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he said to the driver. "I want to go to Georgetown."
    Dana Scully lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Despite her exhaustion, she hadn't been able to sleep; hadn't been able to do anything, really, but lie there and endlessly replay the events of the last two days: the explosion in Dallas and its after-math, the interminable meeting that had led to the termination of her career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Outside the rain beat at the windows, a noise that she normally found reassuring, but which tonight sounded only like another reprimand, another reminder that some-how she had come up short, in the Bureau's esti-mation and—what was even worse—her own.
    And Mulder's. At the thought of her partner, Scully sighed and closed her eyes, fighting back a despair that went even deeper than tears. It didn't even bear thinking about, that this was the end of it—
    Don't go there , a voice echoed inside her skull, trying to put a wry spin on it. But Scully only bit her lip.
    I'm there , she thought.
    The rain battered the walls of her apart-ment, the wind sent branches rattling against the roof; and then she heard something else. She sat up bolt upright, cocking her head.
    Someone was pounding at the door. Scully glanced at her bedside clock. 3:17. She grabbed her bathrobe and hurried into the living room. At the door she hesitated, listening to whoever was on the other side pause, then begin to bang even harder. She peeked through the peephole, stepped back, and sighed, her relief tinged with annoyance. Then she removed the safety chain, unlocked the door, and pulled it open.
    Mulder stood there, his clothes wet and hair disheveled. Despite his disarray, and the hour, he looked strangely, even disturbingly, alert.
    "I wake you?"
    Scully shook her head. "No."
    "Why not?" Mulder breezed past her into the apartment. As he did she caught the sweet-sour reek of tequila and the fainter, stale smoky scent that all bars have at closing time. "It's three A.M.—"
    She closed the door and stared at him in disbelief. "Are you drunk , Mulder?"
    "I was until about twenty minutes ago."
    Scully crossed her arms against her chest and stared at him coolly. "Is that before or after you got the idea to come here?"
    Mulder looked puzzled. "What are you implying, Scully?"
    "I thought you may have gotten drunk and decided to come here to talk me out of quit-ting."
    "Is that what you'd like me to do?"
    Scully shut her eyes and leaned against the wall. Recalling how fifteen minutes ago, an hour ago, she had been thinking exactly that. After a moment she opened her eyes and sighed. "Go home, Mulder. It's late."
    He shook his head, with a resolute, slightly manic gleam in his eyes. A look Scully knew all too well and usually to her peril. He reached down to pick up her windbreaker, still lying on the couch where she'd dropped it last night, and held it out to her. "Get dressed, Scully."
    "Mulder, what are you doingl"
    "Just get dressed," he said. The manic gleam grew even more intense, but it couldn't hide the beginning of a grin, the slightest hint that something big was afoot. "I'll explain on the way."

CHAPTER 5
    BLACKWOOD. TEXAS
    The night breeze swept across the prairie relentlessly. After a while the wind seemed to rise, as though heavy weather was moving in.
    Above the desolation of sage and dust, two black, unmarked helicopters appeared, swoop-ing perilously close to the ground.
    They buzzed past, flying at dangerously low altitude toward their destination: several large, ominously glowing domes, duplicates of the moon's own reflection upon the prairie. Only a few hundred yards away, the commonplace lights of the housing development sparked the night, white and yellow and ice-blue where a television was on. But there was nothing com-monplace about the work site that had sprung up where, only days before, four young boys had knelt digging in the brick-colored earth.
    Now, the white hoods of several geodesic dome tents stretched over