bruises were showing up blackly against her skin today, she thought clinically, but she didn't feel as stiff as she had yesterday. A full night's sleep had helped a little, of course, but she still had circles under her eyes like purplish bruises, and there were hollows in her cheeks. Her collarbones were too prominent and her shoulders looked bony. A part of her deep inside was horrified at the weight she had lost so quickly, but the rest of her didn't have the energy to care. Scully sipped her coffee, glanced at the clock and began to dress quickly. The pants suit she had put on yesterday afternoon was a little big on her, she noticed absently. She finished her coffee before holstering her weapon, gathering up the key to the room across the hall, and checking to make sure that the key to her handcuffs was still in her pocket. The lamp that had been on the table beside him was on the floor now, its shade dented as if by a blow from a fist. On the floor some distance from him was the book he'd been reading. But he was still in his chair, still handcuffed to the door handle. His face was pale and his lips were tight. Scully shut the door behind her and turned on the light from the switch beside the door. "It's okay. It's me," he said, his voice sounding strained. Not wanting to speak to him yet, Scully looked closely at his eyes before she moved nearer and relaxed a little. It was Mulder. "Get me out of this, please." He sat up straighter and lifted his arm with a visible wince. Scully hesitated for a moment, looking at his wrist, before she unlocked the cuff from the door handle and then, very carefully, from his wrist. The steel ring left an imprint in the swollen flesh as she eased it away. "My God, Mulder. What did it do to you?" she breathed, her fingers examining his wrist gently. "It damn near broke my wrist," he pointed out the obvious, gritting his teeth against the pain her examination, however careful, was causing him. "Mulder, we've got to put some ice on this. It's too swollen for me to tell for certain, but it may be broken." "Great," he sighed. "All right, let's get out of here. Is there coffee?" "Back in your room. I had a feeling you'd be needing it." Mulder followed her across the hall to his room, supporting his injured wrist against his body with his other hand. Scully handed a cup of coffee to him before she disappeared out the door with the ice bucket. He took a quick gulp of the hot liquid before he took the opportunity to visit the bathroom. When Scully came back with the ice, he was coming out of the bathroom, drying his face and throat with a hand towel. "Come over here and sit down," she nodded toward the easy chair at the window. She took the hand towel from him when he did so and immersed it in the ice water in the bucket. Wringing it out, she wrapped it tightly around his chafed, bruised wrist. "We'll change that every ten minutes or so until we can get to a clinic. If we go to an emergency room, we'll be there all day." "Do you really think it's broken?" She drew the desk chair over to the table and sat down across from him. "Your wrist is too swollen for me to be able to tell with a manual exam. It's got to be x-rayed." He thought about that, finishing his coffee. "Well, until I hear from Mr. Addams-Leigh, we're pretty much stuck here. I guess it won't hurt." Scully ignored that, getting up to pour them each more coffee. She started a new pot brewing and came back to sit down again, handing him the room service menu. "You're probably starved," she commented. "How'd you know?" "You didn't get dinner last night." "Oh." He'd forgotten about that. "Are you going to get something to eat?" "No," she said flatly. "Scully...." "No." "Look...." "No." Mulder closed his eyes and mentally counted to fifty before he opened them again. "Okay," he said calmly. "Let's just take it as given that we have argued this subject into the ground. We've both aired our reasons and yelled at each other. We feel much better now and we've compromised on a piece of toast." Scully glared at him speechlessly. "Am I pissing you off?" he wanted to know. "I hope so. Anger usually stimulates the appetite." She snatched the menu out of his lax grasp and went to the phone to place the order, not bothering to ask him what he wanted. He would eat whatever she ordered or starve, she thought vindictively, all too aware of his smile as she murmured the order into the receiver. "And an order of toast," he reminded her thoughtfully when she paused. "And an order of toast," she repeated to the phone through clenched teeth. "And would you please pass on a message to the front desk to have Mr. Addams-Leigh phone our room when he comes in? Thank you." She replaced the receiver very carefully and turned to annihilate her partner with a couple of well-chosen phrases, but had her immediate anger derailed for the moment by the sight of him unwrapping the towel from his wrist. "Don't do that," she told him, coming across the room to push his hand away. "If you need it changed, just say something." He said nothing, watching her soaking the towel in the icy water, wringing it out, and wrapping his wrist again. The cold cloth deadened the ache nicely, he was relieved to discover. "I am never," she said conversationally, "ever, under any circumstances, going to marry you." "Oh?" He didn't seem impressed. "I mean it, Mulder." "I don't think so, Scully." "Don't tell me what I mean or don't mean," she said sharply. It was a start, he thought. She still looked like hell, but she was beginning to sound more like herself. