Open Secrets by Summer and Moseley
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 1997

Standard Disclaimer: The Basis for all of this belongs to Chris Carter,
1013 Productions, Twentieth Century Fox and a whole lot of people who are
not us. But we aren't making money on this so suing us really won't help
coz there is nothing to collect. No intent to infringe here, just pass
along.

SPOILER NOTICE If you haven't see the episode 'Leonard Betts', don't read
this and complain to us, OK?

As with all the Book Series, some naughty words, but this one is pretty
mild in that regard. No MSR, V, and gee, I always lose my place on these
category things.

We live for comments.

Open Secrets
An X-Files Thing
by Summer (summer@camelot.bradley.edu) <mailto:summer@camelot.bradley.edu>
In Tandem with Vickie Moseley
(vickiemoseley1978@yahoo.com) <mailto:vickiemoseley1978@yahoo.com>

The Journals of Fox Mulder

12 January 1997

...So much for my pledge to make a journal entry
every day.

Well, after we got back from California it was
time for the holidays, and I cut myself a break for that.
Then the guys at The Lone Gunman had their annual Apocalypse
Now party for New Years'. It used to be the three of them
and a couple of fellow conspiracy freaks knocking back beers
and watching CNN outtakes while making fatalistic predictions
about the year ahead. I dimly recall prognosticating an alien
invasion at midnight of 1992, which was later carried out almost
to the letter in the movie _Independence Day_.

Things have really picked up for them over the past
few years, though, and this time they invited correspondents
from all over the world to come to their soiree. Of course,
the location was top secret and was communicated to the invitees
in a variety of ingeniously encrypted ways. Took me two days
to put together the jigsaw puzzle.

And among those in attendance... Sandra. Whew. Sandra.

You've got to respect a woman who can come up with
a convincing feminist reading of _Baywatch_. I usually can't
stand people who use words like "zeitgeist", but it's funny
how easy it is to overlook little quibbles like that when
garter belts are involved. Fortunately, Sandra's a pro-sex
feminist.

What a weekend. Complete with the requisite huge
fight on Saturday afternoon, followed the usual passionate
reconciliation Saturday night, and then she took off back
to Austin at noon on Sunday. Supposedly if I'm ever in Texas,
I'll give her a call. Except that we blissfully forgot to
exchange phone numbers. Or last names. Actually, I'm not sure
she ever called me by name the whole time... and was it Sandra,
or Sarah? Not that it matters-- we went straight from the
party to the hotel and did everything _but_ get to know each
other.

Yeah, yeah, thoughtless and irresponsible-- well, not
irresponsible. She had every conceivable (inconceivable?) kind
of contraceptive device (not to mention a few things that rendered
my presence somewhat redundant) and the chances of any sort of
consequences are virtually nil. If this is feminism, sign me
up for NOW.

I started to feel like an idiot a couple of days later,
though. We were back in the office battling the scourge of
paperwork, and Scully got tapped for an autopsy, and I had
time to sit there and wonder why weekends like that only
come along every year or so. Stupid misgivings. When I get
maudlin like that, the only thing that kicks my ass out of
a slump is to go out on the road and get some serious work
done.

So while I was digging through dispatches looking
for an excuse to get out of town, I came across a bizarre
report. A body was stolen from a morgue in Philadelphia. The
locals sent out a general alert and a copy of the preliminary
findings. The officer on the scene found bloody footprints
on the inside of the drawer where the body had been. Almost
like the "corpse" had kicked open the door. At first the
officer thought that the man might have been alive,
mispronounced dead by accident.

This theory was promptly scrapped when further
investigation revealed that the corpse in question, one
Leonard Betts, had been decapitated in a car wreck. But
no one could explain the footprints. Cue the Twilight
Zone music, Rod. We're going in.

Scully was still carving up some poor stiff for
Violent Crimes, so I made all the arrangements and handed
her a copy of the case file on my way out the door. She
took one look and said, "I'm not driving to Philadelphia.
I drove in California. It's your turn." I opened the file
and showed her the airline ticket. Thwarted, she glared at
me and said, "You're still driving once we get there."

