Disclaimer: The X Files and its characters are the property of Fox, 10-13 Productions, and Chris Carter, no infringement intended. Rating: PG-13 for "violence" and "language." Summary: Mulder and Scully uncover a massive conspiracy involving time travel. Completed on August 13, 1998. I appreciate any comments. Email me at china@usc.edu The River Crossing -Prologue- Dana Scully's Apartment The faint rays of light from the living room lamp glanced menacingly off the cold steel of the handgun as Fox Mulder pointed it straight at Dana Scully's fair, trembling head. "Mulder, why are you doing this?" Scully said, her voice quavering with emotion. She stood there frozen as she faced the barrel of Mulder's weapon. Mulder had shown up at her apartment for God knows what reason. He had inexplicably drawn his gun and was now poised to blow her brains out. Scully didn't know what to do; her partner looked like a man possessed. The sweat rained from his forehead, soaking his short, brown hair, and his whole frame writhed in a violent clash of conflicting desires. "I swear to God, I'll kill you, you bitch!" Mulder screamed in madness. "Mulder, I'm your friend..." "Shut up!!!" Scully held out her hands in a gesture of friendship as she walked forward, gazing into his eyes, trying with all her might to tell him with her eyes that everything was all right. That theirs was a bond of friendship, trust, and love, that not even death could break. She silently told him these things and prayed with all her heart that she was doing the right thing. "Come on, give me the gun." Scully said gently, reached out her hand. Mulder pursed his lips, backed away, and furiously wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He jerked the gun at her, warning her off. "Mulder," Scully said, a tear caressing her face as she closed her eyes in pain, "Please. Don't do this." She wanted to add, "I love you," but found that she could not. Somehow, she could not bring herself to say the words, even at this critical moment when she needed to show him how much she felt toward him. Even if this was the last chance she would ever have to tell him. Mulder's breathing came in rapid, shallow gasps as his fingers slowly began depressing the trigger. At that moment, it almost seemed as if two men were holding that gun, waging a tug-of-war for Mulder's body and soul... One urged him onto it, a malicious devil sitting on his shoulder, driving him on to murder, while the other, his true self, tore at the iron chains that imprisoned his own feelings. The part of him that held Scully as the dearest, truest, and most loving friend he had ever known. Another fraction of an instant, and Mulder would have committed the irrevocable; he would have sent a bullet hurtling at blistering speed through Scully, putting her bright candle out forever. At the last possible moment, with a tortured cry of anguish, Mulder yanked the gun backward, shoving it against his own temple. "No!" Scully cried out, aghast, as Mulder firmly squeezed the trigger without another moment's hesitation. The deafening report of the gun was a dagger in her own heart as Scully reached out for a collapsing Mulder. The blood seeped out of a gaping hole in his head, the life draining out of his limp body. Scully pulled Mulder's body to her own and held him close, her eyes blinded by her tears. Can't believe he's gone, Scully thought. Not caring for the blood that soiled her robe, Scully, kneeling on the floor, cradled Mulder's dying form in her arms like she would a child. Tears ran freely down her face now as she held him close to her breast. Scully barely noticed as the door to her apartment quietly opened, and a man stepped inside. To Scully's eyes, he was nothing but a silouhette against the light of the hallway lamps. Scully turned to look at him. "Who are you?" she said, squinting as she tried to make out his features. The man flicked on the living room lights and when Scully recognized him, her jaw dropped in shock. How is this possible, Scully thought as she studied the man's face, convincing herself once again that this wasn't all just a dream... that she wasn't looking at the face of a ghost. The face of William Mulder. * * * September 4, 1998 Lone Gunman Headquarters "Fill us in, Byers. Where are you running off to?" A characteristically unshaven, bulletproof vest-wearing Frohike looked up to Byers expectantly as he awaited the answer to his query. There was a quickness and a nervousness to John Fitzgerald Byers' movements that he had not seen in years. Frohike watched with amusement as Byers pointedly ignored the question, looking into a mirror as he adjusted his tie and ran a brush through his hair. "Looks to me like you've got a hot date," Frohike said with a grin. "Come on, Byers, man," Langly said, pulling up behind Frohike, "I thought we were gonna analyze the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination tonight. Got it at at Barnes and Noble for $19.95." "Gentlemen," Byers said with an air of professionalism, "I have to meet someone, so if you'll excuse me--" Byers nodded to Frohike and Langly as he walked out the door. * * * Fifteen minutes later, Byers was sitting down at a table in a crowded Italian restaurant, where he had arranged to meet this mysterious person who he knew only as Carolyn, a woman with whom he had been corresponding with over the internet for some time. The restaurant was atmospheric and classy, with its dimmed lights, polished wooden walls, and a soprano who, at the moment, was giving a bright performance of "Happy Birthday" to an embarrassed young woman as her companion looked on with a smile from across the table, ten feet from where Byers sat. With a dreamy smile full of longing, Byers observed the two lovers, wishing he could have something like that. He had devoted the last few years entirely to working with the other Lone Gunmen, spreading paranoia and distrust toward the government. There was no time, it seemed, for outside relationships, no time to have a social life. Besides, it was too dangerous; anyone might kill him if he spent too much time out in the open. So lonely, so vulnerable. But that wasn't true. He did have time. He didn't really think his life was in as much danger as he liked to imagine. The fact was that he had no one. All he had to hold onto from the last ten years was the memory of Susanne Modesky kissing him softly on the cheek on that sidewalk in Baltimore, and he remembered it as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. Where was Susanne now? Byers wondered. Probably dead as a doornail, of course. "Is this seat taken?" a woman's voice said softly. Shaken from his reverie, Byers looked up and beheld a stunningly beautiful woman. She was around his height, with brown hair, and a pair of brown eyes that exuded tenderness of feeling. Byers nervously took a sip from his iced tea as the woman sat down across from him. So this is Carolyn, Byers thought with wonderment as they introduced themselves to each other. "So," Byers said with awkwardness, "um, read any good books lately?" Geez, what a doof, Byers thought with chagrin as he winced at his own lame question. Could he think of any other thing to say that would make him look any more of an utter, hopeless, irredeemable nerd?! "I've read