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said honestly. "But we both know you're going to marry me sooner or later." "I am, huh?" She eyed him resentfully. "Why would I do that?" "Because I piss you off," he smiled. "A lot of men have pissed me off, Mulder, but I've never married any of them." "You're going to marry me because I care enough about you to make you eat the damn toast when it gets here so you don't keel over this afternoon, even if it means pissing you off in the process." He leaned forward. "Scully, answer me this. Why is it all right for you to take care of me when I'm upset or hurt, but it's not all right for me to do the same for you? And don't hand me any crap about me being overly protective because you're a woman. We both know that's not true." "All right," she admitted. "Maybe I overcompensate sometimes. I just don't want you to get into the habit of trying to take care of me. And I don't want to get into the habit of wanting you to, or expecting you to." "Scully, if I ever try to make you stay in the car while I go off after a suspect because I feel it's too dangerous for you, feel free to kick my butt. And I hope that you would. But offering you an aspirin when you've obviously got a headache, or wanting you to eat some toast when it's obvious that you're so weak that your legs shake when you stand up does not fall into the category of being overly protective of you because you're a woman." Scully sighed. "Okay, you've made your point. I'm sexist and you're enlightened. When the toast gets here, I'll eat it. Will that make you happy?" "Delerious." She renewed the icy towel twice more before breakfast arrived. Neither one spoke. Mulder watched her set the tray down in front of him and wondered what hellish dish she had ordered for him. Mumbling the order into the phone had tipped him off that he was going to have to pay for making her eat that toast. She sat down across from him with the plate of dry toast and deliberately bit into one of the crunchy triangles, holding his gaze. Mulder dropped his eyes to the covered plate in front of him. Whatever was under there, he definitely wasn't going to like it. He lifted the cover and looked at the short stack of pancakes that were attractively covered by some kind of fruit preserve. Probably papaya, he thought gloomily. And the syrup, if any, was probably fruit-based, too. Scully knew he hated fruit on pancakes. He raised his eyes briefly to look at her as she chewed doggedly on a second wedge of toast. Her expression dared him to say a word about the pancakes. He picked up his fork and began methodically scraping off the preserves, keeping his expression neutral. He would eat the pancakes dry, he sighed mentally. The things one did for love. Scully got up from the table as he began to eat and went into the bathroom, shutting the door. Over the water she ran to cover the noise, he could hear the unmistakable sound of her losing the toast. He had finished half his breakfast by the time she came back out, her face nearly as white as her napkin. "I'm sorry," he offered quietly as she sat down again and picked up another piece of toast. "No, I'm sorry, Mulder," she shook her head. "That was a rotten trick to pull on you when you were just trying to help me. I'm sorry." "That's okay," he smiled at her. "Sometimes when you're feeling helpless, it feels good to be able to pick on someone else. I'm glad I could help." She returned his wry smile and then got up to answer the phone. "Yes, speaking. Oh, yes, thanks for returning my call, Mr. Addams-Leigh. Agent Mulder had a...a bit of an accident last night and we need to have his wrist x-rayed. Uh huh. Yes, that would be fine. We'd be very grateful, sir. No, no, everything else is...er...under control. You'll call us with the information we need? Good. We appreciate your help." Scully hung up the phone and returned to the table. "He's making arrangements for you to be seen right away at a nearby clinic," she told him, finishing the half-eaten piece of toast that was still on her plate. "Get a shower and we'll head out. And no," she forestalled him, "I am not going to offer you any more help. You can manage a shower one- handed." "One day you'll be begging to take a shower with me," he grinned, getting up. "Don't hold your breath. Move." ***** At least it hadn't taken all day, Mulder thought philosophically, looking at the splinted elastic glove that was velcroed over his hand and wrist. It reached halfway up his forearm. "You're lucky it's not broken," Scully said, half-echoing his thoughts as the cab pulled up in front of the hotel again. She paid the driver as he got out and then followed him, sunglasses in place against the bright noontime sun. Mr. Addams-Leigh had gone out