Contagium: the specific virus or other direct cause of any infectious disease.

It was the stench, the overpowering, sickening stench that alerted Scully to the fact that they were nearing their destination. Driving through the night with a pure, white moon shining in the sky and getting jolted around in the big truck, she had almost been able to believe for a few hours that she wasn’t living this nightmarish existence.

They had traveled in silent convoy across rough country, and Skinner had told her to use the opportunity to snatch some sleep. She should have taken his advice, but it was too tempting to enjoy the respite of a few hours away from disease and sickness and that goddamn awful stench. Too tempting to pretend that she was back in the past, driving in a world she could still remember so clearly. There was nothing outside to remind her of what her world was like now. In the dark, with the beautiful moon and the sweetly scented country air, it almost felt like the past. Almost. Scully stole a glance at the man beside her driving the truck. Typical of him to instruct her to sleep, but take no rest himself. She had offered to share the driving, but he’d been adamant.

“When we get there, they’ll need a doctor. A well rested, alert doctor,” he’d stressed tersely. “I can take the opportunity to sleep then,” he added grimly.

Only he wouldn’t. Scully knew that from long experience. As soon as they arrived at their destination, his job, like hers, would just be beginning. Oh, he wouldn’t tend the sick, or begin the difficult task of identifying this new mutation. Instead, he’d oversee the setting up of the makeshift hospital. He’d organize the supplies, assess the needs of the stricken local population in respect of food and uncontaminated water supplies, organize living quarters for her and her medical team, and set about making her life easier in the one hundred and one ways he always did. She closed her eyes and pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her feet on the long seat, and laid her head back against the window, feigning sleep to please him. In the old days, she’d have driven alongside Mulder, laughing or teasing as they always did, an endless succession of traded jibes – the comfortable familiarity of knowing someone so well. Skinner never teased. Of course, there was little to laugh about these days. Maybe the current circumstances would have silenced even Mulder’s irrepressible spirit. Maybe.

Mulder.

The ache of wondering where he was still hadn’t gone away, even after all these months – and neither had the resentment either, if she was honest. When the virus had first hit the population, there had been chaos, and she supposed that they had all made their decisions according to who and what they were. Mulder would have been useless tending the sick and dying, so he had taken himself off in search of the faceless men who had brought this all too man-made disaster to their world. Scully, possessed of a more pragmatic disposition like Skinner, had thrown herself into taking care of the mess they were in now. What did it matter who had caused it and why, when people were dying and desperately in need of medicine and care?

Skinner had been true to his own personality as well. With the President and most of Congress dead, he’d addressed himself to the one significant task facing them: containing the sickness and defeating it if possible, although it looked more and more as if that was a lost cause, despite their best efforts.

Skinner had worked tirelessly, setting up a base just outside Washington, arranging for all medical supplies to be routed through there, as a central distribution center, overseeing who got what, and making some pretty tough decisions along the way. He’d lost weight, Scully thought to herself, watching him from under half-closed eyelashes. His face was gaunt, and his jaw was so firmly clenched that she wondered if he’d ever smile again. With a pang of guilt, she also noticed the dark shadows under his eyes and the weary lines etched into his forehead. He needed sleep, too, but she knew well enough by now that he wouldn’t take it. If she’d found Mulder an exasperating partner, in Skinner she encountered an individual so obstinate that she sometimes wanted to pound her fists against that smooth scalp of his in sheer frustration. Mulder had often driven her crazy with his insane risks and wild theories, but it was Skinner who she had stand-up rows with, and he was, she had to admit, an eminently reasonable man – just so damn pig-headed, especially where his own health was concerned.

“We’re nearly there,” she murmured.

“Yes. How did you know?” He peered into the pitch black outside the truck. Without centralized electrical supplies to light the towns and streets, nighttime had taken on a hue almost inky in appearance, and the stars glowed more brightly. It reminded Scully of camping vacations with her father when she was a child – back in another lifetime.

“The smell.” She shrugged and sat up properly, giving him a wry, humorless smile.

“Ah. Yes. Strange how you get used to it,” he mused. “Until…”

“…it’s gone,” they both said at the same time. His expression softened just a fraction as they traded a knowing look. “Then you remember what it used to be like,” she said softly.

“No point thinking about the past.” He slammed his foot down even harder on the gas.

“No,” she said, grabbing her hairbrush from the dashboard and tugging it through lank, lifeless locks. She wanted to look more human, even if she didn’t feel it. Skinner was lucky in that respect, she thought, glancing at him again. Even when he was out in the field, he somehow always managed to look fresh. Only a seasoned eye would have detected the tiny signs that he was dead on his feet and functioning on auto-pilot. Scully had been truly astonished by his stamina over the past year. He had worked tirelessly, taking little rest and operating under conditions of extreme stress, but she hadn’t seen him buckle yet. She was aware of how she had gradually come to rely on that strength to keep her going.

“Did you sleep?” he asked.

“No,” she shrugged.

The lines around his mouth deepened in disapproval. “I told you to get some sleep,” he snapped tersely. “You won’t get a chance to rest for the next few days.”

“I know.” She pulled on a sweater. It was warm in the truck, but she knew it would be cold when they stopped in the town.

“Then why…?” he pursued.

“Because I wanted to feel human,” she interrupted him. “For just a few hours, I wanted to pretend that I’m not up to my eyeballs in sickness and death and the goddamn smell of decaying bodies left on the streets because there’s nobody left to bury them. I wanted to smell the scent of normality, to look at the moon, and sit and dream about the way things used to be, so don’t damn well give me a hard time about it, all right?”

“We all want things we can’t damn well have,” he exploded back at her. “I drove because I wanted you to sleep.”

“Well forgive me for not being able to follow every order to the letter,” she yelled. “Next time I have insomnia, I’ll present myself for court martial!”

His foot slammed down on the brake, and for a moment she thought she’d gone too far, but then she saw that they had arrived at their destination. Their argument was immediately forgotten. Working in such close proximity, laboring day and night without adequate rest, doing what was at best a tiring job, and at worst, downright grisly, the old barriers between Assistant Director and Agent had somehow disintegrated along the way. He remained in charge by force of will and by natural qualities of leadership alone. The FBI was just a distant memory, most of its agents dead. It would never be resurrected. Nothing was ever going be the way it had been before. She still called him “sir”, and he still called her “Scully”, or “Agent Scully” in occasional, forgetful moments, but they were old habits of convenience. Their working relationship had changed out of all recognition.

