From drjudd@rainbow.net.au Fri Aug 30 08:49:16 1996 OFFSPRING DESLEA R. JUDD drjudd@rainbow.net.au Copyright 1996 DISCLAIMER This book is based on The X Files, a creation of Chris Carter owned by him, Twentieth Century Fox, and Ten-Thirteen Productions. Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Walter Skinner, and a number of lesser characters including Bill Mulder, Mrs Mulder, Samantha Mulder and her clones, Maggie Scully, Melissa Scully, Captain Scully, Sharon Skinner, Kimberly Cooke, the Cigarette Smoking (Cancer) Man, the Well Manicured Man and his offsider, Frohike, Quiqueg, Gautier, Jean Gautier, Ellen, and Alex Krycek remain the intellectual property of those parties. A number of other characters are the author's creation and are copyright, and may not be used without her written permission. These include but are not limited to Dr Karen Koettig, Agent Grbevski, Melissa Samantha Scully, Grace Skinner, Clone 1 (Cynthia), Clone 3 (Carolyn), Clone 4 (Catherine), Dr Sam Fieldman, Dr Paul Sturrock, Dr Marion Pieterse, Wendy Tomiris, Serena Ingleburn, Amarette, Dr Jillian Maitz, Hallie, and Emily Trent. Any queries concerning ownership of minor characters not mentioned here should be directed to the author. (See Pt 1 for complete spoiler, content, and comments info). A few spoilers from Pilot, Duane Barry, Ascension, One Breath, Colony, Endgame, Anasazi, Blessing Way, Paper Clip, Nisei, 7.31, Piper Maru, Apocrypha, and Avatar. I've rated this book R just to be on the safe side, but I think it's more PG-13, in truth. There's some low-level sex (three scenes, more emotional than anatomical), low-level bad language, low-level violence, and that's about all. Comments, good and bad, are welcome; but make sure they're constructive, please! My e-mail is drjudd@rainbow.net.au, but don't worry if you see something else in your "reply" header like magna.com, because Rainbow.Net shares a server with another ISP called MagnaData. And if you think my work's worth stealing, I'm flattered; but don't even think about it. Archivists, feel free to add this to your collections; but be sure to let me know. OFFSPRING BY DESLEA R. JUDD (10/18) FIVE 3170 West 53 Rd, #35 Annapolis, Maryland January 19, 1997 In the end, she broke quite suddenly. They were in the kitchen of her apartment, and Skinner insisted that he get the coffee. It wasn't only solicitude. He feared she would burn herself, she was shaking that badly. But Scully kicked up the most infuriating fuss, accusing him of patronising her and trying to be big and strong instead of expressing how <> was feeling. (The pot calling the kettle black, Skinner reflected). She became furious, then overwrought, then suddenly collapsed on the floor in floods of tears, her arms crossed over her head. Alarmed but not surprised, Skinner dropped at her side and cradled her there, until later, much later, she quietened, making little breathless hitching noises every now and then. Then their lips met, and suddenly they were comforting each other in the only way they could, losing themselves and their pain in one another. They moved to her bedroom and undressed one another, and even when, tenderly, he entered her, even when they came together, still they held each other with their eyes, lost in one another's agony. When they were spent, they lay with their hands linked over the swelling in her stomach. Then there were more tears, his; and he wept in that unashamed way that a man does only with his lover in the bed that they share. Deeply moved, Dana held him and kissed away his tears; and he was comforted. Finally, they fell into a fitful sleep, their embrace tightly protective. Skinner was woken by a rattling outside Dana's apartment. There was the sound of a key in the lock, the turning of tumblers. He extricated himself from Dana, quickly pulled on his trousers and threw his shirt on. Not bothering to button it, he drew his weapon, went to the living room, and trained it on the doorway just as the door swung soundlessly open. "Federal agent. Drop your weapon and place your hands behind your head," he demanded as the shadow of a man presented itself. Mulder complied, stepping into the light. Skinner lowered the gun. "Don't you ever announce yourself?" he demanded. "Or knock?" "Only at your office, Sir," Mulder said wryly, lowering his hands. "And usually not then, either." He put the gun down on the coffee table and turned away to button his shirt, suddenly self-conscious. "What are you doing here?" he asked, turning back to face