Fight the Future by Chris Carter Read Free Book Online Page B

saw was that it was still clad in its fireman's uni-form. One sleeve lay empty alongside the torso, and where the chest had been the uniform sank until it grazed the bottom of the gurney.
    "Does this fit the description you just read me, Scully?" Mulder asked softly, as his partner circled the gurney to join him.
    "Oh my god. This man's tissue—" She reached into her pocket, withdrew a pair of latex gloves, and quickly slid them on. Then she leaned and with one latex-clad finger gently pal-pated the man's chest.
    "It's—it's like jelly ."
    She moved to gingerly touch the man's face and neck, carefully unbuttoning his uniform. "There's some kind of cellular breakdown. It's completely edematous."
    Her hands expertly checked for lesions, burns, anything she might normally have found on the victim of a bombing. She peeled aside the man's shirt, shaking her head. "Mulder, there's been no autopsy performed. There's no Y incision here, no internal exam."
    Mulder picked up the autopsy report and shook it. "You're telling me the cause of death on this report is false. That this man didn't die from an explosion, or from flying debris."
    She took a step back from the gurney. "I don't know what killed this man. I'm not sure if anybody else could claim to, either."
    "I want to bring him into the lab. I'd like for you to examine him more closely, Scully."
    She stared at the body, then at Mulder. After a moment she nodded. Together they pushed the gurney out of the freezer, and through the swinging doors that opened onto the pathology lab. Mulder pushed the gurney over to the wall. Scully flipped the lights on, taking in the familiar array of equipment, dis-secting tools, and refrigerators for storing sam-ples, glittering hemostats and neat stacks of freshly laundered sheets, boxes and boxes full of latex gloves, surgical masks, aprons, scrubs— all the tools of her trade. Finally she walked over to where Mulder waited alongside the gur-ney.
    "You knew this man didn't die at the bomb site before we got here."
    Mulder gave her a noncommittal look. "I'd been told as much."
    "You're saying the bombing was a cover-up. Of what?"
    "I don't know. But I have a hunch that what you're going to find here isn't anything that can be categorized or easily referenced."
    Scully waited to hear if there was going to be more in the way of an explanation—or apology. When there wasn't, she tugged at one latex glove and sighed, shaking her head. "Mulder, this is going to take some time, and somebody's going to figure out soon enough that we're not even sup-posed to be here."
    She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and said, "I'm in serious violation of medical ethics."
    Mulder pointed at the body on the gurney. "We're being blamed for these deaths, Scully. I want to know what this man died of. Don't you?"
    She stared at him, then back down at the body. His words hung in the air between them, something between a challenge and an entreaty. Finally she turned to the tray table set up on the wall behind them, the rows of sterilized scalpels and scissors and tweezers and knives that lay there, waiting. In silence she began gathering what she would need to do her job.
    • • •
    D-UPONT CIRCLE WASHINGTON, D.C.
    Connecticut Avenue was nearly empty when Mulder crossed it, stepping up onto the sidewalk and winding between stacks of plastic garbage bags heaped onto the curb, waiting for collec-tion. His cab pulled away behind him, joining a meager parade of vehicles: garbage truck, another Yellow Cab, police cruiser. Mulder scarcely noticed the latter, until he started down R Street and saw two other cruisers pulled up in front of a brick row house. He glanced at the address scrawled on the paper in his hand, then started up the walk. Cheerless gray light spilled onto the front stairs; the door to the row house was open. Mulder slowed his steps, hesitating at the entrance, then went inside.
    It was a typical Dupont Circle apartment. A lot of money bought you