Tachyon, a time-travel casefile
By Ann K


For Summary, disclaimers, etc., see Part One.
annhkus@yahoo.com, http://www.geocities.com/annhkus


Author's notes at conclusion.


Part IV. 
Travel


I. 

The hallway leading into the main lobby of the police station 
was dark, despite the filtered sunlight entering through the 
windows. She jumped self-consciously as Mulder let the door slam 
shut behind him. "Sorry," he mumbled, walking up behind her and 
resting his hand near her hip. They stood there uncertainly, not 
sure exactly which direction to turn. 
 
"It looks the same, doesn't it?" he asked rhetorically, finally 
moving away from her to walk to the lobby desk. 
 
"Unless you count the fact that it is deserted," she added. 
 
It was deserted, and the eerie feeling which haunted them during 
their walk through the main street followed them into the police 
station. Scully swore she felt it in the air, an almost human 
presence, a time shifter that was watching and waiting for them to 
make their next move. It was some sort of bizarre game, and she felt 
like they were on the short end, not knowing the rules. Seemed to 
sum up most of her career with Mulder, she realized. Flying by the 
seat of their pants. 
 
She straightened her shoulders and followed Mulder through the 
lobby, resting her hand on her holster. 
 
"Do you remember what you saw when we first walked into the 
station, Scully?" Mulder was across the wide room, standing in 
front of one of the empty cells. The room was spacious, with the 
lobby desk immediately in front of her. There were only a handful 
of desks in the center of the room, and a few plants scattered 
here and there.  
 
"Yes," she answered, stepping down the incline into the room. "Both 
cells were occupied, there was a young man at the front desk, and 
two officers near the phone." It was a lifetime ago. 
 
It looked so strange, like everyone had walked out to have a cup of  
coffee and would be back at any moment. The chairs were in various  
positions, some tucked neatly under the desks, some pulled out, 
waiting for their occupant to return. None of the computers were on, 
and, as Scully walked past the air conditioning vent, she didn't 
feel any air coming out. Out of the corner of her eye, she 
half-expected to see someone sitting in the chair, or walking out 
the side doors.  
 
But the hum which she first heard on the main street, which 
followed them during their trek to the motel and back, was louder. 
Mulder recognized it, too. She could tell by the way he was suddenly 
very still, and then turned quietly to meet her gaze, his eyes wary 
and watchful. The sound had assumed a near sinister quality. 
 
"Do you hear that?" she finally asked, and he nodded his head 
slowly.  
 
"It's the same as I heard in the store," she continued, walking 
through the room towards him, her eyes finally adjusting to the 
dimmed light merging through the windows. "It's almost like 
electricity, a voltage of some kind." 
 
She stopped near Mulder. "Electricity," he said, as if mulling over 
her words. "Didn't you say that time travel, if it were possible at 
all, would require a tremendous amount of electricity, more than we 
could even fully comprehend?" 
 
Of course, she realized, nodding her head. "The sound is somehow 
related to what happened to us," she thought aloud, "to the 
phenomenon that placed us here at this point in time. If it was a 
tangible reaction, then it is still here, in the air. Still active." 
 
Mulder finished her sentence. "And, if it is still active, there is  
still the possibility that we can get home." 
 
Home. She thought a lot about that word during the events of the 
past hours. Home was her mother's house, her own apartment, often 
her office at the Hoover Building. But home was also anywhere she 
happened to be with Mulder, or her mother, or anyone who she valued 
as a part of her life. She and Mulder weren't walking out of this 
place until they were returned to their time.  
 
"Should we go in?" she asked. 
 
She felt like they were facing their judge and jury as they turned 
towards the interrogation room, where she knew this chaos had all 
begun. 
 
The door to the room, situated immediately off the main lobby, 
was closed. The small window in the door allowed them a glimpse 
inside, and, as they walked closer, she could see the table and 
chair situated in the middle of the room. Just as it was that 
morning, when they first interviewed James Everett. As she 
peered through the dusty window, she saw the chair was pulled 
back from the small desk. 
 
She squinted, trying to remember if the chair had been pushed under 
the table when they left the room that morning. She was almost 
certain it was, but, with the events of the day combined with the 
weakness throbbing in her muscles, she couldn't be sure. 
 
"Looks like someone is sitting there, waiting for us," she said in a 
near whisper. She knew they were completely alone, and had been for 
hours. But she couldn't shake the feeling that they were being 
watched, that someone, or something, was listening to their every 
word. 
 
Mulder only nodded, and then turned the brass doorknob, striding 
into the room. 
 