but had left a message for them that he would have the information they required when he returned. Scully yawned involuntarily as Mulder read her the note. "What now?" she asked. "Now we go upstairs and take a nap while we wait for Mr. Addams-Leigh's information. I'm beat." "You'll feel better tomorrow. The anti-inflammatories will help the swelling, which in turn will decrease the pain." "Yeah, whatever," he shrugged. "I just know that we both need to close our eyes for a while." They waited for the elevator and by the time the doors opened on their floor, Mulder was smiling over some private joke. "What's so amusing?" Scully asked, digging for the room key in her pocket. "Oh, I was just thinking about the look on your face when the doctor started lecturing you about rough sex games with your boyfriend." "You didn't have to tell him that it was handcuffs," she protested, going into the room ahead of him. "Scully, any halfway competent doctor could have guessed how I was injured from the marks on my wrist," he pointed out. "Did the nurse talk to you some more while I was getting the x-ray done?" "Oh, yes," Scully grimaced. "She wanted to talk to me about the bruises on my jaw and neck. I don't think I explained them well enough. She called another doctor to check me out while you were being seen. I had a lot of trouble keeping them from calling the police when they saw the rest of it." "What rest of it?" "Never mind. Since I wasn't going to admit to anything more than a kinky sex life, they gave me a tetanus shot and a lecture and let me go." Mulder wondered what she had gotten the tetanus shot for, what kind of injury would need that precaution. Scully obviously wasn't going to tell him. "Well, our reputations are certainly shot in this town," he said dryly. "Or made, depending on which way you look at it." "The telephone message light is blinking," she prompted him, easing herself down on the newly made bed, pulling the extra blanket over herself. Mulder sat down on the side of the bed. Lifting the receiver, he studied the instructions, and then punched in the code and their room number to retrieve the message. His eyebrows went up as he listened. "Who was it?" Scully asked when he hung up. "Skinner," he told her. "The senator has been in touch and wants to know what the hell is going on with this investigation. He says we haven't been near him or his wife since that first day and he's wanting some answers. Skinner also wants to know how we're doing since we haven't apparently seen the need to file status reports." "Are you going to call him back?" "When I'm getting ready to sack out with you? Not a chance," he smiled, lying down beside her and appropriating half the blanket. "But when we get up, I'll call the senator and smooth him down with some kind of excuse. I've set the alarm so we don't oversleep, just in case we don't get a call from Mr. Addams-Leigh pretty soon." Scully nodded, already half asleep, her face turned toward him a little. Mulder looked at her face, pale, but relaxed and sleepy, even with him here beside her. "How are you feeling today?" he asked quietly. "Better," she murmured. "The bruises ache a little, but other than that, I guess I'm okay." "Want to tell me what the tetanus shot was for?" She smiled faintly, her eyes still shut. "No. But are you going to pester me until you find out?" "I think so." She drew a deep breath and opened her eyes to look at him. "Mulder, don't you understand that there are parts of the attack, things that happened, that you'd really be better off not knowing?" "I know it wasn't me that did it, Scully, and I know that I can't fix anything that happened to you. But I want to understand it. I want to know. I need to. I need to know what it is you saw when you looked at me yesterday morning. I need to know why you get this...withdrawn expression on your face sometimes when you look at me today." "Mulder, remember the emergency room photos of the other women? I suffered very similar injuries," she said deliberately. If he wanted to know, she would tell him. She couldn't protect him when he wouldn't let her. "I have bruising on my thighs, my genitals, my buttocks and my shoulders -- all classic signatures of a rape. I have bruises as well on my face and throat. And I have two bite marks -- one on my shoulder and one my breast. My lip is still store from where he bit it." She looked away again, closing her eyes. "That's what I was seeing yesterday morning when I came to your room with my gun. And I still see it to some extent every time I look at you. Is that what you wanted to know?" He didn't say anything for a minute. "We'll get rid of this thing somehow, Scully," he said finally. "I hope so. Now, go to sleep, Mulder. We both could use some rest." He stayed quiet, waiting until she was asleep before he reached out with his good hand and wrapped his fingers warmly around hers. When she didn't pull away, he sighed and shut his eyes, letting sleep come. ***** (continued part 7) =========================================================================== From: xffscinut@aol.com (XFF SciNut) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: NEW: "Transfers" 7a/10 Date: 24 Mar 1996 14:55:26 -0500 All comments to lcbx5me@aol.com Formating and posting comments to me at xffscinut@aol.com ++++++++++ See part 1 for disclaimers "TRANSFERS" part 7 by L.C. Brown The phone rang just before the alarm went off at three. Mr. Addams-Leigh had the name and address of a person who could help them. Both of them would need to go. A taxi was awaiting their convenience. "What are we going to do if this person can't help?" Scully asked, brushing her hair back into its barrette again. "What about tonight?" "If we have to separate at night until this is over, then that's what we'll do. If we can't get rid of it by nightfall, then you drop me off at the hotel and go on to somewhere else -- even if it's back to the States. Without a victim nearby to drain, this thing will eventually transfer to someone else." "But we can't let it do this to anyone else!" "If we can't get rid of it, the only thing that's going to concern me is your safety. If keeping you safe means passing it on to someone else, then so be it." He hesitated at the door, holding it for her to pass through. "Scully, what you said before you fell asleep.... Do you really see that when you look at me? Do you see it?" She went past him into the hallway and nodded slowly. "Mrs. Allingham could see it in you that day we went to interview her. She tried to warn me, but it was already too late." She looked up at him as he caught up with her down the hall. "I can see it in your face -- almost as if it's a shadow over your face, over your personality. I can feel it in you, too, every time I touch you. Every time you touch me." She looked away, her voice bleak and empty sounding. "Let's go get rid of this thing, Scully," he said grimly, gesturing her ahead of him into the elevator, carefully avoiding touching her. ***** Considering that Bermuda was a relatively small string of islands, the trip to St. David's Island took a surprisingly long time by taxi. Traffic accounted for some of the time, although it wasn't always vehicular traffic that held them up. Tourists on mopeds who had no idea how to control them had to be avoided, and friends of the driver in other taxis and on mopeds and bicycles had to be greeted. It was nearly four thirty when the taxi finally pulled into a little graveled cul de sac at the far end of the island and cheerfully announced the fare. Scully stared at him in outrage, but Mulder handed over the money without a word and got out. A very old woman came out of one of the houses, wiping her hands on an old-fashioned pinafore apron. Her face was ashen black with age, but still held a trace of beauty in the bones under the finely wrinkled skin. "You are Mr. Mulder?" She had a deep voice for a woman, very smooth, with a lovely British accent. "That's right. Mr. Addams-Leigh gave us your name and address. He said he'd called to let you know we were coming." "Yes, he called. This is your young lady? Come inside, both of you. The light's not good for her, you know." Scully went ahead of him into the pleasant shadows of the house and breathed deeply the fragrance of a hundred herbs that mingled and combined in the ocean-scented breeze that drifted through the house. "There, you feel better already, don't you, my dear?" the old woman smiled, shutting the screen door behind them. "The herbs cleanse the mind of unhealthful things. Go on...go on through to the kitchen. It's in the back. You don't mind sitting in a kitchen, do you?" she asked, looking at their expensive suits doubtfully. "Not at all," Mulder said truthfully, following Scully down the dimly lit hallway. The kitchen looked like any other kitchen, except that it seemed to have a ceiling constructed entirely of hanging herb bundles. There were the usual appliances -- a refrigerator, a stove -- and there was a central table at which a small girl was eating what looked like a banana sandwich. Everything in the room was spotlessly clean, except for the little girl, who seemed to be wearing most of the outdoors on her clothes and on her small, bare feet. Her dark eyes looked them over interestedly while her sandwich lost another slice of banana. "I like mine with peanutbutter," Mulder told her gravely. "It holds the bananas in place." Her teeth appeared whitely in her dark face, then the old woman was there, flipping her apron, shooing her out the back door. "I swear, I turn my back for one second and these children are always in here. Never knew such children for eating everything in sight. You just go on now, Nicola. Dinner won't be along and your mama won't thank me for spoiling your appetite." She turned back to her two guests apologetically. "My great granddaughter. I made all those children go out to play when I got the call about you, but they're worse than ants for getting into the house and smelling out food. Did Mr. Addams-Leigh tell you anything about me?" "Just that you might be able to help us," Mulder replied. "Can you?" "That all depends, young man. It all depends. You can call me Miz Gabrielle. Names are important, you know." "You mean...magically speaking?" Mulder asked cautiously. "If that's what you want to