Driving is such a ridiculous thing to fight about,
but Scully and I have to argue or we'll drive each other
nuts. "It's your turn to drive" has become one of our
favorite grudge matches. Right up there with who's going
to get the ice at the hotel and who gets to pick where
we're going for dinner. Scully eats ice constantly at
hotels. Never any other time that I've seen; just when
we're at a hotel. It's no more peculiar than my fondness
for sunflower seeds, but it's funny that she only does
that at hotels-- but when she does, look out. She's
occasionally managed to crunch her way through an entire
bucket in one evening. Hotel ice must be superior to
homemade ice in some undefinable way. Her birthday's
coming up. Maybe I'll get her an ice machine.

I drove to the morgue the next afternoon. Scully
read the report, but as always, she didn't read between the
lines. And when I suggested that we might be dealing with
something as strange as a mobile corpse, she got rather
testy with me.

So testy that she made me dig through the hospital's
biohazard bin with her. "I think I'm going to need your
help, your arms are longer..." Who does she think she's
fooling? Scully was making sure I did a little penance for
bringing her out to Philly on a zombie hunt. I'm going to
have nightmares about sticking my hands into a sea of spare
body parts for _weeks_.

But we found the toy surprise. Leonard Betts' head
was in the biohazard bin. His body, however, was nowhere to
be found. And when I went back to his house for a little
reconnaisance, his bathtub was full of povidone-iodine. The
stuff they swab on lizards' stumps to facilitate regeneration.
A few other little clues suggested that whoever "stole" Betts'
body had been there. So naturally I speculated that the body
snatcher had been Betts himself. Sans head, which was in
Scully's custody for an autopsy.

We searched the place thoroughly-- shit! I just
realized. The window was open in the bathroom, so I assumed
that Betts' body had vaulted outside when it heard (could it
hear?) us coming. We looked everywhere in the apartment but
we didn't drain the fucking bathtub! The iodine and blood
turned the water to opaque black soup. Betts was probably
IN there when I was standing right... fuck! FUCK! When the
fuck am I going to learn to SEE THE OBVIOUS? If I'd just
pulled the plug on the bathtub right then, we could have
saved ourselves the entire investigation--

Okay, okay, calm down, maybe not. Betts _could_
have gone out the window. Besides, I put my fingers right
into the bathwater. If he'd been in there, he would've surged
up then and attacked. He didn't hesitate to attack Scully
later, without provocation. Then again, if he'd killed me
there in the bathroom it might have betrayed his secret...
so he might've been there... this line of reasoning is
getting me nowhere. And now I'll have dreams about being
pulled into an iodine bath full of dismembered body parts.
Ech! Times like this I wish I knew more Yiddish. Nothing
expresses disgust quite like Yiddish. Yuch! Eugh!

Scully called me from the morgue while I was
still at Betts' apartment. A strange and somehow, oddly,
a wonderful phone call. She wanted to let me know that
she hadn't found anything yet, basically. Left it wide
open so that I asked, "What about your examination?"

"Well, I haven't exactly conducted an examination
yet," ask me why, go ahead, ask... Scully's always reluctant
to tell me outright if something gets to her, but she let
me hear the edge of nervousness in her voice. So I asked
why she hadn't examined Betts' head.

She sounded pat and rehearsed: "I experienced an
unusual amount of post-mortem galvanic response. I know
what it is-- electrical impulses still contained in the
muscles..." and so forth, a quick and ruthless scientific
reassurance.

"The head moved," I interpolated. "You're afraid to
cut into it."

She didn't deny it. She tossed jargon at me by
the handful, but she didn't deny that it frightened her.
That was good. That's really good. I don't want her to
feel as though she can't trust me with her fears-- I don't
want her to worry that I'll see her as weak, somehow. As
if I could. I've relied on Scully for so much over the
years. I've never known anyone with her strength. Strength
of character, strength of mind. Sometimes I think the only
thing that frightens her is the prospect of seeming weak.

This time, she not only didn't deny her fear, but
her next words were a tacit admission. "It blinked at me."

Blinked? Or winked? A corpse with taste. Fortunately
I had enough taste myself to keep my mouth shut. Mostly.

Then I suggested to her that perhaps Betts _was_
responsible for the removal of his own body. In a perfect
tone of total disbelief, she said, "Without his _head_?"

