Extreme Possibilities
(Part One)
by Annie Reed
(FancyKatz@aol.com)

*  *  *

Historian's note:  This story takes place early in the second season of
X Files following the episode "Little Green Men."  


*  *  *

Disclaimer:  All characters are the property of Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen
Productions, and Fox Broadcasting. No infringement of copyright is intended.
This is a work of fanfiction and is not for profit. Unaltered copies may be
freely distributed as long as no money is received in return and this
disclaimer is included on the copies. Whew... hope I made everyone happy
there!

Author's note: I would like to thank Rhoda and Melissa for continuously
cracking the creative whip at me to get this story done, and I also want to
thank Cheryl, my guardian worrywart, for her patience.

*  *  * 
    
    
    Darkness.... he was surrounded by darkness.  Floating, drifting
  aimlessly in a pool of absolute black.
    He slowly became aware that it wasn't really black. Rather, it was the
  total absence of light, absence of anything. He might as well have been
  alone in the universe, been an entire universe in and of himself, alone
  in the unending vacuum of space.
    How long he had been like this he could not tell. He had no way to
  gauge the passage of time, and found time had lost its meaning for him.
  Fragments of memory came to him now and then, reminding him that his
  existence had not always been like this. But the memories were fleeting,
  and he didn't try to hold on to them. The images, the smells, colors,
  tastes, were so foreign that they frightened him, and if he could have,
  he would have hid from them.
    One memory frightened him more than the rest. Flashes of emotion, of
  rage... images of violence...{{blood?}}... of voices in his
  {{head?}}... crowding out all rational thought... of a brilliant flash
  of {{light?}} and a painful transition from one place to {{here?}}.
  He tried to whimper, but he had no mouth to make the sound. He tried to
  shut out the voices, but they seemed to fill the darkness around him and
  he could not silence them. One voice raised above the others, insistent,
  refusing to be silent, commanding his attention. He screamed in silent
  anguish, but the voice would not stop.
    Movement... there was movement in the darkness. He felt it spin around
  him, drawing him into a vortex that threatened to tear his awareness
  into shreds so small that not even the tiniest piece of himself would
  remain. Terrified, he tried to resist even as he was pulled deeper into
  the maelstrom. And at the bottom of the vortex was the voice, and the
  voice told him what he must do.....
    
*   *   *


Quantico, Virginia
10:15 p.m.
  