She followed him slowly, listening to the dull echo of her heels 
on the old linoleum. The room was much as they left it, although 
she had the faint sensation of returning to a place of her 
childhood, where the memory grew in proportion to the actual 
physical size. She visualized this room during their walk back to 
town, and it assumed a larger proportion than the dusty box-shape 
staring back at her.  
 
Mulder paced the confines of the room, running his hands over the 
walls, and stopping by the window. "It's gotten darker outside," he 
said to no one in particular, peering out the glass. She stood 
silently near the door, trying to understand the feeling of deja 
vu which washed over her at that moment. 
 
"We wanted this, didn't we, Mulder?" 
 
She could tell by the look on his face that he was confused by her  
question. "Wanted what?" he finally prompted, looking at her with 
a curious gaze, concern etched on his features. 
 
Scully felt her knees get weak, and grabbed onto the side of the 
table for support. Mulder never moved closer to her. "We wanted this 
life," she tried to explain. Her words sounded disconnected from her 
body, and she felt like she was sitting by as someone else spoke 
with her voice. She couldn't understand what compelled her to speak 
with an urgency she found frightening. "We have always known what 
we were involved with. We have always known the chances we were 
taking." 
 
The sound of the hum grew louder as she spoke, and Scully felt like  
she was shouting to be heard above the noise. 
 
"I'm sorry, Scully. I'm so sorry I brought you down here on this 
case." Mulder's figure was hazy, and his words were thick. She shook 
her head, trying to clear her vision. 
 
"It's okay, Mulder. How could you have known, how could anyone have 
known? I don't blame you." And she didn't blame him. Without him, 
she would have never made it back to the police station. She would 
have never been able to walk out of the motel room, to face the 
unknown which resided beyond the door. 
 
Mulder was her reason for so many things. 
 
But, as she tried to tell him, Scully realized she could no longer 
shout over the hum of electricity emanating from the lobby, and 
instead, she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the darkness.


II.

She knew she was cold. She could feel the chill seeping through
her body, a light touch against her skin. Her toes were numb, 
and she swore she felt something brush against her legs. A hand, 
maybe? Mulder's hand? She couldn't be sure.

"Mulder?" she whispered. But she didn't know if she were shouting 
or whispering. Her voice seemed to have an echo, much as her 
footsteps had for most of the day.

She struggled to open her eyes, and when she finally did, she shut
them immediately. The room was dark, ominously so, and she swore 
it was turning. As she squinted again, forcing her eyes to open,
she saw that indeed the room was upside down, the table and chair
which she had just been holding onto now perched above her head.

But she felt as if she were standing perfectly still.

"Mulder?" she shouted again. This time, the shrill sound of her
voice caused the headache behind her eyes to nearly blind her 
with its intensity, and she crumpled the ground, shutting her
eyes tightly against the chaos that surrounded her.

What the hell was happening?

She screamed as she felt the hand firmly grip her shoulder. "Scully,
it's me. Are you okay? What's wrong?" It was Mulder's voice, and 
she smiled, opening her eyes.

But it wasn't Mulder. At least not the Mulder she had spent the 
last twenty-four hours in Mississippi with. This Mulder was younger,
his eyes still bright, not wary and weathered as she saw them so 
often these days. He was wearing a slightly wrinkled white Oxford,
and one of the garish ties he favored early in their partnership. 
He stared at her intensely from behind his glasses, his hair 
longer, hanging low over his forehead. 

"Mulder?" she asked uncertainly, sitting up slowly. She looked
around the room, and was surprised to see that she was on the
floor of their office, back in DC. If she squinted, she could 
decipher the headlines of some of the newspaper clippings pinned 
to the wall behind Mulder's desk. She wasn't sure, but she swore 
they reminded her of cases they tackled soon after she joined 
the X-Files. Mulder hovered over her, a worried expression on 
his face.

"Are you okay, Scully? You were standing up to go get some coffee, 
and then you just collapsed to the floor. You were out for a few
moments. Do you need a doctor?"

He was so concerned for her, and she smiled in spite of her 
confusion. "I'm fine, Mulder," she said automatically, taking 
his outstretched hand and standing uncertainly on her feet. 
Something was wrong. The walls of their office were distorted, 
and she could hear "I'm fine, Mulder" echoing through the room. 

But Mulder didn't seem to notice the echo or the strange light 
that illuminated the room. Instead, he helped her into her chair, 
his touch lingering for a much shorter time than it did when 
they were stuck in the motel room. It was an almost quaint, 
impersonal touch. 

Somehow, she realized with a sinking sense of horror and amazement, 
she was sitting in their office, only a few weeks after she started 
working on the X-Files. Before everything had gotten so complicated. 
Not only with her sister and her abduction and the thousands of 
close calls she and Mulder experienced with their lives. But before 
she and Mulder had established the complicated emotional 
relationship she was so protective of, the relationship which had 
sustained her not only through the last twenty-four hours of their 
ordeal, but through almost every detail of her personal life.

