Echo: The first outbreak (2/?)
By: Commodore X

To be sent to: wipsubs@x-philes.com 

Categories: MS/UST, X-File

Summary: When a deadly virus, created by our own 
government, sweeps the country, its up to Mulder and Scully to 
find a cure. (After Mulder burns down her kitchen, of course.)

Ahem: The characters of Mulder and Scully are not mine, they 
are the property of Chris Carter, Fox Network, and 1013 
Productions, and I'm just borrowing them. So. Now that that's 
out of the way. The science experiment in this story is a real 
one, with all the same real possibilities. However, the real one, 
when preformed, went off without a hitch. Also, for the record: I 
have no idea what gluon theory is. Thank you.

Email: KraneGirl@hotmail.com
*	*	*	*

Somewhere in the world, an alarm went on.

Mollie Holls, a talented woman and overall over-acheiver in the 
world of crime, stood plucking her leather gloves on, and 
meditating on the bright rorschac of blood that was splattered 
on the wall behind the blank gaze of the bank teller in front of 
her. The alarm ceased.

A cloud. It looks like a cloud. Or maybe its huge flashing dollar 
signs. Its good to be the bad guy.

"Too bad," she comiserated with the terrified patrons of the bank, cowering on 
the floor. "He was cute." She seemed to consider this for a moment, head cocked 
to one side, pulling the glove on her right hand. "Dumb, but cute." She slid 
past the 
corpse, spreadeagled on the floor, sneering slightly as one overweight 
mustachioed gentleman burst into horrified tears at the train of 
gore that she left in her wake. One hand was always gripped 
on the butt of the semi-automatic at he side, and with the other 
she began greedily stuffing bills into her rough, cambric bags. 
The sound of weeping and cringing irritated her, but
pleased her as well. She was capable of making even the 
toughest ones cry. Then out of the corner of her eye she 
noticed one bank teller's hand creep towards the counter-
towards the second silent alarm button hidden there.

"You might not want to try me, there. You saw what happened to your 
friend," She said, her back turned to him. Too late, he recoiled his hand as if 
burned. But the damage had been done. He had ruined her trust. She turned around 
slowly, gave him a dissapointed look, and clipped off a short round that set the 
whole room into hysterics as the newest corpse fell to its knees and 
then crumpled to the floor. There was a baby crying in the 
corner, a young couple wailed loudly, everyone sniveled and 
moaned. She spun around nervously. "Stop it, all of you. Stop 
crying or you'll be the next!" she was about to get her rifle out to 
give her an edge, when the crying stopped immediately. The 
room became silent, seemed to grow brighter. Mollie stopped 
and looked down at the people at her feet. The young man's 
face had turned deep red, with ugly purple-brown stains at the 
corners. His eyes bulged dangerously from their sockets and a 
stream of blood flowed from his lips to the floor. A bright light 
seemed to seep out of him. She whirled around, seeing faint 
pulses of light from each body, seeing faint smudges of color 
near them. What was going on? Was she seeing ghosts? All 
the people had the same faces, all distorted. She started to 
panic. 

Oh God, what is this? Did I kill them all? I I can’t have killed 
them all! 

Then, from the silence, a faint noise touched her. She knelt, 
trying not to touch any of the bodies, and put her ear above the 
young man's chest. Then she drew back, crying a little. There 
was a churning, burbling, wheezing sound coming from it. She 
sat back, and suddenly fell on her side. Her teeth clamped on 
her lip, and she felt a terrible pressure in her chest. Oh god. 
She fought for breath, feeling herself being emptied, feeling her 
churning insides being gnawed out, and she sank into the great 
beyond with a bag of money in her hand and one huge burst of 
light.

From just outside the lobby of the building, the unmistakeable 
sound of a match striking.

Half an hour later, a white mist hung in the bank. All the bodies 
had been removed, as had all the furniture and rugs. They had 
been replaced with exact replicas. Outside, Charles drew the 
smoke lovingly from his cigarette and watched, feeling a little 
perplexed, as the bodies, encased in silver contamination 
tanks, were carried from bank single file. As Mollie passed by 
he stopped the man carrying her.

"Take this one to the office in D.C. I need her when I get back." 
The man started to move away, and Charles called him back. 
"This will not be seen by anyone, do you understand?" The 
man nodded and placed the body on the helicopter. Charles 
watched the flight. What was he going to tell the committee?

The committee was not pleased.

"The what?" Felding turned a shade of purple, and Shields 
looked apoplectic. Charles was beginning to tire of his 
collegues attitudes. It wasn't his fault. Surely someone had told 
him that it was terribly gauche to shoot the messenger. He 
coughed, tapped the projector button in his hand, and said,
	"You heard me. It looks like the results from our 
biochemimilitary testing site in Portland. The failed tests on 
human-echo production." At this point, he felt it best to let his 
collegues come to their own conclusions about the 
seriousness of this little. . .mistake of science.

For his part, he felt it was time for a vacation. Someplace 
sunny, like one of Jupiter's moons, perhaps.

