“Tachyon”

Part III. Flight 

For disclaimers, summary, etc., see chapter one.

 I.

“We need to go back into town.” His words were decisive, and served to rouse her from the stupor she found herself in since the events of the afternoon. They laid on the bed close together, her head resting on his shoulder, his hand lightly stroking her arm. She had no idea how long they had been together like this. Minutes? Days? 

She shifted up on one elbow so she could see him better. “Why do we need to go into town, Mulder?” Her speech sounded slurred to her own ears, like she had been drinking at a local bar rather than blindly seeking their way through the confines of time. To be honest, she couldn’t think of any rational reason why she should leave the safety of the motel room at all. Its gaudy wallpaper and dated light fixtures had assumed a sort of comforting quality, lulling her into a lightheaded, restful state. She could feel each heartbeat echoing in her chest, her blood sluggishly moving through her veins, Mulder’s breath teasing the small hairs on her arm. She didn’t think she ever wanted to leave this spot. 

Mulder’s gaze was intense; his eyes, shadowed and unreadable. “I’ve been thinking, Scully. About how we got here, and what we need to do to get back.” Her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she tried to understand his words. “We both agree something has happened to us,” he continued, “something that has altered our time, our reality.” 

She nodded dumbly as he moved off the bed, his sudden power draining what little of her own energy was still pulsing through her body. “I think something has changed,” she said, her face feeling slightly numb, reminding her of when she had her wisdom teeth removed the summer before she starting college, and the ache in her jaw that took days to go away. “But why do we need to go into town? There’s nothing there. There’s no one there.” 

Her words saddened her. No one, but she and Mulder and a vision of her dead father. But Mulder ignored the uncertain tone in her voice, moving around the room in a fervor, grabbing food and supplies from the countertop and shoving them into a black duffel bag. She saw all the tell-tell signs. Mulder thought he was on to something. 

“Think about it, Scully. Whatever portal we traveled through, whatever happened to us, we were in the police station, in the interrogation room. Our only chance is to hope that the portal is still there, that we can somehow catch up to that moment in time, in that room.” He paused, just long enough to grab her sweatshirt from her open suitcase, and turned to her, his eyes wild with energy. “Or that moment in time can catch up with us.”

Somewhere in her exhausted body, the Dana Scully she once was stirred, Mulder’s words evoking a sense of normalcy, her intellect, an understanding of the physics of the world, of time, of the universe. She summoned the strength to sit up, placing both her feet unsteadily on the floor. Her head swam, spots dancing behind her eyes, and she forced the words. “We need to go back to the police station,” she said, slowly, deliberately. It did make sense. She forced her brain to think logically, slowly putting together pieces of the puzzle. 

She stood, watching Mulder as he spun around the room with a devilish intensity. “If this place, Mulder, is stagnant,” she thought aloud, “if time doesn’t exist here, then we are caught in a eddy, an unchanging vortex. If we have traveled in time, then the time we left behind may actually be moving forward. We may be able to find it again.” 

He stopped long enough to nod, a small smile tracing his exhausted features. Her explanation made the only sense to them they could find. They understood. They had an idea, some idea, of what was happening to them, how they might be able to get back home. It was the only thing she could grasp onto at the moment, so she did, with the last of her tenacious strength.   

It did make sense. Assuming whatever happened to time was a tangible force, an unseen entity which affected their physical reality, it might still be there, in the time and place where it first affected them. She knew she encountered the same force that afternoon, outside the motel office, when she saw the image of the young woman in the parking lot. It had taken her, thrust her into another moment in time, where she somehow or another met up with Mulder again. 

But the police station was their best chance. It was their best chance of finding their way back, or forward, to their reality. A cold shiver of fear traced its fingers along her spine as she realized what would happen if they stayed in this room, stayed on the bed where she felt so safe and comforted. Their time might pass them by, leave them behind. They might never be able to return to their lives. The sky might begin to dull, and she didn’t want to know what would happen when the clouds began to slow. 

Mulder grabbed her by the arm, handing the smaller of the two bags to her. “Are you feeling okay, Scully? It’s a good walk from here.” She decided she liked this chivalrous, considerate Mulder, and wondered idly if he would still exist if they made it back home, back to their normal lives in DC. She hoped he wouldn’t vanish into the unknown. 