The truck’s headlamps illuminated the town’s name: Carolina Springs, and the first dim light of morning revealed a welcoming pile of decayed and diseased bodies. They were stacked on top of each other, and strewn around the streets as if the living had just had the strength to push the bodies out of the door. There was no energy for proper burial. There was just pure human expediency and the desire to survive.

“Welcome to Carolina Springs. Have a nice day,” Scully mocked, getting out of the truck, and slamming the door shut behind her. The trucks made a loud noise in the silent town as the convoy rumbled to a halt, and the medical team started to unload supplies. A tall, thin man ran out from what had once been a school and looked at them as if he didn’t believe his eyes.

“You came. I didn’t think…” he trailed off, his wild eyes taking in the sight of the trucks and the people as if he was seeing a mirage. His gaze settled on Skinner, and with unerring instinct, he recognized the person in charge. “I’m Jonathan Farley.” He held out his hand and Skinner shook it firmly.

“You’re the person who contacted us?” he questioned.

“Yes. I wasn’t sure there was anybody listening. I used the radio equipment…people said there was nobody to help. We thought maybe Carolina Springs was the only town left where anybody was alive.”

“There are still a lot of people left alive, trust me,” Skinner said firmly.

“Thank god. When the electricity cut out, and then the water and phones – it’s so hard getting news,” Farley said. “We sent people out, and they radioed back to start with, but then…then nothing. Some of them managed to get word that they were sick, but none of them came back. We thought everybody was dead.”

“We’re doing our best to reach every town in the country, but it isn’t easy,” Skinner informed the man. “The virus mutates every few weeks, and every time we figure out a way of treating one strain of it, another one comes along.” Skinner rubbed a weary hand over his forehead. “The information you gave us made it sound like we had another mutation on our hands. We have to contain the mutations, or…” He gave a wry shrug, his eyes meeting Scully’s, grim and full of a dark certainty. “Well, we have to contain the mutations,” he finished. There was no “or”, they both knew that.

“So if…if you didn’t think our strain of the virus was a mutation, you wouldn’t be here?” Farley asked, his face registering his shock.

“No. I’m sorry. Our job is to identify each mutation, then get the supplies needed to treat it. We have a network of people around the country, but we only go where we’re most needed. Once a strain becomes treatable, we just send out the information on the radio.”

“That’s no use if we’re not on the supply route!” Farley spluttered.

“I’m sorry. It’s the best we can do.” Skinner’s face was lined with strain, and Scully felt a wave of irritation. Didn’t this man realize what they were up against here?

“I can see it’s everyone for themselves,” Farley snapped. “I expect the big towns are okay. The government doesn’t give a damn about those of us living in rural areas.”

“There is no government, Mr. Farley,” Skinner told the other man wearily. “There’s just us. For your information, there aren’t any big towns left, either. In fact, it’s isolated rural populations like Carolina Springs that are doing best. The big towns all went with the first wave of the virus. At my last count, there were just a few thousand people left alive in Washington, D.C..” Skinner let that statistic speak for itself, and Scully watched the color drain from Farley’s face. “Now, we’re here to help. If we can contain this mutation, then we can stop it spreading and decimating what’s left of the world’s population. Perhaps if you could show us the way to whatever facility you’re using as a hospital? We have work to do.”

Farley nodded dumbly, finally taking in the magnitude of the situation. Scully felt sorry for him. Even now, knowing all that she did, there were times when the enormity of what had happened hit her all over again. On those times, she took herself away and wept in private. She was sure there wasn’t anyone left who hadn’t done the same – including Skinner. Watching the big man directing the operation so efficiently, it was hard to imagine him weeping, but everybody needed a release, and she was sure that he, too, must have endured his moments of bleak despair, as they all had.

“This way.” Farley led them towards the school.

“How many people are sick?” Scully asked him. “Are there any new symptoms?” He glanced at her, frowning.

“This is Doctor Dana Scully. She’s in charge of identifying the mutations and finding a treatment,” Skinner explained. Farley nodded, trying to keep up with all this new information.

“Think of it as a particularly lethal strain of flu,” Scully explained, having found this the simplest way of getting the information across. People simply couldn’t get their heads around the concept of black oil, and experiments on human beings, for purposes she still didn’t understand, that had unleashed this disaster upon the world. “It’s a virus, so we can’t treat it with antibiotics, and although it can be spread by physical contact, it often isn’t. On occasion we’ve seen spontaneous outbreaks of the disease in isolated communities for no reason we’ve been able to understand.”

“I see.” Farley ushered them into the school, and Scully smelled the sickly sweet stench she had come to identify with the virus. It was the familiar odor of an old enemy, and she felt her fight or flight reflex send adrenaline running through her body.

“All right.” Scully paced down a row of sick people lying on makeshift mattresses on the floor, identifying the worst cases and pointing them out to her medical team. “Get these people into a side room. The rest can stay here – they still stand a chance. I want blood samples and stats within 2 hours. Get moving, people.”

Farley gazed at her, still in a state of shock. Scully felt as if she had shifted into a new gear, all weariness driven from her body by the current crisis. She caught Skinner’s eye briefly, and saw something akin to amusement there, combined with profound respect, then the moment passed, and he was turning, issuing orders of his own.

“I want every able-bodied man, woman and child over 7 years old to meet me outside,” he ordered Farley.

“What? Why? We thought it best if we didn’t mingle in case we spread the sickness…” Farley protested, running after Skinner.

“Experience has shown us that once a town has the disease, it has the disease. Period. Everyone who is going to get it gets it, and it doesn’t seem to have much to do with physical contact,” Skinner told him tersely. “People who’ve barricaded themselves in their basements for weeks on end have been found dead. The virus has a way of spreading that we don’t really understand. Sometimes it’s clearly spread by human contact, but more often it isn’t. We have no idea why. Now, I need people to bury that pile of bodies you’ve left outside. Before long people will start coming down with typhoid fever and cholera from contaminated water supplies, and trust me, those two can be just as deadly as the virus if you don’t have the medicine to treat them – and we don’t, not in sufficient quantity anyway. Time is short – let’s get moving,” he finished briskly, sweeping out of the school with long, urgent strides.

“Yes, sir,” Farley murmured faintly, running to catch up.