him. To his surprise, Mulder was red-faced. "When neither you nor Agent Scully returned to the office, Sir, I became worried. I thought you'd had bad news. I didn't think - I mean, I didn't realise-" he broke off, discomfort showing in his expression. "I didn't mean to intrude," he apologised softly. Skinner held up a hand, dismissing this, frowning. "Unfortunately, Agent Mulder, you were right. The news is bad - very bad." He regarded him for a moment. "You'd better sit down." Scully woke to voices in her living room. She sat bolt upright for a second, but then she recognised them as Skinner's and Mulder's. She lay back down for a few minutes, collecting her thoughts. She thought of the baby moving within her, and of her sister, and even of her father. <> But she didn't need his message from beyond to know - indeed, once she had rejected a psychic man's offer to give it to her. She already knew: he was her father. <> she could imagine him saying. <> Even as an adult, she had never really understood that. She knew that it was important to do what was right, somehow; but she hadn't understood that you could never exert any control over the actions of others, whatever you did - not really. If you wanted things to be right, you had to do what was right yourself and hope that it was enough. She understood now. And now she committed herself, again, to doing whatever she had to do to protect this child with whom she had been entrusted. Because that was what was right; and it was the only thing in this situation that she knew was right. Scully dressed in a pair of track pants and a loose shirt. She didn't have that many clothes that really fitted her anymore. She didn't need them: she was always swathed in her trenchcoat at work. If her belly strained against her trousers, it didn't really matter, because no-one saw them. Her weekends were spent quietly at home; she had stopped seeing her family. Not that she mistrusted or feared them; she simply hadn't thought it a good idea for them to know she was pregnant until she was sure her baby hadn't been harmed by the accident at Kuringai. And until she knew exactly what this child she was carrying was, perhaps that was just as well. She emerged from her bedroom. Mulder and Skinner looked up, Mulder with some suprise. She was puzzled, then realised: Except for her sonogram, when she had been swaddled in a surgical gown and sheet, Mulder had never seen her this way, her pregnancy showing. "You filled him in?" she asked Skinner. Skinner nodded; then, respectful of the bond they shared, he rose and went to the kitchen. Mulder rose also and took her hands. "I'm sorry, Scully. For how I acted and for what you've learned." He stepped forward and embraced her, warmly. She held him tightly for a long moment, then smiled at him gently and pulled away. "How are you?" he asked gently as they sat. She gave a twisted little smile. "I'm coping, I guess. I wasn't doing so well earlier. I felt kind of frozen - emotionally, I mean; but physically, too. I was so <> I felt- I don't know, paralysed, somehow." He bowed his head, ashamed. "And I was too busy playing ghostbuster to be there. I'm sorry, Scully. You deserve better than the way I treated you." Scully took his hand. "Don't, Mulder. It's over. You're here now. And I don't think anyone could have done anything for me before. It was something I had to break through myself. Walter was here, but even he couldn't do very much except stay with me through it." She paused. "Let it go." Skinner emerged with coffee, and the three of them sat silently for a time, lost in thought. Suddenly, he asked, "Did you check?" Scully looked at him, puzzled, a moment; but then her expression cleared. "The laproscopy? Yes, there's a scar." She paused. "The only thing I don't understand is why it's there. With IVF, they normally use a tube intravaginally into the uterus. Laparoscopy is more often used to collect ova. It doesn't make sense, because the ova used weren't mine." Mulder spoke up. "I went through this with a cousin of mine a few years ago. They used a program called GIFT. I don't know what it stands for. But they surgically implanted ova and sperm into the fallopian tubes to fertilise naturally." "Gamente Intra Fallopian Transfer," Scully expounded. "It's more invasive in one sense, but there's a higher success rate than with IVF. It's also ethically more acceptable because there's no question of freezing complete embryos, and no question of destroying lives once a decision has been made to thaw