“If you could get me back here, Mulder,” she answered, hoisting the bag up onto her shoulder and turning to pick up her gun from the side table, tucking it easily into the holster, “then I think we can make it back together.” Her words were a brave front for her exhausted body. She still had no memory of that morning, or whenever it might have been.  

They stepped out into the parking lot together, its eerie desertion almost seeming normal to her now. Her first steps caused her thighs to tremble, and she forced her stride into a regular rhythm, matching Mulder’s determined gait. Her partner was on a mission, and she, for once, was damned glad to be with him on the journey. He was her best hope for getting home. She needed his steadying influence. They needed each other. 

“Thank you,” she said softly, as they reached the deserted road, the fields of cotton and the tall pine trees silent observers to their drama. The asphalt crunched under her shoes, and the light echo trod behind them, an uninvited guest to their entourage. She looked up to see him watching her, an affectionate gaze, and then he turned away. “For what, Scully?” he asked, his tone revealing the fact that he truly did not know. 

They took care of each other. Even here, surrounded by a dense backdrop of trees and swirling clouds and the smell of pine hanging heavy in the air. She decided not to answer his question, not knowing what to say to explain it, not wanting to demean the moment by fumbling for the right words. 

He accepted her silence, and they walked together along the two-lane for some time, each step becoming easier for her, the headache behind her eyes diminishing slightly as they left the motel, its blur a smear of concrete in the distance. It was quiet, so very quiet, with not a sound except the echoes from their footsteps and her own breathing.  

She wondered idly if this was what the world might be like, if the forces of the universe took away human life, all life, leaving behind the vestiges of a society which took a perverse pride in its own immortality, never knowing that it could all be swept away in a heartbeat, leaving behind abandoned buildings and deserted roads and the semblance of what used to be. She knew they should not be here, that this image of the world was never meant to be seen. 

“This happened for a reason, you know,” she said, her voice sounding husky and betraying the weakness in her body. She wasn’t sure when she had last slept, really slept, her time in the motel spent in a dreamlike state. 

“I know,” he answered, putting the bag on his other shoulder, rotating his arm in the air. “I don’t think it was meant to happen to us. Hell, I don’t think it was meant to happen to anyone in particular. It was too random, too uncontrolled. Someone has to know we are missing.” 

She nodded, wondering what her mother thought, wondering if Skinner called her with the news that her only daughter was missing. With Mulder. Her mother had been through so much because of her, so much pain and loss. She cringed at the thought of putting her mother through yet another ordeal, another indirect trial of waiting and uncertainty. 

“But this force, this energy that we got caught up in, Mulder, it’s not a natural creation. The universe did not create this.” She looked up into the sky again, the white clouds slipping by of their own accord. She and Mulder were moving against the flow, as if the clouds were escaping from the very demon that they were walking towards.  

“Someone did, Scully,” he responded, his voice determined, and his stride steady. “Someone did.” 

II.

Skinner was tired, his eyes bleary and stinging behind his glasses. He took off the frames, dropping them on top of the piles of paperwork. Methodically rubbing his eyes with his fingers, he pondered a simpler life, one where he wasn’t trying to decipher the impossible, trying to understand how Mulder and Scully were missing. Were lost in time, if a shadowy man in a doorway could be believed.   

Agent White’s baritone interrupted his thoughts. “This is the last of the information I was able to get from the office on Stedman,” he said, entering the small room with a handful of papers clutched in his hand. “We have the basic information on it as a federal facility, layout, things like that. More detailed funding information is beyond our access level. Or at least mine.”   

Skinner nodded at that, taking the papers from Agent White, adding them to the top of the pile on the desk. What he learned about Stedman and NASA had brought them no closer to understanding where in the hell Mulder and Scully were. He didn’t understand this, and, from the puzzled expression on the younger agent’s face, he wasn’t alone. 

“Do you think Mulder and Scully might be headed to Stedman? I don’t understand what NASA has to do with the missing persons from this area,” Agent White admitted. 