your newsletter," Carolyn said. So that's what this is all about, Byers thought. She's not interested in me, personally. Only in my stupid paper. "Oh," Byers said with a tight smile that hid his secret disappointment, "yeah. That. Secret elements within the United States government seek to surveil us and control our lives," he said self-deprecatingly. "You sound like you don't believe in it," she said. "Well--I mean, I do believe it, but--you probably think I'm a crazed paranoiac, now... why do you ask, anyway?" "I've got something to tell you, and it's very important." Carolyn said. "I fired the shot that killed John F. Kennedy." Meanwhile, outside the restaurant, a black sedan hurriedly pulled up and came to a screeching stop in the parking lot. Two men, draped by the darkness of the night, got out. Sitting across from Carolyn, Byers sat upright in sudden attention in a reflexive motion, before relaxing and allowing himself a smile. He laughed. "Come on, give me a break." "You don't think I'm serious?" Carolyn said. Byers looked at her in annoyance. A waiter came up and took their orders for dinner. Carolyn ordered a Caesar's Salad, while Byers ordered himself a barbeque chicken pizza. "You don't know anymore about it than I do." "I was there at the Grassy Knoll. I was the second shooter. No one even knew I was there. No one could even tell that a shot had come from behind the knoll, it was... like clockwork..." "But why are you telling me this? Why wait all this time? Besides," Byers noted in annoyance, "you're not even old enough. You probably weren't even born yet by November 22, 1963." "Yes, I was," Carolyn insisted with a grim look in her eye. This is total crap, but she sounds so convinced, Byers thought. He almost wanted to believe her. "I'm telling you this because the danger is still here," Carolyn said, surprising Byers by taking one of his hands in both of her own. Her eyes burned with intensity as she stared into Byers' own. Slowly but surely, Byers could feel himself being pulled into Carolyn's paranoid fantasy. There was something very exciting about it, almost sexy, he decided. "My life is in danger. If these men find me, I'm dead." "What can I do, Carolyn?" Byers said, feeling like a real man now that he was preparing to help the damsel in distress. "You've got to find it, and when you do, you've got to destroy it--" "Destroy what?" "The time machine. Operation River." Time machine? Operation River? Before Byers could say another word, two men dressed in black and wearing fedoras burst like a gust of wind through the twin doors. Everything moved in a heart-stopping blur for Byers as he saw them pull shiny silver-plated revolvers from their jackets and cock back the hammers, the hammers clicking into place like a crack of a whip. Jerking her head around in alarm, Carolyn bolted from her chair and grabbed Byers, desperately trying to yank him down to the floor, as the men opened fire. Byers felt the slugs slam into his chest, and he went down. As he lay languidly on the floor, his eyes blinking in confusion, he saw the world grow hazy and out of focus. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he numbly registered the sensation of the warmth of his blood as it seeped from his wounds. Slumped over his midsection lay Carolyn, but she was not moving at all. The men had left as swiftly as they had come, leaving a roomful of horrified patrons in their wake. God, he thought, I'm going to die... * * * George Washington Memorial Hospital 10:04 PM A soft, wheezing sound periodically rumbled from Byers' throat as he breathed with the soothing rhythms of sleep. Beneath his hospital gown, his chest was heavily bandaged, plastic tubes ran out of his nose and from catheter needles embedded in his arm, and electrodes placed on his body constantly monitored his vitals. He had been struck in the chest by two bullets that had luckily missed his heart. He had been in critical condition when he was brought in, but the doctors had managed to stabilize him. "This was a professional hit," Frohike said with conviction as he paced back and forth in the room, stopping now and then to take a concerned look at Byers. Langly and Mulder sat in chairs, listening to Frohike. "The witnesses say these men were dressed in black suits and fedoras. Very mysterious looking. G-men, probably." Frohike continued. "Could they have been Black Ops assassins?" Mulder mused. "CIA?" Langly put in. "But why?" Mulder said. "What was so important about this mystery woman that Byers was meeting with?" On his bed, Byers gave an unintelligible moan as he began to stir. Mulder and Langly got up to join Frohike as the three men circled around the hospital bed. "Byers? You okay?" Mulder said. Swallowing with effort, Byers moistened his chapped lips. His chest felt like it was on fire with every word he spoke. "Mulder," he croaked, "I had... dinner...with the person... who shot...JFK. Her name was Carolyn..." "Carolyn?" Frohike said, not taking any of this seriously. "A woman shot JFK?" "That's right," Byers said, nodding. "She says she... traveled through time to do it." "Was she really hot?" Frohike inquired. A male ICU nurse named Martin walked in carrying Byers' chart, and he stopped when he saw Byers sitting up talking to the other three men. "Mr. Byers, you need your rest." Martin gestured for Byers to lie back down on the bed before turning to fix a scolding gaze on Mulder. "I'm sorry, gentlemen. He can't be talking right now." "All right; give us a minute," Mulder said, nodding. "What happened... to the girl I was with?" Byers asked hesitantly, suddenly afraid of the answer. "She was dead at the scene." Martin said as he exited the room. There was an uncomfortable silence. "There's a time machine, Mulder," Byers said. "She said... I had to find it...and destroy it." Mulder nodded, silently doubting the sanity of the man he usually regarded as the most down-to-earth and rational of the Gunmen. He hadn't seen too many time travel cases in his experience with the X Files; he almost didn't believe that it existed. What was that saying, he thought to himself as he scratched his memory for the words. He remembered once reading that Stephen Hawking, the physicist, had declared that time travel would never be invented, for the simple reason that if it were possible, we would be seeing time travellers from the future right now. Well, no one said it couldn't happen, or that it had never happened before without our knowing it... uh huh, yeah,...right. As Mulder turned to leave, Byers reached out and feebly grabbed his arm. "Mulder," he said, the words crawling out with difficulty, "You've got to find out the truth. And you've got to find out... who Carolyn really is." September 5 Outside FBI Headquarters 11:31 AM A thick, grey fog covered the streets of DC like a blanket as Agents Mulder and Scully made their way to a diner across the street for lunch. "I don't suppose you could tell me why anyone would want to shoot someone as harmless as Byers," Scully said to her partner as they emerged from the FBI Headquarters. "No, I can't," Mulder said, "But I can tell you something about his hot date. His hot, dead date, that is." Scully tried and failed to conceal a smile. Byers on a date was as likely a picture as... ...as likely as