"Yeah..." Even I couldn't sound sure about that one.
At that point, it did seem like an extreme conclusion to draw
from the available evidence. So I went in search of more info
while Scully polished her scapel and dissected Betts' cranium.

Leonard Betts was an EMT, with tons of commendations
for life-saving work. I spoke with his partner, Michelle Wilkes.
She told me that Betts had no family and never seemed to get
sick. Also, he had a peculiar ability to diagnose people on
sight. Particularly victims of cancer.

Called Scully to update her and she told me she'd
arranged to have Betts' head examined. "Better his than mine,"
I said, and met her at the lab.

They dipped his head in epoxy-- it looked for all
the world like a bumpy, glossy bowling ball-- and sliced it
into thin sections. To be honest, it was much easier to face
Betts' head (there's a pun in there somewhere, but I refuse
to hunt for it) when it was filleted and stained like any kind
of specimen.

Under the microscope, Betts' brain appeared as one huge
glioma. His head was made of cancer. His tissues were completely
suffused with cancer. Leonard Betts _was_ cancer.

Which bring up an interesting question. Now what the
hell am I going to call Cancer Man?

Anyway. I had Scully get us a slice of Betts' head and
convinced her to let Charlie Burk take a look at it. I hadn't
seen Charlie in a while, but he was at the Gunmen's Apocalypse
Now party this year, and he showed me some of his new experiments
in Kirlian photography before I got completely distracted by
Sarah. Sandra. At any rate, Charlie's new aura imaging equipment
is much more sensitive and precise than any other similar apparatus,
and I really wanted to try his new setup technique out on something
big. Besides, Charlie's a member of Scully's fan club-- one of the
few who manages to behave himself in her presence-- so he was glad
to get a chance to see her again, even though she didn't pay much
attention to him.

The wafer of Betts' head gave off a nice coronal discharge,
and it was amazing... a faint image of his _shoulders_ appeared
on the film.

Scully rolled her eyes and began citing the flaws of
Kirlian photography. Inanimate objects give off the same image
of "life energy" that biological tissues emit on Kirlian film.

"Sure," I told her. "Like Obi-Wan said, The Force is
in everything."

Whoops. Wound her up one too many times with that one.
Scully thanked Charlie for his time and left. I had to rush to
keep up with her.

"What's this supposed to prove?" she wanted to know.
I suggested again that Betts might have somehow regenerated
himself whole again, reminding her about the iodine and citing
studies of salamanders and lizards being regrown. A worm cut in
half heals into two complete worms, right?

"No animal on earth can regrow its head," she said.
Besides, she'd found a more mundane lead. Bett's fingerprints
had come up under another name: Albert Tanner. And Albert had
a surviving family member-- his mother, Elaine.

We visited Elaine Tanner. A picture of Leonard Betts
on her coffee table turned out to be a photo of her son Albert,
who "died" six years ago in a car wreck.

It was late when we finally dragged ourselves back to
the hotel, and it was my turn to get the ice. I got to trudge
to the machine with the bucket and carry it back so that Scully
could crunch ice cubes-- but by the time I returned, she'd
already fallen asleep in her suit. I'm proud to say that I
resisted the urge to put the ice to nefarious use, and just
shook her awake to change before going to bed.

That night, Leonard Betts killed Michelle Wilkes. He
injected her with a lethal dose of potassium chloride. We
know that now. It was fairly obvious even then, though the
mechanics of Betts' resurrection were hazy-- it's hard
to argue with evidence as solid and definite as a stray
body part. Seems a rent-a-cop saw Betts with Wilkes just
after Betts killed his former partner. The cop chased him
down and cuffed Betts to the door handle of his own Dodge
Dart, then called for backup. Naturally, he gave Betts enough
time to get out of the handcuffs... in his own unique way.

He tore off his own thumb. Looking at the digit later,
Scully decided that Betts must've been able to pop his bones
into and out of their sockets at will, and that he had enough
control over the aberrant growth of his body's cancerous cells
to cause rapid aging of the skin and flesh of his thumb, cutting
off circulation and weakening the bonds between that digit and
the rest of his hand. Betts pulled off his thumb with no more
difficulty than tugging out a loose tooth.

