In the dark alley behind Casey's, Alvin Kurtzweil waited anxiously, scanning the night for any sign of Fox Mulder. When he saw no sign of him, he turned and started back for the door, reaching for the knob. He twisted it and stepped inside, and came up short against a sparely elegant man in a cashmere overcoat, his hands raised in mock surprise and delight to find Kurtzweil there.

"Dr. Kurtzweil, isn't it? Dr Alvin Kurtzweil?"

"Jesus Christ…" Kurtzweil gasped and reached behind him for the door. He glanced around fearfully, trying to edge back outside, but the Well-Manicured Man only smiled.

"You're surprised. But certainly you've been expecting some response to your indiscretion…"

Kurtzweil shook his head furiously. "I didn't tell him anything."

"I'm quite sure that whatever you told Agent Mulder, you have your good reasons," the other man said evenly. "It's a weakness in men our age: the urge to confess." He paused, then added, "I have much to confess myself."

Kurtzweil stared at him, confused by his words and serene tone. Finally he blurted, "What are you doing here? What do you want from me?"

"I'd hoped to try and help you understand. What I'm here to do, is to try and protect my children.

That's all. You and I have but short lives left. I can only hope that the same isn't true for them."

He stood quite calmly and held the door open, as if in invitation. Kurtzweil stood there for a moment, as though considering the other man's words; then suddenly bolted, pushing past him and back into the alley. He ran toward the street, but had gone only a few paces when headlights blinded him. A town car pulled into the alley, accelerating as it roared down the narrow corridor. Kurtzweil stopped, panting, and squinted at the approaching car. He turned to stare with terrified eyes at the man still standing calmly in the doorway.

Fox Mulder barreled through the front door of Casey's, looking around frenziedly for Kurtz-weil. The bar was crowded, more people than he'd ever seen there. He elbowed past them, pausing to get his bearings and peer vainly through the dim room. There was no sign of Kurtzweil anywhere. Mulder sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and hurriedly made his way to the back to the doctor's usual booth.

It was empty. Mulder sucked his breath in, fighting real panic. He turned and ran to the dank hallway where the bathrooms were, edg-ing by a knot of laughing women, and burst out into the alley.

"Shit," he whispered.

A town car sat idling on the cobblestone pavement. At its rear, a tall, beautifully dressed man and his uniformed driver were arranging something in the car's trunk. As Mulder stared, they closed the trunk.

The elegant man looked up, and said in greeting, "Mr. Mulder."

Mulder's hands clenched. "What happened to Kurtzweil?"

The Well-Manicured Man shrugged off-handedly. "He's come and gone."

He started toward Mulder and Mulder backed away, still breathing hard. "Where's Scully?"

The Well-Manicured Man stopped a few feet in front of him. He took in Mulder's shoes, the too-short trousers and ill-fitting jacket bor-rowed from Byers. After a moment he looked up and said, "I have answers for you."

"Is she alive?"

"Yes." The Well-Manicured Man hesitated, then said, "I'm quite prepared to tell you every-thing, though there isn't much you haven't already guessed."

Mulder's throat felt tight. "About the con-spiracy?"

"I think of it as an agreement," the other man said lightly. "A word your father liked to use."

Mulder took a step toward him. "I want to know where Scully is."

The Well-Manicured Man nodded. Mulder tensed as he reached into his jacket pocket, and removed a thin envelope of dark-green felt. The Well-Manicured Man weighed it in his palm, then said, "The location of Agent Scully. And the means to save her life. Please—"

He gestured toward the car, where the driver stood holding the back door open. Mulder hesitated, then stepped toward it. He moved past the Well-Manicured Man and slid into the seat. The older man got in after him and closed the door. He motioned at the driver, and the town car pulled away.

Mulder sat bolt upright, looking guardedly from the man beside him to the driver, who returned his gaze in the rearview mirror. Without a word, the Well-Manicured Man handed Mulder the small felt envelope.

"What is it?" Mulder asked.

"A weak vaccine against the virus Agent Scully has been infected with. It must be administered within ninety-six hours."

Mulder stared at him, then at the felt enve-lope in his hand. "You're lying."

"No." The Well-Manicured Man stared broodingly out the tinted window. "Though I have no way to prove otherwise. The virus is extraterrestrial. We know very little about it, except that it is the original inhabitant of this planet."

Mulder looked dubious. "A virus?'

"A simple, unstoppable life form. What is a virus, but a colonizing force that cannot be defeated?

Living in a cave underground, until it mutates. And attacks."

"This is what you've been trying to con-ceal?" Mulder no longer tried to keep the con-tempt from his voice. "A disease?"

"No!" exploded the Well-Manicured Man. "For god's sake, you've got it all backward—

"AIDS, the Ebola virus—on an evolution-ary scale, they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs."

Mulder scowled. "What do you mean, 'walked'?"

"Your aliens, Agent Mulder. Your little green men—they arrived here millions of years ago. Those that didn't leave have been lying dormant underground since the last Ice Age, in the form of an evolved pathogen. Just waiting to be reconstituted when the alien race returns to colonize the planet. And using us as hosts. Against this we have no defense. Nothing but a weak vaccine…"

He paused and stared pointedly at Mulder, who finally looked shaken. "Do you see why it was kept secret, Agent Mulder? Why even the best men—men like your father—could not let the truth be known?

Until Dallas, we believed the virus would simply control us. That mass infection would make us a slave race."

"That's why you bombed the building," said Mulder slowly. "The infected firemen… the boy…"

The Well-Manicured Man nodded grimly. "Imagine our surprise when they began to ges-tate. My group has been working cooperatively with the alien colonists, facilitating programs like the one you saw.

To gain access to the virus, in hope that we might secretly develop a cure."

"To save yourselves," broke in Mulder.

The Well-Manicured Man shrugged. "When war is futile, victory consists of merely staying alive.

Survival is the ultimate ideology." He hesitated, then gave Mulder a cool smile. "Your father wisely refused to believe this."

"My father sacrificed my sister!" cried Mulder angrily. "He let them take Samantha—"

"No." For a moment the Well-Manicured Man looked almost sorrowful. "Without a vac-cination, the only true survivors of the viral holocaust would be those immune to it: human/alien clones. He aUowed your sister to be abducted, to be taken to a cloning program. For one reason."

"So she'd survive," Mulder breathed in sud-den understanding. "As a genetic hybrid…"

The Well-Manicured Man nodded. "Your father chose hope over selfishness. Hope in the only future he had: his children. His hope for you, Agent Mulder, was that you would uncover the truth about the Project. That you would do everything you could to stop it—-