Frohike being on a date. Or Langly. Such a bunch of hopeless geeks. "Byers was on a 'hot date?'" Scully said, her interest perked. They walked into the diner and took a seat at the window, facing the street. "Just what would that consist of...a cheap meal at some second-rate diner, followed by watching 'Snake Eyes' at the nearest theatre?" "You tell me, Scully; we do that all the time. Except for the 'Snake Eyes' part, of course." "Mulder, what--what the hell are you talking about?" "This is a 'hot date,' right? How are we doing so far?" A faint redness crept into Scully's cheeks and Mulder chuckled inwardly. A waiter came up and took their orders, saving Scully from having to answer Mulder's quip. Scully ordered a turkey club sandwich, with French fries. Mulder ordered a liverwurst and an iced tea. He winked at Scully with his right eye, and Scully looked back down to the contents of the file, the tight line of her mouth relaxing into a smile. "Check it out, Scully," Mulder said as he reached into his coat and pulled out a manilla envelope. Scully took a deep breath and reached into the folder, pulling out a missing person's case file that bore the date of 1957. It contained a black and white photo of a beautiful 25-year old woman. "Carolyn Connor," Scully read out loud. "Now get a load of this," Mulder said with boyish excitement as he tossed another photo across the table. Scully, sighing in weariness, picked it up and took a look. It was a color photo, dated yesterday, of the exact same woman. She looked like she hadn't aged at all in the last 41 years. Blood had smattered all over her face, but otherwise it was the same person. "Can this be right?" Scully said, confused. "This is the woman who was with Byers last night. Byers said her name was Carolyn. We're running DNA tests against forensic evidence collected in 1957 to be sure." "What happened in 1957, Mulder?" "According to one witness, her husband, Carolyn Connor disappeared near a cornfield in Iowa." * * * July 10, 1957 30 miles outside Des Moines Alan Connor pounded his hands on the steering wheel in frustration as the red '57 Chevy ground to a maddeningly slow halt. He took off his hat and wiped his brow. He could feel the sun beating down harshly from above, baking him with its continual flow of invisible flame. "Now what?" Alan said, giving his wife a lopsided smile. Beside him, Carolyn, a young, pretty woman in the full flower of her womanhood, shaded her eyes as she looked nervously down the lonely, empty stretch of highway. With endless cornfields flanking both sides, the highway wound down into the horizon, like a snake. Cursing, Alan got out of the car and sauntered over to the front, where he opened up the hood. Shutting his eyes, Alan angrily kicked the front fender, sending a shiver through the vehicle's frame. "I can't believe this hunk of junk would break down on us in the middle of nowhere!" he shouted. What could have caused his car to break down in the middle of nowhere? They had only been on the road for half an hour, and it wasn't all that hot. Sure, it was hot, but it wasn't like he was driving through a solar flare or something. Somewhere near the horizon, a thin, white streak of what looked like lightning split the sky for an instant. Alan, perplexed, squinted as he looked down to the horizon. "What was that, Alan?" Carolyn said, her voice shaky. Another short spat of lightning. Two of them this time. Lightning without thunder. What could cause this in broad daylight? Whatever it was, Alan didn't want to know. Giving a cursory look at the engine to make sure everything was okay, Alan stopped long enough to check the oil before slamming the hood violently. "Come on, come on..." Alan whispered as he turned the key in the ignition, praying for the bastard to start. The Chevy whined in protest as Alan kept trying. As Carolyn scanned the horizon, she saw a burst of white light so fierce that it blinded her for a second. When she looked again, she saw something that sent a chill down her spine. Where there had once been nothing, there was now a black Ford in the distance, and it was headed for them. "Someone's coming," Carolyn said tensely. Alan looked up as the car finally roared to life. Flooring the gas pedal, the Chevy streaked down the highway, the black Ford rapidly drawing near. Suddenly, the Ford swung itself 90 degrees on the road, blocking the Chevy. Alan barely had time to stomp the brakes, forcing his car to stop just a few feet from the Ford. A pair of men dressed in black suits and ties got out of the car and made their way toward Alan and Carolyn. Alan looked up as a middle-aged man lowered his piercing eyes momentarily to light up a cigarette as he stood outside by the driver's side. The other man, a pale, slender man, stood outside the passenger's side. It was William Mulder. "Get out of the car, Mrs. Connor," he said with authority. Carolyn looked to the Cigarette Smoking Man, then to Mulder, in confusion. "I don't understand. What do you want--" Carolyn's eyes widened as Mulder brushed back the edge of his black suit jacket to reveal a holstered revolver. "Get out of the car now." he ordered. Carolyn nodded and silently opened the car door to get out. Alan Connor glared at the Cigarette Smoking Man, who returned a steely, impassive, cold gaze in return. The Cigarette Smoking Man looked to his partner, who was leading Carolyn to the black Ford. Mulder silently nodded to the Cigarette Smoking Man as he walked away from the Chevy. "Where are you taking her? Who gives you the right to do this?" Alan demanded. "We have every right, Mr. Connor. Carolyn Connor has just become a volunteer in the service of this country." "Like hell, you son of a bitch!" Alan shouted, reaching out to grab his interlocutor and throttle him. Without warning, the Cigarette Smoking Man whipped out a revolver and blasted him in the stomach at point-blank range, without a second thought. The shot rang out like a thunderclap across the plain, and from inside the Ford, Carolyn cried out Alan's name. As the Cigarette Smoking Man turned around and headed back to his car, Alan Connor fumbled at his door handle. Blood was warm on his hands as he struggled to open the door, grimacing with pain. He heard the Ford's door slam shut as he finally tumbled out of his vehicle. Leaving a trail of blood, his knees wobbling with uncertainty, he staggered out of his car in time to see the Ford speeding off into the distance as lightning gathered ominously overhead. The black pavement scorched his body as he collapsed and lay on his throbbing stomach, watching and waiting for he knew not what, following the car with his eyes. The image of the departing vehicle, now a speck of black in the distance, danced and wavered before his eyes like a dream vision as he felt himself slipping over the precipice into unconsciousness. Alan tried to speak but nothing came out except an unintelligible croak and a steady stream of blood. Lightning surged around on the horizon, and with a bright flash of light, the black car was gone--- * * * September 5, 1998 Washington, D.C. "So that's it?" Scully said. They were back from lunch and were walking back to their office in the basement of the FBI building. "A truck driver found Connor and got him to a hospital. He died