Copyright:  Thursday, March 10, 2005 04:47:39 PM       PARADISE ISLAND ATLANTIC OCEAN MIDMORNING - DAY 5               Scully wasn’t sure just what she’d expected to happen. Shrieking monsters leaping out at them, maybe, or wailing banshees assaulting their sensitive ears. She was prepared for anything as she took that fateful step from sunlight into shadow.           Blessed cool enveloped her weary body. Somewhere ahead, she could hear the faint echoing gurgle of water tumbling over stone. It was a soothing, peaceful sound.           Nothing launched from the receding darkness to challenge them. Her tensed nerves slowly relaxed.           "So far, so good." She wasn’t sure which of them spoke as they stepped forward in unison, cautiously edging deeper into the long tunnel.           Then Mulder cast an uneasy glance back toward the fading entrance. Flickering shadows were dancing across the rough stone walls in precise, nearly-recognizable patterns. For one heart-stopping moment, he even thought he recognized his long-dead father’s distinctive features! He blinked, and the hazy apparition slowly dissipated.           "Scully, look!" He nudged her arm--but the glowing mists were gone. A cold shudder rippled down his long spine. "Never mind," he muttered, before she could start questioning his sanity again. "Trick of the shadows." Still, the elusive mirage had shaken him. He briefly wished he hadn’t loaned his 9mm to Reuben that morning, in case a rescue ship was spotted.           The gurgling water was closer now, louder in the murky darkness. He felt a curious prickling at the base of his skull. "Listen," he whispered. "Can you hear it, Scully? It’s almost like music!"           He took an impulsive step forward. Faint green light began to shimmer at the far end of the passage. "It’s there!" he gasped, wide-eyed. "Waiting for us! Scully, come on!"           "Mulder, wait! We don’t know what’s down there!"           Her frantic warning fell on deaf ears. He was already sprinting down the dark tunnel. "Hurry, Scully!" he yelled back over his shoulder.           "Mulder!" Furious, she drew her gun and raced after him. The distant glow brightened as she stumbled through the meandering stream, nearly lost her footing, then scrabbled back onto solid rock again. "Dammit, Mulder, wait!"           Vivid emerald light enveloped him as he disappeared around the corner. She charged after him--then skidded to a stunned halt.           Against the cavern’s far wall, a huge uneven ring of stone formed a natural raised basin. Swirling, hazy spring water bubbled up from its center, and frothed over the worn edges into a steamy pool that filled nearly half the chamber. Mulder was kneeling in the dirt where water lazily overflowed to glide down the dark passage she’d just traversed.           But his rapt gaze was transfixed on the ceiling arching high over their heads.           Slowly she looked up--and her jaw dropped open. The walls around them were alive with energy. Every crack and crevice was glowing with an unearthly blue-white light, shimmering like an exquisite multifaceted jewel, as nebulous mist rose from the bubbling spring. The very air around them seemed to vibrate with life and energy. Haunting patterns began to shimmer and dance across the walls as they stared, entranced.           "Open, sesame!" Mulder’s low voice was muted with reverent wonder.           Slowly she tucked her gun back into its sturdy leather holster. She’d seen caves filled with phosphorescent spores before--but even after a decade as Mulder’s partner, she’d never imagined anything this beautiful could possibly exist! It seemed to touch her troubled soul with breathtaking eloquence, striking a buried chord somewhere deep inside.           "Can you hear it now?" Mulder’s awed whisper echoed back and forth across the chamber, as if a million barely-audible voices were mirroring his every thought. "It’s been calling to us all this time, but we’d forgotten how to listen. So much time lost, when the answers were all right here, just waiting for us!           "Watch this, Scully, you won’t believe it!" His mobile face lit with sheer delight as he rose, and passed his hand over an outcrop of electric blue stone. Brilliant green instantly washed across the rocky spur, following the exact contour of his hand like a glowing shadow. "Welcome to the Emerald City!"           Impulsively she copied his movement a few feet away. Iridescent light flickered beneath her palm, like a shimmering electric current. "It must be heat activated," she murmured. "Mulder, I’ve never seen anything like this before! They look like spores--maybe descended from primitive subterranean extremophiles, if this cavern was originally underwater. But thermophilic microorganisms require pressurized environments, like you’d find inside a deep-sea hydrothermal vent. I don’t understand how they could survive here!"           Mulder barely even heard her baffled speculations. "This is it, Scully," he marveled. "The Tunguskan cure--the lyékarstva savyérsheniy! It has to be! And it’s affecting everything on this island! The water, the plants and trees, even the animals that live here! This is why everything is so much bigger and healthier than normal! This is why the water heals injuries!"           His jade eyes gleamed with rising excitement as he turned and clasped her arms in a fierce grip. "They know us, Scully--they know who and what we are! Can’t you hear them?"           His manic intensity scared her. "Mulder, these are spores," she insisted, jerking free. "They’re a primitive form of plant life. Yes, they are alive--and yes, they do seem extremely reactive to our presence. But they can’t ‘know’ us any more than my mother’s rose garden can!"           Undaunted, he flung one hand out, gesturing toward the distant cave entrance. "We were both infected with the black-oil virus, Scully, and it’s changed us. We’re not like the rest of them anymore! Don’t you see, this was put here for us to find!"           The tickling sensation at the base of Scully’s skull grew stronger, more persistent, as she warily backed away, and brushed against a shimmering fragment of stone. "Put here by whom?" she protested. "Mulder, this is an incredible find, but I can list dozens of other cave systems containing phosphorescent plant life. Bioluminescence is a common trait, a defense against predatory animals. There’s nothing alien or paranormal about it!"           "Wanta bet?" he retorted. "Look at this!"           Grinning, he dropped back to his knees, and held his hand over the damp floor. Irregular shapes began to glow faintly beneath his widespread fingers. "Footprints," he proclaimed. "And they’re not human!"           "Mulder..." Frustrated, she stifled an impulse to shake him until his head rattled. "Obviously some wild animals found the cave, and ventured this far in to drink the water..."           "No!" His head snapped back up, and she recoiled at the raw fury in his eyes. "I’ve seen these prints before--these prints, Scully--and so have you! In Arizona, four years ago, when we investigated that power plant engineer’s death. Remember the smudged footprint we found in his living room? Right under the broken alien claw half-buried in his wall.           "Then Diana Fowley and I found identical prints near that cast-off alien skin at the nuclear power plant! It is the same, Scully, I’m sure of it!"           Mulder’s crazy theories were always compelling. But she was too much a scientist to accept anything at face value. Frowning, she cautiously bent down for a closer look.           Flattened insoles, she noted, instinctively comparing each feature against the wild animal prints she’d studied in medical school. Four long splayed, multi-jointed toes, with deep claw imprints at the tips. Humanoid--but far too long and narrow to be human.           Nothing she’d ever studied or seen matched the eerie marks beneath her partner’s widespread hand. Except...           A cold shudder ran down her spine. Except for those bloody smudged prints they’d found in Arizona, where a fully-grown alien had exploded from that hapless engineer’s chest.           Only immediate cryogenic hibernation had saved her from an identical fate. The vivid memories still caused her nightmares, even after four long years.           Scully’s rational mind wanted to deny what he was suggesting. But she had seen too much, experienced too much, to blithely dismiss the evidence lying literally at her feet.           "Even assuming that these are the same, what would an EBE be doing here, of all places?" she demanded, settling back on her heels.           Mulder exhaled a gusty sigh of frustration. "I don’t know. It was metamorphing, shedding its skin. Maybe these spores helped to complete the process. Maybe it’s what the aliens eat, when they aren’t eviscerating unlucky humans! Maybe...  I don’t know what!           "But I do know that it wasn’t here alone. Look at this, Scully," he urged. "How many wild animals, or even aliens for that matter, wear Reebok tennis shoes?"           Another distinctive pattern began to emerge beneath the eerie inhuman footprint as he moved his hand closer. "If you look carefully, you can still see the brand name imprinted in the dirt," he whispered.           Scully spread her hand wide beside his, and the soft glow brightened. "Too small for a man’s footprint," she murmured. "A woman’s shoe, maybe, or a child’s..."           Sudden icy chills rippled over her exposed skin. "Mulder, that’s impossible!" she gasped, staring at him in disbelief. "Gibson couldn’t have been here!"           "Why not?" Mulder’s eyes began to gleam with excitement again. "He was trapped in the power plant with that alien--and then they both simply vanished! He never would tell me how they escaped. They were here, Scully! The spores remember!"           He was starting to talk crazy again. Suddenly Scully felt smothered by the darkness, the humid air, the unearthly shimmering walls. "We can’t keep breathing this stuff," she protested, waving a hand through the nebulous rising mist. "Let’s take a sample of the spores outside. We can examine them better there."           "Scully, don’t!" He bolted up, one hand half-raised in protest, as she ran light fingers over the nearest shimmering rock.           The spores felt soft, almost furry, beneath her questing touch!           Suddenly they changed color, sliding from electric emerald into a deep, rich royal blue. The entire wall pulsated with quick-moving patterns.           Startled, she jerked away. "Mulder, what’s happening?"           The spores seemed to swell with flickering light. Then they exploded, and a thick choking haze filled the air.           Scully lurched back into Mulder’s lean frame, knocking him off balance. Coughing, they sprawled together across the damp ground. Flickering lights seemed to dance against her eyes as inky darkness enveloped her, cutting off all sound, all sensation.           The rational part of her brain knew that she was lying on the rocky floor; knew that Mulder was gasping for air only a few feet away. Yet without warning, the entire universe seemed to open up around her, searing her reeling mind with unspeakable grandeur. Suddenly she was no more than a tiny speck tumbling headlong into a million dazzling stars and glowing nebulas, plunging endlessly through the icy cold of empty space...           Something was happening to her, she could feel the spores penetrating her lungs, her blood, her entire body. She gasped in mute protest as vast galaxies whirled by too quickly to see--while time itself seemed to reverse inside her shuddering body, healing old traumas and scars, rejuvenating her very cells.           A child’s fretful cry seemed to echo in the distance. Her precious son, William--or was it Mulder’s long-dead sister, Samantha, calling to her from beyond the black abyss?           Electricity sizzled through her veins and she cried out, clutching at nothing, as the world crashed back in on her with blistering force.           Voices were whispering in her ears, a million clamoring notes in a cosmic symphony that left her dazed, gasping for breath. Helplessly she clamped both hands over her ears.           More subtle shifts, more changes within...           Vivid electric blue-white patterns whirled on the ceiling overhead, dazzling her dilated eyes. The raucous din gradually subsided. Slowly she became aware of little things--rough stones digging into her spine, hazy water misting her face, Mulder’s uneven breathing somewhere nearby.           Every muscle in her body ached as she crawled over to his quivering frame. "Mulder?" Her low voice came out as a husky rasp. Thirsty, she was so thirsty! "Mulder, can you hear me?"           It seemed to take forever before she could muster enough strength to roll him over. His eyes were wide, glassy. For one terrifying instant, she thought he’d gone into cardiac arrest. Then he drew a deep, shuddering breath, and his taut frame relaxed.           "You knew, didn’t you?" Relieved, she collapsed beside him, and let his broad shoulder cushion her aching head. "You knew what would happen."           "The spores told me." His lips barely seemed to move; was she hearing his very thoughts?           She didn’t dare ask what he’d seen, what he’d heard in those brief bewildering moments--or was it hours? She had no way of knowing how much time had passed. Already it seemed a million miles away, like a feverish dream, or a drug-induced hallucination.           "We need to get out of here, Mulder," she mumbled, blearily shaking her head. "It’s not safe here."           A vague half-smile curved her partner’s lips. "Nothing can hurt us here, Scully," he whispered. "They know us, they’ll protect us. They’ve been waiting all this time..."           His enigmatic assurance cut through her lethargy like a sharp knife. Piqued, she grabbed at his lax shoulder. A faint haze of pollen drifted from his dark-green shirt, then settled onto the damp ground and vanished without a trace.           "Mulder, we need to get out of here!" she insisted, gathering strength with every word. "I don’t know what those spores did to us--but I don’t intend to wait around for it to happen again!"           Mulder blinked in surprise, and focused on her anxious face. "Someone’s coming," he murmured, a perplexed frown creasing his forehead. "Can’t you hear them, Scully?"           Enough was enough! Exasperated, she scrambled up and yanked him to his feet. "Come on, Mulder," she ordered, tugging him away from the bubbling spring. "We’re getting out of here right now!"           Mulder took a few sluggish steps, then faltered to a stop and looked blankly around the cavern. Scully fought back a shiver as he stared right through her, and seemed to focus on something miles away. "Someone is coming!" he whispered. "They’ve penetrated the Barrier. They’ll be here soon..."           "Mulder!" She reached up to slap his cheek, to shake some sense back into him. Anything, to break him out of this eerie reverie!           Yet something in his haunted gaze stopped her. Eyes wide, she took a frightened step backward. "Who’s coming, Mulder? Who is it?" she breathed.           He slowly turned to look at her, and his shocked whisper echoed back and forth through the hazy cavern.           "Alex Krycek!"