the cells unused - not that the people who took me seem too concerned about ethics," she added bitterly. "It does make more sense that way, medically speaking," she conceded, "but I stand by what I said before. It must have been IVF - complete embryos. Implanting unfertilised ova - even if you implant sperm too - is just too risky for the purposes these people have in mind. What was to stop me from conceiving with a man with whom I was involved - as in fact was the case?" Skinner spoke slowly, thinking it through. "I'm not so sure about that, Dana. For one thing, they had no way of anticipating that you would be rescued. Chances are they would have held you until they had ascertained the success of the experiment - maybe even until the child was born, if it had been." "There's something else," Mulder said. "They'd have done their homework. You haven't been involved with anyone in years - hell, I don't think you've even dated in years, have you?" She shook her head. "That's my fault, dragging you into my messes and scrapes. They couldn't have predicted you two getting together in the aftermath. And," he added, "it means you haven't been on the Pill, I suppose? Because that would cause problems with you getting pregnant." Scully nodded slowly. "Yes, that's true...I suppose that makes sense." "And maybe that's why you were chosen for the project," Skinner pointed out. "But <> What's it all for?" Mulder answered. "I don't want to hit a nerve here, but I think it's part of the experiments to create an alien-human hybrid." Scully stifled a groan. "But why?" Skinner repeated. "To what purpose?" Scully put forward her own theory. "Whatever it is, I think it's to do with bio warfare. I think it's an attempt to alter immune and other base responses in order to provide an artiliary soldiered by immunes in the event of germ war - not to mention to provide the basis of human survival, in some form, were such an event to happen." "I think that's part of it," Mulder agreed, "but I'd apply the same to nuclear warfare. The question of radiation exposure, all of that." Scully looked at him dubiously. "Not the radiation thing again?" Mulder grinned, half annoyed, half amused. "Scully, do you remember those French seamen on the salvage vessel?" Scully nodded. "How could I forget?" Several months previously, a French vessel on a mysterious salvage mission had been found, all but one of its occupants afflicted with severe radiation sickness. Those suffering had died within days. The remaining seaman, a man named Gautier, had shown no signs of illness; but had acted strangely in subsequent days. Eventually, Mulder had found him, passed out; and when he came to, he had no recollection of any of the events leading up to their rescue. His wife, Jean, had suffered the same fate, making her way to Hong Kong before being found similarly collapsed. Corrupt Agent Krycek had manifested similar symptoms before disappearing. Mulder had formed the opinion that they had been hosts to an alien lifeform, and that the salvage mission had been in the process of retrieving a UFO with radioactive qualities. Now, Mulder said cautiously, "I know what you think of my theories on that case; but isn't it possible that whatever Gautier was host to protected him from the effects of the radiation to which he was exposed?" Scully wasn't won that easily. "Go on," she said dubiously. "Presumably, because whatever Gautier was host to was capable of rendering radiation benign?" Scully thought a moment. "Not precisely. It doesn't become benign, as such. The chain of reactions stops at some point - the radioactive substance stabilises. And radiation isn't an entity in the sense that a virus or bacteria is. You can't have an immune response, per se. It's a process. It breaks down cells. Theoretically, his cells could have self-repaired. This doesn't happen in practice because one, the damage is too great to be repaired, and two, the self-repair mechanism itself is also broken down and either doesn't work or repairs in a way which is faulty. And with gamma radiation, there's never a chance anyway because normally the substance - the cell, say - never completely restabilises." "For the sake of argument, let's say these creatures have some sort of properties which interrupt and stabilise the process, and enable their cells to self-repair - perhaps an ability which evolved because they live in an environment of high radioactivity. As, apparently, do those who are hosts to those creatures - at least while they are hosts. As," he