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." * * * *