Scully suppressed a smile as she watched them go. Having someone like Skinner around the place was reassuring. He always seemed to know exactly what he was doing and projected an air of authority that people responded well to. Iit comforted them, provided them with a feeling of structure in a world that had become as changeable as quicksand. She wasn’t surprised that Farley had unwittingly started addressing him as ‘sir’.

The next 30 hours passed in a haze of activity for Scully. The symptoms of the disease were, as always, mystifying in their diversity. This particular strain had its victims breaking out in a dark, red rash, and caused respiratory problems leading to a vicious strain of pneumonia that was killing people at an alarming rate. The virus itself was immune to antibiotics, but the secondary infections didn’t respond to them either, and the sounds of rasping, labored breathing were a constant backdrop to her work.

She soon isolated the virus under the microscope. It was as familiar to her now as the back of her own hand, and she had grown to hate it, for all its kaleidoscopic beauty – and it was a thing of beauty. Multi-faceted, comprised of a myriad of swirling, interconnected components, with an ingenious method of seemingly unstoppable reproduction; and with each mutation it grew more deadly.

Scully had seen countless numbers of doctors and front-line aid workers killed by the disease, and wondered when her own time would come. There were few actual doctors left on her medical team – most were simply trained volunteers. She was now the senior qualified member of staff at HQ, and possibly, as far as she knew, in the whole of the USA, such as it was now. She sometimes wondered why she had been spared. She had worked more closely with the virus than anybody else, and yet she was seemingly immune from each and every mutation. There had been a time when every cough and each of her many headaches made her wonder if this was finally the virus coming to claim her, but that fear had diminished now. She had come to the conclusion that she was immune – and not just by chance. She suspected that the experimentation she had been subjected to during her abduction a few years before had somehow rendered her invulnerable to the deadly force of this particular virus.

Skinner was a different matter. He was the only other member of the makeshift crisis team who was left from the early days when the virus had first hit. He had been with her on every single front line mission, had been at her side as she identified each new viral strain and found a treatment for it, and he hadn’t succumbed. She didn’t know why, but she was grateful. Without him, they would be lost. He allowed her to do the job she did so well, and made that job as easy as possible within the circumstances. She knew that she didn’t have the energy to do his job as well as her own. If he caught the disease…if he died… Scully paused for a moment in her work, finding that her hands were shaking uncontrollably. She took several deep breaths and a gulp of the coffee that one of her team had brought her. She knew she was consuming too much caffeine, but she had to stay awake.

“How’s it going?”

She jumped and looked up to see Skinner standing in the doorway. He always checked up on her every few hours to see if there was anything she needed and to make sure she was remembering to eat. When Scully got involved in her work, she had a habit of forgetting about the outside world altogether, and if Skinner hadn’t insisted she take regular meal breaks, she knew that she’d have worked all the way through without stopping.

“Fine,” she nodded, putting the coffee down quickly as she realized how much her hand was shaking.

“Making any progress?” He came to stand beside her, and she could smell the scent of him. They all smelled less than savory, as it was hard maintaining even the most basic standards of hygiene in these conditions, and long baths and clean clothes belonged to distant memory. Skinner’s odor was as familiar to her now as her own, and to be honest, she didn’t find it displeasing. The smell of healthy human bodies was a welcome respite from the sickly scent of the illness that permeated the hall next door, and the encroaching smell of death from outside.

“Some,” she shrugged.

“Is it…?” He paused, and his dark eyes met hers, clearly fearing the worst. “Is it the one?”

She knew immediately what he was referring to. It was classified information, restricted to the two of them, his deputy Julia Mareno, and Scully’s own right hand man on the medical team, Eric Hunter. According to the data she had collected thus far, the mutations were rapidly escalating in severity. Soon it would evolve beyond their capacity to deal with it, and after that – they were all dead. Even that small minority of people who had suffered from the virus before and lived would not survive infection from the expected mutation that Skinner was referring to.

“No.” She was quick to dispel his worries and saw him heave a visible sigh of relief. “Actually, this mutation isn’t all that dissimilar from the one we found in…” She gestured to the microscope, then stopped as he grabbed her hand.

“You’re shaking,” he stated. It seemed almost like an accusation.

“Caffeine overload,” she smiled wanly.

“Time to take a break – and get some sleep,” he ordered.

“Not yet. I’m close and…”

“Now.” He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone carried the weight of his authority. Scully stared at him for a moment, but his expression didn’t soften. “I’ve set up some living quarters in a house nearby. I’ve also arranged for a hot meal.” He let go of her wrist, strode over to the door, and held it open.

She considered arguing – god knows they’d had enough stand-up rows over the past few months, but the thought of food, of taking the weight off her aching feet and closing her eyes for a few hours was too tempting. With a resigned sigh, she walked over to the door. He didn’t look so good himself, she thought, knowing that nobody watched out for him, and made him eat and sleep. His face was etched with weary lines, and his normally tan skin was pale and gray.

The living quarters Skinner had selected were just across the street from the school. Scully followed behind him, walking in a haze of exhaustion, when their path was blocked by an angry Jonathan Farley.

“What are all these troops doing here?” he demanded, waving a hand at the dozen armed guards who patrolled the perimeter of the school. “Trying to stop the sick from leaving? Just what kind of experiments are you conducting in there, Skinner?”

Scully felt a surge of anger break through her weariness. Their job was difficult enough without encountering hostility from the local population, but Skinner’s reply was reasoned, firm, and scrupulously polite.

“They aren’t to stop the sick from leaving. They’re here to protect my staff.”

“Protect them from what? The dying?” Farley demanded, raising an eyebrow in disbelief.

“No, from the living. In a country full of sick people, a doctor is more valuable than gold, and there aren’t many of them left,” Skinner said tersely, one hand coming to rest on Scully’s shoulder in a subconscious, protective gesture.

“What?” Farley choked. “There are people who would…?”

“Kidnap a doctor? Yes. It’s happened to us,” Skinner responded tersely. “We lost a few that way until we started providing armed escort. We have to take precautions.”

“I suppose so. I’m sorry,” Farley muttered, shame-faced. “I just never thought people could turn into such savages.”

“They’re desperate – their loved ones are sick and dying, and they’re scared for themselves,” Skinner sighed. “I sympathize with them, but those guns aren’t for show. My staff has orders to shoot to kill. We might be trying to save lives, but I’ll be damned if any of my people will be harmed for doing their job.”