She nearly laughed from the irony of it all. Instead, she surveyed 
the room, memorizing every detail. It seemed so long ago, different 
from how she remembered it. 

Why was she here?

"Mulder, are we okay?" she asked, her voice trembling in spite of 
herself. She knew she was supposed to be in a small police station 
in Mississippi, waiting for the moment that was to transport she 
and Mulder back to the land of the living. Of anything living 
besides themselves, she corrected.

If this was transmitting her, than something was seriously wrong. 
Who was she kidding? Something had been seriously wrong with this 
entire scenario, she thought warily.

The past-Mulder only smiled at her. "Of course we are, Scully," he 
said, apparently satisfied that she wasn't going to faint again and 
fall out of her chair.  "I figure if we can survive that plane 
flight back from Oregon, and what we saw there, we just might be 
okay."

His words had a resonance she was sure he didn't intend. How could 
he know what she knew, what they would experience together in 
the days and months and years to come? She opened her mouth to 
tell him, to warn him about what happened to them over the last day, 
that she knew so much about what they would encounter in their 
lives. But Mulder looked at her quickly with an earnest smile on 
his boyish face, and she knew.

She could never prevent him from searching for what he perceived to 
be the truth, and she would never want to alter the essential fabric 
that bound she and Mulder together.

So, that was how it was going to be, she said, watching as the walls 
behind Mulder's head became increasingly hazy and shimmery in the 
bright light. If that was what she gained from this entire case, 
from this nightmarish dance through the remnants of time, it just 
might be enough.  

Scully stood unsteadily, and walked over to Mulder's desk, grasping 
on tightly to the file cabinet for support. "Thank you, Mulder," she 
murmured, and she swore his figure became hazy, the shape of his 
glasses becoming lost in his dark features. 

"For what?" he asked, barely looking up from the papers on his desk. 

"For everything," she managed, just as the room tilted eerily to the 
side, and she fell, hitting the side of the cabinet heavily with her 
shoulder.

The sensation of falling made her nauseous, and she fought the 
vertigo, trying to keep her eyes open, to regain her sense of 
balance. But there was nothing to see, the familiar confines of 
the office disappearing into a shadowy haze. 

Was this heaven, she wondered, suddenly desperate to know what 
was happening to her. Or hell?

"Agent Scully!" a voice shouted from her right, and she smiled. 
AD Skinner was waiting for she and Mulder in hell. How appropriate, 
she mused, feeling delirious and increasingly nauseous.

She wanted to tell him that it was all too strange, too incredulous 
to be believed, but she couldn't force her eyes to open against 
the bright sunlight streaming in from the small window. Instead, 
she managed only a shaky laugh. "It's good to see you, sir," 
she said, her voice thick, before she fainted, falling into 
Skinner's strong arms. 


III.

By the time the sun came up, he was on his fourth cup of coffee, the 
empty Styrofoam cups in front of him testimony to the evening he 
endured. He figured that, if he were a smoker, he would have easily 
emptied a pack during the night. He wasn't exactly sure what he was 
looking for, but he knew it was in this room. And he knew it 
involved Mulder and Scully.

He had played over that moment endless times in his mind as he sat 
in the straight-backed chair, the bits and pieces of the 
conversation he heard, the hint of Mulder's blue Oxford he saw, 
the perfume which lingered in the room for hours, that he swore 
was Scully's. He knew he was tired, having spent the past two days 
traveling and interviewing numerous witnesses and others involved 
with Mulder and Scully before their disappearance.

But he was sure of what he saw. Mulder and Scully were last seen in 
this room, and he had to believe it somehow held the key to their 
safe return.

"Assistant Director Skinner?" He turned to see Agent White, looking 
wide-eyed, his hair slicked back. He assumed he had just gotten out 
of the shower, and he looked the exact opposite of how he felt. 
"Have you been here all night?" the younger agent asked, genuine 
concern in his voice.

"I have," Skinner answered, his voice scratchy from an evening spent 
with too much coffee. "I have been going over these documents we 
received regarding Stedman. I think there are a few avenues we need 
to explore." Skinner disregarded the fact that he sounded much more 
confidant than he felt. He wanted to pretend that his evening in 
solitude had actually resulted in understanding what had happened 
here over the last few days.

In fact, there was no understanding. He had no idea what he was up 
against. He had no true understanding of where Mulder and Scully 
were, or how he was supposed to help them get back. He realized, 
with sinking clarity, how Mulder and Scully must feel, faced with 
the almost daily challenges of life with the X-Files. Facing the 
impossible, the incomprehensible, but being spurred forward by a 
passionate sense of right and wrong.

