Title: NIGHTMARES III & IV Author: aka "Jake" Rating: PG-13 (Language) Classification: V Spoilers: Includes references to Patient X, Anasazi, One Son, Requiem and perhaps other mythology episodes. Summary: The Navajo code-talker words for "Among Devils" and "Surrender" are "Jish-Cha" and "Ne-Na-Cha." Some experiences are so unthinkable, one can only pray they are no more than bad dreams. "What would I do if they really came?" -- Fox Mulder in Little Green Men Disclaimer: The characters Fox Mulder, Dana Scully and Cassandra Spender are the property of Chris Carter, FOX and 1013 Productions. No copyright infringement intended. This is for fun, not profit. Author's notes: Nightmares III & IV, sequels to Nightmares I & II, were written in response to readers' requests. You'll find a brief recap of I & II below. If you're interested in reading Nightmares in their entirety first, you can find I & II at my website. NIGHTMARES III & IV By aka "Jake" Previously in Nightmares I & II: Held aboard the Bellefleur spacecraft, Mulder hears the voice of Cassandra Spender: "I've had an unborn fetus taken from me. The fetus was implanted into another woman. She raised him as her son, but he was mine first. The first human/alien hybrid. My husband knew. He knew all their secrets. Don't you see, Mr. Mulder? That baby was you." Later, Mulder is delivered to Scully's apartment, exhausted and starved after months in space. She bathes him, feeds him, makes love to him. She watches over him as he sleeps. NIGHTMARE III: JISH-CHA (AMONG DEVILS) Scully's Apartment September 20, 2000 2:14 AM Mulder appeared to sleep without dreaming, motionless. He lay so still, Scully felt the need to check his pulse and make sure he was actually alive. She found a faint rhythm beating below her fingers, echoing her own heartbeat and she held onto him with relief. The muscles of his arm fluttered beneath her hand, vibrating her skin like fingernails on a chalkboard. She pulled away and watched his flesh shudder. Tremble. Lurch and slide. Shift. His skin turned gray. Hairless. His eyes opened. His features blurred, returned and blurred once more, flowing into a new form. A gray alien Bounty Hunter stared at her from across the bed. "Jesus!" The word punched from her lungs; her heart battered her chest. She scrambled backward, away from the intruder. Her swollen belly slowed her retreat. Unwieldy and vulnerable, she clambered across the mattress but the Bounty Hunter snatched her wrist and halted her escape. His rubbery fingers squeezed into her thin flesh, cut off the flow of blood to her hand and turned her knuckles ashy-white, as skim-milk-pale as her distended abdomen. The alien's storm cloud face flitted and wavered, coalescing his features and transforming his inky-eyed stare once more into Mulder's familiar green gaze: contrite, begging forgiveness, fringed with soft lashes and penitent apologies. And it was now Mulder's warm palm -- not the alien's brutal clutch -- that circled her wrist and anchored her to the bed. "Don't!" Scully demanded. "Don't hide behind his face!" "There's no other way to gain your cooperation. You weren't supposed to see me as I really am. I must have been more tired than I thought, Li-Chi Tse-Gah." "What the hell does that mean? What are you calling me?" With his free hand he combed through her hair before twirling a copper strand around his index finger. "We call you Red Hair." He tugged playfully on the spiraled lock. "Or sometimes Ma-E Atsanh: Fox's Rib. Do you recognize the language?" She dipped her head, a single nod of recollection. "Anasazi. Navajo Code-Talker." "The language of the Bih-Tse-Dih. The Before." "Before what?" She jerked her hair free from his touch. "Before Earth became such a busy place." "Let go of me." He did, surprising her. Blood surged back into her hand and stung her with its prickling pins and needles. "I'm not here to hurt you," he told her, drawing back as if to prove his point, leaving only a ruffled surf of bed-sheets between them. Still naked from their earlier lovemaking, she felt exposed and defenseless. The memory of their brief joining heated her skin and flushed her cheeks with blotchy shame. Angry humiliation singed her hairline. "Why are you here then?" She glanced at her Sig Sauer beside him on the nightstand and bitterly dismissed the tempting weapon. Shooting the Bounty Hunter would not kill him but without a doubt would expose her to the alien's noxious green blood, endangering both her and her unborn baby. "I'm here to guard you." His protective