think. There's power in names, Mr. Mulder. You of all people should know the power of names. What's your first name?" "Fox." "Hmmmm. Fox Mulder. Your name tells me a lot about you. You'd be surprised. And you, young lady? What's your name?" "Dana. Dana Scully." "Ahhh. I can see there is more to you than you show us, Dana Scully. You have many facets. Faceting can make a gemstone stronger than it was in its natural state. Did you know that? It's a very interesting fact -- about gemstones and people." Scully looked at Mulder speechlessly. He just shrugged. "You are used to communicating without words," she observed. "Good. Now, sit down, both of you. I will call you Dana, my dear. There are no bad associations in your name for you the way your friend has for his name." She poured something from a kettle on the stove into a cup and brought it over to Scully, nudging forward a pot of honey when she set the cup down. "Drink this, Dana. It's just a tisane that will help settle your stomach and give you a little appetite. You'll need to eat something if we are to work this evening." Scully spooned honey into the steaming cup and, after a cautious taste, smiled her approval. "It tastes like flower smell." "Yes, it's one of those things that proves the exception to the rule that medicines that are good for you have to taste vile. Young man, I'm going to be rude and not offer you anything. You shouldn't eat or drink anything until nightfall tonight." "That's fine. And you can call me Mulder." "All right, then, Mulder. Why don't you tell me why you're here. I know what Mr. Addams-Leigh told me, but I want to hear what you have to say." Miz Gabrielle continued puttering around the kitchen. "Well," he began slowly, glancing at Scully, "I tend to be a believer in forces and beings that most people dismiss as imaginary. My partner was attacked on two successive nights by someone who looked just like me and, for the most part, acted just like me. Only I don't remember doing any of what she says happened to her. During the second attack, she scratched her attacker's back. I had scratches on my back the next morning when she came to see me. Because of the case that we were here to investigate, and because of further investigations that I pursued after I realized that she'd been attacked, I came to the conclusion that her attacker had used a number of men as a host, the latest being me, and that it was possibly a type of incubus." "And you don't shy away from the thought?" "Only from the thought that it hurt Scully through me." Scully smiled. "Miz Gabrielle, Mulder has an extremely open mind to these kinds of ideas. I'm the skeptic in this partnership." "And are you a skeptic about this, Dana?" Miz Gabrielle asked, her head tilted to one side enquiringly. Scully looked down at her tisane, sipping it carefully and letting it warm her, soothe her. "I know what happened to me -- and I know Mulder couldn't have done it. Not even if he was drugged or psychotic or both. He could never hurt me like this thing did. I don't know what it was. Whatever did this to me used him to do it, and I just want it gone. I want it dead." Mulder couldn't say anything for a moment, hearing the hatred and fear and desperation in Scully's last low words. Miz Gabrielle nodded. "And last night, Mulder? What did you do?" "We handcuffed me to the handle of the sliding glass door in her room last night while Scully stayed in my room." Mulder indicated his injured wrist. "It knew we were on to it. It wasn't happy." Miz Gabrielle poured more of the tisane for Scully. "Well, it certainly sounds as if you're dealing with an incubus, here. Of course, we must be sure. The only way to know exactly what we're dealing with is to wait until after sunset and then force it to manifest itself." "How do you do that?" Scully wanted to know. "It only comes out when Mulder is asleep." "You have a quick mind," Miz Gabrielle approved. "Naturally, Mulder is not going to fall peacefully asleep at sunset of his own free will in order to allow this being access to himself. We will have to give him something to make him sleep, very deeply, so that even his subconscious cannot inhibit the manifestation. When the transference is made, we hope that he will wake up." "What exactly do you mean by that? I'm a doctor, so I'd be very interested to know what you're going to be giving him." "I'll give you a list of the ingredients. The combination of herbs and extracts in the drink I give him will put him to sleep and slow his heart rate. He cannot resist the entity taking over, or we will be unable to transfer it from him. He's young, he looks healthy, so he should have no difficulty waking up. But it has happened in the past that the host did not manage to regain consciousness after the transferrance was made." "In the past," Mulder echoed. "How many of these have you done?" "Myself, only one other. My mother performed the ceremony and, as a young girl, I assisted. This was many years ago, of course. The man woke up and complained of a headache, as I remember. These ceremonies go back in my family for many generations, Mulder. 