Of course, for all that they lacked in class, his collegues were 
all quick to intuit. Felding looked on the edge of a coronary, and 
Shields, Pullman, and Fronmein all looked as it you could 
knock them over with a feather. Or an incurable fast-acting 
plague with a mortality rate of 100%. Fronmein pulled himself 
together.
	"Do you mean to tell me that the echo tool has been 
released into the public?" He asked, in a low, not quite 
controlled voice. Charles nodded slowly. Fronmein seemed 
apoplectic. "How?" He asked in an even less controlled voice. 
The hard question. Charles couldn't answer it and god knew 
how he was going to get away from this situation with all of his 
anatomy still in its proper order. From somewhere in the back 
of the building a comet-tracking radar startled them all with its 
high-pitched knobbly whine. Charles bowed his head in silent 
reverence to whichever gods were watching over his sorry ass 
at that moment. The echo tool and the hard question would be 
postponed until they had the chance to reaquaint themselves 
with the latest in a long-string of high-frequency radar 
malfunctions. 
 
From his priveledged position on the business end of the two-
way mirror, the shadowed man bit his lip pensively.
*	*	*	*
   At the end of the day Scully's hair was mussed irretrievably 
and her throat was sore from bantering with the insurance 
guys. It had been a hell of a day, to match the hell of a night 
she'd had before. And of course, she thought, smiling wryly to 
herself from the passenger seat of her car, she would be 
sleeping in Mulder's apartment again. The thought was both 
pleasant and highly annoying. Not only would she be sleeping, 
but she would have to take a shower there. God help him if he 
so much as makes a crack about it, she thought, her lips 
twitching. Still, there were worse things than sharing Mulder's 
apartment. Not that she would ever let him know that. She fully 
planned on milking the situation for all it was worth. And 
furthermore, she thought with grim satisfaction, she was going 
to take the bed. 

	"Heya, Scully," Mulder greeted her, as she walked in, and-oh my dear lord 
in heaven-all he was wearing was a pair of black silk-Scully felt a momentary 
heart palpitation. Then she recovered herself.
	"Mulder," she began in a 'don't mess with me' voice, "I'm going to take a 
shower. For about a year. Don't bother me unless someone I know dies." Without 
waiting for his answer, and eager to get away from him before she threw herself 
all over him, she stalked into his bedroom, and locked the door. Then she lay 
down on the bed, panting slightly. Not having a relationship with Mulder was the 
hardest thing her conscience had ever forced her to do. His habit of 
occasionally ditching her for a case (a habit which had eased up over the years 
and the blossoming of their strictly platonic relationship)and his penchant for 
steamy videos, did nothing to overshadow his kindness, his brilliance, and his 
almost unbearable attractiveness, which had grown over the years as she had come 
to know him, his passions, and his dark brooding soul. She undressed quickly, 
slipped on a robe, and headed for the bathroom, making sure to bring along a 
nicely scented bath gel. Even if she didn't have a relationship with Mulder, she 
could still toy with him a little, couldn't she?

	The shower, 20 minutes long, felt wonderful after a long day of bickering 
and ranting. After stepping out, she felt like an entirely different person. 
Ready to face whatever life threw at her. Like Mulder, perhaps. Stop it, She 
admonished herself, dressing down, a large T-shirt and plaid Berkley boxers. 
Stop wishing ill wishes for yourself. You know it wouldn't work. The patented 
Scully self-lecture. She was so boring. A knock came at the door.
	"Scully?" Mulder's voice was muffled slightly, as if he was talking 
through a pillow. "Scully, are you done?"
	Heaving an annoyed sigh, Scully pushed her thoughts aside, and opened the 
door. Mulder's mouth was stuffed with a sandwhich, and he had a grin the size of 
Texas on his face. He looked absurdly cute, like a little puppy that you just 
wanted to squeeze. . .Scully felt her throat constrict. Sometimes life threw 
tests of willpower at you. This was one of them. She couldn't help a half-grin 
to match his own, however. She raised an eyebrow.
	"Can I help you, Mulder?" He tried to talk, but had to wait until he 
finished his bite.
	"I have a riddle for ya, Scully!" He said, enthusiastically. Something 
groaned inside of Scully. 
	"A riddle?" She asked, raising the eyebrow even higher.
	"What to you get when you force the neuclei of 2 atoms to collide?"
	Scully, ever the scientist, gave this the good measure of thought that it 
deserved.
	"Well, Mulder, its hard to predict, since noone has ever attempted it. I 
suppose, however, that the result would be an explosion of some kind, though I'm 
not positive." She said, after a pause. "Why?"
	"Ah, Scully, but you're wrong on two counts. First: It doesn't produce an 
explosion. Second: It was tried last Tuesday in a high-security lab in Boston, 
Massachusetts." Scully cocked her head slightly.
	"I hate to ask, Mulder, but does this have anything to do with an X-File?" 
She asked, warily. Mulder just grinned at her. "Ok, I'll bite." She said after 
another pause. "What does happen when you force the nuclei of two atoms to 
collide?" At this, Mulder's grin dissapeared.
	"No one knows, Scully," He said, "No one lived to tell."
*	*	*	*