gaze caressed her. So like Mulder. "Watching your back is my job, isn't it, Scully?" She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out his mock concern and reminding herself this man...this thing...wasn't Mulder. "Guard me from what?" she asked from behind closed lids. "You call them Alien Colonists. We call them Altseh-E-Jah-He. First Strikers." "Aren't you one of them?" She risked a glance at him through her lashes. "Not anymore." He smiled Mulder's familiar lop-sided grin and his astonishing resemblance to the missing man hollowed her, emptying an enormous ache from her chest and thrusting it into her throat. The impersonator glimpsed her sorrow as his eyes swam across the watery expression of her face. "Although I am still of their race," he explained. "We are Ne-Tah. Shape Shifters. But even so, for the moment my loyalties are not with the Colonists but with the group you call the Faceless Rebels." "Why?" She glared at him. "They pay more." "You're a hired hit man, a Bounty Hunter." "Yes. Actually, I'm only one of a large group of well-paid mercenaries. And even though we are Ne-Tah, we hunt our own race at the bidding of the foreign Rebels." Scully blinked, confused. "There are two races?" "You must have noticed our differences." He chuckled, the sound resonating beneath his ribs like wine washing against barrel staves, eroding her resolve to hate him. "We Ne-Tah are able to alter our forms to look like you. Ordinarily we are gray-skinned. No hair. Big eyes. You know...you've seen us on the National Enquirer dozens of times. Right next to the hundred pound baby or the Dog-Faced Boy." Eyes lit with humor, the Bounty Hunter was the spitting image of Mulder, a replica so exact Scully ached to touch him. Doubly dangerous, this twin not only resembled Mulder physically, he also acted the part. Nothing like the emotionless shape-shifter who had assumed Mulder's form and accosted her in her hotel room so many years ago. This Bounty Hunter had the practiced capacity to fool her. If he hadn't revealed himself to her, she might never have guessed his true identity, and the realization of her gullibility sliced a swath of horror through her heart. How long would she have blissfully enjoyed the company of this impostor while the real Mulder continued to suffer somewhere else? "The Rebels," he went on, lacing his fingers behind his head and relaxing into the pillows, "they aren't nearly as physically adept as we are." His bare chest, elegant and lean and so exactly like Mulder's, confirmed his boast. Noticing her uncertain stare, he trailed his fingers lazily up and down his ribs, strumming the bones there like strings on a silent guitar, hypnotizing her with the languid, repeated motion. His power to deceive her made him smile and his apparent pleasure brought a swell of tears to her eyes. "To disguise themselves, the Rebels must wear masks. Another important difference between the races is that the Rebels aren't immune to the A-Kha, the Oil. So they mutilate themselves, sealing their bodies against the Oil, and, protected in this way, they hope to overthrow the First Strikers before the invaders manage to enslave the human race and colonize the planet. The Rebels have enjoyed some success, too, but you already know that -- after all, you were there on the bridge over Ruskin Dam in Pennsylvania. And you heard what happened at El Rico Air Force Base -- the termination of the alliance between the Colonists and the Consortium." He let his hand drop to his side, palm up, open and inviting. "Hard to believe we're all genetically brothers and sisters, isn't it? I'm including you in the family tree, by the way. Distant cousins, uncountable times removed -- perhaps not close enough to ask to the family reunion -- but we're relatives nonetheless." A past phone conversation with Mulder tumbled across her memory: **That would mean our progenitors were alien, that our genesis was alien, that we're here because of them, that they put us here. All the mysteries of science, everything we can't understand or can't explain, every human behaviorism -- cosmology, psychology, everything in the X-Files -- it all owes to them. It's from them.** **Mulder, I will not accept that. It is just not possible,** she had argued despite his fatigue and the miles that had separated them. **Well, then, you go ahead and prove me wrong, Scully.