two days later under mysterious circumstances. The two men were never identified, and Carolyn Connor has never been seen since." "Until last night." "Right," Mulder said. "Scully, do you--" "No." Mulder stopped and looked hard at her. Could she really read his mind that well? "You never even heard the rest of my question." he said. "I don't believe in time travel, Mulder. Supposing you could travel through time, forward and backward, you could then possibly go back in time and shoot your other self, in that time frame. This, of course, would result in a major paradox; if you shot yourself in the past, it is completely impossible for you to be standing there in the first place. Even if you and your other self from the past simply look at each other, you would naturally expect to have remembered such an incident happening at that point in time when you were younger, but you can't, because it didn't happen until you were older and traveled backward. Nature abhors a paradox. It would destroy the very fabric of the universe." Having finished her speech on the dangers of time travel, Scully glanced over at Mulder, who was gazing with distraction at one of his sharpened pencils in both hands. The office was silent for a few seconds before Mulder finally noticed that his partner had stopped talking. "Oh," Mulder said. "Um, very good points, Scully," he said in an even voice, trying to conceal the fact that he had completely tuned her out for the last half-minute. "However," Mulder said, "I think we should recognize that time travel may very well be a... possibility in this case. Besides, isn't time travel cool? Didn't you watch 'Back to the Future?'" "Yes, I did watch 'Back to the Future.'" "Scully,... You're my density," Mulder said, trying to keep a straight face. No response from Scully this time. Tough audience, he thought to himself. The DNA electrophoresis analysis was lying on Mulder's desk, and Mulder noticed it for the first time. The two samples from 1957 and 1998 matched, he saw from a short summary tacked onto the report. At that moment, Mulder's cell phone rang. "Mulder," he said. "Mulder," Frohike's voice was heard through the phone, "I think you should get here right away." Mulder disconnected the cell phone and slipped it back into his pocket. "Scully, I need you to examine Carolyn Connors' body." "What for?" Scully said, not without sarcasm. "The FBI already did an autopsy. I don't think 'cause of death' was any mystery, either... unless you're brain-dead." "I need you to review her chart and look for any signs of an abduction. Also, examine her for trace evidence of any kind." * * * 7:41 PM FBI Morgue Pulling back the pale blue cover, Scully found herself staring into the ghostly face of Carolyn Connor. The body had already been cut open and the organs had been weighed. Glancing at the autopsy notes she had on a cart, Scully saw that the "cause of death" was listed as...duh, multiple gunshot wounds. "Oh, what fun," Scully murmured as she slipped on a pair of gloves and tied the apron around her back. * * * 10:30 PM The place was exactly where Frohike and Langly had said it would be. A lone, non-descript looking warehouse on the edge of a tightly guarded military installation. Mulder's computer hacking friends had managed to download secret Department of Defense files on "Operation River," along with a handy, fake identification to show to the guards at the gate. The sky was fading to a turbulence of orange and violet, and Mulder stopped at the warehouse entrance, spinning around to be sure no one had followed him. There was a large Master lock on the front door which Mulder promptly cut open with a pair of lock cutters. Taking out a flashlight, Mulder slipped inside the warehouse. Shadows jumped everywhere as Mulder's flashlight swept out in wide arcs, cutting through the darkness. Wooden crates were stacked up to the ceiling along the walls, and a very large object blanketed with a blue tarpaulin lay directly before him. His breath caught in his throat as he approached the object, finally drawing near enough to lift part of the tarp off the ground. Mulder could not see what the rest of the object was, it was so massive, but from what he glimpsed, he guessed that it was a craft of some kind. The dull metallic trimming that he could see with his flashlight showed etchings and markings that were completely foreign to him. Before Mulder could contemplate the fact that he was standing right next to a UFO, the lights in the warehouse flooded on, washing away everything into white before his eyes in a blinding, searing flash. Mulder cried out in surprise and as he brought up his arm to shield his eyes, he heard heavy footsteps approaching rapidly from all directions. Here comes the cavalry, he thought to himself unhappily. "Put your hands up in the air!" a young, husky voice shouted. Mulder did what he was told. Someone came up to him and frisked him, removing his Sig Saur and spinning him around. Mulder felt his vision slowly returning to him. He could make out a dozen heavily armed soldiers dressed in army fatigues, and a single man dressed in a dark trench coat and suit. The man cupped his hands over his mouth as he calmly lit a cigarette. It was him, Mulder realized. The Cigarette Smoking Man. "Mulder," he said, "you really should call before you come for a visit." "What have you got down here?" Mulder demanded. "It's an alien ship, isn't it?" "Now, that's the 20,000 dollar question, isn't it?" "This ship contains the technology that makes time travel possible. Isn't that what Operation River is all about?" The Cigarette Smoking Man took a long drag on his cigarette before responding. The other men all had their guns trained on Mulder. "Let's find out, shall we?" The Cigarette Smoking Man said as he produced an innocent looking, black belt. * * * 10:05 PM - 25 Minutes Before September 5, 1998 There was no answer on Mulder's cell phone, and Mulder wasn't at home, either. Wishing her partner hadn't gone and run off so impulsively to chase down leads, Scully sighed as she opened the door to her apartment and stretched out both her arms in weariness. There were no messages on her phone. Scully picked it up and dialed Mulder's home phone number again. "Hello, this is Fox Mulder. Leave a message," the voice crackled through her receiver. "Mulder, it's me. I examined the body for trace evidence, and I found something." Scully fished into her pocket and pulled out a vial. Inside was a tiny computer chip, the same type that had been implanted in the back of her neck. The same type of chip that had been used in Duane Barry and all of the other abducted cancer-stricken women. What could be the purpose of this thing? Scully opened her mouth to continue her message, but before she could, everything changed. In a heartbeat. Without even being aware of the change, Scully found herself in a different part of her apartment. The door was open and light from the hallway crept in. Scully was no longer holding her telephone, and she was no longer holding the vial containing the chip. Instead, she was holding her dying partner in her arms. He was going to die. The words seemed incomprehensible to her. Blood from his massive head wound had gotten all over them both as Scully held him close, the tears falling