said pointedly, "do you." "Mulder, I-" Disbelief already showed in her expression. Skinner spoke up. "Dana, you were exposed to over one thousand rem of radiation. You should have been dead inside of six hours. Can you explain that?" Scully turned to Skinner, stunned. "You believe this?" "I want to believe that there is an explanation for all this. That it isn't just some cosmic fluke. I want to believe that there is a reason for this, and that there are people who did this to you, and that we can find them and make them pay." Scully turned to Mulder. "Mulder, it's true that foetal hormones have been found in minute levels in the mother's system - hormones which have been overridden by the mother's cells as foreign. But that's the only known crossing of foetal characteristics of any kind into the mother. For this kind of cell-repair, she would need appropriate enzymes in enormous quantities - quantities far greater than those which could originate in the foetus, much less cross into the mother. And anyway, even if that did explain my recovery, it doesn't explain why Gautier showed no symptoms in the first place." "Gautier was host, presumably, to a mature, fully-formed, completely alien lifeform. The enzyme concentration would be greater and stronger. Maybe his cells repaired almost instantly, so that he showed no effects. You, on the other hand, are host to a partly-formed, immature lifeform which is only partly alien and therefore would not have the strength to pre-empt an attack, but which with a greater time frame could still induce a recovery." "Mulder, there's been nothing documented-" "Scully, of course there isn't! They're completely different creatures - your DNA testing showed that. You can't expect the normal rules to apply!" Scully became angry. "Isn't it convenient that nothing you work on ever has to make sense? 'It's alien, so it doesn't have to.' What a cop-out," she said disgustedly. "You know that's not true. I think there probably is a certain logic to all of this, just as there is in this reality. But I also think that what we presuppose in this world we can't necessarily presuppose in another. That's all." Scully felt ashamed. She didn't agree with him, but he was right - she was being unfair. She looked away a moment. Finally, she said, her tone more even, "All right. Let's take as our assumption that some sort of experimentation has taken place, involving GIFT, with a view to creating a life form with certain coping mechanisms relevant to defense. As to the details of the source of those properties, let's agree to differ for now - it doesn't make that much difference for the immediate moment, anyway. How do we go about investigating further?" "I think you were on the right track asking for a DNA breakdown on the genetic- on the ovum," Skinner corrected. A look of pain flitted across Scully's face. "You mean on the genetic mother." Skinner bowed his head. "I'm sorry." There was an uncomfortable pause; until finally, Mulder could no longer stand it. He broke it. "You think we should run searches against the databases?" he asked, dubiously. "It's something," Scully said. "But Scully, we're probably talking another abductee here, not a criminal. She may not have a record, and if she does, it's likely as not to be something that doesn't involve leaving bodily fluids at a crime scene - like tax evasion. So unless she's from Virginia," Mulder said, referring to that state's practice of taking fluid samples from all criminals, "you won't find her." Skinner spoke up. "Look, it's a long shot. But frankly, Mulder, it's the only clue we have." "I still think we'd be better going to the source of it all...the railroad. They had to be taking you somewhere - a holding facility, labs, something." "That's your agenda talking, Mulder," Scully said pointedly. "That railroad branches off everywhere, and as soon as my absence was detected, they stopped the train and went back, isn't that right? Frohike got nothing but a few hundred extra miles on his car for his trouble. The railroad is bigger than our resources right now. The DNA search is manageable. It might not help, but it's not going to do any harm." Mulder regarded them both. "All right," he said finally. "Let's do it." Coming In Part 11: A Mysterious E-Mail/Who Is S-A-M?/The Mother Of Scully's Child -- _______________________________________ | | |Deslea R. Judd (drjudd@rainbow.net.au) | |"The Owls Are Not What They Seem" | | - The Log Lady, Twin Peaks) | |_______________________________________|