** In fact, she had proved him right. Africa showed her Gibson Praise was not an anomaly and that mankind did indeed owe their genesis to extraterrestrials. God was in all likelihood a race of EBEs. "The inactive junk DNA. The fifth and sixth genome," she conceded to this stranger, angry with herself for never granting the truth so quickly to Mulder. "Yes. We Ne-Tah share these genetic remnants with the Faceless Rebels...and with you. Leftovers from our common ancestors. You see we all sprang from the first Ne-Tah." The truth of his words chilled her. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs in an attempt to keep out this gut-churning reality. Her bulging stomach pressed into her thighs causing the gooseflesh on her legs to chafe like sandpaper against the smooth skin of her stretched belly. "Where...where did the original Ne-Tah come from?" she asked, uncertain she really wanted to hear his answer. "Who knows?" He shrugged. "The history's too ancient. I guess you could say 'a galaxy far, far away.'" Again he chuckled and the sound rose from the well of his chest, unknitting her bones. "More recently -- about four billion years ago, give or take a millennium or two -- the Ne-Tah visited Earth and sprinkled a little seasoning into the Primordial Soup. Since a watched pot never boils, our progenitors waited a few billion years before checking back. When they did, they weren't entirely satisfied with the soup du jour, so they altered the recipe. That was about 440 million years ago -- what you call your First Extinction. Well, you know what they say about too many chefs in the kitchen. Seems it took a few more extinctions to get things right. By that time, the Ne-Tah had evolved into two distinctly different races -- the Rebels being one. Time and distance caused the Rebel race to lose their ability to shape shift. They also lost their immunity to the Oil. However, they maintained their talent to foresee future events. A skill we lost. Too bad. Such proficiency comes in handy during wartime." "Last year Mulder was able to predict actions, see briefly into the future." "Yes." "That's why you took him?" "Yes. The Rebels don't want him to fall into the hands of the Colonists. If the Colonists gain back the ability to see into the future via Fox Mulder's genetic gift, imagine how powerful they'll become. With both the Oil's deadly virus *and* recovered omnipotence, the Colonists will become virtually invincible." "Where is Mulder now? I have to see him." "You can't go to him." "Why?" "It's not safe." "I don't care." "You don't understand. It's not safe for *him*." Mulder's look-alike leaned toward her. She flinched when he reached behind her neck and tapped the small scar marking her nape. "Your chip," he explained, the sympathy in his voice sounding real, "it's a homing device, among other things. The Colonists always know where you are." "So what? So what if they find him through me? Is he really any better off with the Rebels?" Again the Mulder-double shrugged. She squinted at him. "You said you were sent here to guard me. Why? If the Colonists already know where I am, how can you keep me safe?" she demanded. He looked at the mound of her belly, visible behind her drawn up knees. "I'm here to guard them." "Them?" "Your babies. You're pregnant with twins." "No." She shook her head. "The ultrasound showed only one baby." "There are two. And they are not what you think they are." Strength evaporated from her arms; she lost her grip on her knees. "I'm carrying Mulder's son," she insisted although suddenly unsure. "The PCR showed this baby is undeniably his." "The boy is his," he assured her. "We call his child Tse-Le, Small Pup. He's the one the Colonists will try to abduct because he carries his father's special abilities in his tiny genes. If they can't have the father, they'll settle for the son. But Li-Chi...Scully..." genuine sorrow appeared to rut his brow, "You carry a second child. A girl. Eh-Do. It means Also." "No." "Yes. I'm afraid Ma-E...uh, Fox, is not your daughter's father." Scully's eyes widened with dread. "Who then?" Not meeting her frightened stare, Mulder's look-alike plucked at the sheets. "Lit Chindi," he whispered. "What does that mean? Who is Lit Chindi?" Panic bubbled through the foreign words. "Scully..." "Who, God damn it?" He lifted his eyes to gauge her capacity to accept his answer. "The Smoke Devil." "No. No, I don't believe you. I don't..." A wave of nausea surged above her unborn children's heads, rose to her throat and soured the back of her tongue. Tears spilled and spattered down her cheeks. When the Bounty Hunter took her hand, she let him. When he drew her to him, she allowed that, too. She didn't push