We searched Betts' Dodge Dart and discovered a cooler
in the trunk, chock full of cancery goodness. This kind of case
demands an excess of bad taste. If I didn't make jokes about
this shit, I wouldn't be able to decide whether to lose my
lunch before or after I went totally insane. Betts stole medical
waste from the hospitals where he worked. He ate cancer.

GOD, I wish I knew more Yiddish.

It makes sense, in a truly disgusting and vile sort
of way. Current evolutionary theory postulates that evolution
proceeds in fits and starts. A mutation occurs-- minor or drastic
in nature. If the mutant creature's differences help it to
survive and propogate, the mutation eventually becomes normal
among the species. Natural selection occurs within a matter of
generations.

And if a drastic mutation were to occur among the human
race, it only follows that this mutation would incorporate the
most deadly health threat we currently face as a species: cancer.
We've encountered mutations before... Tooms, Virgil Incanto, the
Teliko... but if I had to bet on which strain would survive and
flourish, I'd put my money on Betts.

The car was registered to Elaine Tanner, so we went
back to search her house and have a chat with her. Among her
pearls of wisdom: "God put him here for a purpose. God means
for him to stay. Even if people don't understand."

Yeah, okay, I suppose if your son comes back from
certain death-- a fiery car crash supposedly killed Albert
Tanner-- I guess under those circumstances, you might easily
find religion. From the sound of it, though, part of the
reason Betts was willing to kill to protect his secret
may have come from him mother's zealous faith that he was
special, or chosen. And the further belief that with his
gifts would inevitably come persecution.

Explains why he found it necessary to kill. To attempt
to kill. Ah, shit.

Yeah, I've tried to spell it all out here, lay out
the events so that I can use this as the basis for my field
report. I've tried to keep things rolling along with bad jokes
and detachment. I was in a pretty good mood when we went into
this case. It was bizarre, and kind of fun, since it looked
like an incident of no harm, no foul... Betts either died in
the accident and someone messed with the corpse (which didn't
really hurt anybody) or he came back to life, which would be
a great X-file, and also wouldn't really hurt anybody. So I
felt free to indulge in some tasteless humor and have a little
fun with the idea.

But he began killing to protect his secret, and I
know Scully was thinking the same thing I was... maybe sometimes
we do more harm than good. Was he worried that we'd find him?
Would Betts have murdered his former co-worker if we hadn't been
investigating his disappearance?

He did kill another person, John Gilmitz, to get at
the man's cancerous left lung for sustenance. Stashed the body
in a storage locker-- we found the key at the Tanner home and
got there just in time to find Gilmitz and dodge Betts' car
as it roared out and conveniently burst into flames.

But we found, in the end, that Betts' mutation gave
him incredibly regenerative capabilities... to the point that
he could actually slough off his entire body and generate a
new one. We exhumed the burnt body of Albert Tanner, and the
corpse was identical to that of Leonard Betts. With no other
leads, we staked out Elaine Tanner's house.

An ambulance screamed up the street just a few minutes
after we got there. We stopped the EMTs outside-- thought it
might be Betts, trying to get to his mother in a faked emergency.
But it didn't take long to confirm that we needed the ambulance...
Mrs. Tanner had an open wound, a surgical cut. He carved a tumor
out of her, dressed up the injury, then called 911.

Scully went Mrs. Tanner in the ambulance while I called
out the locals for cordon, canvas, search procedures. We thought
Betts would still be in the neighborhood. He was, in a manner of
speaking. He hitched a ride on top of the ambulance. Scully called
from the hospital; we were updating each other when suddenly, "Mulder,
get over here right now."

Apparently she kicked his ass and fried him with the
defibrillating pads. I wanted to cheer her on when I finally
made it to the hospital and saw the results-- Betts had been
thoroughly worked over, and a man who can regrow body parts
at will has to be a formidable opponent. But Scully had taken a
solid hit to the jaw. And I know it's a peculiarity of hers; she
can deal with getting scratched, cut, or shot at, but Scully
hates getting bruises. Especially where it shows.

It's always hard to come through violence of any
kind. Scully's more adept than most; she must see it as a
sort of surgical procedure. The proper application of force
yields the correct results. But even in self-defense, even
when it's justified and there's no alternative, violence is
hard and killing is terrible.