Scully smiled to herself and rolled her shoulders to relieve an ache in them. Protecting his people had always been one of Skinner’s primary concerns, even before this catastrophe. She was suddenly aware how very safe his hand made her feel, resting on her shoulder. Farley stepped out of their way, still red faced, and Skinner guided her to what would be home for the next few days or weeks, depending on how long it took. She felt a sudden wave of absurd gratitude towards him. She was so bone tired that she was in danger of toppling over, and she liked the feel of his hand touching her, reminding her in the midst of this inhuman situation that she was, at the end of the day, still flesh and blood.

Scully sat down to a meal of minced beef and rice. Food, at least, was one problem they didn’t have to worry about. Although nobody was producing any and fields were left unplanted and livestock untended, there was enough canned food to last the dwindling population for several years. It might not be fresh, but it would keep them from dying of starvation.

A few other members of the crisis team ate with them, trading jokes as a respite from the extreme stress of their work. She joined in, despite her weariness, enjoying the comradeship and banter. Julia Mareno was busy talking to Skinner in a low voice, going through a roster duty with him, talking about the supplies they would need. Her dark head nodded as he took in the information she was giving him, and he issued a series of commands for the next working day. Julia had been a godsend. A former secretary with a large computer company, she’d walked into their headquarters 8 months ago and quickly made herself indispensable. She’d lost her entire family – her 3 children, her sister, her parents – but she wasn’t unique in that, and she battled on, as they all did, channeling her grief into something constructive. She worked well with Skinner, being almost as efficient as he was, and between them the two of them kept everyone fed, found places for them to sleep, and coordinated supplies.

Scully watched Skinner devour his food without tasting it. Food had become merely fuel, a necessity to keep them all going and no longer something to be savored and lingered over or enjoyed for its own sensory satisfaction. Scully wondered when, if ever, they would be normal human beings again, taking simple pleasure in food, in drink, even in each other. She knew several people had flung themselves into brief, intense sexual liaisons, knowing that death could call for them at any time and wanting to make the most of every last moment of life. She hadn’t been tempted, and occasionally wondered if that was simply because she was always too tired to even contemplate it, or whether somehow Mulder had taken a greater hold on her heart than she had thought.

“Bed,” Skinner said, and Scully jerked her head up, realizing that she’d fallen asleep over her meal.

“Yeah. I think so.”

He got up and led her down a hallway to a bedroom. It wasn’t much, just a mattress on the floor, but it was enough.

“Home, sweet home.” She smiled at him, allowing her gaze to wander around the shabby room, with its peeling wallpaper and faint odor of damp.

“Next time I’ll arrange for a vase of fresh flowers beside your bed,” he grinned absently, as if he was so tired he’d forgotten that smiling was something he didn’t do. Skinner always ensured she had her privacy. The rest of the team slept in a dormitory arrangement on these missions away from their main base, but Skinner was insistent that she have her own room so that she wasn’t disturbed by people going to and fro while she slept.

“You’re our only hope for the future,” he’d explained when she protested. “We have to take care of you.” A part of her had bristled at that. Nobody took care of her, she could take care of herself, but another part of her, so long suppressed, was pleased, and she wasn’t sure why.

“I hope you’re going to grab some rest too,” she told him.

“I already snatched a few hours while you were working,” he replied with a shrug, and she knew that was a lie. Too tired to remonstrate, she threw herself down on the mattress and was asleep before she even landed. She didn’t see him pull the blanket over her sleeping form and gently touch the side of her face before he tiptoed out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

She awoke a few hours later, feeling refreshed by the rest. She still felt as if she could sleep for a year, but her pounding headache had lessened. The first thing that caught her eye was a splash of orange on the floor next to her. She stared at it for a long time before it came into focus, and then she gave a little gurgle of surprised pleasure. There, propped up in an old can of beans, now filled with water, were four brightly flowering roses. True, one of them was past its best and losing its leaves rapidly, but the colors were so bright and so near, they took her breath away. Her eyes filled with tears. She had become so used to living out of trucks and makeshift hospitals, so used to despair and the ugliness of disease, she had forgotten that the world could be beautiful too. She lay there, just appreciating the flowers for a long time, wondering at how much her life had changed that something so simple could bring her so much pleasure.

Finally, she got up and yanked a brush through her hair. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked in a mirror, and she assumed that she looked a mess, but keeping the tangles out of her hair made her feel halfway human at least. Scully wandered outside. It was late evening and getting cold. She ran back, grabbed the blanket from her bed, then wrapped it around her shoulders and walked back outside.

A dog was barking in the distance, but other than that the town was eerily quiet. Another ghost town. Scully could barely remember the bustle of people and cars that had been part of her old life. Nowhere was well populated now. The stillness had become as familiar as the stench. She inhabited a world of extremes, where the nights were darker, the smells sharper, and the silence more profound than she had ever known before.

She was about to cross over to the school when a streak of orange on the horizon claimed her attention. Reminded of her flowers, she turned towards it with a smile. It was a sunset – a glorious, vivid sunset. As she watched, she caught a glimpse of a figure crouched on a small grassy hill at the end of the street. She walked over, scrambled up the hill towards him and then stopped.

It was Skinner. He was dressed in his usual uniform of faded blue jeans and open-necked dark shirt, and the cool wind was billowing through the shirt, making it rise and swell around his body. The fading, orange light of the sunset was casting him in fiery shadows of red and gold, burnishing his scalp and making his dark eyes seem almost black. The shadows smudged over the weary lines on his face, and he looked younger and more relaxed than she was used to seeing him. He suddenly sensed that he was being watched and looked up at her. She smiled, and crouched down beside him, swinging the blanket over his shoulders.

“You’re cold,” she chided, feeling his chilled flesh through his thin shirt.

“Yeah. I didn’t want to move, though – in case I missed it.” He nodded his head in the direction of the magnificent sunset. “You were right, earlier.” He cleared his throat and continued gazing into the distance, not looking at her. “If we can’t stop and appreciate what’s still so good about the world, if all we see is the sickness, and pain, then what’s the point of carrying on?”

“I agree.” She hunched up her legs so they were touching her chest and struggled to contain the blanket as it flapped wildly in the wind. Skinner pulled his end of it close around himself and then wrapped a big arm around her shoulder, shielding her from the worst of the wind, and keeping the blanket tucked in tight around them both. It felt snug, and secure.