away his arms when he embraced her. Instead she buried her nose into this stranger's neck and inhaled Mulder's familiar scent. "There's more, if you want to hear it." "No." She shook her head, wetting the skin of his collarbone with her tears. He remained silent, rocking her and stroking her hair. She pretended he was Mulder because she needed him to be Mulder. "Scully...?" "I'm not the mother of Mulder's son, am I?" she guessed, knowing full well she had compared the PCR results to Mulder's DNA but had never checked them against her own. She hadn't seen the need, assuming the baby must be hers. "No, you are not." The unfairness collapsed her. Mulder was not the father of her daughter and she was not the mother of his son, although she carried the odd brother and sister together in her womb. Obviously the conception of these improbable twins had been engineered. She and Mulder had been manipulated. Again. "Who is his son's mother?" "Are you sure--?" "Who?" she yelled into the bristled skin of his jaw. "Our name for her is Tkin." "Which means...?" She drew back, focusing on his eyes. "Ice." "Who is she?" He swallowed and she watched his Adam's apple lurch upward. She felt his chest cease its rhythmic swell and dip as he momentarily held his breath. Lips parting, his answer puffed hotly across her tear-washed cheeks. "Diana. Diana Fowley is the boy's mother." NIGHTMARE IV: NE-NA-CHA (SURRENDER) Location Unknown Autumn 2000 "Yeh-zihn! Tehi. Tehi! Shil-loh, Ma-E! Nish-cla-jih-goh!" Not understanding, Mulder let himself be jostled along, shoved and tugged through a never-ending sequence of oily corridors. Because the aliens had rarely spoken aloud to him, communicating telepathically with one another and leaving him in utter silence, he'd seldom had the opportunity to hear their language, let alone learn it. So their stutter of words rattled without meaning past his ears even after all these months. Only a few phrases stood out to him, repeated more often than any others. Li-Chi. Tse-Le. Eh-Do. Ma-E. Although unable to decipher most of their gibberish, he deduced Ma-E was their name for him, although he had no way of knowing if it meant Fox or Sorry-Ass-Son-of-a-Bitch. Didn't matter, he guessed. For all intents and purposes, the two were synonymous. Something was up today. Something out of the ordinary. Usually they kept him imprisoned in his small, private pod or they restrained him in a chair in the lab in order to carve him up like Josef Mengele's holiday ham. But today they hurried him through halls he hadn't seen since he'd first boarded the alien craft in Bellefleur. When was that anyway? Five months ago? A year and a half? He had no way of knowing. They'd removed his watch. They'd taken everything he'd brought with him except for the tiny cross he wore around his neck. They called the gold symbol Li-Chi al-n-as-dzoh. The literal translation escaped him but he was quite sure the tongue-twisting phrase somehow described Scully's cross. "Nas-sey! Bi-chi-ol-dah Ah-Toh! Ma-E ah-hi-di-dail bilh Ne-He-Mah! Ma-E ahl-neh-enji bilh Ne-He-Mah!" they barked at him. "I don't understand what you're saying," he shouted, "I don't speak Reticulan." A shove between the shoulder blades coerced him across the enormous antechamber to the ship's closed entrance. He wondered if they planned to open the door and push him out into the vacuum of space. Would he explode before he was sucked outside? Or would he remain intact and hurtle forever among the distant stars? And which would be worse? The hull door hissed and groaned while Mulder held his breath and waited to die. Through squinting eyes he watched the widening breach and to his amazement no stars twinkled beyond the yawning gates, no decompression pulled at his flesh. Instead he found himself gawping at the interior of another ship -- a distinctly different craft built for a distinctly different race of passengers. There across the threshold gleamed a curving, clean expanse. A vast cylindrical tower as big around as a football stadium and several hundred stories high rose astonishingly into a haze of distant silvery light high above Mulder's head. No oozing dark walls. No twisting, endless corridors. And no stomach-turning, syrupy stench. What the hell was this artificial odor anyway? Play Dough? Band-Aids? Whatever it was, it smelled like the interior of a new car -- synthetic and recently manufactured. More notable, however, than the size and smell and spotlessness of the second craft, was the exceptional army guarding the immense drum-shaped space. Thousands of troops. Tens of thousands. Human-like soldiers dressed in identical, unadorned uniforms filled one enormous mezzanine after the next. All the soldiers were faceless. Literally. Puckered scars blurred the troopers' features, sealing their mouths, eyes, noses and ears. Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. Yet despite their disfigurement, comprehension vibrated around the ascending balconies like a finger tracing the rim of a lead crystal wineglass. The Faceless Rebels watched without eyes, heard without ears, spoke without lips. And they waited for a prophecy to unfold. "Mr. Mulder!" Cassandra Spender's elated voice echoed chaotically around the columnar room making it impossible for Mulder to locate the source. Only when a line of soldiers broke formation, opening a narrow passage, did Mulder finally spot Cassandra parading toward him. Dwarfed by a trail of personal guards, she beamed at him and extended her arms. "Oh, Mr. Mulder! I'm so happy you've come!" "Cassandra...?" Dumbfounded, he took her outstretched hands. "I know. I know. This place is a bit of a shock until you get used to it. When I first saw it," -- she gestured upward, lifting his hand with hers -- "I thought I was caught in a giant Slinky or something." She laughed and squeezed his fingers. "You can't imagine how glad I am to see you! Although--" she inspected his dirty, scarred arms before frowning at the aliens behind him. "I see they haven't treated you very well. Undoubtedly they plan on selling the secrets of your body to the Colonists, despite being on the Rebel payroll. Tkele-cho-g!" she hissed at the nearest Bounty Hunter and the alien wilted in response to her epithet. Turning her attention back to Mulder, she grinned again. "Don't worry. We'll get you cleaned up, give you a decent meal and you'll feel right as rain in no time." "Alh-nahl-yah!" the reprimanded alien demanded of her. "Don't pitch a fit." She scowled at the Gray. "You'll get your goddamn money." She motioned to a Rebel soldier before tugging Mulder away from the sputtering Bounty Hunter. "Mr. Mulder, you're going to like it here." * * * A bath. A real bath with hot water and soap and clean towels. Mulder lowered himself into the steamy tub where the heat loosened his muscles, soothed his recent wounds and soaked the black dirt from his pockmarked skin. The rediscovered pleasure of simple clean water overwhelmed him after so many months of filth and deprivation. He balanced his forehead against one knee and wept. * * * "Feeling better?" Cassandra asked. Mulder nodded, shoveling soup from his bowl to his mouth. Salty. Not sweet. Wonderful. "I have so much to tell you," she said, following the movement of his spoon. "S'good." He slurped, ignoring everything except the soup. "Yes." She laughed at his enjoyment. "But then anything would taste good after the slop those pigs feed you." She patted his arm to get his attention. "Mr. Mulder, do you know why you were brought here?" He scraped the bottom of his empty bowl. "Misfiled my 1040?" "No." She laughed again. "You're going to save the world." "God help us." "Mr. Mulder, it's you who'll help us." "Is there more?" He indicated the empty bowl. "Yes, but you need to slow down, give your stomach a chance to adjust to the change of diet." Clearly disappointed, he set his spoon beside the bowl. He considered lapping the soup's drying ring from the rim. "Cassandra, when I was on board the alien ship, I heard your voice." "Yes." "You told me...you told me that I'm your son." "That's right." "I don't understand how that's possible." "Well, it was *his* doing. My husband. He planned it; he engineered the whole thing. He arranged to have you stolen from me and implanted into another woman, into Teena Mulder." "But why?" "Because he knew. He knew even then that you were the one." "The one what?" "The one who would save us." "How? How am I going to save us? How am I going to save anyone?" "You already have. It's done." "I don't understand..." "Let me tell you a little story, Mr. Mulder." "Cassandra--" "This is a true story. A prophecy. The Rebels tell it over and over again. They believe it will happen and they can see the future." Huffing impatience, Mulder leaned back and ran a hand through his now clean hair. "Okay. Tell me." "It goes like this." She smiled. "The Universe is in upheaval. Two powerful armies fight for control of all things. Their war has raged for hundreds of thousands of years at great expense yet the struggle continues to grow, taking lives and