Skinner only stared at him blankly, unable to tell him the truth, that a furtive stranger had dropped papers on the motel bed before he disappeared into the evening air, and that, when Mulder and Scully were concerned, suspending the rational might be the best way to go when confronted with the impossible. The problem was that Skinner didn’t believe, or at least not with the same ferocity that possessed Mulder. 

He couldn’t believe, not with his title and his responsibility and the fact that he had the perfect sideline seat to Mulder and Scully’s adventures. Unfortunately, most of the time it was just that. A sideline view.  

But now, he felt like his disbelief was a betrayal to the two agents, and could very well be putting their lives in danger. 

“I’m not sure myself,” he finally admitted, standing up to pace the length of the small interrogation room. This was the room where Mulder and Scully were last seen, interviewing the sole suspect in the latest disappearance. He could easily see the two of them, in the familiar interrogation format, Scully seated at the table talking to the suspect in earnest, Mulder standing by the window, taking everything in. He enjoyed watching the two of them together, and the way their easy partnership worked. “But I got a tip, that somehow Stedman might be involved." 

“A tip,” Agent White responded flatly, clearly not following Skinner’s story. And no wonder, Skinner thought dryly. The X-Files were as foreign to the younger man as they had been to Skinner before he was brought on board as Mulder’s supervisor. How could he ask someone to believe things that he himself found incredible, even though he was so close to being there for so many of the events? How could he ask someone else to believe when he wasn’t sure what he believe himself? 

He couldn’t, which meant he was alone on this one. 

“Why don’t you go back to the motel, Agent White, and get some sleep for tomorrow? We can interview a few of the other men from the station then, try to get some more information.” Skinner knew that no one could provide them with the information they needed, though, just as he knew that Agent White would never understand why the words Skinner heard in the motel room, about NASA and Project Tachyon and Stedman Space Center, could be true. 

After the younger agent murmured his goodbyes, closing the door to the small room with a soft thud, Skinner turned back around, looking out the window to the main street. Even this late in the evening, there were still a few people out, teenagers mostly, standing in the circle of the warm streetlights. Innocents, with no idea of the dramas that unfolded every day, every minute. 

When had he become so jaded? 

With a deep sigh, he walked back to the table, looking at the papers the stranger had left behind in the motel room. Project Tachyon, it seemed, was the culmination of a decades-long project within NASA, funded by all levels of the United States military, and various and sundry government agencies. He wasn’t surprised to see the four-digit identification code for the FBI listed among the sponsoring agencies. He learned long ago that the Bureau had no real allegiances, throwing its lot in with whomever might give it the most benefit, and reward. 

But, at least according to the paperwork he was seeing, the project had been a success. A small dog had been subjected to incredible amounts of energy, its body bombarded with the particles, and then it simply disappeared. Two days later, it reappeared in the same small room, seemingly none the worse for wear. The switch refuted everything Skinner had ever thought about time travel. 

Something clicked in Skinner’s brain, something that screamed for his attention, but he couldn’t seem to grasp onto it. It was elusive, and the longer he thought, the worse his headache became, dulling his senses.  

He looked at the files of the missing persons, the photographs revealing victims with absolutely nothing in common, other than their sudden disappearance and the fact that they lived in the county, so close to Stedman. A young eighteen-year old cheerleader. A farmer who never came home from working in his field. A schoolteacher smoking a cigarette before her afternoon classes. In each case, no witnesses, no evidence. Nothing. 

Exactly what he was told that afternoon, that they had vanished into the ripple effects of a twisted government experiment. He forced himself to visualize these people wandering around somewhere, wherever time travel might leave a person. He couldn’t imagine what might happen, if there was even a body left to cope with the dramatic change. He saw the victims lost, and he saw Mulder and Scully, and realized he had no idea what to do to help them.  

Overwhelmed by helplessness, he stood, hoping that a quick shower and rest might sharpen his reflexes, enable him to make some sense out of what was happening.  

But, as he gathered the papers into his arms, and reached up with his free hand to turn off the fluorescent lights, a movement by the window caught his attention. It was the tailored blue Oxford dress shirt that he recognized first, and then he heard the voice. 

