Title: Patchwork- Part 2/3
Spoilers: Early season 6, after Triangle but before How The Ghosts
Stole Christmas.
Classification: XA
Summary: Mulder goes off on a trip to investigate a so-called
patchwork creature reported to have been seen in Cheyenne, Wyoming,
but ends up getting involved in more than he bargained for.
Rating: PG-13, for disturbing imagery and events.
Keywords:
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, except the OCs.
Feedback: Would be marvelous! Reach me at pomme_noire@hotmail.com
Archive: Just contact me beforehand.
Author's Note: I apologize for any geographical or other
inaccuracies regarding the town of Cheyenne. I have never been to
Wyoming personally, so all of my information comes via Wikipedia.

~~~~~~~
Part 2

When Mulder awoke, he was strapped to a hospital bed, but he could
tell instantly that he wasn't in any kind of real hospital. He'd
been in enough to tell the difference right off the bat. The
facility was all wrong: darkened, dirty-looking, and divided into
separate "rooms" by sheets of translucent hanging plastic.

He tried to sit up, as much as was possible with the restraints,
but the act of attempting to lift his head caused the headache to
return with a vengeance, and he groaned, lying back again. His eyes
traveled to the IV pole next to his bed. He looked-- there was, in
fact, a lead in his left arm. There was no way of knowing what was
being pumped into him. His heart rate began to speed up as the
implications of this sank in, and he tried to watch the results of
this on the monitor next to him with detachment. It didn't work.
Then he tried to calm down by reminding himself that at least he
wasn't in some dank cell in Russia, having an alien virus work its
way into him. That didn't work either.

Just as Mulder was really starting to panic, and to wonder how long
he could keep from giving into the desire to fight futilely against
the restraints, he heard footsteps approaching. A lab-coated man
with a surgical mask over his mouth walked in. He looked to be
about in his early thirties. Without meeting Mulder's eyes, he
looked at the various charts and readouts, adjusted something on
one of the machines, and wrote something down on his clipboard.

"Where am I?" Mulder demanded eventually, when he realized the man
wasn't planning to speak to him. "What are you doing to me?"

Seeming almost surprised to be spoken to, the man replied to the
second question. "You're a test subject. Please don't attempt to
struggle against the restraints-- that bruise on your head needs
time to heal." He spoke in a clinical, emotionless tone, then
adjusted the flow of-- whatever it was from the IV.

"What kind of test subject?" Mulder asked, using anger to mask his
fear. "I sure as hell didn't volunteer for any kind of tests."

Still without acknowledging Mulder directly, the man took out a
small light from his pocket and shone it in each of Mulder's eyes.
Mulder thought about jerking his head away, but remembering the
agony that kind of movement had produced last time, he decided to
blink instead. This didn't seem to bother the doctor. He wrote
another few figures down on the clipboard, and finally answered, "I
haven't been authorized to tell you anything more." Before Mulder
say anything else, he pushed through the hanging plastic to the
"room" to Mulder's right.

"Hey!" Mulder yelled after him. "Hey! Come back here! I'm not just
gonna lie here and let you pump me full of test drugs, you b--"

The doctor poked his head back through the plastic. Smirking ever
so slightly, he interrupted Mulder mid-epithet. "I don't see that
you have any choice, Mr.--" he consulted the clipboard, "Mulder.
And if you don't quiet down, I'm going to have to give you another
sedative. You'll upset the other test subjects."

Left alone again, Mulder distracted himself from the truth of the
man's statement-- that there was nothing he could do-- by running
over what little he knew about his situation in his head. He had
been kidnapped from the woods in the middle of the night, been
driven somewhere out even farther in the middle of nowhere, and was
now in some sort of facility where they were performing tests on
human subjects-- or at least he assumed the other occupants of this
"hospital" were human. He had no way of knowing exactly how long
had passed since his kidnapping, but he hoped that Scully had
realized something was wrong by now. He had told her he would be
back to the motel soon-- hopefully enough time had passed that she
was even now looking for him.

Abruptly, Mulder felt a wave of nausea wash over him. With this
came renewed fear. *What are they testing?* he wondered, closing
his eyes as the nausea passed. He cursed himself for following the
stupid tabloid story out here and getting into trouble again, and
hoped again that Scully would find him.