'In the past' could mean something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago, or more." Scully shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I'm concerned about the possible narcotic properties of this drink...." "Scully, the risk is acceptable to me," he looked at his partner seriously. "We don't have a lot of other choices." "I know that," she said slowly. "But it isn't safe to use narcotics this way, Mulder. You need to think about that before you make up your mind to do this." "Hush, now," Miz Gabrielle patted her shoulder with a small, bony hand. "If you want to to destroy this incubus, risks must be taken by all of us. You could wait, of course, for it to transfer to someone else, which it will do eventually. But that is a much more dangerous path, and you, Dana, will still not be free of its influence if it moves on to someone else. In order to free you both, it must be destroyed. So...you must both decide if you are willing to take the risks in order to see it destroyed." "What kind of risks are we talking about?" Mulder asked cautiously. "This is a dangerous being, but we will take all precautions to guard against anyone being harmed. However, the ceremonies involved in dealing with it are ancient and somewhat complicated to perform, however simple they may look to outsiders. The right attitude must be preserved and the words spoken precisely in order for the transference to be made safely. And even should the transference go smoothly, the ceremony will...how should I explain?...open certain doors and bring us to the attention of other entities that may be here." "You mean we could get rid of one, only to find ourselves stuck with something worse," Mulder said bluntly. "Precisely. I cannot make guarantees against something like that occurring. In fact, I cannot make any guarantees at all," she shrugged. "And you must decide if you want to do this." "I think we should go ahead and do it," Mulder said after a long minute. "You said yourself, Scully, that we couldn't let this thing hurt anyone else. We need to do this." Scully couldn't think of anything else to try. She knew she hadn't been drugged, she knew she wasn't delusional -- and she knew that there was no such thing as an incubus. But she had no other recourse, and Mulder said they should do it. Whether he knew what he was doing or whether he didn't have a clue, she would go along with him because there was nothing else to do, she shrugged mentally. "From what I can tell, Mulder, you're the one that's going to be taking most of the risks. If you decide you want to do this, I'll agree," she sighed. "And, please remind me in the future to be grateful for any assignments that involve brain- sucking amoebas or mutant liver-eaters. These easy vacation assignments of yours aren't what they're cracked up to be." ***** Poison, Scully thought, obediently eating the warm, buttered roll that the old woman had pressed on her before they went outside. The list of ingredients Miz Gabrielle had showned her was amazing -- meaning that it was amazing anyone lived after drinking that stuff. There were serious narcotics in it. Miz Gabrielle was right about it slowing Mulder's heartbeat; it could *stop* his heartbeat. "Small amounts of poisonous substances are commonly used in these rituals, Scully," he said quietly, apparently reading her mind. "I'm not going to worry about it, so why don't you try to relax. The view here is great," he noted. Miz Gabrielle's backyard, in common with the yards of several other houses, backed up onto a small beach. The breeze was soft, the ocean was calm, and the waves were curling lazily onto the pink sand at regular, soporific intervals. As it dropped lower on the horizon, the shot salmon pink streaks across the water, and their shadows stretched to impossible lengths behind them. Scully turned away from the view impatiently. The whole idea of the drink and the ritual made her uneasy. This situation was way outside her range of knowledge or experience, and she didn't like not having some kind of control over it. "Dana," Miz Gabrielle said from behind them, "why don't you come in now and watch me prepare Mulder's drink. It'll make you feel better if you see what goes into it." Scully didn't think so, but followed her back to the house without saying anything, leaving her partner standing, looking at the ocean. "You just leave him alone for a little while, child. He has his own worries that he doesn't want to share with you yet." "How do you know things about us?" Scully asked curiously. Miz Gabrielle shrugged her thin shoulders, beginning to assemble her ingredients. "I've lived a long time. With experience comes the ability to read people." "Not that way." "It bothers you, doesn't it, Dana? That I know things that I shouldn't know about you both." "Yes, it bothers me," she nodded. "I know you're scared, Dana," she interrupted. "He's scared too, dear. He doesn't know what's going to happen either, you know." Scully sat down at the kitchen table, watching the old woman starting her infusion in a pot of boiling water on the stove. Her body seemed to be nothing but papery skin and fragile bones draped in an old print dress two sizes too big. Her