Go, she thought, and closed her eyes. Go, leave, just go…

They left. The freezer's heavy doors slammed shut. Scully sighed, and waited until it was safe to follow.

CHAPTER 7

FORENSICS LABORATORY FBI FIELD OFFICE DALLAS, TEXAS

tftf't/ou're looking for what amounts to a I needle in a haystack." The field agent waved his hand to indicate the room around them, an open space the size of a basketball court. "I'm afraid the explosion was so devas-tating there hasn't been whole lot we've been able to put together just yet."

Mulder had to agree. There were stacks of debris, twisted girders, roped-off areas where forensics experts sat and painstakingly tried to piece together what had been an office, or a kitchen, or a doorway.

It looked like the most tedious job in the world. Mulder stopped and stared at a table covered with what resembled a thousand scattered silvery blobs of solder. He raised an eyebrow, then turned back to the field agent.

"I'm looking for anything out of the ordi-nary. Maybe something from the FEMA offices where the bodies were found."

The field agent nodded, passing Mulder and pointing to another table. "We weren't expecting to find those remains, of course. They went right off to Washington."

Mulder looked away, hoping his frustration and disappointment wouldn't show. "Was there anything in those offices that didn't go to D.C.?"

The field agent gestured at the table. The jumbled contents looked as if they'd been there for months.

There were dusty glass bottles filled with what looked like metal screws and nails. Strewn across the table were a number of brushes of varying shapes and sizes, as well as tweezers, microscopes, and a very large magnifying glass.

"Some bone fragments came up in the sift this morning." The field agent picked up one of the bottles and gazed at its contents. "We thought there'd been another fatality, but then we found out that FEMA had recovered them from an archaeological site out of town."

"Have you examined them?"

"No." The field agent shrugged and replaced the bottle. "Just fossils, as far as we know."

Mulder nodded, when a figure standing in the doorway caught his eye. He lifted his chin very slightly and said, "I'd like this person to take a look, if you don't mind."

At the entrance to the workroom, Scully stood with arms crossed and stared at Mulder. Before he could call out to her, she walked across the room to join them. The field agent acknowledged her with a nod of greeting.

"Let me just see if I can lay my hands on what you're looking for," he said, and headed off into the maze of detritus behind them.

Mulder leaned against the table and gave Scully the once-over, twice. "You said you weren't coming."

"I wasn't planning on it," she said coolly. "Particularly after spending a half hour in cold storage this morning. But I got a better look at the blood and tissue samples I took from the fireman."

Mulder straightened. "What did you find?"

Scully lowered her voice. "Something I couldn't show to anyone else. Not without more information.

And not without causing the kind of attention I'd just as soon avoid right now."

She took a deep breath, and said, "The virus those men were infected with contains a protein code I've never seen before. What it did to them, it did extremely fast. And unlike the AIDS virus or any other aggressive strain, it survives very nicely outside the body."

Mulder's voice was a near whisper. "How was it contracted?"

"That I don't know. But if it's through sim-ple contact or blood to blood, and if it doesn't respond to conventional treatments, it could be a serious health threat."

Mulder started to reply excitedly, but at that moment the field agent reappeared. In his hands he carried a wooden tray holding several cork-topped glass vials. "Like I said, these are fossils," he announced, setting the tray down. "And they weren't near the blast center, so they aren't going to help you much."

"May If Scully waited for the field agent's nod, then picked up the tray. One by one she held the vials up to the light. They held bone frag-ments, the shattered remains of tibia and jaws and teeth. She selected one vial and stepped over to the chair beside a microscope, sat, and very care-fully tapped out a tiny fragment onto the viewing bed. She leaned forward, adjusting the focus until the fossilized sliver came into view.

Almost immediately she looked back up at Mulder. He took in her expression and quickly turned to the field agent. "You said you knew the location of the archaeological site where these were found?"

The agent nodded agreeably. "Show you right on a map," he drawled. "C'mon."

BLACKWOOD, TEXAS

The midday sun beat down upon raw red earth and dead grass, the domed white tents rising like huge, dust-stained eggs amid the unmanned trucks surrounding them. Several large generators gave forth a muted hum, but otherwise the scene was unutterably desolate. And strange.

Within the central tent, things were busier but no less strange. At the edge of an earthen hole, a small bulldozer wrestled with a large Lucite container set into its shovel, maneuver-ing it until it was a few yards from the opening. Monitors and gauges covered every inch of the container's surface, along with oxygen tanks and something resembling a circulating refrig-eration unit. It looked more like the sort of thing you'd find on a lunar landing module than in the Texas flatlands, and that's exactly what it was: a self-contained life-support sys-tem, its interior glazed with a thin, sugary layer of frost.

The bulldozer's engine cut off. Several technicians appeared. They lined up alongside the machine's shovel and lifted off the con-tainer, carrying it gingerly toward the hole. As they did so, a flap at the end of the room opened and Dr. Bronschweig appeared, clad in his Haz-Mat suit, hood unzipped so that it hung across his shoulders. He waved curtly at the technicians and started down the ladder leading into the hole. ,

"I need to have those settings checked and reset," he called, pointing at the gauge-ridden container. "1

need a steady minus two Celsius though the transfer of the body, after I adminis-ter the vaccine. Got that? Minus two."

The technicians nodded. They set the con-tainer down and began checking gauges. Bronschweig pulled his hood on and disap-peared down the hole, bumping against the clear hatch as he went.

Below, in the ice cave, it was dark save for the arctic blue glow coming from the plastic-draped area at one end of the chamber. Refrigeration vents continued to pump freezing air into the dim space. Dr.

Bronschweig moved stiffly across the cave, halting at the entrance to the eerily glowing alcove. With one gloved hand he moved aside the plastic drapery and entered.

Behind him plastic crinkled as the sheeting fell back into place. He stepped over to the gur-ney beneath its rack of monitors. A clear plas-tic bubble covered it, encasing the body of the fireman. Dr.

Bronschweig fished in his pocket and withdrew a syringe and ampule. He reached for a work light, moving it until its steady bright beam fell on the litter, and leaned closer to open the plastic casing. What he saw there made him gasp.

The body looked as though it had exploded. Where the inner organs had been, there was only an empty cavity, as though whatever had been inside had devoured them. The gurney's plastic casing was smeared with crimson and the remains of gnawed bone and tissue.