Scully almost laughed, thinking back to a time when the very idea of sitting on a hillside with her granite-faced boss, huddled up in a blanket with his arm around her would have had her reeling in surprise. Skinner was not a man she had ever imagined sharing such intimacies with, but the times had changed them, and when you saw a man day in, day out, at his best and his worst, old boundaries just disappeared. The sun gave one brief, blazing flash of glory, before it sank down out of sight. Scully watched the last remaining glow of orange and red, leaning her head on Skinner’s shoulder. They were silent for a long time, savoring the beauty of the moment, and then she turned to look at him.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

He shrugged. He was so warm and solid, such a big, reassuring presence beside her. She could feel the hard contours of his muscles through his thin shirt.

“Sorry about the vase,” he said, by way of reply. “It was the best I could manage.”

“It was perfect. The flowers were beautiful. Sometimes it’s easy to forget…” She stopped, her words choking in her throat.

“I know. You reminded me of that. I’m sorry. I know I can be…single-minded,” he grimaced. “It’s just there’s so much to be done, and…” his voice dropped, “the truth is, I get scared. Sometimes it feels as if we’re the only ones standing between the human race and the end of the world. We’re the only ones who can stop the apocalypse, and I see us running out of time, out of energy, out of supplies…” He trailed off, and she knew she had found him in one of those moments of doubt and despair that they all experienced. “I wonder what this world would be like without us – maybe it would be better. Or maybe some new creature will evolve to take our place,” he continued, staring thoughtfully at the encroaching darkness. “Is it a battle we can’t win, Scully? Will I let us down?” He looked at her for a moment, and she was grateful for being here, with him, at this moment in time. He so rarely let people in – he always shouldered his burdens alone. When he was ordering everyone around, running on adrenaline alone, sheer exhaustion making him bad tempered and snappy, it was easy to forget that he was only human, mere flesh and blood, as they all were at the end of the day.

“It’s not all down to you,” she chided him gently. “Don’t think that I haven’t had my moments, too, when I’ve thought it would be my failure that would destroy us all. I still do, occasionally. You’ve done more than any of us to keep people alive, to get the supplies through to those most in need. You were the only one who saw the necessity of tackling each mutation before they got out of hand. It’s your vision that’s stopped the world turning into chaos.”

“Well, being an administrator always was my best, and probably my only skill,” he murmured in wry self-deprecation.

“You’re much more than that.” She dug her finger into his ribs to scold him. “Just look at them.” She stared down the hill to the town, where a few people were crossing to and fro from the school, scurrying around like a handful of little ants. “You’re keeping them going. It takes more than just a talent for organization to manage to keep order and resolve when so much is in a state of disintegration. They could have run out on us, fled to save themselves, but they don’t. They stay because they believe in you and what you’re trying to do.”

“Is it a lost cause, though?” he murmured. She had never seen him like this – so open and so vulnerable. She saw then that his mantle of single-minded purpose was one he donned to keep them all going. Underneath, he had the same doubts and worries as they all had – he just kept them hidden so that people would have something to believe in and a rock to cling to, some sense of permanence in an all too rapidly changing world.

“No. If we go down, we’ll damn well go down fighting,” she retorted, quoting one of her mother’s favorite phrases.

“Ah, that’s my fighting Scully. Always full of fire,” he said with a wry grin.

“And you’ve been too much in my firing line recently. I’m sorry about that,” she said with a sigh. “My mother always said it was my red hair. I’ve struggled all my life to keep my temper under control, and I used to be able to do it too, but these days…”

“You’re too tired, too stressed, too soul-sick to hide what you feel. So am I. We lost the niceties of civilization awhile back,” he said with a chuckle. “The polite veneer of ‘yes sir’, ‘no sir’ that hid our true feelings on any given subject.”

“I don’t remember ever wanting to yell at you that much…” she mused. “Although now you mention it…”

“Don’t go there, Agent,” he told her with mock severity.

She laughed out loud. “Yes, sir. No, sir,” she replied slyly, and he squeezed her shoulder, and gave a belly laugh himself.

He looked so different when he laughed, she thought. She really had seen him at his best and worst since they had been plunged headlong into this nightmare. She couldn’t remember ever seeing Assistant Director Skinner laugh like this, couldn’t have imagined him cutting her four orange roses just to brighten her day, or sitting watching a sunset on a hillside wrapped in a blanket, baring his soul to her. She couldn’t have imagined having a stand-up argument with AD Skinner either, the way she had of late, both of them going for it hammer and tongs, with all guns blazing. She couldn’t have imagined him ever being this dirty or unwashed and unshaven, dressed in torn, stained clothing, or clearing up huge piles of blood and vomit, or standing bare-chested, his body caked with mud as he worked alongside a dozen volunteers digging a mass grave, but she had seen him in all those guises.

“I miss being Agent Scully,” she commented suddenly, an old memory sparked into life by his words.

“I miss being Assistant Director Skinner,” he murmured in reply.

“How come you never know they’re the good old days when you’re actually living them?” she sighed. “If I’d known, I’m sure I’d have tried to…I don’t know, enjoy myself more.”

“I know what you mean.” The wind picked up, and he pulled the blanket even tighter around them. “Time passed so quickly, an endless supply of paperwork, meetings, briefings, debriefings, and goddamn internal bureau politics. I could have done so much more with my life if only I’d known…”

“Yes.” She rested her head on his shoulder again, and they sat for a few more minutes. It was a brief respite from what awaited them down the road. Finally, by unspoken agreement, they got up. Skinner folded the blanket and tucked it under his arm, and they walked back together.

Scully wasn’t sure when she had become inured to the sight of dying, but she had seen so many people of all ages, that at some point it had all become a faceless blur to her. She knew that they were real people, with real lives and their own sets of memories, but now she just saw pale and all too fragile human flesh, where once she had seen the people underneath.

She walked through the hall to her makeshift research laboratory, not even hearing the cries of the sick or the rattling gasps for air as one man slowly, loudly, died. Others slipped away without protest, there one minute, then gone. Their bodies were piled outside the school to await burial.