She was despondent, afterwards, silent and withdrawn.
In a way it might've been better if she'd shot him. They require
at least a week or two off when an agent fires her sidearm. I'm
not sure the paper pushers have gotten around to writing up a
regulation regarding a suspect's death by defibrillator.

I could only remind her that she'd done what we're
supposed to do. Awkwardly, of course. "You did a good job,
Scully. You should be proud."

My partner looked at me as though I were a million
miles away and a total stranger. At the same time, it seemed
she might be on the verge of tears. She said, "I want to go
home."

I took her home.

And it wasn't until I came home myself and had time
to think it over that I realized why this case bothered me,
off in the corner of my mind. Why, once we deciphered Betts'
pathology, I had to work to keep up the facade of the cheer
that I'd been feeling when the case began. I realized what
this case stirred up for me.

Cancer.

It's hazy, now, trying to recall the specifics. I
remember the chicken wire biting into my skin. The wasp sting
of the needle. Heat coursing along my arm, through the veins,
into my blood. The awful loose ache that blossomed in my eyes.

Russia. I was told that it was called "black cancer".
The disease-- parasite, organism, whatever it was-- brought
death after repeated exposures.

They only gave it to me once. I had a physical when
I came back from Tunguska, and they screened me for things I
didn't even know existed. Scully supervised the battery of
tests. I hadn't told her about being injected. It seemed like
a horrible dream. And there was nothing she could do about it,
if it had happened. I let her conduct the tests and waited.

Everything came back clean. And I know she specifically
looked for traces of the black vermiform organism that we'd both
come into contact with through the alien rock-- Scully and I each
had to be thoroughly screened for it. That organism, in one
form or another, was almost certainly the same substance I was
exposed to in Russia. There's every reason to believe that my
immune system destroyed whatever I was injected with; my white
blood count was up when I had the physical. I'm in good health.
I don't have anything to worry about.

Maybe.

Or maybe it's still in me, lying dormant in my cells,
or clustered deep inside somewhere where science can't find it.
Maybe it's managed to hide... like Leonard Betts, who kept his
secret concealed for so long.

In a way, I find hope in this case, despite everything.
Somehow, our species' DNA adapted to the scourge of cancer.
Our bodies react, change, defend us. They incorporate helpful
organisms, expel harmful influences, protect us from harm. If,
somehow, I'm carrying black cancer, it's good to know that I
have thousands upon millions of years of evolution and survival
on my side.

On the other hand... the origins of that organism are
still uncertain. In all probability, it has a few million years
on me. And it's likely to have a talent for staying undercover
for years on end.

Nearly 2 am. I'm tempted to call Scully, but I don't
know what to say. And I'm sure she's wiped out after knocking
Betts all around the town. I should let her rest.

I'm just glad she's okay. It makes it all a little
easier to handle, knowing Scully is all right. And she'll be
there, if something happens. I can rely on her.

There's strength in that. There's peace.




Dana Scully's Personal Log

January 12th, 1997

I don't think I've ever been this tired before in my life.

I'm so tired that I feel as though my entire body is unravelling.
It starts with an itch in the throat, a wracking cough, and then
my nose is bleeding and suddenly I'm falling apart.

It's not a simple nightmare keeping me up this time. I wish it was
just a nightmare. If it were a nightmare, I'd call Mulder and he'd
dust off his degree and psychoanalyse me, telling me that it's all
because I don't get laid enough and I'd threaten him with great
bodily harm and we'd laugh about it and I'd go right back to sleep.

But in so many ways, it is a nightmare. Just not the kind that
comes in the night and leaves in the morning. This particular
nightmare stays even when the sun's shining in the window. It
follows me all day long and waits until I'm alone to pop up and yell
'BOO' in my face. It never lets me forget that it's there, sneaking
around the corners of my mind, waiting to turn on the faucet and
then I can't stop thinking about it.

I hate this! I hate feeling so out of control.