  Dana Scully leaned back in her chair with a sigh. She took off her
reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. It was late, she was
getting a nasty headache, her back hurt, her feet hurt, and she knew she
really should go home. But she still had two more exams to grade before
her 10:00 a.m. Forensic Pathology class tomorrow morning, and damn if
she was going to leave before she was done. 
  She sat with her eyes closed, and in her mind she heard Fox Mulder's
voice.... "Scully, you're the only person I know who's more stubborn than
I am..." God, she missed him.
  And she worried about him. Skinner had him stuck on wiretap detail....
boring for even a fresh from the academy agent, it was hell for Mulder. 
  Dana felt a bright spot of anger burn inside at the thought of Mulder
wasting his talents on such a no brainer. It was Skinner's way of
punishing him, of course... Mulder and Skinner got along like oil and
vinegar, each rubbing the other the wrong way. Unfortunately for Mulder,
Skinner was his superior. 'In title only,' Dana thought angrily.  
  Once Dana Scully might have automatically looked up to someone like
Skinner -- someone who had started out as a by the book agent and had
worked himself up into the hierarchy of the Bureau by his attention to 
detail and his meticulous adherence to the Bureau's rules and regulations.
But those days were long gone. Dana was older and wiser now, courtesy of
the real-life education she had received during her partnership with
Mulder on the X Files. The school of hard knocks, as her mother would
have put it.
  At first Dana had assumed that closing the X Files was more of
Skinner's punishment for both herself and Mulder for continuously
breaking the rules, but now she wasn't so sure. Skinner had let slip
to Mulder that the decision might not have been his to make. But that
didn't stop Skinner from splitting them up and sticking Mulder in that
hellhole of an assignment.
  Dana felt something tighten painfully in her chest as she remembered
Mulder sitting alone in that small room, headphones slung around his
neck, pitching sunflower seeds into an empty coffee cup in an attempt
to alleviate the boredom. He looked so defeated, it broke her heart.
But he wouldn't want her pity, so she shunted those feelings aside and
concentrated instead on the small flame that burned inside her.
  Of the two of them, she had gotten the better end of the deal in the
break up of their partnership. Return to her teaching post at Quantico
should have been heaven for her, but it wasn't. She missed the excitement
of working an actual case, of chasing down clues, interviewing witnesses,
of arguing with Mulder over one of his outrageous leaps in logic based
on faith and intuition instead of solid evidence. Damn, there it was again.
The feeling that she had left the best part of herself sitting listening
to endless babble concerning the finer points of a lap dance as opposed to
a table dance.  This endless reverie wasn't getting her anywhere, and it
sure wasn't getting these exams graded.
  She put her glasses back on and turned to the next test. Arvin Mendelton
may have come to the Bureau with glowing recommendations and high scores
on his medical boards, but she wasn't sure he had what it took to be a top
notch forensic pathologist. Oh, his answers were always correct and
concise, but she just didn't sense the inquisitiveness she felt was
necessary to do the job properly. Mendelton was not someone who would look
beyond the obvious, rational answers to find a reason for the otherwise
unexplainable. No, Mendelton was definitely not open to extreme
possibilities, Dana thought as a small smile played at the corners of her
mouth. The smile got bigger as she thought how Mendelton might have reacted
to someone like Eugene Tooms. Explain that one, sucker, she thought as she
started to write her comments to his first essay answer.
  She was deep into thought when the inside line on her phone rang. Dana
had given the number to Mulder so he could reach her on the off chance her
cellular battery ever died, but he had only used it sparingly. The Bureau
routinely monitored and recorded phone conversations, even at Quantico,
so it was the not preferred way for Mulder to communicate with her. Not
that cellular calls couldn't be intercepted and recorded -- it just took
more effort. Now that she and Mulder were comfortably back in their
assigned sections, wrists firmly slapped after their escapade to
Puerto Rico, Dana had assumed that the Bureau's surveillance of them had
slackened off some.
  "Scully," she said picking up the line, fully expecting to hear Mulder's
voice. But all she heard was static."Hello, anybody there?" she asked.
She was only greeted by more static. Great, somebody's dialing wrong
numbers at 10:30 at night, to Quantico no less. She put the phone down
and picked up her red pencil to continue her written lecture to Mendelton.
  She hadn't written more than four words when the line rang again.
"Scully," she said, a little more clipped this time. More static. Terrific,
a prank caller. She hung up the phone. It immediately rang again.
"Listen, buster," she said in her best no nonsense voice, "you've reached
FBI training headquarters. You should know this call is being monitored
and we can trace it back to you." She hung up and sat staring at the
phone, daring it to ring again.
  When it didn't, she picked up her pencil and started in again on
Mendelton's test. She had just fully changed gears into lecture mode when
the phone rang again. This time she just stared at it. 'Pick it up, Dana,'
she told herself. 'Keep the creep on the line so there'll be a trace.'
But for some reason she didn't fully understand, she didn't want to pick
it up. Instead, she packed up the two remaining tests in her briefcase and
left her office. She told herself that she needed a change of scenery or
Mendelton was going to get more than the earful she originally intended for
him, and that wouldn't be fair.  
  In the dark of Scully's office, the only light was the flashing of the
ringing line, strobing insistently in the dark.
  
*   *   *

Quantico, Virginia
8:35 a.m.

