Mulder is still trapped in the cornfield.
Or is trapped there again.
Either, both. Regardless, he is in the field where he least wants to be, staring at the greenhouse on the plain. The air is thick with buzzing, which he now recognizes as the sound of bees. As he peers at the greenhouse, he realizes it is surrounded by small, swarming dark specks, a handful of escapee bees—nothing compared to the thick swirl within the greenhouse, as though its glass walls encase a thundercloud.
This is a very good reason not to go into the greenhouse, yet Mulder knows he is expected to go. That he should go, right away, if he wants answers.
But then he won’t find Scully. The cornstalks rustle around him, as though in warning. Is Scully trapped inside the cornfield, deeper and more lost than he ever was? What if she’s in trouble? He must find her.
The bees continue to buzz, and he feels one land upon the back of his neck, prickles of fear and sweat and—
Mulder awakened from the dream with a start, then swore. If he had to suddenly begin having recurring dreams, why couldn’t it have been the one about Angelina Jolie?
This thought distracted him from the nagging concern that this dream had some deeper meaning, a purpose he ought to puzzle out. Mulder was in no mood. All he wanted was to get out of the house.
The hour was still early. He threw a sweater and jeans into his gym bag, grabbed a towel for his no-doubt-still-damp car seat, and left before Scully awakened.
Well. Before she left her room, at any rate. For all Mulder knew, she might be lying there silently, hoping for him to go.
During his miles on the treadmill, he stared through the windows at the rainy morning and tried in vain to concentrate on his podcast. Instead the thump-thump of his feet sparked more and more memories, more scenes of what Scully had had to endure for his sake, and that of the X-Files:
Her standing in a thin hospital gown, shivering slightly in the chill, staring at an X-ray that showed cancer eating away at her brain.
Tears welling in her eyes as she looked down at a dying little girl named Emily, connected by DNA and by something more besides, an inexplicable vein of feeling that had brought them together against all odds.
Her abduction by Donnie Pfaster so soon after her mysterious return from Skyland Mountain, the way her lower lip had trembled as she struggled to hold on to her dignity afterward, how Mulder had folded her into his arms both to comfort her and to shield her vulnerability from anyone else who might see.
The confusion and fear on her face as she awoke in a burn unit with no memory of how she’d gotten there, or of the night before when she’d barely escaped being immolated by alien agents with flamethrowers.
Her eyes dimming—as though her very life force was eclipsed—whenever he tried to speak about William.
It wasn’t as though there had never been distance between them. In fact, a certain amount of distance always remained even when they were at their closest. Mulder’s and Scully’s worldviews were so different that he sometimes imagined them as the residents of two different islands, journeying to meet each other again and again. But sometimes the journey was more fraught than at other times. Occasionally it turned dangerous.
Only once before had the distance between them widened so drastically that the journeys stopped. He had tried so damned hard—giving up the X-Files, willing himself to make a life with Scully in the hinterlands. With Scully as the one out front, the one the world saw first, the one who chose their direction. The isolation and tedium had felt like weights constantly bearing him downward, but Mulder had told himself he could learn to carry those burdens. His instincts still tended toward solitary, bachelor life, but by that point he’d had less faith in his own instincts. Surely, someday, their life together would be enough for him, enough to make up for all the rest. How could Dana Katherine Scully ever not be enough? What more of a sacrifice could he have made?
And yet she was the one who had left.
That wound remained painful: He wouldn’t feel its ache for long periods, and then something like this happened, and the bleeding resumed, the stitches pulled. Mulder didn’t blame Scully for leaving. In the process of getting help for his depression, he had read about the strain the disease put on relationships. Not one of those dangers (pushing a partner away, unwillingness to acknowledge their needs) was unfamiliar to him; he went over the materials not to learn anything new, but to see his own experience affirmed.
What hurt the most was the knowledge that he could, in fact, still lose her. They’d made it through so much that he’d allowed himself to believe they might make it through anything. He had the luxury of that illusion no longer.
Screw this, Mulder thought. He slapped the orange Stop button on the treadmill and headed to the showers. Five miles would have to cut it today.
Before he could reach the locker room, however, his phone rang: Scully’s ringtone. Mulder took a deep breath before answering, steeling himself.
But Scully was already back on the job. He ought to have expected no less. “The Bureau called. Bright Eyes has struck again.”
“Damn it.” Mulder closed his eyes briefly. “Where?”
“Two blocks from our home.”
Forty minutes later, Mulder stood with Scully at the gas station near their townhouse. Yellow tape surrounded the small lot, but nothing appeared out of place until you took a look behind the dumpster—which, apparently, no one had from last night until this morning.
“The wife came in from a business trip last night, freaked out because Ms. Koss wasn’t home, filed a missing persons report,” said the cop on the scene. He stood only a few inches from Erin Koss’s empty loafer. “But nobody knew to look here, and what with the rain yesterday evening and this morning, people were dashing in and out, and nobody saw what was behind the dumpster. Only got figured out because the day manager called for her car to get towed.”
Scully’s pale face was seemingly impassive as she looked at the officer. Only Mulder could tell what it cost her to ask, evenly, “The report said that the service station experienced ‘electrical anomalies’ last night, shortly after the time the security footage shows Ms. Koss arriving. What anomalies are they referring to?”
“Don’t see what it’s got to do with anything,” said the cop, leafing through his notebook. Mulder hadn’t seen one of those in a while. This guy was old-school. “But several gas pumps malfunctioned, the lights flickered, and the music for the parking lot turned its own volume up to eleven.”
“Barry Manilow,” Scully murmured.
The cop frowned. “Yeah. How did you—”
“I live nearby. I heard the music.” Scully stared down at what remained of Erin Koss, and the cop finally seemed to realize it was time to step away.
Once they were alone, Mulder said, “You couldn’t have known.”
“No. But if we had, maybe we could’ve made it here in time to save her.”
The possibility burned Mulder too, but he couldn’t look at this only as an agent of the Bureau. “Bright Eyes has attacked three times that we know of, and all three of those crimes took place near you. Not just places you go, but near your actual locations at the time of the murders. We have to assume you’re a target. It’s even possible you’re Bright Eyes’s main target.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
“Hey.” Mulder put one hand on her arm. Despite their conflict the night before, she didn’t pull back from his touch. “I know what you’re capable of. But we’ve both had suspects get the jump on us. And this pattern—we can’t assume it’s random.”
Her blue eyes met his, unblinking. “You don’t understand, Mulder. I hope he’s after me. Because if he is, that means he’ll give me another chance to take him down.”
He wondered what it meant that, sometimes, he loved her the most when she was this furious.