I don't scare easily. It was never mentioned, all those years ago.
It should have been. In that first meeting, Blevins could have done
the noble thing and asked if I had any irrational fears. If I got
spooked easily. Hah. I'm spooked, all right. I have been for four
years. But afraid, no; I use fear as a tool now. It warns me to be
cautious. To watch my back, my partner's back. It's like the siren
before the storm. Fear helps me focus. I've learned to deal with
fear; I've learned to rely on it.

But not this. This feeling of helplessness. This sure and certain
dread.

It's hard to even write the word. Cancer. What a stupid name for
it. 'Moon child'-- that's the Zodiac term. A crab. Funny that when
I think of it in those terms, I smile and recall Mulder spouting off
some of his crap about alignment of the stars and planets. He does
it just to piss me off. He knows that's all fantasy--he's admitted it
to me on any number of occasions. But he likes to tease me with it.
When it's in that sense, the word is so harmless, so docile. Without
teeth.

Cancer.

Medicine is my life. I love my field of work, my field of study.
When I first entered in to medical school, I almost lost myself in
the unbelieveable flood of sensations--the urgency, the feelings, the
information, the thrill. Standing there, watching a human life being
saved, made whole, it was such a rush. Such an incredible feeling.

At first I thought I wanted that rush all the time. I wanted to be a
practicing doctor, that first year. I wanted to have it all. General
practice--the whole nine yards. It enticed me.

No, that's wrong. *He* enticed me. He sold me that dream, all of
it. Oh, John, if you're listening, whisper a little prayer in the
Virgin's ear for me.

It's been so long since I've talked to you, but you're with me
every day.

I remember that first day of class. I'd heard _all_ the stories.
My roommate threw up her hands in dismay when we found that we
both had the grand misfortune of getting you for ethics. She
bemoaned how we could have ever been that unlucky. The other
ethics prof was young, looked like a surfer, wore jeans to class.
He _had_ to better than some old geezer who wore suits under his
lab coat and made his class write, verbatim, the Hippocratic Oath
on the first day.

You loved your image as a slave driver. Don't try and kid me,
John, you reveled in it. It was after class, in the student's lounge,
that you let that facade drop a bit and let us see you as you really
were.

I couldn't believe you almost flunked me in that class. I was
terrified of you. And when I kept getting D after F after D, I was
ready to transfer back to physics. I mean, if I couldn't pass
'ethics'--the Religion class of med school--a BIRD course for
Christ's sake--well, I was sunk. And facing Ahab! My God, I didn't
even want to think of that. He'd already put a second mortgage on
the house to foot the bill for graduate school. He'd have me
swinging from a yardarm--if he had to put the damned thing on the
boat himself!

It was just a game. You were drawing me in that spider's web of
yours. You admitted that, later. I questioned you, after class. My
answers on the test were almost identical to the guy sitting in front
of me--the guy with a nice shiny 'A' on the top of his blue book.
But my blue book was adorned with a rather dismal 'C-', which
was the highest grade I'd attained at that point with you. All I
could think about was the fact that I was a 'she' and he was a 'he'
and you were sticking it to me, just like a whole lot of other male
medical school professors. Why aren't there more women in medicine?
Gee, I don't know. Maybe because they all get flunked out of med
school within the first year for no good reason.

Mulder would have been proud of my inherent paranoia. But even
prouder when I confronted you. You sat me down and went over the
test with me. I was tired; I'd had a clinical that day and a lab
report and to be honest, I'd let studying for the exam slide a
little. I almost gave up; I still hadn't gotten the message.

"Look, Irish--I didn't want the facts," you said in that clear baritone
voice. "I wanted the feelings. What is there in you that would
make you abide by these dictates? And don't give me that mortal
sin stuff, either." When I looked at it that way, I realized that
I'd memorized and regurgitated the information without thought.
I hadn't considered the information as it applied to me. That's when
it happened. That's when I saw what you were trying tell me. It hit
me like a ton of bricks when it was almost too late. I felt
incredibly stupid.

But you thought it was wonderful. You admitted that you saw a
spark in me that you didn't see in the others. The other students,
they'd be excellent specialists. Some of them would go into
research; at least that's what you hoped. But in me, you saw
something that would go further. You told me you expected great
things of me. Things that would benefit the human race. And
that's when you tried to recruit me.