hands were shaky with age, her voice was dry with it, and her steps tottered at times. But this frail old woman knew things she shouldn't know, and there was something about the way she spoke.... "I can see things," came the reply without a question having been asked. "I know you won't understand or believe that right now, but some day you will. I can see a lot of things about you both. Are you going to marry?" "I'm not sure. We were talking about it before all this started. I don't know whether I can after everything that's happened," Scully said slowly, somehow not surprised that Miz Gabrielle knew that bit of personal information. "When tonight is over, if we are successful in destroying the incubus, his influence over you will be gone. There will be some aftereffects, but they'll slowly disappear until the memories of what happened to you will still be there, but distant, like a bad dream that you can remember having. You won't remember it every time you see Mulder." "What about Mulder? Will he remember?" "Oh, yes. He wasn't influenced, you see. He will remember what happened to you." Miz Gabrielle strained her infusion carefully through a piece of fine cheesecloth into a earthenware bowl. "You see, Dana, what happens to you affects you both. It's always much easier to be the victim," she said matter-of-factly. "A victim has a set role. The victim experiences the trauma and then experiences the pain because of it. An easy role. The person closest to the victim has a harder time. There's nothing that he can experience, nothing he can do to help. And in the case of the incubus possession, the host is actively rejected by the victim because of his unwitting role in the attack. It's very hard for him to deal with. He can't take away your pain, he can't vent his anger on the actual rapist; his is an impotent role." Scully stared at her. This woman was making a thumbnail psychological analysis of the case. "Miz Gabrielle, who are you?" The old lady laughed. "Don't you mean where did an old woman like me learn all this? Don't mistake age for stupidity, young lady. I graduated from medical school before your mother was born and I earned two more degrees after that, one in psychology and one in botany -- the herbs, you know. I stopped practicing medicine over fifteen years ago, when I turned eighty; the kids getting shots were starting to beat me two falls out of three." "And with your scientific background, you're doing this?" Scully said incredulously. "Science of a different kind, dear." Her elderly smile was kind. "Something else that you'll learn one day. And as for you and Mulder, just give it a little time. Things will work out between you, don't worry." "But I wasn't sure about it before all this happened --" Miz Gabrielle cocked a knowing eyebrow at her. "Weren't you? Or was it that you weren't sure you wanted to give up some control of your life to someone else, even him?" Scully didn't say anything. "He has to give up some control too, you know. Don't you trust each other?" "Yes, of course." "Don't you love each other?" "Yes." "Then, my dear, it's a leap of faith. But you're at a crossroads, now, and if you don't stay together, you will most certainly be separated. Your lives are going to be changed dramatically, whatever you decide. And it's been my experience that a walk down any path, however difficult or however easy, is made better by sharing the path with a friend." "I'm just not sure if I can ever see him the way I used to." The old lady paused in the act of crushing a fragrant leaf that Scully didn't recognize between her fingers. She looked into Scully's face for a long minute, seeming to search for something, and then nodded seriously. "Dana, you'll never see him again the way you used to -- not because of what happened to you, but because of what's been said between you. There's an awareness of him now that wasn't there before, but you don't have to be afraid of that, or of him. And if everything works out tonight, you won't be afraid of him any longer." Scully nodded silently, accepting her words. She had no idea why she believed Miz Gabrielle, but her words carried conviction and provided a reassurance that Scully hadn't known she was needing. "Some people are coming over to help out -- mostly relations," Miz Gabrielle said, changing the subject. "They'll be gathering outside now so let's go out while this steeps. The men should be building a bonfire on the beach, and I want to make sure they're really doing it, the lazy things. I don't want them procrastinating until it's too late," she frowned, ushering Scully out of the back door ahead of her. "Ah, good. They're lighting it already. I must ask someone if they found the chair for Mulder, dear -- it hasn't been used in so long, you know. I'll be right back." Scully watched her shuffle head down to the beach with the aid of a tall, beautiful young black woman. Miz Gabrielle flapped her hands mock-impatiently at the swarm of children that dashed up to her, and Scully smiled. The children didn't seem to be impressed. (continued part 7b) ++++++++++ ===========================================================================