“I’m sorry, Scully. I’m so sorry I brought you down here on this case.” 

Oh, god. 

From behind him, a voice. As he spun around, seeing no one, he heard Scully’s response. “It’s okay, Mulder. How could you have known, how could anyone have known? I don’t blame you.” 

His heart was racing, and he flicked the light switch back on. But he was alone in the room, and the hazy outline of Mulder’s shirt that he saw in the streetlight shining through the window was gone. They weren’t there, but he clung to the moment, knowing he heard their voices, knowing that somehow or another, they had been in this room a second ago. 

He was as sure of that fact as he had ever been. But he didn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend why they were here, and then gone. His heart was racing, and he swore he could almost detect Scully’s light perfume in the air, and feel her standing behind him. It was terrifying, and eerie, and he forced the air into his lungs, taking a long breath. 

Exhaling, a piece of the puzzle fell together. If Tachyon had created the ripple effect that his informant believed, bouncing individuals back and forth in time, then his vision could very well have been his agents standing in this very room in the future, trying to get back home. He saw them. He heard them. 

Before he could begin to doubt himself, he opened the door, seeing a few officers milling about in the hallway. “Sergeant?” he called, motioning to the young man he first spoke to about Mulder and Scully’s disappearance. “A cup of coffee, please, and the phone number for the Biloxi police department.” 

If Mulder and Scully were minutes, hours, days away from returning to this room, he was determined to be here if they finally arrived. When they arrived. 

III.

Just as they crossed the small bridge that spanned the creek at the city limits, the wooden sign in front of them cheerfully announcing “Welcome to Faunsdale…a happy home for happy people,” he stumbled, falling heavily down to the asphalt before she could react.  

“Are you okay, Mulder?” she asked, kneeling quickly down beside him, wiping the sweat from his brow. The walk from the motel had been long, and they ran out of words a mile or so from town, instead concentrating all their energy on getting back to the police station. There was something comforting in their solitude, she and Mulder against the world. But she could tell by his labored breathing that he was exhausted, the events of the past day taking their toll on his body. 

Had it really only been a day since they walked out of the police station? The concept of time seemed so distorted, and she felt as if she had been walking along the desolate two-lane for years. She felt a sudden rush of fear at the possibility that maybe she had, that maybe whatever happened to them was even greater than they could possibly comprehend. 

Shaking away the thought that she couldn’t even begin to decipher, she concentrated instead on Mulder. “I’m fine, Scully,” he answered, drawing himself up into a sitting position, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Just a little tired,” he admitted with a somewhat embarrassed tone.

She did not comment, passing him the water bottle from her bag and sitting down beside him. The bizarre nature of the moment did not escape her attention. She and Mulder were sitting in the middle of a deserted road, looking down the main street of a deserted town. The clouds had not slowed, and the sun remained bright, its glare creating ripples down the asphalt.  

Nothing. They were alone. 

“I have a confession to make,” Mulder said, offering her the water. She shook her head, and he screwed the cap on tightly before returning it to the bag. A confession from Mulder was always interesting, and she turned to watch him, nodding her head. “Well?" she asked, curious to see where this was going. 

“I turned in a vacation request to Skinner right before we left town, effective for the beginning of next month.” He hesitated a moment before continuing. “I just felt a need to get away from everything for a little while. Sometimes I feel like I’m too close, too close to so many bad things that I can’t appreciate what is good in my life. It’s like I get lost in the darkness.” 

She couldn’t explain why she felt hurt at his words, knowing they were true. In the years they had been together, she had seen what their life had done to Mulder, playing on his naturally volatile emotions and tendency towards a dark nature. But she almost felt like he wanted to get away from her, that she was part of the problem. 

Before she could speak, she felt his hand on her arm. “Actually, Scully, my confession was that I turned in a vacation request for you, too. I wanted you to go with me, wherever you wanted to go. As long as it was away from DC, leaving the damn files and Skinner and all our problems trailing in our wake.” 

Well. That was a confession. She had a fleeting thought that perhaps she should be angry with Mulder for his presumption, turning in a forged vacation request for her, making plans without consulting her. But then she read between the lines, and saw the anxious look in his gaze, and she smiled. “Wherever I wanted to go, huh? I think, Agent Mulder, that I might have to take you up on that offer. As long as we didn’t go anywhere near the Mississippi state line.”  