~~~~~~~
It hadn't taken the search team long at all to find the flashlight
that Mulder had dropped out in the woods, about three hundred feet
from the picnic table. The grass and brush around the area were
trampled, and Scully (who quickly ran to join the searchers who had
discovered the flashlight) was the first to see the small spot of
dried blood on one such flattened section of grass. Her heart sank
still further, but as a sample was gathered for analysis, she
reminded herself that it was possible that it wasn't even Mulder's
blood.

Very little else was found by any of the officers involved in the
search. Scully was frustrated, though she knew objectively that it
hadn't been likely that much would be found. She asked for and
received a copy of the police report that had been filed when Amber
McConnell went missing, and read it carefully at the police station
back in Cheyenne. There wasn't a great deal to be had here, either:
the woman had last been seen at 4:30 in the evening (by a sales
clerk at a convenience store who said she had bought some bottled
water), and had seemed in good spirits. She and her friend had been
planning to head out to a hiking area outside of the city, to the
west, in the national forest land.

Scully rubbed a hand across her face. The rest stop where Mulder
had been kidnapped was also to the west of Cheyenne. Maybe there
was a connection there? But the sheriff couldn't be expected to
 search an entire national forest.

Just then, Sheriff Willis came over to the desk that Scully was
borrowing. "Find anything?"

"Maybe," Scully replied. "I noticed that both Amber McConnell and
Agent Mulder disappeared as they were heading out to the west of
Cheyenne. I know there's a national forest out there-- is there
anything else of note?"

The woman looked like she was about to speak, then stopped for a
moment. "Well, actually, there are several acres of land owned by a
man in town. He's pretty secretive about what he's up to, but I
know that he recently hired several specialists from out-of-state
to come out to work at his facility."

"Facility?" Scully repeated. It could be just some of Mulder's
paranoia rubbing off on her, but she definitely did not like the
sound of that. "What kind of facility?"

Sheriff Willis shrugged. "I'm not sure. As I said, Mr. Taylor is
fairly secretive about his work." Before Scully could be
disappointed, she added, "But I could check with the hospital where
he used to work, if you'd like, get some more background
information on him."

Scully smiled at her. "Thank you." As the sheriff left to set her
idea in motion, Scully looked at her watch. It was now just past
9:00. She blew out her breath slowly, wishing there was something
else concrete, something *useful* she could be doing. Then she
could at least keep herself from simply sitting here, allowing her
imagination to run wild with what was happening to Mulder at this
moment.

~~~~~~~
The next time the doctor came by to check on him, Mulder was almost
relieved to see him. The nausea hadn't returned, but Mulder was now
positive he had a fever. He alternated between sweating because he
was far too warm and shivering uncontrollably because he felt too
cold. It was difficult for him to focus on anything or any thought
for more than a few seconds at a time. During these moments of
lucidity, Mulder realized dimly that he was probably delirious.
Scully would be able to figure out what they were doing to him,
Mulder thought, his teeth chattering.

"His reaction is clearly acute, sir," the doctor was saying to
someone else who was standing next to him. "Should we stop
administering the antibodies, or--?"

"No," came the response, and Mulder thought he might recognize the
voice from... something that had happened to him recently. He
couldn't hold onto the thought for long enough to remember. "We
don't have time to wait for him to recover. Increase the dosage of
cyclosporine, and check back with me in an hour."

"Yes, Dr. Taylor," the man responded. He walked over to the IV pole
again, and Mulder managed to turn and focus on his face.

"Not... working... is it?" he managed to ask through his shivering.

The man looked slightly unsure of himself for the first time.
"We'll get it working," he muttered, more for his own benefit that
Mulder's.

Mulder turned away to stare at the ceiling. He was vaguely glad
that whatever they were doing wasn't working out the way they
planned, but... it still wasn't good. He needed to get out of here.
With that thought, he quickly drifted into troubled half-dreams.
Occasionally he forgot where he was and tried to get up, to leave,
to find Scully, only realizing that this was impossible when the
straps from the restraints would cut painfully into his arms and
legs.