  "What do you mean, you have no record of the call?" Dana glared at the
communications clerk.  
  Something about those phone calls last night still bothered Scully. She
knew the Bureau kept detailed records on the use of all telephone lines at
Quantico. Some said the practice dated all the way back to J. Edgar himself
and the heyday of the intelligence/counterintelligence games which went
hand in hand with the cold war. Directors since that time had computerized
the surveillance of the Bureau's training facility. Although no one was
officially advised of the surveillance, the training staff at Quantico all
knew about it, and furthermore, the administration at Quantico knew they
knew. So Scully decided to check out the calls before her first class and
had stopped by the second floor Communications Center.
  "I received four calls on that line last evening between 10:15 and
10:30 p.m. You must have a record of that." Hearing that there was no
record of these calls was not what Scully expected. She was tired --
grading the last two exams after she got home last night had kept her up
until after midnight -- and for some reason she had slept poorly.
Consequently, patience was in short supply this morning.
  "I'm sorry, Agent Scully," the clerk stammered. Being on the receiving
end of Scully's wrath was not the way she would have liked to start her
shift. "The computer shows no activity on that line after 7:30 p.m. last
night."
  Dana remembered that call -- a brief call to her mother to cancel a
dinner the two had planned for the weekend. Dana just didn't feel up to
it -- the house felt so strange without her father there. On top of her
separation from Mulder, Dana didn't think she could handle all the obvious
reminders of her father's death that her parents' house contained.
"Nothing after that time?" she asked.
  "No, ma'am." The clerk, a pleasant young woman named Amanda, was trying
to be helpful, but there just wasn't anything there.
  Thinking back, Dana remembered that she hadn't actually heard anyone on
the line, just static. "Alright. So... can we determine whether it was an
equipment malfunction?"
  "I can't tell from the computer log, but I can put in a request for
maintenance to check it out, if you'd like," the clerk replied.
  "Thank you. I would appreciate that."  
  Scully watched as Amanda keyed in the maintenance request. Amanda paused
briefly as one screen appeared on her terminal. Dana could have sworn she
heard a quick intake of breath before Amanda keyed in the request and
proceeded to the next input area.  
  "Anything wrong?" Scully inquired.
  "Oh.... no," Amanda replied, looking for all the world like someone
trying to regain her composure. "Nothing at all. Just thought I input the
wrong request. Sorry!" Amanda looked at her screen. "You should be all set
now. Maintenance will send someone as soon as they can."
  "Thank you," Scully replied, grabbing her briefcase and heading out
the door.
  Amanda breathed a sigh of relief as the door shut behind Scully.
Something on the maintenance screen had caught her eye, a code she hadn't
seen in some time, and when she remembered what it was, it had startled her.  
She hoped Scully hadn't noticed. As she cleared her terminal for the next
batch of work waiting to be done, she wondered why that certain code would
appear on the phone line of a forensics instructor at Quantico.

*   *   *

Quantico, Virginia
12:20 p.m.

  Scully's morning Forensic Pathology class had gone well. Thursdays were
lab days -- eight eager young pathologists all armed with scalpels, rib
cutters, saws, and other razor sharp implements. Today no one besides the
cadaver had been cut and Scully counted herself lucky. After all, her class
wasn't comprised of physicians who had already been through residency
training. Her students were medical school graduates who had little, if
any, experience practicing medicine in the real world. The first couple of
weeks of lab work had resulted in numerous slit gloves, and in one
instance, four stitches -- luckily not in her own finger.
  Dana was looking forward to a nice, quiet lunch in her office curled up
with a new book. Dana used to be a big Tom Clancy fan and read each massive
book he wrote as soon as it hit the shelves. These days, however, she
wanted something lighter, both in size and content. Finding herself in the
middle of actual government conspiracies had somehow taken away her
appetite for fictional political intrigue. The new book tucked away inside
her briefcase was written by an actor who used to make his living as a
standup comedian before turning to acting, first in the movies and then on
series television. Dana had never seen his show, but the title of the book
had caught her eye when she was browsing for something new to read. She
hoped it was as funny as the dust cover, which had made her laugh out loud
in the store.
  Deep in thought, Dana almost ran headlong into a man just leaving her
office. Startled, she took a step backward before noticing his nametag,
which identified him as Joe Handler, Maintenance Division. 'That was
certainly fast,' she thought to herself.
  "Excuse me, ma'am," Handler said, holding the door open for Scully.
"Just got done lookin' at your phone there." Handler must have been in his
late fifties. His pot belly and thick eyeglasses identified him as a
civilian employee of the Bureau -- clearly someone who didn't have to
pass a yearly physical exam or qualify on the shooting range. He followed
Scully back into her office.
  "Did you find anything?" Dana asked, setting her briefcase down on her
desk. She ignored the persistent rumbling in her stomach. Breakfast was
one of the things she hadn't had time for that morning, and her body was
letting her know it was now past lunchtime as well.
  "Couldn't find a thing wrong with it," Handler replied. "But I'll check
the cable box for this department and the big box downstairs. Never know
when a coupla' little wires get crossed, can cause a whole buncha'
problems." Handler paused for a moment, peering at Scully from behind his
coke bottle lenses. "Sorry I gave you a start there, ma'am."
  Dana realized that she was standing behind her desk, effectively placing
it between herself and Handler. When had 'trust no one' turned into
'suspect everyone,' she wondered, deliberately moving from behind the
desk to walk Mr. Handler to the door. "Sorry," she said. "Guess my mind
was a million miles away. I didn't expect someone to get down here so
quickly just to check out a possible malfunction. Hope they didn't drag
you away from anything too important."
  "Oh, well, you know how it goes," Handler said, reaching the door. "I
just go where I'm told. Have a nice day, ma'am."
  "You'll let me know if you find any problems?" Scully asked the figure
retreating down the hall. Handler waived his hand in response, which
Scully took for a yes.
  Sighing, Scully shut the door and turned back to her desk, retrieving her
lunch from the bottom desk drawer. Peanut butter and jelly -- not too
original there, Dana, she chided herself. She hated grocery shopping and
only went when she ran out of all edible food in her apartment or she had
an attack of the midnight munchies. At least there was an apple in the
sack, too. Something a little healthy.
  Settling in to lunch, Dana opened her book and began to read. The
sandwich was half gone and Dana was well into the second chapter of the
book when her phone rang. Her inside line.