Scully worked on the virus for another day, pausing only to take meals when Skinner reminded her. Finally, having come up with a tentative treatment, she ventured back out into the infirmary to begin testing it. There was no time for finesse or for using non-human guinea pigs. She took a dozen vials and a box of syringes, and went looking for those who were in the best shape. Bitter experience had taught her that there was no point wasting precious medicines on those who were so far gone, they’d die anyway. It was a harsh judgment for harsh times, and Scully hated playing god this way. She could remember a time when her ethical soul would have revolted at the very thought of it, but that had been a long time ago, and she was older, wiser, and more cynical now. The need for sheer survival had taken away the luxuries of conscience that she had once had.

She knelt beside a bed, handed some of the vials and syringes to her team, and started work on the nearest patient. As she worked, she saw Skinner out of the corner of her eye. He was crouched beside one of the sick, showing him a photograph, asking the same question he always asked wherever they went.

“Have you seen this man? Do you recognize him?” He always received the same reply. A shake of the head, and sometimes a whispered, “I’m sorry,” and he would move on to the next, and then the next.

“No news?” She caught up with him, prepping the patient he was talking to.

Skinner shook his head. “Not this time,” he said.

He always said it like that. “Not this time,” as if one day he would receive the answer he knew she wanted, as if it were only a matter of time. Privately, she doubted he would ever get that answer.

She tried not to look at the photo, but she couldn’t help herself. Mulder was smiling in it, his hazel eyes laughing at her. She remembered the day she had taken it, how he had been in the middle of one of his legendary diatribes about some aspect of the paranormal, and how she’d only been listening with one ear as he rambled on and on while she took photographs of the crime scene. Finally, in an effort to silence him, she’d pointed the lens at him and said: “Shut up or I’ll shoot you,” and he’d opened his mouth, his eyes dancing with mischief, daring her to shoot him anyway, and she had – with the camera – and he’d been laughing the whole time. She felt suddenly dizzy as the memory swamped her. It had been another lifetime, and a different Scully.

“Scully.” She felt Skinner’s hand on her arm.

“It’s nothing. Sorry. I just…” She sat back on her haunches for a moment and took a deep breath. “It’s been months. We haven’t heard from him in all that time. We have to face facts,” she told him.

His expression turned into granite, closed and remote. “I’ll keep asking,” he replied.

“And you’ll keep getting the same answers. If he is alive, he knows where we are. He would have contacted us,” she said.

“We haven’t come down with the disease – he might be immune too,” Skinner stated implacably, refusing to give up – on Mulder, on any of them, Scully thought to herself. The loss of Mulder still twisted inside her like a knife through her heart; it was a real, physical pain. Sometimes she felt that she would have done anything to have him back, to see him again for just one minute, to hear that low, monotone voice, to throw her arms around his neck and hug that lanky body and never let him go.

“He isn’t coming back,” she said, more to protect herself from the pain of eternal hope than because she truly believed it. “He’s never coming back.” She brushed a lock of damp, sweaty hair from her forehead. “When will you ever get it through your bloody head that he’s damn well not coming back!”

Skinner gazed at her in mute disagreement, and they locked eyes for a moment. Then he got up, turned on his heel, and strode out of the building.

Days turned into nights, and they all melted into one exhausting, never-ending miasma of testing, refining, nursing and dispatching the corpses. Scully lost track of everything but the need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. The disease hit its peak, then faded, leaving countless decimated lives in its wake. Towards the end, Scully found Jonathan Farley desperately clutching the hand of a dying child.

“My daughter. She’s my daughter,” he wept, looking up at her, his eyes wild and full of a despairing hope that she could work a miracle. Scully looked at the little girl and tried to feel something, anything, for the pretty, blonde child, lying pale and listless on the mattress, but she didn’t feel anything.

“I’m sorry.” She placed her hand on Farley’s shoulder, remembering that she should say the words, but unsure what they meant, if anything.

“She’s still alive. You can do something…please, do something,” he begged.

She shook her head. “We’ve given her the only treatment we have. It doesn’t work on everyone.” In truth, the treatment worked on only fifteen per cent of the patients, which was a drop in the ocean as far as Scully could see.

“Don’t let her die. You mustn’t let her die!” Farley clung to Scully, screaming and yelling. She fell off balance, landing with a crash, bruising her elbow. Within seconds Skinner was by her side, pushing Farley away, wordlessly helping her to her feet.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Scully repeated over and over again, like a mantra, barely able to walk straight, let alone think.

“Come on. It’s over now. You’ve done everything you can here. We’re busy clearing up. You can grab some rest before we leave,” Skinner told her, wrapping an arm around her and helping her back to their living quarters. As they got to the door, she heard a blood-curdling scream, and turned back to see Farley clutching the now lifeless body of his daughter to his chest.

“Why do we bother? What’s the point of any of it?” she muttered. Skinner didn’t reply, he just guided her across the street and back to the house.

Scully wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she’d last been here, but when she got to her bedroom, she found faded orange petals on the floor, and the stark, bare remains of her roses in their improvised vase. She sat down on her mattress and stared blankly into space, too drained and exhausted even to cry.

When she awoke, it was late afternoon, and she could hear the trucks moving around outside. She got up, feeling stiff, and went out into the hot, sticky air. Skinner was busy ensuring that all their equipment was inventoried as it was returned to the trucks. Supplies were too scarce for them to leave any behind. He handed her a sheet of paper.

“Mission stats,” he muttered, turning back to his work. She took it numbly and read it, but the words blurred in front of her. The numbers were getting worse: 93% of the local population had contracted the disease, of which 83% had died. 5% had survived through the strength of their own immune systems, and 12% had survived as a direct result of the treatment she had devised. She crumpled the paper in her fist.

“What the hell is the point!” she yelled at Skinner, throwing it back to him. “The odds of people surviving are just getting worse and worse. We might as well just make them comfortable instead of trying to treat them.”

“I don’t accept that. There are people here who are alive because of you and your work,” Skinner told her urgently.

“It isn’t enough. It’s never enough. It’s so fucking pointless!” she screamed. “Don’t you see that? Oh god, why do we do it? Why?” She could feel the angry tears blinding her, and he stepped over to comfort her, and all she could do was hate him. Hate him for being there, for making her carry on when she was sick to death with all of it. He reached out and put gentle hands on her shoulders, and she pushed him away furiously, then slapped him hard across the face, then again, her fingernails raking into flesh, causing a flash of red blood to rise on his chin.