~~~~~~~
The test results were in: the blood was Mulder's, without a doubt.
Scully's fear for him grew, but at least now she had something
concrete to do to find him. The background check on Dr. Ryan Taylor
had come back with enough red flags that even the good Deputy
Charlie Greer agreed that he was suspicious: he had been employed
for several years at the University of Wyoming's medical center as
a professor of neurobiology who specialized in bioengineering, but
had been fired for conducting "experiments that did not conform to
established ethical standards"-- that was how Rachel Willis's
friend at the hospital had put it. His former colleagues had no
idea what he was doing now, but when the sheriff told her friend
that he had a piece of property out in the middle of nowhere and
had gotten some specialists to come out to help him with his work,
her friend remarked that three or four younger doctors and lab
technicians had been fired along with Taylor, for helping him with
his experiments.

Scully looked at her watch again: almost 11:00. Sheriff Willis was
driving out toward Taylor's facility with Scully in the front seat,
sirens wailing and lights flashing. Three other squad cars were
behind them. The sheriff had offered to have one of her officers
pick up lunch before they left, but Scully had said truthfully that
she wasn't hungry, and the woman hadn't pressed her.

"How long of a drive is it, approximately?" Scully asked, breaking
the fairly tense silence.

"At this speed, about an hour and a half." Though Scully tried to
hide her dissatisfaction at this information, the sheriff saw and
shook her head. "I know, that's not very fast. But it's the best we
can do. You could charter a helicopter, but at this point it would
probably end up taking just about as long to get it out here."

"No, I understand," replied Scully, trying to smile. *I just...
don't want to think about what's going to happen to Mulder in the
time it takes us to get to him.*

While she waited for the test results earlier that morning, Scully
had called the Gunmen and asked them to find whatever they could on
Ryan Taylor. (The three had been curious as to why Scully wanted
the information, but she had only told them that she and Mulder
were in Wyoming investigating him.) What they had found was not
comforting: the unethical experiments had taken the form of
attempts to use genetic engineering to alter healthy, normal test
animals (monkeys, in this case)-- to increase their physical
strength and other factors. Fortunately, the tests had been halted
before too much damage had been done, but the Gunmen said that
Taylor and his team, at least, believed they had been close to
success.

Only a few years ago, Scully herself would have been skeptical that
anyone could be close to successfully performing that kind of
genetic engineering. There were too many variables that had yet to
be determined: for one thing, the vast majority of the genes in the
human genome had not yet been mapped to specific areas or functions
of the body, and for another, methods of gene manipulation were
still in their infancy. Now, though, after all she had seen in her
time on the X-Files, Scully wasn't sure she could say it was
impossible. But even if (as was likely) Taylor was not as close to
success as he thought, there was no doubt that botched genetic
engineering experiments could cause plenty of harm. Scully was
almost glad that Internet connections were so spotty out here-- the
Gunmen said they had found pictures of the results of Taylor's
experiments, but Scully had no way to receive them... and she was
not sure she wanted to see them. Not right now, at any rate.

The officers had also discovered that four other people had gone
missing recently in neighboring precincts. Two of them had been
missing for an entire week. Scully *really* didn't want to think
about what could have happened to them during that time, if they
were being experimented on.