fast down her face. For a moment, Scully blinked in confusion, wondering how she had gotten to be kneeling before her own door with her partner in her arms. She had the vaguest, most intangible feeling that she had been doing something else at this exact moment, but what? The memories blazed through her mind like a streaking ball of flame that consumed everything in its path. Scully trembled as she recalled Mulder standing in her doorway, pointing a gun at her head. She could see the struggle within him, and had almost gotten through to him. But at the last moment, when Mulder had nearly succumbed to the urge to shoot Scully, he had managed to turn the gun on himself instead. A million questions raced through her mind. How could this happen? Regret and sorrow welled up within her, threatening to submerge her. It wasn't supposed to happen this way... right? A man appeared in her doorway, looking down on her. "Who are you?" Scully said, afraid. Scully could barely make out his facial features in the shadow, but when she gently laid Mulder's head down on the floor and stood up to get a better look, she stiffened in shock. It was a face that burned with intensity and was tormented by inner demons, but there was no mistaking who this man was. "You're Mulder's father," she said in awe, not knowing what else to feel in the presence of a dead man. "Yes, Agent Scully, I am," William Mulder said sadly as he looked down at his dying son. "This can't be," Scully said in bewilderment. "You're supposed to be dead." William Mulder arched his eyebrows in surprise, and his face registered a touch of dread. "Why are you here?" Scully said finally. It was the only question she could think to say. "To save my son's life," William said. "With your help, Agent Scully." "How can you save his life?" Scully cried, tears threatening to overtake her again as she pointed to Mulder lying on the carpet. "He's as good as dead, can't you see that?!" William Mulder stepped back into the hall and looked around at both sides. "There's not much time, Agent Scully; the police will be here any moment now," Mulder whispered fiercely. "Change out of those clothes. We need to go someplace where we can speak in private." Scully looked William Mulder hard in the eye before turning to get a change of clothes. September 5, 1998 10:31 PM "What I am about to tell you is highly classified. Only a handful of people, including myself, know the truth." "The truth about what, Mr. Mulder?" "Operation River." Scully and William Mulder were sitting across from each other at a table at Denny's. A waitress came and took their order. They both ordered coffee. "You never knew it, but in 1968 we were plunging headlong into a war with the Russians..." * * * August 29, 1968 "Caroline! Caroline!!!" William Mulder screamed out the name of his wife with growing urgency as he hastily scanned the smoking remains of the interstate freeway. Cars everywhere had stopped dead in their tracks, and panicked citizens everywhere had exited their vehicles and were scrambling for whatever shelter they could find. A massive wave of people was stampeding through the freeway. Just instants before, ICBM's had come raining down from the sky and sent massive sections of freeway shooting upward in chunks of rubble, metallic shards, and debris. Scores of innocent people had died instantly, but the Mulder family, returning to Virginia from Washington, D.C., had miraculously survived the initial onslaught. In the confusion that followed, Mulder had somehow gotten seperated from his wife and children. "Over here!" Caroline's voice called out from twenty yards away. Relieved, Mulder navigated his way through the sea of people to reach Caroline, Fox, and little Samantha. Fox was carrying Samantha in his arms, and the little girl was visibly shaken with fright, too scared to even cry. Mulder grabbed his wife's hand and led the way to the nearest exit. Someone behind the Mulder family pulled out an AK-47 rifle. "Out of my way, you sons of bitches!!!" the man cried as he began shooting people in a blind rage. The screams of terrified people filled his ears as Mulder fell to the ground, a bullet having grazed his right shoulder. He dropped to his stomach, pulled out his own gun, rolled, and searched frantically for the assailant. Mulder spotted the crazed lunatic right away and blasted him clear off his feet with three shots. Through the many legs that passed by him like a torrent, Mulder saw his wife and children lying face down on the asphalt. On his stomach, he agonizingly crawled over to them, ignoring the pain from his shoulder. William Mulder managed to turn his wife partly over, and immediately felt his stomach go right to his shoes. She had been shot in the head. "No," Mulder breathed. Fox was dead, too. Samantha was dying, not from having been shot, but from having fallen head first from Fox's arms as her brother fell from the gun shots. Mulder propped himself on his knees and wordlessly gazed at the heavens, his mouth open in shock. He wanted to scream in his anguish, but no sound came... Three days later... William Mulder found himself standing before a giant spaceship. He looked to his side and saw Carolyn Connor, along with a tall Cigarette Smoking Man. "Is there any other way?" Mulder said with dejected resignation. "We have no choice, Bill. You know that. Nothing else will bring your family back." Mulder nodded in grudging assent as he pondered the spaceship standing before him. * * * September 5, 1998 10:45 PM "We were the only ones left, the only ones who could carry out the mission." William Mulder said. He wearily pulled out a cigarette. His hands twitching, he managed to light the cigarette after several tries. "Operation River, that's what we called it. Going through time was like crossing a river, we used to say between the two of us. You could always alter its course, whether by somehow diverting its path or stopping the flow altogether. Build a dam against history. God, we were so arrogant; nothing could be allowed to stand in our way." "What was Carolyn Connor doing there?" Scully said, not sure what to believe anymore. The waitress brought their coffee, and Scully toyed with the handle. Mulder looked down at the coffee but decided to wait till after he'd finished his cigarette to take a sip. "We took her, Agent Scully. I chose her myself; on July 10, 1957 she and her husband both were supposed to have died in a head-on collision with a truck driver on that highway in Iowa. The truck driver survived with minimal injuries. You see, by taking Mrs. Connor, we changed nothing, since she would have died anyway. "Once we had Mrs. Connor, we sent her on a mission to kill John F. Kennedy. I came from a world in which Kennedy never died. He survived the Lee Harvey Oswald assassination attempt, thanks to Oswald's sheer incompetence with a manual bolt action rifle. Oswald did hit the president with one of his three shots, but it was non-fatal, and the president recovered, going on to a second term. "You have to understand... because JFK lived, he not only escalated American troop involvement in the Vietnam War during his second term, he also made serious political blunders, and antagonized the Soviet Union into a heavy, full-scale, conventional war. We were this close to