“Scully. Dana.” He reached for her again, and she pummeled his chest with her fists, over and over again, wanting to hurt someone else as much as she was hurting, needing the release. He endured her anger for several long minutes, making no move to stop the onslaught. Finally, she ran out of strength and energy, and she pulled back, breathing heavily.

“I’m leaving. I’m not coming back with you. Go. Just go!” she yelled, then she turned and ran, blindly, the tears rising in her eyes, not wanting him, of all people, to see her cry.

She ran and ran, and then she stopped and sank to the ground where she was standing, the tears streaming down her face. She cried for that little girl she had seen clutched in Jonathan Farley’s arms, for her own lost mother, and the brothers she hadn’t heard from since this nightmare had begun. She cried for Mulder, and for that tall, solid, grim-faced man on whom she had just poured out all her frustrations and left standing by the truck, but most of all she cried for herself. She cried for what she’d lost, and what she’d seen, and what she’d become, and she didn’t stop until she was spent. Then she just sat, bereft of energy, staring into the distance. She sat there for hours, and would have sat there for days but as night fell, the cold settled into her bones and only her own discomfort spurred her into action. She got to her feet, and began the weary walk back to the outskirts of the town, where the trucks were.

She wasn’t sure what she would find. God knows, Skinner should have gone and left her. None of this was his fault and it wasn’t fair that she had taken out her grief upon him. She deserved to be abandoned. Her breath caught in her throat as she drew close and saw that all the trucks were gone. All save one. And, seated beside it, wrapped up in a blanket waiting for her, was Skinner. She walked up to him, and he got to his feet. She stared, blankly, at the dark, red streak of blood on his jaw and then opened the door of the truck, and got inside. He went around to the other side and got in himself, started the engine, and began the long drive home.

Scully closed her eyes and rested her head on the window. She knew she should apologize, but she didn’t have the words to break the silence between them, and he drove without so much as glancing in her direction.

“We took samples from the survivors and the people who were immune. One day we might have gathered enough data to find a common link…” Skinner said, finally, an hour later.

“Whatever.” She scowled out of the window.

“When we get back to the base, we can analyze what we brought back with us, run it through our database, and…”

“I know,” she snapped. “I know the goddamn procedure.”

“You’re tired. Get some sleep,” he snapped back, his patience finally wearing thin.

“Is that another fucking order, sir?” she growled.

“Yes, it’s another fucking order. Get some fucking sleep,” he bellowed, “and wake up in a better fucking mood.”

Scully glared at him, but he ignored her, and finally she closed her eyes and allowed sleep to claim her. She wasn’t sure what happened. She heard a thump, and the truck screeched to a halt, and the next thing she knew, there were people swarming everywhere.

“What…what’s…” she began, her hand going to the gun lying on the floor of the truck beneath her feet.

“Oh shit, SCULLY!” Skinner’s words were cut off as someone grabbed him and pulled him bodily out of the truck.

“No!” she yelled, bringing up the gun, but it was knocked out of her hand. She lay winded on the seat of the truck and dimly, in the gray dawn air, she saw Skinner lunge out of his captors’ hands towards her.

“Drive!” he shouted. “Get out of here!”

“Not without you!” she yelled back, and then it was too late, someone was holding a gun to her head. She watched, frozen in time, as one of their assailants, a tall, wild-eyed youth, hit Skinner hard across the jaw with the butt of his rifle. She heard a snap as his head was thrown back, and he slid down into the dusty ground, unconscious.

“NO!” Without even thinking, she slipped out of her captor’s grasp and fell onto the ground beside Skinner. Blood was trickling down his face, and he was completely still. She reached out to see if there was a pulse in his neck, but someone pulled her away. “Let me go, let me go…” She kicked and bit but there were too many of them, and she was overpowered and slung back into the truck.

“He’s just the driver,” someone was saying. “She’s the doctor, she’s the one we want.”

“What shall we do with him?” another voice asked, and a man rolled Skinner over with his foot.

“Leave him,” was the curt reply, and then she found herself surrounded by six armed men. Three of them clambered into the back of the truck, while the others crammed themselves in beside her.

“What are you doing? You can’t…?” Scully glanced around in panic. “You can’t leave him. He’ll die – it’s the middle of nowhere, for God’s sake!” she remonstrated as one man started the truck and began to drive away.

“Tough,” the driver snarled.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded. “Why the hell are you doing this?”

“Because we need a doctor. We’re dying,” the man beside her responded softly. “And you can help us. We heard what you did in Carolina Springs.”

“We didn’t do anything. Didn’t you see the number of people we buried over there?”

“You’re a doctor. You can save us,” the man repeated stubbornly.

“That’s no reason to kill my friend! Why the hell do you think I’d want to help you when you killed him?” She craned her head and glanced in the mirror. Skinner was just a dot lying abandoned in the dust far behind them, still unmoving.

“You’ll help us, or we’ll kill you. Simple as that,” the driver said with a shrug. “Look, I’m sorry, but we’re desperate. We’d do anything.”

“I don’t care. Stop the damn truck. Turn around!” she yelled. “I won’t go anywhere without him.” She reached out, making a desperate grab for the radio, but she never even got close before the man next to her swung his gun down on the equipment, shattering it into oblivion. She screamed out loud in anger and launched herself at him. One of the men glanced at the driver, and he nodded. Something rough and smelly was placed over her face, and she took a deep breath, drawing up her strength to fight, and then everything went black.

Scully awoke to find herself in a bed. It was comfortable and warm. She moved, mumbling blearily, her head aching, then came to with a start. A woman was standing by the door, holding a gun. She was middle-aged, her dark, chestnut hair streaked with gray, her face careworn and grief-stricken.

“Who…?” Scully’s memory flooded back in, and she pushed her hair back from her face with a groan. “Oh, shit,” she muttered.

“Did they hurt you?” The woman came over and handed her a glass of water. “I told them to be careful. You’re very valuable to us.”

“I’m not some kind of commodity,” Scully snapped, taking deep gulps of the water, “and I’m not going to help you. Your people killed my friend.”

“I’m sorry, but you will help us,” the woman stated implacably. She took hold of Scully’s arm and dragged her out into the corridor and down a flight of stairs, into the large living room of a farmhouse. Scully stopped and looked around in dismay. The room was filled with the bodies of the ill and dying. “Most of them are family to me, one way or another, so you can see that I’m kind of desperate,” the woman told her, gesturing with her gun.

“We’ve all lost people. You’re no different,” Scully snapped.