The two women were silent for the rest of the journey.
Unsurprisingly, the closer they got to the facility, the fewer cars
they met on the road. Just as Scully was about to suggest it,
Sheriff Willis turned off her siren, and radioed to the other cars
to do the same. "No sense in alerting Taylor too far ahead of
time," she said to Scully grimly, and Scully agreed.

Right on schedule, at about 12:30, the cars pulled up at the front
of the bunker-like facility. There had been a gate across the
entrance to the long driveway, but its lock was rusted, and took
only a few seconds to open. Scully wondered briefly if Rachel would
have gotten enjoyment out of driving through the gate, had it been
necessary.

The sheriff knocked sharply on the sturdy-looking front door of the
building. "Dr. Taylor?" she called. "This is Sheriff Willis. Open
up!"

There was no answer for several seconds. Then a man's voice could
be heard coming out of the intercom next to the doors. "The police?
What do you want?"

"We have a warrant to search the premises for several people who
have gone missing recently," she replied, "including an FBI agent.
Open up, please."

The voice sighed. "I'm afraid I'm too busy to deal with this at the
moment. Feel free to come in... if you can." The intercom clicked,
and then there was silence.

"Dr. Taylor?" Rachel called again. No reply. She turned to Scully
and the other officers in disgust. "Any suggestions on opening this
door?"

Scully examined it more closely. The facility might really have
been a bunker of some kind in the past, she guessed, because the
door was certainly reinforced like those she'd seen.

"No point in shooting the lock?" one of the other officers asked
helpfully.

The sheriff shrugged. "Go ahead and try if you want."

The young man dutifully fired off his pistol, after everyone backed
up. Then he tried the door. "No luck."

Meanwhile, Scully had been wandering around to the side of the
building. She saw an indentation in the ground, and bent down to
look. It seemed to be some sort of cooling tunnel, just wide enough
to walk in if you bent over. She took out her flashlight and turned
it on to look down the tunnel. "This door could be less secure,"
she said, and waited for the officers to gather before she crept
partway down the tunnel and tried her luck with shooting the lock.
She crept forward the rest of the way, and turned the doorknob. It
swung outward.

Within minutes, the whole group had managed to crawl into the
facility through the tunnel. They stood up to find themselves in a
darkened, decades-old looking hallway with low ceilings and no
decorations.

"We have no idea what kind of security measures Taylor has in
here," the sheriff cautioned them. "Proceed carefully, in pairs.
Keep in contact if possible." She looked at Scully. "Agent Scully?
Where should we start?"

Scully glanced around. This floor did not look like it would have
much in the way of medical facilities. It looked more like unused
offices. "I suggest we try the lower floors," she said. "I don't
think there's much up here."

Rachel nodded. "Right." The group split up, sticking in pairs as
the sheriff had said. Scully went with Rachel down the hall,
turning a corner carefully to see a door marked "Stairs." They
approached, and Scully nodded to Rachel, who kicked it open, gun
drawn.

There was no one on the other side. Silently (though the door had
made a fair amount of racket, hitting the wall), the two began down
the stairs. Scully's heart was pounding. She didn't like the fact
that they had met no opposition as of yet. Then again, she
reflected, it didn't sound like Taylor had that many people on
"staff", and his comment at the intercom seemed to suggest that he
was extremely focused on his work, so maybe he just didn't have
time to create elaborate security measures.

Rachel raised her eyebrows questioningly as they reached another
door. This one was simply labeled "G2." Scully nodded again, and
they entered the floor.

Upon opening the first door that they came across in the hall,
Scully knew they were on the right track. There was an empty metal
operating table in the middle of the small room, and the smell of
disinfectant was heavy in the air-- but not quite heavy enough to
mask the smell of blood. Scully didn't allow herself to think too
much about the smell, instead making herself start investigating
the room as she would any other potential crime scene.