using nuclear weapons. It was because of JFK that my family died in the missile attack on that freeway. But we used Connor...she became the second shooter from the grassy knoll. We provided her with a highly advanced sniper weapon, equipped with a silencer, which we obtained from one of our brief jaunts into the twenty-first century. Imagine this: JFK is shot first by one of Oswald's bullets, and he slumps forward. The motorcade swings around the bend in the road at Dealey Plaza, bringing him into direct line of Connor's sights. Connor, whom we have transformed into a cold, ruthless killer, takes aim through the sniper scope and fires once, then again. No one hears these shots, not even those standing by the Grassy Knoll. The president's head is blown backward by Connor's own true shot, the other Oswald bullets missing the mark as Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy climbs over the back of the limosine. Echoes in the Dealey Plaza cause confusion among the witnesses; some think all three shots came from the Grassy Knoll, and Dallas police officers converge on the spot immediately. They find three innocent vagrants whom they arrest, but not Connor, who has gotten clean away, rapidly and efficiently disassembling the weapon into a dozen, completely indistinguishable pieces, tossing them into various trash receptacles and storm drains, tearing off her black leather gloves and disposing of those, too, as she finds a sufficiently deserted spot and presses the button on her belt that returns her to the year 1968." "How did you turn Connor into an assassin?" Scully said, completely enthralled by this wild story, yet remaining skeptical all the same. "The answer to your question is in your coat pocket." Frowning, Scully dipped her hand into her coat pocket and pulled out the vial. The chip glimmered in the light as Scully held it between herself and Mulder. "This thing? You used this to control her actions?" Mulder said nothing, but Scully knew. She should know, of all people. Scully hadn't forgotten the time she had inexplicably ended up on a bridge in Pennsylvania with Cassandra Spender and all the other UFO cult members. It was a proven fact that this chip could, in fact, control her actions. Was there an identical chip implanted in the base of Fox Mulder's neck as well? Could that explain his maniacal behavior, right up to his own desperate suicide? "But something went wrong, Agent Scully," Mulder said as he mixed cream and Nutrasweet into his coffee and mixed it with a spoon. Mulder took a sip before going on. "The chip was still in the early stages of development, and it malfunctioned sometime after Connor shot Kennedy. Consequently, instead of returning to 1968 as planned, she deviated from the mission parameters and jumped forward to an unknown point in time. In 1993, my colleague finally succeeded in tracking her to September 4, 1998, and a meeting with a man named Byers. Apparently, she'd hoped that Byers could help her get her story out without giving her undue exposure. "Because of all this, my son got involved and now he's dead. I received word of what had happened, and came here on my own to stop it, but I was too late. Fox was sent back in time by half an hour to kill you, but he couldn't do it, and he shot himself in your place. Now I need your help." "Why, I hardly know you, Mulder. But I do know something of the awful experiments you were a part of... the 'merchandise,'" Scully threw out bitterly. "Why the hell should I trust you?" Scully said as she lifted the cup to her mouth. Before Scully could drink out of the cup, Mulder's hand came shooting across the table to violently slap the cup out of her hand, sending it crashing to the floor. Several people looked their way in alarm. Mulder's eyes blazed, and his mouth trembled. His breathing came in rapid gasps. "It's poisoned!" he whispered fiercely as he slumped over the table momentarily before slipping off his chair to land on the floor, curled up in a fetal position. In an instant, Scully was at his side, holding him up. "Poisoned? How could it be poisoned?!" Scully said. Who were these people, that they could know their every move and act accordingly? Was there any way to fight an enemy who knew the future? "Listen, Agent Scully," Mulder whispered, the light in his eyes slowly fading. "There's not... much time... I traveled here from December 7, 1993." Scully nodded, her entire soul hinging on every word this man now said. This was all so incredible, she couldn't believe it, but in the face of such unexplainable events, there was no choice except to believe the unbelieveable. To trust the untrustworthy. "You must... take the belt I'm wearing, and press the button on the side." Scully, reaching around Mulder's waist, removed the belt and contemplated it. It looked like any other belt, save for the small buttons. "It will take you back to December 7, 1993. Connor's... location was found several days before... you must... upon returning to December 7, go further back, to any point in time but December, 1993. If you succeed, you can undo everything that's happened here in 1998....Everything." "What am I to do then?" "Destroy... the...time...machine..." "I can't do this alone, Mr. Mulder. Not without your help." "I can't ...help you..." Mulder said, his voice cracking. He would be gone any minute now. It was incredible how so few sips of coffee could have the power to send him to death's door. "Then who will?" Scully said urgently. She had no idea how she would do this. So many lives rested on her own small shoulders... Carolyn Connor, the man lying at her feet, her partner... In a blink of an eye, the answer suddenly appeared before her. Mulder. Fox Mulder. Of course, it was so obvious, he would help her in a second! There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for her. But this was 1993 they were talking about, a time when she and Mulder were still in the early stages of their partnership. "Will he trust me?" Scully wondered out loud, her voice trembling, almost in timidity. "He... must..." William Mulder said ever so faintly, understanding perfectly what had gone on in her mind. Scully started and gazed into Mulder's glossy eyes, wondering how it was that these Mulder men could be so damned perceptive. Mulder smiled slightly as his eyes closed finally, in death. The second Mulder to die in her arms in one hour. A small crowd of observers had gathered around Scully and Mulder, and Scully looked up, noticing them for the first time. She hastily shoved her way through the spectators, and before anyone could stop her, she raced into the street. The belt was firmly around her waist. It was time. With a silent prayer to the heavens, Scully closed her eyes and pushed the button on the belt. A bolt of lightning streaked down from the cloudless, night sky... End part Three The River Crossing, Part Four September 20, 1993 7:41 PM "Mulder, they have been here for a very long time." The words of his Deep Throat informant resonated in Fox Mulder's head, days after he had spoken to him at the track. Whenever he tried to remember what he had seen at the United States Air Force base, his mind drew a complete blank. What had they taken from him? What had he seen? A knock sounded on his door, and Mulder looked up with