Slowly, awareness returned. He was slumped in his chair, the chair he'd pulled close to Scully's bedside, and his hand was still wrapped protectively around hers. He shifted slightly, felt pain radiating from numerous locations, and noticed with annoyance that now, to top it all off, he also had a crick in his neck.

"She never..." the voice continued, then paused. It was a woman's voice, with an anguished edge that made it sound as if she were holding back tears. Mulder forced his eyes open and sat up. "I can only think of the time she was missing...she -- "

How long had it been since he'd called her? How could she already be here? "Mrs. Scully?"

She turned when she heard Mulder's voice. "Fox?" She moved into the ICU alcove from the doorway, and he could see that she'd been crying. "Oh, Fox, I didn't want to wake you. The nurses said you'd been here for hours. You look terrible."

He grunted indecipherably, vaguely hating the disorienting loss of a sense of the passage of time. He clenched his teeth against the pain and stood. His attention was distracted by the figure in the doorway and the apparent conversation, but he tried half-heartedly to smile at Mrs. Scully. He cleared his throat, but his voice was still a hoarse rasp. "What's going on?"

Mrs. Scully tried to look composed, but Mulder could see the tears that threatened to spill over. "Dr. Hessman was just asking me a...a few questions about Dana."

Despite his best efforts, Mulder's face darkened and he took a large, sudden step forward, toward the doctor. "What questions?" he grunted. "What's wrong?"

The combination of Mulder's tone and his expression pushed the doctor back an involuntary step, but even as he moved back, out of Mulder's reach, his face reflected a genuine concern. "Mr. Mulder," he said, "someone needs to be checking on that head injury of yours periodically. I still wish you'd let us admit you."

Mulder glowered at him. "What's wrong with Scully?" he demanded, as if the doctor hadn't spoken.

Hessman sighed and dropped the subject. "Why don't we step into the consultation room?" he offered, gesturing quickly. With a black look, Mulder stalked toward him. He led them to a small room beside the nurse's station. As he moved to close the door, Mulder heard him mutter to the nearest nurse, "See that someone checks on his head injury occasionally, ok?"

The door swung closed then, and the doctor turned to face them.

Then he pulled a small glass vial from the pocket of his lab coat.

Mulder's sharp intake of breath was the only sound in the room, then he closed his eyes against what he didn't have to see to know. He sank and landed heavily on the tabletop.

"Fox?" Mrs. Scully whispered. He heard it in her voice -- panic, mostly at his reaction. Dammit.

He couldn't look at her. His throat constricted unexpectedly, and all he could manage was one word, aimed at the doctor. "Where?"

"In her thoracic cavity. It was recovered during her surgery."

"What is it?" Mrs. Scully breathed.

"Originally," the doctor continued, "considering her -- " he eyed Mulder " --your -- profession, I assumed it was some kind of shrapnel."

Dr. Hessman paused, and Mulder took a deep, cleansing breath and tried to rid himself of the ugly visions his imagination had begun to generate. "...And now?"

The doctor sighed. "And now I'm no longer certain of that. X-rays have indicated another metallic object of some kind, this one lodged in her left ovary. It's...considerably larger." He paused, looked pointedly at Mulder, then said, "I can find no discernable entrance wound."

Her ovary. Jesus. Despite his best efforts, the visions became sudden, dark suspicions too horrifying to find a conscious voice in his thoughts. He swallowed hard.

Mrs. Scully's eyes were wide. "Is she in any danger?"

Dr. Hessman's expression was suddenly sympathetic. "Until we can run some further tests, I just can't be sure," he admitted.

"It's some kind of electronic device, isn't it?" Mulder blurted.

Dr. Hessman's eyes pierced him; the nature of the question let the man know Mulder knew more than he was telling. He cleared his throat. "I don't know, Agent Mulder."

Mulder gave no indication that he had noticed the doctor's reaction. He pressed onward. "Can you remove it?"

Dr. Hessman flashed him an accusing look. Mulder tried to keep his expression as blank as possible and wondered if he was succeeding. "Well," the doctor said carefully, "we won't be certain until she's sufficiently recovered from her current illness and we can have a good look, but I believe we can." He turned the vial over absently in his fingers, and Mulder's eyes recorded every tiny movement. "She may lose the ovary, though."

For a few long seconds, there was silence, then Dr. Hessman's said simply, pointedly, "Mr. Mulder, what the hell is happening here?"

Caught on the thin edge of what he knew was a dangerous juncture, Mulder hesitated. He scrutinized the doctor -- tense, angry... genuine. And still, he -- they, he and Scully -- could trust no one.

The sudden pressure of Mrs. Scully's shaking fingers against his arm moved him finally to action. "Fox..." He faced her, and the expression in her eyes, a mixture of bewilderment and fear for her daughter, pushed the air from his lungs. "Fox, what do you know about this?"

His stomach clenched. He hopelessly wished he could somehow make it right, somehow rid Dana of the bitter overspill of his life and his demons that had long ago seeped irretrievably into her life as well. But all he could ever seem to manage was damage control.

Mrs. Scully had a right to know, but he didn't know how he could possibly begin to tell her. He took a deep breath. "Mrs. Scully," he said gently, "has Dana...has she ever really spoken to you about her..." that word again, 'abduction'. He just couldn't use it. "...about the time she was missing?"