The source of the smell became apparent rather quickly: the large
steel container in the far corner of the room was apparently used
for storing medical waste before it was taken to the incinerator.
When Scully opened the lid, her first thoughts were of relief: this
was definitely the result of experimentation on animals rather than
humans, based on what was visible. However, it was still highly
unpleasant to imagine what kinds of experiments would have resulted
in this kind of waste material-- and from the expression on Sheriff
Willis's face when she took a look, Scully wasn't alone in this
idea.

"Nothing else to see in here," Scully muttered, closing the
container. The two of them headed back out into the hall.

Just then, the walkie-talkie on Rachel's belt crackled, and one of
the other officers reported in. "We found one of Taylor's
specialists, ma'am," he reported. "He was trying to make a break
for it, but he told us that the FBI agent was taken to floor G3,
and that Taylor and the others are still there."

"We're on our way," Rachel replied crisply. Before she had even
finished the phrase, Scully was headed toward the stairs again, and
the sheriff had to run to catch up.

As soon as Scully pulled open the door to floor G3, she felt her
fear and unease increase rapidly. One side of the long, poorly-lit
room had five occupied hospital beds that could be seen faintly
through the translucent plastic hangings around each one. The other
side of the room had several refrigerated storage cabinets
containing various samples and medicines. It was impossible to tell
from here what they all were. But Scully's attention was mostly
focused on the tall older man who was calmly walking from one of
the cabinets toward a bed, as if the sudden entrance of two
officers of the law was not important enough to interrupt his work.
He was wearing a lab coat and a surgical mask, but Scully could
still recognize him from the picture she'd seen as Dr. Taylor.

"Dr. Taylor, stay right where you are," Scully ordered, her pistol
aimed at the man.

He looked up at her briefly, but then turned his attention to the
two other lab-coated men who were standing staring at Scully and
the sheriff, seemingly in a daze. "Edwards, give me a hand with the
next dose," he said.

"Edwards, don't move," Rachel broke in. "You, your friend, and Dr.
Taylor are all under arrest for kidnapping. And that's just for
starters."

Edwards and the man next to him nodded and put their hands up.
Taylor sighed heavily, but at least stopped moving. "You are making
a mistake, Sheriff," he said quietly. "This may be the most
important medical and scientific breakthrough since Dolly the
sheep."

The sheriff was about to reply when a woman's voice came from the
closest bed. "Please... help." She sounded as if she were in agony.

Rachel kept her weapon trained on Taylor as she turned to look at
Scully. "You said you're a doctor-- you go see to her and I'll deal
with this mad scientist."

Scully hesitated for a second, knowing that Taylor wasn't likely to
give up without a fight. But just then, Charlie and another officer
came into the room and moved to cuff the three doctors, and Scully
waited no longer.

When she pulled aside the curtain around the closest bed, Scully
saw a woman who she guessed must be Amber McConnell, but the woman
who was strapped into the bed hardly looked like the young, healthy
woman whose picture had been in the missing person report. She was
almost gaunt, and she was shivering and gasping, her face was slick
with sweat. Her eyes were glazed, and though she was looking at
Scully, it was plainly hard for her to keep focused.

"You should put on a mask," one of the younger doctors called.
"Their immune systems-" Then he fell silent.

Scully quickly found a mask in the drawer of the bedside table, and
put it on, after looking at the IV bag. Cyclosporine-- so they were
in fact trying to suppress their immune systems. She met Amber's
eyes and said soothingly, "We're going to get you out of here. You
don't need to be afraid."

The woman nodded slightly, but Scully was unsure of how much she
understood in her feverish condition. She had clearly had an
adverse reaction to the immunosuppressants, and yet Taylor and his
crew had apparently gone ahead with their testing without bothering
to remedy this. Scully's anger grew.

"What were you testing on these people?" Scully demanded, turning
to face Taylor.

He regarded her impassively. Before he or either of the other-- she
couldn't call them *doctors*-- responded, though, she froze upon
hearing Mulder's weak plea from the next bed.

"Scully?"