suspicion. "Mulder, it's me," Scully's voice came faintly through. Mulder opened the door and found himself face to face with Scully. She was a different Dana Scully from the one he had just seen several hours ago, at work. This Scully looked leaner, and he could see the faint lines on her face as she looked at him expectantly. She looked... hardened, somehow. Her eyes were intense and tumultous. It made her look all the more beautiful, he decided. "Scully?" Mulder said. "What?" "You look... different," he said. "Oh?" Scully said, smiling slightly. "Is that in a good way?" Blinking stupidly, Mulder looked hard at her. "Scully... what are you doing here?" "Well, Mulder," Scully said, dropping her eyes shyly, "I don't know how to tell you this, but..." What was she going to say that was so difficult? What, did she want to quit the FBI? Couldn't stand his spooky ass, now, could she? Or was it the opposite...did she want to sleep with him, seeing as how she found him the ultimate stud muffin, and she was desperately in love with him? What? "...I need you to help me destroy a time machine." For a moment, Mulder stared at her, dumbfounded. This was "rational, scientific, skeptical" Scully we were talking about, here. A time machine? She didn't even believe in extraterrestrials, which even she'd have to admit was a hell of a lot more likely than a time machine! Unable to help himself, Mulder burst out in hysterical laughter. "Ah, ha ha Ha Ha HA HA HAAHAHAAH!!!!!" he bellowed as he led Scully into his apartment, closing the door. Scully looked impatient and annoyed. "My dear Dr. Scully," he said sarcastically, "what ARE you smoking?!?" Scully rolled her eyes and stared at a spot on Mulder's ceiling as her partner finished having his laugh at her expense. "Are you done yet?" Scully snapped. "Because a lot of lives depend on you listening very carefully to what I have to say, including your own, Mulder." Stunned into silence by Scully's complete seriousness, Mulder finally composed himself and looked at her attentively and with curiosity. "Mulder," Scully said, "I've come here from the future. I traveled through time using a device built by our own government." Mulder raised his eyebrows mirthfully. A Scully from the future. This was turning out to be a fun evening, after all. "This device," Scully pointed to her belt, "this device is based on an alien technology, and it was recovered from a UFO that crash-landed in the Atlantic Ocean." Scully pulled out a map of the Washington, D.C. and Maryland area. She pointed to a spot and Mulder, from his spot on the couch, looked on with interest. "This is the location of the military base that is housing the remains of the alien ship," Scully said. "Well, Scully, I'm impressed," Mulder said respectfully. "You and I are going to have to find that ship and detonate it with as much explosives as we can carry." "What, Scully, you and me setting off some fireworks, huh?" Mulder grinned. Now Scully wanted to blow up some shit. He was getting to like this Dana Scully more and more, with every passing minute! Scully ignored his last remark and continued. "I think we could use the help of Frohike, Byers, and Langly for help in bypassing security." Now Scully REALLY had his attention. As far as he knew, Scully hadn't even met his Lone Gunman buddies... at least, not yet. So for Scully to know about Frohike, Byers, and Langly was simply impossible, because he had never mentioned a single word about them to her. Which left one of two possibilities. Either she really was from the future, or... She had been spying on him all this time, from day one. "Why should I believe a single word of what you've just said?" Mulder said, his eyes narrowing. "Why don't you find out for yourself, Mulder. Call my apartment. I should be home." Warily, Mulder picked up his cell phone and dialed Scully's home number. After a few rings, Dana Scully answered. The voice was unmistakably Scully's. Mulder hung up immediately, without saying a word, and turned to the other Scully standing before him. She was crossing her arms, looking at him as if to say, "Well, do you believe me now?" "It proves nothing," Mulder said. "Give me one good reason why I should trust you." Scully was crestfallen and hurt by her partner's distrust, but she understood how she'd feel if she were in a similar position. Cautiously, she stepped into the waters and began an attempt to navigate her way through the fortress around Mulder's heart. "Mulder, I can't give you absolute proof that I am who I say I am," she said, looking him in the eye, trying to conceal nothing. She continued after a pause. "But I come from a time and a place where we are friends who trust each other implicitly. I trust you and no one else, Mulder, I would trust you with my life, and you would do the same for me, I know it. You're the most loyal, honest, and passionate man I have ever known, but you are also the most impulsive and reckless. Time and again, you have had your flashes of insight, conclusions that seem to lack any real scientific or rational basis, and you have called on me to follow you. And I have, Mulder; I've followed you to the ends of the earth, against everything I've held sacred, and my faith in you has never wavered, in spite of everything that I've lost." Scully paused. She felt tears welling up in her eyes as she remembered Melissa, Emily, the three months of her life, everything. "This is the bond, the knot of fate that ties our destinies together, Mulder. You've often asked me to follow you, sometimes on blind faith. I only ask you, just this once, that you do the same for me, when I need it most. Please, you have to trust me." Mulder was staring hard at her, not missing a single word. When she was done, Mulder got up and began pacing back and forth across his room, absorbed in thought. "I don't want to lose you," Scully whispered softly to herself. When Mulder finished pacing back and forth, he stood before Scully and looked into her eyes. Scully looked unflinchingly back at him. Mulder at first had seemed confused and torn, but now he was completely calm, with no doubts in his heart. "Let's go," he said. As they walked out of Mulder's apartment, Mulder stopped and put a hand on Scully's shoulder. "Tell me one thing, though," he said, looking into her eyes again, "Do I get to have any relationships with beautiful women in the future?" Scully gave him a cryptic smile. "Mulder," she said ironically, reciting the words of Doc Emmett Brown, "No one should know too much about their own future." * * * 8:27 PM Looking into the NIKE sports bag for one last time, Scully took an admiring look and whistled. All the plastic explosives anyone could ever want. Thanks to the Lone Gunmen, Mulder had gotten in touch with a crazy anarchist, who had happily provided the goods at the right price. Mulder and Scully were driving down territory that Mulder would cover in his ill-fated journey five years from now. That is, unless they stopped it from ever happening. The security guard stopped them, Mulder and Scully duly provided their fake identification badges, and they were allowed through. No one gave them any trouble as they made their way to the old warehouse on the edge of the base. When they got inside, Mulder and Scully pulled out their