Part Twenty Eight

"Here. This is it." Other than the frat party assaulting her stomach, Sydney had more or less shaken off the effects of whatever drug their abductor fed her. She tried to focus on finding the relic, repeating to herself that this was business as usual, nothing more. She couldn’t afford to think about the real ramifications if she failed. It might already be too late for the infant, for the grandmother, and for Nigel.

She instantly slammed the door shut on that thought, unable to cope with the knife of worry it sent through her heart.

She stood on tiptoe to peer into the secondary cement line. "It’s got to be the one."

Mulder trained his small halogen flashlight on the dirty page. "Any sign of the tributary branch?" he asked.

"No. Yes. Yes, it’s there, off to the right. This is it. Somebody give me a boost." She wished again she’d been granted a simple tool kit; a rope, a hammer, anything she’d normally bring along to do her job. Bereft of the basics, separated from her assistant and best friend, she was reduced to giving orders for the obvious.

With a shrug, Mulder stuck the paper into his pocket and interlaced his fingers, forming a stirrup to lift her to the secondary line. "You okay?" he asked once she got inside.

"Nope, but I’m too pissed to stop now." She crawled through the sludge, forcing back the bile that rose in her throat. She reached the junction, but it was too dark to see more than a foot or two in. "I need your flashlight."

Something smacked against her butt and, after a couple of moves worthy of a contortionist, she collected the flashlight. "Got it!" she called. "Heading down the branch."

"Hey, if you find the sword, won’t it be solid rust?" Mulder yelled back, and it struck her that he was living the same worries and uncertainties that plagued her. He needed to talk and be talked to as much as she did.

"It might be. Depends on whether it’s been left in the open or if it’s sealed in something waterproof, and how long it’s been down here. Hey, Mulder, can I ask you something? It’s kind of personal, so you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to."

"You can ask. If I don’t answer, don’t take it personally." There was a hint of macabre humor in his voice.

She spied a dark mound a few feet ahead, its outlines too indistinct for her to tell if it was what she was looking for or not. "Why do you and Scully call each other by your last names?"

Silence was his reply, and for a moment she figured she wouldn’t get an answer.

"We worked together first. She was sent to spy on me, to undermine my work." There was a quiet soft chuckle. "She wasn’t exactly what my enemies were expecting. Hell, she wasn’t what I was expecting!"

"So you guys were friends first?" Before he could answer, she grasped the tattered leather case, "I got it!"

Navigating backward through the sewer line was considerably more complicated than entering. Mulder picked up where they left off. "We were about as different as they come, you know? I mean, we both were intelligent adults, and we spoke the same language and shared the job, the same passions. Pretty much everything else was different. It took us seven years to realize that the differences weren’t important. Either that, or spending all that time together we grew more alike in self defense."

Go to Part Twenty Nine.


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