planets with it. Both sides name the war 'Ne-Ol,' which means 'storm,' as if their conflict were a natural disaster and not something conspired by the minds of those in charge. "The two sides were defined by great distance. Originally they comprised a single race, but early space travel separated the group and evolution outpaced the speed of even their fastest ships. So at one end of the Universe settled the Da-A-He-Gi-Eneh. Their name literally means 'to know other's action' and their innate talent allows them to read minds, predict events, foresee the future. Because they're able to look ahead, the events they foretell are as real as if they'd already occurred. The future becomes history even before unfolding. Their skill makes them true seers and the Prophecy is their story. "They tell us that when the original group left, those who stayed behind eventually lost their skill to portend the future. However, although they could no longer forecast events, they became very powerful because they controlled the A-Kha, the Oil, and, unlike their traveling cousins, they remained immune to the Oil's Virus. Maintaining the races' original ability to shape shift -- a proficiency no longer available to the traveling race -- the shape-shifting aliens called themselves Altseh-E-Jah-He, First Strikers, since they planned to invade and colonize nearby Earth. The transformational capabilities of the First Strikers allowed them to blend in with the human population while plotting the enslavement of Earth's inhabitants." Mulder cleared his throat, interrupting her. "You're saying the Consortium and their association with the invading aliens was forecast billions of years ago?" "Yes, Mr. Mulder. The Prophecy foresaw two armies arising from a single species, warring against one another, using uniquely effective weapons to gain advantage. And Earth is the planet where it will all end. They call it the Ah-Ha-Tinh, the Place of Action. Why else would the aliens come here?" "You tell me." "They came because the Prophecy predicted that an Earth man would father a son and the boy's name would be Tse-Le, Small Pup. Tse-Le would have a sister named Eh-Do. Although born of the same mother on the same day, the children carry different bloodlines. They grow up to be bitter enemies. Tse-Le one day leads a strong army against his sister's soldiers, defeating them and precipitating the end of the Ne-Ol. The Universe is finally at peace. See? Everyone gets to live happily ever after." "Nice fairytale but you still haven't explained my role." She grinned. "Tse-Le's father is a man named Ma-E. Ma-E means Fox. Get it? You, Mr. Mulder, are Ma-E." Mulder shook his head. "I don't have any children and won't if they're going to be nothing but someone else's pawns." "I told you, it's already done. Your son was conceived months ago." "That's impossible. I'm pretty sure I'd remember the occasion." "Don't imagine these things happen naturally, Mr. Mulder. After all, you are living proof that they don't. Everything was planned long ago. Right now your son grows in Li-Chi Tse-Gha's womb. The boy *will* become the Savior. The Rebels understand this. That's why they help you. That's why they've sent a guard to watch Agent Scully." "Scully?" "Of course. She is Li-Chi Tse-Gha. She carries the babies." "No. She...she can't become pregnant. She..." "I'm telling you, she *is* pregnant. Everything will happen just as the Prophecy predicts. No one can change the course of these events -- not you, not me. We need to relinquish ourselves to our destiny. The Rebels call it the Ne-Nah-Cha. The Surrender. You must stop fighting what is already preordained." "You stop fighting, Cassandra. I don't intend to roll over and play dead." * * * "Mr. Mulder? Wake up, Mr. Mulder!" Squinting into Cassandra's hand-held light, he saw panic in the lines of her face. "What...?" The word slurred across his dream-heavy tongue. "Something unexpected has happened. Something terrible." He sat up and scrubbed the blur of sleep from his eyes. "How does something unexpected happen in a universe ruled by the Prophecy?" "This is no time to be flippant," she hissed. "Our guard has been killed." Mulder glanced at the door. "Not *here*, Mr. Mulder. The man we sent to watch Agent Scully -- he's dead." "Where--?" A fist of fear clutched his throat. "Where is Scully?" "She's gone. We don't know where. We only know this wasn't supposed to happen. It's not part of the Prophecy." "We've got to find her." "Yes, Mr. Mulder, we do. Otherwise everyone dies." To Be Continued...