flashlights and had a look around. The same wooden crates were stacked all the way to the ceiling around a very large alien ship, this time not covered by a tarpaulin. Whistling, Mulder walked found an open door in the ship and stepped inside, with Scully following. After walking down several empty corridors, they found it. Sitting flush against the metal wall was a large cylindrical chamber. It was formed by a cylinder of thick glass and covered at the ends by large metallic blocks strewn with wires and alien machinery. The wires ran to a compuer which showed a digital readout of the destination time. "This is it?" Mulder said. "Yeah," Scully said. They began placing the C-4 in strategic spots all over the ship. The explosives were rigged to a remote control detonation device. Once Scully returned to September 5, 1998, the plan was for Mulder to blow the whole thing to hell. "Good-bye, Mulder," Scully said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, before stepping inside the chamber. "Wait," Mulder said as he reached out to stop her. Scully turned to face him. "If what you say about this machine is true, then... isn't it possible for me to go back in time and--save my sister--?" Scully didn't answer. She only looked at him sadly. "Scully, I have to try." "Mulder, you could possibly go back and... stop her abduction, but even if you do, who's to say they won't try again?" Mulder remained unconvinced by Scully's rationalization. "Mulder, you are what you are today because of what happened on that day in 1974. If you go back and distort the natural course of events, the consequences could be disastrous." "But that one incident, Scully, it--it tore my family apart. I can't stand by and let it happen, not when I have to power to change--" "It's not your fault, Mulder. You didn't stand by and let it happen. All of your passion, all of your belief has grown out of that one incident. You might never have joined the FBI, never have been assigned to the X Files. Everything you've seen, and heard, and learned--gone. The people you'd have met--" Scully's voice suddenly caught in her throat as she thought about what she had just said. "Mulder," she said, unable to meet his eyes, "I can't force you to do what I'm asking of you. But if you don't destroy this machine--" Scully's voice welled up with emotion. "If you go back," Scully said, her voice quavering, "and change what was meant to be,... you won't only affect yourself, you won't only put more lives in danger. I--I can't begin to imagine a life in which I'd never known you, Mulder. Your friendship for me... means more than you know." Scully looked him in the eye one last time. "Someday, you will." For the second time in one day, Mulder was stunned by Scully's emotion. In the short time he'd known Scully, he'd never seen her get this emotional or worked up about anything. She was always so cool, so unafraid. This Scully was showing him a vulnerability and a softness that he had rarely seen in her before. Could this be real? Could Scully ever have such depth of feeling for him? As his fascination grew, he felt his own urge to "save" his sister growing weaker. His sister was gone. Samantha Mulder was nothing now but a phantom child in his distant memories. But Dana Katherine Scully was real. Not a ghost, not an illusion, but a real person, with real feelings. With those last words, Dana Scully closed her eyes, stepped close to Mulder, stood up on her toes, and kissed him on the cheek. The kiss was as gentle as the touch of a maple leaf falling softly to the ground. It was the caress of a cool breeze on a hot, dry, desert day. All these sensations and associations ran through Mulder's mind as he stood there with his eyes closed. When he opened them at last, Scully was standing in the time chamber, wearing her belt, gazing out at him. Her lips curved into a final smile as the chamber whirred to life, buzzing with a burst of electrical energy and light. Mulder, still in a dream-like daze, slowly touched his hand to the spot on his cheek where Scully had kissed him. He smiled wistfully as the final flash of light came, taking Scully to another time, he knew not when. Fifteen minutes later, when he had gotten a safe distance away from the military base, he pulled out the remote detonator. Hesitating for only a second, he finally brought himself to depress the trigger switch. In an instant, Mulder saw the warehouse erupt in a flower of fire. * * * September 5, 1998 11:31 AM "So," Scully said, "how did Byers' date go last night?" Scully shot her partner a playful, smiling look as they both walked into a diner to eat lunch. Mulder only looked confused. "Byers was on a date last night?" "Sure he was, Mulder. Her name was Carolyn Connor, and she shot JFK." "Oh. He, he, Scully, you really had me going there for a second. That's a good one," he said, chuckling. Scully breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was going to be okay, as long as Carolyn Connor didn't put up a billboard that announced to the world that JFK's assassin was alive and well in 1998, living in Washington, D.C. Byers was going to be okay. Mulder was going to be fine. She thought of all these things as the two of them sat and ate their sandwiches, neither of them speaking much, both of them gazing out the window that faced the street corner. Looking at their reflections in the glass, Mulder noticed that Scully's reflection was looking at his. He turned to her, and she averted her eyes, somewhat embarrassed. "What?" Mulder said. "Mulder, I--" Scully stopped. "You what?" Mulder prompted. "I just want you to know... that you did the right thing." What in the hell was that supposed to mean? As she stood up to leave, Scully lifted her right hand. She pantomimed the setting off of the explosive charges from 1993, her fingers wrapping around an invisible box, her thumb depressing an invisible trigger, her tongue making a mechanical click. "Set off some pretty good fireworks, didn't we?" Scully said, smiling enigmatically as she threw Mulder's own words back at him. Mulder sat there dumbfounded. In an instant, the whole experience he had shared with Scully in 1993 came back to him. She--she was the one, he realized. Through the glass window, his eyes followed her with wonder as she crossed the street, heading back to work. "Well," Mulder said to himself with a long sigh. Downing the last of his iced tea, Mulder walked out the doors after her. The End That's it, people. Finis. I take this moment to acknowledge the film "Back to the Future," written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and Dean Koontz's novel, "Lightning." Now I'd appreciate it if you email me, so I'll get something other than SPAM mail for posting this story. Thank you, and good night. Todd China china@usc.edu "The time has come. You know it in your soul. For I am your soul...You cannot escape me...You are puny, you are small--you are nothing--a hollow shell, a rusty trap that cannot hold me--Smoldering, I burn you, burning you, I flare, hot and bright and fierce and beautiful--You cannot stop me--not with wine or vows or the weight of age--You cannot stop me, but still you try--still you run--You try to drown me out... But your voice is weak..." -Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS