They're Not Coming Back
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Scully sipped at her coffee irritably and glared at her fretful partner over the lid of her cup. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
Mulder was far from amused. “Since we’ve gotten to the airport, you feel better?”
Scully knew what he was getting at, and she didn’t want to admit that he was right. Sitting there in the pedestrian, concrete and vinyl world of the Portland airport, she felt worlds better than she had in Bellefleur hours before. “I’m fine, Mulder.”
Something like relief crossed his face. “Good...that’s good.”
“You think that whatever is going on out there, it’s why I feel like hell?”
“They aren’t taking new people, anymore, Scully, they are taking abductees. They are covering their tracks.”
Scully glanced to the bored looking family sitting down the way, the mother trying to entertain her young children with a story book and failing miserably as they began to whine. She didn’t think they had noticed Mulder’s conversation, and worried what they would think if they did. “Keep it down a little, not everyone is used to you on your full on, alien conspiracy train.”
He only glared at her in mild annoyance, but at least dropped his volume by half. “Look at who they were taking. Ray and Teresa, people who have a history, and I’d bet that kid who went missing was an abductee too. And Billy, he’s likely gone.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted darkly, passing a thumb over the opening of his own Starbuck’s cup. “But I don’t think it is just in Bellefleur.”
Scully ignored the growing headache blossoming behind her eyes, not even daring to speculate whether it was aliens or Mulder causing it. “There haven’t been reports of any other people going missing.”
“That we know of. Many times repeat abductees’ presences will go unnoticed by authorities. Most don’t believe that they were taken in the first place, that they just ran off. When they disappear again, their families, even the authorities, just assume they’ve run off somewhere else.”
“You would think, then, that if there were spaceships swooping in and taking others, that there at least would be a bump in reports on lights in the night sky or something.”
“Maybe,” Mulder didn’t sound as convinced. “But they don’t want to be noticed, Scully. They are covering their tracks, hiding the fact that they’ve even been here.”
“And what makes you think there have been others?” The thought left her feeling cold, despite herself, and she pulled from her coffee in the hopes of staving the chill.
“Because you saw a ship in West Africa.” His gaze was pointed as he regarded her, knowing she couldn’t deny it. “The ship off the African coast, just laying around for anyone to see.”
“That was part of an archaeological dig. Who knows how long it had been there.”
“Maybe it had, maybe it hadn’t, but that still doesn’t change the fact that abductees are being taken.”
“But why!” She didn’t want to think that, was afraid of what it could mean. “For what purpose?”
“Maybe the colonization.”
Scully blinked, her heart thumping uncomfortably in her chest. “You think that’s still happening?”
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t.” He pulled from his own paper cup in dark thought, glaring out the windows to the jets outside. “What incentive would they have for stopping it now? The conspiracy, the work my father and Spender did, that was supposed to to stop it, to slow it, and that went to hell when Cassandra died. We don’t know what’s been happening since.”
It was an utterly terrifying thought, one Scully hadn’t even dared consider. “Jeffrey said something about a war. A rebellion, others trying to stop something.”
“Which might explain why they are cleaning shop now.” Mulder considered her, his face grim. “Perhaps a different faction is in place and is now taking over, a whole new factor no one has accounted for. Fifty years, Scully, those men were playing this game for fifty years, and they left one hell of a vacuum when they left. It’s been two years since El Rico, and we don’t know who has been running anything since then.”
And that thought scared the hell out of Scully at that moment.
“They are trying to hide then?”
Mulder’s jaw worked as he fiddled with his coffee cup. “If someone new has stepped in, I think they believe that their predecessors were sloppy. They want to clean up the operation, want to hide it better, cover up any of the old links and get a new handle on all of it. Gather up all the loose ends and make a new go of it.”
The ever plaguing nausea crept up her throat, bringing with it the coffee she had been clinging too, but she forced it down, her skin prickling as she felt herself pale, sweat beading. If Mulder was right, and this was what was going on, she knew who else was an abductee. Could she hide from something like this? Once, long ago, she had followed that eerie feeling towards a bridge with Cassandra in tow. She had barely made it out with her life. She didn’t even understand why she had done it. Would this be like that time? Or would it be a whole new, different set of circumstances? Would she simply just disappear from her home, from the office, on her way to work or to the grocery store.
She hadn’t realized how hard she was gripping her coffee cup until Mulder pried it out of her fingers. His hand was warm in her now icy grasp, and she turned to look at him, realizing there were tears in her eyes.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, you know that, right? Not this time.” He spoke with quiet vehemence.
“You don’t know that, Mulder.” On the back of her neck, her skin prickled, right along the spot where the minute microchip lay. “I still have one of those chips in my neck. We don’t know what is going on. Maybe...maybe all this sickness is it trying to get my attention, to get me to go somewhere, to follow something? Maybe I will go out into the woods and be snatched up too, like Ray and Teresa, like Billy. Or maybe they’ll just give me cancer again, do it right this time, kill me off so no one will know, like Penny…”
“Stop it,” he hissed, desperately jerking her to get her to stop the torrent of fear. “Nothing like that will happen, you know it won’t.”
She couldn’t help the trickle of tears that coursed down her face, even as she knew one of the nearby children was now starting to stare. “I don’t, Mulder. That’s just the thing, I don’t know any of that.”
She knew he wanted to say something. But words failed him as his expression became pleading. “Believe me, I won’t let anything happen, okay?”
She wanted to believe him. “How can you stop them if that’s what they want?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, he sighed, pulling her gently towards his shoulder, allowing her the comfort of a few, private tears, his arm wrapping around her trembling shoulders. She snuffled in the twill of his jacket, her throat burning against sobs she didn’t dare release in public as he murmur nonsense into her hair.
“I’m not going to risk you, Dana, I won’t.” His voice was husky as he whispered, and she could feel his arm tighten around her possessively. “If I have to have the boys watch you day and night, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
That was hardly a more comforting thought, but it did earn a mild snort and a wet chuckle. “That of course would make it all better, having those three living in my apartment.”
“At least Frohike remembers to put the toilet seat down...sometimes.”
Scully laughed again, the amusement enough to give her equilibrium once again. She pulled away, discreetly wiping at damp eyes with her napkin and feeling suddenly foolish for working herself up yet again over what likely was nothing. “I want this over with, Mulder. I’m so tired of things like this, of fearing the shadows and what lay in the dark. For once I just want to not have to look over my shoulder, or in this case, what’s up in the sky.”
“I know,” he murmured, and for the first time looking as if he truly wished that too.
Over the loudspeaker, their connecting flight to Denver was called. The family nearby began to gather scattered books and toys, and Scully finished off her coffee, gathering her own bags, crumpling her now sodden napkin in her hand. As she did, she felt Mulder’s fingers wrap around her fist, holding it tightly.
“No matter what, Scully, you’ll always have me here. Remember that.”
She nodded mutely and silently prayed that would be enough.