You wanted me in General Practice. Why, of all the levels of
medicine, you wanted me on the bottom rung, I'll never know. But
to you, it wasn't the bottom. To you, it was the top. To practice
medicine in _all_ its fields, obstectrics to gerentology and
everything in between. . . you saw it as the pinnacle of
our profession.

I admired you so much. You'd been in general practice for 25
years before teaching. You would have been in GP for another 25
if the arthritis hadn't taken over and made it painful for you just
to open a door. You suffered so much, John, every day. Why? Why
in God's name did you suffer so much? The pain, the horror just
kept piling up on you. Til one day, it was over.

I was actually going along with that dream you sold me until you
left. When I watched you die, John, I knew I could never really buy
into that dream. It came at too high a price.

I hated to watch you suffer. I was in my internship by that time.
I heard about the diagnosis from one of the residents. Certainly
you never would have told me. You had lymphoma--incurable. You
went fast, they said--but I didn't see it that way. It took months,
John. Weeks upon weeks of going into that little room at the
nursing home, seeing the pain in your eyes. "Say a prayer to the
Virgin for me, Irish," you used to say to me. That a Quaker would
have such belief in the Blessed Mother always amazed me. You
told me that you figured you had better chances with a woman than
a man--she might just give you a hand if you asked.

And even at the end, you were teaching. You tried to help me learn
how to face death, how to help a patient relinquish his hold on life.
I couldn't do that, John. You knew, even then, that it was a fear of
mine. Yes, a fear. It's hard to admit the emotion, even here, where
I can admit anything and still be safe. I saw the way you tried to
get me to face that demon. "Take this to the Cancer ward for me,
Irish,"--always a book, or a copy of an article. You knew
_everyone_ on that ward, they were all your friends. And since you
couldn't get there yourself--you sent me. You thought I'd put a
face on that demon and defeat him.

But it didn't work, John. See, it was a short elevator ride down to
the morgue. Somehow I'd find myself there. Nobody ever questions
it when someone cries in a morgue. It's so common that no one
notices. And there was a peace there; those souls were at rest.
In a way, you did teach me to face death. Soon I found that I was
comfortable in the morgue. I belonged there. I did my residency
in the morgue. By then, I'd made my decision. You were gone, and
I couldn't stand to see anyone else go through that kind of pain.

By the time I see people, John, the pain is gone. It's over. It's done.

I don't want to go through this! I don't want the pity, I don't want
the guilt. I don't want to tell people. I don't want to tell Mom
that she could lose another one of her children. It almost killed her
to lose Missy so soon after she lost Ahab. Now, if something happened
to me--

And God, I don't want to tell Mulder. He won't understand. He'll
brush it aside. No, that's not fair. I was angry at him because I
thought he was brushing me off after Allentown. Later, when I
thought about it, I realized that he was doing no more than I had
done. He didn't want it to be true, so he treated it as if it weren't.
It's easy enough. Disregard it and maybe it will go away. And to
be perfectly honest, it's exactly what I wanted. It's what I did, too.
I didn't go in for tests, I didn't go to my doctor; I just went along,
ignoring it. Hoping it would go away.

But if it's true, then what? This will kill him, too. I know it.
Everyone he's ever been close to has gone away. I've seen how he
is with his mother now. She's the last china cup--the lone crystal
goblet from a once-perfect set. Fragile. And he's fragile around
her. Every sound she makes, every wince, every sigh is interpreted,
hovered over, distilled and catalogued until he no longer sees her as
a human being; she's not his mother anymore. She's a set of data.
And eventually, when she ceases to be, a big part of him will die
with her.

I don't want that to happen to us. I don't want him to look at me,
afraid that every second might be our last. We'd lose everything.
He'd give up his will and I'd hate him for it. The cancer would
would eat our partnership as surely as it would destroy the cells
of my body.

And I can't stand to think of the guilt he's going to shoulder
because of this. I know the other nightmare. He comes to my
apartment and I'm not there and there's blood on my coffee
table and blood on the windowsill and he can't find me, will
never find me, in that dream.

I never wanted to replace Samantha. And God, I don't want to do
it this way. Never, never this way. He'd stop looking for her
because he'd be too busy trying to avenge me. Then, one day, he
would come to the realization that he would never get either of us
back. And then he'd find his "truth". The last, final proof that
the world really is out to get him, on a cosmic level. That it's
all been a joke that he's played on himself. And one way or another,
it would be the end.