She idly wondered if they might die here, in this abandoned little town that she had never heard of up until a few days ago. She knew the risks of their jobs, knew that every day they stepped out into the field might be her last. It was macabre, but it was her reality, and she knew when she decided to join the Bureau that it was a reality she was choosing to live with.  

But she never expected her death to come like this, beneath a horrific sky, in a place that offered only a semblance of her life.  

“I wish we had never come here, Scully,” Mulder said sadly, standing up with effort and reaching his hand down to help her to her feet. Standing beside him, she held onto his hand tightly, and, to their mutual surprise, stood on his toes to kiss him softly. It was a spontaneous gesture, but one that came from her heart. 

His lips were soft beneath hers, and she detected the faint taste of something she could only define as Mulder. She savored the taste. If this entire nightmare taught her anything, it was that he was her salvation.  

He smiled at her kiss, a genuine smile that reached his eyes, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, he continued to hold her hand, and they walked slowly together down the street. She felt an urgency to get back inside the police station, but she couldn’t understand it. Time had no meaning for them anymore. Although their hope was that returning would somehow provide them a window in which to go back to their time, neither of them gave voice to their deepest fears. 

If the same thing was awaiting them inside the police station as they had seen in the motel and the countryside on the walk back into town. Nothing.  

“What would it take to produce the kind of energy that would create time travel?” Mulder asked. “Hypothetically, of course,” he added as an aside. He knew her belief was a tenuous one. 

She mulled over the same question since they left the motel, and had come to no definite answer. “In theory, time travel would require an incredible amount of energy, more than the human mind can comprehend. It’s one of the reasons that the conventional scientific community has always thought the idea to be impossible. You can work out the process on paper, what would happen to a finite body when put into such a situation, but such a situation could never exist. At least not within the confines of the world as we know it.” 

“It’s like the idea of space travel,” she continued. “We have the understanding to send a human being light years away into space, but the person would die before they ever got out of our universe. It’s the quintessential scientific dilemma. Theory versus reality.” 

At that moment, their reality was the small brick police station, now in front of them. It looked eerie to her, its windows a shimmery gold from the sunlight. But it had an ominous air about it, and she felt a sense of foreboding. Whatever their future might be, however they might define that term, was inside that building. Her entire life depended on what might be breathing within the walls. 

“I guess we should go in,” she said uncertainly, and she felt Mulder’s hand tighten against hers. He felt it, too, the sense of danger lurking all around them. She caught herself looking over her shoulder, knowing that no one would be there, but wanting to convince herself of the fact.  

It was as if whatever had happened to them had assumed an identity of its own, hiding in the empty storefront and around the bend in the road and behind the stubby bushes lining the sidewalk. Waiting for them, appraising their every move. 

Mulder finally answered. “I guess we should. I don’t think anything is going to happen out here on the sidewalk.” It was that unknown, the “anything” that they couldn’t quite define, which haunted them. Neither of them moved, however. She stared at the sky, watching the clouds. 

“Do you see that?” Mulder asked, and she only nodded. She saw it earlier, when they were sitting in the street, but she didn’t want to say anything. Drawing their attention to it wouldn’t make it any better.  

The clouds were beginning to slow, losing some of their steady pace that had marked the hours since they first left town. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the sun was beginning to dull. And she didn’t want to wait around to find out what might happen next. 

“Let’s go,” she said, ready to face whatever might be waiting for them around the proverbial bend. They walked up to the front doors in silence, Mulder swinging them open with one hand. The air that greeted her was musty, reminding Scully of her grandmother’s attic and summers spent exploring with Missy. It was stale, and a hint of what might be awaiting them. 

Stepping inside, she stopped, and squeezed Mulder’s hand. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to reassure him, or her, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered other than each other, than getting home. “No regrets,” she said with decisiveness, wanting Mulder to understand everything, everything that she couldn’t put into words, about how she felt about him and their lives together. 

His nod assured her that he knew, and, with that, she walked into the darkness.

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