"AD Skinner?" White asked again, taking a few steps closer to the 
table. Skinner could only imagine how he looked, and how much the 
other man didn't understand, could never understand. And, in that 
moment, he knew that nothing would ever quite be the same. While 
he had never truly considered himself an adversary, he was now 
firmly in Mulder and Scully's camp.

"I'm all right," he responded, a little frustrated. He didn't need 
this man's sympathy. That wasn't going to help get Mulder and Scully 
back. "Go check with Officer Parker out front. He was supposed to be 
bringing in a fax I was expecting from DC." The fax was information 
he needed to file a federal warrant to search the premises of 
Stedman Space Center, in the hopes of finding information related 
to the disappearance of two federal agents.

The chances were slim, but, for the moment, they were all he had.

Agent White stared at him blankly for a second longer, and then 
nodded his head abruptly, walking out of the room. Skinner was 
reminded of what it was like to encounter a well trained, 
and still obedient junior agent. He had seen precious few of those 
in recent years, he thought with a wry smile.

"I'm fine, Mulder." Skinner was startled. It was Scully's voice, 
sounding faint and far away, like she was shouting from across a 
large room. But it was unmistakably Scully. He jumped away from 
the table, knocking the chair onto the floor in his haste, and 
stood absolutely still, his hand resting instinctively on the 
sidearm in his holster. His eyes scanned the room, looking for 
Scully's petite figure. If all else failed, then he would grab 
her, whatever part of her body he could decipher, and then 
face the consequences.

"Are we okay, Mulder?" Scully's voice, again, coming from behind 
him, so close that he felt the hairs on his neck prickle. He 
whirled, watching, knowing that she was here. He was not losing 
his mind. He heard her. She was here, goddamit. He could sense 
her standing close to him, almost like she was next to him. 

Then Mulder's voice. "Of course we are, Scully. I figure if we can 
survive that plane flight back from Oregon, and what we saw there, 
we just might be okay." Oregon? What was Mulder talking about? 
His confusion caused a delay in the realization that Mulder's 
voice didn't sound the same as Scully's. While Scully sounded 
closer, so close he could reach out and touch her, Mulder's voice 
was like the reception on a cheap television.

"Agent Scully!" he shouted, walking around the room, feeling the 
walls with his free hand, not knowing what else to do. His heart 
was pounding in his chest, and he could feel the blood rush through 
his veins. He stopped near the window, and stared at the floor. 
The light coming in through the double panes was wrong. It was 
bent, and was streaking across the floor and up the walls in dark 
columns.

"Agent Scully!" he shouted again, trying to ward off the fear he 
felt in his chest. He had seen too much in his lifetime to be 
truly frightened by most anything these days. After Nam, nothing 
scared him. But this room, hearing Scully's voice, he knew that 
something was wrong here. Something was happening that he was 
never meant to see.

He thought he saw the small door to the room open just a fraction. 
Agent White must be coming back with the fax he needed. "No," he 
tried to shout, to warn the man against entering. He didn't know 
why. But, as he took a few steps toward the door, Scully's voice 
sounded once more.

"Thank you, Mulder, for everything," she said, in an almost reverent 
whisper, and then he saw her.

At first, he could only decipher her hair, the distorted shadows 
playing against the vibrant red. It was unmistakable. Then he saw 
her face. Her eyes were open, staring right at him, but she was 
looking past him. Her expression was intense, anguished, and 
emotional. So many emotions that he had never seen from Scully 
before. And then she closed her eyes, and the look on her face 
was one he would never forget. It was almost as if she were 
falling, her eyes tightly shut as gravity rushed past her.

He called her name again, desperate, and ran towards her. 

Suddenly, she was in his arms, her body heavy. "It's good to hear 
from you, sir," she said, her words thick, as if she were having 
trouble speaking. He barely managed to hold onto her before they 
both slid to the floor in a heap. She was shivering, and her 
body was freezing, even through her clothes. 

He knew from the pallid expression on her face, the way her lips 
were tightly clenched and faintly tinged with blue, that she was 
in shock. 

"Where in the hell did she come from? Is she alright?" That was 
Agent White, who stepped into the room a second later, dropping 
the papers onto the floor and rushing over to their side. 

"Get the paramedics," Skinner growled through clenched teeth, 
never letting go of Scully. He brushed her hair away from her face, 
repeating her name over again, trying to get some sort of response 
from her. She opened her eyes, barely, squinting against the bright 
sunlight in the room, and then managed one word, in a tone that 
spoke volumes of her anguish and exhaustion and fear.

"Mulder."


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