*   *   *

8:30 p.m.

  Dana sat looking at her dinner. She couldn't say she was eating it. What
she was really doing was pushing the food around her plate, like she did
when she was little and didn't want to eat what her mother had fixed. She
knew that never fooled her mom, but she never gave up trying. As an adult,
it had just turned into a habit -- pushing the food around instead of
eating it. Only now it was a sign of stress and frustration, not a sign
that she disliked what was on her plate.
  Giving up, she sighed and took the plate over to her sink. The kitchen
in her apartment was small, but cozy. Dana didn't cook often. Usually she
made a couple of things for herself a few times a week, whenever another
night of take out was not appealing, and being single, she only cooked
what she liked. But tonight she had no appetite. She scraped her dinner
down the garbage disposal, rinsed the plate and put it in the dishwasher.
Then she looked around her apartment for a distraction -- any distraction
-- anything at all that would settle her nerves down.
  'You're being silly,' she scolded herself. 'A couple of wrong numbers,
or a prank at best, and it's got you all shaky.' But those calls had set
her internal radar off, loud and clear, and there had to be some reason.
Something her conscious mind was missing.
  Finding nothing to distract herself, Dana sat down in her favorite chair
and closed her eyes. If she couldn't ignore this, she might as well
concentrate on it, use her investigative skills. The last call, the one at
lunch -- that was the one that really spooked her. Like the others, there
had been no one on the line. Only this time, the static had been replaced
with silence. No, wait -- that wasn't quite right. Thinking back now she
realized the other end of the line wasn't totally silent -- there had been
something there, something in the background, almost too faint to hear.
Music, maybe? Dana tried to concentrate, to remember what she'd heard,
try and make some sense of it, but it eluded her. 
  Blowing out a breath filled with frustration, she leaned back in the
chair, still with her eyes closed, and tried some mental exercises to try
and relieve the stress in her body. 'Start with the toes,' she recited to
herself, relaxing first her toes, then her feet, working up her legs.
She'd made it all the way up to her thighs when her phone rang.
  Getting up to answer the nearest extension, which was on her kitchen
counter, a small shiver ran up Dana's spine. 'No,' she thought, 'it
couldn't be. My number's unlisted.'
  "Hello?" she answered. Silence. No static, no music, no nothing.
Dana slammed the phone down. It rang again immediately.  
  "Hello? Who is this?" Dana demanded angrily. More silence. Dana hung
up and turned her answering machine on. The phone rang again and
obediently, her machine answered for her.
  "You've reached Dana Scully. Please leave a message at the tone." Dana
listened intently, eyes fixed on the phone as if by sheer force of will
she could get it to give her the answers she demanded. Maybe it worked,
because this time she did hear music, faint but still there. But it was
only snatches of a melody, nothing Dana could recognize. She moved closer
to the answering machine, trying to hear the music. She had reached out
to turn up the volume when a bloodcurdling scream issued from her
answering machine's speaker and the line cut off.
  Dana's hand was shaking badly as she fumbled to turn the answering
machine off and eject the tape. She was sure her heart had skipped a beat
sometime during the last few seconds because now it was racing as if to
make up for lost time. She grabbed the tape, her coat and keys and left
the apartment. As she locked her front door, she could swear she heard her
phone ringing.
  
*   *   *
End part one.