The longer I sit and think of all this, the more determined I become.
I can't let him know. Not until it's too late for either of us to dwell
on it. I have to focus his efforts, while focusing mine. I can take a
page out of your book, John. Mulder faces demons without on a daily
basis--it's the demons within that he keeps locked in a cellar in his
mind and won't even admit to anyone they exist.

I'm not afraid of death. That has no sting. Not after what I've
learned. It's calm and peaceful and very possibly the only thing the
nuns were really right about. I would see Ahab, and you, John, and
I'd be at peace. It's the struggle before that, when my body is
still trying to decide where to go and I'm in torment every second
or oblivious and helpless--that's what I can't face. I don't mind
being dead. I just can't stand the thought of dying.

The thought has crossed my mind, spoken in a analytical voice, that
I could end it all before then. I could have my death, but not the
dying, not what's in store for me. I'm sorry. I can't do that either.
I feel in many ways that it would be worse. While I'm still
breathing, I still have hope.

Hope of what, I don't know. Hope that I can help Mulder finish his
quest. That I can help Mom face all of this. That I can give them
and myself some answers. Hope that I can, in some small way,
avenge myself so that Mulder doesn't try to do it for me.

I refuse to let them succeed, the bastards who took me. I see this
last affront as coming not from my body, but from those men. They're
responsible for this. They commited this crime against me. I swore
an oath to uphold the law, and to protect the people of this country
from men like the ones who did this to me. I can't give up now.
If I don't do everything in my power to stop this, and bring them
to justice, then I would truly fail. I would fail all the women
who have been the victims of these tests. I'd fail to live up to
my oath. I'd fail my partner. I'd fail you, John. And I'd fail
myself.

I can't give up.

I'll have to be careful. I can't let Mulder know what's going on.
I can only hope that his basic nature will keep him oblivious to what
what's happening to those around him. He can read my every mood
sometimes, but not when it's something he doesn't want to see in
the first place. It's sort of like ditching me, just on an emotional
level. He runs and hides by ignoring anything that's wrong. That's
all right. I don't mind, this time. In face, I welcome it.

I'll go to the doctors and try to avoid any debilitating treatment for
as long as possible. I have no doubt I'll be informed that this is
incurable. It's not a question. But I won't stand for any last ditch
efforts on the part of a collegue to drag out a life that can't work,
if I can't do what I need to do. I'll have a fight on my hands in
that case, but it's a fight I know how to wage.

Part of me, a big part of me, wants to deny it all. I have no
empirical evidence, no data that can give me proof. All I have
is the word of man who by all rights should not exist. A man who
would mutilate his own mother to feed a sick, twisted need brought
on by psychosis. Leonard Betts killed two people to protect the
secret of his alleged resurrection. Even if, somehow, he might be able
to tell that I. . . even if he could somehow sense the presence of
cancer, I have no reason to trust his word. He was standing over
me, ready to attack. "I'm sorry. . . but you have something I need. . ."

I had to kill Leonard Betts in self-defence. There is no reason
to believe what he said, and little reason to think that he was
right.

The nose bleed could be coincidence. It's been dry in this
apartment for weeks. I'm almost out of hand lotion because of the
lack of humidity. Hell, I killed my angel wing begonia fast enough
for lack of water. Right now I'm a little shaky, but other than the
nose bleed and the inability to go back to sleep, I don't feel any
different than I did last week, last month, last year. I'm not more
tired, I'm not exhibiting any of the other warning signs. Except
maybe the cough--but there, too, dry air could be the culprit.

Sure, I can live in denial almost as well as Mulder.

But I can't let this go on any longer. Even if I walk into that
doctor's office and he gives me a prescription and tells me to get a
humidifier, I realize this can't wait any longer. I haven't wanted to
face what was done to me. But it's been hanging there like the

proverbial sword over my head, waiting to fall across my neck.
This can't go on. I have to act. I will not be held prisoner
by fear.

I have to face this. I've been running from it for too long
already. Now I'm running out of time.

I won't leave without a fight.

the end.