Mrs. Scully's eyes grew even wider, and the confusion in them was plain. She shook her head slowly. "No...well...no, not really. She just said she couldn't remember."

"Did she ever tell you anything about -- " he inclined his head toward the doctor's hands " -- finding one of those?"

Mrs. Scully's hand shot to her mouth. "No," she whispered through her fingers. Tears appeared suddenly in the corners of her eyes. He could hear her thinking. Why hadn't her daughter come to her with this?

"This has happened before?" the doctor interjected tersely.

Mulder nodded. He faced Dr. Hessman again. He knew he had to prepare his words carefully. "Once, that I know of."

Dr. Hessman held the vial up to the light and scrutinized the small metal object clinking against the glass. "Agent Mulder, do you know what this thing is?"

Weighing his options, Mulder shook his head slowly. Dr. Hessman looked back toward him, and his eyes narrowed. "Then do you have any suspicions?"

Nothing you'd believe, he thought dryly. Nothing Mrs. Scully ought to hear right now. "I..." he began, then his words trailed off. At one time, the glee of discovery would've sent him into a state of giddy excitement...if it were anyone else... He glanced quickly at Mrs. Scully, then looked away and fixed his eyes blankly on a vague point beyond the doctor's head. "I suspect...I think it might be some kind of device." His bandaged hand ran quickly through his hair. "Beyond that, I don't know."

The doctor eyed him critically. For a tiny second, he seemed to have an internal debate, then he said, "Agent Mulder, I have never seen anything like this." He held the vial up to the light once again. "What are you not telling me? Do you know who's responsible?"

Still unwilling to look the doctor in the eyes, Mulder nodded. It was a forlorn gesture. "I do have my suspicions about that." His gaze fell to focus on the vial in the doctor's hands. "But that's all they are," he murmured. "Suspicions."

The doctor pursed his lips. "Is there anything at all you can tell me that might be helpful to Agent Scully?"

Mulder turned and looked at Mrs. Scully, then took a long, deep breath and let it slowly escape his lips. In the cabin, he had watched his wounded partner as she slept and was anxious for the coming of every breath and every movement. In a particularly black moment, he'd wondered again, as he so often did alone, in the dark, what he would ever say to Scully's mother if...

Christ, they'd discussed her headstone, but this was somehow worse.

He slumped, shoulders hunched, and fixed his gaze on his hands. Finally, in a hushed voice, he murmured, "I think she might be part of an...experiment. Some kind of medical experiment. Without her consent." He forced himself to straighten, to look the doctor in the eyes. "When she was returned after her -- " he forced the word out, his voice breaking almost imperceptibly " -- abduction, there was branched DNA in her bloodstream."

The doctor's eyebrows abruptly shot up. "Branched DNA?" he repeated.

Mulder nodded, and he didn't wait for the doctor to offer up any further reaction or pose any questions. "Beyond that," he finished, "I just don't know."

For an interminable second, there was silence in the room, then the doctor simply nodded and said curtly, "All right." Then, almost seamlessly, the face Mulder guessed belonged with his usual bedside manner -- the face he'd been greeted with earlier -- fell into place. The doctor placed his hand comfortingly on Mrs. Scully's forearm. The contact startled her.

"Mrs. Scully," he said, sounding suddenly, strangely comforting, "your daughter's wounds are healing, and she appears to be responding to the intravenous antibiotics. Her fever is beginning to come down. She isn't out of the woods yet, but her odds are improving. I'd say she's doing as well as we could expect under the circumstances."

Mrs. Scully, looking shell-shocked, simply nodded and managed an unsteady, "Thank you."

He hung back as the two of them exited the consultation room. He fingered the small glass vial now in his own pocket and watched as the doctor guided Mrs. Scully gently through the doorway. Another implant, another job for Pendrell. All in a day's work, after all. A day in the life of the FBI.

He'd hoped -- wanted to believe -- that the worst was over.

He was shaking. He felt it setting in, oozing into his thoughts like a dark, malevolent oil... the familiar, unwelcome intrusions, the dark, inky stirrings of his too-oft abused imagination. That thing inside Scully now, that wasn't the kind of thing you would just leave. The kind of thing you wouldn't come back for. It was too large, too conspicuous, and he feared because of this that it had some purpose vastly different from the others.

For just an instant, Scully's face filled him; terrified, motionless, watching in silent horror as distorted features hovered over her in preparation for...for...

Whoever They were, They weren't finished.

He reached out blindly and slammed the door shut with unexpectedly brutal force. The consultation room began to spin lazily around him, and he felt nauseous again.

And then, soundlessly, he simply began to cry.

They were still taking her.

Mulder, numb with frustration, chewed his thumbnail and paced Scully's alcove with the energy of impotent rage. Modell had been bad enough, but now to know the bastards were still...

And here, wherever that was, another implant in his pocket, he could do nothing to find Them, nothing to stop Them. He felt trapped, contained by the intensity of what wouldn't let him leave her. What the doctor had discovered had put them all in danger, Scully most of all. And every time he glanced over and saw her, he knew she'd been right then, in the cabin, waiting for the Pusher; he would quite willingly lay down his life to protect her.

It would be so easy, as easy as drawing another breath. For the very first time, he realized what that really meant. And for the very first time, it truly frightened him.

GO TO PART THREE