“We stayed out here, alone, away from all the sickness and death that you and your godless kind have brought upon the world,” the woman hissed. “We stayed out here, and prayed to the good Lord to deliver us, but we couldn’t escape the pestilence. Even living hard-working, God-fearing lives, we still succumbed to this evil plague. Now, I’m not going to sit around and watch my people die. You’ll help us, or so help me, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“I will help you, but only if you go and get my friend. Until he’s brought back here, I won’t do a damn thing.” Scully stood, her arms crossed over her chest. The other woman stared at her for a long time, and they faced each other down for what seemed like an eon, then the woman nodded her head, curtly.

“You get to work, and we’ll see what we can do about your friend,” she snapped. Scully thought about it for a moment, then nodded. It seemed to be the best deal she was going to get.

“I’ll need some equipment from the back of the truck,” she said, striding towards the door. A young man, standing on guard, blocked her path, and pointed his gun at her. She brushed it away irritably, and he looked over her shoulder for guidance. The woman nodded, and he stood aside and let Scully pass.

She walked wearily over to where the truck was parked. She seemed to be on a large farm. There were several buildings and outhouses, and she could already smell the unmistakable odor of diseased and dying bodies. She brushed a fly away from her face and clambered into the back of the truck. She reached out to grab a pack of medical supplies when the blood on her hands caught her eye. Skinner’s blood. She glanced sideways and saw Skinner’s bag, lying on the floor of the truck, abandoned. Just like him. Abandoned to die in the dirt and the heat of the sun, and the last thing she had done had been to yell at him. If he was dead, then she’d never have the opportunity to say she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant it.

She opened the small bag, with shaking hands. There was a change of clothes inside, and a bar of soap. Her fingers touched something hard, and solid and she drew out the palm pilot he carried everywhere with him. Krycek had arranged for it to be delivered to him, just before the disease struck, maybe knowing it was all over. She could still remember the look of disbelief on his face as he’d opened the package, and found the slim, sleek, deadly device. She’d analyzed the data it contained, but there hadn’t been time to come to any conclusions, as the whole city had been wiped out by the first attack of the contagium a few days later. Her fingers dug deeper, and she drew out a spare pair of his glasses, wrapped in a cloth, and gently stroked the fragile combination of metal and the glass, fighting down the lump in her throat. These meager possessions seemed so poignant, so much a part of the man she had come to know so well.

She picked up his sweater, and held it in her blood-stained hands, then raised it to her face and inhaled the scent. His scent. She was filled with a wave of despair. She couldn’t do this without him, without his strong, reassuring presence holding her together. She couldn’t carry on if he was dead; she might as well die too. She realized that he had been the only thing keeping her going for the past few months, and now he was gone. The image of him lying, bleeding in the sand, rose up again in her mind, and she flung herself over the back of the truck, and heaved out her guts onto the baking earth below.

When she’d finished, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, wrapped Skinner’s sweater firmly around her waist despite the heat, grabbed the supplies she needed, and walked slowly, wearily back to the house.

The woman in charge was called Valerie. The enormous farm was less a family home and more of a commune, as far as Scully could tell. Some of its inhabitants were related but many were not, and they all seemed to belong to some strange religious sect. Scully’s tired brain couldn’t take in any more information than that. She set up her medical equipment, ordered Valerie to take the worst affected patients to an outbuilding where they would be quietly left to die, and then concentrated on those who stood a chance.

One thing became immediately apparent to Scully: this wasn’t the strain of the disease that she had encountered in Carolina Springs. This was yet another new mutation. The irony of the situation was that if this small, desperate commune had enlisted their help and brought Skinner with them, he would undoubtedly have ordered the full crisis team out here, with all its equipment, and they would have had the benefit of more than just one over-worked, unhappy doctor.

Scully wasted valuable time turning the able-bodied into nurses and assistants, showing them how to take blood and how to administer medication. This mutation induced symptoms she’d never seen before, including an acute septicemia that acted so fast that people who had been alive and well at the start of the day were dead by sunset. Most of her patients went through recognized stages of the disease that she’d seen before, each lasting an average of three days before they died, but the severity of the symptoms and the fact that they didn’t respond to any of her medicines marked out this particular mutation as being more dangerous than any she’d encountered before.

Scully worked flat out all day, then sat down at the table and ate a bowl of broth that was placed in front of her, barely tasting it. Valerie sat opposite, her grim face growing more lined with each passing second.

“What about my friend?” Scully asked, numbly. “Where is he?”

“Do you think I have people to spare to go back looking for one man when so many are dying and need nursing?” Valerie spat.

“You promised!” Scully exploded, rising to her feet angrily.

“I said what I had to in order to get what we need,” Valerie replied, in a tone of pure steel.

“You bitch!” Scully had a sudden image of Skinner lying in the dirt, in the baking sun, dying slowly. He deserved so much more than that, after all he’d done. “You stupid, stupid bitch. Don’t you know who he is? This isn’t just about you, it’s about the whole damn world, and he’s the only one doing anything, anything,” her voice rose a pitch, “to save us.”

“He’s dead,” Valerie said tonelessly. “Nobody can survive out there in the heat. There was no point sending anyone back for a corpse.”

“God forgive you then, because I sure as hell won’t,” Scully said in a low tone that was beyond anger, beyond even grief.

“I’m sorry for your friend, but we needed help.” Valerie shrugged.

“And the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, do they?” Scully growled.

“When they’re my few, then yes,” Valerie replied bluntly. “Now get back to work.”

“Or? You’ve lost your bargaining chip.”

“You’re a doctor, and you’re not going anywhere. Healing’s what you do, and my guess is that you’ll do it. My people don’t need to suffer because of your quarrel with me, do they?” Valerie’s expression was as hard as steel. Scully glanced back into the other room, full of sick and dying people.

“You’re wrong. I don’t give a damn about them,” she snapped, “and I don’t give a damn about what happens to me, either. Kill me if you want.”

“You might not care about them, but you do care about it, don’t you?” Valerie hissed. “You care about what’s inside them – I’ve watched you work. It’s personal, isn’t it? Just you and this disease. You want to defeat it – or die in battle. You can’t just let it win, can you?”

Scully had never loathed anyone more than she did in that moment, as Valerie threw the truth in her face. She stood, fists clenched, hating that truth, and then silently, she turned on her heel and went back to work.

Continued in Chapter 2